Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1217: Visions

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

This episode looks back at the design of Visions, the second set in the Mirage block.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work Okay, so one of my goals of this podcast is to do a podcast on every magic expansion And I'm a good chunk of the way there So what I did for today is I started from the beginning of magic and looked at all the expansions To see which one I hadn't done yet. So I got all the way up to Visions. So I've done everything through Mirage. In fact Mirage, I did Mirage a couple different times. I did one on a multi-part series on the cards of Mirage. I had Bill Rose on as the guest and we talked he was the lead designer of Mirage. So I've done a lot on Mirage But I realize I not yet done a podcast on visions, which is the first small expansion of Mirage

So that is today's topic today's topic is visions The visions came out in February 3rd of 1997 so just real quickly I started working at Wizards in October of 1995 The very first set that I worked on while I was in office was alliances But that was already in progress. I was on the team but near the end of it The first set that I worked on sort of full-time as a developer

Was Mirage. And so Visions was the second set. So the design team, so let's, I gotta give the story again, just set up where Mirage came from, because Visions was really done as part of Mirage. So, okay, so recap for those that have not heard the story, and just something I'll talk about a bit.

Richard Garfield decides to make Magic. He's at the University of Pennsylvania, so he needs playtefters. So he goes to different places to find playtefters. Some of them are fellow people at school. That's the East Coast playtefters. But one group he found at his local bridge club. Richard loves games. One of the games he loves is bridge. So he went to a local club to play bridge. At that club he met a bunch of people who then became magic playtefters. Bill Rose, Charlie Cattino, Joel Mick, Howard Kallenberg, Elliot Siegel, Don Felice, Lily Wu. Those were all people that he met through the bridge club and all of those save Lily Wu he would later marry they when Richard realized at some

point as magic was about to be made that it that eventually they would need more magic sets Richard didn't quite realize how soon they would need more magic sets but knew that eventually they would need more magic sets, but knew that eventually they would need more magic sets. So what he did is he had his different design teams make sets. The East Coast plate defters made Ice Age. Barry Reich made a thing called Spectral Chaos that parts of it got into Invasion.

The Bridge Club plate defters, I don't have a fancy name like the East Coast plate defters, but I always refer to them as the Bridge Club platetefters, I don't have a fancy name like the East Coast Playtefters, but I always refer to them as the Bridge Club Playtefters. The Bridge Club Playtefters made a set that they called Menagerie, but Menagerie actually ended up being a large set that broke into Mirage and Visions. So Visions was made by the same team that made Mirage, at the same time they made Mirage and Visions. So Visions was made by the same team that made Mirage at the same time they made Mirage. They made it all together I'm not sure whether or not the idea was it was just one giant large set or whether it was made as a large and a small set

The sense I got from talking with Bill about it is I think at one point it was just one larger set. And then once we realized the structure of like Mirage, by the way, was the beginning of the block era. Ice Age had alliances, but alliances wasn't really designed to be part of Ice Age. And it was kind of mostly in development, we made it sort of feel like it matched Ice Age. That was something we did after the fact.

The designers, these Coast Placephthers, did not design the lines necessarily as a continuation of Ice Age. Mirage was the first idea of the sense of a modern block where there was a fall set. These are north hemisphere seasons. It was a fall set. And then there was a small spring, a small winter set, small spring set. So the case of Mirage, there was Mirage, Visions, Weatherlight.

So like I said, I've talked a lot about Mirage. Visions was meant to be that small set. And I don't know, so the one interesting thing about Mirage is Most of the time when we do a set the person leading the design What we now were like vision design set design play design is how we do things now Normally, there's someone different leading each of those components not always I did all infinity, but most of the time there's different people This set Bill Rose led the design he Charlie Coutinho, Joel Mick, Don Feliz, Howard Kallenberg, Elliot Siegel made

menagerie back in Pennsylvania and then Bill got hired basically the same time I got hired. He started three weeks before I started. So we both started in October of 1995. Bill was also the lead developer of the set. So he led the design and the development. The development team was everybody in Magic R&D at the time, which was me, Mike Elliott, William Jocush, Henry Stern, and of course Bill, because Bill does that. So the five of us, we were all the development teams for a while, so we were this development team.

