(SPOILER) While our references came from a company source quoted in an old interview, in response to this question there's been a more "horse's mouth" follow-up made by the original designer here: www.tiktok.com/@mtg/video/7255010949848091950
ah, that makes more sense. When I went and looked at it after watching I thought "that doesn't look like a mistake, it looks more like an intentional texture"
They did want to change back, however. There's a visual somewhere of a purple backed deckmaster set for Arabian Nights, but they couldn't go that way because they realized it would be too easy to tell the cards apart.
@@daerdevvyl4314 I paused the video at the 4:30 point to look down here because I thought I had this all figured out -- until I saw your comment and realized it would have required such an obvious misspelling for my guess to be correct!
Magic the Gathering also didn't come out in 1990. I think you've confused it with the founding of Wizards of the Coast, the publishing company that would release Magic the Gathering in 1993.
I thought the same thing until I remembered the original brand, Deckmaster, which is still on the cards because of the logic that they explain in the video.
I had the same thought, but my first inkling was if they somehow misspelled it as GATERING on the card and the squigle made it hard to notice. That didn't seem right, but all I could think of.
I had to grab one of the Magic cards and look at it. I had forgotten the Decmaster part. Even then I had to hold it up to the light to see the squiggle. I never noticed it even though I have played continuously since '95.
I assume the idea is that by having all the card backs be identical then your opponent has no idea what is in your hand. If the other person can see a mixture of old and new designs and they know your basic deck composition then they might be able to make educated guesses about what kinds of combos you have ready.
Correct. There are usually slight color differences between cards released at different times but the main idea is, you can open some packs, put a deck together, shuffle it and play it without knowing the top card of the deck. As for the double-sided cards, packs usually also contain token cards, some who have with multiple of double-sided ones referenced, which you can mark and put in the deck instead and swap for the actual one, when you play it. I agree it's inconvenient.
If you have exactly one card in your deck with the new back, you know exactly what your next draw will be as well. I *if you see the back, obviously. You can expand this to cards along a certain theme to make it more practical so you'll have an idea of what you're drawing into, like creature removal.
Many Magic players use opaque card sleeves for their decks (mostly to protect them - they can be very expensive), but if you don't want to do that they make single-sided reminder cards where you literally write on it the card is representing, and set your double sided card to the side until you use the reminder card to play it.
Yeah. Fun fact: They wanted to change the back and the name of the game from Magic: The Gathering to Magic: Arabian Nights, and change it for every expansion... but they ran into the mixing cards problem, so... here we are.
The funny thing is that they’ve now printed enough two-sided cards that many serious players use sleeves with opaque backs, but they still use the 1990s style card back for everything else.
It's more the other way around, really - enough serious players had been using opaque sleeves by 2011 that the designers felt confident double-faced cards wouldn't be an issue. But yeah, of course they've also made a way around using sleeves for double-faced cards, something that wouldn't be nearly as possible for a change in the default card back.
@@deamon6681 So this is kind of interesting. Yes, it's private knowledge when playing the game normally, and like another commenter said they make special placeholder cards with the normal background that you use while it's in your hand or deck (or you can just use sleeves). However, there's another way to play the game which involves picking cards out of a pack and then passing it to the next player in a circle. Here, you have to declare if your pack contains a double-sided card, and people will know whether you picked it.
This reminds me of the problem of card games where you need two packs, and if one of the packs is really old and the other is fairly new, you can sometimes work out - to a certain extent - which cards have already been taken by other people, based on whether they look old or new.
In fact, they didn't even intend "The Gathering" to be a permanent part of the design! They were going to have "Magic: The Gathering" as the first set, and then "Magic: Arabian Nights", "Magic: Ice Age" etc. for the other sets, complete with unique card backs. But they realised the issue in time, so now everything is M:tG forever.
The first Warcraft Game had that too: They planed that "Warcraft - Orcs & Humans" would be the first part of a series of RTS games in different settings, like "Warcraft - Vietnam" or "Warcraft - World War 2"
They should have foreseen the advent of card sleeves. They could've done the card backs anyway, and made sleeves mandatory for competitive play, then also made money selling sleeves.
Incidentally, the alpha release of Magic the Gathering had corners that were more rounded than all later cards, so you can still tell those cards apart just from looking at the backs.
As others have noted, M:tG was initially released at the Origins Game Fair in 1993 (in a blisteringly hot Fort Worth, Texas), not 1990. And the first printing cards are, in fact, marked, since the corners on Alpha cards are cut to a different radius than Beta cards. Note that here "Alpha" is not an indication of pre-release, but rather the first published printing.
I played that game a lot back in the day - still have boxes full of cards somewhere. I had spotted that line on the back but didn't think it was a misprint - thought it was just part of the marble-like texture of that panel. Well, now I know.
