Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1015: Artifacts and Enchantments

Episode Date: March 10, 2023

In this podcast, I talk about the history of artifacts and enchantments and how they evolved to become closer mechanically.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today I'm going to address a topic that popped up on my blog. It's actually a topic that pops up from time to time. Talking about the difference between artifacts and enchantments. One of the big questions sort of is, mechanically, aren't they kind of the same thing? And the answer is they are, but we're going to go into the history of artifacts and enchantments and talk about sort of where they started, how they got created, and how they slowly drifted to be closer to each

other mechanically. So today is all about the history of artifacts and enchantments. Okay, so we started our story all the way back in Alpha. So Richard Garfield makes the game of Magic. So when he first makes Magic, he's like, okay, he realizes he wants different cards to do different things. So he creates card types, right? Lands got made because he needed a resource to run the game. Creatures were the main means of distributing damage. Instants and sorceries and interrupts were the means to sort of cast magical spells that were short in duration. But there were

two things left that he needed to make. One was artifacts, which represented magical items that you, the planeswalker, could use. And he wanted enchantments that represented magical spells that had duration.

So that you could cast a normal spell, a sorcerer or something, that just did something. Or you could cast a spell that lingered. Maybe it lingered because you enchanted a creature. Maybe because you just cast a general enchantment. But the idea was each one of them represented something a little bit different. The enchantments were magic, but longer duration, and the artifacts were objects. Now, a lot of them

were magical objects, but they were objects. Now, early on, interestingly, one of the things in the story today, there's two different aspects of artifacts and enchantments. One is sort of the mechanical definition, and one is the flavor definition. So early on, the flavor definition was definitely a little looser. Artifacts tended to be things, but things was a little loose. And then enchantments, while it represented magic, in the early days, oftentimes, they would name enchantments after places or things. Like, enchantments sort of stepped on the toes

of a lot of other card types for a while. So we'll get sort of how, over time, that about. But let's go back to the beginning mechanically. Okay, so in the beginning, there are a couple ways that Richard separated the two. The biggest one was enchantments were always colored. You had to cast colored mana. So, you know, whenever you cast an enchantment, it required you being in the right color. There weren't colorless enchantments that didn't yet exist as a thing. It would later exist,

but it didn't yet exist as a thing. And artifacts were generic, meaning, and the flavor behind them was a strong flavor, was like, well, if I'm a, you know, I'm a planeswalker, I'm a mage,

if I want to do a specific black enchantment, well, I need to be a black mage to do that. It requires black magic to cast this. But if I just want a particular magical object, well, anybody could pick up any magical object. The magical object itself carried the magic, so it didn't require me to know how to cast a certain kind of magic. You know, I didn't need to have a certain color access to it.

So in Alpha, all enchantments were colored. All artifacts were generic. No exception. Now, there were a few artifacts that were more leaning toward a certain color. For example, the Gauntlet of Might was a card in Alpha. It made all your mountains tap for an extra red and gave all your red creatures plus one, plus one. Now, anybody can

play that, but it's not the kind of thing, you know, mostly you were going to play that in a red deck, right? That even though it didn't require red mana to cast it, it definitely sort of, it leaned itself toward red. So there definitely were cards that have sort of flavor connections or had mechanical elements that while it didn't require that color to play it, it really required that color in the deck to maximize what it was. If you play Gauntlet of Might not in a red deck, well, what is the value of it? Like, what are you doing if you don't have mountains or red creatures? It didn't help you at all.