And a lot of it was broken off from what Mirage had done. So let's first talk a little bit about Mirage, because back in the day, the way blocks worked originally was the large set would create two new mechanics and exactly two new named mechanics And then the small sets would just do more of the two small mechanics Eventually we would start at like we had all eventually we got to the point where all sets would add a new mechanic Yes, they would maintain some mechanics from the block, but they would invent new things as well. We weren't there yet This was the early days of block. So so let's talk a little bit about flanking and phasing Because those both showed up in visions

We'll begin with flanking so flanking the idea that they were trying to get so let me quickly touch upon the story the the bridge club platefters not only created the set, they also created the story that went with it. And the story, basically the set of Mirage and Visions takes place on a continent known as Jamora. It's a very African inspired continent, I mean, you know, inspired world.

And there were three great wizards at the time, Kervek, Jorail, and Mangara. And basically the plan was for the three of them to, you know, they were the powerful wizards of the time. They would team up and they would try to use their magic together. One of them, Keravac, went kind of evil. In prison, Jorail, in what was the, oh not Jorail, in prison, Mangara, and Mangara by the way is an anagram with the word anagram, in the Amber Prison. And so a lot of the story of Mirage is trying to fight against

Sorry, fight against Kervec and stop Kervec's evil plans The character that first shows up in that set who would end up becoming a pretty major magic character is Teferi That's where Teferi first shows up also The Weatherlight plays a small Weatherlight and Sisay play a small part in the story. We, Mike, Ryan and I would borrow the Weatherlight and Sisay and make a whole story out of it. So I believe in the story, the only Sisay was the captain. So they mention Weatherlight and Sisay the captain, but there's not talk of the other, the rest of the crew, which Michael and I would later flesh out. Basically the I think they they give Joe rail a ride because Joe rails on a way

to go free Mungar from the Amber prison I think what happens. Anyway so one of the things that they liked about the setting was they wanted to have combat be they like the idea of a lot of invading armies and things like that the setting was they wanted to have combat be, they liked the idea of a lot of invading armies and things like that. And so the idea of people on a horseback came up. Like, how do I represent, if I'm fighting, if you're a normal person and I'm someone

who's fighting you on horseback, okay, I have an advantage. Being on horseback is an advantage. You know, I just have a. I'm up higher than you, I'm hitting down, I'm on horse, I'm faster. They wanted to get the sense of how do we represent the idea of the advantage of being on horseback. So they came up with flanking. So the way flanking works flanking says if I am blocked by a creature Without flanking because the idea is if I'm blocked by creatures also on a horse. I don't get the advantage Any creature that's blocked that doesn't have flanking gets minus one minus one until the end of the turn So the idea is if I have let's say I have a two two flanking creature in order to destroy my two two flanking creature

You have to have a creature plus one plus one bigger. You would need a 3-3 to trade with my 2-2 with flanking And you know if you have something that is smaller or sorry equal in size to me Normally if you block my 2-2 with your 2-2 you would trade but not here with flanking you have to be one bigger So it just makes you a bit stronger flanking only works on attack And it does not work against other flankers now. They're not working with other flankers. I understand where they got there It was a flavor thing But but a couple problems real quickly that in general. I like flanking

I like the fact that it works on attack and not on defense is good. I like the idea that it gives you a small advantage in combat. Generally, I like that. Biggest problem with it is two things. One is the name and even though literally every creature that has flanking is either pictured on a horse in the art or it's like a centaur, like is a horse, is part horse. Even though that is 100% true,

the audience did not get Flinky Equal Creature on horseback. Did not get it. And so I don't know if the word, maybe we could have chosen a different word that conveyed that better. But players did not get that tie into flavor. And the second thing is, and maybe part of this is because they didn't get the tie into it. The idea that flinkers flinked non-flinkers was just people, a lot of people didn't rock that. And then if I had the mechanic to do again, I probably would remove that just because

the cleanliness of, hey, you gotta be, you know, I shrink anything blocking me is good. Oh, the other thing that flanking did, I think is, it also kind of discouraged multi-blocking in the sense that every creature blocking at minus one, minus one. So if I have a, let's say I have a four, four flanker, kind of discourage multi-blocking in the sense that every creature blocking at minus one minus one. So if I have a, let's say I have a four, four flanker.

