Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #531: Magic Evolution, Part 3

Episode Date: April 27, 2018

This is the third in my series "Magic Evolution," where I go through every set and talk about what design technology was created. In this podcast, I talk about Mercadian Masques through Apocalypse.

I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today is, I think, part three in the series I've been doing called Magic Evolution, where I go through all the magic sets and talk about what, sort of, what design evolutions got added by each set. So, last we talked, I went up through Urza's Destiny, which means we start today with Mercadian Masks. And I'll be honest, Mercadian Mask block is not, uh, the easiest, uh, block to talk about in this regard. Um, so the funniest thing about Mercadian Mask is probably the biggest lesson Mercadian

Masks from the design standpoint was something we didn't do rather than something we did. So when we made Canadian masks, it actually had some mechanics in it. It had both the rebel mechanic and the mercenary mechanic. We had a bunch of pitch cards. I mean, there was things in it. There were mechanics in it, but we didn't label any of them. None of them were named. And a weird thing happened, which was people were upset that we didn't have any mechanics. It's something I hadn't anticipated until it happened,

which was, you know, like clearly there were mechanics in the set. There were new things in the set. But when we didn't label them, we didn't name them, I was really interested in the reaction of the audience was, why didn't you make new things?

And it really was an eye-opening thing for us to realize, like, how important labeling what we were doing was. That how much of... I mean, Magic always has new cards, and the cards do things. And that it was really, like, for the designers, when you're sort of, you know, working under the hood, use my analogy here, like, you're really aware of all the differences.

Like, oh, clearly there's these 18 cards that perform in a similar function, and, you know, clearly these are a new thing. and clearly these are a new thing. What we realized is that you need a little bit of telegraphing. You need, you know, that when people sort of look at something and they pick out something new, the labeling was important. Now, the interesting question there is that that's not even about changing the mechanics as much as it is about sort of how you present them. Like, one of the big things I want to get across when we talk about evolutions is design

evolutions are not just learning a new way to do things from a mechanical structural point. Some ways it's something as simple as, oh, we need to label the things we do. We need to communicate what we're doing. And I think as we go along, we get more and more willing to label things. Remember, we're still at a point in time where the way we thought about sets was they had two new mechanics. That's not at all how we sort of think of things modern day,

but early Magic, it was very much like, there will be two new mechanics. Let's explain the two new mechanics. it was very much like there will be two new mechanics. Let's explain the two new mechanics. And we were also in the mindset early on that blocks didn't add new keyword mechanics along the way. Now, we're starting to get to the point where that changes, but we're not quite there yet. We're still in the mindset of the first block introduces the keywords for the block, and then there's evolution, and there's minor changes, and there's, you know, there could be new mechanics in that there's a cycle of cards or something, but not named mechanics.

That took a little while to get to. Mercaded Masks also is interesting in that we brought back pitch cards. So pitch cards, for those who don't remember, first appeared in alliances. They were cards that instead of paying the mana cost, you could discard a card of the same color. Sometimes you paid a life. So we started messing around in Mercadian Masks

with doing alternate costs. So not just pitch cards, but other alternate costs. Maybe I give you life. Maybe I have to sacrifice land. Now, Magic had messed around, and it's not like Mercadiany Mass was the first set to ever give alternate costs. Pitch cards, obviously, were alliances, but there have been other individual cards. There's a card in Visions. I mean, there are individual cards that let you do

this, but we really messed around with it as a theme for the first time, and there's a lot of interesting sort of us experimenting with what can you do other than spend a cost? Like, there's a card, I think it's Mercantile Mass, where you give your opponent life. It's a giant, I'm blanking on the name of the card, but it's a giant growth, and you give your opponent life rather than pay for the cost. I know that card ended up going in poison decks, because if I'm trying to poison you out, life is meaningless. So the fact that I could have a free giant growth and the offset of doing it doesn't matter in the deck I'm building, it made it sort of super synergistic with, with, in a deck, I mean,

in a deck playing, playing, in fact. Other than that, I remember this whole block was not magic at its finest. I mean, like I said, there's interesting things we played around with, and there's, like, you know, even when you look at sort of the rebel and the mercenary mechanic. I guess the other idea there was, so the rebel mechanic was a mechanic that built up,

