Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1259: Edge of Eternities Vision Design with Ethan Fleischer

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

In this podcast, I sit down with Ethan Fleischer, the vision design lead for Edge of Eternities, to talk about the making of the set.

I'm not pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work at home edition Okay. Well today I've Ethan Fleischer the vision design lead of edge of eternities So I thought maybe we talk about the vision design of edge of eternities. Hey, Ethan Okay, so, um So I want to set set the scene here. So Ethan for years, I mean years has been pitching a space opera set. That is true.

We used to, every once in a while we would have these offsite meetings where people could like pitch a magic set. And I think the very first one that I was at, I pitched the idea of space opera magic set. And I think the very first one that I was at, I pitched the idea of space opera magic set with five planets, one for each color. So what happened is I'm part of arc planning where we plan things ahead. We figured out we're going to do a space set. And I have to go find the vision leader like I,

I know who's leading this product. like I know who's leading this product. So. I definitely am very well acquainted with this genre. Not only have I seen all of the popular movies and TV shows, but I actually did a lot of, I'm always interested in the history of things. And so I went back and read the like foundational texts of the space opera medium. This was years ago, well

before I started working at Wizards. So I went all the way back to like the 1920s basically and read the original novels that kind of started the whole sub genre. So anyway, I knew you were well prepared. So let's start at the very beginning. I mean, you were there for Exploratory. So like, how do we make a space-separat set? I don't think I was there for... Oh, you're not there for Exploratory, you're just for Vision? I don't think I was on the Exploratory design team.

So I just swooped in for Vision. Yeah, I think you did swoop in for Vision. Okay. I think maybe I was in the last few weeks of Exploratory. Exploratory is us just saying what could we do and we obviously just went through infinite mechanics. Yeah. Yeah, so why don't we start with the big challenge which led to something that we didn't end up doing but let's start there. So one of the biggest challenges, and we knew this going in,

I remember in exploratory we were writing like, what are the big challenges of space opera? And so what I consider one of the biggest problems is what we'll call a scope problem, which is like an normal story, like it takes place in a city, but like in science fiction, especially space opera, it's not cities, it's planets. And it's not like you have a car, you have a spaceship that's, you know, as large as a planet, you know.

Yeah, I mean, one of the most important elements of space opera is that sense of wonder, the idea that the universe is vast, this technology is incredibly powerful. Yes, the the sort of setting of the story is an entire galaxy and you can fly to different stars. And yeah, the scale and scope need to be tremendous. They need to be bigger than any other magic set, right? And so one of the things we spent a lot of time exploring in vision design was oversized cards. Like what is bigger? How do you make a magic card bigger? Well, you physically make a larger magic card.

And this is something that we've played around with in certain products like Plane Chase has cards that have twice as much surface area as a regular Magic card. They don't shuffle into your deck. Dual Masters, which is the Japanese trading card game that we make also makes use of oversized cards and those ones actually can fold so they go into the they can fit it to the normal size booster pack we've done meld before which is a way to get to two magic cards and put them next to each other you know so that they form a giant magic card essentially so we've played around with this space quite a bit so that they form a giant magic card essentially. So we've played around with this space quite a bit.

In various contexts. You're forgetting one. We made a product called the Transformers TCG and that product actually is large, the booster pack is larger and in each pack you get one large card and then a bunch of normal size cards. Right, I did forget about that one.

Yeah, so like we've done this before. It's certainly physically possible to do it in a variety of ways, but ultimately, Meld didn't have the flavor that we wanted. Like Meld is very much about like, okay, we're taking this thing and that thing and connecting them together, which is not really what happens when you build a giant spaceship or something. It didn't didn't feel

quite right. And then the considerable time after the handoff from vision to set design the product architects determined that the production costs of oversized cards would be so high that we would have had to raise the price on the booster packs and so that that's a that's a big Rubicon that we don't want to cross yeah we don't want a magic set that's just more expensive than other ones. Well, let's just explain to the audience a little bit. One of the things that we assumed is, oh, hey, Duel Masters does this. Hey, Transformers does this. We can do it. We can print it. We can do it. And what we didn't realize is the scope of magic, ironically, today's theme is scope and scale.