If you want to stop me with more than one creature, you need like two three threes or four two twos. It's a, it really, the bigger you get, the harder you are. It's harder than it is to deal with because a lot of the ways you deal with bigger creatures is multiple blockers, but because it shrinks each blocker, it, it's harder than it is to deal with because a lot of the ways you deal with bigger creatures is multiple blockers. But because it shrinks each blocker, it really works against multiple blocking. Not that you can't multiple block it,

but it is harder to deal with. Flanking was a combat mechanic. I mean, we used it like we use any combat mechanic. And it's sort of an invasion mechanic. A lot of times when you attack with a flanker your the opposing player Might not have good blocking decisions, and so they can chump or let it through so sometimes they let it through

Okay, the other ability was phasing Phasing was definitely the more complicated the two abilities okay, so the way phasing works is phasing works is phasing, at the beginning of your upkeep, I believe, a creature with phasing phases out. And what that means is, well, we've since spent a lot of time defining it. At a time it was a little, early on it's kind of like it just just leaves and it comes back and what does leaves mean? What does comebacks mean? But the one quirky thing about phasing is when you left, you didn't lose things that were attached to you. If you had an aura on you, if you had equipment on you, if you had plus one plus one counters on you, you wouldn't lose those.

So the idea was, phasing was kind of imagined, I mean, it was a drawback in the sense that you were only there every other turn, but you got much higher stats for your costs. So it was a drawback mechanic. I mean, one of the things we've learned over time is most drawback mechanics aren't particularly popular.

And the reason is, the reason they're exciting is you have to understand the ratio of, oh this cost shouldn't get this power toughness combination, ooh I'm getting something I shouldn't get. And you have to be somewhat more advanced player to really understand rate of how how good a card is. But anyways, so the idea is beginning of upkeep, if a creature had Phasing, it would phase away, but it would keep everything on it. And then, at the next upkeep, if it had phased away, it would phase back. But it didn't trigger Enter the Battlefields, or Enter the Battlefields effects. Sorry, didn't trigger interest effects, which is a little non-intuitive. So the way we've since worded it, it doesn't exile it.

Instead it sort of pretends like it's not there, it stays on the battlefield, but nothing can interact with it. So it's sort of gone, but not completely and explains why things don't fall off it and such. Things don't fall off it and such When when the Bridge club plate defters first made phasing they mostly used it as Sort of this downside mechanic that allowed you to get a lot more Because because your creatures only there every other turn you kind of got a creature

That was almost twice as much as a normal creature so they like people are bad at reading rate, but this had such a differential that Even players that aren't great at rate generally got as bigger than they're supposed to get The other thing that we ended up doing with phasing and I was a big part of this because in in Development when we were developing Mirage, I really was intrigued by what else we could do with phasing. And one of the things that I was a big advocate of is things that phase themselves as a protection. Like frenetic or frit, for example, the flyer.

There you have to flip a coin. But anyway, the idea of things that could protect themselves, I was very intrigued by that idea would later lead me to make the flickering mechanic flickering slash blinking where things are X out for the term come back. Fixing my biggest problem with what phasing is I wanted to trigger enter the battlefield effects slash enters effects. Um, so Flickering does that anyway phasing phasing was never super popular. Um, Oh and the other thing about Mirage is not only was it the first block to introduce Blocks really and like I said Ice Age was done after the fact. It also is the first set we really designed thinking about limited play. The block before Mirage was Ice Age and for those of you

who have never played Ice Age, let me fill you in. It is, while there are fun cards in it, I think there are cards that are very good constructed cards. The limited environment and the set was not designed for limited. Let's just stress that was I will call painful. It didn't have the right mix of things that you needed necessarily. There wasn't enough evasion. There just wasn't enough creatures. It was hard to win in a game of Ice Age Limit Sealed. It was challenging. Anyway, Mirage though, really,

like one of my favorite Mirage stories is, Mirage did, we did a pro tour, which was players showed up, They had never seen Mirage. We hadn't teased it. No one knew anything about Mirage. And then for the very first time, it was basically a pre-release pro tour. You're going to open up a car, and even most pre-releases you see the cards first. Never seen the cards.

Frank Odler won that pro tour. But it, well, Frank Odler might not be the biggest name. The top eight of that Pro Tour were at the time, a lot of big names. I believe Chris Paculo's in that top eight. Terry Bor was in that top eight. Darren Casto's in the top eight. Matt Viena was in the top eight.

