Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #539: Reprints

Episode Date: May 25, 2018

Not every card is new. In this podcast, I talk about when and how we use reprints in design.

I'm pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today we're going to talk about reprints. Okay, so one other thing that happens whenever we make a set is we like to take cards we've already made and put them in the set. What we call reprints. So today I'm going to talk a little bit about what goes into a reprint, why we make a reprint, why reprints are important So actually that's a good place to start Why are reprints important? They're important for a couple reasons

One is that the average person who plays Magic, I think we're up to nine and a half years magic. I think we're up to nine and a half years. Most people who play have played for a while, and that one of the things that there's some fun of seeing things return, that there's some excitement in having things come back. So one of the reasons we do reprints is because people like to see reprints. Another reason we do reprints is, look, we don't have to keep reinventing the wheel. Sometimes to clean the simplest thing to do is something we've done already. And so there's no reason to have to always make something new. We make a lot of things new. Every set will have new elements to it. But conceptually speaking, we could design a brand new set using mostly pre-existing cards if we needed to.

We don't because there's a lot, you know, there's some splash of making new things, obviously. But, you know, we do, I guess, do reprint sets, which are stuff like masters and things. And that's us making a new product out of existing things. Most of the reprints I'm talking about today, though, are for normal standard legal sets. Obviously, we do things like core sets and supplemental sets and things in which there are reasons we use other reprints, but I'm going to focus mostly today on standard legal sets. Okay, so the reason we want to do reprints is don't want to re-vent the wheel. Sometimes there's some fun that comes from bringing things back sometimes there are issues in standard or modern of what we call the four of issue which is if we give a new name to something that already exists that allows you to play more of them

in whatever format it has and so for example Modern is a good example where if there's an effect that we kind of don't want you playing eight of it, then we'll bring it back with the same name rather than do a tweak on it because it just increases the amount of things you can get. It's not a lot of cards that work like that, but that is something else we will think of. Other reasons we will do reprints,

sometimes it's contextual. Like, for example, in Tempest, one of the classic stories is, I reprinted both Terror and Shatter, because in that environment, Terror was better than Shatter,

which is just not a normal thing. And one of the ways to make people realize, I'm sorry, not in Tempest, in Mirrodin, which was the first sort of big artifact block. And the idea was in an artifact block, terror couldn't kill artifact creatures and shatter could, and there were just a lot more artifacts than normal. And so the idea was terror stock went down and shatter stock went up.

And one of the ways to highlight the fact that the environment was different was bringing back cards. So sometimes reprints are there to sort of help reinforce the point. Other reasons we might reprint something is sometimes we're trying to nod to something. Sometimes there's a famous card and then we want to sort of make a nod to something. Sometimes there's a famous card and then we want to sort of make a nod to that. What's the one where the red card where you draw a card and discard you draw two cards and discard one.

I forget the name of it. What I like to call the in English card and we've seen Sarkin in English and we've seen different characters in English and we've changed up who the characters are. So sometimes it's fun with reprints to sort of make nods to other versions of the cards and sort of do some parallelism that is harder to do when they're not connected. So anyway, there's a lot of reasons to do reprints.

There's a lot of reasons we want to bring cards back. So today I was going to talk about, so there's four categories, I think, when I talk about reprints. I'm going to talk about each of the four categories. First are what I call the staples. Second are what I call the occasional returns. Then the all-stars. And then the unique. Okay, so let's start with the staples.

So what staples means is there are certain effects that just magic uses all the time. Giant growth would be a classic example, or naturalize. You know, there's certain things that we just, we do a lot. That just magic sets are always going to have a giant growth variant, for example.

Some of the time, it's giant growth, because look, we're always going to do a giant growth variant. Sometimes the variant would it's giant growth because look we're always going to do a giant growth variant sometimes the variant would just be giant growth so the staples exist because they tend to be things in which we're going

to base like I talk about this a lot that one of my goals and when I say my I mean all of R&D is we want the sets to both feel new and fresh and feel like magic. And so one of the ways we make things feel like magic is there's a certain structure to it.

There's a certain effects that we tend to put into sets. Now, we mix up how we do that. Sometimes we tweak them. Sometimes we mix them with the latest mechanic of the set. But sometimes, like, we don't need to change everything. And so sometimes we use a reprint because, like, oh, we need a giant growth effect. Oh, for whatever reason, other things we might normally do to tweak it don't make sense here. Look, one of the options is always just use the original.

