Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1025: March of the Machine Set Design with Dave Humpherys

Episode Date: April 14, 2023

In this podcast, I sit down with Dave Humpherys, the lead set designer of March of the Machine, to talk about the making of the set.

I'm not pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work at Home Edition. Well, today I have Dave Humphries, the lead set designer of March of the Machine, and we're going to talk all about the set design. So, hey, Dave. Hi, everyone. Okay, so the story picks up. So, vision design has finished. We hand handed off... Let's see. Let's walk through the elements of the set. So, we had a version of backup. We called it Boost at the time. That was handed off. We had Convoke

in the set. We had Incubate that we called Cocoon at the time. We had the Transforming Double-Faced Cards. We had a bunch of suggestions for Praetors, one of which was the Sagas, but we gave you a bunch of suggestions. And then, we had something that wasn't at all battles. We had a bunch of suggestions for Praetors, one of which was the Sagas, but we gave you a bunch of suggestions. And then we had something that wasn't at all battles.

We had double-sided lands that you played the land and then you transformed it. And then the backside had a plane as a subtype, as a land with a subtype plane. So anyway, let's start with that. So we gave you something. Every plane had its own land, and then backside it had a plane as a subtype. But that wasn't working. So let's talk about how you took that and made it into battles. Yeah, so the focus of a lot of our early meetings were just kind of us sitting in a room, brainstorming how we might try to do that in other ways.

I feel like everyone on my team contributed little pieces to that. And then, like, Ari ultimately kind of drew all those pieces together. And she came up with, like, you know, Ken Nagel suggested that, you know, maybe these are attackable things and maybe a little bit like planeswalkers.

And I think J.D. had suggested, like, that they could be transforming dfcs where like the backs could be a whole bunch of different things on the back to give us some variety of expressions of things um and like but yeah ultimately i think ari kind of like pieced together all the little suggestions and ideas and yeah we ended up really with what pretty much became the final thing i mean there were a lot of like little details that we ironed out later but that yeah like that i think even at that point we knew like we wanted these to be a little bit like planeswalkers or at least in my mind we we very much wanted them to or i wanted them to behave like planeswalkers so if you knew

how that card type worked then you could sort of know how these would work in terms of like you'd block for them the same ways and their their loyalty counters could be like reduced over a number of turns in the same way that a planeswalker could and just aligning it with that and then i talked with creative about um right like you know what does this actually represent i mean we did still want to keep up keep the like right the the vision handoff was very much about showing like a plane on each card and we still wanted to show that where each of these battles would be showing a plane and that we we agreed that each of the cards um right like i guess that was later but yeah we agreed that each of the cards would have the plane name in it when we switched them to battles um yeah to keep that going that the the back would represent some key aspects

of what was going on in the story, if there was a story for the plane, and if not, that we'd be trying to show something that was cool or iconic to the plane or indicative of what could be going on there or what was at stake for the plane. Yeah, one of the things that's really fun about the battles is the variety of what the backs are.

You know, some are permanent, some are spells, some are legendary creatures. I think you guys tried really hard to be as flavorful as you could so that each it really spoke of the world that you were doing. Yeah, yeah.

I think, right, it did mean things got a little bit more complicated in terms of how we executed, but I definitely, like, all through the process were, like, you know, Archavius, and talking about, yes, like, Strixhaven in general, right, like, we knew that that really wanted to be a spell, like, an instant or sorcery on the back, given, like, how people were really, you know, that was, like, indicative of that world world and i had also latched on to like i think i like the idea of alara being sort of like casting like an ultimate ultimatum of ultimatums and like we you know at some point we also like oh it would be really cool if teferi was on the back so we we knew we wanted to go with a variety of things um and yeah like i i think that that helps helps them all kind of be unique and play in different ways and also just helped us express each plane better in terms of what is iconic about, iconic and memorable and fun about that plane.

