Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1218: Weatherlight

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

This episode looks back at the design of Weatherlight, the third set in the Mirage block.

I'm pulling away from the curb because I dropped my son off at school. We all know what that means. It's time to let her drive to work. Okay, so one of the things I've been trying to do on the podcast is do a podcast on every single magic expansion. And so today I'm doing what I haven't done yet, Weatherlight. So for those who don't know, came out in June 7th of 1997. It was the third set in the Mirage block.

Had 167 cars, 62 commons, 55 uncommons, and 50 rares. So the design team was Dan Cervalli, Mike Elliott, Joel Mick, and Taywin Woodruff. The development team was Mike, William Jocush, Bill Rose, Henry Stern, and myself. The art director was Sue Ann Harky. Okay, let me give a little context to weatherlight. What's going on? So basically Magic Comes out in 93. The first thing they do after Magic comes out is they hire a bunch of the original play tefters to work on Magic.

Skephalias, Jim Lynn, Dave Petty. And so a lot of the early R&D are people that were play tefters. Well, what happens is they decide that a lot of them want me working on other stuff So that higher sort of the next wave of magic designers and that next wave is me Bill Rose William Jocke's Mike Elliott Henry Stern And so there's a period of time where the five of us were the development team and we were doing most of the development work but Up so early magic, Richard obviously made Alpha and then he got his playtefters to start designing magic sets that would end

up being Ice Age and Mirage, what they called Menagerie. Meanwhile, Peter Atkinson, who was the president and CEO of Wizards, asked some other people that he knew, and they ended up making Legends and Homelands and The Dark. Anyway, so at the time that I came to work for Wizards, all design was done externally, and we were doing development inside of Wizards. So external people would design it, internally we would develop it.

It was so Tempest and Weatherlight. So Weatherlight is technically the first set done internally to come out. Tempest is the first set done internally to be worked on because Tempest was a large set and Weatherlight was a small set. We began out. Tempest is the first set done internally to be worked on because Tempest was a large set and Weatherlight was a small set. We began work on Tempest before we began work on Weatherlight.

But basically what's happening is Mirage, like I said, Menagerie, when it got designed, really was sort of so big that it got chopped into a large set and a small set. But there was no secondary set. So the idea of blocks, Mirage really is where blocks get formed. They're messing around. Ice Age has alliances,

which was sort of sold as a set to go with Ice Age. But the big thing to remember was that alliances wasn't made to go with Ice Age. That was done almost completely in development. It was just made as its own set. And we, after the fact, said, oh, it's part, like, the idea of starting to link together sets.

You see the first inkling in Ice Age, but really, weather lights, like, okay, every year we will have one large set, two small sets. They will take place roughly in the same place, and they'll be connected mechanically. So Mirage is really the start of that. So Mirage has flanking and phasing. This is the era where there's two named keywords and those run all year long. So the interesting thing about Weatherlight was that the, so Mirage was designed by what I refer to as the Bridge Club Playtefters. Those are the Playtefters that Richard met through the Bridge Club he attended.

So this is Bill Rose, Joel Mick, Charlie Cattino, Howard Colenburg, Don Felice, Elliot Siegel, Lily Wu, although Lily wasn't one of the designers on Mirage, but she was part of the Bridge Club. Anyway, so we realized that Mirage didn't have three sets worth and so decided we're gonna make a small set and the idea essentially was the small set was supposed to plug in to what's going on in the first two sets so it didn't it there's no new keywords in it it is flanking and phasing I think cumulative upkeep had become evergreen for a little while I think it had cumulative upkeep had become evergreen for a little while. I think it had cumulative upkeep.

But the reality is it really didn't invent anything new per se from a mechanical standpoint, but it needed an identity and it just being more of Mirage, it needed its own identity. So the people who designed it did in fact put a theme to it. And the theme to it and the theme to it was the graveyard. It's all about the graveyard. And so while there's no name mechanic, there's just a lot of cards interacting with the graveyard in a lot of different ways. And there are not a lot of sets in early magic that were super thematic. Antiquities was, antiquities was all artifact theme. But this is one of the early sets where they were like,

okay, we're about something mechanically. We're about the graveyard. And so they mess around, they mess around a little bit with like how the graveyard could matter. They even have some cards that care about the order. They have things where you sacrifice stuff. They have orders that can be sacked for effect.