So there was, even in the very beginning, a little bit of that definition. The other thing that was interesting was, we decided that, Richard, decided that artifacts would tap. Now, there were global artifacts. There were artifacts that just sat there and did things. Howling Mind, for example, that let you run a Shakarta turn. But he decided that enchantments,

you could enchant objects, you could enchant creatures or artifacts or other enchantments and stuff, or lands. So you can enchant any permanent or you could just make general enchantments, but none of them ever, there was no

tap as a requirement. Every once in a while, they'd be triggered. That is kind of how we did in the early days, doing it once as well. At a certain time, something would happen, and that only happened once per turn because it was a triggered event. Okay, so

anyway, alpha comes out. Artifacts and enchantments are pretty different from one another. Now, mechanically speaking, at their core, Richard didn't really divide them. Like I said, there were artifacts that did general global effects, much like enchantments did. And the only difference between them had to do with having color and stuff, but it didn't, like,

if I wanted to say, every turn draw a card, I can make Holland Mine, or I could have made an enchantment that's like, you know, fruitful knowledge or something. That effect could have existed either way. So even from the very beginning, the mechanical difference between them was,

they were pretty close. There were some subtle differences. Oh, the other thing that enchantments did that artifacts did not do at the time was that they could go on things, right? You could enchant a permanent. And then you could basically attach an enchantment to a permanent. That's something only enchantments did in the beginning. Okay, so now we move ahead to Antiquities. So Antiquities was

the second set in Magic made by the East Coast playtester. So Scafalias, Jim Lynn, Dave Petty, Chris Page, also Joel Mick worked on Alliances. Anyway, they decided so Arabian Nights, which was the first expansion, had a flavor theme, right?

It was all from 1001 Arabian Nights. which was the first expansion, had a flavor theme, right? It was all from 1001 Arabian Nights. Antiquities was the first set to have a mechanical theme, and its theme was artifacts. Every single card in the entire expansion, with the exception of some of the lands, had the word artifact on it. Either it was an artifact on its type line, or it affected or interacted with artifacts in its rules text. 100%, once again, minus the lands that tap for colorless that synergistically went with artifacts. So,

and that's the first time where we made some powerful I say we, I wasn't at Wizards yet, but I'll say we as Wizards. We made some powerful artifacts that kind of could go everywhere. Like one of the dangerous things about an artifact being generic

mana is if you made an artifact that was good, well, everybody could use it. Now, sometimes the artifact did something that not every deck wanted. For example, Ivory Tower was in Antiquities and it gained you life for cards in your hand.

So really what it wanted you to do was play in a deck that you had a lot of cards in your hand. So it wasn't quite as efficient in an aggro deck that spilled its hand and much more efficient in a control deck that held its hand. But still, any color that was playing slower could play it. It wasn't limited. So Antiquities is the first time that we see the genericness of artifacts causing a little bit of a problem. Now, at the time, you know, magic was vintage. I mean, we didn't call it vintage, but what we now think was vintage was magic.

Everything was available. The Power Nine were available. There were Moxes and Lotus, and there was a lot of very powerful cards. So even though there were powerful cards in Antiquities, it was surrounded by other powerful cards. So it wasn't quite as loud as it would later be. Okay, now we get to Urza's Saga a couple years later. So Urza's Saga was the first chance of us trying

to make an Enchantment Matters set slash block. Now, the funny thing is, if you look at the set, we did a lot with enchantments. There are a lot, like there's a very strong enchantment theme running through it. If you've ever played

Urza Saga Limited, the enchantment theme is actually pretty strong. But, what was going on at the time was Michael, Ryan, and I had started the Weatherlight Saga.

We got kicked off during the tail end of Tempest Block. So, they just decided they would do, you know, we worked so hard to get off of Dominaria and go to other worlds. And as soon as we're kicked off the team,

we go right back to Dominaria. And they decided they wanted to weave the story and have it more connected to Urza. In our story, there was a connection, but it wasn't quite as strong as it became. Anyway, so Urza Saga, we went back to Dominaria. But the interesting thing is, at the time, there was not a lot of connections

because I was the connection between the creative team and the R&D team back then. And when I got kicked off the team, that connection got lost a little bit. So we made this enchantment-heavy set. They made, the story people, a story about Urza, the greatest artificer of all time. They even named the block the Artifact Cycle.