And so the staples are things in which, look, there's just anticipation that we use these cards and that, you know, when it's time to do that, we always consider. In fact, one of the things that's really common, especially in vision, is if I'm not sure whether we're tweaking something or not, sometimes when I'm first filling in the file, I'll just put in the reprint, like, well, I want this kind of effect. For right now, I'll just, you know, we need a giant growth effect, I'll just put in giant growth. And then, as we sort of develop the file and start realizing things, I realize at some point, you know, I can, I can shift over and turn it into a tweak if there's something that's, like, normally when

you're making a set, the reason you tweak cards is you find a way to make it, you know, unique to the environment that you're making. Oh, there's a mechanic in the set. Oh, then to make it, you know, unique to the environment that you're making. Oh, there's a mechanic in the set. Oh, then I can make, you know, mechanic X's in the set. Oh, well, the giant growth of this set could have mechanic X. Or maybe there's something unique about how things function. You know, maybe you want to put a rider on it because there's something you're caring about. I giant growth things, but it's better if it's an artifact creature or whatever. Whatever thing you're messing around with, you can, or maybe it's a tribal set where a giant growth

has a little extra rider if it's a certain tribe. It helps elves or whatever. So the idea essentially is that you want to make your staples and you want to reserve the right to tweak them, but one of the things that's always on the table is just doing reprints. And one of the things that's always on the table is just doing reprints.

And one of the things in general... Oh, something I forgot. Another thing that we like for reprints, another reason that I forgot we like reprints, is that one of the things is we know that magic players come and go, that there's an ebb and flow, that people will play magic and get really into it,

and then life changes will change, and they'll move or get a job or get married or something. Something will change in which their time is just not, they don't have the time to play Magic. And it's not that they don't want to play Magic, it's just other priorities shift. And so it is very common for people to sort of not play for a while. And maybe they read the website or they do something to keep in touch. And then later in life, when they have the opportunity to sort of pick it back up again, they do. And one of the things we always like magic to do is we want a sense of familiarity. That if you play the game and come back to it, we want you to feel like it's not completely foreign to you.

So another thing that reprints do is they're able to sort of say, oh, yeah, oh, I know that. This is the magic I know. Look, oh, giant growth. I know giant growth. And so one of the reasons that reprints are also important is we'd like to reinforce the idea that there is a continuity to the game. You know, I like the fact that if you played Magic way back in the day and you come back now, there's still cards you see that you recognize. That is important.

And the staples are probably the easiest way to do this because there's certain things that, like Giant Growth, for example, goes back to Alpha. If we put a Giant Growth in, this is definitely a card that you will see. Now, not every staple necessarily goes back to Alpha. For example, Naturalize, I say, was another staple. Well, originally in Alpha, White was the one, you know, Disenchant was where it started. But at some point, we made the realization that it was more of a green thing to do than White. And that White still does it at higher rarities, usually not quite as efficiently.

But that, you know, Naturalize came around, I don't know, I'm not sure where Naturalize started. But maybe five years in or something. So, I mean, Naturalize has been a long time. It's still a card that people will recognize. But that doesn't quite go all the way to Alpha. So, staples sort of enter when we discover them. And the interesting thing about it is, and there's a bunch of reasons we'll make new staples. Sometimes it's just we give a new ability to a color that it didn't have before, or that we sort of push in an area and go,

oh, we didn't think this was okay, but it's okay now. So we do occasionally make new staple things. I do admit most staple things go back a little bit because usually they're simple things that we came across earlier in Magic than later, but they're staples that come from all over the place. Okay, so that is staples. Next is occasional returns. So the idea of a staple is

any set, anytime, anywhere can use a staple. That it is not like it's odd to, you know, any set that wants to throw Giant Growth in can throw Giant Growth in. That is something that sort that is available to everybody. An occasional return is something in which, look, it's not going to fit everywhere. It's the kind of thing that makes sense when there's some value to it. So the occasional returns are, this is a card that can come back, that can see play in a set.

