Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1169: Borders & Frames

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

In this podcasts, I talk about the history of various Magic card borders and frames.

I'm pulling out the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to let their drive to work. Okay, so today's topic is Frames and borders very exciting stuff. So I'm going to talk about the history of frames and borders I'm going to do my best to hit as many things as I can. There's a lot of things I guarantee I will miss some things, but I'm doing my best to try to run through the history Okay, so when magic begins way back in the beginning, one of the initial questions that Richard Garfield and Peter Ackerson and the other people that made magic in the beginning had was

they were making a collectible. It was a game and they wanted it to be a good game. There was also a collectible and one of the things they knew that was important was first printing and they wanted to make sure that people could differentiate the first printing from future printing so they knew they were going to reprint things. And so the idea that came upon was to use border. So the idea was that the first printing of the border or first printing of the card would be in a black border and then future prints like reprints of the border, or first printing of the card, would be in a black border, and then future prints, like reprints of the card, would be in a white border. Now, in the world that they lived in in early Magic, mostly new sets had new cards when

they had black border. I do think there was the ability for you to have cards come back with new art, and then those would be black border, because it it was first time printing in that art But the idea is if I was reprinting a card where I'm not adding new elements to the card Like in the core sets that would be in white border So the idea was like limited edition came out so alpha and beta were both part of what's called limited edition Those were black border and then came unlimited edition and unlimited edition was in white border. So Unlimited basically had the cards, few exceptions that were in beta,

but in a white border rather than a black border. And early Magic, cards existed in black and white border, and black border was more sought after than white border. One of the things that I did back in the day, because I cared a little bit more as a game than a collectible, so I would make trades with people to trade my black border, or sorry, my white border,

I'd reverse, trade my black border card for their white border version of it, plus they'd add extra things in. And so, so in early Magic, that was sort of an element of the different borders. And so for the first, I don't know, many years of Magic, all the new sets would have Black Border, and then all the core sets would be in White Border. Eventually what we realized was that White Border just, people didn't like white border as much as black border

Uh white border is a little bit Washes out the art a little bit. It just looks better with a black border than a white border Uh, so eventually I don't know somewhere around eighth edition. I think we just said, ah, we're just gonna do black border. We stopped doing a white border um, so other than The rare occasion we've done one or two promos in white border. I think there's been some secret layers a white border. So other than the rare occasion, we've done one or two promos in white border. I think there's been some secret layers in white border.

And we just announced, as a neat taping this, Mystery Booster 2, which has some white borders in it. Some cards in a white border that had never been in a white border before. Although I think in Mystery Booster 2, it does have the collector number. So it looks a little bit different than the old white border.

But anyway, so the next border that came around was we, the Wizards, made a product that printed one of every card from, you know, limited slash unlimited. One of every card. But they didn't want, I mean, because it's a collectible, they didn't want to just make it too easy to get those cards, so they put them in a gold border. So what a gold border would mean was that it was commemorative, that they weren't for tournaments. And so that allowed us to print cards that might be hard to print.

Another example of using the Gold Border was when we started the Pro Tour in 96. The very first Pro Tour in New York, we made decks for them. And we would later start doing them for the World Championships. And those decks always had a Gold Border, because it allowed us to print the exact deck that they played. And at some point, we started having them sign the cards,

instead of the cards were signed. Anyway, so Gold Border is sort of commemorative. Then we made the Silver Border. So Silver Border was first created and unglued. And at the time what it meant was not for tournament play, only for casual play. That would change over time. Commander ended up not including the silver border, so silver border's kind of... originally the idea of silver border was for casual play, and now it's kind of like not for format play. I mean you can rule zero them in obviously in commander games, but they're not allowable without rule zeroing them in. And then in unstable, we introduced the no border,

both contraptions and we made lands that went all the way to the edge. There was no border on them, borderless lands, which are very pretty. In fact, by the way, I tried to do that for unhinged. When we were looking at lands for Unhinged, the second of the Unsets, I had two versions, one of which had a very skinny border and one of which had no border. And too many people, like everyone felt like the no border was just a bridge too far, so we did the skinny border.

