Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1200: Two-in-Ones, Part 2

Episode Date: December 20, 2024

This is part two of my two-part series where I talk about the history of two-in-one cards.

I'm pulling away from the curb. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work and wrap my son off at school anyway, last time I started I Talking about the history of the two in one. This is based on an article I wrote So I define the two in one as a card that has two cards on it. Maybe find a two in one as a card that has two cards on it. Maybe it could be on the back face, but the idea is there's two names, often two arts, two effects, like there's two different cards on one card.

So last time I started by talking about how this all began with split cards in Invasion, flip cards in Champions of Kamigawa, double face cards in innistrad and meld cards in eldritch moon. So today we will continue our story. Okay, so the next one picks up in Amonkhet. So Amonkhet was our Egyptian inspired world. In the story, Nicole Bolles had set up shop there,

made himself a god, and was slowly making himself an internal army of zombies. Anyway, the set had a graveyard theme, and so we were interested in playing in the graveyard theme. So we ended, we made a mechanic called Aftermath. So the idea of Aftermath is, it's kinda like a split card, in that it's two separate cards, but the difference from a split card is a split card, you only get one and you choose when you cast it,

what you get. Aftermath, you get both cards but each card is dictated when you can cast it. The first card which is sort of faced up in the top of the card you can cast from your hand. The second card which is sideways you can cast from your graveyard. So the idea is essentially you get to cast both spells but you don't have you don't get to choose the order you cast them in. You cast them in a set order. Cast first one and then the second one and first one's from your hand, second one's

from your graveyard. If you somehow mill it or whatever, discard it, you can cast the second one without casting the first one. It just cares that it's in your graveyard. So it doesn't have to be cast first before it's cast out of your graveyard. So it doesn't have to be cast first before it's cast out of your graveyard. So Aftermath, I think we were just playing around with the idea of interesting elements in the graveyard. Obviously there's a spell called Flashback, a mechanic. So Flashback was an original Odyssey, the first graveyard block. And the idea of Flashback is a spell

that you can cast once from your hand and once from your graveyard. So in some ways, aftermath is kind of like half split card, half flashback. The big difference between flashback and aftermath is flashback is the same spell, where aftermath is a different spell. The one thing we did do is we did set them up so that they were synergistic with each other. That if you cast one spell and then the other spell, that they often were created effects that liked each other. And the reason for that is late in the late game, when you have enough mana, you can cast the first spell. Now it's in your graveyard and you can cast the second spell. So the idea was later in the game when you have the mana these effects could link up to do something cool. I think in general people like

the gameplay of Aftermath. The idea in general I mean one of the things about two and ones is people generally like two and ones. I get two cards either I get a choice of two cards or I get both of two cards But people most one of the themes you'll see as we go through is Like for example when we put split cards in invasion. They were very popular We put double-faced cards in industry. They were very popular Now flip cards and aftermath actually have a similarity, and that is aesthetics. People didn't like, I mean, Flip cards had a problem with functionality. Aftermath didn't really have the functionality problem.

But there is an aesthetic issue. One of the challenges of making a two-in-one is you need to make it pretty to look at, right? You wanna make something that people go, ooh, what is that? And some of them, ooh, what is that? And some of them like split cards did a great job. They were two little mini cards, looked very cool. It was sideways that caused a little bit of issues, I guess.

Double-phase cards, I mean, there's logistics with them. You have to have either a checklist card or you have to have opaque back sleeves, but they're very pretty to look at. I mean, they look like a normal magic card, except there's another one on the back. sleeves but they're very pretty to look at. They look like a normal magic card except there's another one on the back. Aftermath, the sideways card, so basically the thought process was one card is face up, one card is sideways. The reason it's sideways is it

was in your graveyard, you can turn your card sideways in your graveyard to remind you that you have that card in your graveyard. That was a functionality that we were trying for. It just didn't look particularly nice. But the interesting thing about Aftermath is we've made more Aftermath cards. We haven't brought the mechanical cloth, but there's been a lot of one-ofs in different places. And mostly that's because there's something pretty clever about, like, there's lots of cool designs.