So they have a bunch of ways to care about the graveyard and to fill up the graveyard. Now, as we come to realize later, there's two different approaches to graveyard sets. What I call the barometer approach and the resource approach. Graveyard is barometer means I just care what's in the graveyard.

I'm looking at the graveyard. Lergoif is kind of a class example of this. Hey, my power and toughness care about what's in the graveyard, what creatures are in the graveyard. So barometer just means that I care about the graveyard as a resource and I look at the graveyard. Resource, graveyard is resource means I'm actively using the graveyard as a resource. Normally I'm exiling cards from the graveyard. I'm eating up my graveyard. And the graveyard is a neat resource in that you start with nothing and you gain with things over time and then it naturally fills up.

All instant sorcerers go right to the graveyard. Creatures that die go to the graveyard. If you sacrifice something goes to the graveyard. If you discard something, goes to the graveyard. So there's a lot of neat dynamics there. And weather light really is just playing at all the space. It wasn't, I think as we started developing more graveyard sets, we started realizing

the tension that got made when you did resource and barometer together. I think the, if you look, there's a lot of sampling and trying of different things. So anyway, it was a really neat set in the sense that it was, it was, and then once again, the designers were all people that were working in R&D at the time. Dan Cervalli, who led the team, did a lot

of programming in R&D. Taywin, I think, was working on other projects. Like, she wasn't mainly on Magic, but she worked on this. Even Joel Mick. I think Joel Mick at the time, I think Joel Mick was the head designer. That baton will be handed off to Bill, but I think it was still Joel Mick at this time. And then Mike Elliott was the only person on the design team that was sort of a regular that worked on the development deans. Mike and I, by the way, both really wanted to be designers. We were hired as developers. And so he and I worked on Tempest,

Mike worked on Weatherlight. So anyway, the most interesting story though about Weatherlight actually is not about mechanics per se. There's a lot of interesting things going on there, but the real story of Weatherlight has to do with the Weatherlight saga. Long time listeners will know I was very intimately involved in this. So basically what happens is before I came to Wizards, the big thing that I was doing was writing for the magazine.

The most popular thing I did in the magazine was a puzzle series called Magic the Puzzling. It was so popular that they decided at one point to put out a book. We put out a Magic the Puzzling book. I was actually working on this before I even got to Wizards. When I got to Wizards, I had written all the puzzles before I got to Wizards, but the book was in editing while I was at Wizards. And the editor of the book was a guy named Michael Ryan, who was one of Magic's editors. And so we worked very closely on it because I was the expert on all the puzzles.

So like whenever you had questions, he had to come to me. And puzzles, especially complicated puzzles, there's a lot of moving pieces. We want to make sure the puzzles all worked and make sure that everything was clear And so there's a lot of fine tuning that happened and there's a lot of back and forth between me and Michael And it was at that point that we realized that we became friends. I really like Michael. We have a lot in common He was a writer obviously before I came to Wizards My background was writing and so we clicked right away and I used to go to his house for movie night. And anyway, we became friends.

So one of the things we would talk about was that how Magic didn't really have a consistent story. I mean, there were technically Mirage had a story. The Bridge Club design team, the Playtefters, they came up with the story and then there's a story about three wizards. It was Kervek, Mangara, and Jor-El.

Mangara, by the way, is an anagram of the word anagram. And Kervek goes bad and he imprisons Mangara in the Amber Prison and then Jor-El has to get help. Probably the most famous part, the character that's the most famous from the story is this story introduces Teferi who would go on to be a very big, major magic character, but this is where Teferi gets introduced. And in the story, there's a little tiny part in the story about how Jorail needs to

get to where the Amber Prison is. And she gets a ride on a flying ship called the Weatherlight with a captain named Sisay. There wasn't a lot said about it. Flavor text about Sisay and the Weatherlight show up in Mirage and Visions. There's even a card called Sisay's Ring in Visions. But other than that, other than the flying ship Weatherlight

and Sisay, the captain, not much is said about it. So Michael and I are sort of bemoaning that there's not a more continuous story in Magic. That it seems like every Magic set sort of has its own little mini story, but there didn't seem to be connective tissue. And we're like, hey, we should do that. So we come together.

