Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #540: Dominaria, Part 1

Episode Date: May 25, 2018

This is the first of a three-part series on the vision design of Dominaria.

I'm pulling out my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so today it's time to talk Dominaria. Note that I'm going to be talking about the design, not getting into cards. I'll probably do cards at a different time. For those that are regular listeners to my show, note that cards take a lot of prep, but design does not. So today we're talking Dominaria design. Okay, so first let me set the ground a little bit. So Dominaria was the very first vision design team. I will get into that as we talk about this. In fact, being the first vision design team matters because it didn't

start as the first vision design team. It turned into the first vision design team. I'll talk about that. Okay, let's talk about the people involved. So I obviously led the vision design. Ethan Fleischer, the winner of the second great designer search. Ethan led the exploratory design and then was on the team. Gavin Verhey was what I call a strong second, the person who was on the team. Gavin Verhey was what I call a strong second, the person who was keeping the file. I think that's the first time Gavin had done that.

Aaron Forsythe, who runs Magic R&D, the senior director of Magic R&D, I believe is his title. Aaron doesn't get to work on sets a lot anymore, but every once in a while he does. Usually maybe once a year he'll do something, and this was the doesn't get to work on sets a lot anymore, but every once in a while he does. Usually maybe like once a year he'll do something, and this was the one he wanted to work on. It was the 25th anniversary. We're going back to Dominaria.

Aaron's a longtime player. Aaron was with me on Time Spiral, and so Aaron loves doing sets with some nostalgia to them. And who am I forgetting? Oh, Kelly Diggs was a creative representative. There was a lot going on. Dominaria, of worlds to visit, there was a lot of history, as you will see, in Dominaria.

So Kelly was very important. Ethan, by the way, also had done a lot to study Dominaria's past. He read all the books. So Ethan and Kelly were had done a lot to study Dominaria's past. He read all the books and so Ethan and Kelly were both very well versed in Dominaria. We had Ian Duke, who was a representative at the time of the development team and

now I would say the play design team. The transition between sort of happened during the period of this time. But anyway, he was a person on the team to cost the cards, make sure things were balanced, and made notes about whether things could be crafted correctly to make constructed cards and stuff. The final person on the team is

this guy named Richard Garfield. So Richard obviously created the game of magic, for those that somehow don't know that. So what happened was Richard made Alpha, and then he quickly made Arabian Nights. And then he went on to do other things, to make other games,

to make Jihad, which later would become Vampire the Eternal Struggle, and to make Netrunner and Battletech. When Magic first got made, the idea was that it was just going to be the first of a whole bunch of trading card games, and that Richard was going to make the trading card games. Then, as he became aware that we were doing more than just trading card games, Richard started designing other games and such, and Richard really loves game design. So he stopped working on Magic because he was doing

other stuff, making new games. And the reason I got him back into Magic was I wanted to be a designer. And Richard hadn't made a design in a while. And so the reason that I got to lead Tempest was because Richard was going to be on the team. And so

that was the first chance for Richard and I to work together on a Magic set was when I led Tempest. Then I believe Richard, every set that Richard worked on with one exception. So he worked on Odyssey that I led. He was on Judgment and I was on that but I did not lead that team.

Then he was on Ravnica. Then he was on Indusrod and now he's on Dominaria. So I've had Richard on a number of teams I've led, which has been a lot of fun. I mean, obviously Richard and I know each other from way back. And so the story of this time is I was, I don't know, on my blog or somewhere, and someone, I think it was on my blog, and someone said, when would you, would you work with Richard Garfield again?

Of course I would. I love working with Richard. Anytime Richard's interested, all he has to do is ask and I'd put him on a team. So somebody from work had read that reply on my blog and said, hey, about six months ago, I ran into Richard at a party and I asked him if he'd be interested in doing any magic design. And he goes, of course, if Mark ever is interested in having me, you know, if he calls, of course I'd say yes. And he goes, I think both of you are interested in the other one

and just waiting on the other one. And so I called him up the next day. Now, I knew Dominaria was coming up, and I'm like, oh, well, if ever we're going to have Richard, how about the set where we return to Magic's home on the 25th anniversary? That felt just like a slam-dunk awesome set for Richard to be on. So I called him up.