Yeah, and it's cool. I mean, not every plane necessarily ties into the story because there wasn't, it wasn't as if the story told exact things of every 36, all the 36 planes. But where there were story moments that mattered, like my example is, on Innistrad, the zombies end up being an important part of why they're able to

win, because the zombies can't be Frexenized. So when you guys did Innistrad, the back represents zombies, because you're trying to say, this was an important part of winning the battle. Right, yeah, like, it's the back represents zombies because you're trying to say this was an important part of winning the battle right yeah like it yeah is sort of the this the world building lead like emily definitely had certain suggestions like you know i'd really like to see zombies on the back of innistrad was definitely a very specific creative ask and then like similarly there are things like it would be really nice if we had fairies on the back of eldraine if i remember right and there were there

were definitely other asks like a pharah like it was important that like a pharah be on the back of Eldraine if I remember right and there were definitely other asks like a Pharah like it was important that like a Pharah be on the back of Theros in terms of one of the key gods able to resist what was going on so yeah there were yeah there were definitely some specific story asks and then there were some like you know right

I was digging through all the old plane chase cards to find like this plane sounds like it could be the blue green plane and this one could maybe be the green white plane. And like, right, there was no there was no story for those. Right. It was just like most most most me, mostly me looking at cards and like, oh, this mechanically speaks to these colors. Right. Because the planes and plane chase don't have colors. the planes in plane chase don't have colors, but it's like, what mechanically does this plane seem like it's trying to do?

Or what is this world like from what little we know about the world? What does it feel like it might represent in terms of colors? I think we did very much try to choose colors for each of the planes that most felt like those planes. Yeah, so there's 36 planes. And one of the challenging things was

there just aren't 36 well-known planes. You know, you had to dig deep. And so it's fun. I'm doing a series of articles where I actually go in detail and talk about like, some of the planes are pretty obscure. And I talk a little bit about where they came from.

But it's a lot of fun sort of seeing what you guys did of finding, you know, what's the cool way to execute. And one of the things I've talked about in my podcast on the design, I always talk about how the lens of the design was the planes and that these do a really good job of showing you the personality of the planes

in a way that I think was key to the set. And they're one per pack. That's another thing. Do you want to talk a little bit about, like, you've done this in a couple different sets. What are the challenges of trying to do something one per pack? I mean, ultimately, it's not super hard. I mean, like, again, yeah, I felt like that was, right,

this is in many ways the most important aspect of the set. It's this new KSP. And, like, ultimately, it does mean, like, that the structure gets a little bit rigid. many ways the most important aspect of the set it's this new new ksp and um like ultimately it does mean like the structure gets a little bit rigid like you like you know i want to make sure that these are balanced between the colors that they're balanced um with the color pairs um i mean i guess that's mostly the thing is like that you you kind of need to feel like it's like all right well i like i really need to find another like white battle that i can show or you know like in need to find another like after that i'd like oh we still need

another white battle so a lot of it's just like there there definitely ends up being a bit of a grid that you want to fill out but i mean that's that's not so different than like what a lot of other sets might be but it's just like i i if they're going to be one per pack like in this case um i at least for this type of mechanic, I wanted them to be pretty balanced. Like we've definitely done one per pack things that aren't balanced in that way. I think like, you know, like original Innistrad

in terms of DSCs, if I remember right and stuff. But this felt like something we didn't want to have be focused in any particular colors. Like we did have rewards for transforming in blue and green but i wanted all the colors to get pretty equal access to battles here okay so let's um i'm going to start talking more about the phyrexian side and then we'll get to the the non-phyrexian side so we wanted to represent a bunch of things so um as we're talking about battles we had double-faced cards and i think that started because we were trying to figure out how to show the Phyrexians invading, right?

