Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #508: Unstable Talk, Part 2

Episode Date: February 2, 2018

This is technically a "Drive from Work." I picked Mark up at his house to do the last podcast, so we figured we might as well do another podcast when I drove him home.

I'm pulling out of the parking lot of Wizards! You know what that means. You might not know what that means. I don't do this that often. But it is time for Drive From Work! So this morning, or for you guys' last podcast, I had Mark Pernison. Say hi, Mark! Hello, everybody. So I had to drive Mark home since I had to drive him here, so we figured let's get another podcast in! Because we can talk more about Unstable. We're very i like talking about unstable i do i love talking about unstable so um part part of my job actually one of the things i have to do is go around and and talk to um

the distributors that that sell our product to stores and talk to them about uh new products when they come out and I've had so much trouble keeping myself to my time limit whenever I have an opportunity to talk about Unstable. It's been a lot of fun. So what do you show? What's like the pictures you show when you're showing off Unstable? Well, we basically, we talk about all the reasons why we think it's going to be something that fans are really excited about. So we talk about the crossover cards like Sword of Dungeons and Dragons. It's a really exciting card. It's probably my favorite mythic in the set

for a variety of reasons. Oh! Can we tell the story? Can I tell the... Okay. Let's tell this awesome story. About Chris? Yeah.

Okay, so Chris Cox is our CEO. Okay? And so, um, um, he called, one day he said that he wants to play Unstable. Um, but it's really late. It's late in the process and Stable is basically all done. And, and of course, you know, we've had some stops and starts with Unstable as we've talked about on previous podcasts. And so Mark and I were kind of worried. We have this new president. He's a gamer, and he gets magic. But what if he hates Unstable for some reason? We haven't announced it yet. So Mark says to me, he says,

okay, here's the important thing. So we're going to play with him. So I was going to play with Chris. He goes, let Chris win. Whatever you do, let Chris win. And so it wasn't just Chris. It was some of the other people on the business team. I was

three games over and I could just barely hear Mark play Sword of Dungeons and Dragons against Chris. So let me tell you what's going on here. So we make the decks. And we specifically make the decks because we're trying to make it something we think Chris will like. And we know that Chris from his youth was a giant D&D fan, big Dungeons & Dragons fan.

And so we specifically put in the deck Sword of Dungeons & Dragons so that it will come up and he can see it because he likes Dungeons & Dragons. We didn't know what deck he picked, by the way. We just made the decks. So he ends up picking a different deck. And so I pick up the deck that happens to have Sword of Dungeons & Dragons in it. So I get it in my opening hand, and I'm like, oh, I want Chris to see this, because it's Dungeons & Dragons. But the problem is, which Mark's laughing at, it's a really, really powerful card. It's a really good card. And so I hear Mark say, I play Sword of Dungeons and Dragons. And Ben Hayes, who was the lead developer on the set, was walking around and kind of checking on everybody's games. And I was playing against one of the other brand managers.

And I pulled Ben over and I said, Ben, did Mark just play Sword of Dungeons and Dragons? He's supposed to let Chris win. We talked about this. Right, so... Ben wanders off, and he goes and he watches the game with Mark and Chris, and he wanders back, and kind of under his breath, he goes, he's not equipping it to a creature.

And I was like, oh, okay. Right, so what happened was, I play the card, and then I realize after I play, I'm like, uh-oh, I have Sword of Dungeons and Dragons. So I just, I'm like, uh-oh, I have Sword of the Dungeons and Dragons. So I just, I'm doing other things. I'm like, oh, I just forgot about it. I forgot that I have Sword of the Dungeons and Dragons. Unfortunately, Chris knows magic and is a gamer and is a really sharp guy.

So at a certain point... Well, at a certain point, I empty my hand. So there's a point at which I have no cards in my hand. I have mana. He goes, oh, why don't you equip the Sword of the Dungeons and Dragons? I'm like, yeah, why don't I do that? So the only creature I have no cards in my hand. I have mana. He goes, oh, why don't you equip the Sword of Dungeon Dragons? I'm like, yeah, why don't I do that? So the only creature I have has Double Strike. So every time you hit someone

with Sword of Dungeon Dragons, it makes a 4-4 Dragon. So I have to equip it to my Double Strike creature because it's the only creature I have. And he doesn't have a creature that can block me. So I hit him and make two 4-4 Dragons. But luckily, Chris also has a great sense of humor And ended up loving the set

Even though I think he lost that game He lost that game He won the second game But it was funny that like I remember I hit him I made two dragons And I'm like Is there any way I can lose this game?