I think the joke is I called him up if he wanted to be on the set. He said, yes. I go, wait a minute, don't you want to know what the set is first? He goes, it doesn't matter. I go, no, no, no. I think you'll really like the set. And he goes, okay, what's the set? And I'm like, it's, we're going back to Dominaria, 25th anniversary. He goes, yes. So anyway, so that was the team.

I think we had a seven person, we had a big design team. So let me explain a little bit about the vision design team part of this. So the old system, the way it worked was there was design and design would go on for about a year and then development would go on for about nine months. And so that was where the split off was. In the rejiggered system, it got broken up a little bit

where the early part of design doesn't go as long, and then the middle part goes a little bit longer. So it sort of, we chopped up kind of where the handoff happened because we were starting to move into a world where we wanted, so the idea of doing large, large, large core set and the idea of doing vision design, set design, play design, um, were actually two separate things. They, they both evolved sort of separately, but, um, the, the existence of the other sort

of had some influence. So for example is, um, it used to be we had one world a year we would visit, and then we'd have one large set, two small sets. So as the head designer, usually if I could sort of craft the world in the first large set, I could hand it off, and the small sets could be made by other designers. And then we moved to a world where we had large set, small set, large set, small set. Well, in those worlds, what I ended up doing was I was leading designs and then handing over the reins to other people. So for Kaladesh, for Aminkat, for Ixalan, I kind of led the first half of the design and then handed off, you know,

Sean did the second half of Kaladesh, Ethan did the second half of Aminkat, Ken Nagel did the second half of Ixalan. That I would be handing off. I mean, we'd be working together the whole time. Both of us would be on the team for all 12 months. But I would sort of handle the range for the first six months and then hand them over for the second six months. And what we realized was, in order to do what I was doing,

that I was already kind of making a system where I would come and do the early part. And then when we went to a three system world, it even became more clear that we needed, like I needed more concentrated time to pull this off. So the idea in vision now is I spend four months on each set. There's three sets a year, not kind of the core set. I don't do a lot of work on the core set. I did a little work when we brought it back to sort of make sure it's, you know, the overall structure was fine. But now it'll sort of repeat itself. So it does not, I don't need to constantly be worrying about it. But anyway, so the metaphor that I use for Vision is we're building a house. Vision is the architect that's going to build the blueprints. We're not building the house. Set design is going to build the house.

But we are figuring out what exactly the house looks like and what components the house has. And, you know, we figure out themes and mechanics. We figure out a lot of the big picture stuff and then let the set design take all those components and build the set. Okay, so Dominaria was a tricky one. So we knew we were going back to Dominaria. Oh, sorry, I jumped off my own story. So when we started this, it was going to be, I was going to do, actually, was I going to hand off the set? I think the plan for this set was I was not going to hand off the set,

that I was going to do the full design this time. Although I'm not, I forget exactly. Anyway, but one month into it, it was announced that instead of being a 12-month design, it would be a six-month vision. Now, vision would later turn to four months when we, the three-in-one system would click in soon thereafter. But for, and remember, by the way, when I, when we made Dominaria, which was codenamed Soup,

Soup had a salad. It had a small set. So I'm going to talk about that when we talk about designing. But there was a small set. The small set really didn't go away until after we handed over the file. So I designed this block as if it was a large set, small set. So we started Vision, but once

again, Vision at the time was a six-month thing, and then as we sort of moved over to the three-in-one system, it became a four-month thing, so that I could get three things in. So when I talk about how they're connected but not the same, like this is the first Vision design I ever did

was not a four-month vision design, which is what they currently are, but a six-month vision design. So basically the way it worked is soup and then spaghetti, meatballs, and milk would all have a six-month design. Oh, actually, sorry. I did spaghetti and meatballs combined as a six-month design

because even though they were always supposed to be large sets, they were considered one block. So I did that as one six-month design. So that was sort of put together. And then I did milk. But after milk was archery, and archery was the first one that turned into a four-month design. So that's when the three-in-one kicked in from a...

