Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1026: Lessons Learned – Innistrad: Crimson Vow

Episode Date: April 14, 2023

This podcast is another in my "Lessons Learned" series where I talk about sets I led or co-led and all the lessons I learned from designing them. In this episode, I talk about what I learned from making Innistrad: Crimson Vow.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, today is another Lessons Learned. So I'm going to talk about the making of Crimson Vow. For those that don't know, my Lesson Learned series, I examine sets that I led or co-led, and I talk about what I learned from leading them. So this is an introspective podcast. And I talk about what I learned from leading them. So this is an introspective podcast. Okay, so Crimson Vow was an interesting case in that it wasn't on the schedule. You can tell this because the sets leading up to it, the keywords were like equestrian, fencing, golf. And the sets after it are hockey, ice skating, judo.

But this set is clubs uh so basically what happened was we decided to change around the schedule we decided to get rid of the core set and move to having four uh premiere sets you know not not having a core set and having four regular premiere sets um that was decided late enough that sets around it were already in flux. I don't know why we didn't change the names around. Anyway, we didn't. But the fact that it was called Clubs for Golf Clubs, one with golf. And the idea was when we added it in,

we knew we were doing it a little bit of a last minute. So the idea of taking a known world and expanding it felt a lot easier to do than making, you know, making a brand new world that we were trying to squeeze in because we knew that would be tough. And so basically what we did was, and I got put in charge of it just because it was being done a little faster than normal. I don't, for example, I'm not sure if we got our full exploratory design time. We had the full vision design, but it was a little tiny bit rushed.

And so I decided to do it just because it was going to be a little harder than normal. So normally when things are a little harder than normal, I will do them. So what we did is we had a look at Midnight Hunt and figure out how do we complement Midnight Hunt. The goal was to make a large set in Innistrad that made sense with Midnight Hunt but was its own thing. We weren't looking to do sort of old school blocks where it's just solely a continuation.

But on the flip side, we didn't want to not do some continuation. As you will see, we thought some continuation was okay. So in the end, when designing an Innistrad set, one of the things you have to answer, there's five tribes, basically. There's five creature types that matter. There are humans, there are werewolves and vampires and zombies and spirits. So there's four monster creature types and humans.

Usually we want each to have a mechanical identity. They don't necessarily have to have a keyword but they have to have some strong mechanical identity the other thing so partly was what are we going to do in this set and part of it was how do we make it feel like it's a companion to what Midnight Hunt was doing

so when we examined Midnight Hunt what we realized was Midnight Hunt really kind of had a werewolf mechanic as its center, right? Day-Night was the big mechanic. So, Day-Night, for those that don't know, basically it's a riff off the werewolf mechanic from the original Innistrad. The idea is when a creature comes out that has the Day-Night mechanic, you go get, there's a card that's the day-night card. And then on any turn in which a player doesn't cast a spell,

it'll become night if it's day. And any turn in which a player casts two spells, the same player casts two spells on the same turn, at the beginning of the next upkeep, it becomes day. So the idea is players have some control over day and night. Not complete, but some control. And then the idea is things are affected either on the day side or the night side. Usually they're affected on the night side.

Werewolves transform on the day night. So we get to our first lesson, which was when we were... So this is a little bit of a midnight hunt lesson, but it's tied to Crimson Vow, so I will mention it. One of the things that happened was when we made Day Night, one of the things is I spent time talking with the rules manager at the time and saying, I want to make sure that we can line up all the werewolves so all the werewolves work the same. Originally, the plan was, when it became day, all werewolves became human, and when it became night, all humans that were werewolves became

werewolves. Meaning it was baked into day night. The day night transformed them. And then it became clear that in the rules, it was better if the Day-Night creatures just said, oh, when it's day, I'm this, and when it's night, I'm that. Meaning Day-Night didn't have a master thing that affected werewolves, the cards individually. And when we found that out, I was like, oh, well,

okay, we need to then errata the old werewolves to become Day-Night so that all the werewolves work the same. And the rules manager at the time said, yes, we can to then errata the old werewolves to become day-night so that all the werewolves work the same. And the rules manager at the time said, yes, we can do that, no problem. Anyway, in between vision design and set design, we changed rules managers. So the person that had promised me, of course, that is how it would work, was not around. And later in the process process when I brought up, hey, hey, they really need to work together, I just couldn't convince enough people to make that happen.