So anyway Okay sorry So we show Dungeon Dragons Yeah so You know we talk about the fact that they're silver bordered cards because we want people to have realistic realistic expectations like you know i've said i feel like the silver bordered sets have sort of a cult following among magic fans there's certainly a lot of people that really love the silver-bordered cards, but if your focus is competitive play

and your main way of engaging with our brand is, like, training for the next GP, there's not going to be as much, you know, you're going to play this a couple of times and have a good time. Right. But it's not necessarily going to be as broadly appealing as a black-bordered set or as a master set. Right. The thing we designed for Unstable was we wanted to, A, make it a limited experience.

That if you just want to experience it, it's a one-time thing. You can just do that. You can come, you can play, you're done, you've had your experience. Or for people who get into the unconstructed stuff, you can take it in, you can put it in your cube or your commander deck or just make decks around it if you have friends that will play with you. or just make decks around it if you have friends that will play with you. And I did, speaking of Commander,

I did actually confirm with our resident Commander Rules Committee member that their position is that if your playgroup wants to allow Silver Border cards, by all means, have as much fun with Silver border cards in your commander deck as you'd like, but as far as anything official, they're still kind of deliberating on how to handle silver border cards. One of the things we did do was we purposely put a lot of legends in the set, so that if you wanted to make an un-commander deck, you can. In fact, it's funny, we're still previewing stuff, as far as you guys, because you guys will listen to this in the future, as far as we're concerned, you know, it stables out and everything, but for us, we're still previewing it. Um, so it is, it's fun, like, today we, it was, uh, Agent of Sneak Day, so we were showing

off, um, X and Phoebe, Head of, Head of Sneak, and Animate Library, and some fun stuff. Man, I love Animate mean, I love animate library. I love cards like that that just force you to think about zones or parts of the game in a way that you just never would think of. Yeah, animate library, by the way, I tried to actually put that in a real magic set, and it didn't work. So then I tried a version where, like, it's star, star, where star is equal to the number of cards in your deck,

but it proved a little too, just keeping track of it was a little hard. So what happened was, it wasn't in this, we were in development, and somebody said something and reminded me of the existence of that card, and I'm like, we have to put this in, we have to put this in! So I made Dave take out a card. I go, take this card out, put this card in. And I think

Animate Library is one of the last cards to go on the set. Well, I'm glad I made it in, because I love magic cards, whether they're silver-bordered or black-bordered, that just have words on them that have never been on magic cards before that just make you... Oh, you're trying to figure out what it means?

Yeah, I mean, going back to even really old cards like Shiharazad, that's a really old card, but that just did something that really, to me, demonstrated the openness of the rule set that Richard Garfield had created because there were just some really out-there things that could be done, Things like even the whole morph mechanic. I guess I'm getting a little

sidetracked but I do like talking about magic. Yeah, one of the things that's interesting is Shaharazad is what we call a sub game and we decided a while ago to ban sub games from Black Border. Why? You know why we banned them from Black Border? Time.

Tournaments, yeah. It caused a tournament problem. So, Silver Border picked it up. Silver Border, some of what I do is testing the future, and some of what I do is remembering the past. So, sub-games are something that... I've done a sub-game in every unset, although the first one was a little less sub-game, but Unhinged had Enter the Dungeon,

where you played a sub-game under the table, and Unstable has The Countdown is One, where you play a sub-game, but you start at one life. Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. So what is your favorite Unstable card? It's almost certainly Earl of Squirrel. Oh, let's talk about the alternative art for Earl of Squirrel. That's a good story.

Sure. So the art that's going to appear, that Matt Cavata did, that's going to appear on the promo version of the card is actually something that my wife had commissioned for me for my 40th birthday and has been hanging in my office at Wizards of the Coast for years. and has been hanging in my office at Wizards of the Coast for years. And when it came time to pick a promo card, and we wanted to do something special, we wanted to do something alternate art, and this was not my decision.

But the team that was in charge of that asked if they could use that art as the alternate art of Earl of Squirrel. The original artwork is also amazing. It's Milivoš Saran painted that artwork, and it's just incredible. But the piece that ended up going on the promo version and subsequently on some of the Ultra Pro products that were made, that's actually something that was in my office for a couple of years before Unstable was ever finished.