But when we came back from Unstable, I said, oh, I like the no border, so we did the no border. So both contraptions and the lands went all the way up. There was no border Yeah, there was no Border at all. It went up to the frame of the card That requires special printing by the way, I mean we can do it but it requires a certain kind of sheet and stuff and then finally Secret lair has been messing around a little bit with other color borders

So the one that it did is it has a red border on the secret layer Burning Revelations. So anyway we have definitely there are a lot of borders we've messed around a lot of borders and so those are the various borders so far that exists. Frames my friend is a much more complex situation. So I'm going to talk about frames. So when I talk about frames, I literally mean when we make a magic card, for example, we have to have a frame because we layer the rules text on top. There's text that gets layered on it, but behind it, the frame itself has, it has

to be designed. Okay, so when Alpha first came out, we had the following frames. Each color had the following frames. Each color had two different frames. It had a creature frame, because it had to have the power toughness box on it, and it had a non-creature frame. We then, artifacts had their own frame, because at the time artifacts were all colorless. So there was an artifact frame and there was a frame for artifact creatures. And then there was a frame for land. And I believe those

13 frames were what Magic started with. We would later, sort of as Magic evolves, we will start adding other frames. The first one that is obvious to me was the third expansion for Magic was Legends. Legends introduced multicolor cards. Well what does a multicolor card look like? So basically what happened was we decided to make them, or they, I was there at the time, decided to make them gold. Gold represented more than one color. Okay next up in 1998 Unglued came out with the very first onset. So one of the things Unglued did is really started experimenting with lots of elements of the card, frame being one of them. For example, for the very first

time there were token cards in packs, there were full art lands. There was BFM which was so big it was on two cards. There was a left half and a right half. There were cards that were oriented sideways. There were cards where the art box was smaller than normal or bigger than normal. We really sort of played around a lot with the shape because the way Unglued got made is each card was literally designed unto itself. So it didn't have a standardized frame, which allowed us to do a lot of experimentation with it.

So interestingly, the first, what I would say, the major change of frames came because of Unglued. So Unglued 2 came out, big fanfare. Unglued 2 came out big fanfare. Unglued 2 got further in the schedule. We made it but then we ended up choosing not to print it. So unglued 2 never got printed. We did get art and stuff. We got pretty far in the process. One of the things that I had made for unglued 2 were split cards. BFM was the most popular card in unglu, so I was just doing the reverse. If people like a card so big it's on two cards, how about a card so small that two

of them fit in one card? And the idea being this card is one of those two things. You can cast either one. Split cards were very controversial when I introduced them because they looked different. It did not look like a normal Magic card. I mean they did look like little miniature Magic cards but still a split card was a deviation. In early Magic we didn't really deviate that much. As you will see

with time we got much more comfortable with deviating with frames but other than the kind of the unexperimentation which was meant to be a weird thing we really didn't do a lot with it. Like even Full Art lands took forever to get into normal magic. Okay, another thing that happens roughly around this time is the 8th edition, which is a core set. One of the things that we realized was when the cards were first made a lot of decisions were made that were very Fancyful and flavorful and made them made the cards feel like a fantasy frame But there was a lot of impracticality to it. It was white text on a darker background The font was called medieval gaudi. It was hard to read

and The font was called Medieval Gaudi. It was hard to read. And just so we decided with 8th edition that we were going to redo the card frame. So we updated it. It uses a font called Valerian, I believe. I'm not sure if 8th edition started with Valerian. It now has Valerian. Valerian might have been added when we did 2015, now that I

think of it. But anyway, we changed the font, we changed the look of the card, the art box got a little bit bigger, and we just changed a lot of components of it. And at some point, I'm not sure whether it happened with this set exactly, we started doing pin lines.