And I consider that one of the things that's important is understanding the dynamics of, like, that was important to me and I believe fundamentally important to the werewolf players. And I wish I had done more earlier. I think I didn't realize the change until it was too late. And then by the time I tried to change it, there's enough momentum, it became hard to change. And I wish I wish I'd been a little more on top of that.

I mean, one of the things that's really tricky in my job is I'm just doing infinite sets and working on infinite products. So when I sign off on something, I keep a small eye on it. But there's a lot going on and it's hard to know every little change that happens. But that is one that I really do. I wish I had been a little or even if maybe we should have fought a little more for the changing to be on night day. That day made werewolves into humans and night made you a werewolf if you could transform into a werewolf. Maybe, I don't know.

I wish I'd done something. The fact that werewolves kind of work similarly but not exactly, I'm not happy with that. I wish I had somehow, I wish I had figured out how to make that not happen. Anyway, that's Midnight Hunt. So when we get to Crimson Vow, we looked at Midnight Hunt, and we said, you know what? It really has this werewolf vibe.

The werewolf... The biggest mechanic was werewolf-related. We were stretching werewolves into new colors. We were doing more werewolves than we had done before. It just had a very werewolf vibe to it. I mean, there's stuff that the other creature types did. So the idea was that we would focus on a different one of the creature types. It was clear that spirits had a little less sort of cachet, that we wanted to be a zombie set or a vampire set.

So we set out to, we experimented with both, and we brainstormed both. Interestingly, by the way, when we brainstormed for the zombie set, we ended up coming up with Decade. Now, Decade ended up getting taken by Midnight Hunt, but Crimson Bomb made Decade, and I was very, so lesson there. I was very proud of Decade. I think that one of the things about it is, at first blush, it seems like something the players wouldn't want, right? Oh, we're making a token, but it's just worse than a normal token.

You know, because basically whenever you get in combat, the Decade creature dies. But what actually happened was, it made a very dynamic set of gameplay. I know it's very easy to look at things in a vacuum saying, oh, well, this token versus other tokens seems weak. But the fact that it had less overall power embedded in it allowed us to make more of them. And it let us do something pretty cool, which is have zombie swarms that didn't sort of overrun the game. Because a lot of times when you make a lot of tokens, it just sort of gums up the board. But the Decade creatures were neat in a way

that they allowed sort of that zombie swarm without gumming up the board. And I thought that, I was really happy with that. And I don't know quite what to do with Decade. I kind of wish we didn't call it Decade by the way. Meaning, I think it's a mechanic that's broader than just zombies. And calling it Decade made it a very zombie-ish thing. So, but anyway

it's a mechanic I think we could use again. I was very happy with it. But anyway, what happened was we thought of a bunch of ideas for zombies and for vampires. The creative team went and did their own exercise, meaning what's better, vampires or zombies. Basically, on the design side, we're like, we can do either.

We have cool ideas for both. And then the creative team said, oh, we have this neat idea for a vampire wedding. And they were really excited by it. So like, okay. Like, you know, as far as we're concerned, we could do both vampires or zombies. And creative had a reason to want

to do vampires, so we did vampires. So we did Vampire Wedding. So one of the lessons, by the way, which is an interesting one, is a tonal lesson, which was one of the complaints we got about Crimson Bough was the wedding went a little lighter. I mean, it's still vampires, but the contrast of vampires in a wedding played off as more humorous. You know, it didn't really come off across as scary or anything. It had more of a lighter tone to it.