And their whole shtick is they turn you into them. So when we handed over, we gave you DFCs where the front side was an iconic creature from a world and the back side was the Phyrexian version. But talk a little bit about what were the challenges of making those of making the phyrexian dfcs yeah i i mean i think one of the bigger challenges was just like how we express like so we put on the front of all those other than the praetors we put on the front of all those cards uh phyrexian mana to transform i mean i i i forget how involved exactly in that was but i i i thought it would be really fun to do firexian mana here um and like i didn't want it to be in the mana

cost because we know how like that can be problematic in terms of balance and but like just if you if you've already had to pay colored mana to play a card and then you use firexian mana to transform it we can we can balance for the fact that often you won't actually end up needing to spend the mana um and i i felt like that was a fun callback and a fun like way to relate that these are becoming firexianized um but but then we we did want to have a nod to that mana requirement like if you're spending like red firexian mana we wanted the card to feel more red on the back and like but but it wasn't none of those all of those costs are different than the the cost to actually cast them so if it's like

a white card that's um using red fire axiom mana we wanted the back of the card to feel red we did we in that process we kind of also wanted it to be a little bit a little bit like feeling like a little bit odd or a little bit color bending like in ways that felt like a little bit off and that that would also represent kind of like that there was an extreme transformation with the fire oxygenization. Um, so yeah, it was, it was tricky to do that bending in a way that wasn't going too far. Right. That like, Oh, well like, right. Like we have it like a green creature,

like what Plukernos gets lifelink. It's like, well, green doesn't get lifelink, but, well, like, right, like, we have, like, a green creature, like, what, Plukranos gets lifelink. It's like, well, green doesn't get lifelink, but, I mean, green does get life gain and plenty of ways to gain life. And so that, right, that felt inbounds. And trying to find what felt inbounds and, like, almost a little bit transgressive because of what was happening with the setting just felt actually appropriate. But then, like, yeah, not going too far. Yeah. I remember the console callers looked at all of them, and we definitely had discussions about, like, we knew we wanted bends, but, right, right,

things that weren't going too far, and I thought you guys did a good job of finding things that sort of, like, lifelink on Pelucanose is a great example where, look, we don't want green having lifelink, but that's more about separating white from green than it's about, well, green gaining life is problematic for green. Green can gain life, so. But yeah, I mean, otherwise, you know, mechanically we were doing something a little bit like, you know, monstrosity or monstrous, like, and like, it's a mana sync mechanic and it, like,

we knew all that sort of stuff would play pretty well. And like, we'd done it before, what, even with like, kind of like werewolves and, I think, Eldritch Moon. So it was a bit of a known quantity. Otherwise, I had confidence, I guess, at least in executing on that gameplay. Okay, well, you also brought up the Praetors. So we did an interesting thing, and this happens sometimes in Vision,

where we knew we wanted the Praetors, but we didn't quite know how you wanted to do them so we just gave you a whole bunch of suggestions I think like there are at least five in the handoff, the Vision Design handoff How did you guys end up choosing to do the one you did?

Yeah, I'm not sure I remember all the details but I felt like we just needed to do kind of one of the more, I don't know, extravagant versions of whatever was handed off. I think Sagas just felt like the most novel. I mean, I feel like we did such a good job with the previous two cycles of Praetors. I felt like the bar for us to clear as designers, I felt, was pretty high.

And a lot of the most recent Praetators are seeing play and popular cards already. So I felt like we just, we wanted to be doing something pretty different, right? Like those had all done the like, make my things better, your things worse. Like I just felt like there was no way we were going to be able to execute on that like style thing again in a better way.

So just wanted to do something different. Someone's, yeah, again, someone I think had pitched the sagas on the back i felt um right that that that would just be a much very different thing and just conceptually i felt like it could also just be like right like what is seeing some glints of like if if the you know if the praetors are successful here what is like what is their ultimate plan what like what happens if they win um and i i felt like that could be told pretty well on the on the backsides of them with sagas and then otherwise from a kind of a balance and tackling the card designs like i saw i wanted

these to be a little bit like ultimates like if you like there would there'd be some kind of relatively hard hurdle to get through and that like it would be a hurdle that you'd mostly only be able to do maybe your praetor had been out for a little while and that well if your praetor's been out a while and your opponent hasn't dealt with it like maybe it's already winning anyways but like i i you know like i likened it to ultimates on planeswalkers where if you can if you have this card out and it's not dealt with and somehow the game's not ending we're gonna we're gonna give you a different way to end the game and like that was like all right we're just gonna do really preposterous over-the-top effects on the backs of these cards on sagas and like again you have to put yourself a little bit at risk because they're becoming like

enchantments it could maybe be disenchanted so we like we wanted to just put in really you know like there it is something to be giving up your creature we wanted to make sure like oh like the back of these are really that enticing and appealing and like in fact even if you go through the whole saga and you still haven't won we're like all right well we're gonna even let you go back to the front again which is not where we had started but something just from internally pulling people. Or, like, some people were sad that the saga ends. And it's like, where did my Praetor go? This is, like, their moment of victory.

