Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1076: Iconic and Characteristic Creature Types

Episode Date: October 6, 2023

What exactly is an iconic or characteristic creature type? In this podcast, I explain what they are and detail our long history of figuring out which ones work best.

I'm not pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the Drive to Work at Home Edition. Okay, so today I'm going to talk about a concept that I've yet to do a podcast on, but it's become something we've been talking a lot on my blog, which is iconics and characteristic creatures. What are those? Why do they exist? creatures. What are those? Why do they exist? I will talk about that today and walk through sort of the history of what they are and what they mean and why we care about them. Okay, so when Alpha came out, Magic first came out back in 1993, there are a couple of cards that sort of drew attention to themselves. White had a card called Sarah Angel. Red had a card called Shivan Dragon.

And black had both Sanger Vampire and Lord of the Pit. Green also had a card called Force of Nature. So what we found was there were definitely things that were sort of representative of a color in a cool way, that they were sort of big and brash and bold, and that something about them really just sort of embodied the color. So let me start with the Shivan Dragon.

shivan dragon so richard garfield so thought that the shivan dragon the dragons were the embodiment of red that he put him in red even though red really wasn't a flying color per se um it just they breathe fire they're wild you know it has some of the chaotic nature and Richard was obviously doing fantasy and dragons are a huge thing in fantasy and it just felt red to him so Shivan Dragon was stuck in red and there was something about it that part of the idea of an iconic

I'll talk about the iconics first then we'll get to the characteristics part of the idea of an iconic is the sense of having creatures that so embody what the color is and that are hitting sort of things people know that it's just this loud, bold statement about what a color represents. And that from the very beginning, like, Shivan Dragon was kind of like the face for red. And when Alpha came out, Shivan Dragon was one of the the face for red. And when Alpha came out, Shivan Dragon was one of the most popular cards.

It was very exciting. And it really put this neat sort of face on red in a way that was very popular. And, you know, it was a card people were excited for. It archetypally made sense. Everything about it just really all came together. The Shivan Dragon was like the embodiment of red. Now, in white,

now Shiv and Dragon was a rare card. The next card I'm talking about actually was an uncommon, Sarah Angel. But Sarah Angel did something similarly for white in that it was a character that people, it was a card people were drawn to, and it was an angel, and it just embodied sort of the essence

of what white wanted to be. That white was all about, you know, trying to do right by things and caring about things and defending things. And, you know, the idea of the battle angel that Richard had come up with to be the Sarah Angel really had the sense of it. It just seemed like it embodied the essence of white in a way that was really cool. Now, black was in a weird state, that there were two different cards that really drew people's attention. One was Sanger Vampire. So Sanger Vampire was

an uncommon. So, actually, real quickly, since not everybody, not everybody knows off the top of their head what all these cards are. Let me real quickly say what all these cards do. So, Shivan Dragon is a 4 red red, so 6 mana total,

2 witches red, 5 5 creature dragon, it's got flying and it's got fire breathing. Spend 1 red mana, Shiv and Dragon gets plus 1 plus 0 until end of turn. Sarah Angel is a 3 white white, so 5 mana total,

4 4 creature angel, it's mana total, four four, creature angel. It's got flying and vigilance, although vigilance wasn't yet a thing when the set came out, so it was written out, but now it is flying vigilance. Sanger Vampire, Sanger Vampire is three black black for four four, creature vampire. It has flying, and whenever a creature

dealt damage by a sacred vampire this turn dies put a plus one plus one counter on sacred vampire so it feeds on the things and then lord of the pit was four black black black seven seven so this is the original alpha text here flying trample

you must sacrifice one of your own creatures during upkeep or Lord of the Pit does seven damage to you. You may still attack with Lord of the Pit even if you fail to sacrifice a creature. Okay, so... Shivan Dragon and Ser Angel really were the embodiments of their colors

in a way that was very clean and loud. There were two different black creatures. Sanger Vampire was a vampire that feeds on creatures. And Lord of the Pit was this demon that you're sacrificing things to. Both of them felt very, very black in slightly different ways, but they both felt

