Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1124: Outlaws of Thunder Junction Vision Design

Episode Date: March 29, 2024

In this podcast, I talk about the early design of Outlaws of Thunder Junction.

I'm pulling away from the curb because I had to drop my son off today at college. We all know what that means. It's another drive to work. Okay, so today I'm talking all about Outlaws of Thunder Junction. So today is the story of the vision design of the set. I led the vision design, so I'm very familiar with the story. So let's get into it. Okay. So last year in March of the Machine, there was a giant Phyrexian war that forever changed the cosmology of the multiverse. So one of the reasons we did that was it would allow us to design some sets that we couldn't design before. So one of the ideas that we're like, once we did it, one of the questions we asked ourselves is, okay, what can we now make that we couldn't design before. So one of the ideas that we're like, once we did it, one of the questions

we asked ourselves is, okay, what can we now make that we couldn't make before? So one idea that I was really interested in was sort of what I will call thematic set, which is imagine if you pick a theme and then because of the Omen Pass, you're allowed to get people from across the multiverse here. So you can do something that's sort of a connective tissue theme, and then you can use the open pass to bring all people of that, or many, many characters of that theme to the same place. And the theme we wanted to use was actually a theme we almost used in a different set. So many years ago, we made a set called Magic Origins.

It's probably best known as a set called Magic Origins. It's probably best known as a set where it had the five founding members, or the five first members of the Gatewatch. I guess only four of them were founding. And introduced them, showed them as legendary creatures. You saw their spark, and they were double-faced cards.

And on the back face, it had their planeswalker. And the story represented the sparking of those five characters. Of Gideon and Jace and Chandra and Liliana and Nyssa. And it showed them on their original plane and their first plane after they sparked. Anyway, before it became that theme, before we were going into the Gatewatch story, it was a villain's theme. Originally, when I think Sean Mayne led that set,

when he first started, they were exploring doing a villain theme. And one of the things about core sets is you're not limited to a place. So that had the ability for it to be in multiple places. Although core sets don't do as much like legendary creatures and stuff. Anyway, we liked the theme theme it didn't work there but when I said oh we can do anything we want we can go across the multiverse I was very intrigued by the

idea of doing a villains theme that felt like it would be a fun theme and there are a lot of fun villains from around the multiverse so the idea was okay this set's going to be a villain themed set and we're going to be a villain-themed set, and we're going to be able to pull in things.

So, part, we decided, the story got built around a villain story trope, which is the heist. It's a heist story. And the heist story is a story where you have a bunch of people, a bunch of villains getting together to do a big score, robbing something,

or, you know. Anyway, that was the kind of story we wanted to tell. And then, when we figured out, okay, we were doing villains, we were looking for a location,

we wanted to do a new world. We liked the idea that creatures had come from across the multiverse through the Omen path to this world. We liked the idea that creatures had come from across the multiverse through the Omen path to this world. And then, so something else we've been trying to do for a long time is something set following the Western genre. And we've tried to do it many times over the years. There's lots of challenges with the Western genre. But once we realized we wanted a new world and we

wanted a sense of villainy and a sense of a little bit, we liked sort of a frontier sense to it. It just seemed like a good pairing. That the West was kind of known, you know, the American West as, you know, there was law, but the law was sort of stretched thin and, you know, there were a lot of bad guys. And so the idea of a set for a villain set seemed pretty cool. Okay, so the idea was, one of the things we've been doing a lot, I've talked about this for Murders of Cardloft Manor, is trying to get better at figuring out how to get the words we want on

the cards on the cards. That like, we're trying to represent the idea of villains. Okay, well, what represents villainy? So the number one thing we had was crime. I mean, villains almost definitionally commit crimes. That's what they do. That's what makes you a villain. And so we spent some time figuring out, well, what does it mean? What could crimes mean?

And we explored a lot of different things. So one of the larger challenges we've been facing recently, so the last, I don't know, 10 years, we've been sort of facing what we call an eternal format, or an eternal environment, which means that once upon a time, standard was kind of the main environment, and we sort of built everything towards standard.

