Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #534: Designing Legendaries

Episode Date: May 4, 2018

In this podcast, I talk about how we design legendary cards.

I'm pulling up my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so one of the topics that's been going on my blog lately is talking about legendary creatures. And so today I thought I'd talk about the design of legendary creatures. So what goes into making a legendary creature? So we tend to get to legendary creatures in a couple different ways. Number one is sometimes the story people come to us and they say, oh, well, here are characters that are going to be in the story. You know, this is the leader of this faction,

or this is a character that we plan to be a protagonist in one of the short stories or something. And so some of the time, they come to us and they say, this is a character we plan to have. And usually what happens then is they sort of give us a description of the character, and that is a top-down design. That is us trying to say, okay, I'm designing to a known character. How do I bring that character to life? And the point of design of those kind of cards is literally just trying to match the character as cleanly as we can with the caveat that we want it to be an interesting card to play. It is not one of the traps that you can fall into when you're doing top down is sacrificing play for accuracy of representation,

of, you know, capturing the flavor exactly. And what we've learned is it is better to capture the flavor generally and just play better than be dead on, have it exactly right, but not play quite as well. And so one of the tricks on doing top down legendary characters is that you want to definitely sort of keep in mind that the goal is not to capture as best possible with no other objective.

The goal is to make something that's a fun, playable card, but that then captures some essence of it. And the trick we've learned is that players are good at sort of filling in gaps from a flavor standpoint. Meaning, if I talk about something in the general, people can fill in specific where they need to. So let me give a good example of this in larger magic,

which is what we call the elephant in boots issue. So let's say we're going to make a pair of boots. Now, from a flavor standpoint, okay, that boots make sense to maybe a humanoid creature, but putting the boots on an animal doesn't make sense. You know, you're not going to have something like a wild elephant put on boots and run faster. But what we learned in Magic is when we sort of get exact for flavor reasons, it just generally makes a poorer game. And the idea is, so let's say I make boots that are an interesting piece of equipment to make you maybe run faster and maybe have hex proof or something, that the fact that I could put that equipment on any creature

just makes it a better game. Oh, but what happens about I put it, you know, okay, the flavor of disconnect falls apart when I try to put the boots on the elephant. But what we've learned is that if we show you boots, and in the art we show you boots on a human running, or a human or a creature running, and convey what the boots are doing,

you get the idea that the flavor is, oh, someone puts on these boots and the boots make them fast. And then later, if you are in a game state and you get to put the boots on an elephant, ha ha ha, ha ha ha, sorry, ha ha ha, the boots went on an elephant. But anyway, I still get the gameplay and I get to do what I want to do.

There's a similar dynamic when we were working on Kaladesh and we were doing vehicles and we were trying to figure out whether or not to let vehicles crew other vehicles. And it was extra words and it was sort of like, ah, it's not worth it. You get the flavor that the crew is going to be people that actually can drive the vehicle. And that the fact that you can sort of hop in a car and have the car drive a train, it's quirky and silly, but look, that's not the flavor of what's going on.

Legendary creatures have the same basic idea in that if we can convey the basic essence, if you can look at what's going on and say, I get how this connects, you don't need the finite detail. In fact, magic is better when you can be a little bit broader. One of the things in general is you want some restrictions, restrictions for creativity.

I'm not saying that, in fact, the interesting thing is if you go too broad, the car loses something as well. That if you just say, I can affect anything, well, that's not as flavorful as, oh, I affect a subset of things, or I care about certain things. One of the balances we're trying to get is you want enough detail to not just give it flavor, but from a gameplay standpoint, some restrictions are kind of cool.