We retroactively changed soup. Salad went away. But anyway, I'll get into that. Okay, so let's start from the beginning. We were going back to Dominaria. We'd not been in Dominaria since Time Spiral, which was 13 years earlier from the time it came out. I think we were making it a little less.

So if you go back and look at early Magic, for some reason, even though we were a world, we were a set, I'm sorry, a game all about traveling the multiverse, we didn't actually travel the multiverse all that much. Arabian Nights took place somewhere else, but more so because after the fact,

we decided that we didn't want worlds directly taken from 1001 Arabian Nights took place somewhere else, but more so because after the fact we decided that we didn't want world directly taken from 1001 Arabian Nights to be sitting on Dominaria. I mean, it wasn't really defined at the time, but later we said, oh, that's a different world. Then Homelands was set in a different world, Agartha. was set in a different world, that's Agartha. And then Tempest, Tempest, Exodus, and Stronghold Exodus were in Wrath,

although Wrath would later get overlaid onto Dominaria. Then Mercadian Masks was in Mercadia, but that was literally just the first set. The second set, Nemesis, partly took place on Wrath.

And then after Mercadia, I think until we get to Mirrodin, which is more the modern age, that might be it. That might be the, like, everything was on Dominaria except for one Rebaia, one Aggrotha, three Wrath, and one Mercadia, or maybe four Wrath and one Mercadia. And that's it. Everything else for the first, like, ten years of Magic was set on the same world. Now, the way it tended to work was, we did go to different worlds, sort of. Like, Ice Age was a Nordic-inspired ice world. Jamora was an African-inspired jungle world. Otaria was a

world where mutations were out of control. Time Spiral was a post-apocalyptic... Like, on some level, we did go to a lot of different worlds. We just didn't, quote-unquote, leave the plane. Now, for those that haven't heard me talk about that, there's all sorts of issues I have with that.

I like the worlds that have identity. And so the idea was, here was the challenge we were signing up for. We wanted to come back to Dominaria. We wanted to bring it into the fold. We wanted it to be a world we could visit. But we wanted it to have an identity. That it is not good to be the hodgepodge everything

world. Because all identity is no identity. And so what we said is, we wanted to figure a way to make we wanted Dominaria to be so what we said is we wanted to figure a way to make, we wanted Dominaria to be Dominaria, but we wanted it to be in such a way that it had a clean, understandable identity to it. And so one of the challenges of making Dominaria was how do you do that? How do you make a, and because there's so many sets there, like the very first meeting,

I said, okay, guys, we're going back to Dominaria. Let's fill up the whiteboard with what do you expect, what are players going to expect to be there? And we, I mean, I think we more than filled it up. I think we filled it up, took a picture and then filled it up again. Like we, there was a lot of stuff that was, that was there. You know, there was a lot of,

we're talking like, I think it's like 28 or 29 expansions that took place there. Plus, there are four Wrath expansions that Wrath got

overlaid on Dominaria. The things on Wrath are now on Dominaria. So, we're talking over 30 sets that have things that could be on Dominaria. Like, we couldn't

even fit it all in. So, part of it was to figure out what the cool parts were and then how do those cool parts get an identity to them. And one of the things, I mean, we spent a lot of time going a lot of different directions.

We spent a little bit of time. So, one of the things that guided us was, interestingly, Time Spiral. So, Time Sp spiral was our last visit to Dominaria, and it really was, on some level, the best of Dominaria because of the time travel. There was time anomalies, and so things from the past were popping up in the present.

Mishra was dead, but boop, there's Mishra, and now we have a card with Mishra on it. So we had a lot, we were able to sort of, Time Spiral also had a lot of nostalgia to it and definitely had a backward-looking feel. And one of the things we said going in is, there was good parts of Time Spiral

and bad parts of Time Spiral. And what we wanted to do is get the good parts of Time Spiral and bad parts of Time Spiral. And what we wanted to do was get the good parts but not the bad parts. So the good parts of Time Spiral is there's just general nostalgia, the Easter eggs,

the sense of the more you know, the deeper you can appreciate things. And there's a lot of sort of fun rediscovery in Time Spiral. The downside of Time Spiral was too much of what we did

was defined by you knowing what it was. That we had way too many cards where it was what I call get it. Like, oh, it's this card and that card slammed together. Get it? Well, if you do, then you see the cleverness of us slamming them together. Get it? Well, if you do, then you see the cleverness of us slamming them together.