But now that Commander and Modern and Pioneer, there's a lot of other formats that are taking up a lot of attention. And so we want to make sure that we are building with themes that aren't to what we call parasitic. Meaning, if I make a theme that only exists in the set I'm making it in, and there are no cards to support that theme outside the set I'm making it in, then it becomes really hard to build decks. It's hard to build a 60-card deck with four of. It's really hard to build a 100-card deck singleton with one of. And what we found was even back when we had the blocks, even when there were three sets,

that when you had an insular theme, it became hard to build decks, especially in Commander, with that theme. And so one of the things we've been looking at as we've been building new things is, is there a way to build something new that allows players to build decks they couldn't build before, but makes use of pieces that pre-exist? Like, is there a forward-facing theme with a backward-facing compatibility? So what we ended up doing with crimes,

and we said, okay, what do you already do in magic that feels like a crime? And the original version we had was whenever I do something that either targets, destroys, or damages my opponent or some of their stuff,

stuff divided as their permanence, their spells, or their cards in the graveyard. If I'm messing with them... Now, eventually what happened was we turned it over as targeted, destroyed, or dealt damage to. And what happened was, in set design, they worked with the rules manager,

and it turns out that target, very clear, the rules know when you're targeting something. Damaging and destroying are vaguer. The classic example is, let's say I cast the card Mutilate. Mutilate does minus X, minus X to all creatures, where X is the number of swamps you control. Okay, so let's say I have eight swamps, and no creature on the battlefield is more than eight toughness, so I cast it and there's ten creatures on the battlefield. They all get minus eight, minus eight, none of which survive that. Okay, has my mutilate destroyed them? No, it is not.

My mutilate merely made their toughness zero. What destroyed them was the game with state-based actions. What destroyed them was the game with state-based actions. So the problem we would run into is we'd get into situations where intuitively it felt like something did something, but technically by the rules it didn't. Mutilate did not destroy any creatures, even though it kind of did, but it didn't technically. And technically, sadly, or not sadly, but technically is how the rules work. And so what we found was there just wasn't a way to define the damage and the destruction in a way that created the effects we wanted. So that's why we fell back to just targeting,

because it worked. And what we felt is targeting hit the vast majority of the times that you were doing something, you were targeting. Yes, there was exceptions. But majority of the times that you were doing something. You were targeting. Yes, there are exceptions. But one of the things that in general we have learned is, you know, when you're talking about, you know, 27,000 plus cards, look, you're not going to hit 100% on flavor on everything. There's going to be some disconnect. Do most things that feel like crimes get hit by our definition? Yeah, they do. The vast majority do. Does it hit some things that don't feel like crimes get hit by our definition? Yeah, they do.

The vast majority do. Does it hit some things that don't feel like crimes? Yes, it does. But once again, flavor when you're doing a modular game with as many component pieces as we have. Getting a lot that feel right is about as best as you can do. And so, and the other thing is, and we've run into this, is it requires a lot of words to get added for a little payoff.

Like, yeah, we can add 10 extra words and now it, you know, now it hits 100 cards it didn't hit before out of the 27,000. It's like, wow, is that worth the eight extra words, 10 extra words? Like, it's not usually. Um, so, uh, anyway, we ended up with just targeting. The thing we liked about it was it definitely had that feel like, oh, crimes, I'm messing with my opponent. I'm doing stuff with their stuff.

That felt good. I'm sure at some point I'll get into set design. There were a lot of challenges of making crimes just because there's a lot of inputs and old inputs that could do things. And anyway, we'll get into that when I talk about set design. The other thing we did was we liked the idea, we were really into terminology. We liked the idea that there were crimes committed. We also liked the idea that there were criminals of some kind. And so the idea we came up with was we did a batch.

Batch technology coming from original Dominaria with Historic. The idea of a batch is we name something, we then list the things that fall inside that batch. So we wanted to do, we liked the idea of outlaws. These are criminals. We thought outlaws was nice.