Like, if every time we made a lord, it always said all creatures get plus one, plus one. Well, it's not as interesting to say, oh, well, this is an elf lord, or this is an elephant lord, or a unicorn lord, or whatever it is. That by having it be a little bit narrower, it gives a definition. So there actually is an interesting range we want to get in. Which is, you want enough detail that there's a little bit of flavor there and it gives some restrictions because it helps sort of give like you want each card to not go in the same deck but to go in different decks. It goes, oh this would inspire a different kind of thing. But you want to be general enough that you don't, you know, if you

get too specific then you make a card that kind of gets stranded that's just too hard to use. you get too specific, then you make a card that kind of gets stranded that's just too hard to use. And so there's a middle area that's kind of the sweet spot where it has enough detail to it that it gives a little bit of flavor and it sort of pushes you toward a certain direction, but enough open that you have enough flexibility and that it's not too restrictive. You know, if I made a creature that said all creatures with a converted mana cost of four that are two three creatures, you know, at some point you get so narrow that just there's not enough things that fit in it. And so you

want that sweet spot. Now another thing to keep in mind when we were making legendary creatures, especially top-down ones, is the commander format exists. One of the things I stress is every legendary creature does not need to be for the commander format. I understand the commander format cares about legendary creatures,

but there are different reasons you want to make legendary creatures, and that if you have a really cool legendary creature and what maximizes it is making something that requires multiples of it, that is okay. You know, like, I remember in, was it Dragon's Dark here? We had a cool thing that cared about

duplicates in your graveyard. Well, Commander, that's never going to happen. But it was a cool card, it was a neat thing, something you could build around, and the idea was, okay, well, this card might not be a Commander, but every legendary card isn't necessarily for Commander. You know, the, yes, the Commanders not be a commander, but every legendary card isn't necessarily for a commander. You know, yes, the commanders care about legendary characters, creatures,

but they're not the only ones that care, and that part of what you're trying to do when you make something legendary is you're trying to hit all the different audiences. So let me deviate into that a second. Who are the audience for a legendary creature? That's always good to know. Well, number one, you got your commander player. And the commander player very much cares about,

I would like this to be a commander in my deck. I would like this to inspire me. I would like this to sort of give me some restrictions, but give me a lot of flexibility in building my deck. In general, the commander crowd tends to like commanders that have more colors rather than less. Just gives you more options. But there are people that enjoy the full spectrum of commanders. So we do make minor color legendary creatures. There are people that enjoy making minor color commander decks. There are people that like

as many colors as possible. So we make 3, 4, and 5 color legends as well. Like I said, it's not as if the commander players are a uniform group that all want the same thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, they care about legendary things. And they, you know, whenever he makes something legendary, the commander group is going to look at it. It doesn't mean

everyone has to be for them, every design's for them, but it is something they're going to look at. Also, in general, they like when it gives some definition, you know, that the commander pushes in some direction. In general, for Legendaries, we like that.

It gives some sort of what kind of deck would want this. We occasionally will make some more generic Legends when we're filling certain... Sometimes within a set, there's certain roles you've got to fill. We'll get to that in a second. Other reasons you make legendaries. As far as people play, number one, people want legendary creatures,

commander players. These aren't important to me. Number two is Vorthoses, people that are just story people. That whenever we talk about something in the story, the people really want to see it. Now, one of the problems we run into is that the stories getting written happen after we've made the set.

That we, the basic outline is made while we're designing the set, but the details, the actual stories themselves, don't get written until later. And so what happens is, in making stories, same with flavor text, by the way, in the making of flavor text and making of stories, often they will create new characters. And the audience tends to like those characters. They read them, they fall in love with them. And then where's this character? And a lot of times the reason that the character that

seems so important in the story might not be in the card set, is when did it get made? If it got made early enough that we were aware of it, yeah, we'll make one. And there's some classic examples. Like back in the day, back when we used to do novels, the novels would be written separate from us, and usually at the same time we were making things, or actually later than we were making things. So, for example, in Urza's Saga, there's a character named Xantcha, who was like the protagonist of at least one of the books.

Nowhere in Urza's Saga do you find Xantcha. Because we didn't know about her at the time. We didn't know she was even a thing. No one said, hey, there's a character. Like, if we're given details on the character, we can flesh out the character and assign the card. But if nobody tells us it's a character, or the character wasn't even created at the time, then

it's not there. But if nobody tells us it's the character or the character wasn't even created at the time, then it's not there. Now, the nice thing about Commander products and other supplemental products is it's allowed us to go back and fill some stuff in and make characters that never got a card. Like Kondo, who was Gerard's adoptive father, never got a card and finally, recently, we were able to finally give Kondo a card. Stuff like that's kind of fun for the Vorthorses out there. But anyway, and other people who really like the legendary characters are the Vorthorses, the story people, who really want to see the story and see the characters and see them reflected in the story. The Vorthorses tend to care more about how the characters represent, how the

cards represent the characters. The commander crowd is a little more like, is this fun to commander? Does it lead to fun play? Is it a fun commander? Stuff like that. The four-throw crowd is a little more like, are you truly representing the character? This was a neat character. Ooh, how do you represent that character through gameplay?