and the mercenary mechanic was a mechanic that built down. What that meant by is, a rebel mechanic, if it was a two drop, it could get you a three drop. And the mercenary mechanic, if it was a two drop, it could get you a three drop. And the mercenary mechanic, if it was a two drop, it could get you a one drop. And what happened was the rebel mechanic was really powerful and the mercenary mechanic was not powerful at all. So the interesting lesson there about sort of the sequencing of how things happen. And that in general, when your mechanic matches the flow of the game,

it's more powerful. When it fights the flow of the game, it's less powerful. So, for example, you want to, with a one drop, get a two drop. But a two drop getting a one drop is just not as powerful. And so, really, the natural state,

the things that sort of push you toward along the way the game plays is where a lot of power lies. Where it's like, oh, I'm going to do that already. I now have something that sort of plays into the space of

how the game naturally functions tends to be stronger. Now sometimes we push against that tension and make something that isn't exactly how you would do it but it's powerful enough that maybe we want to think

about doing it. But I think the rebel mechanic definitely sort of taught us the idea of understanding the flow. Also, I think it's the first time, is that our first tutoring mechanic? We started to learn with time that tutoring mechanics are dangerous. And the reason for that is, one of Magic's great strengths is the fact that you shuffle your deck means each game is radically different from the other.

That what's going to happen in this game, I don't know, I've shuffled my deck, I don't know what order I'm getting things. But tutor mechanics would say, well, once you get card A, it'll get card B, it starts making the randomness stop happening as much. And that Magic is just not as good a game if things just start playing out more similarly. it starts making the randomness stop happening as much. And that magic is just not as good a game if things just start playing out more similarly. And while that doesn't mean we can never have tutoring, we do have tutors from time to time, it does mean that tutoring mechanics are problematic. Now, we won't learn this lesson right away.

This is a lesson we're going to learn a little bit down the path. There's more tutoring mechanics to come. But this was our first really exposure of seeing the power of tutoring mechanics. The mercy mechanic was pretty strong. Okay, now we get to nemesis. So nemesis, the thing that always stands out in my mind from nemesis

are the seals. So the seals were a cycle of five enchantments that were basic effects, but instead of being an incident or a sorcery, they were enchantments that were basic effects, but instead of being an incident or a sorcery, they were enchantments that you could sacrifice for free. So, for example, Seal of Cleansing was a disenchant. And Seal of, what were they called? There was a Destroy Tard Creature.

There was a Shock. Seal of Fire, I think. Destroyed target creature. There was a shock. Seal of fire, I think. Anyway, the interesting thing about it is this idea of shifting when you pay the cost was something that we were playing around with. Now, seals have their issues. We tend not to make proactive... We don't make as often proactive ones.

I'm sorry, is that right? We tend not to make ones that keep the opponent from doing things because they know the threat is there. What we learned is there's a lot of power to surprise and that if you have a way, for example, to kill a creature and they don't know it, well, they're going to continue to play their game as normal. If you show them that you have a way to kill their creature, it sort of makes them less inclined to want to do things.

And so what we found was, when you make the wrong kind of seals, it inhibits gameplay. And so we've been kind of careful how we do that. It's not that we never make them, but we tend to do things that are not reactive to the opponent. So for example, if I'm going to draw cards, look, that doesn't stop me from doing anything. I'm going to spend mana now so later I can draw cards.

Okay, that's fine. My opponent doesn't go, oh, I better not do things because you're going to draw cards. Now, if I play a creature kill spell or a direct damage spell where I now affect you and you have to sort of consider what you're going to cast because of what I have,

that tends to sort of slow people down. So we're less inclined to do stuff like that. Nemesis, I'm trying to remember. This whole block was not necessarily... I mean, I guess we learn things in the block by trying things and then realizing they don't quite have the impact we wanted. I mean, Nemesis... One of the most interesting things about Nemesis, by the way, is creatively we did something we hadn't done before,

which is most blocks we'd gone somewhere and we were there. You know, when we're in Mirage, we're in Mirage. That's where we are. This set was interesting in that Mercadian Masks took place on Mercadia. Nemesis did not take place on Mercadia. Nemesis took place on Wrath, mostly. And then Prophecy took place back on Dominaria. So it's us messing around in the idea of telling the story a little bit different.