Right? We were trying to make a set about enchantments, and it got called the Artifact Cycle. And then, because we really needed better developers at the time, we made a pretty broken block. It was quite broken. And of the things that were broken, some of them either were artifacts

or cared about artifacts. I don't think any of the cards that got broken, well, the highest tier of broken cards, none of them were enchantments. A bunch of them were artifacts. The set was called the Artifact Cycle. So even though we made a set that was focused on enchantments, or I would argue even

a block focused on enchantments, the public didn't really see it as that. So that was our first chance to play around with the theme, and it kind of got hid by other factors. Okay, next up is Mirrodin. So Mirrodin was, we, starting with Invasion, we started doing black themes. So Invasion was multicolored. Odyssey was graveyard. Onslaught was creature types. Well, Mirrodin, I wanted to do an artifact block. And I wanted to go whole hog into the artifact block.

So I worked with a creative team. Tyler Bielman was in charge of the creative team. Brady Domeroff was there. It was... Jeremy Cranford was our art director. Anyway, we... We built this metal world, which was pretty cool. And Tyler and I had spent a lot of time talking about...

In fact, we actually made a pitch at the time we said you know what artifacts and enchantments are pretty close to each other maybe we want to separate them a little more so we actually made a pitch where we separated and said here's what artifacts do here's what enchantments do

let's not mix them so for example static abilities in an enchantment thing artifacts shouldn't do them so we made this proposal to R&D, and part of it was like, okay, Howling Mine wouldn't exist anymore. That would be a blue enchantment and not an artifact.

And we ended up pitching, and R&D's response was, eh, we don't mind them being close to each other. We don't think it needs a mechanical definition. There's a lot of cool cards we want to make, and the fact that we couldn't make Howling Mine would be sad. And so we ended up not doing that.

Now, Mirrodin did make equipment, which I talked about how in Alpha only enchantments could attach to the creatures. Well, now we made equipment, and equipment in some ways were like auras but a little bit better. Because if the creature died, the aura didn't

go to the graveyard, or the equipment didn't go to the graveyard, the equipment didn't go to the graveyard, it stayed on the battlefield and you could equip it to a new thing. Equipment came about because we were really trying to capture the sense of, I have a sword. Before that, equipment, you, the planeswalker, could have the equipment,

but you couldn't really give it to your creatures. Now, we had messed around things like flying carpet. There were artifacts that we had made where you had to tap the artifact to affect the creature, and as long as it remained tapped, the creature had the effect, which is kind of us playing in that space. Okay, I'm going to give the flying carpet to this creature,

so this creature can fly because he's on the flying carpet. And if something happens to the creature, uh-oh, something happens to the flying carpet. That was sort of how we connected it. So equipment sort of took that and made it a more formal thing. Early on, we said that equipment couldn't be on the opponent's staff.

We've kind of done that once or twice. So once again, the story of artifacts and enchantments is they keep crouching closer to each other. And this is a good example where equipment, we made equipment in Mirrodin and instantaneously it it became popular. And it became evergreen, like, almost, you know, and then the very next set, or the next block, I think, had equipment in it. Okay, next we get to Future Sight.

So in Future Sight, we were teasing the future. So I teased two things. I teased a colored artifact, and I teased an enchantment with a tap symbol on it. Now, we've yet to do the enchantment with a tap symbol other than the future site. But colored artifacts

was something... So when we had gone to Mirrodin, we had actually put the seeds in for the new Phyrexia to be there, to Phyrexia to be there,

the Phyrexians. In fact, in the very first, in the novel, Memnarch, who's the bad guy, like in the very first pages, you see him find this oil that he rubs in his fingers and disappears and like, oh, who knows what that is? And he goes on with his way. Like he gets infected in the first pages of the book.

Anyway, I made a card called Saccharimite Mirror that showed a mirror that got infected that was Phyrexian. And that was my tease of where we were going with Phyrexia and the fact that I was planning to use colored artifacts when we got there. So it turns out, Shards of Alara popping up, one of the shards of Shards of Alara was Esper. And they had this flavor of... They had this flavor of constantly improving themselves

by artificial means. That they're all kind of cyborg-y. And so we ended up making all the creatures in that shard artifact creatures. And so they were colored. And so we ended up using what I had planned to use when we went back to Phyrexia there speaking of which, a couple

years later we do Scars of Mirrodin where we do go back to Mirrodin, we learn about all the Phyrexians and there we start messing around, we do have artifact creatures with Phyrexian mana so you don't have to have the color mana to We do have artifact creatures with Phyrexian mana.