When Tom said that this was between sports trading cards and Pokemon cards chronologically, that was when I figured it out, causing me to say "Deckmaster" out loud
So, interestingly... WotC has made digital versions of their game over the years, from Magic Online to Magic Arena to various yearly versions they did on Steam for a while. They DID update the backs of the cards for many of these digital versions so they had no Deckmaster and new yellow logos, but only because they could control the whole game. With physical product, that was impossible, of course, so they're stuck with it.
This isn't true, though. At least according to the original art director (Jesper Myrfors). He says it was deliberate, and is the same technique used to make the frames on the face of older blue cards. According to the MTG Wiki: _"The "T" and "R" in Deckmaster overlap a blue pattern which was initially believed to be a ballpoint pen marking introduced to the logo before the printing, but according to Jesper Myrfors this is not the case, as the Deckmaster logo was created with the same textured process as the blue card border."_
@@MichaelMoore99 - The person at the company who said it was an accident was the new art director, who later admitted he didn't really know for sure and the original designer was a better source.
@@RFC3514Given how another video talks about a D&D book _in print_ in the 90's that repeated contained the words "iwizard" and "dawizard" _are you sure about that statement???_ Spoiler for the video: The writer used the terms "mage" and "wizard" interchangeably. Before printing, someone Ctrl+F replace all'd the word "mage" to turn it into "wizard" and then did not proof read it before it went into print. The words are supposed to say "image" and "damage"
Okay this question broke me, because I knew MtG launched in 1993 and he kept talking about 1990 and 33 years. It's pretty hard to think of a slightly older collectible card game than the one that (to my knowledge) spawned the entire genre.
And they could have change backs because first edition was considered marked anyway for tournaments (it had slighly different reounding of corners) . And there was idea for expansion to have different backs but they did not with this idea it
I'm fairly certain this isn't true and the squiggle around the TER of the cards is an intentional design to give it a marble-like quality, and just that when going from proofs to print, the final printing left the design a little more visible than intended, but the mark itself is part of the original textured look of that part.
It seems different people have different memories about this. A Senior VP of the company said it was a printing error, here: web.archive.org/web/20210429164236/magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/ask-wizards-may-2004-2004-05-03-0 Interesting to see the other link from the designer, though.
Instantly knew the trivia except that it wasn't published until 1993. I trusted the clue so much that I started wondering if there was some other game that had the same issue.
I played Magic for decades, but the Deckmaster logo being on the back of the cards is just something my mind blocks out for some reason. So I was having troubles figuring this out until I figured I'd just look at the back of a card to check since everything except the 1990 bit was pointing towards Magic.
I first noticed it when I saw a V:TES card with the deckmaster logo and it struck me that that's also on magic cards. Never noticed it on MTG cards, but when it turned up in the only other place it hit like a revelation
Before the French refolution Kings were actually the highest cards in the deck. But after the French revolution they obviously couldn't have that anymore, so they took the card with the lowest value (the Ace, which was worth 1) and also made it the highest card in the deck, worth 11. That's why the cards in regular decks range from 2 to 10, then Jack, Queen, King, Ace, and why the Ace is worth both 1 and 11 in blackjack. And that was the useless fact of the day.
Haha, same. My brain instantly went to “Deckmaster” tho I never really noticed “errant scribble” (just assuming everything part of active design) but I started playing in 1993 and knew that was when the first cards weee coming out. Maaaayyybe Alpha was in 1992? But certainly not 1990.
As a member of a certain subset of your audience, I wasn't _screaming_ the answer, but I definitely did exclaim the misprinted word shortly before the one minute mark.
Jesper Myrfors, the original designer of the cards, has stated at SCG Open Worcester on 9 July 2016 that this was not a mistake. Mark Rosewater may have said so, but he only joined WotC a few years later, so his is not a first hand account.
44 seconds in and I'm laughing uncontrollably. I pause, go to the other room and grab one of these cards to verify that the squiggle is still there. Laugh some more. Then hit play to watch everyone else squirm trying to figure it out.
Год назад+1
And I just recently (last two weeks or so) watched a video about some OP original MTG cards. If the back gave a hint of -"this is an older card"- "this is one of the original print run cards" you'd have a hint for what to expect (something potentially way OP).
It's gotta be the flaw on the back of MtG cards, right? They got printed wrong in Alpha, when Richard Garfield had no idea magic was going to take off like it did. But now, to make sure all card backs are indistinguishable, they still print the error
Fun story: A company named AEG released a trading card game named Legends of the Five Rings in 1995. The logo on the back of their cards was five interlocking rings with "Legend of the Five Rings" printed over it. Then in 2000, the game had gotten popular enough that the Olympics took notice and sued over a trademark violation for the five interlocking rings logo. So they had to change the card backs and it was a big change. The tournament legality of all the cards then had to be split into two separate brackets - before the change and after.
I was watching this with an MTG deck next to me and was looking at it like Tom Scott had cursed them so they had the squiggle I never noticed before. Now I'll never be able to unsee it.
As soon as Tom reassured them that they would not figure out the word ending in "t-e-r". My brain instantly jumped to deckmaster, and I feel like I'm about to learn that the original prototype for magic was 3 years prior.
