As a huge fan of the Level Up mechanic, I naturally love Class cards too. But, I recall you mentioning that Level Up was too problematic to be re-used much. If I'm remembering correctly, what are the differences between the two that make the Class mechanic more valuable?

Creatures which had to change power and toughness as it evolved was much more complicated to track and made the layout less appealing and more confusing.

Hi Mark, Happy Friday!

I enjoyed listening to your Logistics Drive to Work podcast today.

It's a very important subject related to Magic for me and logistics, particularly related to tracking and mental load issues, are one few things I feel are getting significantly worse in recent years.

Even if you make it easier to get specific additional game pieces required to track to play Magic (i.e. tokens, keyword counters, stickers in booster packs) keeping track of them in paper Magic significantly contributes to the mental load.

Do you really think it's worth it? Yes, sometimes you have a slam dunk mechanic like double faced cards, but I question if mechanics like the Initiative and Day/Night are worth the logistical tracking hurdles for paper Magic.

For 25 years, Magic had a relatively low tracking logistics issue. Sure, you had +1/+1 counters, level up counters, loyal counters and simple creature tokens, but it was always very easy to track any of these mechanics with a standard six sided die.

So why did things have to change? Magic continues to introduce several new and interesting mechanics each year that don't rely on outside game pieces and complex logistical tracking so it doesn't feel like Magic is running out of design space.

Day/Night, stickers, keyword counters, die rolling, Venture and Initiative and extremely complicated creature tokens are all relatively new to Magic (within the past 4 years or so).

I feel in recent years design isn't being conservative enough about weighing the logistical consequences for introducing more tracking logistical issues and extra game pieces aside from the cards. Does anyone else at WotC feel this way or not really?

Are more mechanics like this the new normal or is this just an example of the pendulum swinging in one direction for now?

I'm asking about this because all of these new logistical tracking issues make the game feel burdensome (even though the mechanics are fun), they fundamentally exacerbate the mental load, especially in eternal formats like Commander, and they cause me and my friends to make far more misplays and errors which creates a "feels bad" effect.

Thanks for everything you do Mark. Keep up the good work. I hope this isn't coming off as too critical or negative. I'm a mega fan of Magic and enjoy numerous things about the game including the upcoming ONE set but this logistics issue is a big deal to me.

You touch upon the companion issue, mental load, which is another podcast I have coming up. The data was telling us we’d been a bit under what the players wanted/could handle, so we dialed it up a bit. Did we dial it up too much? That’s a good question, and something we’re monitoring. Whether it’s a new normal or just the pendulum swinging will have a lot to do with the data we get.Which means this is a fine question for all of you. How are you feeling about current Magic when it comes to the overall complexity, including logistics and mental load?

Just from the play on Arena (Running Kaito Brawl), huge thumbs up for the Ninjas with "only once" Ninjutsu payoffs. While it seems like an unfortunate drawback, it allows for a "level up moment" when you ninjutsu one back to hand, then use it's own Ninjutsu again to get the once-only trigger.

: )

Just curious, why wasn’t level up used for the class enchantments?

Because you don’t change power and toughness. Plus, changing it allowed some improved mechanical tweaks.

If I remember correctly, the main issue with level up was that the frame could be confusing, so if we saw level up again would it use a frame more like the new class frame?

The class frame doesn’t solve the evolving stats issue.

Was there ever any consideration of Level Up being in AFR? I know it wasn't too popular, but was hoping it'd come back to a set that would match it flavorwise!

It was talked about.

If level up was brought back would it use something like the saga frame?

It’s original frame was not super popular.

Hey Mark, know its super early but could I get a maybe for level up showing up for the dnd crossover next year??

Maybe. : )

Hi Mark, would it be possible for a Planeswalker's static ability to reference the number of loyalty counters on it, e.g. “As long as [NAME] has four or less loyalty counters on it, it has hexproof“ or “As long as [NAME] has five or more loyalty counters on it, attacking creatures you control have trample“, or would that be to similar to Level up?

I believe that works within the rules.

For flavor reasons Level Up really should have occurred when the creature with it kills another creature through combat damage.

As Sengir Vampire demonstrates, that doesn’t happen a lot.