One of the things we actually talked about for 8th edition was changing the gold cards. So the idea we had pitched, one of the weird things about gold cards is, gold cards at the time told you nothing about what color they were. That if it was a white black card or a red green card, they both looked the same. So we had actually pitched a frame for two color cards

where half the frame was one color and half the frame was the other color. Now obviously we didn't end up using that for multicolor, but later when we made hybrid, we borrowed those frames. I'll get a hybrid in a second. But anyway, we started doing pin lines on gold cards. Sort of, we also, originally lands didn't have pin lines. The lands, in fact, of what we had done in alpha was,

there was a texture behind the rules text that was two colors to sort of tell you what colors they were. So we started doing pin lines that sort of told you one pin line was one color, one pin line was the other color. We only did that for two color cards but still it really helped communicate that. Okay, so next we get to Champions of Kamigawa. So we were trying to come up with some cool new different thing. We ended up with what we called flip cards. Richard Knight made these. Flip cards were cards that you played as one side. The way they look is they have an art box in the middle

and then two different rule text boxes that are oriented each way. And so you play it for the side that has the mana cost, but then you can flip it at some point or certain conditions and you turn it upside down and now it has the text on the other side. Once again, the unset did mess with in the space a little bit. But so it's the first time we had done something like that. The art looked a little bit different. It kind of, depending on the orientation, had two pieces of art in the art box. But anyway, once again, it was us really sort of showing that, like split cards, hey there's functionality in frames and having new frames. So sometimes around here also Magic 2015 and maybe I'm jumping a little bit ahead, Magic 2015 would be another shift in the card frame

looked like not nearly as severe as the 8th edition change. Oh the other thing with the 8th edition change I didn't mention. There are a few things. Probably the biggest change was artifacts originally had a brown frame in the original frame, and when we changed it, we made it, we went from brown to silver. The reason we did that was lands was also brown, and they were a little bit too similar to each other, so we were differentiating between them. The early version 8th edition in I believe in 8th edition and or at least in Mirrodin we tried for a while having black and white mana symbols and rule sets. People hated it, it was hard to read so we stopped doing it but

we did it for a short period. Okay we got to Ravnica, original Ravnica. That is where hybrid shows up for the first time. Like I said, we use the frames we had made as an attempt to change multicolor. Also split cards came back, but like definitely we were sort of experimenting more. I think so. The interesting thing is I took over

as head designer in Ravnica. I'm the guy that made split cards. I'm the guy that made flip cards. Like I, I definitely am someone who, and I made the un-card. So like up before I became head designer, if you look at every single time we had done something where we designed a new kind of frame to facilitate a new kind of design, I was, I was in on it. Um, and so when I became head designer. I really pushed the idea that look this is just a tool in our toolbox We should be less afraid to use it And I think with the success of hybrid hybrid ended up being very popular

For a while it was the highest rate mechanic mechanic in quotes that we'd ever made. It was very very popular Okay next up in FutureSight following year, we were teasing the future. And one of the things we teased was a colored artifact, Sarkomite Mirror. So for the first time, we made an artifact that was a color. That would go on to be a tool. Now, that wasn't really, I mean, it was one frame for

Sarkomite Mirror. But that would go on to end up being 10 new frames, because you need one for each color non-creature, one for each color creature. It had a similar texture to it, so once again, the blue creature and non-creature look similar except for the power toughness. But anyway, we had to design those, so that introduced that, and that would be, it would come back in shards of a lara for the Esper shard, we used it in Neufrexia, and then it just became something that we becoming, we've started using very regular. After Kaladesh broke things, we

started saying, okay we really have to make use of colored artifacts more. Then the following year, or actually the very next set, is Lorwen. Lorwen introduces the Planeswalker, a brand new card type. And unlike other card types, this card type looked different. One of the things we did is we bled the art behind it, so the art ratio was different. We hadn't done that before and it was pretty exciting. Anyway, we were making a brand new card, so we decided to make a brand new frame. The way Planeswalkers look is unlike any other card. Originally, by. The way Planeswalkers look is unlike any other card.