It really is. The scope of magic, ironically, today's theme is scope and scale. Magic is so big that there are things that you could get away with. Like, for example, some products are small enough, you could print them at just one single printer. And there might be a single printer that can do things that other printers can't. But magic is so large and you have to print it so many different places that there are things that you might be able to get away with a small product that magic just can't. But magic is so large and you have to print it so many different places that there are things that you might be able to get away with a small product that magic just can't do or not in a realistic way do. And that is that's what sunk it. Can't do it economically in a big enough way right?

Yeah. It's like we know these things are possible, but are they practical within the constraints that we have? So that was pretty sad because I was like, this is going to be the big thing. The big we call it a key selling point, right? We have giant magic cards this time. It's going to knock their socks off. Can you explain how they worked? Because I have not talked about that yet.

We talked about they went away, but that's explain people. If they if we could have done them, how how they worked? Because I have not talked about that yet. We talked about they went away, but just explain to people. If we could have done them, how did they work? So the way that they worked as of the handoff was there were cards in the booster pack, regular magic cards that did a thing, but then also had an additional ability that said like, arrive at the void cathedral or what have you so like and the void cathedral would be one of these oversized cards a giant spaceship so there could be more than one card that would arrive that would um cause you to arrive at a particular cosmic card which is what we called the the oversized cars cosmic cards represented anything that was huge so like a giant spaceship a planet a supernova I think we even had one that

was a creature it was like a giant space worm or something yeah yeah so it just anything that was huge got got to be a cosmic card and yeah so you know there were instances sorceries and all kinds of things we had sagas that got got to be a cosmic card. And yeah, so you know, there were instances, sorceries and all kinds of things. We had sagas that got got you to a cosmic card. Yeah, a variety of different things. But yeah, in general, there were some number of cosmic cards and then a larger number of cards that could get you to get that cosmic card. And I believe we were banking on the idea that we could have the hacks collated

such that if there was a card that fetched a cosmic card, that cosmic card would be in the same booster pack with the card that fetched it. Also something surprisingly harder to do when one would think it might be. Yes, yeah, it's really interesting how some of our vendors, the printers that print the cards, have all sorts of really fancy technology that like, it feels like sorcery sometimes, the things they could do.

And then some of them are not nearly as far along and are doing things in a more traditional fashion. And so things that one vendor can do, not necessarily every vendor can do. Right. And with Magic, we need enough vendors to do it because it's so many, Magic is so big and it takes many many people printing it. Yes. Okay, so you got to it, what happened when you got to it? So you ventured to the... Oh, then, so then you would have this oversized card, it would be laid out in a landscape format. You know, normally a Magic card is taller than it is wide. For these cosmic cards,

we want them to be wider than they were tall, mostly because we knew a lot of them were going to represent gigantic spaceships, which generally tend to be longer than they are tall. And the cosmic cards would have a track along it with little nodes that you could place counters on. So you would move a counter along the track. Various things would cause you to move the counter along. And there were certain nodes that had abilities associated with them. And once the counter got to one of those nodes,

the ability would be unlocked on the thing, on the cosmic card. So in general, they were very powerful things. And a lot of these, you know, a lot of the conditions for the track, the counter moving along the track would be kind of build around things. You know, if you cast an artifact spell, move the counter along the track, things like that. So they were kind of a little mini board game that would unlock abilities. And because the different nodes can do different things, it sort of be like, on the second time you do this something,

on the fourth time you do it something, and sometimes it would unlock permanent things about it, right? Yes. It would gain static abilities or become a creature or something that Yeah, sometimes it would just do a triggered thing like create some tokens or something But yes, sometimes it would say this becomes a creature with lifeline convigilance things like that Okay, so obviously

For I will have a podcast with with the set lead who is Andrew Brown, who's going to talk about what happens later. So we handed it off, Cosmic were awesome. We actually played, we mocked up actually large cards for our Vision Design Summit. It went really well and everyone loved them. And so that was the glorious moment where everyone was playing with giant cards. Yep, it was cool. I think it was working well. It's too bad that reality got in the way. Yes, damn reality. Okay, so let's move on and talk about some other aspects of the set. So I'm gonna, next let's talk about Warp. What do you remember of the origin of Warp? Right, so an important element of space opera is that you can travel faster than light.