So we take the idea of the weather light and flesh it out. Because we like the idea of what if you had a cast of characters that are on a device, a ship that itself could travel between planes. So what if every, you know, what if there was this cast of characters that was this continuous cast of characters. And so we go to the Magic Brand team at the time. The brand manager was a guy named Rick Aarons. And we pitched this idea of an ongoing story. And Michael and I pitched a three year story. The first year took place on a plane called RAF.

The second year took place on a plane called Mercadia. And the third took place back on Dominaria. And there's a meta story. If you want to hear the whole story, I've done a podcast on our story. For those that do not know, Michael and I were involved in the early part a meta story. If you want to hear the whole story, I've done a podcast on our story. For those that do not know, Michael and I were involved in the early part of the story. There was a, we had some conflict

with other people working on the story and Rick Aaron chose them over us. So Michael and I stopped working on the story. We were there for roughly the first year. Anyway, I have other podcasts to talk all about that. But the important thing is we pitched this to Rick. Rick is very, very excited about the idea. Very excited about the idea.

So much so that they go and they get an entire creative team to work on this project. Among them, Anson Maddox and Mark Taddeen, two famous magic artists are brought in. Matthew Wilson's brought in. There's a bunch of are brought in. Matthew Wilson's brought in. There's a bunch of people brought in. And anyway, and he's so excited that he decides that he wants, he wants us to start right away in the next set coming out,

which we're going to name Weatherlight to show that it's the beginning of the Weatherlight Saga. There was just one small problem. The set was mostly done. The design was pretty much done. The first art wave had already been sent out. We hadn't got the art back yet, but it had been sent out. So we had one art wave. So some of the cards in most Magic sets, there's multiple art waves. Usually two, sometimes more depending on the set. This was a smaller set. There was two waves. So some of the cards in most Magic sets, there's multiple art waves, usually two, sometimes more depending on the set. This was a smaller set.

There was two waves. So the first wave had already been sent out, meaning artists were actively working on it. And the second wave was in the middle of being done. And so Michael and I had a rush to figure out, okay, what story are we trying to tell and How do we tell it? so our original plan was that the story began with the ship arriving in wrath and That we were going to explain that you know, so for the real quickly for those that don't know the Weatherlight Saga

The main character is a guy named Gerard Gerard Has a destiny He is born to use something called the legacy which is a guy named Gerard. Gerard has a destiny. He is born to use something called the legacy, which is a whole bunch of artifacts to save the world. And because there's a lot of people that want him dead because of his destiny, he's said to be raised by a man named Sadaracondo who lives in Jamora. And Sadar Kondo has a son named Vhul. Jarrar and Vhul become great friends but eventually Vhul becomes jealous of Jarrar because of his father's treatment of Jarrar and a bitter schism happens.

Vhul would leave and go to the plane to wrath and become Vhul of Wrath or Vohrath who's one of the main villains in the story Anyway Volrath kidnaps Sisay which starts the whole thing Gerard had Gerard had come had joined the ship originally with two friends Mirri who's a cat warrior and Raffaellus who is an elf from Lanowar During an incident Raffaellus gets killed by Mornfrid and Gelfred, and Gerard leaves the

ship. Gerard and Mary leave the ship. They're so sad they leave the ship. So when the story begins, Cisse gets kidnapped and Tomgarth, who's the second command at the time, goes and finds Gerard and basically says to him, we need your help. You know, you owe Sisay a lot. You know, she was there for you when you needed her. Well, she needs you.

And Gerard reluctantly agrees to come and captain the ship to go get Sisay back. There's a whole, so Michael and I created a whole series of cast members for the ship. We wanted to represent all the colors so Gerard was white also we made Oram who was a healer. Blue there's this young cocky wizard named Urtai that we came up with. In black we had a nobleman named Krovaks who eventually becomes a vampire. We thought he couldn't start a vampire because no one would let a vampire on the ship. In red

we have Tomgarth is a Minotaur and Squee is a goblin, sort of comic relief. And then in green we have Mary who's a cat warrior. Also we have Sista who's white mostly. Um Anyway, we made those characters and so a lot of the story was us sort of establishing the characters So the real short version of the Weatherlight story is Sissy gets kidnapped Tangarth and the Weatherlight come to Gerard Gerard reluctantly says okay, I'll help you He convinces them that,