The actual way the cards play is pretty fun. The fact that I get effect A then effect B is pretty neat. Oh, the other thing I didn't get into before is naming conventions. So when we made split cards originally, we made them such they were blank and blank. The two things went together. Wax and Wayne, you know, that they would go together.

Eventually we got to the point where we had exhausted all of our split card names, or enough of them, enough that it was hard to name more. And then we started doing this thing where they overlap in the first, I think, four letters, so that the words are similar but different. When we did Aftermath, we were said, okay, the words are similar but different. When we did Aftermath, we were said, okay, well, these are similar to split cards. So instead of doing and we

do two. And so it's always the expression with two in it, road to ruin or something like that. Okay. So Aftermath was not the biggest of successes, but a couple years later in Throne of Eldraine, we do a different take on it. I think we sort of learn a little bit of some more lessons from Aftermath. So the way that adventure works is you have a card. I think the card has to be a permanent. In Throne of Eldraine, it was always a creature. And then on it, on the left side, it's like a little storybook on the left hand side.

There's a little spell that spells an instant of sorcery and it's a subtype adventure. And the way it works is if the card is in your hand, if you have an adventure card in your hand, you can either cast the instant of sorcery or cast the creature or the permanent, other things we do different permanents. So the idea is that you have a choice, but if you cast the instant or sorcery first, you exile it and then you may cast the permanent creature and from Eldraine from exile. So if you cast the spell first, you can get both, kind of like

aftermath. But if you cast the creature first, then you don't. That's more like foot card. So you're given an option, but you're kind of encouraged to cast the spell first. Usually the spell is cheaper than the creature. In Thorn Eldraine, that was true most of the time. But the idea, the flavor is, oh, well, your creature's going on a little adventure represented by the spell, but then you could have the creature. Adventure, very popular,

most popular mechanic in Thorn of Eldraine. Like I said, the two-in-ones, when we knock them out of the park, split cards, double face cards, adventures. They're very, very, very popular. And even when we don't do that, the absolute best job we can, like flip cards and aftermath, people still like them. They're still definitely enjoyable.

I think the reason we keep seeing it. So the other thing that I checked out last time is, we're starting to ramp up their usage. Like I mentioned last time, split cards took seven years. Magic came out in 93, it wasn't until year 2000 that we did the first two-in-ones with the split cards. The second two-in-ones, which were the flip cards, took another four years, that's 11 years in to Magic.

And then double-fist cards took yet another seven years. So that is 18 years into magic So we are well in the halfway into magic when we start getting to the second half we Aftermath adventure, I mean we're starting to speed up the repo with which we do them There's a couple reasons for that one is I Think I mean as magic gets more advanced, there's less and less, like, the fresh design space of stuff we haven't done before becomes less.

And so the general nature as magic evolves is, you know, we're digging a little deeper to find things, we're a little more willing to do things. One of the big things of the last 10 years or so is, when we made Split C split cards the idea of changing the magic frame was like controversial. Nowadays we're like hey that's a tool available to us that if we're making a mechanic one of the things we think about is hey do we need a different frame. In fact there are even cards that don't have to have a different frame that we put a

different frame because we think there's something valuable to it. Like Miracles, for example, were a card that when you drew them, you could play them for a different cost of turn you drew them. So we wanted it to be clear that they're Miracles, so the frame's a little bit different. When we did Enchantment Creatures and Theris, we wanted the frame, like, we're a lot more willing now to sort of use frame elements, especially if we think the frame elements are helpful gameplay-wise. If they help explain how the mechanic works or make it easier to remember.

We are much more willing to mess with frame. And I think two-in-one cards, almost by definition, are messing with the frame. I mean, split cards was the very first thing to mess with the frame. Flip cards mess with the frame. I mean split cards was the very first thing to mess with the frame. Flip cards mess with the frame. Double-faced cards, I mean, mess with the back, I guess. So they do mess with the one side of the card. Same with Aftermath, with Adventure. I mean, there's a look and feel to it. And that I think our willingness to do that is one of the reasons why we're really just starting to seeing it more. That and the fact that we're farther into magics. Like we have to dig a little bit deeper to find new things because the you know the low

hanging fruit has been plucked. Okay so Aftermath very popular. Like I said in Throne of the Eldritch just creatures it would come back in Battle for Baldur's Gate, Commander Legends, Battle for Baldur's Gate. There, they put it on some artifacts. So the idea was it represented, the reason they put it there is when you go do a dungeon crawl, you're on an adventure. And so it represented some of the things you would find on your adventure.