It definitely influenced a little bit about how we told stories. And you could see Urza's side of the block for example also had some sets we were jumping around a little bit. I think I think what we found was we were confusing people a little bit so we were a little more

careful about where we were and telegraphing where we were. I think a lot of people didn't realize at the time quite where Nemesis took place because Mercadia

and Mastiff and Mercadia we knew it was Mercadia and the funny thing is in a block you continue the mechanics and so people sort of assume there's continuity of

place, because there's continuity of other elements of the game and I know Nemesis confused people some for that okay, then we get to Prophecy so Prophecy I mentioned this before I think Homeland is the first design magic set

but Prophecy's up there. Prophecy definitely... So what Prophecy did was it was a very, very spiky set. What William Jockish, who was the lead designer, William was really interested in sort of pushing the idea of testing resources.

And so the Rhystic mechanic... There was a mechanic with a name that was in the small set. We're starting to shift a little bit about how we do that. Um, the Rhystic Mechanic was about the, um, I got a spell which was cheaper than normal, but I gave my opponent the ability to spend two mana to stop the spell. Um, the way I joked about it it is, it's the spell mechanic with a built-in counter spell. Hey, I get a cool thing, but you can counter it. Also, there was a lot of land sacrificing.

William was really playing around with the idea of mana sort of management, of how to know, you know, when do I know when to sac the land, save the land, spend mana, not spend mana. You know, the idea behind Rhystic was, look, if I know my opponent has Rhystic things, I kind of want to leave mana up. But I leave mana up, then I restrict sort of what I can cast. And, you know, the thing that William was playing around with was really the idea of there's an interesting, very minute choices you have to

make. What we found from that was most players didn't care about making those choices. And so what ended up happening was it didn't have the impact that William had thought. William was a really spiky player. You know, yes, there are players that are like, okay, I'm going to telegraph my opponent has a wristed card and yes, I could cast something, are like, okay, I'm going to telegraph my opponent has a Rhystic card, and yes, I could cast something, but my board position means I'm better off playing against a Rhystic and not doing something. Like, decision-making that was... One thing you have to be careful of when you design Magic is there's many ways to play Magic. There's many different kinds of players and stuff.

And that if you gear your set too much toward one style of play, you alienate other players. That if I want to have a path for you to go down, I want to make sure that there are other paths for you to explore. But this set went all in on this sort of the man and management thing that, like, if you don't care,

like, my analogy is, I used to play Dungeon Dragons when I was younger. I just don't have time now. It's an awesome game. And that one of the things when I was a dungeon master for it is trying to figure out, there's a rule in D&D about sort of weight, how much you can carry.

And kind of what I decided when I was dungeon mastering is, look, be reasonable. I'm not going to let you do crazy things, but it's not worth the energy carrying. It's not like, oh, well, how much weight do you have, and how strong are you, and what, like, we'll keep a, you know,

look, I say to people, you've got to carry something reasonable. If you start trying to be unreasonable, I can call you on it, but I'm not, I'm just not going to spend the energy doing that. Now there are people that are really into that of okay how much can I carry and what's the weight and what does it mean if I carry a certain amount it's going to tire me out and there's people that really get

into that sort of the realism of trying to match that. The kind of player I was I didn't and I didn't make my players do that. There's a similar quality that if you sort of make people care about something they don't want to care about, it's just not fun for them. And, in case

of Prophecy, they just didn't care. The problem with Rhystic wasn't that they were constantly thinking about how to not get counterspelled if you were. It's just they would walk into it left and right. They weren't anticipating it so they'd walk into it and then just it became this again and again, like just constant disappointment. because the style

of how they played was like I'm not going to spend the energy caring about that and then Jesse was unfun for them and it wasn't enough of motivation to change their behavior

so it was just sort of like okay this is inherently unfun for me you gotta be really careful about that that doesn't mean you can't have moments of cool spikiness

for the spikes out there, but it can't be something that is, at the same time, not going to make other players happy or not give other people routes to how to play. And Prophecy really kind of went full throttle on that. The one other thing Prophecy did, which in my memory is the first time I remember doing this, is the idea of KSP is what we call key selling points, what we call KSP rares, which is a rare cycle that's like, hey, look at me. I'm just this really cool thing that might excite you to want to buy this product.

