Why Does Magic: The Gathering Have Two Main Phases?

An Indie Dev and a AAA Dev try to determine why Magic has two main phases. Is it necessary in a modern card game?
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Forrest Imel
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Gavin Gray Valentine
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[@joylesstiger]

Double main phase makes sense to me as: prepping for battle > going to battle > licking your wounds > end step.

[@distractionmakers]

Love this analogy!

[@Guru4hire]

Ha jokes on you I am playing at instant speed on your end step.

[@distractionmakers]

The only way to be.

[@deeterful]

In the original rules there was only one main phase and combat was a sub-phase of the main phase. In those days if you weren’t going to attack you just skipped combat altogether. Making it into three separate phases is cleaner from a rules POV.

[@jdonvance]

Exactly what I came here to say (I watch YT on my TV). You guys said that there is value in the "everything is possible at all times" approach Garfield started the game with, which is another testament to his ability to design from literally zero; there were no other games of this kind to compare with before Magic.

[@theyanger]

Same thing I was gonna say. The notion of discrete separation of main phases is a modern rules conceit, that allows for the same gameplay options that the original rules allowed. It’s still not functionally any different “you have a main phase and you can “go to combat” once during that phase”

[@deeterful]

@@theyanger , the main difference is that back then if you chose to forgo combat there were no combat phase triggers. Now days going through the combat step is mandatory, regardless if you use it or not. While only a subtle difference, it has huge implications upon card design.

[@majordude83]

I watched an entire video about the importance of Main Phase 1 waiting for somebody to mention Haste, haha.

[@distractionmakers]

Haha yes haste requires main phase 1. On another note having no phases, like hearthstone, makes their haste-like ability charge much stronger.

[@jordantaylor4390]

I love haste.. I think it's just about the strongest ability.. that or first-strike

[@chromaticchrome3746]

Honestly i was thinking about Lords and Anthems as cards you'd wanna drop pre combat but haste of course if also a great example.

[@zym6687]

I was just thinking auras first, they occupy that same space as haste in that sorcery speed spell that affects combat this turn.

[@jordantaylor4390]

I had honestly never thought about "why?" there's two main phases.... I just accepted 'that is the way'

[@IVIaskerade]

If nothing else, the first main phase before combat lets you play a land, which means that going first always (for the first few turns at least) lets you represent more/better combat tricks than your opponent, because you're up 1 mana. It also lets you meaningfully distinguish creatures with haste.

[@thejollyrajamtg9847]

I am so glad to have stumbled onto this channel. EXCELLENT stuff here.

[@distractionmakers]

Glad you enjoy it!

[@nomukun1138]

A lot of these rules were not made by the holy and omnipotent hand of Dr. Richie Garfield, PhD, but were the result of many years of modification by dedicated and intelligent teams. I think the most amazing thing about Magic is the way it was continually shifting to be a better game through its entire history.... arguably better....

[@distractionmakers]

For sure. It is a great resource for seeing game design evolve and change over time.

[@nomukun1138]

@@distractionmakers Thanks for sharing these discussions.

[@simplegarak]

Just started but I already want to make the joke: "maybe the question is, why does magic have only 1 combat phase?" (semi serious, several games - like Lorcana - have just the one phase which you can do attacks and play cards both)

[@hayden32040]

10:50 this is so cool and something I've never really thought about. Each turn being a mini story arch unto itself and the phases facilitating that

[@matthewrehn5652]

Thank you KZbin for recommending this channel last night, almost done binging through the content to catch up and was pleasantly surprised to see a new upload today! Great content you guys, love hearing your input on systems i have been subconsciously aware of for most of my life, but never really considered before. New sub, and cant wait to see what else is in store!

[@distractionmakers]

Thanks so much! Really appreciate the kind words.

[@SirStickBug]

If I am not mistaken, Magic originally only had one main phase. I don’t know if that was before or after combat, however. Anyone who knows more than me can elaborate.

[@distractionmakers]

We should have mentioned this in the video. Combat used to be part of the main phase and you could play spells before or after attacking. Very early on combat was split into this own phase.

[@nuclearphish8051]

That point about the turn structure dictating the rhythm of tension and release in a game is brilliant. The question of how exactly to implement it is very complex and above all context driven, but I think it's really important to be generally aware of it when trying to figure out why some games feel good and others don't, and especially when designing games.

[@christuckwell3185]

There is also scope to consider the "enters play tapped" mechanics on cards, either so you can't defend with the tapped creature or you have an effect that forces an opponents creatures to enter tapped. Also, why 5 colours ? Odd verses even number of colours? Have you done a video on that?

[@distractionmakers]

Haven’t done one on colors yet. Feels like a series honestly. I’ll add it to the list.