And either like, oh, you nailed that character, or, oh, that's not exactly that character. And one of the things you'll find is, I'll use a chroma as an example. A chroma is an example of a card that we made to be exciting, but we really didn't reflect her role in the story. If you've ever seen, I wrote an article about this, and I think a few other people have referenced it over the years. If you you ever seen the comments on Akroma? I

actually was trying to change Akroma away from what she ended up being, because I didn't think she matched the story. I mean, the current card does not match the story. The current card sort of says she's powerful, you know, which was true in the story, and she was someone to be sort of,

if you're up against her, be afraid of but it didn't really capture the role from the story, where Phage on the other hand exactly captured the role in the story like Phage was, this is a character who's like, touches death oh okay, well when she does damage to you, she kills you

that does a good job of sort of representing the essence of the character so, um anyway, the second people that like legendary characters are the Vorthors. For those that have never heard that term before, it was coined by Matt Cavada back when he was writing an article about creative. There's an aesthetic scale that's separate from the psychographics, although people often clump them together. They talk about what you appreciate in the game, Um, it is, there's an aesthetic scale that's separate from the psychographics, um, although people often clump them together.

They talk about what you appreciate in the game, um, and, uh, the Vorthos is the end that's more about flavor, and the Mel is more about mechanics. So Mel and Vorthos are two, uh, aesthetic scale. They're not, sorry, not really a scale. They're two elements that care about things. You can actually be a Vorthos and a Mel, or be neither Vorthos nor Mel. That's possible. elements that care about things. You can actually be a Vorthos Anamel, or be neither Vorthos

nor Mel. That's possible. Okay. The other people that care about Legendary, there's a mechanical function that sometimes we use for Legendary, and that is you can only have one in play at a time. And so there's some people that

enjoy the challenge of... Like, there are people that like restrictions built into the game and kind of enjoy the mechanical aspects of the way legendaries play. So I'll get to that in a second, because that's another reason we might make legendaries. And finally, there are people who appreciate characters in the story that never read the outside material, it's not that they know the characters. It's that part of the fun for them

is they explore the world through the card set. And that is one of the richness of the environment. And that, oh, well, I'm here in Ixador. Not Ixador. Ixalan. And, oh, there are different factions. Who are the pirates, and who are the dinosaurs, and who are the merfolk, and the vampires, and, oh, well, this is the leader of the vampires,

and stuff like that, and all that. There's flavor that's derived not from the story, but from the game itself. Now, I guess you won't get it, but there's also vorthoses in a different context. But there are people in which the legendary stuff itself. Now, I guess you won't argue those are also vorthoses in a different context, but there are people in which the legendary stuff

sort of brings something to the game exclusive of being to the story. I mean, some people want to match the story, some just like it illuminates the game itself. Okay, so the first way that we make legendary cards is

that we design top-down based on stuff told to us. The second thing that will happen is sometimes we make legendary cards is that we design top-down based on stuff told to us. The second thing that will happen is sometimes we make a card as a mechanical card, and we come to realize that it kind of lends itself to being an interesting character. Just as the creative team will come to us and say, here's a character we want to use, sometimes we make a card, a design, and realize that, wow, this really has the flavor of a character. That it might want to be legendary, because the essence of the design really speaks to a character.