And I mean, now our cycle sometimes is not a mythic rare rather than just rare, you know, the gods of something or whatever. But the idea of doing something, and we had both the winds and the avatars of really high profile sort of sexy KSPs. That was something that Prophecy had done. I think that's the first time we did it was in Prophecy. And it really became something we went back to of saying, look, we want to do something high profile,

something we really, you know, we'll draw attention to it, we'll do a cycle so every color gets one, you know, and that we'll do something that really makes sense and feels rare or later mythic rare, when mythic rare didn't exist at the time. And both the wins and the advertise were like, I'm either a really powerful creature,

legendary creature, or I'm a very powerful spell, and oh, these are really cool and they do powerful things and you might want these. And they're big and bombastic and something that's real sexy. I mean, more teeny, obviously, but something that really could excite players. Now, be aware that these cards were you didn't need to play this card

the difference between the Rhystic thing and is that when I put something in a mechanic that's all the way down to common

as a high-ass fan it's hard not to care about it when I make a cycle of rare cards that you can sort of opt in if you want to also these cards are really good

and limited then it can get you excited makes you want to buy more packs but it doesn't sort of push you in a situation where, let's say you don't like these cards, it's fine, you can trade them away. It's trying to balance the idea of, not everything has to be for everybody, but the thing is, it's not making the gameplay have to follow a certain style

of play, which is where Rhystic went wrong. Making cards that might excite a subset of players, but that don't dictate sort of the gameplay necessarily, that's a different thing. Why making Timmy rares was fine, but making a spiky mechanic a common ended up causing us problems. Okay, after Prophecy, after the Mercadian Mask block was Invasion block. So Invasion was the start of the third age of design. So Invasion was a really important set. First off, Invasion was the idea of blocks that had a theme to them.

Mechanical, a mechanical theme to them. This was the multicolored block. Now that might seem, one of the things that's funny is when I talk about innovations, once you're used to the innovations, like I've told the story before about how I would take film history classes and the professor would stop and say, see this?

This is the first time ever that film did this. And the problem was, without the teacher telling you that, it doesn't even seem noticeable because films do that. The fact that it was the first time that it was done is important, and it's historic, but it's hard to see sometimes without knowing the context. Because like, oh, oh, they used to not do that before this, but now it's so ingrained in our cinema vocabulary that you can't even see it. It's like it's almost invisible to you. Because that's, you know,

one of the things you learn when you study film is there are certain things we do that mean something and they don't have to mean something. You just, from watching enough films, there's just cheats. You know, the one I always talk about, the Great Train Robbery, is the fact that if you cut from one place to another place and cut back and you go back and forth between them, that says to you, oh, it's happened concurrently.

There's no reason that it has to be the truth, you know what I'm saying? But that's just how film has worked in enough time that people just, oh, that's what it is, and you accept that. So this was the first set that really had a block with a theme to it. Previous blocks, obviously, there's a carryover mechanics. You know what I'm saying? We introduce two mechanics and that runs through the block. But it didn't quite have the theme.

This set was like, we're about gold cards. There's going to be a lot of multicolor cards. And we're going to make you play a lot of colors. And the things that we chose to do were all to that theme. So that's another big difference between Invasion is once you have a theme, once your block is about something, like early on, we would have two mechanics for every large fall set. And they had necessarily nothing to do with each other. It's flanking and phasing.

nothing to do with each other. It's flanking and phasing. It is buyback and echo. Or not echo, sorry, buyback and shadow. It's echo in cycling. You know, they were just things in which, well, what exactly did these have to do with each other? And the answer

is, in some cases like Tempest, I managed to make them mechanically sort of have tension with each other, but they didn't really connect to each other. So once you start getting to Invasion, it's like, okay, our mechanics are going to serve a larger picture of what we're doing here. And, you know, so we get to Invasion.

It introduces Kicker, which is a pretty big deal. I've talked a lot about this. Kicker is a pretty big deal. I've talked a lot about this. Kicker is a huge technology. And if I could roll back time, I would not have introduced Kicker as Kicker. I would have made a subset of it. And, you know, it was boost, and it makes your spells bigger or something.