And we will do it from time to time, but usually it's something where it is not something we expect to see in every set. My favorite in this category, this goes back a little bit, shows my age here, Harrow, which was a card that originally showed up in Tempest,

where you sacrifice a card to go get two, sacrifice a land to go get two lands. And I remember that we brought it back in a couple of different places because, like, I remember we brought it back in Original Zendikar because Original Zendikar was all about landfall. And here was a spell that could let you trigger landfall twice. And here is a spell that could let you trigger landfall twice. You know, there's other places where we make use of it is where, you know,

one of the fun things of the occasional ones is finding places and opportunities where maybe it works a little differently than it does normal. You know, where it's like, oh, this is something we do, but, you know, we look to find opportunities to bring it back in places that have a little sort of, I mean, in general, one of the things you like about reprints, like I said, staples are a little bit more of, look, this is just something Magic's normally going to do. Casual returns are, look, there are a lot of, I mean, there's 18,000 plus cards in Magic. We're trying not to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes you go, oh, this is a cool card, but it's particularly cool in this environment because Fling is another one that falls in this category

where, okay, Fling's a fun card. We don't do Fling all the time, but every once in a while we're like, okay, is there something in the set that, you know, cares about power in a way where fling has some extra value to it? Is there something about things being bigger, or

a plus one plus one counter theme, or something in which why you'd want to fling things is slightly, you know, there's some use to it. So fling's the kind of thing that every set's not going to have a fling, but when we need it we can bring it back. And we don't necessarily need to make a tweak on it

on some of these effects that we do once in a while. It's like, oh, this is a fun effect. Okay, we can bring it back because it has some function here. And the occasional returns, when we reprint an occasional return, it's also sort of about, is it fit the style of what's going on? Staples are more about, look, we just need it. Every set's going to have this kind of effect. Just are we doing the original, or are we bringing it back, or are we going to find

some new tweak on it? Occasional returns are more like, okay, these are things that are available to us that we know have some interesting utility. What am I doing, and how do I want to make use of it? And usually the occasional returns are cards that we like their function. They're fun cards. It's like pretty much when you make a set,

there are things that are super narrow to what the set is and there are things that are super narrow to what the set is, and there are things that are a little broader. Now, sometimes, the other place we can go with occasional returns is things that have a mechanic on them, a non-evergreen mechanic. So, for example, let's say we're doing a set with cycling. Okay, we now have access to every cycling car. Normally, you can't bring back a cycling car. A cycling car is not something I can reprint in a normal set.

But once cycling's in the set, once we reprint a mechanic, now we have the opportunity to reprint cards with that mechanic. So that's another reason for some of the occasional returns is where you can use them is specific, and so you have to wait until you have the opportunity. Sometimes it's situational. I think Fling's a good example where, and so you have to wait until you have the opportunity. Sometimes it's situational. I think Fling's a good example where, look, you know, it's not that you can't stick Fling in every set, but Fling makes more sense in certain sets.

You just kind of wait where that makes sense. Something like a cycling card is, look, I've got to wait for cycling to come back, so I'm at the mercy there. look, I gotta wait for cycling to come back, so I'm at the mercy there. Other times it's something in which maybe it's something where it's bending the color a little bit, or it's doing something in which we don't want to do it frequently. So some of the occasionals is on the right place at the right time. Also, sometimes the reason we bring things back is

they're tied to places rather than to mechanics. For example, let's say we go back to Mirrodin, or we go back to Ravnica. There are certain things that we can do, like Mirrodin, for example, the mirror are from Mirrodin. So if we go back to Mirrodin, we can reprint mirror that we might not normally reprint because the mirror don't show up everywhere. So sometimes in occasional reprints, like I said, there's something about it that keeps us from normally doing. Maybe it's tied to mechanic we don't, that's not evergreen.

Maybe it's tied to a world. Maybe it's tied to a theme. You know, that's another thing that will happen sometimes is, okay, we're doing an artifact set. Okay, now we can look at some artifact matter cards that we don't normally do. So, for example, you know,

when we do a particular theme, there are certain things that we don't do normally that we sort of do in theme that aren't normal things. And so so we open up those reprints. So a lot of the occasional reprint is where do I have opportunity? You know, what am I doing now that I can go in the past to bring something up that there is some reason that I can't, that I probably wouldn't normally do it.