The second I heard the question was about cards, I immediately reached over to the pile of Unsorted cards sitting on my desk and saw it broad as daylight! Fantastic question and a surprising fact I never knew before.
When Tom says “there is a subset of our audience who will be screaming the answer”… I feel that’s the case for every question and doesn’t really need to be said!
1:57 I heard it and thought it meant it's a 52 card deck. So the answer would be blackjack or something (because a shoe has like 5 decks so when the casino replaces a deck if the back is different then card counting would be much better)
Man, this reminds me of another big (at least for a time?) collectible card game - Vampire the Eternal Struggle. Very interesting and fun game based on Vampire the Masquerade. But since that game was written in the early 90s it wasn't all that culturally sensitive in some areas. So originally Vampire TES was named after the titural eternal struggle of the old vampires, which in the Masquerade lore was called "The Jihad". AFAIR they pretty quickly pulled that name from the game title and cards after its initial run... Another story of a card game having to change its back logo was Legend of the Five Rings due to a small trademark cease and desist from the people that run the Olympics (since the logo had five interlocking rings on the back). Regardless, so many fun stories that happened in the collectible card gaming space! :D
I hardly played MtG, but I have a sizeable collection of properly stored Alphas and Betas from the 90's that I bought off a guy back then when I thought I might get into it more.
I can't be the only one who read the question and thought "No god damn way", then immediately got up to check my cards. It's been so long since I've even looked at the back of a non-sleeved card I forgot they had that weird little "Deckmaster" logo on there, but sure enough there's a weird little mark through the T and R (It sorta looks like a check mark that dips under the E). Had to flip through 4 or 5 cards just to make sure it wasn't damage or a something.
These days, most people play with card sleeves, usually with an opaque back. The first to protect your cards, the second because even without a logo change, there are a lot of ways a card can be considered "marked". For example, it will always be obvious whether the top card of your deck is 30 years or 30 days old. Still, for those barbarians that play without, or in things like draft where cards need to be hidden the moment they come out of the packet, the back needs to be the same.
The answer deserves slightly more explanation. Because it's a TRADING CARD GAME players of the game can play their cards from the beginning of the game. Unlike just getting a new Uno set or what ever.
Back in 2017 somebody asked Mark Rosewater, head designer for MtG, if they'd ever update the card backs. He replied that the topic comes up every few years but so far the status quo has always won. You can find his tumblr post with a bit of googling.
I was playing Magic the Gathering on the pc when I decided to click this video, lol. I knew immediately. Now I'm literally looking at the card back while they try to figure it out
The funny thing about this question is that in professional play, this problem wouldn't actually be a problem, because most if not all pro magic the gathering players use sleeves on their cards, but I'm glad they did keep this to make sure that you couldn't tell if a card was a newer set. I hadn't even noticed the blue squiggle until I had heard this episode!
I never knew that, how cool! It makes sense. The only thing my brain could come up with was "Neverwinter", which is in the right neighborhood but completely the wrong direction. 😅
You mentioned a certain subset of listeners screaming the answer but i was completely thrown off by the "In 1990". Magic came out in 1993 so when they were talking about playable card games in 1990 i was getting very confused because i was fairly certain magic was the first.
I'm not sure if it's true. Alpha (1st edition) had different corners, so you can differentiate them from the back. Also, lot of players use protective covers (some of these are not transparent at the back) to cover possible differences.
It did make me think of Pokemon immediately, as the Japanese cards said "Pocket MonsTERs" at first, but date wouldn't match. And they did an error too - placed a button on a wrong side of a Pokeball, which Wizards of the Coast (yeah, same company as MtG) used as a visual base creating their own backs. Japan did change backs on Pokemon cards 20 years ago, fixing the error among other things, but outside of Japan they are stuck with the WotC back with the error as well.
0:29 the word was deckmaster, the squiggle was blue and theback can't change because then you'd know which Magic the Gathering cards your opponent has based on the card backs
The Deckmaster Logo's squiggle just makes it look like marble texture. And they probably could get rid of it just fine at this point since tournaments require plain backed sleeves on your entire deck these days.
Oh god i saw the thumbnail and went oh i have no idea what this could be. And then he read the question and my eyes snapped to the huge piles of cards on and above my desk so fast
7:25 the thing is they COULD have fixed it if they did it right away. There already was enough that changed about the shape of the cards from the first printing, you can already tell an alpha card from any other card in magic by the radius of the corner rounding, they could have fixed this issue too.
We all remember playing yu-gi-oh with our older brother and then seeing that crumped up, taped back together card show up on the top of his deck. and you knew, that was the card that allowed him to spawn every undead creature in his deck which would be pretty much end game.
Fun extra fact, they *did* change the card shape very slightly after the very first Alpha release. Although those cards are still legal for play, they have to be sleeved because the difference is very apparent for anyone who knows what to look for. However, given the value of Alpha cards, I can't imagine anyone would be dumb enough *not* to sleeve them - if they're using them at all.
