Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1345: Landfall

Episode Date: May 29, 2026

In this episode, I talk about the history of one of Magic's greatest mechanics, landfall.

I'm born out the parking lot. We all know what that means. Or maybe we do. It's time for other drive from work. So this morning, I did a podcast. I thought it was almost perfect. And then I realized after I was done, I messed something up. So I'm fixing on the way home today.

So we're going to take two for me, take one for you. Hopefully you guys didn't hear my other version. But anyway, guys, today I'm going to talk all about landfall. I did a talk where I picked the best mechanics of all time. and in top five was Landfall, an excellent mechanic. So today, we're going to talk about where Landfall came from, how it got designed, and then talk a little bit about why Landfall was very influential in Magic Design.

So that is the topic today. Okay, so our story begins back in 2003. My boss, Randy Bueller, promotes me to head designer. And as part of being head designer, Randy had a thing he called the five-year plan. And so right now, nowadays, we have what we call the arc planning team. There's a whole team that figures out what the upcoming sets are. But back then, I was the arc planning team. So the idea of the five-year plan was Randy wanted me to pitch my ideas for five years in a row.

Ended up being a seven-year plan. I had a lot of ideas. But anyway, one of my ideas that I pitched was I liked the idea. At the time, I was looking for sort of like mechanical clusters that we could design around. And one of the ideas I was very enamored by was the idea of a land cluster, of a set that's all about land mechanics. And I was very intrigued by this. I was very excited by it. I was mostly alone, though. Mostly the other R&D members used to make fun of me.

I remember Matt Place used to joke. Finally, I said where land matters. But anyway, I pitched this idea to Randy And Randy liked the idea that I was inspired That something I was passionate about Even if I was mostly alone in my passion So he ended up putting it at the end I think it was the seventh year and the seven year plan

But originally I called up a land set And then enough people just bulked I ended up I started calling it Lanzapalooza So anyway, I was very excited for the idea But, so Randy's boss was Bill Rose. Bill was less excited by it. But Bill, I mean, Bill understood that I was excited by it. But Bill said it means here's what we're going to do.

At the time, this was back when it was design and development. Design was a year long. He said, I will give you three months. At the end of three months, you and I will play. If I'm happy with what I see, you are fine. But if I'm not happy, we're going to audible, and we are not going to do a land theme. We're going to change to something else.

So I had three months to prove to Bill that the land theme was a viable theme. So we spent those first three months the vision design, not vision design, design team at the time, coming up with every different mechanic we can make, every land mechanic we could come up with.

And my memory is we had we had a lot of them. We had, I think it was 46 mechanics, I believe. That's my memory. In the 40s. So we tried a lot of different things. And we found some things we liked that were good and small number. But I really wanted to find a marquee mechanic, something that was going to be the centerpiece of what the set was.

And so number 45, so there's a card called Goblin Rock Jockey. And so what Gobbin Rock Jackie does is it says, I don't remember the exact stats, but it was a power toughness for a manacost that normally you would never get that power toughness for the manacosts. But you could only play the card if you haven't played a land before. And once you play the creature, you can't play a land that turn. Essentially, it used your land slot kind of as a cost. And we thought that was interesting. So we made a whole mechanic where the idea was that you could spend.

your land mechanic. You're saying your land drop. That your land drop was a thing that you could spend. Now, the interesting thing about it was the idea that, hey, once I don't have land anymore, I have this resource that I can't use,

right? Obviously, early turns, when I have a land in my hand, I can play a land drop. But once I stop, I run out of land, then I have land drops that I can't use. And so the idea of this was, would it be interesting that you then could use that resource?

That was the idea. So I play land, and then when I run out of land, I have access to this extra resource and that my land drop that would be going unused, all of a sudden had purpose. That was our idea. So we made this,

and then we did some playtesting. We played testing with people outside the team as well. And what we discovered was, once again, the idea was, for the experience player, is you go, oh, well, if I can play a land, I will play a land. But if I can't play a land,

who had this resource I can use. What we found when we gave it to people outside the playtest team is they just would use it whenever they could, even when they shouldn't. So, for example, it's like, oh, on turn two, I could play this creature that I normally could never play on turn two. Well, I guess I'll play on turn two. Just not play my land turn two. And then what would happen is the opponent at some point got an answer for that,

and then they were just behind the whole game. essentially it's a mechanic that made less experienced players just screw themselves over basically and the worst part about it was they would lose in a way that they didn't understand why they were losing. So like it's a mechanic that made you lose but without any knowledge or understanding of why you lost which was not ideal.