very black. So, one of the things early on when we were sort of thinking about how magic was approached, that there was something really clean about how certain things came out. How like Shivan Dragon, you know, we could put a dragon in most sets and it would just be the embodiment of what red was. So the idea of the Iconics, the idea of iconic creatures didn't start,

like it wasn't like when Richard made the game, he's like, there must be iconic creatures, because he didn't, he would have made a cycle of them, creatures didn't start... It wasn't like when Richard made the game, he's like, there must be iconic creatures. Because he didn't... He would have made a cycle of them. He didn't. Mostly what happened was Richard just made cool individual cards and certain cards sort of stood out. So in 95,

this is after I came to Wizards, we started talking about how cool it was that Red had Shivan Dragon and white had Serra Angel. And that, you know, could all the colors have something as clean and as simple as that? The problem was blue and green really didn't have anything nearly that matched that. And black had two things. We weren't quite sure what to do with that.

So one of the things we did is, okay, we said, what does an iconic creature want to be? What's the point? Why do we want an iconic creature? And what we said is we like the idea that there's a creature, something that's understood, that's not a made-up creature, that's not brand new to magic. It's, hey, hey, person who's new to magic,

here's a thing you probably already understand. You know what a dragon is. You know what an angel is. They're things that have a fantasy element to them, but they're familiar. That was the first part. They had to be familiar. People had to know what they were. And

something about them had to really play into the essence of what the philosophy was. You know, that the dragons had that sense of chaos about them, that they breathed fire, that they, everything about them really emanated what red felt like, or the angels is just trying to do good, and it's a protector, and it's trying to help, you know, really had a lot of sense of what white was. So, we like this idea of

there being iconic creatures, but when we first came up with the concept, it just was incomplete. It's like, well, we have two of them that are working really good. Could every color have a dragon and an angel? Could we do that? And the idea being is the reason we wanted to do it

was magic likes to live in cycles. Magic's all about breaking into five. We like to have something clean and simple that we could do that demonstrated that. And so back in 95, the idea came up of like, is this something we could do? And it was sort of a problem we wanted to solve. It was sort of the idea of Iconic Creatures were, it'd be great if we could do this, but we

knew we had a lot of work to done because, you know, blue and green had nothing and black, you know, we had to figure out. But white and red, okay, white and red, we have two. We dreamed if we have two, we can get to five. That's what we thought. Okay, so first let's talk about the black problem. So black's problem was an embarrassment of riches. Unlike blue and green had nothing, black had two. Vampires and demons both hit what we wanted. They're all over pop culture. You know what vampires are.

You know what demons are. Both of them have qualities. I mean, once again, they play in slightly different qualities, but they play in qualities that do seem to embody what the color is. Eventually what happened was we decided that demons made a little more sense iconic. And then I'll get into the characteristics. The characteristics have to do with lower rarity. We realized that it was more fun to like have a whole deck full of vampires. That vampires make

more sense as a characteristic race than an iconic race. And so we decided that demons were the right choice. That there was a place for vampires. Vampires are really cool. But that demons had a little more of a grandiose element

to them. Demons versus Angel had a little bit of a nice icon to them for enemy colors. And a demon really had the sense of, you know, a lot of black is you want power, but you're making dangerous choices to get that power. And, you know, a demon seemed to

really be the embodiment of that idea. That, you know, dealing with the demon is, you know, there's great risk. The demon is going to try to get what it wants, whatever it needs. But it'll tempt you and, you know, dealing with the demon is, you know, there's great risk. The demon is going to try to, you know, get what it wants and whatever it needs. But it'll tempt you and, you know. Anyway, we felt that the demon did a good job. So, okay, okay, we have three of them. Dragon, angel, demon.