But if you don't, it just seems like a weird thing. That one of the problems we have with Time Spiral, and Time Spiral Block, for those that don't know their history, Time Spiral Block had this weird dynamic to it. Tournaments were up and sales were down. Well, what does that mean?

Tournaments are up, sales are down. Up until that point, sales being up, tournaments being up always meant sales were up. So, what does that mean? Tournaments are up, sales are down. Up until that point, sales being up, tournaments being up always meant sales were up. So the first time ever, more people were playing in tournaments, yet we were selling less of the product. And that's when we first, what we call the invisibles,

which are, there's people that aren't involved in the organized play system. In fact, there's a lot of them. And early on, we found this trending where, well, in general, if tournaments were doing well, Magic was doing well. And here we had a situation where tournaments were doing great, but Magic wasn't. And what we realized was, is Time Spy was playing to the enfranchised crowd. The crowd that was most likely to come and play in tournaments.

They're the ones most likely to have been playing for a while to get the in-jokes. Or even if they don't get the in-jokes, they're part of the community and they're online and they're talking to people. They can get the in-jokes, they're part of the community and they're online and they're talking to people. They can get the jokes explained to them. But the average person that wasn't part of the magic community, that wasn't online, that wasn't in stores, just got baffled by it. It just, you know, and we put way too many mechanics in it. It was just, it was overwhelming. And so what we said is, look, we like nostalgia.

We like a sense of Easter eggs. We want a sense of there's depth here if you know what's going on. But it can't be unaccessible for people that don't know it. And so one of the things we actually wrote up on the board on the very first day

was the Black Blade. So Dakin Black Blade was a character from Legends. And he had this mighty sword called the Blackblade. So the reason we brought the Blackblade up is we liked the idea of, Dagen Blackblade's probably dead. It was thousands of years ago that he existed, so he's probably dead. But his sword still exists.

And you know what? If we make a really cool sword that does a cool thing, you don't need to know anything about the history of the world to know that that's a cool card. And so what we said is, look, we want to show off this world but in a way that makes it cool. That somebody who doesn't know it, that you don't need

to know anything to understand why things are exciting. Now if you do know, like the black blade is a perfect example. We make the black blade, it's a cool sword. If you don't know anything about the history of Dominaria, you're just like, oh, cool sword. But if you do, you're like, oh, this is a cool sword. And it's the Black Blade. Awesome. Right? So that's how we set apart to figure out.

And then Mark Winters was the art director in charge of the set. And he had done some sketches to sort of flesh out the world. And one of them was, I guess, a fallen Phyrexian ship from the Phyrexian invasion, from invasion. And the idea was a city had sort of grown up inside of it. The idea was this thing had happened to the world,

this remnant was there, and rather than ignore it, they just sort of made it part of what they were. That this city now encompasses this old Phyrexian ship. And I really liked that, and it made me tap into the idea that

what made this world unique was that it had a history. And when I say history, I don't just mean a history in-world. I mean a history outside of world. That we're talking about putting Easter eggs and stuff in. So when I talk about the Black Blade, okay, the Black Blade has a history in the world. I mean, the Black Blade had it, whatever. The sword itself has a story.

Someone could write the story of the Black Blade. It had a story. But also, external in the game, there was write the story of the Black Blade. It had a story. But also, external to in the game, there was a card called Dark and Black Blade. There was a card called Coralash, Heir to Black Blade and Future Sight. We've made reference to the Black Blade on a couple

different occasions in flavor text. It has game relevance beyond having world relevance. And what I realized was that the neat thing about this world was it was a world in which all these things happened to the world. The Thran was existing.

