Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #567: Magic Evolution, Part 5

Episode Date: August 31, 2018

This is another in my series where I go through Magic sets and talk about what each one added to design technology. In this podcast, I talk about original Mirrodin block.

I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. I'm dropping my son off at camp again. Okay, so today is another in my series, Magic Evolution, where I go through magic sets and I talk about what did this set introduce to magic. Sort of talking about design technology and design evolution. So today, I'm going to talk about Mirrodin block, original Mirrodin block. There's a lot there.

A lot to unpack, they say. So let's start. So Mirrodin had three sets in it, Mirrodin, Darksteel, and Future Sight. Not Future Sight, sorry, Fifth Dawn. Yeah, remember the sets correctly. So Mirrodin, Darksteel, Fifth Dawn. So let's start with Mirrodin. So the interesting thing, by the way, is each of these sets introduce something to the game that became evergreen in the game.

Dun-dun-dun. Okay, so first off, in Mirrodin, let's start with the thing that became evergreen. Equipment. So, the idea was, back in the day, artifacts kind of served lots of different roles. And early magic, we did make things that were sort of flavored as equipment. Swords or flying carpet or things in which you had to kind of equate them to a creature. And then there was sort of a one-to-one relationship with the creature. And sometimes even if the creature died, the artifact would be destroyed. Or, you know, there was a lot of sort of one-to-one relationship with the creature. And sometimes even if the creature died, the artifact would be destroyed,

or, you know, there was a lot of sort of one-to-one connectedness because the idea of artifacts that your creatures use is pretty flavorful. And we had talked about wanting to do something like that, and so finally, you know, Mirrodin was the artifact-themed set. Now, Antiquities, which was Magic's second expansion,

had an artifact theme, but we really hadn't done,, Antiquities, which was Magic's second expansion, had an artifact theme, but we really hadn't done, since Antiquities, we hadn't really done a theme like that. And after Invasion kind of introduced the third age in which themes were a role of how blocks worked, I really wanted to do an artifact themed block. And so Invasion was multicolored, Odyssey was about graveyard, Onslaught was about creature types and tribal, and Mirrodin was going to be about artifacts. And in fact, one of the things, in some ways, Mirrodin is the beginning of our modern world building. I mean, not that we didn't make...

There was some world building that happened before. But it was the first time we kind of built a world where the design and the creative team worked together. In fact, I was super involved in the creation of Mirrodin. Because really what I wanted was a metal world, was how I described it. Was I wanted a world in which you could just have more artifact creatures than normal and go okay that's just what the world is so that was the first time really design worked with creative

to sort of figure out like here's what we what ended up being kind of the way we now work is there's a back and forth. Where the way it started was with design saying, we want an artifact set. It said it's all about artifacts. So we want a world that's all about artifacts. So we started with the idea of what would a world be that just had more artifact creatures in? What does that mean?

And then we came up with this idea of a world that had been artificially built. And then we worked with the creative team and we went back and forth and sort of slowly sort of evolved the world that made sense. And the idea was a lot of what we were doing was working with creative so that we would get ideas mechanically from creative and creative would get world building ideas from us from things we did mechanically and so there's a nice back and forth so that when you're finished you know one of our jobs as um a designer here is i don't want you necessarily to tell which came first i mean some sets it's easier to understand than others but if i'm doing my job perfectly the the creative and mechanics just seem to blend naturally together. And it doesn't matter which we started with.

And so Mirrodin was the first time where we really had this back and forth quality to the way we built the set versus how we built the world. And it really sort of shows that you see a lot of the flavor of the mechanics seeps into the world itself. Okay, so let's get to equipment. So we knew that we were going to do artifacts, and part of doing artifacts said, okay, let's think about how we do artifacts, and is there anything we want to do different? So Tyler Bielman, who was in charge of the creative team at the time, Tyler and I planned to do this major overhaul on artifacts. and I planned to do this major overhaul on artifacts. The plan was we were going to start making sub,

artifact subtypes. And we had, like, weapons and armor and potions and scrolls. And we had six, there were six of them we made. And then one of the ideas we really played into was to lay down some rules to separate artifacts from enchantments. Like, one of the things we had proposed was that enchantments are about changing the world, and that artifacts are about being used. Meaning that if you had something that changed the state of things, that wouldn't be an artifact, that would be an enchantment. Like Howling Mine, every turn draw an extra card, that should be a blue enchantment, not an artifact.