You can go from one solar system to another, and to do that you have to go faster than light because light takes years to go to other solar systems and we don't have years to tell a story. So the concept of warping space, of going into hyperspace has been around for as long as the almost as long as the genre existed as a sort of somewhat plausible physical explanation for how a spaceship could go faster than light. So like I expect most people with any familiarity with this genre to know about going to warp or warp speed or creating a wormhole ever. So that was something that we were keen to represent with a mechanic because it's such a key element of the genre that we were working with. And we played around with

some things. And the thing that we really liked was the idea that things were moving between zones. Like zones kind of feel like dimensions of reality. And so playing around with like, oh, the battlefield represents normal space and maybe the exile zone represents hyperspace. So you can warp into hyperspace by going into the exile zone represents hyper space. So you can warp into hyper space by going into the exile zone.

And so we landed on an ability that played kind of similarly to a few other mechanics, kind of like evoke in a way, like a creature could come in and then warp away into exile. Instead of going into the graveyard, it would go into the exile zone where it could eventually come back.

Why don't we tell you what warp actually does? Because I feel like we're talking around it. Oh, that's true. That's right here. I will read. I've got it. Oh, you got it? Okay.

So a creature with warp has a keyword that says warp, and then it has a cost. then the reminder text says you may cast this card from your hand for its warp cost exile this creature at the beginning of the next end step then you may cast it from exile on a later turn so basic and almost all of them have entrance the battlefield triggers on them so like they'll come in or they have haste that's another way to make a simple work card that does something relevant. And almost always, maybe always all of the work costs are lower than the normal casting cost. So

here's a common, can I talk about cards? Yeah, we can. The cards will be revealed. All right, so Light Knight Luminary here is a four mana creature that when it enters you make a 1-1 Soldier token. It has warp for 1 and a white so you can pay 2 mana to get a 1-1. And then on a later turn you can pay 4 mana to get a 3-2 and another 1-1, or you can just cast it for four mana to get a 3-2 and 1-1 token. So it has some options and kind of acts as a mana sink and limited and can make a lot of really appealing cards. Like creatures with the Internet of Battlefield triggers are generally an appealing shape that can lead to a lot of cards

that people want to play with. So we were pretty happy with this and had a good reflected the concept of warping through space pretty well and also had a very playable and fun mechanic. Yeah, I think Andrew came with it and we put it in and it I mean it changed a little bit over time but essentially the essence of it didn't change. Yeah. Okay, let's move on to Void. Void was an interesting one. Well, let me read Void first and then we'll talk about.

Yeah, talk about what Void is. Void says, at the beginning of your end step, you do something, sorry, at the beginning of your end step, do something unless a non-land permanent left the battlefield this turn or a spell was warped. Or do I? No, that's wrong. Sorry, I think I read a weird one. I'll read it.

At the beginning, it's an ability word. At the beginning of your end step, if a nonland permanent left the battlefield this turn or a spell was warped this turn, do something. A triggered ability happens. So in the case of insatiable Skittermaw, at the beginning of your end step, if a nonland permanent left the battlefield this turn or a spell was warped this turn, put a plus one plus one counter on this creature. But there can be all sorts of outputs. It could make tokens, it could draw cards, any number of things.

This one was much more inspired by the specific world building of the Edge of Eternity's setting that the world building of the edge of eternity is setting that the world building team worked on. We got to sort of see where they were going with their world building throughout vision design. But even at the beginning of vision design, they'd already, the world building team had already done a bunch of work on the edge. And everybody loved the monoists, which are these worshipers of the singularity, the black hole like object in the middle of the star system, where the where the

edge of eternity takes place, the Sophera system. They were just so cool. This whole idea just really was exciting. It was clearly the coolest of the factions. I love all these factions. I think they're great, but there's something special about these monohists that just like, oh, this feels meaty. So I think the mechanic was always called void.

I think we're just like, it's gotta be called void. We don't. Yeah. Warp and void never changed. They started as what they were. They never changed their name. Yeah. So, yeah.

