Fun video by Gavin last spring on how ward in Magic kinda got out of hand.

Magic removed the “conga line” rule.

Revising the earlier example under the new rules, my 5/5 attacker gets blocked by your 3/3 and your 4/4. It’s now the declare blockers step, after blockers are declared, our last opportunity to do anything before combat damage is dealt. I pass priority. You have that Giant Growth in hand. You can still save the creature of your choice. We’ll say you want to save that 3/3, probably for the same reason I wanted it gone, so you pump it up to a 6/6. We move on to combat damage, and now I get to assign my creature’s 5 damage any way I want. Most likely, I’ll take out your 4/4, as it’s the best I can do. But maybe I have, you know … plans and would rather deal 3 damage to the 6/6 and 2 damage to the 4/4. That’s okay, too.

So now double blocking is even weaker than it was. And some of my favorite cards (tricks that give one toughness or prevent one damage) are now unplayably weak. But they’ve apparently playtested this inhouse for a full year.

Maro.

It’s not the players’ job to find the fun. It is your job as the game designer to put the fun where the players can’t help but find it. When the players sit down to play a game, there’s an implied promise from the game designer that if they do what the game tells them to do, it will be fun. So most players will do whatever the game tells them to do to achieve the desired goal (usually win), even if that thing isn’t fun. When the game is done, if the players didn’t enjoy themselves, they will blame the game—and rightfully so!

It’s your job as a game designer to make sure that what it takes to succeed at your game is the very thing that makes the game fun. Fun cannot be tangential; it has to be the core component of your game experience. I can’t stress this enough. You can’t hide the fun and expect your players to hunt for it. That’s not their job. It’s your job as a game designer to lead the players to the fun.