It also sort of fit the vibe of the world. So Outlaws, we knew going in, I think the first two that we knew we needed to have was rogues, because rogues we use for villains all the time, and assassins, because assassins, by definition, killing creatures is a crime. So we, I mean, flavor-wise is a crime, I guess. Uh, anyway, so originally we had rogues and assassins. We wanted that in the third one. Um, and so I think originally, so there's

another, we made a token in the set, which are mercenary tokens. Uh, there are one ones. I don't think they can block and you tap them at sorcery speed to give target creature a plus 1 plus 0. We liked the idea that you had minions. One of the big tropes of villainy is villains have minions. We wanted to have minions. We wanted the minions to help the villains rather than be sort of

as much... We wanted them to be more supportive. That's what minions are. And so, we designed them. We liked them. We ended up calling them mercenaries. The plan was only the token sweep mercenaries. But I think as we were sort of making, when creative was

figuring out what the set wanted to be, having mercenary as a tool helped add flavor to things. So mercenary ended up being not just on the tokens. So we added mercenary to it. The fourth one that we added was, I spent some time talking with Doug Beyer, who was the liaison at the time for the creative team.

And what he said was, part of what we need to do is make sure that we're covering all our bases, that if design wants, you know, vision design or set design wants a creature to be an outlaw, we need to make sure that however it's concepted,

it can be an outlaw. So what Doug said, it was the thing we were missing was, look, we're a game called magic. There's a lot of magical spells. We really needed some kind of villain version of a spellcafter. So we looked at all the things

and warlock is definitely our most, our most likely spellcafter. So we looked at all the things, and Warlock is definitely our most likely spellcafter to commit crimes. So we put Warlock on there to sort of fill it out. That's what we handed off in Vision Design. In Set Design, Dave realized that there were a lot of pirates in Standard because of Lost Caverns of Ixalan. I mean, pirates very clearly feel like villains.

So he threw a couple pirates in and added pirates. Generally on a batch, we usually try to do three or four. I think five is our upper limit. We don't really like to do more than five just because you have to remember what the batch is. Now, the more flavorful the batch, like, the nice thing about outlaws is

when you see them, there's a connective tissue. Like, oh, these are the kinds of classes that do bad things. And so connecting them is a lot easier. So we made Outlaws and we made Commit Crimes. And we liked the... They allowed us to write really fun text boxes. You know, if you've committed a crime, when you commit a crime. You know, if you've cast an outlaw or play an outlaw or an

outlaw enters the battlefield, all those words are really nice and played in a way that was fun and easy to work around. Well, when we get to set design, there's some challenges. Whenever you make mechanics, it dictates the structure they have to be in, but that's more, we'll get more into that in the set design part of it. Anyway, so the next thing that we needed to do was we wanted, like I said, the set was about villainy. The idea always that I pitched from the very beginning was I liked the Western as the theme. I liked the Western as the setting. And we can do a lot of top-down individual Western things, which we did. But at the core, the idea of the set to me was

it's the villain set. You, the player, get to be a villain. And what's the cool thing about being a villain? Well, you commit crimes. You have your minions, your outlaws and stuff.

But I also like the idea that one of my favorite tropes of criminals in, like, pop culture is the smart criminal. I love, for example, when the criminal does something where they outthink the hero. Like the hero gets caught off guard

because the villain planned ahead. So the two other mechanics we did really got into that space of planning ahead and being smart. So the first one is plot. So plot basically is, there are spells. They have a plot, like any

non-land spell type, they have a cost, that's the plot cost. Sometimes it's the same, sometimes it lasts, sometimes it's more, it can vary. And so basically what happened was we made, oh sorry,

the way plot works is that plot is sorry, a little plot works is that plot is sorry, a little bit of traffic trying to stay safe. The reason, what plot does sorry, is that once you cast it for the plot cost, it gets exiled, and then on any future turn

you can cast it at sorcery speed for free. It doesn't change what card type it is, it's just when you can cast it. It's still, if it's a creature, it's still a creature and such. Being able to cast a sorcery speed just means when you can cast it. It doesn't turn into a sorcery. And the cool thing

about this, it is a subtle mechanic. It's a very Johnny Jenny mechanic. It just lets you set up things. And a lot of the way we made the spells, the plot spells, is that they are built such that when you

cast matters, so that you can sort of do things. A lot of them care about what happens the turn they're cast. And there's things in the set that care about second spell or care about how many spells or things that, or if you've cast a certain type of spell this turn, there's things that

play well with it. And so the idea is that it allows you to sort of set up future turns. One of the things about villainy is the idea that I'm plotting

and I'm scheming and I'm figuring what's going to happen and that I can set up and then I can make this master turn where my plan comes to fruition

and all the things happen. We want that moment to happen. And like I said, it's a really fun mechanic. It might be my favorite mechanic in the set. But it is a subtle mechanic that, at first glance, it doesn't... It's like, well, why can't I just do my spell now? Why would I wait? And you have to understand why it's valuable to wait. The other sort of criminal mechanic that we did was called Spree.