And there are definitely some people like, well, the reason I like Indestrod is I like the darkness of the horror. And this one was a little sort of dark humor-ish rather than just dark. Now, some people enjoyed that. And I'm not saying necessarily we should never do that. I'm just saying that in the act of doing that, I do think that we took a world that some people really liked and we lessened an element of the

world that those people liked. I did think we mixed up something that other people liked, and I think the Vampire Wedding definitely had its fans, and I enjoyed one of the things I'm realizing more and more as we sort of figure out trope space is I love playing in genre trope space.

You know, we're doing things that you see in stories and stuff, but I also like sort of what I've been calling real world trope space. You know, we're doing things that you see in stories and stuff. But I also like sort of what I've been calling the real world trope space, right? Whereas you're doing something that people have actual experience with in their own lives. Weddings being one of them. Another class example was in Strixhaven. We did school tropes. Well, most people understand school tropes because most people went to school.

And so the idea of, you know, a lot of the dynamics of school, we could play there, and wedding had a similar quality. Most people have been to a wedding or been in a wedding or, you know, have some interactions with weddings. And so I think that I enjoyed that aspect of it. I think we made a lot of fun cards. The interesting question is, was Innistrad the right place to do that? I don't know. I'm mixed. I don't know where else you do a vampire wedding. It makes sense there.

I guess another important one of my lessons is it's not as if when you learn something, it's always crystal clear what you've learned or the lesson's 100% in one direction. I think we learned that when we change the tone of a world, that the people that are fans of that world and like that tone sometimes will be disappointed. But on the flip side, I think there's power in, there is power in taking a world as you know it

and adapting it to different things. Like, I do like the idea that, hey, we could come to Innistrad and use Innistrad and use it to do some things that are different than normal. That, you know, I like the idea that we don't have to invent a new world every time we come up with something. Like, oh, we're doing Vampire Wedding. Well, let's make a Vampire Wedding world. Like, well, is there a world that we could have a Vampire Wedding?

I do like the idea of, like, as we make more worlds, I do think we need to think of the worlds as a resource. That there's not endless worlds, and we do want the worlds to be distinct from one another. And so there is sort of a lesson, and it's funny. I have two lessons, and they pull opposite directions. So, lessons don't always pull in the same direction. Lesson number one has to do more with the idea of understanding why people like something. But lesson number two is, hey, we should be able to repurpose worlds to a certain extent. Meaning just because we have a cool new theme doesn't mean we have to invent a cool new world.

Then if we have an existing world, it makes sense. For example, Lost Caverns of Ixalan, which is coming later this year, we were doing an underground world. We said, oh, do you want to make a brand new underground world? Or like, whoa, is there a world we already have that really makes sense and the vibe can match to this? We thought Ixalan did. And so I'll talk more about that when we get to Ixalan.

But I do think repurposing a world is important. So I don't know. Interesting lesson here where I like elements going in opposite directions to each other. So the third lesson is that not all lessons go in the same direction. Okay, so let's get into the nitty gritty of the mechanics. Okay, so werewolves did day-night. So that was a carryover from Crimson Vow I'll just do a few quick lessons on Day-Night

I talked a bit about the Werewolves in general, which we lined them up The other mistake on Day-Night, I think, was I wish Day-Night went away when nothing cared about Day-Night I think we The problem is, I don't like players having to do bookkeeping that doesn't matter. And so day night had this weird dynamic where if you got rid of all the day night creatures, the day night continued. And it could matter. Maybe I

I think the reason that set design kept it around is, look, I could have werewolves in my deck and you kill my werewolves? And hey, maybe the werewolf in my hand wants to come in on the knight side, so maybe I want to make sure it's a knight, so when I play my werewolf, it comes on the knight side, werewolf side up. The problem there is I think that it wasn't... Generally, when you're making decisions, you have to take all...