I immediately thought that the reason why the print stays the same was because, like in magic the gathering, they need the same card back so that they can add cards to the set without making the old cards obsolete. Turns out, it was MTG, who would have known!
I got this after maybe two minutes because every time I looked at the back of my Magic cards, I thought that it looked weird, but I never thought of it as a squiggle.
Magic: The Gathering? It's the right time frame, it's a collectible card game, and all card backs must look identical for tournament play, because otherwise an opponent can look at the back of your cards and maybe guess at what you have in your deck. Unless you use sleeves, but I don't think those are required, and some tournament styles don't work well with sleeves, like draft, where you're opening packs and building decks on the spot. I couldn't figure out -TER, though (probably could have if I pulled out a deck, but I'm in the process of moving and I don't play enough to have them at the top of a box, lol!). Very interesting! Guess that means you gotta come up with a card back design for a TCG that's evergreen. Pokémon cards I don't think have anything but the Pokémon logo and a Pokéball on the back, but they're fine anyway, Pokémon is the highest grossing IP ever, it would never have to change that. I think YuGiOh has a Konami trademark on the back, which would suck for them if Konami ever sold or lost the rights. Never thought about this stuff before! How interesting!
How does this happen? During attic cleanup today I found a single MTG card in an old box and noticed that squiggle on the back, thinking it was something the child version of myself did 20 years ago. I put the card aside to check if might be worth something, while also hoping it isn't since I figured I ruined any potential value anyway with that squiggle... I never searched for something MTG related, I've never played or collected those cards, yet RUclips recommends this video today, the day I found the card... And no, this is not some conspiracy post about how Google listens to or watches everything we do, there's no chance this is anything other than pure coincidence.
It's actually unconfirmed as to whether that squiggle is actually a misprint. It seems to just be a myth, as I believe the designer stated it was just part of the background texture.
This was the first one that I knew almost immediately... without having heard of this before. I was like, 'this is the back of MTG, right?' I'd never noticed the error, but i knew they kept the old backs because they need them to all match. (Who plays unsleeved anymore?)
Mark Rosewater, head of Magic R&D, has cited the color of the logo and the word “Deckmaster” as one of his biggest pet peeves in the whole game. He’s said he’d change them in a heartbeat if he could, but he no longer can. P.S.: I think Tom might be underestimating the amount of Magic players in his audience.
(SPOILER) While our references came from a company source quoted in an old interview, in response to this question there's been a more "horse's mouth" follow-up made by the original designer here: www.tiktok.com/@mtg/video/7255010949848091950
ah, that makes more sense. When I went and looked at it after watching I thought "that doesn't look like a mistake, it looks more like an intentional texture"
They did want to change back, however. There's a visual somewhere of a purple backed deckmaster set for Arabian Nights, but they couldn't go that way because they realized it would be too easy to tell the cards apart.
I thought they printed
MAGIC: THE GATERING
@@daerdevvyl4314 I paused the video at the 4:30 point to look down here because I thought I had this all figured out -- until I saw your comment and realized it would have required such an obvious misspelling for my guess to be correct!
Magic the Gathering also didn't come out in 1990. I think you've confused it with the founding of Wizards of the Coast, the publishing company that would release Magic the Gathering in 1993.
My train of thought was "TER? Like Magic The Gathering? Wait no, it's gaTHERing not gaTERing, and it's not at the end of the word..."
I thought the same thing until I remembered the original brand, Deckmaster, which is still on the cards because of the logic that they explain in the video.
I had the same thought, but my first inkling was if they somehow misspelled it as GATERING on the card and the squigle made it hard to notice. That didn't seem right, but all I could think of.
DeckmasTER
No, I haven't watched the video yet. I knew about that back in the early 90s.
I had to grab one of the Magic cards and look at it. I had forgotten the Decmaster part. Even then I had to hold it up to the light to see the squiggle. I never noticed it even though I have played continuously since '95.
Deck Master
I assume the idea is that by having all the card backs be identical then your opponent has no idea what is in your hand. If the other person can see a mixture of old and new designs and they know your basic deck composition then they might be able to make educated guesses about what kinds of combos you have ready.
And yet they have made double sided cards
Correct. There are usually slight color differences between cards released at different times but the main idea is, you can open some packs, put a deck together, shuffle it and play it without knowing the top card of the deck.
As for the double-sided cards, packs usually also contain token cards, some who have with multiple of double-sided ones referenced, which you can mark and put in the deck instead and swap for the actual one, when you play it. I agree it's inconvenient.
If you have exactly one card in your deck with the new back, you know exactly what your next draw will be as well. I
*if you see the back, obviously. You can expand this to cards along a certain theme to make it more practical so you'll have an idea of what you're drawing into, like creature removal.
Many Magic players use opaque card sleeves for their decks (mostly to protect them - they can be very expensive), but if you don't want to do that they make single-sided reminder cards where you literally write on it the card is representing, and set your double sided card to the side until you use the reminder card to play it.