And already, artifacts have the quality that you use them and the idea was that enchantments um not that you couldn't activate them but it would have a less feel of using it and more feel of you're generating an overall effect tyler and i spent a lot of time delineating in the end rnd felt like we were cutting off too much of magic's past like they wanted to be able to make Howling Mine or something, you know, and so we ended up not adopting it. It did do a much clearer job of saying this is what's an artifact and this is what's not, but this is what enchantment is. But anyway, so the subtypes, we'd spent a lot of work on this. But one of the things we also spent time on was the idea of carving out equipment space. Because one of the things we knew is, look, it's neat that

you, the planeswalker, could have a sword, but it's also kind of cool that you could give your goblin a sword, or your merfolk a sword, or your elf a sword, you know, that you could give one of your creatures something that they could use. So what we decided to do, so the first version we did of equipment was literally like colorless auras, essentially. The first thing we tried was just like, they're auras, except they're colorless and they're artifacts.

And what we found was, it was just a little lackluster. Like, auras have all these problems anyway. Why are we copying auras' problems? So the next stage we came up with was, okay, there's a permanence to it. So I give a sword to my goblin and you destroy my goblin.

Well, the sword's still there. You know, the goblin falls over and the sword's lying there. Someone else can pick up the sword. So we started out with this idea of, okay, what if there's a permanence to them and if you get rid of it, and really one of the biggest problems with auras in general is the card disadvantage problem.

That I have a creature, and then I put an aura on, and if you destroy my creature, now I'm losing not one card, the creature, but two cards, the creature and the aura. And so there's a lot of card disadvantage built into auras, which makes them hard, especially in constructed, to make them viable. especially in constructed to make them viable. So the idea was equipment would fall off if the creature is destroyed and you could re-equip it. And we messed around with a bunch of things. Early we tried something where just when you cast it it got equipped but then the creature had to die before you could equip it again and so eventually we said okay well what if we just play it and then you could

equip it wherever you want and that includes moving it from one creature to another creature if you want to. So equipment is one of those things that kind of hit evergreen status like immediately. Like we had equipment in Mirrodin block

and the block that follows it is Champion's block and Champion's block just had equipment in it. It just wouldn't, it's like the second it wasn't a block mechanic, it became an evergreen mechanic.

It was just something that was super, super flavorful. One of the issues we've had since then is generic costs are problematic because anybody can play it. And so we've been a lot more careful with equipment. In fact, one of the recent things we've started messing around with is the idea of maybe from time to time we wanted more careful with equipment. In fact, one of the recent things we've started messing around with is the idea of maybe from time to time we wanted to do colored equipment.

It's really hard to push generic equipment, artifacts with generic cost, just because the fact that any deck can play it is you have to maximize it for the strengths of that color. So like blue is really bad at power pumping. Okay, well equipment can't be that good because blue decks can play it. So anyway, we've definitely been... One of the things that we've been messing around a little bit, you'll see more in the future, is the idea of maybe having artifacts in general, not just equipment,

but having artifacts have a little bit more play into colored artifacts. The major reason is, as Kaladesh and Myrden, Skarsgård... Like, artifact blocks have caused this problem because it breaks from the color pie. If you have powerful artifacts, anybody can play them. And so we're starting to weave a little more color into them. Well, I mean, I like the general flavor that anybody can pick up any artifact. It makes it hard for us to make that a theme.

Okay, next. Affinity. So, obviously, in Mirrodin it was affinity for artifacts. I mean, this was definitely a special... I mean, I... I don't know if this was... I think this is the first...

I think this is the first cost reduction mechanic. I mean, I think we had cost reduction on individual cards. But this is really sort of saying, hey, you know, there's one of the things that you can do with mechanics is make it easier to cast

spells. Now, affinity for artifacts proved to be a little too powerful. It was a combination of things. A, because they're, because artifacts have a generic cost and some of them can even cost zero,

it is possible to, especially, so especially artifacts that have affinity from artifacts, you can essentially play them for free. I think if we bring

affinity back, well, first off, I think when we bring affinity back, it might not be affinity for artifacts. I think there's other things of affinity for. But think there's other things affinity for

but it definitely was a mechanic that we overplayed a little bit and made too strong definitely some lessons there I mean like the artifact lands are good lessons that we learned

which was it was a set all about artifacts matters and I loved the idea that having lands that have an artifact status would mean something and there's a lot of there's so many cool things you could do with them.