[@LibertyMonk]

5 is kind of arbitrary, but with them being mixable (on different cards within a deck, they didn't do multicolor cards until a year in) much more than that and the combinatorial math goes wild. I'm not sure if they considered that though, since they stuck with single color cards at first. A single color isn't a color, and two or three doesn't give you much room, even with mixing 2 is just 3 and 3 is only slightly better with 6. 4 could probably work fine, especially with Brown & Grey as secret "colors", you've got 4 colors 4 pairs, 4 tris, all and nothing for 14 options. A lot of games use (or started with) 6, but they typically don't support color mixing, or restrict it to 2 or 3 colors at most. Then there are games that don't have colors at all, or have some really small "colors" that are impossible to support with expansion.

[@starmanda88]

So glad to see yall growing! I found you a couple weeks ago and the discussions have been great!

[@9clawtiger]

In a similar vein, Haste would be invalidated by removing main phase 1.

[@TurnOneWin]

so glad the algorithm sent me to this channel Forrest what kind of tea are you drinking?

[@ForrestImel]

Thanks for asking, no one has bothered asking me about my drink choices and I couldn't be happier to share this with you. I make homemade medicine balls from starbuck's drink menu. It's a combination of moroccan mint green tea, peach tea, steamed lemonade, and honey. It's delicious and I highly recommend it.

[@TurnOneWin]

@@ForrestImel wow, glad I asked! Us tea drinkers have to look out for one another

[@starmanda88]

@@ForrestImeloh that sounds like heaven

[@Grogeous_Maximus]

Would be really neat if you explained (maybe just text on screen) what stuff like heuristics are :)

[@9clawtiger]

Ask yugioh players how they feel about Duel Links, which did remove the second main phase.

[@lomalindasmogcheck1]

10:20 Then please explain 'Ninjistu'

[@PhoenicopterusR]

"These are the rules unless a card states otherwise" is easier for newer players or people unfamiliar with magic to understand. Gotta stick to the basics for basic examples.

[@majordude83]

Very rarely does Ninjistsu result in _more_ attacking creatures (the ninja that can create copies of other attackers when it ninjitsus is one obvious exception). Normally, you just get _different_ attacking creatures, and that's only after you've decided not to block something. I'd argue that the decision-making is still chunked up fairly well.

[@jordantaylor4390]

@@majordude83 I"ve been playing a Satoru Umezawa Ninja/Horror deck and it is a blast Ninjutsu-ing in Sludge Monster to turn off their Sheoldred... And Turn 4 Toxrill is wonderful! Another fun mechanic is having silver fur master and ping-ponging thousand faced shadows to make multiple copies of the lord and dramatically increasing damage out of no where

[@majordude83]

@@jordantaylor4390 Yeah, Thousand-Faced is who I was referring to. With the Alchemy buffs (now only legal in Historic), the combo with Silver-fur is insano. I made a ninja/fairy deck for the Artisan (commons/uncommons only) event that was super fun and fairly successful. Relating to the topic of this video, Ninjas are hard to play and hard to play against. Non-beginner friendly strategies that break some of the norms are what make MTG great. I thought it was cool but interesting that Arena chose ninjas as one of free starter decks last year. I loved playing it in the starter deck event (fun to play lower-power, precon MTG sometimes), but I definitely played against it less than any other deck (including the red/white Samurai one, which was legit terrible).

[@jordantaylor4390]

@@majordude83 Yup, Ninjutsu is deceptively complicated: that ninja you just ninjutsued in? still unblocked and able to be ninjutsued. Damage has been dealt? Well, we're still in the combat phase and that creature that just dealt damage to the opponent can be swapped with a ninja. It's understandable newer players may not see all the utility of ninjutsu

[@LibertyMonk]

The question isn't "why are there two" it's "why is there a combat phase", because it's pretty obvious that there are two to make room for combat. It's old-school rugged construction to have a concept of "alright, now this is my only chance to attack, and I declare all of it at once". Sure, Vigilance etc is slightly more complicated to track or might not exist, but "oh, it'll add design space" is a terrible excuse, that's as bad as just adding stun counters or Exert "markers". The interesting results I see from having all attacks happen at once are that: You can "go wide" on the attack, gang up on defense, and dorks are safe unless they become chumps. You can do a Hearthstone, Lorcana or Yugioh, and let summons attack specific targets, which introduces a similar amount of design space as it takes away. You can do a Pokemon or Flesh & Blood style, where attacking ends the turn or is otherwise the core limitation etc. You can also do zones/lanes like Artifact or Stratego, where instead of just saying "go attack" there is some tactics involved. And then there's stuff that hasn't made it big yet. Yeah, forcing all the attacks to happen in a single phase makes the "instant speed interaction" thing a lot less complicated to think about, but blocking could work a different way, as could interaction, and the game would be pretty similar. Heck, Banding, Ninjitsu, Morph, Planeswalkers, Battles, extra combat phases, "tap to fight/punch", and more exist as mechanics in the game. They're all limited to a few sets or colors etc, but the fact that those cards got printed means the game is still a game when combat works that way. Yes, I understand that it wouldn't be the same, we'd lose some design space, but we'd probably also gain some, or focus on other untapped wells.