And so sometimes what will happen is we'll talk to the creative team, and there's times where the creation of the card is not a story thing, it's a mechanical thing, but we make such kind of a cool card that really speaks as if it's a character that the creative team will find a way to use it as a character. I'm trying to think of a good example of that. For example, the way during Tempest that was a weird one because I was

during Tempest I was the liaison for the story and there definitely were things where we made the cards like slivers were a good example where slivers were just a mechanical thing and then we realized that we wanted them to have a role in the story and we added and there's a point where the the weatherlight crew has to fight the slivers um and then later in the story we ended up making the sliver queen the sliver queen was not made to be a character but was made to be um just a cool card and then we realized it

was kind of cooler like if there was one Sliver Queen, which is kind of cooler, rather than there's lots of Sliver Queens all over the place. And then we wove the Sliver Queen into the story. She was not created to be a character. We made the card for Slivers to the Sliver deck, and we're like, oh,

well, this really seems like it's a unique, special thing. This is something that's producing the Slivers, the Queen to the Slivers, and, this really seems like it's a unique, special thing. You know, this is something that's producing the slivers, the queen to the slivers. And, like, it seems odd there's a lot of them. So we made it a legendary card. And then I later realized that there was a, I found an opportunity.

There's a cool moment where the sliver queen, when the weatherlight first shows up on Wrath and they're attacked by the Predator and Ger the, when the, um, Weatherlight first shows up on Wrath and they're attacked by the Predator and Gerard falls overboard and stuff, they end up,

uh, Predator goes aboard and takes all the legacy in addition to taking Karn because he's part of the legacy. Tyngarth hops on, although they didn't take Tyngarth. He sort of,

uh, in his brave act jumped on after to try to save Karn. Um, but anyway, they then put the legacy in the stronghold, and they...

Volrath has captured the Sliver Queen because he is... Well, he's evil, and he wants to sort of control the Slivers. And anyway, he then puts the legacy with the Sliver Queen, expecting the Sliver Queen... expecting the Sliver Queen, because the Sliver Queen is kind of beholden to him right now, because he has, if she wants access to the Sliver,

he controls that. And so she is guarding the elements of the legacy. And so when they're trying to escape the stronghold, Karn goes to go get the legacy, because it's his responsibility. He's the guardian of the legacy, if you didn't know that. And they all fit inside him. I don't know if you know that either.

Anyway, and he has the heart-to-heart with the Sliver Queen where he sort of explains to the Sliver Queen that the legacy is to him what the slivers are to her. And he sort of reaches her and she ends up letting him take the legacy. But anyway, that cool little moment came about because we knew we had this card and we're like, is there a way to make use of that?

So we've done cool stuff like that in the past, where we have made just a cool mechanical card, and then said, oh, wow, this really feels like a character. We're going to make it legendary, because the feel of the card will be enhanced if we make it a legendary. Another reason that we will make something legendary is a mechanical reason. another reason that we will make something legendary is a mechanical reason so the example of this will be

Crook's Thumb the original Crook's Thumb, not Crook's Other Thumb although Crook's Other Thumb I guess once Crook's Thumb was legendary of course Crook's Other Thumb is legendary the reason Crook's Thumb was legendary was we realized if you had multiples in play

that if you get a reflip coin, normally a flip a coin is 50-50. And if you get a reflip a coin, you now have a 75% chance of success from before you had a 50% chance. My probability math might be a smidgeon off, but I believe that's what's going on. So, but the problem was the more you got, just the more assuredness you have of winning the coin flip,

and the coin flip cards were kind of designed to have some flexibility to them, some unknown to them, and that we weren't really interested of, because we tend to balance coin flip cards as if you truly don't know. So we sort of allow you to make them a little cheaper because you don't know the outcome. And if you had too many crunked thumbs, it actually got a little bit abusive because enough crunked thumbs, you had such, I mean, it wasn't a certainty, but a near certainty of doing things at a much lower cost

that we actually were worried about it. And the whole point of Corpse Thumb was, it wasn't meant to be a constructed card. Because we don't make the coin flip cards to be constructed. So they came to me and said, we really want to make this legendary, not because we

care about the flavor or anything, but because we don't want you having two in play at once. And so we do that occasionally where we use legendary as sort of a mechanical restriction. The side effect of that is in order to do that we have to make it legendary. So whenever we want to make something legendary, we go to the creative team and say, would you mind if this was legendary? Usually it's not a big deal. Most of the times it's an artifact is where this happens and it's like, okay, it's not

just a sword. It's the sword of whatever. It's not particularly hard to make artifacts legendary. So we do that. Every once in a blue moon. I think there's been a few creatures we made legendary because they were cheap. And we didn't want you having, like, we've made a few things that ended up like, oh, it needs to be legendary in order to do this.