It really was a neat thing. The problem is we kind of skipped over the... When you have a mechanic that cares about artifacts, the idea that you could play an artifact land and all of a sudden the Infinity from Artifact things cost two less because the land taps for mana and it's an artifact just proved to be a little a little bit too much it just made our affinity for artifacts a little too strong um

i think if you turn the artifact lands out there i'm not saying there's not issues it's still pretty strong but the artifact lands clearly put it over the top and i was blinded a little bit by um what i what i call the mistake of the honest play, which is one of the things we do in design sometimes is we play it the way we want people to play it rather than the way people might play it. Meaning, if you're playing it honestly, here's kind of what you would do with it. And there's a lot of fun things you can do with Artifact Lands. There's a lot of like neat cool interactions. The problem was you have to

look at not what can people do, but what will people do. And one of the issues in general is people want to win. So if there's a way to break your mechanic or break your thing, they will. And you kind of have to look at not what's the fun thing to do with it, but what's the broken thing to do with it. Because like we had this problem for a while where in design we would just play with it and go where's the fun way to play? And we would just play the fun way.

And then development would get their hands on it and they're like okay, but that's not how people are going to play it. That's not the way to, that's not the most efficient way. And yes, yes, there are casual people that will play the fun way, but you have to acknowledge the fact that there are people who are going to play it the broken way, so if it can be played the broken way, that causes problems.

So Affinity was really educational for us. It sort of taught us that you kind of have to think ahead and think of how things get abused and also, once again, it just sort of taught us the dangers of messing in artifacts in generic space. And the lack of color to guide you.

Because the Affinity cards that were in a color, not that any of them weren't good, but they were nowhere near as problematic as the ones that were just, could go in anything. I mean, there were some good blue ones. I'm not saying, it was a combination of things. But anyway, Affinity just definitely taught us a lot and really was, I mean, damage, I mean, not damage, cost reduction is something, it's a well we go to. I mean, we're cautious about it because it's dangerous, but it is a well we go to. Next, Entwine. So Entwine was a mechanic where

oh, Affinity, by the way, I didn't mention this. Affinity were cards that cost one less for every artifact you controlled. Entwine are artifacts that had modal spells with two modes, and you could pay an extra amount of mana to get both modes rather than one. And the idea was that the two effects had synergy

with each other. We've definitely been messing around a lot with modes. I think before Entwine, most of the time what we were messing around with was how many modes. Like we messed around with charms. Then in Lorwyn, we messed around with commands, but we're not to Lorwyn yet.

So that's coming later. But anyway, this, that was really the idea of messing with modes in a way of what if you could have more than one mode um and this is something we've come back to a couple different times the idea of um that maybe you're not limited to a single mode that maybe you can have more than one mode um and that really sort of... It was a different kind of thing to design, a different space to design. It's really interesting that you get a sort of...

The idea of having inter... Like, before, if it's a modal spell and you can't cast both sides, you kind of don't want the spells to be too synergistic, the effects to be too synergistic. Because it just kind of teases you. Here's two effects that would be great together, but you can never have them together. Where Entwined is all about let's find those things, and it really sort of forces us you. Here's two effects that would be great together, but you can never have them together.

Where Entwined is all about, let's find those things, and it really sort of forces us. Like, one of the things is, the idea of doing secondary effects is something, it predates Mirrodin. We definitely had kicker and things where you would kick into the second effect. This was kind of neat in the idea that you wanted each effect to stand on its own.

And so this really was us playing in some modal space we hadn't played before. And then finally, the most sort of out there mechanic of Mirrodin, imprint. So imprint came about because both Brian Tinsman and I had made individual cards that you exiled a card, and then that card was kind of the model of telling you something. I had made Soul Foundry, which was called Clone Machine at the time, which allowed you to copy a card that you had, you sort of, you imprinted the card on the artifact. And then Brian had one of the spell copying ones.