And so like this, this interacts with a bunch of things. It interacts with sacrificing things, it interacts with, you know, so like, we'll get to lander tokens in a minute, but like it interacts with the lander tokens, it interacts with warp, both on the front end and the back end. I think originally, our original version of void only cared about a permanent leaving the battlefield that turn, and then later the additional thing about a spell being warped was added to give it a little

additional juice. Yeah, the handoff from Vision was Void, if an artifact or a creature was put into a graveyard exile from the battlefield this turn, effect. Okay, so yeah, so the specifics of it changed a little bit, but it's a little stronger than what we handed off, but it has has more interaction. Yeah. And the impetus much like warp was very influenced by like, I would say evoke this, this mechanic was very influenced by morbid, right? Oh, sort of we wanted morbid but morbid didn't quite hit everything we needed to hit especially artifacts which was important yeah it didn't hit artifacts and it needed to care about exiling right because the mechanic sends things into exile yes yes uh and so and morbid wasn't, the word wasn't right and you know, it had a... Yes, that's true also, yeah.

Okay, so you mentioned the Lander tokens. Let's talk about the Lander tokens. So, what was, how do we get the Lander tokens? Let's talk about the origin of Lander tokens. Well, I mean... I remember what I believe is the origin. Okay, go ahead. So one of the things that we've been playing around with, we have to go all the way back to Shadows over Innistrad. We were trying to get the idea of how do you get like half a card or whatever and we ended up making clue tokens and that began a love of R&T and artifact tokens that there's just something very compelling about I get a token that I then could spend man on like we can we can

give you a reward that still has some cost built into it and so we got to food and we got to try to treasure them and cost built in. But we got to a lot of artifact tokens. And so one of the things that we keep talking about is what else can we do with artifact tokens that's useful and just a generally interesting thing. And so I believe this started as the idea of what if it was land fetching? What if the token got you land? That's where I think that's where we started. I think that, yes, and I think the version that we handed off was a double faced token like the yes, like the token.

Do you want me to read it? I have it in front of me. Oh, yeah. Tell me. Tell them what. Create a Lander token. It's an artifact with two tap, transform this artifact. It transforms into a settlement artifact land token with tap, add one mana to any type that a land you control could produce. Right. So, yeah, so that was a, you know, we it to be able to ramp you because we knew that this was going to be a slow magic set

where you could get the big mana costs, right? Or at least that's the goal, right? If this is gonna be the cosmic set where everything is huge, that implies that people should be casting some gigantic spells. So we wanted to have something that would ramp you that version that cares about The mana that you already the colors and types that you already have access to Doesn't fix your man. It doesn't give you access to all colors or anything

It just ramps you which I think was it was it was a goal at the time Well, not make it make this format too easy to splash things. There's another issue too. We were influenced by the incubate token from March of the Machine. We were playing around with having a double-faced token. That is true, the back has to be universal, meaning we couldn't have a lot of different backs, we'd have one back.

And so the reflecting pool was kind of like, well, anybody can make this. So what are we doing? And like, oh, well, I guess it can produce any color mana that you like. It was a way to sort of give you some flexibility without, but it always being the same thing. Yep. But ultimately, you know, the set design team changed the landers to actually sacrifice, which, you know, makes it

interact with the the void mechanic, and search for basic land cards. So it's essentially a rampant growth token, kind of. So, which, you know, very appealing for a variety of formats also, right? This is a kind of token that I would be happy to play with in any of the formats that I enjoy. It sounds like a good token to have around. Yes, it got very clear. Okay, one last mechanical thing. We handed over, there was one other mechanic in the set, the set returning mechanic that ended up getting swapped out for landfall

Um, we had modified went up a little bit about hanging over modified yeah, we one of the the sort of trope clusters of science fiction is that uh, the characters have a lot of technology and um the characters have a lot of technology and technology in magic is represented usually by artifacts and a lot of those artifacts could be equipment that you could carry around and so and it also just is sort of a very positive constructive sort of setting usually where where technology is improving, people are improving. So the idea of

modified, which is a game concept that cares about whether a creature has a counter or or an equipment attached to it. or an equipment attached to it, felt like a resonant concept here, because we knew we were gonna have a bunch of equipment, and we knew we were probably gonna wanna put a bunch of plus one plus one counters on things, and like, all right, we'll let Oris come along for the ride too, because why not?