And so it was a bad mechanic. It was just it was a bad mechanic. So I had this. this idea. I go, this mechanic is so bad. What if we did the exact opposite of the mechanic? What if we did

the opposite of it? And so the idea was, instead of letting you spend your land drop to do something else, what if when you use your land drop, you got rewarded? That every time you dropped the land, something happened. So rather than making

you not play land, it made you play land. So we made that, and And it was very fun. It was surprisingly fun. And then, I think the thing that finally made me realize how amazing it was, was I was playing, and this is like the first or second game we played with it.

It's late in the game, and I have a bunch of landfall creatures on the board, so I want to draw land. So here I am in the game, please be a land, please be a land, please be a land. And I'm like, when in the world did I ever late game, want to draw a land and I realized there's something cool there. It was making me do really cool things. And another thing I realized about it was something that I really appreciated was it had

a lenticularness to it. So for those that don't know, lenticular is a term I use for a way to design something such that an inexperienced player sees the card differently than an experienced player. Essentially, the idea in the particular usually is you're hiding something that would intimidate the beginner but is exciting to the experienced player. Usually a strategic depth. So here's how it played out with landfall. If you were a less experienced player, basically landfall was just, it rewarded you for doing things you wanted to do. I was going to play land anyway. And it just, so you just got free rewards. It's just sort of like, well, I was going to, I was going to do this thing, it's not, you know, I'm not changing my behavior. I was already going to play

land, but now I get a little reward when I play my lands. But for the experience player, it said, oh, land drops are meaningful, you know, normally when you play in magic, like if you can play a land, most of the time you play a land. You know, if it's the last card in your hand, maybe hold it up to bluff something, you know, maybe if you're going to loot or, I mean, there's reasons you might hold land in your hand, but it's most of the time, the general rule is if you can play a land, yeah, play a land. And so this said, well, maybe, maybe you want to think differently. Maybe I want to hold a land and play it next turn when I better set up for something.

Or maybe I want to wait until I can make use of the ability. You know, if I have enough mana that I can cast the spells I want to cast, maybe I want to hold up my extra land to get more utility out of it because I could play it at the right time and get the right effect. So anyway Once we hit landfall We stop We in fact stopped

Designing more land mechanics What we did is we started optimizing And designing for landfall To make the best versions of landfall So anyway Three months roll by I make my deck Mostly a landfill deck

But it had a few other land things in it And I go and I play Bill Bill literally played one game And he goes, yep, you're good Like he to Bill's credit, well, Bill was skeptical of what we could do.

Once he saw what we did do, he's like, yeah, this is great. He signed off on it and we, Lanzibalooza was a go. And so, so anyway, we put Landfall on the set. Landfall comes out. Landfall is a giant hit. Everybody loves landfall. It was the highest-ridden mechanic in the set,

and by quite a bit, it was a very popular mechanic. And I should stress, We were decently aggressive with it. There were a lot of very powerful, a lot of constructed landfall cards got played. Okay, so we made landfall. Landfall is, you know, definitely very exciting. Okay, so the next time, oh, so before I get to the next time,

so we like the effect enough. Oh, I should stress. Landfall is what is called, it is a, it's an ability word. So, keywords are in which I take an exact line of text and I replace it with a word, you know, multiple words. So it means this means that. An ability word, technically the card doesn't need anything.

In fact, you're not changing anything about it. You're just adding in an italicize name ahead of it just so people have something to call it. They can refer to it. Now, you are allowed to mechanically care about keywords. You cannot mechanically care about ability words. Anyway, landfall is an ability word. So what that meant is future sets after that would occasionally just do that effect.

And in fact, we might have had one or two cards before Landfall existed, you know, that had that effect, I think. Or maybe we didn't. I'm not how it's it sure. Anyway, after Landfall, we definitely did it and we would label it. I mean, sorry, we would not label it. If it was, because landfall is considered like an expert mechanic. It was for sets that had landfall in it. So if we did one card that essentially was landfall, we wouldn't label it as landfall.

We would just do the card. So the next time the landfall by name returns is in battle for Zendikar. So in original Zendicar block, so what happened was we did Zendakar. We then did World Wake. actually, I should mention this. In World Wake, we did do one, we did something new in World Wake with Landfall, which is we put it on spells.

So there's some spells that said, I do something, but if you've played a land this turn, I'm better, I'm upgraded. We didn't find that landfill work best on permanence, but we did try it on spells. And then the set after World Wake was Rise of the Iodrazi.