Yeah. Fun fact: They wanted to change the back and the name of the game from Magic: The Gathering to Magic: Arabian Nights, and change it for every expansion... but they ran into the mixing cards problem, so... here we are.
0:57 "There is a certain subset of our audience who will be absolutely screaming the answer right now."
Don't call me out like this
ikr lol, i immediately looked right at an unsleeved card thats on my desk and stared at "Deckmaster"
The funny thing is that they’ve now printed enough two-sided cards that many serious players use sleeves with opaque backs, but they still use the 1990s style card back for everything else.
You do have placeholder cards that go in your deck if you want to play with transparent sleeves/without sleeves
It's more the other way around, really - enough serious players had been using opaque sleeves by 2011 that the designers felt confident double-faced cards wouldn't be an issue. But yeah, of course they've also made a way around using sleeves for double-faced cards, something that wouldn't be nearly as possible for a change in the default card back.
Now I'm wondering, is there an official ruling, is having a double sided card in you hand pirvate knowledge?
@@deamon6681 So this is kind of interesting. Yes, it's private knowledge when playing the game normally, and like another commenter said they make special placeholder cards with the normal background that you use while it's in your hand or deck (or you can just use sleeves). However, there's another way to play the game which involves picking cards out of a pack and then passing it to the next player in a circle. Here, you have to declare if your pack contains a double-sided card, and people will know whether you picked it.
@@deamon6681 it's in your hand, so yes.
This reminds me of the problem of card games where you need two packs, and if one of the packs is really old and the other is fairly new, you can sometimes work out - to a certain extent - which cards have already been taken by other people, based on whether they look old or new.
Been there, done that, lol!
In fact, they didn't even intend "The Gathering" to be a permanent part of the design! They were going to have "Magic: The Gathering" as the first set, and then "Magic: Arabian Nights", "Magic: Ice Age" etc. for the other sets, complete with unique card backs. But they realised the issue in time, so now everything is M:tG forever.
The first Warcraft Game had that too:
They planed that "Warcraft - Orcs & Humans" would be the first part of a series of RTS games in different settings, like "Warcraft - Vietnam" or "Warcraft - World War 2"
@@pflasterstrips7254That would make for a very different World of Warcraft.
They should have foreseen the advent of card sleeves. They could've done the card backs anyway, and made sleeves mandatory for competitive play, then also made money selling sleeves.
Incidentally, the alpha release of Magic the Gathering had corners that were more rounded than all later cards, so you can still tell those cards apart just from looking at the backs.
As others have noted, M:tG was initially released at the Origins Game Fair in 1993 (in a blisteringly hot Fort Worth, Texas), not 1990. And the first printing cards are, in fact, marked, since the corners on Alpha cards are cut to a different radius than Beta cards. Note that here "Alpha" is not an indication of pre-release, but rather the first published printing.
I played that game a lot back in the day - still have boxes full of cards somewhere. I had spotted that line on the back but didn't think it was a misprint - thought it was just part of the marble-like texture of that panel. Well, now I know.
The original designer says it's part of the texture and intentional. The company disagrees.
When Tom said that this was between sports trading cards and Pokemon cards chronologically, that was when I figured it out, causing me to say "Deckmaster" out loud
I just need to point out that MTG was released in 1993, and just turned 30 this year. It wasn’t 1990.
It really sucks when the comments contain spoilers.
@@onelegoutso... every Lateral video?
So, interestingly... WotC has made digital versions of their game over the years, from Magic Online to Magic Arena to various yearly versions they did on Steam for a while. They DID update the backs of the cards for many of these digital versions so they had no Deckmaster and new yellow logos, but only because they could control the whole game. With physical product, that was impossible, of course, so they're stuck with it.
This isn't true, though. At least according to the original art director (Jesper Myrfors). He says it was deliberate, and is the same technique used to make the frames on the face of older blue cards.
According to the MTG Wiki:
_"The "T" and "R" in Deckmaster overlap a blue pattern which was initially believed to be a ballpoint pen marking introduced to the logo before the printing, but according to Jesper Myrfors this is not the case, as the Deckmaster logo was created with the same textured process as the blue card border."_
Correct. The designer claims it was no accident. The company claims it is. It is officially "a mistake" even if it really isn't.
@@MichaelMoore99 - The person at the company who said it was an accident was the new art director, who later admitted he didn't really know for sure and the original designer was a better source.
Bruh of course they're not gonna admit the unchangeable card back has an (admittedly very minor) error.
@@mietschj - It was perfectly "changeable". No one orders millions of cards without getting (and approving) a sample back from the printers.
@@RFC3514Given how another video talks about a D&D book _in print_ in the 90's that repeated contained the words "iwizard" and "dawizard" _are you sure about that statement???_
Spoiler for the video:
The writer used the terms "mage" and "wizard" interchangeably. Before printing, someone Ctrl+F replace all'd the word "mage" to turn it into "wizard" and then did not proof read it before it went into print. The words are supposed to say "image" and "damage"
Okay this question broke me, because I knew MtG launched in 1993 and he kept talking about 1990 and 33 years. It's pretty hard to think of a slightly older collectible card game than the one that (to my knowledge) spawned the entire genre.