And then, like, it's just gone. So it's like, oh, like, given that we already expect these to mostly be winning the games, we're just going to let you. Yeah, we'll let you keep the Praetor. Yeah, that was one change that you guys made in set design. The original versions we did, you had the Praetor. They told the saga, and then it just went away. And you were like, nah, let's bring them back. Yeah.

Okay, also on the Phyrexian side, and also uses DFCs, is Incubate. So we handed off Incubate. I think the way we handed it off is not super far from where it ended up, but what were the challenges of trying to make Incubate happen?

Yeah, I mean, well, some of them were just even a little bit in the rules. I know there was like sort of a period of time where it's like, well, the rules don't really support this. And can we even do this? And I mean, again, I feel like a lot of those things, if we're confident enough in our vision rules, we'll figure out ways to make them happen and as well digital but um yeah i mean like one of the hard decisions for us was just whether you could transform them at an instant speed or sorcery speed there was like a lot of debate on that throughout the process like i felt like the again the cards we talked about earlier that are transforming into phyrexians like those are pretty complicated cards right they? They have two card faces. They do powerful, unusual things on the backs of the cards,

whereas these are... So we wanted those to be at sorcery speed just so there weren't too many surprises or you wouldn't like, oh, your creature's bigger in the middle of combat and it's becoming bigger and kind of catching me off guard. So those we wanted at sorcery speed and then like, well, then these tokens

should be also transforming probably at sorcery speed and then like well then these tokens should be also transforming probably at sorcery speed just to match right like just in terms of like they're similar conceptually and we should probably match those things but then we found that there was just too much tension and like uh do i really want to like i have this instant removal card or this instant combat trick am i going to need to use this on my opponent's turn like can i afford to tap out now like it just it wasn't that fun and like ultimately yeah i kind of just made the call where like these aren't complicated they're just like they're creatures with a number of

counters on them that tell you how big they are and like um yes that means that like you could like maybe like some catch somebody a little bit off guard it's like oh i didn't notice that you have that as a blocker. But for the most part, they weren't providing the same sort of challenges in gameplay. And I didn't like giving the tension of forcing people to decide ahead of time how they wanted to spend their mana on those cards. And so that was really the main challenge. I mean, otherwise, right, ultimately there's a little bit of balancing,

just I think more for constructed really but right that these are these are resistant to sweepers or like at least you know creature sweepers so um you know that i think was a bit of a challenge for play design just in terms of like i think in many ways that was just seen as a good thing right that you you can you can keep these in reserve for following a board wipe, and that provides some pretty fun, cool gameplay, but that was certainly a consideration. Otherwise, yeah, there weren't any really big challenges beyond what I just talked about. So here's a question I'm getting,

and I'm curious to get your take on this. A lot of people ask, like, why can't we just get the creature tokens? Why are you making us pay two? Do you want to talk a little bit ask, like, why can't we just get the creature tokens? Why are you making us pay two? Do you want to talk a little bit about, like, why there's good gameplay and, you know, making you have to transform it? Yeah, I mean, ultimately a lot of that, some of that comes down to just rates, right? Like, if you were just immediately getting the tokens, then your cards would not have as good of stats, or they would cost more mana to cast. Or, like, this generally falls into a category of tokens that we make

quite a bit. And I think we've been pretty successful with like dating back to like clues and, you know, like we have, like we've made quite a few tokens that are like intended to like, we're going to give you this, you're going to get a token and it's going to,