It's very easy to think about the ones that matter, but you kind of got to take all situations. So the answer is, okay, I now kill the last day night. What percentage of games am I monitoring something that will never matter again versus how often am I monitoring something that will matter again? something that will matter again. And I think what you'll find if you sort of crunch the numbers is the majority of the time, I think a decent majority of the time, when you get to day, night, and nothing's there,

you're monitoring and there's not a payoff. And so I don't know the answer. I don't know if... What I do know is, in retrospect, I wish day-night went away when there was no day-night creatures. And maybe that means we have to rethink a little bit about whether it starts

day or night. I could imagine, for example, in a world where you care about day-night, maybe it's supposed to start on night so that if I have to start all over again, werewolves get to start on werewolves' side. I'm not sure about that. That would power up the werewolves. Maybe that's a bad idea. But I do know that I wish day and night did not stick around

after there was nothing they cared about day and night. I don't like the bookkeeping when there's nothing to bookkeep. Even if there's future possible bookkeeping. I still don't like it. Okay, next up. Let's get to the vampires since the vampires were the crux of this. So the main mechanic for the vampires was blood tokens. So blood tokens were a colorless token that you spend one and tap sack to rummage, meaning you discard a card and draw a card.

I have some mixed feelings on blood. I do think it played well. I do think it's a good token purely from a play standpoint I also really like the idea that we had a token that represented blood and that the vampires could use the token to do other things, mostly strengthen themselves

so the idea of here's a resource mechanic that you can use that's valuable but if you're playing vampires they use that resource in a different way, I thought was very flavorful. The area that we never quite cracked was most of our other tokens, we found a mechanic that was just like slam dunk that mechanic. Food gains you life. Clues draw you cards. Treasure gets you mana. And those were

just total, total slam dunks. The problem we ran into with blood was there wasn't anything we could do with blood that when we asked people, everyone said, yeah, that's blood. That blood was a little vaguer in concept. Like, what does blood do? It keeps you alive?, what does blood do? It keeps you alive? What exactly does blood do? So what we ended up doing was choosing something that

played well. But I think what ended up happening was, there's a little bit of dissonance. I don't know. So here's the interesting question. I don't know the answer to this one. I like how it played. I like how blood played.

Meaning, I like having blood the vampires can eat. I like having blood that has a resource that you can use. I think blood played actually very well. I think it missed a little bit on the resonance. And the larger question is, yes, food is a slam dunk. Does every token immunity a slam dunk, or can it be in the ballpark? And I don't know. I don't know if there was

an answer for blood that was more blood. We did mess around with like plus one plus one counter. The idea that blood makes you stronger. The problem there is the vampires wanted to eat the blood and they wanted to get stronger. So making you, the random person, get stronger when you're not a vampire.

Like, you kind of wanted the vampire to get stronger from the blood. Not any random person, any planeswalker that somehow has blood get stronger. That felt weird. So, I don't know if there's a good answer. But at least I want to acknowledge that the resonance was not at the bar that most other tokens were. And I'm honest, I don't know. I mean, I look back on this and like, yeah, it's great to go. I want everything to be at that bar, but I don't know.

There's other good reasons to have blood. I'm a little bit torn. We spent a lot, a lot of time trying to find something. So it's not like I felt like there was something we couldn't have found that was there. But anyway, that one I'm really mixed on, which is I like the gameplay. I like the overall flavor. I like blood tokens being a thing in a vampire set. But the resonance of the blood tokens as blood left something to be desired.

I acknowledge that. Okay, next up was the zombies. So the zombies, we had made the Decade mechanic, and that played better with the stuff in Midnight Hunt, so they moved it to Midnight Hunt. We ended up getting Exploit, which was a mechanic from Dragons of Tarkir. I don't have anything against Exploit per se. Here's the weirdest thing about exploit,

is how well exploit played with decayed. Like we removed decay to add a mechanic that played well with the mechanic we removed. Now, if the two sets have been drafted together, where there's just an environment where decayed things interact with exploit. Now, they do in Standard. They do in Constructed Events. Maybe I'm thinking a little too limited-centric.

In Constructed, they did overlap. But it was sad in Limited they didn't overlap. Like, you had just played with Decade, and Decade went over really well. They were very popular. And then you got this mechanic that would have played so well with a mechanic that you loved so maybe we should have carried over Decade

maybe what we should have done is carried over Decade and then had a mechanic that maybe isn't a named mechanic like Exploit but maybe just have a lot of sacrificing in and have a sacrifice or maybe have Decade and Exploit maybe that would be okay.