So anyway, it had a lot of names. The winner ended up not being someone with a lot of names. And as a format, it was a little higher average than we like at Pro Tours. But that said, there was a lot of skill to it. Trying to identify things you hadn't seen actually is quite skillful. That's why the top eight I think was actually a pretty good top eight in retrospect. Anyway, so making visions, there are a lot of pieces going on. So the idea was visions was the first small set that was designed to be drafted with the

small set that came with it. Or I don't know, maybe, yeah, I guess I guess drafted. We had already started doing drafting on the Pro Tour. So right, we had designed it to be drafted So it's the first small set designed for limited play designed to be drafted designed to go with the large set and like I said one of the things that the bridge come play gestures had done is They had made a very large set at which they then broke it off into a large set in the small set

Well light which I've also not done a podcast on, but I will, was not, it ended up being something different. It was not connected to the work they had done. Okay, so Visions, Visions had a couple cool things going for it. So one is, from a historical standpoint, I believe V visions was the first set to have entered the battlefield effect slash enters effects And a couple very high profile ones It had tabi or anything it had Necrotol and it had I was the one that bounced things It's a it's. It's a underwater creature.

I'm blanking on it. But it had three cards. So tell me a rank, name, destroyed, artifacts, what entered the battlefield, next to it all destroyed, creatures entered the battlefield, and I'm blanking on the blue card, it bounced creatures. And those were high quality, like tournament tier cards. And the interesting thing by the way was

while Visions was happening, we were designing Tempests because large sets start before small sets. And in Tempests, we ended up making enter the battlefield effects, not because I'd seen them in Visions, so I hadn't, but we were trying to solve a separate problem and it came up with them. So I'm very proud that my team independently came up with them, but we do not have, we do not make,

the first published ones were not made by us. It was made by Bill and his team. Okay, so I'm going to talk about a few of the high profile cards from the set and just give a few stories a little bit about it. Vampiric Tutor. So Vampiric Tutor costs one black mana, it's an instant, you pay two life, you then search your library for any card and put it on top of your library. So in Mirage there was a, I don't know if it's a cycle, but there was a card in white, blue, and green that were also tutors that went and got a specific card type and put it on the top of your library. We then decided that we would like to

make the more general version of it. So each one of those got a subset of things. So the idea is, well, let's go get one that go get anything We'll put in black as black with the color of demonic tutor, but because it's black. We also make you pay life Interestingly, we did not make the red one yet So one of the questions at the time is we made a cycle clearly made a blue green and white one in Mirage We made a black one visions. Where's the red one? We would later make it in, or is it soccer block?

Gamble, I think, but anyway. That card ended up being, it's just very efficient. Basically, B pay two life. No, it doesn't go in your hand, it goes in top of your library, so it's not netting you an extra card. But the ability to make sure the next thing you draw is what you want to

draw is very powerful and efficient. That's why the card sees lots of play. It's particularly popular in Commander, assuming it's still legal in Commander. It might not be legal in Commander anymore. They've come back in a lot of tutors, but anyway, it's a very powerful card played in a lot of formats that can play it. Anvil of Bogdan. So it's an artifact that costs two generic mana.

So what you do is it makes you skip your discard phase so you never discard. And then whenever it allows you to draw and discard a card. So at each turn you get to trade the card you least want for a new card. I'm not sure where that, so a lot of these cards were designed by the, most of these cards, that's Vajor's cards,

were designed by the Bridge Club Playtefters. The next one though, I designed, Squandered Resources. So it's an enchantment that costs black and green, and it allows you to sack a land To add one mana of any color that land could produce I For those who do not know I enjoy making engine cards. I like the idea of turning one resource into another So there actually was a deck

Played by Mike long or made famous by Mike Long, that I believe they referred to as Squandered Resources deck. Is that the name for it? Anyway, it made use of cards that existed only in Mirage and Visions. Mike won a Pro Tour in Paris, which I believe was a Mirage Visions, like it was a block constructed only those two sets

and he made a combo deck and Squandered Resources was a big part of the combo deck. There are a bunch of different pieces to it but basically it was a deck that sort of build up resources and then using all the there are a bunch of different engine cards would then go off and kill you in one turn and anyway Squandered Resources was a big part of that deck. I made it at the time just cause I would like the idea of I want to advance, I want to get more mana, but at a cost. So green was all about getting mana,

black was about spending resources. So the idea that I could get extra mana, but it came at the cost of my land, felt like a cool thing. The card ended up being very powerful. It does see a lot of play. In formats where you still can play it. Next, Tithe.