They got wiped out. And there was a Phyrexian invasion and a Brothers War and the mending and all sorts of large events happened here. A lot of things happened here. And so one of the things that's kind of neat is to show a world that's sort of coming through.

Oh, the other thing was, last we saw Dominaria was an apocalypse. It was in a bad shape. It was post-apocalyptic. And we wanted Dominaria. We knew that coming back for the 25th anniversary was going to be a feel-good moment, right? We're returning home.

It's the 25th anniversary. So we wanted the world to be recovering. We didn't want the world to be like in even worse shape. So the idea was we wanted this sort of this vibrant renewal to happen. You know what I'm saying? And that, so we wanted to see a world in which bad things had happened to it, but look, it's resilient and it adopts whatever happens to it or adapts to it, sorry. And then it goes on and it keeps living. And that is Dominaria.

That it's a world in which its present is defined by its past. And that took us, by the way, all of Explorator Design to get to. In fact, I think we were in Vision Design before. We quite centered on that. But the idea of what, you know, if Innistrad is Gothic horror and Theros

is Greek mythology and Amonkhet is sort of Egypt meets Bolas, what was Dominaria? And it's a world of history. It's a history world. It's an archaeology world on some level. Like, one of the things we realize is

even when you go back to the very first magic story that takes place there, which is the Brothers' War, like, even that story is about digging up the world and finding out the things that came before it.

Meaning the Thran, like, we started Dominaria with a previous world history built into it. Like, it's a started Dominaria with a previous world history built into it. Like, it's a world that started as an archaeology world from the beginning even before the game park got added in. Like, the story of the

Brothers War is digging up the past. It's like, this is a world in which you dig down in the world and you just keep finding pieces of its past. And the people have an admiration for that. So we latched onto the idea of history. It took quite a while to get there.

We went on many different paths. We spent some time sort of looking at some mechanical identities of magic's past. And eventually realized that was another mistake of Time Spiral, which was Time Spiral said, here are things we don't do normally, but we once did, so we're going to do them. We broke color pie, we just

did things that we don't normally do, and it causes problems. We said, you know what? Our goal is not to go back to magic as it once was. Our goal is to take a modern sensibility to design and find components of the past that are cool and make a modern

magic set with a dominarian sheen to it, if you will. That, you know, it wasn't about sort of saying, we looked into it and said, oh, do we want to kind of retreat to the gameplay? And what we found is, no, we like the gameplay. Magic is in a good place with the gameplay. kind of retreat to the gameplay. And what we found is, no, we like the gameplay. Magic is in a good place with the gameplay.

We don't need to go back to where, yeah, there's just, you know, land destruction is easy to do, or creatures are weak. You know, we didn't need to retreat to that. Okay, so once we knew that history was going to be our guide, the real question was, how do you represent history? Like, we liked a lot the idea that our focal point was history. So the next question was, okay, you're about history, but mechanically, you have to capture that. So what is, what represents

history? And there's a pretty clean answer. History is the graveyard. You know, the idea is creatures die that go to the graveyard. Spells got cast that go to the graveyard. That if ever there's a past in the game, it's the graveyard. In fact, there's even a mechanic that like, says that. Flashback. You know, I cast

spells and then I remember that I did them. I remember they're there. I'm able to do them again. And so we're like, oh, okay, well maybe we can make this a graveyard-centric world. We could use flashback. And then there was one small problem. So Shadows over Innistrad.

So real quickly, it goes Shadows over Innistrad. Then it goes Kaladesh, then Amonkhet, then Ixalan, then us. So, Shadows actually had fallen out of standard by the time Dominaria came out, although Amonkhet did not. So, Shadows over Innistrad was a graveyard

set. Had a lot of elements of graveyard. We were back in Innistrad. Okay. So, then, luckily, we got Amonkhet. Amonkhet in Innistrad. Okay. So then, luckily, we got Amonkhet. Amonkhet was a graveyard set. Not quite as strong, but pretty strong.