Originally by the way Planeswalkers were going to premiere in Future Sight on the Future Shifter cheat but we didn't get them done in time so we ended up pushing back to Lorwin. Okay then we get to Rise of Veeldrazi so the following after Lorwin was oh I'm sorry after I jumped ahead. Oh, I'm sorry. After I jumped ahead. The, oh right, I'm sorry, the future site. Then there was Lorwin. After Lorwin was Shards of Alara. After Shards of Alara was Zendikar. So the third set in Zendikar was Rise of the Odrazi. That actually introduced two sets. It turns out there's a designer that loved alternate frames as much as I did, Brian Tinsman. So he made a set with two. So first off, we did colorless. So the Odrazi show up for the first time. They are colorless, they're not artifacts, but they're colorless. So we had to make a colorless frame kind of inspired by the Planeswalkers. We

make it a full art ratio so it goes behind the art. And so we do that. And then also they make a levelers. Levelers are creatures to match the adventure theme of Zendikar that they level up much like you know D&D characters do and there are three different sort of text boxes each with their own power toughness and the idea is as you sort of indicate as you level up what level you're at. Okay the following well after that see after Kamawa block, we have Skarzymyrna block, let me get to Indusrod block. So Indusrod block introduces double face cards. It's not really that double face cards look all that different.

I mean, the back frame is unique in that it doesn't have a mana cost, so it looks a little bit different. We have to introduce the color identifier, signifier. But so transforming DFCs get introduced in Inner Shrod. Then later in that block in Avacyn Restored, Brian Tizanick is another frame. So we had talked about making a card that had a trigger when you drew it.

In fact, we go all the way back to original Tempest. We tried to do the original Tempest. And at that time, we messed around with, what if we had a different card back? And so the idea that Brian and team came out, I was on the team actually, came up with for miracles. The idea of a miracle is the turn you draw it, you can reveal it,

and then it costs less the turn you draw it. But we wanted to make sure that it was clear that it was like we wanted from a functional standpoint we want to knew when you draw a miracle that was clear you do a miracle that you the person drawing oh it's a miracle so we added a frame that some sort of white streaks to it that just make it clear that it's a miracle and once again as you can see here we're starting to up the number of different frames we're becoming much more we are becoming more comfortable, the audience is becoming more comfortable with having more frames.

So next up we get to Theros. So Theros introduces Enchantment creatures. Magic had had Artifact creatures from the very beginning, but we had not had Enchantment creatures. Because we want to differentiate them, we want to make sure you understand, we started doing, we made a new friend that's sort of Nix inspired for Enchantment Creatures and Theros. When Enchantment Creatures came back, we would use that again. And so we definitely like the idea of when you're a creature and you're an additional thing, the frame

sort of helps you understand what you are. Oh the one other thing that we made I don't know where the first one showed up we did make a land creature in Dryad Arbor so we had to make a frame that was a land and a creature that counts. Next up in Battle for Zendikar we made the devid mechanic that was colorless cards that had a colored manakoth. And so just to give a little bit of the feel of the Eldrazi to them, they have a special frame. Now that's a good example where the frame change is less about mechanical needs and

more about flavor needs. A lot of the early changes were like, hey, mechanically it has to work this way. We're starting to get the idea that, oh, sometimes a frame change, hey, it can communicate something, but there could also be creative elements that it helps reinforce something and that making the devoid frames feel Eldrazi-ish is part of that. Okay, then we get to Eldritch Moon where we introduce Meld. So like I said, BFM had been in Unglued. It had a left side and a right side.