That is not quite a staple. And so we want to keep aware of that. Okay, the next category is the all-stars. And what this is, sometimes we make a card that's really exciting. And the reason we reprint it is that it will draw attention to itself. What an all-star reprint means is this reprint will make people happy. Now, it's not that people won't like, like, it's not as if in staples or the occasional reprint, no one will like the card, but the reason you bring them back is fun. It's purely functional. You know, the reason you bring back a staple is I need the effect. Okay. I'm using the simple version. The reason

you're back in an occasional one is, oh, we're doing this thing again. And this is a good, this fits that. And we're, I can bring it back. And all star is about, oh, we're doing this thing again, and this is a good, this fits that, and I can bring it back. And All-Star is about, oh, this is going to excite people. So a good example of that, Dominaria coming up, or maybe, it might be there, actually, by the time you guys read this, Dominaria might be out. It's not out for me yet.

But let me know, Llanowar Elves is a good example. Llanowar Elves is a pretty example is Llanowar Elves is a pretty powerful card and we had made a conscious decision to take Llanowar Elves out of standard for a long time Llanowar Elves

was just part of standard but we sort of realized the power of it and what it did to the environment and said okay you know what every time we have

an accelerator in the format it sort of warps the format and so we decided to take it out for a while. But we knew in doing Dominaria, we wanted some exciting reprints because we were going back to Dominaria. There's a lot of nostalgia there.

So one of the things we looked for was what were cards we could reprint that would draw attention to itself. And Lanor Elf is a good example there where we knew telling people Lanor Elf is going to be there unto itself was a draw. there where we knew telling people Land of Elves was going to be there unto itself was a draw. Now, the danger with all-star reprints is that we don't want

usually if people are going to be excited to come back, I mean, I guess they fall into two camps. One is pure nostalgia where is something like, something was in Magic for a long time, maybe it was in the Core Set for a long time, and we pulled it away and we haven't seen it for a long time. Maybe it was in the Corset for a long time.

And we pulled it away and we haven't seen it for a while. And it comes back and they're just, oh, I remember so-and-so. Those sort of fall in this category in that it gets people excited to see them. But the second category is the reason it was so beloved was also it saw play. And if it saw play, that means us reprinting it means there's a good chance it will see play again. Sometimes situational, you know, we have brought back cards that at a time were super powerful. Like Underworld Dreams is a good example. A card that we had had a ban at one point and we brought it back.

I can't believe you brought it back and it turned out that it wasn't quite as powerful in the environment we brought it back in as it was originally. But one of the fun things about all of our reprints is that we really get to sort of get people excited by what we bring back. They do fall into different categories. Not everyone, but oh, anyway.

So one of the biggest problems, especially in ones that are powerful, is that we have to account for it. Like any set only gets so much power in it. So when we bring back a card and it's a powerful reprint, some of the power of the set is not in the new cards. It's in the reprints. And so we want to be careful. We want to make sure that in a normal standard legal set, we want enough of the power being in new things, new exciting things.

a normal standard legal set, we want enough of the power being in new things, new exciting things, you know, that if we bring back a set and everything cool about the set is just the reprints, it makes the set overall

feel a little more lackluster. Having a little bit of power in reprints is cool, but there's a balance that needs to be reached there, so we have to sort of watch. Dominaria, for example, we put more reprints

in than normal, but thematically, we were playing into history and nostalgia, and so it sort of hit our theme a little bit better. But pretty much the biggest thing about All-Stars is

trying to figure out when and where you can bring something back where it really gets to shine. Sometimes it's fine to bring it back in a place where it works a little bit differently. Usually it's best where sometimes, once again, so the all-stars could be cards that people are beloved just because we printed them a lot, not because they're powerful. They can be cards that are powerful, or they can be cards that once were powerful that are no longer powerful.

that are no longer powerful. And one of the things we do is we like to sort of shake up where things go and that sometimes we bring things back. And I'll start bringing things back because we want to shake up the environment. Sometimes it's not as dangerous an environment as it once was, so we can bring it back and create some excitement, but it's going to not quite do what it did before. It could just be it's a beloved thing. And just thematically it makes so much sense here.

Like a lot of Dominaria was we were trying to find mechanics that really spoke to the idea of being Dominaria. You know, that we really wanted to say, hey, we're back. Oh, look, like Llanowar Elves was great because Llanowar, that's a big Dominaria thing. And part of the reason Llanowar probably was so big was Llanowar Elves. But there's a lot of other Llanowar things and there's And part of the reason Llanowar probably was so big was the Llanowar elves.