I think we originally called it Mission in design. I think Plot was called Plot in design. Commit Crime, Plot, and Outlaws were all called that in Vision Design. Spree was called Mission. And the idea is, we like the idea that you have modal spells. We've done a lot of modal spells. But one of the challenges of making a modal spell is normally you're tied by the mana

cost. And what I mean by that is if the mana cost costs something, three and a green or whatever, and you have multiple choices, each one of those costs each one of those choices needs to be in effect roughly the size of the cost. Because usually you're locked into

that cost. If I cast a spell that, you know, for three and a green has three modes, well each of those modes basically has to be the equivalent of three and a green. Or sometimes I have a mode where I pick more than one thing, but nonetheless, normally what happens in a modal spell, the effects have to be roughly of the same power level because you want them to be worth the cost. And the idea that I was really fascinated by was, what if we made a modal spell that had different levels of effect? Because you, the player, could choose to opt into them, but pay for them. player could choose to opt into them but pay for them. So the way that

spree works is you have a mana cost. Usually it's pretty low. Usually one or two mana at most. And then you have and you'll see there'll be a mana symbol and there'll be a little plus sign next to it in the upper right hand corner. Then on the card instead of having a bullet point, there's a plus sign. And what that says is

plus red mana do something plus one in red mana do something, or I'm talking green, one in green mana, or one in green mana, like, or two colors mana, or two generic mana. Like, the idea is, it gives you a cost for the effect. And some of them have two effects, some have three effects, might be some that have four effects. I know, I know there's two and three. We turned over one in Design to Head 4. I'm not 100% sure it stayed. And so the idea is, let's say I have three

effects. So I have effect A, B, and C. I can cast it and I can pay to do A, or B, or C, or A and B, or A and C, or B and C, or A, B, and C. I have a lot of options there. I have a lot of choices. And so, I think, seven choices? Is that right. I have a lot of options there. I have a lot of choices. And so, I think, seven choices, is that right?

I have a lot of options of what I can do. And so it gives you, the player, who's the mastermind, just a lot more options, a lot more flexibility. And the fact that we have cost means that they can be different levels. So, one of the neat things about the spells is, they really change as the game evolves. Early on, maybe you can only do one or two of the abilities. Later on,

maybe you can combine abilities. Way later on, maybe you can do all the abilities. And so it really plays out differently in a fun way. And like I said, part of the joy of a set where we make you sort of play a role is leaning into what's the funnest thing about that role.

What's fun about being a criminal? Yeah, commit crimes and be smart and plan ahead and do your sprees and stuff. So all that stuff is there. Now, because there was a Western theme, there are two mechanics that we did think about that were tied to that. First up is saddle.

And then all the creatures that can be saddled, that have the saddle ability, have the mount creature type. So one of the things that we've been asked for forever, I mean a long, long time, is the idea of creatures you can ride. The idea of horses you can ride, obviously, but this is fantasy, so we have a lot of other creatures you can ride. Our setting, the idea of horses you can ride, obviously, but this is fantasy so we have a lot of other creatures you can ride. We're on, our setting is a wefturn.

Okay, riding horses, that's pretty big, right? And so, like when we did Kaladesh, a lot of people have been asking us

to make vehicles forever and it just felt like we finally got to a set like, how do we, you know, it was the, it was the artifact

invention set. Like, how do we not make vehicles here? We felt the same way about saddle here. That we needed to make monk creatures. We needed to do it. We tried a whole bunch of different things.

In fact, what we turned... I'm trying to remember what we turned over. What we turned over from vision is not what ended up... Is not how we ended up doing it. The way we ended up approaching it, which actually, I'll tell that story in the future, but it was actually started on another set. When we get to that set, I'll talk about it.