We had tried to figure out how to bring that, it became one of Ken Nagel's goals, how to get this to normal magic outside of the unsets. And he finally realized that double face technology, that transforming double face cards were the key. That you could play two cards on the battlefield and when they were both on the battlefield together you would transform both of them and they would turn over and then click together into a giant card. So meld was just us taking that technology of making a big card out of two small cards. Next up we get to Kaladesh we introduce vehicles. Vehicles are artifacts that can turn into creatures and so it had it had a ruleness box, but we didn't want you to confuse

it with an artifact creature that normally is a creature. So it has a special friend so you can identify it as a vehicle. Also want to mention that during Kaladesh we started doing masterpieces. So I think they were inventing, it's called inventions, Kaladesh inventions if you recall. But the idea is we started doing special treatments that looked different. When I get to Throne of Eldraine, we also talk about showcase, but that was the precursor of us trying to make special, cards that looked different with unique frames

that you could collect. When we get to Dominaria, we have sagas. So sagas are representing stories inspired by a combination of a mechanical structure that Richard had made for original Ravnica that he didn't use, and planeswalkers that were inspired by structures. So the early version of planeswalkers, instead of you choosing what to do, just went through a pattern. Turn one, turn two, turn three, then went back to turn one. And we realized that while it took away the agency from Planeswalker, it's just the idea

of a story. I'm going to tell you a story. Well, here's what's going to happen. And there'll be different chapters over turns. We also did a cool thing with sagas where we made a vertical rules text box and a vertical art box so they take up the whole run of the card but one takes the left side the text box on the left side and the art is on the right side. We also did some cool thing with the art. The art also always represents the story that's being told through the means of art native to the

world that it's being told in. Oh, can we get to Throne of Eldraine? So two things. First off, showcases start there, what we call booster fun. So we start showing off different frames. And we also had the adventure mechanic. The adventure mechanic allows you to cast a spell. It was a permanent and Throne of Eldraine was always a creature. The mechanic allows you to have a permanent. And then so you could either cast the spell from your hand or cast the permanent from your hand, but if you cast the spell you exile it and then can cast the permanent from exile. But in order to do that we need to make a new frame. The new frame had a little magic card on it. It was very cool. In Modern Horizons 1, so we'd introduce snow-covered lands. We're first

introduced in Ice Age way back in what, 94? Or, sorry, 95. Snow-covered, I guess the snow-covered lands might have had a slightly different frame maybe. But anyway, we brought it back in Cold Snap, the lost ice age, to put that in quotes. But then when Modern Horizons brought snow back, we got the idea of making snow permanent, and I believe the snow frame started there. I don't think Cold Snap had this snow frame. I think we saw that in Modern Horizons 1. We were just more willing as we got far along to do more frames. Then in Zend that in Modern Horizons 1. We were just more willing as we got farther along to do more frames.

Then in Zendikar Rising we introduced the modal double-phase card. That is more like a split card where each side is castable. Now once again, some of these frame changes, while technically being new, aren't super different, but slightly different. Then in Dungeons & Dragons, Adventures in the Forgotten Realm, we introduced classes. Classes were kind of like sagas, except the art, instead of being on the right side, is on the left side. And there are different elements of the rules text box to show different levels of the classes,

kind of inspired by the level mechanic I talked about from Rajoy Ladrazi, but designed a little bit differently. Next, Kamagawa Nian Dynasty. We, for the first time, you saw a Phyrexianized planeswalker. So technically that had its own frame. We saw more Phyrexian planeswalkers as the Frexing story went along. Then we get to Brothers War. Brothers War had a mechanic called Prototype. So Prototype were artifacts. Usually they were expensive, they were colorless, but for a cost, usually a colored cost, I'm sure not 100% but usually a colored cost. You could cast the card, they were all artifact creatures, and you could cast it cheaper, but it was a smaller power and toughness. So you got the creature cheaper, like usually for colored mana, but it required, but it became in the, so the text box had to have two different power toughness names.