Like, you know, if you're doing a dungeon, oh, you might find this artifact. So it made use of artifacts. Um, when we came back to Eldraine and wild of Eldraine, uh, we experimented with enchantments. So there was a cycle of virtues. Um, so the idea essentially is that there's just different things you can do with adventures. Uh, it is pretty popular. Um, people like doing two things. We have the frame figured out and the frame looks pretty good. So it's clear. We did the one thing I'll say about adventure is on a lot of other cards we do two pieces of art. I think the realization is you have to figure out when and where and how to do that second piece of art. We decided with

adventures we didn't need the second piece of art. It has the adventures, we didn't need a second piece of art. It has the text, it has a name, it has a text box. So it clearly is a second card, but there wasn't a clean and easy place to put the picture. So we didn't. And I think we sort of learned that, hey, when you can, it's nice. But as aftermath and flip cards sort of taught us is,

a lot of times it's trying to get the art in that can sometimes cause the extra problem. So we are more willing to do a two-in-one that doesn't have extra art. It can, I mean, when we're able to make it work, we do, but it's just not a given. Okay, next we get to Zendikar Rising, which was just a year later.

So you can see we were speeding up the issue of when these happened. So when we made double-faced cards back in Indus Rod, we definitely explored what we could do with them. And one of the things we realized very early on is when you have two backs of a card, you know, two sides of a card, two faces of a card, there are other things you can do. Transforming, which is what we did originally,

is I play side A, side A is the only one that has a cost, and then under certain circumstances, I can transform it to side B, and maybe other circumstances, I can transform it back to A. But we realized that there was a different model. So influence, once again again by split cards. One of the things that's cool about split cards is you get two in one.

One of the downsides is they both have to be instant sorceries. It's just very tricky when they're both on the battlefield. We'll get there in a minute. So the idea of what we call the modal double face card, an MDFC. The idea of an MDFC is rather than one side being what you cast, both sides have a mana cost. But the cards don't change between each other. If you choose side A, then it's side A. That's what you have. If you choose side B, then it's side B. Now if you somehow bounce it back to your hand

or somehow get it back to your hand, yeah, you could choose a different choice. But mostly, you pick what side you want. So what happened was I was aware that we could do modal double-phase cars. It was something I kept in my back pocket. I purposely chose not to do it in Innistrad. They were different enough.

I wanted, when we introduced them to Innistrad, they all worked the same. So eventually we were working on, we were doing our advanced planning and we came up the idea for Strixhaven, which was a world that played into sort of the magical school trope that had an enemy factions and cared about instance and sorceries. And the idea is one of the things, when you care about instance and sorceries, one of the challenges, you need to get the ass fan of instance and sorceries up.

Now there's some ways to do that. You can have instance and sorceries that make token creatures, for example. But token creatures have to be pretty simple. So one of the ideas I realized is maybe this was a good place to introduce modal double-faced cards, because you could have a permanent on one side and have a spell on the other side. That would allow you to get more instant sorcerers into your deck, up the ass-bound of them,

but still allow you to make it easier to play them. One of the biggest problems when you play especially limited is you only get like, normally it's like 16 permanent, 16 creatures seven spells or seven non creatures if you want instance disorder to matter you need to get the aspen up a little bit and so there are different tricks but one of the ideas was okay we can use MDFCs when I first pitch MDFCs Aaron's what Aaron was kind of curious about them. So he asked me to make a mini team to demonstrate proof of concept. And when I did, I ended up making, the team and I made a little mini team. We made so many cool cards that I realized really there was a lot of options with MDFCs.

So much so that what I decided to do was for the entire magic year, So Zendikar Rising, Call Time, and Strixsave. And then there was a core set. That what we would do is, Zendikar was first, Zendikar was a land set, because we're on Zendikar. There's a real cool mechanic you can do where there's a land on. The front is a card and the back is a land.