5:10 August 5, 1993! Almost exactly 30 Years! Not 33
And they could have change backs because first edition was considered marked anyway for tournaments (it had slighly different reounding of corners) . And there was idea for expansion to have different backs but they did not with this idea it
I'm fairly certain this isn't true and the squiggle around the TER of the cards is an intentional design to give it a marble-like quality, and just that when going from proofs to print, the final printing left the design a little more visible than intended, but the mark itself is part of the original textured look of that part.
Not according to the game's publisher.
But yes according to the person who designed it:
ruclips.net/video/isAPM_p5Xdo/видео.html
The graphic designer who made the cardback confirmed it was intentional
@@silasary Source?
It seems different people have different memories about this. A Senior VP of the company said it was a printing error, here: web.archive.org/web/20210429164236/magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/ask-wizards-may-2004-2004-05-03-0 Interesting to see the other link from the designer, though.
Instantly knew the trivia except that it wasn't published until 1993. I trusted the clue so much that I started wondering if there was some other game that had the same issue.
I played Magic for decades, but the Deckmaster logo being on the back of the cards is just something my mind blocks out for some reason. So I was having troubles figuring this out until I figured I'd just look at the back of a card to check since everything except the 1990 bit was pointing towards Magic.
I first noticed it when I saw a V:TES card with the deckmaster logo and it struck me that that's also on magic cards.
Never noticed it on MTG cards, but when it turned up in the only other place it hit like a revelation
Before the French refolution Kings were actually the highest cards in the deck. But after the French revolution they obviously couldn't have that anymore, so they took the card with the lowest value (the Ace, which was worth 1) and also made it the highest card in the deck, worth 11. That's why the cards in regular decks range from 2 to 10, then Jack, Queen, King, Ace, and why the Ace is worth both 1 and 11 in blackjack. And that was the useless fact of the day.
The fact he said 1990 irks me. They didn’t get printed until 1993 they are only turning 30 this year. That threw me way off.
Haha, same. My brain instantly went to “Deckmaster” tho I never really noticed “errant scribble” (just assuming everything part of active design) but I started playing in 1993 and knew that was when the first cards weee coming out. Maaaayyybe Alpha was in 1992? But certainly not 1990.
As a member of a certain subset of your audience, I wasn't _screaming_ the answer, but I definitely did exclaim the misprinted word shortly before the one minute mark.
Fun fact, they did actually almost change the card back for the first expansion, Arabian Nights, but decided last minute not to.
Jesper Myrfors, the original designer of the cards, has stated at SCG Open Worcester on 9 July 2016 that this was not a mistake. Mark Rosewater may have said so, but he only joined WotC a few years later, so his is not a first hand account.
44 seconds in and I'm laughing uncontrollably. I pause, go to the other room and grab one of these cards to verify that the squiggle is still there. Laugh some more. Then hit play to watch everyone else squirm trying to figure it out.
And I just recently (last two weeks or so) watched a video about some OP original MTG cards. If the back gave a hint of -"this is an older card"- "this is one of the original print run cards" you'd have a hint for what to expect (something potentially way OP).
Oooh I got this one as soon as it was about cards. Obscure knowledge FTW!
It's gotta be the flaw on the back of MtG cards, right? They got printed wrong in Alpha, when Richard Garfield had no idea magic was going to take off like it did. But now, to make sure all card backs are indistinguishable, they still print the error
I did not know this, but I happened to look at them while they were still guessing. And I was not aware of it.
I really love the show - I have been watching them back to back regularly
Fun story: A company named AEG released a trading card game named Legends of the Five Rings in 1995. The logo on the back of their cards was five interlocking rings with "Legend of the Five Rings" printed over it. Then in 2000, the game had gotten popular enough that the Olympics took notice and sued over a trademark violation for the five interlocking rings logo. So they had to change the card backs and it was a big change. The tournament legality of all the cards then had to be split into two separate brackets - before the change and after.
"A squirrel -- A squirrel -- ? It's not a squirrel, it's a scribble, that'd be very different." Oh, you have NO idea
I was watching this with an MTG deck next to me and was looking at it like Tom Scott had cursed them so they had the squiggle I never noticed before. Now I'll never be able to unsee it.
As soon as Tom reassured them that they would not figure out the word ending in "t-e-r". My brain instantly jumped to deckmaster, and I feel like I'm about to learn that the original prototype for magic was 3 years prior.
The second I heard the question was about cards, I immediately reached over to the pile of Unsorted cards sitting on my desk and saw it broad as daylight! Fantastic question and a surprising fact I never knew before.
at a certain point that's also a counterfeiting measure to a degree.
I am shuffling the cards in question while listening to the podcast!
When Tom says “there is a subset of our audience who will be screaming the answer”… I feel that’s the case for every question and doesn’t really need to be said!