Now, sometimes we work backwards. Sometimes, because we make a legendary creature, we design things that we wouldn't do if it weren't legendary. So sometimes we lean into the legendary sort of drawback, if you will. So when you look at cards, sometimes, like I said, sometimes it starts legendary and we build it knowing the restriction will allow us to do something we couldn't do otherwise. Other times we make a card not intended to be legendary, find out it's a problem, and then make it legendary.

So sometimes things get made legendary for mechanical reasons, restriction reasons. for mechanical reasons, restriction reasons. Another thing that we tend to do to make legendary things is we have found that when we... One of the things that Commander tends to make us want to do these days is that when we make a theme in a set, if it's a large enough theme, we often make a theme in a set, if it's a large enough theme, we often make a legendary creature because we want to, well, two things. One is making something legendary where you have factions or you have major themes sort of helps reinforce that there's a theme.

Usually we want to make a card that says, hey, I would encourage you to play this theme. And usually what it does is mechanicallyically, it just says, it references the theme by name, or it just works really well with the theme. And by making it legendary, it draws a little bit of attention to the fact that this is something that highlights your theme. When we make factions, for example, we tend to just, it's now a given that factions will have a leader. Sometimes they also, we call it champion.

Like when we make the Ravnica guilds, we made a leader of the guild and a champion of the guild to allow us to get two different legendaries for each guild. Like Khans of Tarkir, we made the Khans. So sometimes what we're doing is we're making things to reinforce

the themes. The reason we make them legendaries twofold, it's high profile and it helps sort of build story around it. But also, people like having commanders of the thing. One of the notes we keep getting is, when we do a theme and don't give you a clean commander for the theme, it forces them to go get old characters

that mechanically might connect but don't tie it flavorfully. And like the werewolf class example here, where we made a lot of werewolves. It was a theme. We didn't make a legendary werewolf. Players were like, where's the legendary werewolf? And the commander crowd, what they wanted, what we misunderstood at the time was we thought they wanted

something that was just a good generic commander that happened to be a werewolf. What they really wanted was a commander for their werewolf deck that was a werewolf. And so this is something we're learning with time. When we make a theme, if we can try to think about how to encapsulate the theme and then make something that also can double as a commander for that theme

definitely makes a certain crowd happy another reason that we'll make legendaries is sometimes we make cycles as what we call key selling points, KSPs. We like to make sure that every set has things that just sort of get players excited. That's just business speak for there's exciting things in the set

that make people go, ooh, I want that set. Sometimes we use legends, often cycles of legends, as a KSP. Um, the classic example would be Theros. It's like, oh, there's gods. You know, we're going to have three sets, and every set's going to have a cycle of gods.

And so you'll be able to collect the pantheon of gods. Um, you know, we had the Gearhulks in Kaladesh. You know, a lot of times we'll just do exciting, splashy things. Actually, the Gearhulks were not legendary, so that was a bad example. But the gods were legendary. Not all of our splashy cycles necessarily are legendary. But a lot of times where it really reinforces what we're trying to do. For example, when we're doing gods, it doesn't make a lot of sense.

There's a lot of gods. There's a singular god for one particular thing. So when there's a red god, usually that will be a legendary thing. Also, I should note, by the way, I'm talking a lot about characters. All the things I'm talking about apply to objects or places as well.

So, for example, in the story, like take Odyssey, you know, the Mirari was a major component of the story. Well, we knew we needed to do something really cool with the Mirari. You know, and so one of the things that we were sort of on the hook for is, hey, this is a major component of the story. We need to reflect this. And not only do we need to reflect it, but, look,

the story revolved around people wanting the Mirari. So there was some pressure to make something that people would want. And that's another thing to keep in mind sometimes is when there's something that is so crux to what's going on that you want to make sure that you represent the thing or the place. Legendary places have been trickier. For a long time, the way the legendary rules work, we didn't want legendary lands because the gameplay was bad.

