The Complexity Creep: are Magic cards wordier than they used to be?
“Modern Magic has too much going on” is a thirty-year-old complaint. But the rules text is printed on the card, so it is measurable. We took the median length of the oracle text on every new-design Magic card ever released, in its debut year. The typical card has gone from 14 words to 37. The one exception is the one place Wizards drew a line: the common.
Words per new card, by year
Bar = median rules-text words on that year’s new-design cards (all rarities). Right columns: the median split by rarity. Mythic rare did not exist before 2008.
The New World Order fingerprint
Every rarity got wordier except one, and the exception is the most interesting line in the data. In 2011 Wizards of the Coast published New World Order, a deliberate policy to cap the complexity of common cards so a new player can read the board. You can see it land. Common word count climbed to a peak of 21 in 2006 (the notoriously dense Time Spiral era), then fell for seven straight years to 14 in 2013, a 33% cut. The policy worked. What it did not do was hold: commons have since climbed back to 28 words (2024), the wordiest commons Magic has ever printed. Complexity was cut once, then crept back past where it started, while the bodies on those cards grew too.
| Common rules text | Median words | vs the 2006 peak |
|---|---|---|
| 2006 (Time Spiral era, peak) | 21 | baseline |
| 2013 (New World Order low) | 14 | 33% shorter |
| 2024 (today) | 28 | +33% longer |
Method & sources
- Every NEW-design card via the open Scryfall API, counted once in its debut year (a card’s first printing is not a reprint), 30,007 cards across 33 years.
- We measure the length of the oracle (rules) text, in words and characters, and report the MEDIAN per rarity per year. English paper only; basic lands, tokens, memorabilia and joke (Un-) sets excluded; multi-face cards sum both faces. Printed reminder text is kept because it prints on the card. Median is used so a few very wordy cards cannot skew a year.
- No market data is used. Known design history reproduces: the Time Spiral complexity peak (2006) and Wizards’ New World Order decline in common text both land exactly where players expect. Valued 2026-07-08; reproducible from the open API.
FAQ
Have Magic cards gotten wordier over time?
Measurably, yes. The median new-design Magic card carried 14 words of rules text in 1993 (85 characters) and 37 words by 2024 (216 characters), about 2.6x. Because the number is printed on the card and we use the median, a handful of famously wordy cards cannot skew it.
What is New World Order, and can you see it in the data?
New World Order is Wizards of the Coast's real design policy, introduced with Magic 2010 (2009) and explained publicly in 2011, to hold down the complexity of common cards so new players can read a board. It is visible in the data: common word count peaked at 21 in 2006 (the Time Spiral complexity era), then fell for seven straight years to a low of 14 in 2013, a 33% cut. It is the only place in Magic where rules text was deliberately shortened.
So commons stayed simple?
No, and that is the twist. The New World Order dip did not hold. Commons have climbed back to 28 words by 2024, the wordiest commons Magic has ever printed, above even the 2006 peak. Complexity was cut once, then crept back past where it started.
Did the higher rarities creep too?
Harder, and without any policy pushback. The median new rare went from 17 words in 1993 to 43 by 2024 (about 2.5x). Mythic rare, introduced in 2008, started at a median 30 words and reached 48. The rarer the card, the more text it carries.
How was this measured?
The oracle (rules) text of every new-design Magic card, counted once in its debut year, via the open Scryfall API (valued 2026-07-08). We take the median text length, in words and characters, per rarity per year. English paper only; basic lands, tokens, memorabilia and joke (Un-) sets excluded; multi-face cards sum both faces; printed reminder text is kept because it is on the card. No market data is used. Known design history reproduces: the Time Spiral complexity peak (2006) and the New World Order decline both appear exactly where players expect.
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Source: <a href="https://foilio.net/studies/mtg-complexity-creep?utm_source=share&utm_medium=study_embed&utm_campaign=viral">The Complexity Creep: are Magic cards wordier than they used to be?, Foilio</a> · data CC BY 4.0
</p>Foilio (2026-07-08). The Complexity Creep: are Magic cards wordier than they used to be?. Retrieved from https://foilio.net/studies/mtg-complexity-creepThe big picture, across every game we measure: The Chase Multiple · The Price Census · The Promo Premium · The Foil Premium