So the plan from the very beginning was that we were trying out having a third set that was a large set, and we wanted to try a set that didn't have any of the same mechanics. And so what happened was, originally, in fact, Riza-O-Drazi originally was going to be a different world. But the creative team at the time wasn't very big, much smaller than now. And they said, look, we can't build two worlds in one year. But what we can do is create an event so large in scope that it makes sense that we're having all new mechanics. And that was Rizzi of the Odrazi. The Odrazi were in prison, they get out, and, well, let's not wherever we're going to be.

about landfall, let's worry about the Aldrazi. And so there was no landfall in the Idrisi. When we came back in Battle for Zendikar, we had kind of had a cliffhanger. We decided to resolve the cliffhanger. It's the Zendikari, what we call it, the people from Zendikar, fighting the Eldrazi. In retrospect, I kind of wish the Odrazi had left.

But anyway, so we did have landfall there. Half the set was the Odrazi, half the set was the Zendikari. Landfall was so iconic to what Zendikar was. We knew we had to bring it back. We were a little more cautious when we brought it back. We weren't quite as aggressive. So the landfall wasn't quite as powerful as it was the first time. So we did two things in Battle for Zendikar and Oath of the Gate Watch.

So at this point, by the way, blocks were two sets. So it was a large set with Battle for Zendikar, small set Oath the Gage Watch. So what we did is we tried cards that were landfall, but they had an extra ability if it was a specific land type, a basic land type. Oh, I do this, I have landfall. If a land enters, I do this, but if it's a mountain, I get a bonus. If it's a forest, I get a bonus. We also did ones in which the effects were a little bit bigger, but in order to use the effect, you had to pay mana. So the idea says,

if a land entered under your control this turn, you may spend this amount of mana, and if you do, you get this larger effect. So larger is to do some bigger landfall effects. Because landfall is free, they mostly had to be little incremental effects. They could be things that were cool, but they were small and incremental. Okay. Then we returned in Zendekar Rising. That was our third trip to Zendekar. By this point, we have single set.

So Zendikar is just one set. In it, we did this thing where landfall triggers, but when you reach a certain number of lands, like, I have an effect, but when I reach six lands, you get a bigger effect. So it incremented and got bigger over time as you got more lands in play. So that was, and so for a while, quite a while, the only place that you would see landfall by name would be in a Zendekar set. It took place on Zendikar.

But then in October of 2002, we made it deciduous. And what that means is in the past, I explained, when we do landfall in a set that wasn't a set with landfall, we just wouldn't label it. But now, if we use the set that is landfall, if we make a card with landfall, we labeled it as landfall, even if it's the only card in the set. Decidious means that we can use the mechanic

wherever we want. It's not in every set like Evergreen or most every set, but it is in any set that needs it. And so we did that. Also, in Bloomberg, we shortened it the template. It used to be whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control,

and it became, whenever a land you control enters, because we changed over to the, keywords. So what that meant is we started just doing more of it. We started just putting in more sets. In fact, Foundations, which was kind of our relaunch of sort of a course set, a little bit different, but we decided that we wanted to have some deciduous mechanics in foundations, and one of the ones we chose was landfall, because landfall is just so cool. Then when we made Final Fantasy, The chokobos are these creatures that you can ride in game.

We like the idea of landfall representing travel because, oh, how do I get new land? Well, I see new land because I travel to new land. And so the chokobos were tied to landfall. And then, in Edge of Eternities, once again, one of the things about space opera is exploration is a big theme. And so we like the idea of using landfall as a means to explain travel.

which felt pretty cool. And so what we did there was, we used landfall on the set. And it combined landers were the tokens that you could get, land tokens. So anyway, it combined really nicely in many different ways. Oh, the other thing I didn't mention Zendikar Rising was we introduced modal double-faced cards,

of which the backside were always lands in Zendekyll. lands in Zendekar Rising. So the idea is late game is I could play my spell or if I really want to land, I could play it as a land. I had the opportunity. So each of the times we did it. So we did it in Zendikar and World Lake went over like gangbusters. We did it in Battle for Zendikar and Oath of the Gate Watch. Didn't go to quite as well. I think that's because we sort of ratcheted down the power level quite a bit. So when we came back in Zendikar Rising, we rose it back up. And the Zendikar Rising, it, I mean it didn't do poorly in Battle for Zendikar. People liked Landfall. but it didn't do quite as well as it did the first time.