We eventually changed it so that now we can make legendary lands again. There was a period of time where the reason you would play legendary lands is to destroy the opponent's legendary lands, and it was kind of a strip mine thing. That was not particularly fun. But now that you each can have one copy of it, I of a strip mine thing. That was not particularly fun. But now that you each can have one copy of it, I can't use

mine destroyer or so. We now can go back to Legendary Lands. Legendary Lands usually is it's trying to play up some place and there's usually something special about the card that the idea of

it has some uniqueness to it is built in. Often we use that mechanically to say, okay, we can only have one of these in play at a time, so we can definitely sort of juice it a little bit because of that. I will note, by the way, that we don't power things up all that much because they're legendary. I know people seem to think we power them up a lot. We get a little bit of space. We don't actually get as much

as people think we do. You can push things a little bit in certain areas. The reason you mostly get to push legendaries is not because they're legendary. It's because most of them are multicolored. And you can push multicolored stuff a little bit more. For example, if you cost

just three mana but you're 3 different colors mana, getting that out is hard and getting that out in turn 3 is not impossible honestly but tricky so we can make cards that if you got in the third turn are super powerful but because you're playing 3 colors

it's hard to get on the third turn and so we definitely give you more value when you're playing more colors. Another thing with Legendary is sometimes when we are

trying to sort of make something for you to build around, sometimes we feel that giving some personality will give the deck some personality. Of like, oh, this is a cool thing. Oh, well maybe instead of just being, you know,

instead of just, like for example, I think if we had something like Battle of Wits to do over again, it's seldom that you need to play two Battle of Wits at one time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, your deck will have four Battle of Wits, but it's not that you need to play two Battlewits at one time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, your deck will have four Battlewits but it's not the kind of card where

you know, look, if one Battlewits is out it's going to do the job. You don't necessarily need more than one out at a time. And so that's the kind of thing nowadays that we make something that really will be self-identifiable for a deck and there's opportunity to just give it a little extra flavor, we'll definitely consider doing that.

The other thing about legendaries that we tend to do is we tend to avoid doing exactly... Like, one of the things you want to do with a legendary is... There's a concept in design that I call the, does it have a name, sort of being askew. What that means is that if you go back and look at architecture from like the medieval ages, one of the things they used to do is they would make a mistake on purpose in building churches. Because it was trying to reinforce that only God is perfect,

and so they would build in a mistake. And one of the things that artists have found over time is that one of the things that helps give identity to something is to do something that is a little out of the norm, not what's expected. And so a lot of times when building a legendary, what you want to do is give a little bit of, just a little bit of tweak to it

that makes it have an identity that no one else is going to copy. That is doing something mechanically we wouldn't normally do, or just how it does it is just a little bit different. Usually legendary cards are rare or mythic rare. The Splashes ones are mythic rare, but we make some of it rare.

In sets that matter, we occasionally make them an uncommon. Dominaria is a good example where legendary matters in the set as part of the historic mechanic and so we did make some uncommon legendary cards but it's the kind of

thing that we tend to only do when thematically it makes sense in general the legendary theme and flavor kind of wants to be on rarer things if this is a one of a kind thing well odds are the average person doesn't see it that often. It's a one-of-a-kind thing. But anyway,

when designing them, one of the things that we spent extra time on Legends is that part of giving it a unique flavor is not just copying something you've done before. I'm not saying we never do that, but we're less likely to just repeat something we've done before and I'm not saying we never do that, but we're less likely

to just repeat something we've done before and just make it legendary. Usually when you're making something legendary, you want to add in a little something that just makes it a little unique in a way that's not something most cards will do. Like I said,

sometimes that is in doing an effect we wouldn't do often. Sometimes it's just in the execution. Sometimes you will connect abilities or put together abilities that have a quirky element to them that isn't something we would normally do. The other thing that we tend to do with legendaries is, because we know there's a lot of attention toward them, we always want to make sure that every legendary... I mean, in general we want to make sure every card is pointed toward somebody, but we do

this with legendaries a little more rigorously than we do with normal cards, which is, when we're looking at a card, we're like, who is this for? You know, is this something that is going to be it's super faithful to the story and the Vorthos's really like it? Is it something that just plays awesomely in Commander? Is it something that just has a big splashy cool moment

that the Timmies and Tammies are just going to have such fun playing? Is it do some weird quirky thing that the Johnnies and Jennies get to build around? Is it hyper- build around? Is it hyper-efficient? Is it something where there's a lot of interesting decisions to be made and the Spikes will really have fun with it?