So you don't have to have the colored mana to cast them, but you could. Not all the Phyrexian mana things were artifacts, but I think a few were. And we definitely play in a little bit of the Phyrexians have this connection to artifacts. We weave a little bit of colored artifact stuff in there. Then we get to Theros. So Theros was the first time after Urza Saga where we made a block with an enchantment theme.

We used the enchantments to represent the field. The gods. The gods were enchantments so for the first time we made enchantment creatures. Oh, in Alpha, Richard had made artifact creatures.

That is something that existed and they were generic in their cost. But artifacts mixed with creature happened all the way back in Alpha. In Future Sight, I had also made an enchantment creature. So a lot of the stuff got teased in Future Sight. But it wasn't until Theros that we actually started making enchantment creatures. We started making enchantments... We started making enchantments that could become, like, die. They were creatures and die and become auras.

In Tempest Black, we had made Lysids, which were creatures that could become enchantments and go back and forth between being creature auras and creatures. But anyway, Theros really explored with the idea of what enchantments can be and enchantment themes in Journey to Mix

we made enchantment matters as a theme we've done a lot of artifact matters back in Mirrodin now interestingly when we made Mirrodin

and we made Scars of Mirrodin we had lots of problems but when we made Theros we didn't have any problems there weren't really like us really Theros. We didn't have any problems. There weren't really... Like, us really pushing enchantments didn't break anything. So we'll get to that in a second.

Next, we come to Kaladesh. So that is another artifact block. Now, in Theros, by the way, we did make some enchantment artifacts for the first time. The god's equipment. And those were colored. In Kaladesh, we made the gearhooks that were colored. Most of the things were artifacts.

We made vehicles for the first time. And again, what we found was when you make a set all about powerful, generic artifacts, in which you push them a little bit, because that's the theme, you cause problems. You know, Mirrodin, we had to ban cards. Skars and Mirrodin, we had to ban cards. Kaladesh, we had to ban cards. Interestingly, though, we didn't in Skars and Mirrodin with Esper, even though it was a whole theme of a whole thing. And that's

when we realized that, look, we were having a problem with artifacts. So we said to ourselves, there were three solutions to our problem. One is we could just make artifacts suck. We could make them, make them generic, but just never make them powerful. Two, we could make them very niche. We could, like, okay, all our artifacts, whenever we push an artifact, it'll be very focused on what it does so that, well, only certain decks could play it. Or three, we could just start making colored artifacts. Obviously, we had done it on the gods' equipment.

We had done it on the Gearhulks. We had done it in Esper. Like, it's something we had done. And Esper had shown us that there are less problems caused when you do that. So we made the choice in Kaladesh. Oh, I'm sorry. After Kaladesh, we made the choice to just say colored artifacts are now in our quiver, if you will, in our toolbox. Pick your metaphor.

Now, we still can make generic artifacts. We would make them whenever we're trying to do stuff in limited. A lot of times we do generic because we need them so everybody has access to them. And if we have a really cool narrow effect that, like like the narrowness of the fact limits where it can go we can still make that in generic so we make some generic equipment um but we very much um know that if we want to push uh artifacts we need to we need to be able to use colored mana we started to do it okay then we get to um zendikar, Battle for Zendikar, where we introduce the Eldrazi. Oh, sorry.

The Eldrazi, actually, they first get, Raizo Eldrazi is where they first get introduced, I guess. Raizo Eldrazi was in the Zendikar block, so I skipped over it. So let me jump back to Raizo Eldrazi. In the Raizo Eldrazi, we decided that one of the qualities of the Odrazi was going to be their colorlessness. That they would have generic costs. And so, in it,

we, for the first time ever, made some generic costed enchantments. Something we had never done. Generic costs had always been definitionally about artifacts and enchantments. we had never done. Generic costs had always been the definition definitionally about about

artifacts and enchantments. But we did that. So once again, little by little, we've been crossing things off the list. Enchantments used to be colored and artifacts not. Now we make colored artifacts. You know, enchantments used to be the only thing that went on to attach to things.