Okay, all we need now is just get green and blue. What we found, though, was, so what we started doing is we said, okay, what could be the embodiment? So for blue, we're like, okay, we really want to get the intelligent, the quest for knowledge. So we looked around, and

the other thing that we decided is, the idea of an iconic, because we wanted to be something that was kind of big, not that they could only be rare, but the idea of an iconic is we wanted to be something that was kind of big. Not that they could only be rare, but the idea was that iconic should be the kind of thing that were special enough that mostly you saw them in rare. Maybe most of them were made uncommon. The general thought at the time is that iconics mostly shouldn't be common. They want to be something that feels a little bit more special than showing up in common. Okay, so Blue wanted something that was knowledgeable, that had some sort of intelligence.

You know, the essence of what Blue is. We looked at Djinn, because there's a little bit about the craftiness of a Djinn. And Mahamori Djinn had been an alpha. And it wasn't quite to the level of some of the other cards I named. Oh, real quickly. Mahamori Jin, since when I mention these, I'm trying to... Hold a second. Mahamori Jin is blue.

So it is... Where is it? Four blue blue for a 5-6 flying creature. Creature Jin. The problem we had with Mahamud djinn was that a djinn felt a little

it there were like worlds where djinns made sense and other worlds where it didn't quite fit as well for some reason like dragons just seemed a little more universal but we experiment with djinns. We like the idea of djinns, the idea that djinns grant you wishes and things.

And so we experimented a little bit with djinns, and it didn't quite pan out the way we had hoped. So we looked at other things to try to find stuff for blue. But we were struggling. Because, like, for example example one of the big blue things are stuff like serpents and like well you know a serpent like not every iconic needs to necessarily be smart but blue is the essence of knowledge and intellect so i felt like you know it's it's iconic needed to be smart and so we struggled. We weren't quite sure what to do.

Meanwhile, we were doing the same experiment with green. I think the first one we lagged onto is what if we was tree folk? Like what's more nature than trees, right? But I think what we found is tree folks just kind of function better at low rarity that they showed up. And we try to make sort of dramatic tree folk, like Doran was doing some of this period, we were trying to make tree folk exciting. And it never quite

had the appeal. The thing about the Iconics is you want something that just sort of speaks to people at a guttural level. We tried worms. We tried dinosaurs. We tried dinosaurs. We tried a bunch of different things. And, you know, we would

say, how about this? And we'd make a rare and multiple sets and try to gauge what people thought. So we struggled for blue and green for years. For years we struggled with blue and green. So the solution to green,

the interesting thing for green was the creature had existed since Alpha. Richard just didn't put it in green. So the solution to green eventually was the Hydra. So one of the big attributes of green

is growth and it's kind of wild so like it made sense that if there was an iconic that wasn't the smart one that was just more of you know just did it's thing green made the most sense you know

there's a reason I mean there was no clear green iconic that just was a very smart would chat with you sort of thing. But we decided that green was more about sort of the wildness of green. So anyway, Richard had made a Hydra, Rock Hydra, in red, in alpha. And it used the whole schtick of having counters for... Here. It definitely had the counter schtick for heads, because a Hydra is defined by its heads.

So, let's see. Where's Rock Hydra? Rock Hydra was X red red for a 0-0 creature Hydra. Rock Hydra enters the battlefield with X plus one plus one counters on on it For each one damage that will be dealt to a Rock Hydra If it has a plus one counter on it Remove plus one counter from it And prevent that one damage And then for one red, prevent the next one damage that will be dealt to Rock Hydra this turn

Red, red, red Put a plus one plus one counter on Rock Hydra Active the ability during your upkeep I think I read you the I didn't read you the original version Where's the alpha version? The alpha version was put X plus counters, heads, on Hydra. Heads in parentheses.

Each point of damage Hydra suffers destroys one head unless R is spent. During upkeep, new heads may be grown for RRR apiece. Anyway, I think Richard recognized the coolness of the Hydra and that the Hydra is defined by sort of its heads. But we realized that green was the color that wanted to, like creatures with a variable in it, with an X in it, made the most sense in green. Green was the color that could ramp the best.