you know, that's if at any point later in the game, you have like unspent mana and want to like spend that mana then like you can you can turn these on and so you're you're kind of getting things all at like better rates and then like later in the game if you don't have stuff to do with your mana you can you you will feel good about having something to do with your mana and then like there there's a whole lot of gameplay beyond that there is like because we're giving you a creature that's a token that's not a creature to begin with, like it's like you're getting it at a pretty good rate if you want to use it for like sacrifice effects, which we have a lot of in the set, especially in the black red color pair,

where you can sacrifice it before you've even spent the mana to make it into a creature. And then like you're again, you're getting those tokens at a better rate for sacrifice effects and and other types of synergies like that um all right we we also in this set wanted to care about transformation matters which also then is something that we could play up here by like since these are transforming we can have cards that care about transform cards and the tokens playing to that and um yeah i mean there are a lot of little things like i guess the tokens could have entered with plus one, plus one counters, but those tokens have a lot of synergies

within the set, cards carrying about counters and transformed cards and Phyrexians and all sorts of stuff. Okay, so let's move on to Phyrexians. Let's get to all the people of the multiverse defending the multiverse. So we wanted

a couple of different ways to represent this. So there are three main ways we did. First up is backup. So we, Ari Nee made this mechanic, and we handed it over from Vision. Let's talk a little bit about what, like,

you guys, you did a lot of maneuvering with the mechanic. I know it was a tricky mechanic to do. So talk a little bit about what, like, you guys, you did, there was a lot of maneuvering with mechanic. I know it was a tricky mechanic to do. So talk a little bit about how did you make backup work? Yeah, I mean, ultimately it didn't change really a ton. A lot of it just came down to some of the rules nuance that I don't even know. I'll explain all super well in some of the cases. But, right, like, ultimately we wanted, yeah, to grant all of the cases but right like ultimately we we wanted yeah

to grant all of the the words that we were putting on the cards to other creatures and then there became all sorts of like rules things of like well what happens if you give it like um plus two plus two and flying like in response to it entering and like do we want it to be granting that and like you know what happens if i clone? And there were all sorts of cases in terms of like, when we were looking at maybe we care about the printed words or whatever. And like, great, like, ultimately, we ended up with an execution of saying like, great, you get, you get all the words below the keyword. But yeah, like, otherwise, like, it's, you know, it's akin, it's like a simpler, like, I've worked on mutate, I've worked on Solvand, it's you know it's akin it's like a simpler i like i've worked on mutate i've worked on soul bond

it's like it's you know kind of in that space like i love the idea of like being able to mix and match like it's it's really cool if you give your death toucher for strike it's really cool if you give your death toucher trample it's like right there it is fun to pair together keywords it's fun to care to pair together other abilities we put on the cards and like i like i i really enjoy that space like this was internally like one of the certainly one of the favorite limited mechanics internally was this um and and you know we tried to tried our best to make some constructed shots as well as well with a mechanic um but yeah it like a lot of the cards did end up with like kind of low backup numbers.

I guess that was another thing in terms of balance. But yeah, ultimately, other than sorting out some of the rules stuff and the exact execution there, it was a pretty straightforward mechanic. Okay, next up, Convoke. So we wanted to bring back a mechanic that conveyed working together, and Convoke was the one that we chose. So the interesting thing from set design is when you get a mechanic that we've used before, one of the things that's fun to do is figure out what we haven't done with it. So you want to talk a little bit about how you found new space for Convoke?

Yeah, well, there were just a lot of cards that were like, You want to talk a little bit about how you found new space for Convoke? Yeah, well, like, there were just, like, a lot of cards that were like, oh, like, you know, Blue's card drawing spells. We certainly have a couple variants on those. And just, yeah, like, Blue had not really touched the space. Like, yeah, anytime we have a mechanic like this, I really find, like, you're just going through, like, what is going to be an interesting card design, like what are some of the mechanics and some some make more sense to be including in a deck with creatures and others don't or like some sometimes they're

just effects like even sometimes like a lot of the strongest blue card drawing is in decks that don't play creatures so it's like oh like you know this this is a way where we actually can incentivize creature decks to be playing with some of the like inspiration type effects that usually more often see play and like kind of creature light or creature less decks um so yeah it was just it's just a fun exploration of like yeah we have tons of magics history of like card designs to draw from and like yeah which ones are going to play fun or sound fun with convoke um right like for for both blue and red, we did have to figure out how we give them the right support. Like we made more blue

token cards than we normally would. Like we have a two mana make two tokens card, which we've done in red before and here like, oh, this is going to make red and blue tokens so that the tokens can actually help you cast Convoke cards. So there are little things we did like that.