One for the normal one and one for the prototype. Also around this time Infinity came out, actually Infinity came out a little bit before this. Infinity had hosted Augment, which were mechanics where a host looked mostly like a new Magic card except that his text box was split. And then when you played an Augment on a host you covered up some portion of the card, and between them you made a new card that had, that used the elements of the Augment in addition to what the Host was, to sort of make a brand new card. And also in, that was in Unstable, that was in Unstable, did I say Un say infinity? That was in unstable.

Unstable also had, I mentioned earlier about the four lands and the contraptions, they had the contraption frame, contraptions had a different back because it didn't go in your deck. Infinity would introduce attractions that also don't go in your deck, have a different back. They have a different frame, there's little numbers that light up to give you information about what what gets activated when you roll die

Next up in March of the machine we introduced battles battles is a new card type So they look a little bit different the big thing on battles is they at least the front part of battles are sideways Some controversial talks in this I had done a sideways card way back in Unglued. And we had talked many, many times of doing something oriented sideways. Battles was one where we finally did it. The reason we did it is we wanted to show the scoping of this battle and landscape stuff allows you to sort of... It just looks a little bit better.

Other things we've done, let's see, in Murders of Karloff Manor we did cases. Cases are kind of similar in frame to classes. They have art on, is art on the right? Or say, I think what, I'm trying to remember where the class, trying to remember on classes is the, sorry, on classes the art is on the left. On cases, I think the art is also left on cases, it'd be different from sagas. So cases are something that when you solve it,

you unlock something and so they sort of give you the thing by which you have to unlock it. And then we did Spree in Outlaws of Thunder Junction. Spree was interesting in that we had additive things in the rules text, meaning it was a modal spell where you paid extra things. So what we did is we made a symbol next to the mana cost, which is something we've talked about doing forever. We keep talking about, do we want a symbol that says this cost might not be representative of the full cost? There's a lot of stuff like morph and things that have a different cost that,

if you just watch the upper right, maybe you can play things, you know, and we've talked about that for a long time. During Odyssey, we had made a little symbol that was a graveyard symbol that represented the card had an ability that was usable in the graveyard. We'd originally planned by the way to have that being an ongoing thing but when we made eighth edition eighth edition frames couldn't handle it at the time so we ended up it ended up being just an

odyssey block thing. Oh the other change we made and I'm sure where this one happened we at some point changed the legendary frame uh it put the little crown on it so that you would know that it's a legendary creature. Like one of the things that's very interesting over time is, to wrap this up, is I think we have realized as time has gone on that frames can do a lot of really good work. It can allow us to give reminders. It can allow us to shape things in a way that just makes the cards easier to play. A lot of times the frame can help you

understand what's going on. And so we really see the frames as a tool that we can use. Borders are more about giving you the player information about what the utility of the card is, mostly how we use borders. But frames have a lot wider. And like I said, sometimes we do frame things that's more about flavor than necessarily just about mechanics. So though usually the reason we make a new frame is about mechanics, it's not about flavor,

but from time to time we find elements of flavor. There are a lot of other things I did not get into. For example, watermarks. For example, we can put pictures behind the text box and while watermark can't matter in normal magic, it can matter in uncards. But we've used that for factioning and to sort of tell you, you know, there's a lot of elements of visual elements. The other thing we've done is we've done a lot more with symbols obviously when magic started there was the five mana symbols and the colorless mana symbol or I'm sorry the colorless generic symbol we later would make a colorless mana symbol we would make a tap symbol and then we started making symbols that were not evergreen

symbols like energy or like the paw print where it represented a mechanical component and it was an easier way to do that. So like I said, there's lots of visual components. We have a team that helps us, that helps design these things and more and more as we make magic sets, an important part of understanding is what are the visual components? What, how are we using frames? You know, what are we doing with them? And over time, you know, we've done a lot of things. As I said today, I am sure, I am sure I miss things. I try to be as thorough as I could, but I'm one man and there's a lot of magic sets, so I apologize for the things that I know that

I miss. But anyway guys, I hope you enjoyed this look through borders and frames. But I'm now at work. So 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 be making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye bye.