I'm not sure. I mean, we're really kind of weighing how often we bring back mechanics and what level. I do think that exploit had some interesting gameplay. And I like what the set design team, like, I do think they made exploit fit the archetypes they were doing. And so I think there was fun from exploit. i'm just recognizing there was a weird feel bad but both in that i think players like decayed so much they wanted to see it carried over like day night got carried over and disturbed which i'll talk about in a second sort of got carried over um and so i think players were like well one of the things that was new that they really liked

about midnight hunt was decayed and there's a little bit of like, oh, come on, you could have got Decade over. Knowing that we had Exploit, maybe the correct thing would have been have a little bit of Decade in it, along with Exploit. And they would play with Exploit, and players get a little more Decade, which they enjoyed. Maybe that was the right call.

Okay, next up, let's get to the Spirits. So we did the disturb mechanic in um midnight hunt so disturbed was cards that it's kind of a cross between double-faced cards and um flashback the way it works is an aftermath um you have a creature when the creature dies oh so you have a creature that's not a spirit and When the creature dies oh, so you have a creature that's not a spirit. And when the creature dies you can cast the backside, which is a spirit, out of the graveyard. So the idea is the creature dies and then sort of becomes a spirit. I mean, you have to cast a spirit, but the flavor is the creature dies

and now you have access to a spirit. Then what happened was in eyes and now you have access to a spirit. Then what happened was in Crimson Vow we had instead of having non-spirits that become spirits on the back, we had spirits

that became auras. Interesting, by the way, a little tidbit here. The Disturbed with Auras was actually designed by the Midnight Hunt design team, and so when they took Decade, we got I think what happened was they realized they could do the Creature Creature first

and then do the Creature Aura, and so it made sense to push it back so they could do the Creature Creature first. But anyway, the Creatures that Died in Auras was something that, I mean, I was on it, but something the Midnight Hunt design team had done. I do like, so Disturbed was probably my favorite. Like, one of the things that, with the blocks not being here anymore,

one of the things that we don't have a lot of opportunity to do, and I would like to find more opportunity to do, is evolving mechanics. In fact, it's my belief I mean obviously it makes sense in Innistrad it's the same world I think we're much more comfortable doing evolutions mechanics and where we stay on the same world but I'm definitely pushing is that when we find opportunities where similar mechanics can get evolved and make sense in sets I don't mind I don't mind bringing back mechanics

or evolving mechanics in sets very near each other. In fact, they can be back to back. And I was glad that we were able to do it here. I thought it was a nice evolution of the mechanic. And it did this neat thing where it demonstrated two

different ways to do the mechanic, both that were really flavorful. I think Creature dying to to Spirit and Spirit Dying to Aura are both, like, slam-dunk flavors, really cool flavors. And so I think they played really well, and it is another... I think the Disturb mechanic is another tool in our toolbox when we're doing double-faced card sets. I think it is a very versatile thing.

And so I expect us to use it again. I think it was definitely something that was very open-ended because the idea is I play side A, and then once it dies, I can play side B. So it is, in some ways, also, it's just a cleaner version, I think, of Aftermath. Aftermath was a mechanic in Amonkhet, where you cast a spell, and then you can cast a spell out of your graveyard. Because it was pseudo-split card, I think they only could be instant sorceries, if I remember correctly. And the nice thing about Disturb is you can do that, but you can have any permanent type. So you can have any card type, including permanents.

And so I think it's a cleaner version. Aftermath, also, we never quite got a look that looked right. So the only downside is it's a double-faced card. Not every set is double-faced mechanics. But in sets that do have double-faced mechanics, I think it's a nice new tool or toolbox. One which I definitely will use again. Or I intend to use again. Okay, next up was the humans.

So the humans in Midnight Hunt had a coven mechanic. Coven, is that right? Yeah, coven, sorry. Coven mechanic. And the coven mechanic requires that you had three different powers of creatures. Thatven mechanic. And the Coven mechanic required that you had three different powers of creatures.