Certainly I was eyeing what are the colors of the tokens and the sets to make sure that those are also helping you cast your spells. Okay, another thing we did to show teaming up was the legendary team-up cards um so i know envision our original idea was to have cross planar things but the creative people

said no no that's not what's going on um so so what was the challenge of finding a within world team-ups yeah well i guess the main challenge is like so so for one like these are just like finding a within world team ups? Yeah. Well, I guess the main challenge is like, so, so for one, like these are just like hugely popular. Like every time I did a play test, people were like,

these are, you know, these are the coolest, greatest things ever. And there, there were certainly some that like, we immediately latched on some ideas like Fibble, Thip and Borborygmos.

I thought like this, this is just like hilarious, funny, like, you know, like you have like, you know, the, the similarities in terms of like, you know, the one odd thing. And, but then funny like you know like you have like you know the similarities in

terms of like you know the one-eyed thing and but then like you also like they're just so different they're different like they're kind of enemy colors they're like totally different in like philosophy and size and it's like you know we're not going to find it like a ton that are like all this kind of like almost perfect in a way in my mind but just like we we knew like like we we could find right like it was it was about like in my mind, but just like, we, we knew like, like we, we could find, right. Like it was, it was about like, in my mind, like trying to find people that had like some sort of like, yeah, similarity, like I was describing there, but like also, yeah, like, you know, big, big differences as well. And then I worked a ton with Emily on,

right. Like, like we, we kept trying out different earrings of things and she, she had goals from a creative and story side. I had goals from like a mechanical side and just like where I felt like our players felt like, you know, I kind of like I know what's our strongest cards and like what people are going to, what sees the most playing commander. And I sort of knew like, so it was like a big balance and a big kind of like jigsaw puzzle of like,

all right, well, like, you know, ultimately we're like, all right, we still don't really have one that's like, we still don't have a red, white one or like a blue, green one. And then like, I'd keep juggling things around and moving things around until like, I felt like we had like satisfying pairings for all 10 color pairs and for all five wedges

as we kept adding, adding more into the set. And they didn't repeat worlds, right? Yeah. Well, that was, yeah, that was the hard part of the jigsaw puzzle is I wanted, I wanted all of them to be from a different plane. And I, yeah, like then it's also, and I also didn't really want to diverge at all if possible from like, right. Some characters had maybe been white, blue and white and right like it but like i i wanted

to make all the kind of the color pairs to make sense like i didn't want like if there was a white blue character i didn't want to pair it with a blue character and have that be the white blue pair like yeah i wanted to yeah like it to really feel like yeah that you were getting something from each creature in terms of colors um and then yeah some of the mechanics didn't work like we'd agreed on some and it's just like i mechanics didn't work like we'd agreed on some and it's just like i really can't come up with a design here that isn't just nonsense um and it's like can i you know can i try this instead um so yeah i like it yeah i think as a designer they were just super fun to make right like you know the whole right there are a lot of constraints

here and you know i know you've talked about like how that breeds creativity and whatnot but yeah there was just like it's like all right like this card does this and this and like right like what is like i have to mash these cards up that is like the whole point like how do i mash these cards up in a like way that's like hopefully somewhat elegant or yeah like you know how elegant can we be in mashing them up um what is like what is the through line of like oh they both care about graveyards or they both care about some other aspect or how do you like or they don't really share anything and like how do we combine right like the like we had i guess the pre-release card i'm thinking of an example where it's like this