And so we said, oh, what if we move hydras to green? What if the idea of this creature that has all these heads and is in the epitome of growth was green? And we tried that, and that actually worked. People really seemed to like the hydra. It had a cool definition,

which left blue. Blue was tricky, and I think in the end we found something we liked, but kind of like hydra, not Hydra, kind of like, um, sorry, kind of like, um, the djinn. It didn't feel quite as universal, but, um, but we like, so the Sphinx is what we ended up with. Um, so the Sphinx is from Greek mythology. Um, so like the riddle of the Sphinx is from Greek mythology. So like the riddle of the Sphinx. So the idea is the Sphinx would ask people things,

and then you needed to know the answer to the riddle. So the Sphinx really had this sense of caring about knowledge in a way that was cool. And we wanted Blue's Iconic to fly. It's not crucial that all of them fly. Green kind of didn't want to fly. Flying isn't really a green thing. But we felt like of all the Iconics, like Blue had them fly. Green kind of didn't want to fly because flying isn't really a green thing. But we felt like, of all

the Iconics, blue had to fly. And so Sphinx had this nice marriage of, it's kind of known for being smart, and it flies. And it's something people know, you know, the Sphinx. Like, the key for Iconics, we experimented a little bit, well, what if we made

our own thing, just made something up? But part of what you want for an iconic is that there's recognizability and understandability. Like, one of the cool things for an iconic is to a new player when they see it, like, seeing a dragon in red kind of helps understand what red is. But if it's a brand new creature you've never seen before,

like, both for iconics and for characteristics, the whole idea is that it's leaning into resonance. It's leaning into resonance. It's leaning into what people already know. Now, the concept of the Iconics is something that was more about a means by which to demonstrate stuff. It's the kind of thing we would put maybe in a core set. It is definitely something that we think about

in the sense that we try to make sure to get these creatures in where they make sense. But it's a rare set, actually, that has all five of those in the same set. You know, not every world has all of those. And so we use them where we can, and they're definitely the thing that we repeat more often. Sphinx is probably the least used. Dragon is the most used. But that's sort of the goal of

what we try to do with them. And I think the reason it gets talked a lot about in my blog is there's a lot of structural things we do that add some nuance to what we're doing but that how we use it isn't quite as harsh structurally

as it might seem. Like, we don't say every magic set must have a cycle of the Iconics. We don't do that. Some worlds make sense to have some of the Iconics and some don't. So we put them where they make sense. But if a world will make sense, we would lean on making sure to have them and having a rare mythic rare of those. There are definitely stuff we lean in a little bit to make

things that are really exciting in that color. Now, we... Let me get to the characteristic races. Characteristic races is a problem we've yet to... I mean, a lot of this is us trying to find something and it's nice to have some stuff where there's some... you can

cycle things out. And so having something that makes sense for all the five colors is nice. But the fact we're 30 years in and we haven't quite cracked the characteristic one means that it's a puzzle we're trying to solve, but it's not, there's no easy answers. Okay, so for Characters of Graces, in Alpha, Richard made

three lords, meaning three cards that encourage you to play other creatures of a certain creature type. And so, those three ones were, first up, in blue, Lord

of the Pit. So, Lord of the Pit was blue, oh, not Lord of the Pit, I'm sorry, Lord of the Pit. So Lord of the Pit was blue. Oh, not Lord of the Pit. I'm sorry. Lord of Atlantis. Lord of Atlantis. So Lord of Atlantis was blue, blue creature merfolk. So in Alpha, it wasn't originally, I think in the very first printing of it, it was summon Lord of Atlantis.

And then later it was a Lord, back when we had Lord creature type, and eventually became a Merfolk Lord. I think the current version now is just a Merfolk. It went from Lord of Atlantis to Lord to Merfolk Lord to Merfolk.

Anyway, the ability of the Lord Atlantis is all merfolk in play gain Island Walk and plus one plus one while this card is in play. Island Walk is you can't be blocked if your opponent has an island. Island Walk early in Magic was representing sort of things that lived in water. And so we don't

really do much Island Walk anymore. But that is what Lord Atlantis does. And then, okay, so there was Lord of Atlantis. That was merfolk. There was Goblin King. So Goblin King was one red red.