1:57 I heard it and thought it meant it's a 52 card deck. So the answer would be blackjack or something (because a shoe has like 5 decks so when the casino replaces a deck if the back is different then card counting would be much better)
Grabs one of said cards off my computer desk to check, oh yeah I always forget about that squiggle
Man, this reminds me of another big (at least for a time?) collectible card game - Vampire the Eternal Struggle. Very interesting and fun game based on Vampire the Masquerade. But since that game was written in the early 90s it wasn't all that culturally sensitive in some areas. So originally Vampire TES was named after the titural eternal struggle of the old vampires, which in the Masquerade lore was called "The Jihad". AFAIR they pretty quickly pulled that name from the game title and cards after its initial run...
Another story of a card game having to change its back logo was Legend of the Five Rings due to a small trademark cease and desist from the people that run the Olympics (since the logo had five interlocking rings on the back).
Regardless, so many fun stories that happened in the collectible card gaming space! :D
I am the subset of the audience this time
1:00 you can say that about any question though
I find out such interesting things watching this series.
Unbelievably, I had never heard of this game/cards.
Learn something new every day.
I went and checked a card in my colelction and I can't believe it was the first time I saw that squiggle !
Got this one almost instantly. Those card backs are burned into my mind.
I hardly played MtG, but I have a sizeable collection of properly stored Alphas and Betas from the 90's that I bought off a guy back then when I thought I might get into it more.
I can't be the only one who read the question and thought "No god damn way", then immediately got up to check my cards. It's been so long since I've even looked at the back of a non-sleeved card I forgot they had that weird little "Deckmaster" logo on there, but sure enough there's a weird little mark through the T and R (It sorta looks like a check mark that dips under the E). Had to flip through 4 or 5 cards just to make sure it wasn't damage or a something.
These days, most people play with card sleeves, usually with an opaque back. The first to protect your cards, the second because even without a logo change, there are a lot of ways a card can be considered "marked". For example, it will always be obvious whether the top card of your deck is 30 years or 30 days old. Still, for those barbarians that play without, or in things like draft where cards need to be hidden the moment they come out of the packet, the back needs to be the same.
The answer deserves slightly more explanation. Because it's a TRADING CARD GAME players of the game can play their cards from the beginning of the game. Unlike just getting a new Uno set or what ever.
Back in 2017 somebody asked Mark Rosewater, head designer for MtG, if they'd ever update the card backs. He replied that the topic comes up every few years but so far the status quo has always won. You can find his tumblr post with a bit of googling.
Yep, instantly knew it xD Love that this made it into an episode!
My first thought for blue logo and crossing out the “ter” was Twitter…
I want a t-shirt that says "there's some listeners screaming right now."
I am in a subset! 😁
When they said 'Pokemon cards' I literally sprinted to my MTG cards to check them and I was SCREAMING inside when I saw it😂
as both a non-native english speaker and tcg player for exactly half of my life, i'm sad i didn't get the question on the spot :(
Well, my first vague idea was completely wrong 😂
I was playing Magic the Gathering on the pc when I decided to click this video, lol. I knew immediately. Now I'm literally looking at the card back while they try to figure it out
The funny thing about this question is that in professional play, this problem wouldn't actually be a problem, because most if not all pro magic the gathering players use sleeves on their cards, but I'm glad they did keep this to make sure that you couldn't tell if a card was a newer set. I hadn't even noticed the blue squiggle until I had heard this episode!
Wow. I played M:tG for years, and never knew about the misprint. Was too focused on the other side of the cards.
I was originally thinking it might have had to do with 'computer solitaire' from the original version of Windows, but nope.
"Deckmas" sounds like an extra Homestar Runner holiday.
I think this is the first time I've arrived at the correct answer a good few minutes before the end 😂
I never knew that, how cool! It makes sense. The only thing my brain could come up with was "Neverwinter", which is in the right neighborhood but completely the wrong direction. 😅
You mentioned a certain subset of listeners screaming the answer but i was completely thrown off by the "In 1990". Magic came out in 1993 so when they were talking about playable card games in 1990 i was getting very confused because i was fairly certain magic was the first.
I got part way through, and surely the reason is obvious: so the old cards are still valid but cannot be identified by their backs.
This was the first of these clips where I immediately knew the answer ^^
I did get the answer but did not know about the scribble.
I'm not sure if it's true. Alpha (1st edition) had different corners, so you can differentiate them from the back. Also, lot of players use protective covers (some of these are not transparent at the back) to cover possible differences.
It did make me think of Pokemon immediately, as the Japanese cards said "Pocket MonsTERs" at first, but date wouldn't match. And they did an error too - placed a button on a wrong side of a Pokeball, which Wizards of the Coast (yeah, same company as MtG) used as a visual base creating their own backs. Japan did change backs on Pokemon cards 20 years ago, fixing the error among other things, but outside of Japan they are stuck with the WotC back with the error as well.