card cares about humans and that card cares about instance and sorceries and it's like oh like they could be like you know a whole bunch of snapcaster mages like i think i just popped into my head at some point and it's just like so a lot of it was just like how do you right like yeah you definitely have a structure of expectations for these cards and like how do you how do you find the correct pairing of mechanics it was a lot of fun to design them. Okay, the final thing before we end for today. There were a lot of characters that we wanted to use because we had the whole multiverse

to choose from, and there's only so many slats in the set. Even teaming them up and putting two on one, there's only so many characters. So, I think when we handed it over, we sort of said, hey, maybe we want to do a bonus sheet. The suggestion we made when we handed it, we've sort of said, hey, maybe we want to do a bonus sheet. The suggestion we made when we handed it over was, maybe

it would have all proper names. Everything in it would be something that's hard to put in a normal bonus sheet, because it references a specific thing from a specific place. And you guys ended up doing more legendary creatures, so similar, but quite different. Talk about the making of the bonus sheet.

Yeah, I mean mean i feel like pretty early on like i mean again i i'm a big fan of bonus sheets i've been jealous that yanni's been able to do them for like strict saving and brothers of war it's like all right i gotta i gotta get in this too and like i feel like pretty early i pitched to aaron or someone yeah like i mean i feel like legends is a pretty good match here like i mean like we could do planeswalkers do Planeswalkers, but it's like, I've, like, I mean, I've already sort of done that with, like, War of the Spark and, like, I don't know, I think going from one event set to our next event set, I didn't, like, yeah,

I didn't feel like it was appropriate to be doing Planeswalkers here again, really, at all. Like, I think I can just do this with Legends, right? Like, and Legends are a good spot. Like, I don't know that we'd ever, like, I feel like there was some amount of, like, oh, like like we might want this for a commander product or something but at least for for a standard product i didn't feel like we could they're not it would be hard to do a justification for it in the same way like right we're showing all the multiverse like like if

you're trying to stay in world then like there's not going to be a set that's going to be able to do like a whole sheet of legends because most worlds can't support that we're doing all the worlds like it just it made sense to be doing it here um and then right then then it was like yeah about trying to narrow down and like like yeah just digging through again like what are what do people most want to see like yeah we only have so many slots trying to like find like what are the most popular commanders what are the most popular cards in general in magic that are legends like yeah what are what are which cards haven't gotten like cool treatments yet which cards yeah like right like like just

what wants to be here i mean i was surprised by like how many characters have actually like died off in our storyline like there are a lot of like, oh, this card would be perfect. It was like, no, they died. And then there was other stuff that's just off limit, like I wasn't going to do Eldrazi here or whatever. There were a surprising number of cards that were hard to do because they just didn't make sense to be here or weren't in the correct timeline

basically the the rule was that they had to fight in this fight right that so like they had to be alive they had to be the right timeline that you know they had to be participating in this fight and so that had more restrictions than we thought it did i know starting out right but yeah like yeah as you're saying like it was important to me like yeah that just like we could show them all like legitimately you know this would be them participating in the war showing showing a whole bunch of characters like that are a part of the war um and like we did get pretty cool pyrexian creature options as well um including their original the original um Praetors. Okay, so we're almost out of time. Any last thoughts on the making of March of the Machines?

No, I mean, it was a lot of fun to do. I mean, I've been super happy to see the reception so far. Like, there's always stuff like, you do stuff like a new card type, like Battle, and it's like, definitely there's always, always like dots in the back of your mind. And it's just it's been really reassuring to see the reaction so far has been really overwhelmingly like great to read. Like I'm excited to see how excited people are and how well they think we've done. So I get to see now I'm eager to see how it all plays out.

But, yeah, I've been really happy with the reception so far. Well, I want to thank you for being with us. It's fun talking. I had a lot of fun myself with March on the Machine. It was definitely, it was a daunting task when we began it because the scope is so big. But it really turned out great. And I'm, as always, I always love when I hand over sets to you and you make them better. So it's always, I'm excited to see what you do to make the set the best it can be.

Thanks for that, Dave. Yeah, thank you. Everybody else, I'm at my desk, so we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys all next time, and thank you, Dave, for joining us. Bye-bye. Yeah, thanks.