But anyway, the idea we played around with was one of the things that happens a lot when you're designing is what we call conservative, um, conservation of ideas. I'm trying to teach you to do something. So one of the things I will do is I say, okay, is there anything like that you already do? So like, well, vehicles are similar to what we want. Like, oh, look, there is a chariot or a boat or whatever the vehicle is. a chariot or a boat or whatever the vehicle is, I want to make that vehicle go. I want to ride that vehicle. Now, in a vehicle, slightly different than that,

the vehicle has no agency until I get in it and drive it, until I'm steering the thing. But the idea that I hop on it and now I'm riding it was not that far away from a mount, not far away from riding a horse or something. So he said, OK, can we sort of piggyback on what people already know? And the idea with saddle was, OK, it works just like crew. Saddle has a number. You have to tap creatures equal to that number, that number or more, I believe,

to saddle the creature, much like you would crew a vehicle to saddle a creature, saddle a mount, I guess. And then the difference is that when you do that, you grant some ability to the creature that is saddled. Because what happens with a vehicle is you turn it on, it becomes a creature. Well, the creature's already creatures. So what you're doing is if you saddle it, you're enhancing

it in some way, and obviously since that creature could already attack by itself, well why don't I just attack with both creatures, why do I not attack with one creature to saddle the second creature, and the answer is, the creature I'm saddling is gaining in abilities, so maybe I want to do, like maybe I want it to have evasion

and if my little creature hops on, now it's evasive and now it can't be blocked. There are different reasons. But the idea of matching vehicles so that it worked similar to vehicles,

we felt just made it that much easier to understand and to learn. And conservation of idea is an important design concept. Maybe one day I'll do a whole podcast on that. It's a very important concept.

Anyway, so we made a bunch of saddle creatures because it's, they're fantasy. There are some horses, but there are a lot of other fun things that you can ride that are fantasy-esque and stuff. And then the other thing that we looked into was, so in Arabian Nights, the very first Magic expansion,

Richard came up with the idea of doing a land subtype that wasn't one of the five basic lands. I think in Alpha, the only subtypes that exist are the basic land subtypes. And in Arabian Nights, Richard introduces the first land subtype, Desert.

Made a lot of sense for Arabian Nights. They have the Arabian Nights, Richard introduces the first land subtype, Desert. Made a lot of sense for Arabian Nights. You know, they have the Arabian Nights flavor. Anyway, we have had some success. So the story here is, go back to Return to Ravnica. The lesson we learned from original Ravnica was we needed more mana production. We didn't have enough mana production. So the way we solved that is we said, okay, we're going to bring the Shocklands back at rare

like they were, and they're very iconic to Ravnica, but we're going to add a common cycle of dual lands. And usually our common dual lands are what we call tap lands. They come and play tapped, and then you can, on future turns, you can tap them for one of the two colors. The problem was that Shocklands

were kind of Tap Lands Plus. The way Shocklands work, for those that don't remember, they can come and play tapped if you choose, but you can take two damage to have them come and play untapped. So you have the option, they're basically Tap Lands

with an option to not be Tap Lands. So we felt a little weird that the Tap Lands, like, it's not that magic doesn't do strictly worse. We definitely make cards that are worse than cards elsewhere. We do try to avoid somewhat doing strictly worse in the same set. I mean, Richard did it in alpha, so

it doesn't always happen that way. But we do try, we try to separate our strictly worse and southern different sets so they're not right in front of your face. Different sets will do things at different values. So it's like, hey, in this set, this is not as strong as in another set. But within the same set, we've been trying to

be a little better about not doing strictly worst. So we were trying to come up with, like, what's a little tiny thing we can add to these lands that makes them not strictly worse? And the idea we came up with was doing the gate subtype. Oh, there are gates. The gates are the main areas of the guilds where the guilds sort of collect together.