But it did better in Zemnaker Rising. And every set we've done Landfall in, like I said, Landfall is a pretty cool mechanic. But let me get a little bit into why. Like, I think Landfall did something really cool in a larger way, and I want to talk about that. Okay, so most of the time, if you read some of my old columns,

one of the things I used to talk about is that one of the neat things games is that games is a way for you to test skills that are important for real life but without the the threat of real life that when I play a game if things go wrong I lose the game in real life if I test out skills and things go wrong there's consequences it could be bad consequences and that games is really an opportunity for you to try out things and test things and see where things are at and so a lot of the way I used to think of about games is we're testing the opponent, right?

That they're trying to test their metal and that mechanics really need to push the limits of what players can do. And I really like the idea that you want to make tension and you want to make the players have to make decisions and that they, by learning and improving, that they make decisions and get better. Now, I'm not saying that games don't still,

they still do that, but one of the things that was interesting about landfall is that landfall really flew in the face of that. That landfall was like, well, here's what we're going to do. We're just going to reward you for doing something that if we didn't reward you for doing, you would do anyway. It's just like free reward. But what we found about it,

the reason that people were so giddy when they played Landfall is they're just, it made these little pockets of joy, right? It's sort of like you just got little rewards. So my mom is a psychologist. I'm very interested in psychology. and that there's a lot of study about how rewards work in general. Like, how does the human brain work? If you want somebody to do something, how do you get them to do that?

And the idea of small incremental rewards is one of the most efficient way to motivate people. And here we were without even thinking about it, like, oh, that's exactly what we're doing. And the interesting thing, it's not, obviously, we don't have to encourage you to play land. People want to play land. the nature of the way the mana system work is it encourages you to play land.

Because essentially, you know, the genius of the mana system is the game starts, you have very little resource, you can just do small things. As the game progresses, you've access to more and more resource to do bigger and bigger things. And so it's exciting.

I want to get the resource. I want to do the bigger things. And so land was always kind of like, well, you don't have to make people like land. You know, for example, everybody has the memory of, I'm in a situation where, okay, I just need to draw the land. I have the card I need in my hand, but I need one more man to be able to cast it,

and just trying to will the land to come to you and how happy you are when you draw the land. And the contrast to that of how late game, when you don't need the land, how unsatisfying it is to draw the land, right? And that, so basically what this mechanic did was it said, I'm just rewarding you for doing the thing you want to do, but that was really fun. It was just enjoyable. And that when I sort of dug into my sort of psychology, you know, my knowledge of psychology,

I'm like, oh, well, yeah, why wouldn't people like to do that? And that, you know, one of the big reasons that I, for regular listeners, is I really believe that the goal of the game designer is you're trying to create emotions out of your player, that you're trying to do things that make them do things that just they experience things that they want to experience. One of those things is joy and excitement in that one of the things that I, So the important thing here is I was really at a point in my design where I was trying to sort of challenge the player. And all of a sudden we made a mechanic that did not challenge the player.

Exactly, almost the opposite. Like, you know, it really sort of said, I'm just going to reward you for what you want to do. But that felt really good. It made players really happy. You know, the reason the mechanic was ranked so high is that it just, like I said, it was just playing in pure psychology. It's just, it rewarded them for doing the thing they wanted to do. And it really made me realize how powerful that was. That it really opened my mind that, hey, part of the game design experience is getting people to do things that they enjoy doing, do things that, you know, is fun for them.

And here we have a little mechanic that just drops little bits of joy as you're just doing, as you're just playing the game like you normally would. And as I said, for advanced players, it can change, like, there is skill testing in it. But once again, it's lenticular. But everybody just really enjoys it. And it really revamped about how I thought about design. It made me understand that, like, my goal isn't, everything doesn't have to be a challenge. Everything doesn't have to be, you know, I don't have to put you through the pacer's. Like, yes, there's something very exciting about having to challenge myself and think through things

and then win. And that is exciting. Magic still does that. But it's also fun to just say, hey, I'm just going to give you small rewards for things that you're excited to do, and then those more rewards will be fun for you, and it'll bring happiness, and it'll just make the act of playing joyful. And that's a big deal. In fact, interesting. So Zendekar comes out a couple years later, I'm doing Indistrade. So Innesrad is the set where I figure out that I want to create emotional responses. The Indistrad is the set like, okay, I'm doing

a Gothic horror set. Well, I want my players while playing to feel afraid. I want to make mechanics and do things, they create this sense of fear. Like, oh no, I don't want that human deterred to a werewolf. Oh, no, they're attacking, but they maybe, maybe they, they have morbid. And if I block, then the morbid will go up. It made you sort of question things in a way that was really fun. And I don't think I get to that epiphany on Innestrade without first having the realization I had on Zendikar. That, like, a lot of my journey from, like, like, I think when I first started that I really had this idea that magic is about, you know, games in general are getting you to do interesting things. And over time, I sort of learned like, oh, yeah, you want to do interesting things.