But there's a lot of other Llanowar things. And there's stories that take place in Llanowar. And characters from Llanowar. So, you know, going back to Dominaria, Llanowar really did that. Okay. The fourth category is what I call the unique. Which is, one of the things we like to do is is it is fun to go back when we do a new set and try to see if there are cards that we've never, usually never reprinted before or if we printed a long time ago.

What's a card that people wouldn't expect but just thematically makes perfect sense? Like I remember when we went to Theros, idea of tragic poet was you know it just made so much sense in this world that one of the things we're always looking for is is there a fun reprint like the one in Dominaria that I really enjoy was

Sage of Latinum which originally showed up in antiquity I think we printed it once in 8th edition but it is not a card that we really did much with. It's a blue creature that you can sac an artifact to draw a card. It's a little 1-1, I think. For 1 and a blue, I believe. And the idea is, it's just this old card that sort of...

Like, Historic cared about artifacts, so there was a little bit of an artifact theme in the set. old card that sort of like historic cared about artifacts, so there was a little bit of an artifact theme in the set, and this was just this flavorful card. It referenced a latinum, which is his place, and for the old timers like me, just like,

oh, it's sage and latinum, you know what I'm saying? It was sort of fun to bring back, not because it's something that it's not going to you a lot. You know what I'm saying? It was sort of fun to bring back. Not because it's something that it's not going to sell a lot of packs. It's not a staple by any stretch of the imagination. It's not something to even reprint on regularity. It's just kind of a cool card from the past. And that one of the things that we really enjoy doing is

it's fun to use reprints. Like sometimes we use reprints in a way that for the new players, they don't even know it's a reprint. This card's old enough that it just seems like a new card. But for the enfranchised older player, it's a nod. And one of the things is the people who make Magic are big fans of Magic. I've obviously been playing, for example, since the beginning.

And so it's neat to go, oh, we're doing this theme. And one of the things that we'll do, let's say we're doing a new theme. So let's say, I know like in Theros we were doing Enchantment Matters. Well, Journey was more Enchantment Matters. But we were doing Journey and we're like, okay, finally we're doing Enchantment Matters.

Let me go look at every card that cares about an enchantment. And some of them, for example, were destruction effects. Some of them were like, okay, what positively cares about an enchantment? And we can go and look at them and then say, oh, will any of them naturally fit here? Sometimes, for example, one of the fun things about the unique reprints are it has a name. Like, I remember when we were in Innistrad, there was, what was the card?

There was a card that you could use to, you could use it against vampires, what was the card? It was a card that literally you think we would have made an Innistrad. What was it? It was an equipment. The story of it is I put it in because it was such a perfect fit. Like we had made it in Zendikar, I think, but it just felt so perfect to Innistrad. And then I got a note from Brady,

who was the lead of the creative team at the time, where he was asking if we could tweak something for flavor. And I was like, Brady, this isn't a new card. This is a reprint. We're bringing it back. Like, it so fit the world that it didn't even dawn on him that we were bringing it back. That's also a really fun thing to do with reprints. You know, like when we went to Theros, we're like, are the things that have sort of Egyptian flavor to it that we can bring back?

Amonkhet, same thing. You know, we always sort of, whenever we're going someplace that has a distinctive identity, whether it has a thematic identity, a flavorful identity, it is fun to go back and look. So another thing that falls in this category is the future shifter cards from FutureSight. So in FutureSight, we had a bunch of cards from potential futures. And one of the things that we love doing is going back and looking to say, oh, can we, the premise is these were future peaks at things we would later do that we didn't promise we'd do all of them. But anyway, when we can sort of do what we call a preprint where it's the first time we do it. I mean, it's a reprint, but flavorfully,

the first time we do it. I mean, it's a reprint, but flavorfully, oh, we were going to the future and here's where it was. That's a lot of fun. So it's fun to sort of find places and opportunities to do some of that. And the FutureSite in general, there's a lot, the fans get a big kick out of it. One of the problems in general is we were making a lot of guesses of stuff, and so all the low-hanging fruit we've used up. So, it's not that we don't find the occasional future-shifted card, but

it is not as easy as we can do. Although I do know, we keep finding them. There are ones in the future, or at least one that I know of in the future. But we keep looking for those. So traffic, yeah, how are we doing on time here today? Aha, a little bit of traffic. So, okay, so the unique, like I said, the unique are more fun for us to sort of feel clever when we find them.