I would have done a subset of it. But the idea of, you know, well, we had done it on one of cards. Kicker's the first time we really grasped the idea. Well, I can take it back. Buyback actually was in Tempest. I think, I guess buyback was the first time we had done it. Kicker is the first time we sort of broadened it out a little bit and understood that the value of having extra mana to extra effects.

And we definitely go a little bit broad with it. You know, there's a lot of other minor themes in Invasion that ended up becoming important. Like, we had the Divi mechanic. That was not a name mechanic, but you divide things in piles. I guess Factor Fiction being the most famous one. But the idea is, okay,

I divide things in two piles and my opponent picks. It's a mechanic we've gone back to time and again. That's something that's fun little mini-games. hey, I divide things into two piles and my opponent picks. It's a mechanic we've gone back to time and again. That's something that's fun little mini-games. I think we started stumbling upon the idea that making you and your opponent do something, as long as it doesn't take too much time, can be kind of fun where there's a game,

there's some skill testing. This is the kind of thing we found that Spikes like that the other players enjoy, which is, you know what? Yeah, Spikes is much better at fact or fiction than someone who's not into the minutia of it, but it's still fun to do. The mistake with Rhystic is

here's something Spike's would enjoy. Would anybody else enjoy it? Eh, not really. Fact or fiction, Spike's would enjoy it, but other people like it? Yeah, yeah, they would. You know, Invasion also, obviously with, I mean, starting with Tempest, we started telling the story, or Weatherlight. We started telling the story, and you start seeing some of that coming through. A lot of Invasion was about the actual invasion of the Phyrexians and the defense by the Dominarians to stop it.

So you start to see the Coalition come together and stuff like that. Invasion also, although it was unnamed at the time, had a domain mechanic. The idea of pushing toward playing more colors. And that was a big Invasion theme of trying to say, hey, let's get you to play more colors. Now, the funny thing about Invasion is, and once again, this is us learning something

by not doing it correctly, is we did a multicolored set where we really didn't support you with the mana. Now, the interesting thing is, for the first time ever, we made the dual lands that came into play tapped. That was something we had been afraid to do, and we had just hired Randy Buehler off the Pro Tour, and Randy was like, look, these lands are fine. In fact, we need to have lands like this. Later it turned out that we could go even farther, that we were so hesitant about dual lands that kind of, we were so skittish that we were

sort of not, we had more room to push where dual lands could go without quite getting to traditional dual lands. But Randy really, it was interesting, Randy really pushed us and finally we said, okay, okay. Now in retrospect, the tap lands are like,

what else do you get? That's not even something we would do without usually, I mean we do them sometimes as a beginner product, but it's something in which usually we give you extra stuff on top of that.

There are gates or whatever, something else, you gain life, things that, there's extra bonus for maybe you want to play these. But anyway,

Invasion definitely taught us an important lesson of respecting mana in a multicolor set. You know, but I think Invasion was a lot of fun of sort of

having us embrace themes. Okay, Planeshift. So Planeshift messed around with a couple things. One thing is it did something called gating, which once again wasn't a named

mechanic. But what gating cards were is they were multicolored cards that you had to bounce a creature of that color when you played it. So they were aggressively costed, but built into it was the idea that you bounce things. And I really think gating has become something that we have learned as an interesting tool for magic.

Sometimes there's—usually the way gating works is you have no choice. You just have to do that. We sometimes do opt-in to gating where you can if you want. We sometimes do opt-in to gating where you can if you want. The cool thing about gating is that it has this clever moment where there's reasons sometimes why you want to return things. And then not only do you get to sort of get this thing cheaper, but the negative can be a positive. And that's a theme that we've played a lot into of giving you a negative, but making

things in such a way that under the right circumstances it might not be a negative um and that there's a lot of fun um card building card crafting if you will um where you sort of let people make that discovery and feel clever for finding the way around it um and so we've gotten more and more into the space of then we we do still give you pure negatives. We do downside mechanics. I don't know, we don't do downside mechanics much these days. We do downside cards.