Well, we made equipment. Now artifacts could attach to things. Artifacts were the ones that tended to tap. Well, we started doing more stuff with once per turn. And so we make enchantments that literally said once per turn on it. We didn't put a tap symbol, but once per turn is a lot playing in that space. Okay, next up is Kamigawa Nyan Dynasty.

That's the first set where we made a theme of both. It had an artifact theme and an enchantment theme. And we even crisscrossed them. You know, we did things that were, you know, we cared about modified things. We cared about, you know, we did things that said, hey, I care about a quality that both enchantments and artifacts can do. And there even was an unnamed mechanic that said, hey, I care about a quality that both enchantments and artifacts can do. And there even was an unnamed mechanic that said, hey, I get a bonus if you have an artifact and

an enchantment. So we had artifact and enchantment matters. We're both matter together. But, for example, Kamigawa was the first place, other than Theros, where we had an enchantment theme. And I will say, I think we're being a little more willing.

Artifact themes get used more than enchantment themes, and part of that is some of the flavor. But we have been trying to find opportunities where we can use more enchantment themes, because enchantments are organic to the set. And I know we've done a lot more artifact matter things than enchantment matters, but we are looking to do more. Okay, then we get to Brother's War.

Brother's War was another artifact set. While they all had generic costs because we were trying to do throwback to old school artifacts, most of the artifacts had colored mana in them to maximize them. You know, if you wanted to unearth them or you wanted to prototype them

or they had an activation, most of them had some color worked in. So if I'm trying to play the best version of it, I need the color. Maybe in Limited I play it, you know, maybe I hardcast it if I'm playing a ramping deck or something. But in Constructed, if I'm not playing that color,

I'm probably not playing that artifact. So we did limit the artifact to certain colors. And then Phyrexia All Will Be Won also had some artifact themes in it. The Phyrexians are very Be One also had some artifact themes in it the Phyrexians are very tied to artifacts so there definitely are some artifact themes running through it so let's now answer the big question

that we started with are artifacts and enchantments too close to each other and the answer is we think no I think there are two important things to how artifacts and enchantments stay off each other one is flavor and we've really come to the grips with artifacts being important things to how artifacts and enchantments stay off each other. One is flavor. And we've really come to the grips with artifacts being things and enchantments being magic that are ephemeral, that aren't things.

Every once in a while, we'll show some magical item, you know, item made out of magic. It's a cage made out of magic or something. And usually then we're very clear about showing like magical energy that it doesn't at all look like a mundane thing. That any sort of mundane object falls in artifacts. And because of that, for example, we've started making

non-creature tokens and so far the majority of them have been artifacts. Stuff like clues and treasure and food and blood and stuff. Mostly because they're tangible objects and artifacts make more sense. We are looking at spaces for enchantment tokens

when it makes sense, when it flavorfully makes sense. Okay, anyway, flavor is a big thing. And we've done a lot over the years, by the way, of being much clearer of delineating what the flavor is. That if you look at a piece of art now, if you go back in the first couple years of magic and I show you a piece of art from, if you go back in the day, first couple years of magic, and I show you a piece of art from an enchantment or an artifact, sometimes you're not sure what it is, especially on enchantments.

Nowadays, it's a lot clearer, and we're a lot more clean on what the creative difference is. Now, mechanically, the big difference between them is the interaction that the colors have with them. And what I mean by that is, white, green, and red can destroy artifacts. Black cannot destroy artifacts. Blue cannot destroy artifacts.

When you talk about enchantments, white, green, and black can destroy enchantments. Red can destroy enchantments, and blue can destroy enchantments. So blue doesn't really destroy things. Blue has other, blue can counter them, or steal them, or copy them, bounce them. And blue has a lot of answers answers but blue isn't about destruction.