so they had to go pick up Mary's. They were going to do this, I want Mary. So they go get Mary who was in Lannowar, grieving with the Lannowar elves about Ruffalo's because she's the one that went and told them he had died. They go to go get help from the Tolarian Academy. Baron, who is Hannah's father, Baron is like Urza's right-hand man, gives

them Urtau, who's this young wizard to help them. He's a little cocky, but he's a good wizard. Then they end up going in order to find the way back. There's a connection. I won't get into it. They have to go talk to Krovacs. Krovacs used to have an angel name, Selenia. That's a connection. Anyway, they need to get information from Krovacs used to have an angel named Selenia that's a connection. And anyway, they need to get information from Krovacs. And then Krovacs leads them to Meraxes and then Gerard is fighting Meraxes and Stark ends up saving Gerard from Meraxes. He stabs Meraxes back and kills him. And then you learn from Stark.

Stark is someone who used to work for Volrath. Volrath kidnaps Stark's daughter, Takara. And Stark is like, if you promise to rescue Takara, I will help you rescue Sissay. But Stark is on the crew, but you can't really trust him. And he would later get murdered in Mercadia. But anyway, the idea is, okay, we're gonna do the preamble of the story.

Weatherlight's gonna talk about the picking up of all the characters, and then the story ends with them going through the portal to get to Wrath, because they've learned that they're in Wrath. Now here was the challenge. We had a lot of story to tell, and we had very little space to

tell it in. Now remember the cards were designed, the designs are locked or mostly locked. I mean we had a little bit of flexibility but the cards are mostly done. The art is being commissioned and we have like a tiny window to get art. So the problem was we didn't know what the characters looked like. So I think that the team was quickly able to put together what Gerard looked like so Gerard shows up he's on master arms there's a card called Gerard's wisdom and there's a few cards like devil loyalty where they show Gerard and Stark I think we figure out what Stark looked like but there's a lot of things we didn't know most of

characters were not figured out till Tempest. In fact, one of the funny stories is there was a card that was originally named Steel Golem. And we said, oh, well, we wanted, I'm sorry, originally it was called Silver Golem. We thought maybe it could be Karn. We like Karn being a Silver Golem. But when the art came back, it just didn't, Karn was kind of what we call a gentle giant archetype.

So he needed to be really big and the character was very small. So we ended up changing it to steel golem. So the steel golem, like we were like, oh, this looks right. Maybe we'll make this Karn. And we ended up not. But like, luckily it was a card that stole a creature. So we turned that into abduction. So we could show Cisse.

Oh, we figured out what Cisse looked like. Although maybe Cisse was known from Mirage and Visions. Anyway, so what happened was we had to do a lot of figuring out, okay, how do we convey the things we need to convey? So one of the things we did is we took a lot of characters that just were there. Most of them were done in the first wave. Abberoth, Meraxes, Morranfrinn, Gallibrave, those existed. We did not make those characters, or I should say, we did not make how they looked or something.

They were just characters made that were just for the set. We might've turned some of them into legends so we can make characters, other than maybe, maybe we turned them into legends. But we took a lot of stuff that was already commissioned and then like, oh, and they get Mirri, they have to help Mirri capture the Aberroth. And then when they go to see

Krovacs Mournfin and Galabrider there and then we wove in that these were the same creatures that killed Ruffalo's and anyway we did a lot of weaving in of stories to make things happen and by the end of it basically all the characters we need to get were on the Weatherlight crew they're all there and then we ended up but um we don't tell a lot of the story a lot of the story is mostly done in flavor text uh if you look at the set there's maybe maybe 10 arts where there's a Weatherlight character in it mostly Gerard um and a lot of what we pulled off was we did flavor text there's some stuff where like one of the cards we decided was Sissies mother because it wasn't sissies

But we we use the flavor text to talk about sissies mom and sissies and so we we got as creative as we could Because like I said, we were calling the set Weatherlight. We were selling it as beginning of the Weatherlight saga Now we did write a bunch of stories and put them online and like we wove it in as much as we could. Now when you get to Tempest, Tempest like it's ingrained. Like there is a thing we did in the Duelist where we showed, where we showed like we did like the story in Story Beats showing through art in the cards and there like once we had control over everything and we knew the

Satin and we we can manipulate what's going on and have story reflect stuff like Tempest is really ingrained. It's very very much in the set Okay, so let's walk through some of the cards that are in the set just some of the famous cards So no rod is an artifact that costs two players Players can't play artifacts that require an activation. So this sort of shut down Mox's. It was one of those things we made that could answer some of the threats that were in larger formats. So this card saw a lot of play.