0:29 the word was deckmaster, the squiggle was blue and theback can't change because then you'd know which Magic the Gathering cards your opponent has based on the card backs
My first thought when ye said Ter was French railways.
Surely the big name in standard playing card decks is Bicycle.
The Deckmaster Logo's squiggle just makes it look like marble texture. And they probably could get rid of it just fine at this point since tournaments require plain backed sleeves on your entire deck these days.
I thought about MTG as a possible answer, but didn't realize Deckmaster until halfway through
Oh god i saw the thumbnail and went oh i have no idea what this could be. And then he read the question and my eyes snapped to the huge piles of cards on and above my desk so fast
7:25 the thing is they COULD have fixed it if they did it right away. There already was enough that changed about the shape of the cards from the first printing, you can already tell an alpha card from any other card in magic by the radius of the corner rounding, they could have fixed this issue too.
I found some high quality photos now, and yeah, plain as day. I always thought it was a deliberate marbling effect
Haha I didn't know this was magic, but the reason for not changing the backs was immediately obvious to me
We all remember playing yu-gi-oh with our older brother and then seeing that crumped up, taped back together card show up on the top of his deck. and you knew, that was the card that allowed him to spawn every undead creature in his deck which would be pretty much end game.
I always thought the blue line in the Deckmaster logo was supposed be a marble texture. The more you know.
I have played MTG some time ago, still have the card, and I have never noticed that
Fun extra fact, they *did* change the card shape very slightly after the very first Alpha release. Although those cards are still legal for play, they have to be sleeved because the difference is very apparent for anyone who knows what to look for. However, given the value of Alpha cards, I can't imagine anyone would be dumb enough *not* to sleeve them - if they're using them at all.
Alpha was released in 1993, not 1990!
Part of the subset here. 👋
I immediately thought that the reason why the print stays the same was because, like in magic the gathering, they need the same card back so that they can add cards to the set without making the old cards obsolete. Turns out, it was MTG, who would have known!
I got this after maybe two minutes because every time I looked at the back of my Magic cards, I thought that it looked weird, but I never thought of it as a squiggle.
Can't believe it took me a whole minute to get this one, for shame.
This is from a different show, but UM ACTUALLY, that's not a scribble, but a marbling texture they used on their early cards.
The designer says it is; you're correct about that. The company position, though, is that it's a mistake.
The squiggle thing I never knew about.
The logo never changing I'd defo have said magic, but the misprint? I legitimately never knew
Despite being entirely irrelevant to 1990, my first thought was “Ah, someone must’ve made some twitter cards that were crossed out to just TWIT”
The cross could have just been a giant X instead.
My first guess was Pokemon, and that it used to say Pocket Monster. But then that would leave out ster.
Magic: The Gathering? It's the right time frame, it's a collectible card game, and all card backs must look identical for tournament play, because otherwise an opponent can look at the back of your cards and maybe guess at what you have in your deck. Unless you use sleeves, but I don't think those are required, and some tournament styles don't work well with sleeves, like draft, where you're opening packs and building decks on the spot.
I couldn't figure out -TER, though (probably could have if I pulled out a deck, but I'm in the process of moving and I don't play enough to have them at the top of a box, lol!). Very interesting! Guess that means you gotta come up with a card back design for a TCG that's evergreen. Pokémon cards I don't think have anything but the Pokémon logo and a Pokéball on the back, but they're fine anyway, Pokémon is the highest grossing IP ever, it would never have to change that. I think YuGiOh has a Konami trademark on the back, which would suck for them if Konami ever sold or lost the rights.
Never thought about this stuff before! How interesting!
How does this happen? During attic cleanup today I found a single MTG card in an old box and noticed that squiggle on the back, thinking it was something the child version of myself did 20 years ago. I put the card aside to check if might be worth something, while also hoping it isn't since I figured I ruined any potential value anyway with that squiggle... I never searched for something MTG related, I've never played or collected those cards, yet RUclips recommends this video today, the day I found the card... And no, this is not some conspiracy post about how Google listens to or watches everything we do, there's no chance this is anything other than pure coincidence.
Oh, I have some friends who will go crazy over this.
Huh. I was certain it was going to be Pokemon, with the 'TER' being in 'POCKET MONSTER' (the Japanese name for the game)
It's actually unconfirmed as to whether that squiggle is actually a misprint. It seems to just be a myth, as I believe the designer stated it was just part of the background texture.
This was the first one that I knew almost immediately... without having heard of this before. I was like, 'this is the back of MTG, right?' I'd never noticed the error, but i knew they kept the old backs because they need them to all match. (Who plays unsleeved anymore?)
Yeah, yelling the answer pretty much straight away. The 'they never changed it' gave it away immediately for me.
Mark Rosewater, head of Magic R&D, has cited the color of the logo and the word “Deckmaster” as one of his biggest pet peeves in the whole game. He’s said he’d change them in a heartbeat if he could, but he no longer can.
P.S.: I think Tom might be underestimating the amount of Magic players in his audience.