So blue destroys nothing. And then, for each sort of card type we said, you know, pinpoint creature destruction. I mean, green is not good at killing creatures. I mean, we let it use its creatures to kill creatures, fighting and stuff. But like, on an empty board where I don't have any

creatures, green, I mean, green can destroy flying creatures and artifact creatures. But just a random creature sitting on the ground, if I don't have a creature to fight with, green can't destroy the creature. White does not do pinpoint land destruction. Red does not do pinpoint, or red does not destroy enchantments. Black does not destroy artifacts. So the idea that certain colors have trouble with certain things is important. And then we also, on the flip side, the synergies.

You know, blue and white and a little bit red really like artifacts. And green and white and a little bit black really like enchantments. And so we've definitely sort of like depending on what you're doing and like, if something is an artifact

versus being an enchantment, even mechanically, we can make the same card. We have a global effect that we can put on an artifact and put it on an enchantment. If we put it on an artifact, how that's going to interact with the other colors is different than if we put it on an enchantment. And that interaction point is important.

It is important that different things care differently. That if I want to get it out of the graveyard, different things are... Well, I guess white can get enchantments and artifacts out of the graveyard but you know there are like green well maybe the graveyard is not the best example but there are ways that different things

interact with them that are different and so that is part of it so the larger question is why aren't they more different? Like really the tale I told today was they started a little bit apart and just every way they could be different, we've slowly undone. We make colored artifacts. We make colorless enchantments.

We make enchantments that have a one-turn use. We make artifacts that can attach to creatures. You know, everything that was, that all the definition. And the reason is, look, magic's a trading card game. We have to make a lot of cards. And what we realize is, we want to maximize making the coolest cards we can. That it's not crucial that artifacts, like, on some level, for example, I could take a global effect and I could put it on an enchantment. I could put it on an artifact.

I could put it on a creature. I could put it on a land. I could put it on a planeswalker. There's a lot of ways for me to make effects and put them on all different types of things. Now, each one of them have different interactions. How I destroy a land or how I destroy a planeswalker, it's not quite the same.

And how they interact with other cards in the deck. Not only, by the deck, because not only by the way, card types can matter in different ways, and so that's important. If I'm making an artifact deck and I have artifact synergies, well, I want to play artifacts, and the fact that this effect is on an artifact matters

versus it being on an enchantment. And I think what we realized over the years was that the separation wasn't crucial. That sometimes we created separation for the sake of separation. And all that really did is prevented us from making cool cards. And so now what we said is, okay, we're going to let flavor and, you know, color differentiation carry the weight of the difference between them. That's enough weight.

That's enough difference. carry the weight of the difference between them. That's enough weight. That's enough difference. That, you know, and I also don't want to, the flavor carrying a lot of weight, I think is a fine thing.

That there is a real difference between I had this magical object versus I'm casting the spell of duration. Those are different things and they feel different. And so that, that is kind of the history of artifacts and enchantments. Of us starting,

I mean, like I said, even back in the very beginning, they weren't that far apart. But over time, just realizing that trying to separate them just didn't matter. And like I said, when Tyler Bielman and I tried to formally do this, when we did the homework to say what would we have to do to really separate them, what it really meant was there were cool things we did now that we would not do in the future. And the take from R&D at the time, which I agree with now, is, you know what?

We've got to make a lot of cards, and it's not the end of the world that mechanically the artifact enchantments are kind of close to each other. It's just not. And so that is why over time they've grown together. And that is why, you know, we're aware, like we get it from a mechanical, when you look under the hood, they're really not that different from each other. But that's okay.

It really is okay. My message of today's podcast is that really is okay. It's not a giant deal that they're mechanically close to each other. We have enough definitions that make them different enough that, you know, they go in different decks and they have different interactions and different synergies that that's enough. That's enough to make them feel different.

So anyway, guys, I hope you enjoyed this podcast. Once again, I like taking themes and stuff that I see in social media and bringing them and talking about them. So I hope you guys enjoyed it. But anyway, guys, I'm at work. I'm in my spot. Or not my spot. I don't have a signal spot. But I'm parked. And we all know what that

means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to make it magic. I hope you guys enjoyed today's podcast. And it's time for... I will see you all next time. Bye-bye.