So those are the basic reasons we'll reprint things. Those are the basic kinds of reprints. The staple, the occasional, the all-star, and the unique. the occasional all-star and the unique. So let me talk a little bit about the ebb and flow of reprints. So one of the things that we've talked a lot about is how many reprints is the right number of reprints for a set. Now, if your reprints are organic

and they do what you need them to do and they functionally play well, we are not against having a decent amount of reprints. Now, once again, it depends. When you return somewhere, you get extra value out of your reprints. So like we're going back to Dominaria, so there's a little more reason to want to reprint things from Dominaria. Same when we went to Zendikar or back to Zendikar or back to Innistrad or back to Ravnica that there is some value of saying, oh, there's some popular things people liked and

hey, it did it well. Let's just bring those back. And so I think when we do a return set, there's a little more impetus to want to do the reprints. The other thing that tends to bring a lot of reprints is when we're doing a theme we've done before. We're doing a graveyard theme or an artifact theme or a tribal theme with a tribe. Like, sometimes in tribal themes, like, oh, we want to do, like, in Dominaria, there's some goblin tribal.

And like, oh, well, hey, maybe we can cross the streams. Maybe we can both do some goblin tribal and bring back some favorable old cards because we're trying to sort of do some nostalgia stuff in Dominaria. So sometimes you can crisscross them. And we are willing to do a decent amount of reprints. It's interesting. As you go back and look, there are sets that I think 10 to 15% is usually about the highest we'll go in reprints. And most of it is a matter of

and once again I'm talking about standard sets. When you talk about supplemental sets, we're willing to go much higher. If you look at something like Conspiracy, in fact the majority of it is reprints. Now there's new stuff that adds value to it but it's combined with a lot

more reprints. And you look at something like Masters obviously where it's all reprints. I'll get to all reprint things in a second. But anyway, I think it's about, for a standard legal set, about 10-15% is about the upper round. We like to have something. We like to have some reprints. The only time we do no reprints is something like Unstable.

I chose not to do reprints just because we don't do silver border products all that often. And I could have brought back old silver border things. I'm allowed to. But I kind of decided that because I get to do them so infrequently, I just wanted to max the amount of unique cards I could do. So let's talk a little bit about all reprint sets. So that is an interesting challenge. So normally when I'm talking about doing standard legal sets, it's like, where can we use reprints to sort of use them strategically? When you're doing an all reprint set, the challenge there actually is reversed, which is I'm limited by what we have done. actually is the reverse, which is I'm limited by what we

have done. And so one of the challenges there is finding themes that are big enough that they're supported in the cards that we've made. It's funny, you don't appreciate sort of reprints until you work, sorry, you don't appreciate sort of

what new cards do for you until you work in a world with no new cards. Like a common thing we'll find when we do master sets is we have a neat idea for a theme and then we just literally don't have enough cards in that theme. That if we go get all the cards that make any sense, like, oh, this is not enough. You know, we want to make a draft archetype. This is not enough. Oh, we can't do that.

not enough. Oh, we can't do that. And one of the interesting things is, one of the things we will do sometimes is when working on a master set, someone will say, oh, this is a good theme. We don't have enough cards. And they'll come to me and say, Mark, here's a theme. It'd be awesome if we could do new cards in this theme at some point, because this would be a neat thing we could do in a master set or a reprint set, but there's not the cards there to do it yet. Also, sometimes what will happen is people will come to me with cards they'd like to see reprinted and sort of say, if you could find a place to reprint this, for whatever reason, this is... Like, another reason for reprints is that players have cards,

and that one of the things that's nice is when you can bring something back, especially something that falls more in the all-star, I guess, is that if I tweak something and make a new card, people got to get a new card. But if I bring back something that is an old thing that exists, players who have the old thing, get to pull the old thing out. And then, um, usually when we do reprints, um, well, I just said usually, usually we get new art for, um, if it's truly a reprint, we don't change the name. Um, oh, the one thing that I

didn't mention is near reprints, which is when you take something and the card is functionally a reprint, but for flavor reasons, we bring back, we change something about it. One of the classics of that, in fact, I just wrote about this