That went okay. Not great, not bad, but... The mechanic in this set was... What's it called? Training, which was a reverse of Mentor. So Mentor was a mechanic... What did we do with Mentor? Mentor was... A B What did we do with Mentor? Mentor was a Boros mechanic, I think,

in one of the Ravnica sets. The third Ravnica, Guilds of Ravnica, or Ravnica Allegiance, whichever one had Boros in it. So the way it worked was, oh, it was in, anyway, that whenever you attacked, Mentor attacked with a creature smaller than it, it gave it a plus one plus one counter.

So training is the reverse. If a creature with training ever attacks the creature larger than it, it gets a plus one plus one counter. And it's basically Mentor, I think Eric made this mechanic, it's basically sort of a mirror Mentor. I think it plays a little bit better. or make this mechanic. It's basically sort of a mere mentor. I think it plays a little bit better.

Well, I mean, the problem with mentor was that it took a while to get the larger creature out, and so it just didn't happen quite as quickly. And training, I think the gameplay training is a little smoother. I mean, I still like Mentor, I guess. I will say, though, that training did not do a great job of feeling like a human mechanic. I think it's a fine mechanic. I mean, I think it's an interesting tweak on Mentor.

And in some ways, it plays better than Mentor, although I could argue both sides. But I don't think it did a great job of feeling... I mean, the humans usually are sort of... you want the humans to feel like in crisis. Now, Coven represented them turning toward

witchcraft in Midnight Hunt. I don't know. It's not that training couldn't be used somewhere to good effect. I'm not sure whether this was the right set for it. Speaking of which, we get to our last mechanic, I believe, which is cleave. Did I type all the mechanics? I did type all the mechanics.

So cleave was a mechanic where there was brackets on a card. And if you paid the cleave cost, then you removed those lines of text from the card. You cleaved them from the card. And the idea essentially was, it was kind of a cutesy way to do kicker where the card changed functionality. So I have a couple issues with cleave. One is, so Cleave originally got made for

I think for Obscura in Streets of New Capenna for the white blue black family I think that it I don't think Cleave was a great fit for the set

that it I know they gave it the name Cleve, and they tried to make it sound like it was a horror thing, but really it's this clever... It wanted to come across somewhere where it felt like it was something being clever, because the mechanic was being clever, and so you wanted to mirror that. And so the reason that it was obscure in the first place was oh

they are really smart they were like the smartest of the families and we were trying to show their intelligence so I think there's a place that Cleve could work that would be a better fit I think tonally it didn't do a great job

in Crimson Vow and I should say Cleve got added late I think what happened was tonally it didn't do a great job in Crimson Vow. And I should say Cleve got added late. I think what happened was Adam was the lead designer, sorry, lead set designer. He and Eric co-edited, I think.

But he did the later part of it. They were trying to find something that was a little more novel just because the set was a little light on novelty. And Cleve is very novel, so I get how they got there. I think the problem in the end was it just was hard to dress up Cleve in a way that felt like he was a, you know, a gothic whore mechanic. It was a little too clever for its own good,

meaning it wanted to be somewhere where it was kind of playing up its cleverness and that the flavor of it acknowledged the metedness of it, which I just don't think it did here. The second thing is, I think it's a mechanic that was a little too clever for its own good from a, like, I think it was hard to process. I think, for example, if I say, hey, I do something and if I kick it, bonus, meaning the spell gets bigger or I have an additional ability, it's a little easier to wrap your mind around. And the idea that it's the spell, but slightly different because these words don't work, I think it took an extra step

to process that was hard for people to understand. I think that Cleave suffered a lot from, okay, what does this do again? We refer to it as non-sticky, meaning non-sticky means

there's something about it that's fighting intuition and fighting how you process it so that you have trouble processing. How does that work again? I think there were some Cleave cards that worked better than others. I think the trick to Cleave was you wanted to remove one thing that was core to the card that then it opened up and made it more general. And some of them did. I think some Cleave cards were better than others.