Yeah, so it felt resident ultimately like It's a it takes a lot of structural support You need a lot of counters you need a lot of equipment you need a lot of or as to make modified work and limited and Yeah, I think I think that it was Judged to be a little too much of a constraint by the set design team But I guess I'll let Andrew talk about that. Yes judged to be a little too much of a constraint by the set design team but I guess I'll let Andrew talk about that when he does his interview. Okay so we've talked about all the mechanics so I want to talk a little bit

about just the general feel of the set right I mean one of the reasons we were eager to have you lead this is, you really understood the space opera genre. What were things beyond just the mechanics that you felt the set needed to have to capture that? Well, something that was important was that we were introducing a whole new setting to Magic. This felt like it wasn't just a plane in the multiverse it was kind of a whole new almost a new multiverse that well it has obviously

has some connection to the place where people like Jason Chandra live it's very different in a lot of ways and it seemed like it had a lot of potential to, for us to come back here again and again. And so we kind of wanted to make this outing, Edge of Eternities, sort of our introduction to the Edge as a setting. And we kind of approached it, like, all right, let's let's strip this

thing down to the basic elements of magic. Like, what if alpha, the first magic set was set in the edge instead of in the multiverse. And so we really focused on what each of the colors was doing. And there were five factions here. Each faction was aligned with one color. And that really aligns very well with, I think, Richard Garfield's approach to the colors in Alpha. Like, the colors in alpha really feel like factions like there are, you know, bad moon buffs all of your black creatures and fear can't affect black creatures like the

colors feel like factions in a way that we don't often do. Sometimes we do it in other Magic Sets, but it really, really felt like that was, that was the structural North Star for this set, was like monocolor factions, not rewards for playing monocolor, but you know, sort of making each of the colors feel like it had a personality

and a sort of distinct creative skin. Yeah, one of the challenges with the set that I think we always kept our eye on was that we were trying to do a space opera, but we were also trying to make sure that it was magic, it felt like magic. And I do agree that from the very, very beginning, the idea that there are like five that, uh, from the very, very beginning, the idea that

there are like five sort of planets that are the colors, like the lens of the color pie is kind of what the environment is. I thought it was really cool. Yeah. And also there were like science fiction, more broadly speaking is a big and diverse genre and has lots of sub genres of which space opera is only one of them. And so we were kind of, I don't want to spoil our future plans too much, but we kind of thought about like, okay, what are some other things that we can do

in the edge that isn't space opera? Let's make sure we're not accidentally kind of doing things that belong in those other sub genres. And we do tease a little bit in this set. Yes, yes. There are definitely a lot of little teases. You know, there's one card that makes sliver tokens and there's one Eldrazi in the set. Like we've got a lot of little hints about what else is out there in the edge. But those aren't those things aren't the focus this time, right? This time, we're focusing on the Sothera system and what's going

on in this one solar system where lots of exciting stuff is happening. And even that solar system, that's huge compared to any other magic setting. The biggest other magic setting, you could say like Dominaria is huge. It's a gigantic planet with lots of continents. You could say Kaldheim is huge. It's a plane with 10 different realms in it, each of which is kind of its own little mini plane. But this one, I think is the biggest and I hope it feels like the biggest. Yeah I think it does. So anyway, that is our time, Ethan.

So any last thoughts for our audience on Edge of Eternities? Yeah, I hope you really have fun exploring the Sothera system. I just kind of want to call out the world building team on this one. I think they absolutely nailed it. If I had been in charge of world building for this, I would have taken it in a very different direction

and it would have been much poorer for it. I really think that this is a unique setting not only for magic but just for science fiction in general and I love it. Okay well thank you so much I'm so you, I was happy you finally got a chance to make your space opera set. So that was very cool. So was I. But I can see my desk. So we all know what 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. So thank you so much for being with us, Ethan. My pleasure as always. And to everybody else, I will see you next time. Bye bye.