And the idea is a land. The idea is that, hey, we can put effects on cards that normally you wouldn't put on cards because they're just not worth putting in your deck. But if there's a land on back, if I can't use the card because I just play it as a land, that gives a lot of flexibility. It allows you to just put things in your deck you might not normally put in your deck. And so, lands in particular worked really well. Then the second set was call time. The idea there was all the gods, we made double face cards, and the front side was the god,

and the back side was, I think they're all permanents, that are tied to the god. The leader of the gods has his raven and the god of thunder has his hammer. You might see where we're borrowing from. But anyway, so we did that. And then in the third set in Strixhaven, we did sorcerer instant on one side, usually permanent on the other side.

We also did one, we did a few all permanpermanent stew. One of the ideas of the schools was that each school had two deans, one representing each color because the schools represented the conflict of the colors. So anyway we made the deans one on each side. We made Rowan and Will were there, so we had a planeswalker of Rowan and Will were there on each side. And then Luca was the other planeswalker and his familiar was on the other side. Anyway, we did learn some lessons. I, Zendikar went off like gang buffers. Koldam is pretty well liked too. Mostly people like the spells and tricks, even the deans they didn't like. So one of the lessons we learned is if you put too much information on the back, you just can't process it because you only get to write so much on the front of the card. And so when the back of the land is very, I tap for red, it's pretty,

pretty simple. Um, even the, the gods, I think because we did a good job of like, Oh, well this is, you know, God of thunder and the hammer. Like we did things that are a little bit easier to remember. Um, The deans were a perfect example of what not to do. They were complicated. They were not connected. Like I think when we made the deans originally like in vision design, we made them so they were very like they were mirror images of each other. So if you remembered one, remember the other like green black would be plus two plus two and black minus two minus two and like you could remember them. But I think they

ended up making them a little more wanted to make good commanders out of them so they got a little more complex um anyway uh modal double phase cards in general were very well received extremely well received in uh zendikar highest rated thing in zendikar rising um i think they were rated really highly in call time they got dinged a little more in strict saving although and there's a lot of other stuff going on in strict saving um But anyway, so we introduced modal double-faced cards. Like I said, double-faced cards as a resource has proven to be super flavorful. I mean, super useful. One is, A, they're flavorful. Like I said, you get two pictures and two names that you really get a lot to work with. And as we discovered with stuff like, you know, the gods and their objects and things,

it's like you can make really interesting stories and you can make cards where like one other neat things about the Kull Time gods is the gods are legendary. So if I play a god and then I draw a second god, normally it's just stuck in my hand. But oh I play the god of thunder, T'Rolfe, and then on the back it's his hammer. So if I draw a second one I could play his hammer. And you know what we did? We made it so T'Rolfe likes having his hammer. So there's some nice synergy there. Like I said, I've been kind of amazed how been kind of amazed how deep the design well is for double face cards. It is quite deep. So much so actually the problem now is whenever we do a card that represents more than one state we always have to ask ourselves, hey, should this be a double face card? And I would

say in almost every Magic set we make there's something that could be a double-faced card? And I would say in almost every Magic set we make, there's something that could be a double-faced card. And really, the thing now I say to teams is, make things double-faced cards because they need to be double-faced cards, not because they could be double-faced cards. So real quickly, let me get into the logistics of things. One of the things when you do certain Magic cards, there's a cost that comes with them. So double-faced cards, which includes Transformer double-faced cards, Modal double-faced cards, we have to print them on their own sheet.

Normally when we print Magic cards, the back of all cards are the back. And so, in order, and you can't mix back and not back. The nature of how we make the backs are printed a little bit differently. So in order, and you can't mix back and not back. The nature of how we make the backs are printed a little bit differently. If a sheet has all magic backs, it has to be magic backs. If the sheet has double faces, that has to be its own sheet.

So for starters, whenever we do double-faced cards, it requires it's extra printing sheets on our end. And using extra printing sheet, there's collation that comes with that. We have to get the right number that work. We can't, I mean, we have done a few things like Magic Origins or the core set with Nicole Bolas where we did a small number of them.