Tithe is a white instant. It allows you to search for a plains, or if target opponent has more lands in you, search for two plains. So this is one of the earliest, we let white do a little bit of land searching mostly just for plains. White isn't green, green really is the land fetching color but the idea here a little bit is letting white catch up. White definitely has some mechanics and some flavor of that balance from the most famous one where, okay, I want to be an equal footing

with other players. So either I knock them down to where I am or I bring myself up to where they are. Or in this case, it's sort of like, well, if I'm behind on land, I get extra land. Because white doesn't have a lot of amazing means to ramp, and in formats like commander or ramping is really important, Tide has proven to be very popular in decks that play white and usually don't play green. Okay, next is natural order. Two green green, a sorcery, you basically are allowed to sacrifice a green creature you have and then go get a green creature out of your library and put it on the battlefield. So the idea is in the natural order the more powerful predator takes out the weaker predator.

So you get to go get a powerful predator, but it takes out one of your things as it comes in sort of and that card The idea one of the things that green can do is green can go get creatures out of library And this is one of the earlier versions of us doing that and definitely one of the more powerful versions city of City undiscovered paradise so undiscovered paradise was the land that got tapped for any color came and play untapped could tap for any color but and I think the beginning of next upkeep it returned to your hand. So it sort of gave you color, but it came at a cost. The cost really was that it was hard to play and hard to use when you were still developing your land base.

Once you have your land, not as big a deal because okay I get to play a land to turn, but early on it makes it definitely harder when you're building up to play it. So Richard had made City of Brass in Arabian Nights which could tap for any color but it did the damage to you and we were already trying to find five car lands that were fair. City of solitude, enchantment, two and a green, and only lets you cast spells or use activated abilities on, players can only use those on their own turn. This is a little bit weird in green. or use activated abilities on players can only use those on their own turn. This is a little bit weird in green. It's the kind of effect we would do in white now.

It's more sort of rule setting. But anyway, one of the things about early magic is, we spent time trying to, there definitely was a period of trying to figure out the color pie and what made sense. And a lot of early magic was story. You make a car and said, oh, this kind of feels like the flavors kind of make sense. And so city of solitude.

So I think the reason it's definitely season play is it green just doesn't have effects like that. And it gives that. Femur of enchantress, green and white for a one, two. Whenever an enchantment is put into the graveyard I believe from the battlefield you draw a card and so the idea is I know it goes they're definitely enchantment decks I mean you have to include black in it but there's enchantment decks that will generate a lot of enchantments and then stack those

enchantments for different effects or sometimes there's some enchantments that have their own stack effect built into them but you can use this with that and so this is popular usually the decks that do this are green white black because white also is good at white has a lot of powerful enchantments let's see two more and then we're gonna wrap up. Teferi's Puzzle Box. It's an artifact, I did not write the cost of Teferi's Puzzle Box. Basically the idea is the beginning of each upkeep,

you take your hand, you put it on the bottom of your library and then you draw a new hand. And so you keep getting new cards. And there's definitely some combo decks and some stuff that have done very efficient things with Teferi's Puzzle Box. I also believe in stuff stuff I did a trivia. For those who don't know on blue sky which I started on I've started doing a

feature where I do a trivia question every day and one of my trivia questions for boxing day was what was the first card with the word box in it and the answer was very puzzle box. Okay the final one a pretty popular card goblin recruiter it's one in a red for a one-one. When it enters, you may search your library for any number of goblins and put them on the top of your library in your choice of order. Very popular, very, so one of the things we did in Visions, like I said, you can see with the seven pair of tutors, a little more of tutoring, but instead of getting the card

right in your hand, it goes on top of your library. Goblin Recruiter is interesting in that you can get as many goblins as you want. So really, there definitely are goblin sort of combo decks, if you will, that the fact that you can go get the pieces you need can make it quite powerful and very good. Anyway, so Visions was a fun set to work on. I really was happy with it. I think when it came out, I think it was a really good set. It's one of my, when I look back at small sets, it's a small set that I really think

is a powerful small set. I mean, like I said, it didn't reinvent things. That wasn't what we did at the time, but I liked how we sort of built upon what we've done in Mirage the enter the battlefield effect cards ended up being really cool anyway that my friends is vision a fun set so I'm an ongoing quest to talk about all the sets I now can cross visions off my checklist anyway guys I hope you enjoyed today's podcast but I'm at work so we don't know that means. It means 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.