I mean, we had Embalm and Eternal Eyes. We had Aftermath. You know, we had a bunch of mechanics that took place in the graveyard. And one of which, Aftermath,

I mean, it's a tweak on Flashback, but it's essentially Flashback. I mean, it's a tweak on Flashback, but it's essentially Flashback. I mean, it's Flashback where it's spell A and spell B aren't the same spell, where normal Flashback is the spell of a spell again. But having Aftermath in the same standard environment meant we couldn't do Flashback. And it really meant after, you know, of the previous four sets, or four blocks, two of them have been graveyard-centric.

Like, ah, we can't be graveyard-centric. So I would say, okay, okay, the graveyard, the past can't be the graveyard. Okay, well, what else, what else is the past? And so we wrote down things, and we said, okay, well, there are objects of the past, right? There are things that, you know, people dig up. And so we say, okay, artifacts can represent that. There is people of the past. There are actual, like, one of the things about magic being a fantasy thing is there are a bunch of characters that lived on Dominaria that are still alive. In fact, a surprising number of them.

Teferi is still alive. Joira is still alive. Karn is still alive. Moltani is still alive. Karn is still alive. Moltani is still alive. Squee is still alive. Joda, Jaya, you know, there's lots of people who were once alive and are still alive.

And so one of the sort of cool things is that we could just act to show real characters. Also, there are lineages. There are people in which, you know, this is not the person you know, but it's the great-great-grandson or something, or great-great-granddaughter. And also, some of it was sort of positions where someone was once this position, and now the new person has that role, not, you know... Like, for example, there are Benelish Knights. Maybe the famous Benelish Knights of now

are not the Benelish Knights of then, but they still carry on, you know, to be a Benelish Knight means something. And so we knew that there were a lot of sort of people that represented things. And the other thing we were really interested in is the idea of telling stories of the past. Like one of the unique things about Dominaria is it is a world. And when I say stories of the past, I don't mean the ones that, I'm not saying that,

I mean, we could have made a world that had a very, you know, the idea of a world that's obsessed with its own past. We could have made a brand new world that did that. And everything about its past we made up. Except, in this case, we didn't make it up. You know, when we talk about there are stories to tell, eventually I'll get to the making of sagas, but we talk about stories to tell.

Like, literally there are stories to tell, stories that have been told, you know. One of the things that Kelly and Ethan did is they went back and did all the research and, like, there's books and books and books and books and books on stories from Dominaria. There's all sorts of characters that we've told

and stories and all sorts of stuff. So there's a lot there. So I said, when we look back, we look back that there is things that are just elements that represent the past. So the first thing we tried was, I wanted to try a supertype. And what the supertype was is, I think we used the word historic. I'm glad I used a different word.

I think we did use the word historic. But the idea was it was a supertype. And what it meant was, anything that represented something that was of history from the past, we would just put the supertype on it. So if you were an artifact that was from the ancient days, you were a historic artifact. If you were a character or a role or something that really represented the past, you were a historic creature. If you were an enchantment that had something to do with the past, you were a historic enchantment, then whatever, whatever card, historic instant, historic sorcery, whatever you were, if you were something from the past,

you could be historic. And the idea was, okay, okay, so what we'll do is, we'll label things, and then we give cards that care. Okay, there were two problems with this. Number one is the, what I call the marker problem. So in Battle for Zendikar, we tried,

so Devoid ended up becoming a mechanic. It wasn't originally a mechanic, but in order to communicate, we had to make it a mechanic. And the point of Devoid was really is, I'm colorless. I don't do anything. I'm just colorless.

I'm just telling you I'm colorless. Why?'t do anything. I'm just colorless. I'm just telling you I'm colorless. Why? Because there's cards that care about colorlessness. And so a marker mechanic is, I don't do something. I just tell you I am something. Now, I was trying it as a super type rather than as a mechanic.

Devoid as a mechanic. We needed to have done it a different way. Not that I didn't want to have spells that were colored mana cost but colorless. I just didn't want to represent it as a mechanic. Because, but people said, oh, this new mechanic, what does it do? And I'm like, it doesn't do anything. Like, well, why doesn't it do anything?