Interestingly, interestingly, the art hadn't been done for it. Now we couldn't really change the card because we liked the card, but we put Gerard on it. So like it shows Gerard using the null rod. And then there's a point in the story where we had him use the null rod. So like we show him using the null rod and then he uses it in one part of the story

to save the day, I forget which part of the story. Lotus Veil, so Lotus Veil is a land. When it entered, you sacked two lands and then it tapped for three men of any color. So this is a good example. I'm a big believer in the equity of words. And what that means is I think words have power. And that if words, so there's certain words

that we've only done in certain contexts that players are excited by. So for example, the word mocks or the word lotus means something to people. You know, if you see a mocks, you have some idea that, oh, this is a powerful thing. And so we made this card. I was the advocate of like, we need to get lotus in the name. You're turning a lamp into a lotus and tap for three colors of mana. Now one of the things we learned and the reason you don't see a lot of stuff like this anymore is it's not that hard to untap lands. We make cards that

untap lands and that when you make lands tap for multiple mana, it's just not that hard to produce a lot of mana out of them. And so you'll notice now, we don't even really tap lands to tap for two mana anymore. Um, mostly they tap for one. So you just have to be very careful that tapping for multiple mana, it's very easy to abuse it, especially in older formats. Next up firestorm. So firestorm is an instant that costs one red mana. Um, so the way firestorm works is you discard X cards when you cast it, then you deal X

damage to X, to X targets. So for example, let's say you spend one red mana and you sacrifice four, not sacrifice, discard four cards. I now am doing four damage to four targets. So that allows you for very little mana to do a lot of damage to a lot of things. Now given you're discarding cards, so the reason this is in the set

is part of caring about graveyard is caring about filling up your graveyard. And so the set had a lot of stuff like discard effects and sac effects to help you fill up your graveyard so you can use your graveyards slash care about your graveyard. But Firestorm was a very effective card. It allowed you to have answers on turn one because all the resources you need you already had. It allowed you to have answers on turn one because all the resources you need you already had You know on turn one if I have one, you know if I had the ability to produce one red mana and I have firestorm in my hand I can get rid of whatever they put out because I can do a lot of damage to things if I need to because I have the resources now It was one of those things where a lot of times we make cards that go yeah but this card to cards

is a big cost and then it turns out well you know it can be very efficient and a lot of times with Firestorm you can three for one people four for one people like you can do stuff in which yeah you're losing cards but you're destroying so many different creatures that it can be worth it and so this is one of those cards that ended up being a lot more powerful than I thought when we made it. Next Goblin Bomb. Goblin Bomb is an enchantment for one in red. Each turn you flip a coin and then either you add a counter or remove a counter from the thing and then if you remove five counters from it you can sac it to do 20 damage to a player. Basically, I mean, not in commander, but in most formats 20 damage enough to kill a player so the idea is now when we made this card coin flipping what there wasn't

a lot of interacting with coin flipping so the idea was I really had to essentially flip you know five in a row you know on five turns flip my way and that is that's very very hard to do but You start getting cards that interact with coin flipping like What's the card um? Crack thumb or you have something proliferate that can sort of get you more counters and it got a lot became a little more usable Than it was we originally made it Next up doomsday black black black for a sorcery pay half your life round it up

And then you shuffle your grave into your library, and then you remove all but five cards from your library. So you're sort of setting yourselves up. The problem is, when you can't draw a card, you lose the game. So it's sort of like, well, I'm setting myself up for the best possible next five turns, but if I don't win in those five turns, I will lose.