Summon Goblin King. Goblins in play gain mountain walk and plus one plus one while this card remains in play. So it grants a plus one plus one in mountain walk. So play. So, it granted plus one plus one in Mountain Walk, so can't be blocked if you have a Mountain. And then, there was... Oh, uh, what's the zombies called?

Um... Um, there was Zombie Mafter. One black black, two three, all zombies in play gain Swamp Walk and black regenerate for as long as it remains in play. Um, so, 2, 3. All zombies in play gain Swamp Walk and Black regenerate for as long as it remains in play. So the Blue and Red gave plus one, plus one.

All three of them gave Land Walk or their opponent thing. Black, instead of giving plus one, plus one, did regeneration, which was weird because most of the early zombies had regeneration. So it was an odd thing to grant. Anyway, those were very popular early on in Magic, and

definitely sort of gave way to this idea of, oh, hey, there's typo themes. I want to make a merfolk deck, a goblin deck. Also in Alpha was Llanowar Elves. Single green mana, 1-1, it's an elf, and you

tap it to add one green mana. That was also very iconic, and players very quickly asked us to do cards that cared about elves. So what happened is, what we realized, especially in blue, green, and red, and black I'll get to in a second, black always has embarrassment riches apparently. So blue, green, and black. Green had elves. Red had goblins. Blue had merfolk.

Those were just very popular and have since early magic been popular and maintained popularity. I think that each one of them did a good job of just kind of representing from a ground level what the colors were. Like merfolk live in the ocean. You know, they're water-based, and they're smart creatures, and it just sort of captures the essence. Meanwhile, elves, you know, live in the forest and are all about communing with nature and, you know, really capture the essence of green.

And goblins were chaotic and sort of wild and just did what they wanted and caused, you know, caused utter chaos. They had a red quality to them. chaotic and sort of wild and just did what they wanted and caused, you know, cause utter chaos. They had a red quality to them. Also, so zombies did a good job of being black. You know, they literally are undead creatures. And vampires, when we ended up pushing them down, also do a good job of being very characteristic

that they feed in other things. They definitely have a lot of the qualities of black. So characteristic, what we did is we said, okay, well, red is goblins, green is elves, blue is merfolk. Black has both zombies and vampires, and we can use them accordingly as we see fit. We never really found a great fit for white.

We've been looking for white. So once again, like iconic, the key to a characteristic race is that it has to be something that's resonant, that the players already know, and that embodies the essence of what the color is. You know, the nice thing about goblins and elves and

merfolk and zombies and vampires is, if I show you a single card, you know what that concept is, you understand what it is, and it embodies its color in a way that's clear and simple and understandable and so the character races is just like

what's the coolest, cleanest way to represent that color? Now the problem we had in white is we spent a lot of time looking at white once again we wanted to be resonant we wanted to be something that but you know, what exactly sort of

embodies the essence of the good of the group and stuff. We've talked through all sorts of things. Dwarves sort of had a little bit of a problem in red. Dwarves are nice in that dwarves are very recognizable and understandable. When Richard first made the game, he put dwarves in red

because they live in the mountains, and there's a lot of them that felt red. But we said, oh, well, maybe the problem that dwarves had in red is goblins tended to eat up their spots because goblins are a little more popular than dwarves. And so if we wanted to put goblins and dwarves in the same set, dwarves tend to lose out to the goblins.

And so like, okay, well, maybe we could try dwarves in white. So like in Kaladesh, we had dwarves in white. We've definitely tried that experiment. Not that we don't continue them in white, but they didn't quite catch on in the way that these other ones did. There's things like the Leonin or the Loxodon, but those are sort of like animal creatures

that don't quite have the clean resonance we want. We've talked about stuff like insects, because they have a hive mind, you know, the good of the group, but it doesn't quite have the personified insects. I don't know. Also, it doesn't quite

feel as white as we want, even though philosophically there's some white there. We've talked about doing halflings. I mean, obviously, Kithkin are kind of magic's halflings. But halflings are something that definitely shows up in other media, and