in an article, which I assume you've read, is the 1W31 Vanilla. I think we've done that card six times now, and every time we change the creative. You know, it's a cat rebel. I mean a cat warrior. I mean a human warrior. I mean it's a fox. I mean it's a human knife, you know, that we keep sort of changing up to fit the flavor of what we want to do. So near reprints are where they are almost the same, but for some reason. And interestingly, the reason we'll do near reprints is either there's a flavor disconnect, so we match it to the world, or because we can change creature types, maybe there's a

tribal reason we want to change it. types, maybe there's a tribal reason we want to change it. Or maybe it's the reverse, as I said before, where in standard or modern, we want more than four of something. So we give it a new name. So now you can play up to eight of them. So we do do near reprints, which is we allow ourselves to change the name. And well, there's actually, I should say, there's exact near reprint where we just changed the name. It's functionally identical. And then there is what I would say spirit reprints where we change it a little bit. Sometimes we update it. Sometimes the original version of the card did something that causes problems for digital or we've changed the template slightly. And so we sort of bring it back

and usually those ones we give them names that sort of hint at it's like the old one but we're just trying to update it so there's this kind of in-spirit updated reprints that aren't quite reprints because we've changed something about it. You know, we went through a phase where we'd like to have effects be optional

and then not optional and we went back and forth making different versions to capture that. But if it's an exact reprint, meaning same name, often we will do new art. Not always. Sometimes if we're in a place where the previous art was well-beloved and it makes sense in the world we're returning to, occasionally we reprint art. Most of the time we don't.

Most of the time we get new art. And then the new art allows us to sort of sometimes take something from the past and give it a spin. Like I talked about, like Macabre Waltz was, the original card is these two dead creatures dancing with each other. Or not dead, I guess they're not dead, but they're near death.

And then we brought it back and we had Liliana dancing with the zombie which was kind of a fun nod to the original card but was something that sort of gave it a little something when we brought it back. A lot of time with reprints and art we have fun sort of looking at is the original art have some iconic quality to it

or something that we can make reference to or the reverse. Sometimes there's a giant Growth is a perfect example where some of the early Giant Growth, the artist didn't do a lot of scale. Meaning, they would show something that was big, but because they didn't have enough scale to it, it was hard in a vacuum to get that it was big. So sometimes when we come back, we go, oh, here's an issue people had with the previous art usually it was a functional

thing and like oh maybe we can reinforce you know sometimes it wasn't clear the artist made a cool looking picture but there's something functional in how it played that misled people or confused people or something like oh we can fix that so

sometimes when we come back, it's a matter of clarifying things. Sometimes it's fitting into the world. Sometimes it's making a nod to the story. Like in, what was the name of the card? In Amonkhet, there's a story point with Gideon and realizing how he felt about the Egyptian gods. And, was it Restore Faith?

We brought back a card that was a reprint and it just was the perfect name to be the story point. So sometimes in redoing art, we can really redo it and even use it as a means to get across a certain element of the story. In general, my point of today, as I'm almost at work now,

is reprints serve a lot of function. They do a lot of good. They help us in many different ways. That they're a tool. A lot of the way I like when I talk about this is, look, when you're designing, you have tools. And one of the tools that is in your tool belt is, look, this game is 25 years old. You know, we've been making it for a while. That there's things we've done before.

And that when we need something, sometimes the exact thing we need has been made already. And that we don't need to reinvent the wheel. We don't need to... One of the nice things about having Magix pass there is if we need to do something and make a new card, we have that freedom to go back and that, you know, reprints are a tool. They shouldn't be overused. They, you know, there's a lot of mistakes you can make with reprints. But if you use them correctly,

they can do a lot of fun things. Like I said, they can fill in, they can fill in a need that needs to get filled in. They can sort of be used to highlight what the theme is. They can create something and get a sense of return or sense of nostalgia. They can be exciting. They can help sell the set. You know, reprints have all sorts of functions and really can be something that, you know, can be a real boon to a designer when making a set. And so that, my friends,

is probably more than you need to know about reprints. But hopefully you guys enjoyed it today. A little bit of traffic. So we had a little bit of traffic. So a little extra content to you. Because this is the podcast where traffic means more content for you. But anyway, I am now at work,

so we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.