[@distractionmakers]

Thanks for your thoughts. Our point wasn’t to necessarily exhaust all avenues for discussion on the topic. We wanted to point out that two main phases is unintuitive, but has quite a bit of utility once players are over the hurdle a follow up about the combat step specifically is likely in the future.

[@lolmonkeyjizz]

Thanks for the content ive been really enjoying it !!

[@emiel122191]

I never saw it as "you have 2 main phases", i saw this always as "you have one main phase, during which you get to attack once". From this perspective, having two main phases makes sense. Instead of time order, you look at when players can play cards.

[@distractionmakers]

That is how the rules were originally written haha. It is a bit more intuitive to think of it as one phase with a sub combat phase within it.

[@christopherlundgren1700]

I’m not going to claim that I know better than Paulo, but I’ll sometimes hold my land until 2nd main for kind of a similar reason. My reasoning is that if the opponent isn’t sure whether I’m hitting my land drop for the turn, they might misevaluate whether they should be blocking, trading, or taking damage. Does this trick ever work in my favor? Is this a better way of hiding information than the precombat land? 🤷 It’s given me something to think about, anyway.

[@distractionmakers]

High level play is about managing information. Sometimes holding the land is the correct play, just depends on the situation.

[@peterrasmussen4428]

vigilance would just become "untaps at the end of your turn", but I still think the point is good, phases makes it clearer what is happening.

[@distractionmakers]

What I mean is, if you can attack without an indicator, cast spells, attack with a different creature, cast spells, etc. how can you be sure if you attacked with that first creature or not if your turn was complex? Tapping is a clear indicator that an action has been used. Vigilance removes that indicator, but the combat phase keeps things from getting too messy.

[@peterrasmussen4428]

@@distractionmakers Like I said, vigilance would become "untap this creature at the end of turn" it doesn't matter if it attacked or not. Attacking would still tap creatures. Still agree that for a paper format, having things in discreete phases is for the best. But vigilance is not the reason why.

[@U.Inferno]

Summoning Sickness.

[@misomiso8228]

You guys are great. Camera may be a tad overexposed though...!

[@chromaticchrome3746]

"you have no way to know wether something has attacked" *laughs in Yu-Gi-Oh* the game that also has permanent stat changes on a card and no inbuilt way to track those.

[@SkyToriJukebox]

The second main phase was created to prevent Maddening Imp from being OP. Duh!

[@spammyv]

On the note about the lack of phases being more complex, I've always wondered if it's just biases/Magic experience that has led friends and I to kind of act like a game has a combat phase when it doesn't. Mix attacks and playing cards only as much as we need to, then attack with the rest and pass. I appreciate the point on more phases in a way reducing complexity by segmenting what can happen.

[@distractionmakers]

It is an interesting trend to see modern tabletop games move away from a distinct combat phase. The way Magic handles attacking and blocking is also much different than the modern take of attacking whichever thing you’d like. My biggest issue with that is creatures are much less permanent, so putting abilities on them becomes problematic.

[@ich3730]

Thats literally just hearthstone no? HS essentially only has upkeep, draw, main phase, end of turn. With combat being more like an activated ability of every minion they can use once per turn

[@LibertyMonk]

@@distractionmakers You've got RPGs like Pathfinder, Pokemon or Darkest Dungeon if you want examples of no distinct combat phase, and those characters are plenty durable, though there is a distinct combat ruleset within which there is no "combat phase". There are other, less combat focused games though that either don't "roll for initiative" or you're always in initiative. I'd also say that the ability to put enchantments on a stick with no downside isn't an inherent benefit, other than more room for powercreep. Yugioh has back-row removal, and you still never play vanilla beaters over creatures with Enters the Battlefield or effects that'll help a lot this one turn. Either way, there are a lot of card games without a combat phase, but it usually doesn't change much. Either there's no advantage to doing things in an unpredictable order, either because there isn't off-turn interaction, everything is already on the table for them to see (outside of exceptions), or the other option where there are obvious advantages to doing all your attacks one after the other, after you cast Overrun or before you cast Day of Judgement. And it's easier to check "did I forget a planeswalker?" then do them all than it is to mix it up for no reason.

[@nuclearphish8051]

@@ich3730 Yeah, and combined with the ability to attack creatures directly and with almost no means to interact during opponent's turn means Hearthstone suffers from rather major runaway leader problems. Or at least it did when I briefly played it ages ago. Didn't play it for very long because I realised about 8/10 games were just landslides one way or the other. When I won, it rarely felt very satisfying and when I lost, it rarely felt like I could've done any better or learn anything meaningful from my loss.