So actually, did I ever tell you about my favorite present that Matt ever gave me? What? He gave me Mize as a birthday present. The original art to Mize. Oh, cool. Which is on the cover of Unhinged. The booster pack of Unhinged has Mize on it. It's the one with the giant pink rabbit holding its own foot.

Well, I know you weren't talking about the promo version of that. That is true, because you are the promo version. I have that one, yes. I love original artwork. So the promo version of Mize is dogs playing magic. Yes, I always wanted, in my game room, I always wanted a big velvet painting of dogs playing poker. But when I found out that this piece by

Mark Zug existed I knew that there was you know that was miles above dogs playing poker so here's the trivia question where did that art come from I actually know this because I looked it up when I got into Wizards of the Coast it was originally commissioned for unstable or unglued to yep you know what the card was called? I do. Okay, very good. What's the card called? I don't know if we should talk about it.

Okay. Oh, there's a fine point. Okay, so, what's my favorite? I have a lot of favorites. I do like Earl Squirrel. I mean, for me, I've always loved squirrels in Magic, and one of the first design and development teams I was ever on was the Commander decks, the very first ones. And I went to the creative team at the time, which I knew was not wild about squirrels, and I said, look, I want to do a card called Squirrel Cannon.

And I want it to shoot a squirrel at your opponent and do one point of damage and then make it a squirrel. And they told me at the time, this is acceptable for this release, we will do this. And then when the card ended up actually getting concepted, it ended up being squirrel catapult. I'm sorry, acorn catapult. And apparently there had been a pretty extensive debate about whether or not if you shot a squirrel at somebody and it did one point of damage to that person...

Oh, would the squirrel survive? It would kill the squirrel, which is, I guess, reasonable. It could be a hearty squirrel. But it was very heartbreaking to me that there was, you know, we had finally gotten to the point where we could have another squirrel card in Black Bordered Magic and it ended up not happening. So every time for years, every time I would go to some casual play group or meet some group of people who played Magic, there would always be someone who would come up to me and have to show me their squirrel deck. And I've always had a squirrel deck that was my favorite casual deck.

And so I'm glad that we have so many awesome squirrel lords and squirrel related cards in Unstable yeah we are two of the biggest squirrel fans in fact there was a period in time by the way where every single card that was a squirrel in magic I designed

and about half of them I did the art description for that's how we ended up with the original Night of Oaks, right? Yes, because I did all the card concepts in Urza's Legacy. And so I needed... One of my pet peeves about giant growth effects was they never had scale, so you didn't really, like,

why would you know this is bigger than normal? So I said, I want to show scale. So I said, it's a forest, and you see some creature, you know, booming above the forest, and you had to know it's a forest and you see some creature you know, booming above the forest and you had to know it's a small creature so why not a squirrel? Because those aren't big So this is

actually going back to artwork though real quick. Matt Cavata actually has two pieces of art in the set If you work at Wizards of the Coast and you're an artist, it's really hard to also be commissioned to do artwork but he actually did another piece of art in the set Oh, which part did he do? an artist, it's really hard to also be commissioned to do artwork.

But he actually did another piece of art. Which part did he do? It's the one where you open the booster with all the monsters. Oh, yes! It's called Sum the Pack, I think? Yes. And so it's been a couple of years since he's had a piece of art in Magic. Oh, that's cool.

Yeah, that card was originally called Undead Legions. Yes. Because it was's cool. Yeah, that card was originally called Undead Legions. Yes. Because it was trying to be a joke that maybe you want to open the pack with 15 creatures in it.

Although there's Phage in that pack, by the way. If you open up Phage, you lose. So it's a good pack, but it comes with a poison pellet.

You can occasionally lose by opening up a Legions pack. That's funny. I think I knew that he had done that. I forgot. But then, like, when we give

all the artwork for a set to our licensing partners, we often let them pick the artwork. And so, when it comes to Ultra Pro, I mean, we obviously work with them if there's something that's not going to work out, or if we don't approve it. But out of the images, it was very exciting that they chose his version of Earl of Squirrel for some sleeves.