And then we can make some cards that cared about gates because gates was a subtype. That philosophy of using land subtypes has proven valuable. We've done it other places. Sometimes they're subtypes, sometimes they're supertypes, like snow, for example. Anyway, that seemed valuable. so we're like, okay could we do what we've done with deserts

here, like, sorry could we do what we did with gates so when gates were to Ravnica, return to Ravnica could deserts be here, so we did do that there are a bunch of lands there's actually a cycle at Common there's ten dual lands at Common that are

they enter the battlefield tapped, but they do one damage when they enter, which is a crime. So we called them the Crime Lands. So they were simple dual lands that also committed a crime, which was valuable. And we decided to make those

deserts. So they have the subtype deserts. And then the set... There are some other deserts in the set, and then the set has a light Desert Matters theme. I think there's also one of the Commander decks, I believe, has a little bit of a Desert Matters theme in it. So, anyway, so the idea there was

to just to give a little bit of flavor to sort of the Wefton feel, we added saddle, we added deserts. And that, I mean, there's a lot of top-down. The other place where the western comes through is, because it's the genre, there's a lot of

individual card design to there. There's also a lot of, like, we made a list of all the villain tropes. We made a list of all the western tropes, and all that stuff is there. We also, sort of a subtype of the villain tropes is heist tropes. You'll notice, for example, that Oko, who's the ringleader, has a gang a subtype of the villain tropes is heist tropes, you'll notice for example, that Oko who's the ringleader has a gang

and each of the gang in their cards sort of talks about what role they fill in the gang, are they the muscle what are they doing for the gang and so each one sort of has their role which is kind of playing into the heist stuff anyway, and so we those, I'm not sure if there's any other mechanic I haven't remembered stuff. Anyway, and so we...

Any other mechanic I haven't remembered. Yeah, the other thing that I said is every set definitely wants a feel and a tone, and the villainy... Oh, the other thing we did, sorry, okay. Once we knew, like I said, we wanted

to really highlight villainy across the multiverse part of the fun of the set was showcasing that so what we did is we went to the creative team and said what we want is we want a lot of legendary creatures that players already know that in other worlds are villains and bring them here um and so i don't know exactly but there's like 10 plus worlds that we found villains on and we brought them here. And so, I don't know exactly, but there's like 10 plus worlds that we found villains on and we brought them here. There are villains from Ravnica

and Innistrad and Fiora and Kaldheim and Nukapena. Like, we pulled them from all over the place to sort of make this sense. So, the set really has that, like, doing something we don't normally get to do is there is this sort of this, there's a nostalgia element to it of seeing things that you enjoy of the theme from across the multiverse from many different planes.

And I thought that's a lot of fun and definitely adds another element. One of the things of the cosmology change is the idea of, hey, the reason we make changes is so we can make things we couldn't make before. And one of the themes you'll see, about every year, but once a year, I'm trying to make a set that just we couldn't make before. And one of the themes you'll see about every year, but once a year I'm trying to make a set that just we couldn't have made before. I want to make something brand new. So the next one up and then the following year will be Tennis, the Death Race set.

We'll get to Tennis, we'll get there. But anyway, guys, that is the story of the making of Outlaws of Thunder Junction. Oh, to answer just a question that I keep getting online. Thunder Junction is the name of the plane. The people that came there, that is what they called it. Oh, and why? The other question I get is why?

So one of the stories of the plane, it was the plane before the Omen Pass happened, it was a desolate plane. Nobody was there. It is not until the Omen Pass opened up. And for some reason, this particular path had a lot more Omen Pass to a lot more worlds. Meaning, it became like, and one of the things about the Omen Pass, one of the themes we're playing into is the idea that, hey, if you could leave your world, why would you? Like, why would you leave your world? Maybe some

people, it's a dangerous world. And other people, one of the things we like about the villain set is like, well, maybe you've gotten in trouble in your world. Maybe I'll leave because, hey, I'm a wanted fugitive in my world, so maybe I'll go to another world where I'm not a wanted fugitive. And one of the questions I've also gotten is,

okay, there's a heist there, but what's their value? So it turns out, I won't get too much into the behind the scenes here, but there's a vault that was, there were creatures from before, before the open pass, that did have the ability to travel between planes, that needed to hide something here and built a giant vault. So the vault predates, the vault's been here for a long, long, long, long time. And there's valuables in the vault. That is what they're after. It is not, the things they're trying

to steal are not new things and not something brought by people that came through the Omen paths. So to answer that question. Okay, guys, but I am now at work. So I hope this was a good, gave you a good insight of how we made Outlaws of Thunder Junction. I will do a podcast talking about the set design. This was about

the vision design. That is for another podcast. So anyway, I'm at work. We all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to make a magic. I hope you guys enjoyed today's podcast, and I will see you next time.