I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means.

It's time for the drive to work.

Okay, so I have a new series that I'm called Designing Blank,

in which I pick a basic effect that we do in magic, and I talk about designing for that effect.

The first time I did this was Counter spells, so today I'm talking about designing for that effect. The first time I did this was counter spells. So today

I'm talking about designing direct damage. So first let me define direct damage. So

direct damage means that the card is dealing some amount of damage to a player, a

plains walker, or a creature, or some combination of those.

So, mostly direct damage is in red.

So I'm going to start by talking about it in red.

There are actually some direct damage in other colors.

We'll get to that eventually.

So let's talk about designing a direct damage spell other colors. We'll get to that eventually. So let's talk about designing a direct

damage spell. Okay, so there's a bunch of different factors when thinking about a direct damage

spell. So let's walk through those. Number one is the target, is what is it hitting? And there's

two different categories of the target. A is what is it hitting? And there's two different categories of the target.

A is what kind of target?

Is it hitting a creature?

Is it hitting a player?

Is it hitting a plains walker?

Is it hitting any target?

Is it hitting a combination of targets?

...