there's definitely a sense of they band together, but we've messed with halflings a little bit. It's never done a great job of sort of capturing what we want. So, like, we've tried to really get a good white characteristic race and have just not found, like, a lot of the idea of the iconics and the characteristics is something that just kind of feels right

and that you just sort of can make lots of cards and just seeing the card again and again sort of informs you and educates you about the colors. The default for white has kind of been human. So whenever we do sort of typal stuff, a lot of times whites end up being typal human. The problem with human is that A, the people who play the game are universally human, are all human, and so humans show up in all the colors. They show up more in white, and more of the typo stuff is in white,

but humans show up in every color in most sets. There's been typo in other colors for humans. It kind of feels like if we have to make a cycle, we'll use human, but it is more out of necessity than it's the great answer. And I will say the fact that we're 30 years in, like we've thought of everything. It's not like, I mean, I'm sure I'll make this podcast and people go, oh, do you think about such and such?

If it existed in magic, we've thought about it. We went through. And like a lot of these things, like with the Iconics, we experimented some, we tried things, we did market research, you know, we tried to some. We tried things. We did market research. We tried to make exciting sort of splashy rares out of them and see how people thought and did it in body. And we've done a lot of stuff trying to get there. So the Iconics, we've gotten to the point where we're pretty happy.

And like I said, this is as much for larger sort of structural way of thinking of things than practical. as much for larger sort of structural way of thinking of things than practical. Other than maybe like a core set, it's not often that we'll do a cycle of exactly the Iconics. Core sets have done them a little bit. Most worlds just don't happen to have

all five. Not all five necessarily fit in every world. Dragons are the most popular of the five, and the ones that fit better in most places is because we're so fantasy-oriented, and dragons are very core fantasy. So dragons have shown up in the most places,

but we still have places that don't have dragons. I think angels show up next, and are also probably the second most popular of the Iconics. Anyway, mostly today, on my blog, there's been a lot of topics about, like, what's the right Iconic or why are these Iconic or what can we do for character races.

And a lot of, like I said, in some ways, this is more of something that we... You want things to be clean and simple and a lot of stuff in Magic, we've got to the point where it be clean and simple. And a lot of stuff in Magic, we've got to the point where it's clean and simple. Not everything has gotten there.

And I think it annoys people to have something be close, but not quite. So I get comments all the time about this. That's why, in fact, I assumed I had done this podcast. So when we were talking about it, I'm like, oh, someone said, have you ever done a podcast on this? I'm like, oh, I don't know.

So I went and looked it up. I'm like, I have not done a podcast on this? I'm like, oh, I don't know. So I went and looked it up. I'm like, I have not done a podcast on this, so that's why I did it today. Just sort of letting you in on sort of a different way to think about magic and the iconics and the characteristic creatures are not,

it's not even absolute. It's not something we have to have. It's just something as we sort of structure magic and look how we structure, there's things we have to have. It's just something as we sort of structure magic and look how we structure, there's things we notice and observe. And because I'm so open with this and because I've, the other thing is whenever I'm open with the public and I'm like, we haven't quite cracked

this, I get infinite people trying to help me solve the problem. But it's a lot of retreading of stuff that we've done. So, if we find a solution, like for example to the white characteristic race, I don't think it'll be, hey, this existed all the time and now we've done it. It might be something new that we stumble upon. But once again, 30 years in, I don't know.

Anyway, just to let you guys know, like, the thought process on it and a lot of the thinking behind it and kind of what goals it fills. I'm sure the existence of this podcast will mean I'll have even more discussion on my podcast. I'm sorry, on my blog about my podcast. But anyway, guys, it is, I can see my desk. So that means we have to wrap this up. So I hope you enjoyed this topic today. It's a little more just talking about the kind of things that we care about and the

history of it. And it's definitely something that's evolved over many years. today. It's a little more just talking about the kind of things that we care about and the history of it. And it's definitely something that's evolved over many years. But anyway, I got to go because I can see my desk. So we all know that means it means the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to make a magic. Hope you guys enjoyed today's conversation and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.