In Doomsday, it is a very black card. It is like high reward, high risk. And people have done a lot of fun things with it, so it's definitely a very fun card. Okay, Gemstone Mine. So Gemstone Mine was a land. It came with three mining counters. And then you can tap it and remove a mining counter to add any color if Ever there's not three or whatever. There's no counters on it. You sacrifice it

So I made this card I think I called it three shot city of brass so city of brass was a card Richard made in Arabian nights I could tap for any color mana, but it did the damage to you And so I was trying to sort of say okay. I like that have any color let's get a different things rather than damaging because they're a different way to go about it. And the idea that I really liked that I was really fascinated there was a card in Homelands called serrated arrows where you got three uses of it and I really liked the idea of limited uses I thought that was really cool that the restriction was how often you could

use it. That same card would inspire me that same my love of this thing would inspire me to make energy down the road But anyway, I this idea was okay What are you the land the restriction to three colorness or five colorness is you only get to use it three times? Now once again with things like proliferate there's some things now that allow you to sort of use it or sometimes people will bounce in replay it proliferate there's some things now that allow you to sort of use it or sometimes people will bounce and replay it. Okay next, Ophidian. Two and a blue for a one three, it's a snake, it's a creature. If you attacked and aren't blocked, you can instead of doing damage, like I said it's

a one three, you can draw a card. So this is what the old school version of the saboteur ability. So nowadays when I say a saboteur ability what I mean is it's a card that when it deals damage to the opponent triggers and does something. Thieving Magpie would be the modern version of of Ophidian. What we now the ability we now call curiosity. I think at the time they're like oh this is a big deal and so like saboteur used to work for you, you had to give up your damage in order to do that. But since this card only had one power, I don't know, the way they thought at the time was like, oh, what's going to get through?

And how do I show this is going to get through is that it's not blocked. So eventually what we figured out was just A, it's easier to say you hit the opponent, that's just cleaner and simpler rather than, oh, I'm not blocked in the night, do something. And second is you just didn't need to give up the damage. The interesting thing about Ophidian is

there would be a deck, an Ophidian deck that John Finkel would win the US nationals with. And that's the year that he won the US nationals and then he later won the world championship. And people winning their nationals and winning the championship doesn't happen a lot. There's a handful of people that have done it. And I think John might be the only person that won the US nationals to then win the world championship, I believe. Maybe I'm missing something

I apologize if I forgot um, but anyway a fitting he made a fitting a pretty high card Debt of loyalty are our final card today because we're running out of time here that a loyalty cause one white white It's an instant regenerate target creature then gain control of it gain Gain control on a white card. So early magic we definitely goofed around and tried different things. This card by the way shows Gerard feeling that he he's obligate like Stark had helped him by defeating Moraxas and so Gerard's like I owe you one and this is how Stark gets in good with him. But we show that on the art of dead of loyalty. We really moved away from white stealing things. There's a card called Preacher in the Dark.

And then there's another card that's in Time Spiral that's like a preacher throwback. But other than that, white really doesn't steal things anymore. This is not what white's doing. But it's us, I don't know, messing around in space. One of the things about early magic is it took us a few years. I was a very adamant color pie. I was the big sort of color pie advocate. And it just took me a while to sort

of get us to stop like, you know, be cool, this thing that we don't do and this, what if this color did it? It doesn't normally do it. And whoa, whoa. Whoa, let's like colors should be good at things I'm the other color should be bad at things and it took me a little while to sort of get that I eventually got R&D on board. I mean now we have the council colors, but it took a little time Anyway, looking back at weather light it was like I said, it was the first set the first third set of a block It was the first set done first third set of a block it was the first set done internally at least to be released it was one of the early very themed sets it's the first graveyard set with a graveyard theme and so there's a lot

going on there it definitely was it's a set that started off the Weatherlight side I mean there was a lot Weatherlight had a lot of moving pieces there and it was, it was generally well received. And I, like I said, it was the start of us, like it was the first, it was interesting that the very first third set itself had a little theme that wasn't in the first two, sort of laying some track of where third sets ended up being. But anyway, it was a fun set. It was a memorable set. I think I did a lot of things for the first time and introduced a lot of cool concepts.

And that my friends is Weatherlight. So continuing on my quest to talk about every magic expansion. Anyway guys, I am at work. So we all know what that means. Means the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to make a magic.

I'll see you all next time. Bye bye.