You know, who is it for? What psychographic is it for? What aesthetic is it for? Who is the card for? You know, what format is it for? And that we, because we know legends, legendary permanents, especially creatures, get extra attention to them, we will spend a little more time sort of making sure that it is fine suited, I would say fine tailored,

suited for someone in particular, and make sure that that person really likes it. Because legendaries are sort of a special thing. Like one of the things, in Like, one of the things, in fact, as of the day I recorded this, I did a poll today. Every once in a while, other than head-to-head, I do what I've been calling poll position, where I ask your opinion on magic things that we do.

And today's poll was all about, would you like us to have less legendary creatures, but all of them be relevant in the story, or have more, but not all of them are relevant? And it's very close as of right now. I think less but story relevant is winning by like 1% or 2% as of me leaving work. I don't know by the end of the day if that'll be true.

But one of the big challenges is that we want legendaries to feel special, and that usually the way it works is we'll go through the set and we'll say, okay, if it's a legendary card, to make sure it should be legendary, is this something that we think, I mean, A, is it a character in the story

we're trying to reflect? Is there some sort of faction, some sort of inherent flavor we're trying to do? Is there some theme we're trying to provide for commander? What is the role of each card? And then, beyond that, the psychic graphics of, we want to make sure that there are legends for each of the psychic graphics, because not

everybody plays the same way. And that we want to make sure, like, we like to have some legendary things show up in tournaments. We like to have some legendary things be super popular and casual. Another thing that we try to do, oh, here's another thing that we've been doing recently, is the players get really excited

when we make legendary creature types that we've never made legendary before. So one of the things we've been consciously doing now is just keeping an eye open when there's an opportunity. You know, that, for example, we had never made a legendary blue-red artificer that mechanically cared about artifacts. And there's a lot of players that wanted that.

And they thought we were going to make it in Kaladesh, but we ended up making Sahelian instead, which was a Planeswalker, not a legendary character. So when we were making Dominaria, we were very conscious that's something they wanted. And there was a character that was blue-red, which was Joyra, who is Artificer, right?

So, like, we had this line up and think, okay, players want this, let's try to make them do that. Also, there are just creature types. Actually, I combined two things. There is archetypes that are missing

and there's creature types that are missing. So we want to make sure to fill archetypes. I know there's Desire, one for a white-black cleric. I know when we make new, like we put dinosaurs and pirates in Ixalan,

we knew that people would want a legend that fulfilled all the colors of them. Well, if dinosaurs are white, red, and green, give me a white, red, and green legendary dinosaur. If pirates are blue, black, and red, give me a legendary pirate that's blue, black, and red. And we're also looking of, like I get the question all the time,

for a legendary bear or a legendary, I guess we've made a legendary hound. But people will say, you've never made a legendary fill in the blank. And so we're always on the lookout for, is there an opportunity to make a legendary something that we've not made before? And that's something we look at in legendary stuff.

we've not made before. And that's something we look at in Legendary stuff. Often, when we're making supplemental sets, or even normal sets if we can, we sometimes look back and figure out, especially in a return. If we're doing a return,

we're like, oh, did we miss somebody? We're going back to Innistrad. Was there somebody people wanted on Innistrad that we, because of the timing that showed up in the story or in flavor text, that we just didn't know when we were making Innistrad, that now we know people want it, we can go back and make it? Sometimes those get made supplemental sets. Sometimes those get made return sets.

We always have to keep that in mind. But really, when making a legendary, a lot of the roles of designing a legendary is understanding kind of who wants it on many different vectors. You know, what format is it being played in? What kind of player is going to play it? What kind of psychographic is going to play it? What roles does it play in the set? What theme does it hit in the set? You know, what is it saying about the set?

How is it filling out the world? There's a lot of different things you've got to do when you design legendaries. And that, my friends, is how legendaries are done. But anyway, I am now at work. And so that means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to make it magic. I'll see you guys next time.