And so the idea of a marker, I thought, well, let's try it as a super. People don't mind markers as subtypes. So, for example, we do creature types all the time as markers. We have done curses and quests. Like, we've done subtypes and people don't seem to mind that if they're flavorful. And they don't mind creature types.

I'm like, okay, maybe we can do a super type that's flavorful. But there was a lot of resistance in the team that the same sort of problem we had with the marker issue with Devoid. The second problem was it was super parasitic. What I mean by that is if I care about Historic cards

and Historic cards literally only exist in this set, well that's parasitic means it's not backward compatible. This is the only set that you can care about. Like Champions of Kamigawa had a lot of problems with being parasitic because I care about Samurais, but this is the only set that you can care about. Like, Champions of Kamigawa had a lot of problems with being parasitic, because, like, I care about Samurais, but this is the only set that has Samurais.

I care about Arcane Spells, but this is the only set that has Arcane Spells. You know, it's looking at things there. And so Historic, that way, made it really, really parasitic. And so Aaron said to me, well, what if we just found the card types,

like, it seems to me the two things that we most care about are the things and the people, which are artifacts and are legendary, mostly legendary creatures, but legendary things and artifacts. What if we just said that, you know, instead of, what if we cared about those things? What if those things were the things we cared about um and the thing that i liked about it when aaron first pitched it was

one of the challenges is there's only so many things on a magic card like the idea the reason i kept looking for trying to do some marker mechanics is i just want to subdivide things differently like the neat thing i to me, if I label some things historic, is, well, then it's just a weird mix of things. Like, you could use these creatures and these artifacts and these enchantments and these instants and these sorceries, maybe these lands.

I mean, like, it just meant that certain things cared, and when I was building my deck, I had constraints that I never had before. So when Aaron proposed combining something, the thing I liked a lot about it was, I said, well, we've made you care about artifacts. There's been numerous blocks to care about artifacts. Care about artifacts is not a brand new thing.

We've made you care about legendary things. That was a theme in the Chimps of Kamigawa. That's not a brand new thing. But we've never made you care about the combination of them. And the thing I was excited by is that there was a potential for trying to make you care about something that's unique without making you care about a brand new thing.

And that's the part that I really liked about it, was that it said, hey, you're going to build a deck you've never built before, but I'm not introducing any vocabulary to you. I'm not doing anything. You know, I'm just saying artifacts and legendary things and it seemed like a cool idea so the earliest version of historic was an ability word and what it said is whenever you cast an artifact or legendary card, you may do something. So the idea essentially was, it was kind of like Constellation.

So Constellation is whenever you cast an enchantment, loom, something happens. So we're like, okay, so instead of being an enchantment, so instead of being landfalls whenever you play a land, Constellation is whenever you play an enchantment, we're like, okay, what if we sort of, whenever you play an artifact, constellations whenever you play enchantment, we're like, okay, what if we sort of, whenever you play an artifact, and then add in also a legendary thing? So historic was going to be this sort of, it just wanted you to cast certain things.

And I was excited. That seemed like a cool idea. I liked the blending. It seemed different. And so we decided to try that meanwhile oh I'm almost to work so this is not going to end today oh the one other thing by the way is

the reason that we did historic as an ability word was when you do a mechanic there has to be a constancy to how you do it. And because this had an open-ended effect, the effects were different, we tend to ability word those things. Usually what ability word means is it's the italicized word with the em dash before the text.

And the idea is if you cover up that word, it's in italics, the card tells you what it does. You don't need that word. That word is just for flavor. So we decided that, I mean, this pattern of the things that we had made an ability word in the past.

So we made it an ability word. And so that was how we were going to capture, one of the ways we were mechanically going to capture history. Anyway, guys, I am now at work, and I'm far from finishing this story. So we will have to continue it next time. But anyway, I hope you guys are enjoying

hearing about the history of Dominaria. There's a lot of fun stuff going on, but it is a lengthy story, so obviously it's going to be more than one podcast. But anyway, I'm now at work, so we all know what that means. This is the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for be more than one podcast. But anyway, I'm now at work, so we all know what that means. This is the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time.