But the thing that gets you coming back, the thing that sort of inspires you, the thing that gives you the extra energy is the excitement, the emotional, the emotional thing. And I, like, one of my lessons in my GDC speech from 2016 is don't confuse interesting with fun. Interesting is intellectual stimulation. Fun is emotional simulation. Nothing. You don't want to create an intellectual simulation. You do. But the thing that people, like, one of the things I always talk about when you're doing playtesting is the number one question you ask people is,

do you want to play this game again? And stimulating people intellectually will encourage them to. want to play again, but what really does it is they have a good time. They feel things, they experience things, and that that experience really is key to getting people to want to come back. And anyway, the reason I bring this all up, the reason that's so excited to me is that landfall, I've kind of stumbled into landfill. It's very, very funny that, that, the, the In some level, I don't know if I would have got a landfall if Bill hadn't been skeptical.

If Bill, like, what happened was because we had the three-month cutoff, I was like, okay, I got to go big. Like, I can't come back, like, let's say we rank mechanics on a one through a ten of how good a mechanic they are. I can't. If I come back to Bill and said, I have three land mechanics that are all sevens, Bill might have just gone, eh, yeah, no, no, no, no. Let's get another theme.

That's like, I knew I needed a nine or a ten, right? I knew I needed to, like, I knew I needed to do something that, like, put the stake in the ground and really said, no, no, no, lands are fun. This is fun. Because the problem that I was getting was just people didn't get it. Like, why would lands be fun? Lands are functional. Why would they be fun? And because that we were pushing there, like, we did find some mechanics we liked, but they weren't the 10.

And so, like, that's why I kept putting. That's why we made 46 mechanics or whatever. because I kept pushing the team. And we not pushed the team. And then the only reason we got to landfall was we made a mechanic that was so unfun that it just inspired us to go the opposite direction. And like I said, I kind of stumbled upon it.

And it was only by playing it that we realized kind of the secret sauce that we had stumbled into. And that the thing that's most interesting to me is because I talk a lot about how regular listeners will know that like I joke that sometimes design is like pushing a rock up a hill

that you know you believe in your idea but everybody out there doesn't see it or doesn't share your vision and so much of what you're trying to do is convince people why your vision is a good thing but ultimately the big lesson of that is I can't tell people I have to show people

and I really learned this idea of you know I need to build the thing to show people And anyway, so my point is, the people that are in your way, that are people that are stopping you for doing what you want to do, they aren't really stopping you. What they're really doing is testing you. They're really doing is making you do the best work you can so that you're making the best version.

And I don't know if I would have made landfall had, like, Bill budding against me and saying, look, I'm just not going to do this if you're not, you have to wow me. You don't wow me, we're not doing this. And I really had a lot of faith in it. So, anyway, that's one of the coolest things about landfall was it was kind of boring out of this weird thing. It's, I don't know if there's a mechanic. Like, I was so giddy, so fast with Landfall.

Like, the very first game we played, it was just so apparent so quickly, how much fun it was. And, I should stress, there were skeptics when we made Landfall because it felt like kind of cheaty. Like, okay, yeah, well, yeah, but they're going to do that. thing anyway so what are you doing like they're just going to you know um and that and like I said that became my chittling thing of yeah um put the fun where players want the fun to be make the players happy to find the fun don't hide the fun don't you know uh and landfill really got me though that that's kind of a lesson of the day is that landfall really became this poster mechanic for me that sort of showed me the way forward um and like I said it's a great mechanic it plays

well, it's simple, it's fun. But more so than anything else, it really opened my eyes and inspired me in ways that really upgraded me as a designer. In fact, one day, one day, I did a podcast once about sort of how I've evolved a designer. Maybe there's

an interesting podcast one day where I talk to individual sets of, like, what sets upgraded me the most. But that, my friends, is everything you wanted to know about the landfall mechanic. It's really fun, really exciting, and a truly great magic mechanic. But anyway, guys, I'm now home, and so it's time for me to have dinner.

So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be eating dinner. But anyway, thanks for joining me, and I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into the Mechanic of Landfall. See you next time, everybody. Bye-bye.