But even more so what we tend to find now is things where there's sort of a cost to them, it's something that there's potential upsides if you work correctly on it. And that is a theme we've done again and again. That to me is probably the biggest takeaway of Plane Shift. Apocalypse. So Apocalypse was interesting. The story behind Apocalypse basically is, originally

we had put all ten colors into Invasion. It was a little much, and I also realized, so Henry and I came up with this at the same time, that if we save something, it would give definition to the final set. That Apocalypse, you know, being the enemy set, was the first not large set that had an identity, really.

That wasn't a flavor identity. I mean, some of the early small sets had a theme to them, obviously Antiquities and Arabian Nights and stuff. But once we're in the block era, the idea that this block has a mechanical theme to them, obviously, Antiquities and Arabian Nights and stuff. But once we're in the block era, the idea that this block has a mechanical identity to it, this is really the precursor of that. In fact, Apocalypse in many ways is kind of the precursor to block

planning. Because before that, we really didn't plan out our blocks. I mean, we sort of like, we're going here, we'll do more, we'll do more. Sometimes we saved a little space on where to evolve the mechanic. But Apocalypse was the first time we said, you know what? We're going to do this theme, which people might want,

but we're going to hold back on it, and then we're going to pay it off. And so Apocalypse really sort of set the standard of, and it was the most popular third block in a long, long, long time. In fact, even years past that. I mean, there's not a lot of third blocks that had kind of popularity because they really hit a strong theme people wanted. And to me, in fact, it's kind of funny. For as popular as Apocalypse

is, we really have not done a lot of enemy sets. I know I tried to make dragons an enemy set and ended up changing, but it is still something we don't do all that often. It is on the short list. We'll get there. But it is something that really excites players.

One of the other things in Invasion it wasn't really until Ravnica we learned this lesson, but I think we started to realize the love the audience has for enemy stuff. Early on in Magic, we really sort of pushed the

ally and sort of made it harder to play the enemy. We did that for thematic reasons of like, well, allies get along well, but enemies, they struggle to get along. And like, while it thematically made sense from a flavor standpoint, it just wasn't good gameplay. Like, why are we cutting down the options of things that you could do? And so I think Apocalypse really started to get us to understand the attractiveness of the enemies.

I mean, Ravnica is the first set where I said, look, we're going to do evenly. When I get to Ravnica, I'll talk about that. But I think the lessons of Apocalypse influenced how I made Ravnica, which was the next gold block, obviously, a few years later. You know, Apocalypse also, the other thing that we had done in Plan You know, Apocalypse also, the other thing that we had done in Planeshift and Apocalypse,

interesting, is that Mike and I had both come with different ways to play around with using Kicker. And we ended up doing the Battle Mages in Planeshift and the Vulvers in Apocalypse. Both were interesting technology.

The Battlemages really played around with the idea that a card can have built-in choices that you can make, and, I mean, charms, I guess, predate the Battlemage. But it definitely sort of showed us how we can use choice, and when you cast something, you have some options. And also the idea that you can choose A, B, and b probably down the road would um lead to entwine which is you know in mirrored and coming up um volvers were interesting in that the vulva sort of said to us that how do we tackle memory issues and the idea there was i make choices

and depending on my choices i I mark my card differently. So the way Volvers worked was you could kick for a smaller thing and get a plus one, plus one counter and an ability, or kick for a larger and get two plus one counters and an ability. And so the idea is you always knew kind of what, and you could kick both. The idea is, well, if I had one counter or two counters or three counters, that told me what I had done. And so it was a neat idea of figuring out how to do memory. And I think the Volvers was us starting to play around a little bit more with having things be different,

but finding ways to help you remember that they're different. It's kind of funny because today, really, I just talked about two blocks, which is Mercadian Masks and Invasion. In a lot of ways, they were very different blocks in that Mercadian Masks did a lot of things, made a lot of mistakes, sort of educated us in what we were doing and sort of taught us how not to do things. And Invasion sort of paved things and did things correctly that helped us understand how to do things. So they both were very informative blocks, but in kind of different ways.

But anyway, I am now at work. So hopefully you guys are enjoying this Magic Evolution series. It's neat to sort of go back and look at things and understand from sort of a technical standpoint. So I hope you guys are enjoying it. But anyway, I'm at work, so we all know what that means.

It means it's the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. See you next time.