We occasionally do that. Ixalan, for example, we did Lans. Early on, we adjust on doublefaced cards and Innistrad, but eventually we went to Ixalan and we're like, you know, we wanna do explorations, kind of neat. We have the idea for a lot of really powerful lands, but we need some hoop to jump through. Well, what if you, on the front side,

it was an explorer or an exploring tool, or some of that stress stress exploration and then on the back you got to the land and the land to be pretty powerful and so anyway there's there's a cost that comes to using double-face cards and that is that we have to it just it adds extra expense it's just like the way every set works is we have a budget and within the budget We have like a certain amount that's like, okay This is for us to do something and are we doing punch-out things? Are we changing the pre-release kit? Are we what are we doing that's different?

Are we doing extra token art like a balm like sets do different things and different things come with the cost? like sets do different things and different things come with a cost. Double-faced cards are a cost. So if you do double-faced cards, it kind of eats up a lot of that extra cost. So we don't want to do double-faced cards. We don't need to do double-faced cards. There's some things that could be double-faced cards but work fine with single-faced cards. So that is something and like I said that the popularity of double-faced cards, as you notice, for example, we did them in Innistrad, and then we didn't do them for the second time

till five years later, till we returned to Innistrad. And then like we were in Ixalan, like, oh, like, you know, you know, Kamagawa, we did the Sagas, the Flip into Creatures, like, more and more we find cool reasons to use them. And we've gotten, like, for example, we did three modern horizons and the first two modern horizons, we didn't do double face cards, but the third one we did and look, here's another cycle of, um, planes, or ledger creatures that flip into planeswalkers or

here is, um, lands, you know, uh, MDFCs that are land. So we definitely play in that space. Okay. MDFCs that are land. So we definitely play in that space. Okay, which brings us to rooms, which was the mechanic that started the whole article in the first place. So one of the things I said earlier is when we talked about double-face card or sorry split cards, early on the idea of split permits was something that we were excited by, but there's just, the challenge is, let's say I have a split card that both sides are creatures. Okay, I put it on the battlefield.

It's not one creature, it's not both sides, it's only one side. Well, how do I tell you which side it is? And it's just hard to mark to understand what side it is. But then we figured out the technology of modal double-faced cards. Modal double-faced cards say, hey, it's like a split card, but only one side's relevant. You can only see one side. So when you pick it, just play that side face up. You know what side it is. But so we thought we'd

solved it, right? That's the solving. But we ended up, we ended up finding a separate way to have split permanence. So what happened was we were making Duskborne. We wanted, so the idea that we signed off really early, two things we signed off on, one was inspired by a sort of modern 70s, 80s horror, just to give it a different feel from Innistrad. The second thing was the whole plane was the inside of a creepy mansion. So we knew early on that we wanted to represent the mansion, so we wanted to do rooms. How do we show what rooms are? The earliest incarnation is we made a whole separate deck, kind of like contraptions and attractions, an entire separate deck that had rooms in it.

And when you explored the mansion, you'd flip up rooms and then you could, the rooms hadn't impact. They had a, so early on you'd slip them up and I think you could have up to three. When you flipped up your fourth, you covered one of the three you had. And then the earlier version, every room that's open is just an enchantment. It's an affecting you and you get things. Having just all these enchantments was a bit much. So we then, we introduced a meeple.

A meeple is a little game piece from mostly European games that looks like a little person. And then the idea was you could have up to three rooms open, but your meeple said where you were. So you could move between rooms. And then we really got into the idea of moving between rooms. And then I think we then made versions of the rooms that had two rooms per card, then three rooms per card, then four rooms per card. We just, or actually, I think we just jumped to four.

I think we had one per card and then jumped to four per card. The idea being we wanted you to move between rooms because that felt really like haunted horror. And we tried a bunch of stuff and eventually we liked the rooms but we knew the extra deck was just a little over the line. We knew the meeples was a little over the line. But the idea of having multiple rooms on a card felt very compelling and that we wanted you like

just one room, it felt like you just didn't get enough rooms. And then we made the observation that one of the problems with double with split permanence is knowing what's on the battlefield. And if you want to use it, how do you tap it? Right? Let's say for example, I had a split creature. We're both creatures went on the battlefield.