I think my biggest knock against. Other than Cleave was a bad fit for the set. My other knock against Cleave was. I think it's a harder to process mechanic. And as such. I think there's more that goes into how you design it. And maybe that makes it unusable. I don't know.

I mean, I don't... All I know is you have to take greater care when designing Cleave. And I think that some of the execution in Crimson Vow was more confusing than I'd like it to be. So anyway, I think that it might be the right set to use Cleave again with the right flavor and the right execution.

There's something very darling about it. And you could see that when we premiered it, that players had a lot of fun sort of making memes about it and stuff. So I don't want to knock Cleave completely in the sense that there's something very charming about Cleave. There's something that's very meta and lovable about Cleave that I don't want to sort of say that we should never do Cleave. I do think that that wasn't the right place for Cleave. And I do think how you execute Cleave is tricky and that we have to take into account the processing is a little harder.

But I do think Cleave had some pluses. And I do think that there is a lovableness about Cleave that if used properly, I think Cleave could be a plus for a set. I don't think Cleave, like, sometimes I review mechanics and I'm like, ah, that's just a mistake. Like the gotcha mechanic, okay. I don't think there's a right way to do the gotcha mechanic. I think that's a mistake to do it. I don't think Cleave is a mistake. I think the execution was wrong. I think that the tone was a little wrong. But I do think that the mechanic itself is salvageable and we could do fun stuff with it. Anyway, so I'm almost over now.

A little extra traffic today, so you guys got a little more podcast I think, let me wrap up my final thoughts on Crimson Vow um, I do like the general vibe of the set, I do like the vampire theme um, I even

like the vampire wedding I guess, okay, now that I've time to process, I think I like the vampire wedding. I guess, okay, now that I have time to process, I think I like the vampire wedding. I think the fact that we did Midnight Hunt right before it, which was a little more traditional Innistrad, I guess makes me a little happier that if you love Innistrad, we just gave you more traditional Innistrad.

And I do like the idea that we could take worlds and that I think we have to be willing to have worlds to be able to tweak words a little bit and try different tones in the sense of, I don't think it's the right thing to, every time we do a brand new, um, a brand new theme that we just invent a new world. So I guess looking back, I, okay, I'm in favor of the vampire wedding. Maybe that means that you... Maybe what that means is

that in places that aren't the vampire wedding, maybe you have to pull up the whore a little more. Okay, let the vampire be the vampire wedding, which... Vampire wedding is cute. It's not going to be a scary thing. I mean, not that there weren't some elements of it, but the very nature of a Vampire Wedding,

what you want to do and what makes it sort of charming, is just not quite as scary as normal Innistrad. But maybe that means you offset it. You know, maybe in this set, you go a little darker with werewolves or go a little darker with spirits. Like, you find another part of the set where you can go a little bit darker

to make sure that the fans of Innistrad who want a little more of their darker horror get some of that. So maybe that would have been the right answer. The other thing, by the way, just as a processing for those of you listening,

when I do this, I write down all the mechanics to make sure I remember the mechanics, but I'm trying to actually walk through my lessons as I'm driving, meaning it's not as if I pre-thought all this out and wrote it all down. I'm actually, you're hearing me process as we drive how I'm thinking about things. So hopefully you'll like that. I mean, it gives you a little more of actual insight.

And like I said, one of my big takeaways from today is it's not as if you do something and everything is right or everything is wrong and for sure do that again or for sure not do that again. Sometimes you do something and it's mixed. And there are pluses and there are minuses. You're like, wow, was it the right thing? Should we have done that? And the vampire wedding is a real good thing where

there's things I really, really like about the vampire wedding. But there's things that definitely tweak things in a way that I know upsets some players. So, you know, trying to find the middle ground of how do we make all the people that love the Vampire Wedding still have a Vampire Wedding, but make the people that love Innistrad, that want the darker Innistrad to have some of that as well. So,

anyway guys, that is my thoughts on Crimson Vow. So, I'm now at work, so we all know what that means. I mean, this is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. Hope you guys enjoyed the look at Crimson Vow.

Until next time, bye-bye. Thank you.