And then they also, they really were taken with the artwork that Wayne England did, which we discussed in the last one. And just a follow-up to that, it is the British Heart Foundation, so all the net proceeds from Ultra Pro sales of things with that artwork will go to benefit the charity that his family requested. Yes, very awesome. And it looks really cool. In fact, I was on an episode of Game Nights, and we had the four Ultra Pro play mats for the unstable play mats. I played Under the old squirrel yeah

that art is just so great yes very cool and then I think it's selfie preservation the sketch version

of very cryptic man and art dealer art dealer by the way that's one of my favorite pieces I'm sorry

squirrel dealer it's one of my favorite pieces of art at the set me too that's the one where he's opening up his trench coat and there's like squirrels, he's selling squirrels inside the trench coat. Yep.

Yep. One of my goals with the set was I wanted to give you enough cards that you could build a squirrel deck out of the cards from Unstable. So it's a black-green deck and it has a lot of dice rolling. For some reason, the squirrels got connected to dice rolling. For some reason the squirrels got connected to dice rolling. I'm not sure why. So can you talk a little bit about how the tokens were chosen for the set? Sure, although you might have more information than I do on the script. So what we did was we wanted to, people had always talked about how there wasn't any foil tokens. And we saw this as an opportunity to do something cool.

So what we did is, half the tokens are tokens that are in the set. So things that the cards in the set actually make. And those have a... Normally tokens have an ad on the back. Those have an ad on the back. They're all for unstable, so they're silly ads.

And then the other ones... We did a poll? ads. And then, the other ones, we did a poll? How did we figure out the other ones? I thought we did a poll to see what the most popular tokens were at the time. Yes. And then those were what we chose for the black border. Right, and I think there were nine, nine or ten.

And, right, and the cool thing about those is the back of the non-inset ones, ones that are from outside the set, on the back of it is full art. So it's the art that you see on the front in frame, full art on the back. So a couple of things real quick. One, the ads are phenomenal. They're one of my favorite things about this set, actually. how even after the card set was done, the people that were working on every aspect of the set really stepped things up and thought about things differently.

The brand manager that was working on Unstable was Adam Colby, who works on my team, and he came up with some, he's just a really creative guy, he came up with some really fun and funny things, including one of my favorite jokes in the set, which is an ad card for Dungeons & Dragons that appears only, I think it only appears on the gold dragon token. Yeah, I think so. I think it's on the gold dragon token.

And the joke is, you know, did you know there's a whole role-playing game based on the card Sword of Dungeons & Dragons? Which is ridiculous, of course, because Dungeons & Dragons has been around for much longer than Magic. But it's those kinds of touches that I just really enjoy. Yeah, that's fun.

The other thing I want to say is that for those of you who are confused about why we're struggling with the details of things like card names and number of tokens, by the time you hear this, the set will have been out for a while. We still haven't played with finished cards yet. I haven't played with finished cards. I have one time played with finished cards. Which was awesome, by the way. We are still salivating at the chance to

play with finished products on this project that we worked on for years. The other thing, by the way, is although I've been recently doing a lot with it because obviously we've been previewing it, so I've been answering a lot of questions, but this product got finished quite a while ago.

Like I said, we talked about it in our first carpooling podcast we did. Like, it got moved three times. So, in fact, it's funny. My daughter, who right now is applying to college, when I started this set, she was in fifth grade. Wow.

In fact, the start of it was almost closer, not quite, but almost closer. Yeah, turned it. Almost closer to unhinged than it was to unstable. Well, hopefully this one will be as big a hit as we think it's going to be.

Yeah, I hope by the time people hear this, it's going to smash in. You guys, you know this because it's the future for you guys, right? Right. Or it's present for you. It's our future. All right. We're pulling up to my house. Which way am I going?

It's that one on the corner here. Yep. Okay. Okay. So, let's see how we do it on time. Oh, wow. We did not spend very long. Carpool lane, man. I know.

So this is an extra short episode. Normally when I do podcasts, they're at least 25 minutes, but this is short. It's bonus content. It is bonus content. Maybe we'll throw this in as a bonus content. But anyway, so usually I say we get here that means it's the end of my drive to work.

But it's the end of my drive from work. Well, actually it's not because I still got to go home. But anyway, thank you for joining me, Mark. Yeah, thanks for having me. It was fun. It was great. So anyway, so guys, I guess instead of talking magic, it's time for me to

eat dinner. I don't know. So anyway, thanks for joining us, guys, and we'll see you next time. Bye-bye.