Okay, now I have two creatures. Now I don't know which one they are. It's both The next question is well, what if I want to tap one of them, but not the other how do I even indicate that? But it turns out that enchantments are the one permanent that don't tap So the idea we ended up on was what if we had it such that you could only play you didn't have to play both Of them it was very much a split that you could only play, you didn't have to play both of them. It was very much a split permanent. You could play one or the other,

but kind of like Aftermath, kind of like Adventure, you would later be able to, you didn't miss the opportunity to get the second one once it was on the battlefield. So what we did is you play it, we made a little locked door token. So the idea is if you haven't played a side, it's locked. But you may pay the mana cost of that side to unlock it.

And then you get that effect. And then we made the mechanic of the set that cared about enchantments, which was eerie, to also care about unlocking rooms. So eerie is nice in that it's like Constellation. Every time you play an enchantment, something happens. But then it also counts sort of the playing of the second enchantment in the rooms when you unlock the rooms. Now I will say rooms are a little on the complicated

side. For example if you flicker a room what happens? It comes back with both sides locked. I don't know if people knew that. And when you open a room only then you get the qualities of that room So if I have a blue room on the left side and a red room on the right side and I play the blue room My card is blue until I open up the right side that is red The card is not red once I do open it is now blue and red In all zones other than it it has both qualities but but

Well, it depends how you. So for example, if you're looking for a certain thing, it has both. It's kind of like a hybrid in that it has both. Although certain circumstances when it wants you to understand the man value. Anyway, it gets, my point is it gets complicated. Rooms come with the cost. And that's one of the things I also should stress here as I'm wrapping wrapping up the two and ones are very cool They come at a cost One of the cost is they tend to be complicated when a card is more than one card Like there are rules that were made for split cards

How do I know when it's not in when it's not on the battlefield or some site not on the back? How do I know what it is on the stack is only one of two things but in my hand it's not on the battlefield or not on the stack, how do I know what it is? On the stack is only one of two things, but in my hand it's both, in the graveyard it's both. So there had to be a lot of rules. So two in ones do come with a lot of rules. They come with graphic design requirements. Like I said, you can do them wrong.

I think both Flipkart and Aftermath are proof that, hey, just because you make it doesn't mean visually it's aesthetic and there are challenges to making it so there are costs like I said with printing so two-in-ones like I said generally when we look back split cards very popular both transforming and modal double-faced cards very popular and ventures very popular rooms very popular there's a high high when when you miss flip cards aftermath you know they're there and even then there are people that like the aftermath and like flip cards i mean i i think um flip cards have a little more gameplay issues than aftermath does aftermath just isn't pretty um but anyway and

you know i forgot meld like like there are a are a lot of times the number of mechanics, in fact, I believe split cards, both transforming and mold double-faced cards, meld and adventure. I haven't seen the feedback on rooms yet, but each of those mechanics was the highest rated mechanic in the set it was in, and often is the highest rated mechanic in set it's in after even after the first time we do it and there's some loss of novelty right after the first time but I guess my say is there's something really really cool I mean really cool about them there's something really compelling about it's not just one card it's two cards and like I said by the way I only went through cards that have two names

There are a lot of cards that were like prototype for example from the Brothers war that are like on the cusp Like it's kind of two cards, but they don't have they don't set have two different names I mean there's a lot of stuff in this space. And so there's a just ten gentle thoughts of the space And like I said, I we have to do with our eyes open. We have to be aware there's costs that come with it. There's complexity that comes with it. There's rules that come with it. There's often actual production costs that come with it. There's frame issues that come with it. There's aesthetic issues.

There's a lot of issues, but there are high highs. When two-in-ones are done right, they are mighty popular. And so we will continue to do them, but judiciously and carefully. But anyway, I hope you enjoyed this two part series, looking at all the two in ones. I like, like I said, I'd like as a, as a historian of the game and as someone who cares about the design very much, I do like looking back at the history of the

design. That's why I do that a lot on this very podcast. So anyway, I hope you enjoyed the two episodes, but I am at work now. So we all know that means this is 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 all next time.

Bye bye.