And one of the things I realized was that there's all these memory issues that you have in the game. And so Imprint was saying, okay, what if we just exile a card and then the card is the memory tool? It really was a different way of thinking about memory. And one of the things you'll see, and Imprint really was the guide of this, is the idea of for a long time we were very limited by saying, well, we don't want you to remember too much so we'll just not do that. And over time like, okay, as we sort of eat up the simple space

and have to sort of expand a little bit, we're like, you know what? There's a lot of cool effects you could do if the memory part's not so hard. So let's figure out new ways to help with the memory. And imprint was one way. Imprint was probably a pretty bold way to do it. Because it allowed you to make pretty like, you know, Soul Foundry lets you copy a creature.

Well, as complex a creature as I want to put in that, it's as complex as it becomes. But I have that as my model so I know what it does. So anyway, Imprint, it is definitely one of those things where you see us from time to time kind of using Imprint technology to make individual cards. from time to time, kind of using imprint technology to make individual cards, that there's something cool about using the resource of cards themselves as memory aids. And as you watch as magic has evolved,

the idea of giving you more and more memory aids, the current sort of popular thing is using frame and frame elements as a means to help give you, to help remember for memory aids. But anyway, imprint definitely was very valuable there. Okay, we move into dark steel. So dark steel also has something that became evergreen, indestructible. So indestructible came about because I,

Bill was leading dark steel and Bill said, what is a cool thing that we could do for artifacts? And so my pitch to Bill was okay Bill, what is the thing people most dislike about when they're playing artifacts? And I'm like, other people destroy them! That's what's horrible, they destroy them. What if we made an artifact you couldn't destroy?

And originally indestructible was not a keyword. It was just like a vocabulary word. Well, it's a word that means cannot be destroyed. So if something is indestructible, what it cannot be destroyed. That's another mechanic we moved in the game relatively quickly.

What we realized was it had a lot of flexibility in how you could use it. Not only can you make creatures that were just naturally indestructible, but you could activate to make things indestructible, which now kind of fills the role of what regeneration used to have. It also lets you do some of the generic

kind of protection-y type stuff we used to do. We're like, oh, this creature can't be harmed. So you target it, and then I give you indestructible to end return as a means to sort of protect it. And like I said, it's funny when it first started this was something that was kind of confusing to players at first. Like,

what does it protect against? Like, does it say destroy? It can't be destroyed. There are a few effects that don't say destroy that do destroy. So there is a little bit of knowledge and understanding there. But it quickly became something that was a good tool to have, and so

it made its way over to Evergreen. We don't use indestructible, I mean, we use indestructible until end of turn a little more than we use the straight-up indestructibility. It has become something that's... The other place we tend to use it is, sometimes we make things that are fragile

that we want you to sort of play a game with and do something cool with, and we don't want people just getting rid of it. So either we put Hexproof on it or we put Indestructible on it, saying, okay, look, this is not supposed to be easy to destroy. A lot of times, if you have some alt win condition or something in which you're supposed to work to get there,

we don't want a person spending the whole game working toward it, and then in the last second, your opponent just destroys it. But Indestructible definitely was something that was very... The idea of the nature of what it is and that it can't... The idea of designing sort of in the negative space, like indestructible is about you just can't do something to it. It doesn't actually do anything.

It just passively can't have something done. And that is an interesting space that we've mirrored later on. Next, modular. So modular was what only went on artifact creatures, I believe. They're creatures that came in with a certain number of plus one, plus one counters. And then when they died, they can move all plus one, plus one counters on them to another creature. This is another thing that ended up being a little stronger than we intended. One of the things that I think if you ever brought modular back

is the idea that the creature doesn't have to be a zero zero and all of it be plus one plus one counters. There's actually some interesting space where, hey, I'm a three three with two counters. Essentially, I'm a five, five. But if I die, it's not that all the counters move. It's some of the counters move. Something we learned from

that. I mean, modular... Modular was us trying to redo the chimeras from Visions. The chimeras were creatures that when they died, you sort of grafted their size and their ability. We sort of moved away from the ability because that's harder to monitor. But anyway, modular definitely taught us a little bit about being careful of the equity

of how much it matters. Like when you die, how much do you get to keep before it's an issue? And sort of big bodies where you keep all the body, where killing it just means that this other creature becomes that much bigger. You have to be careful with that. Okay, next. Affinity for basic land. So the one thing we also did in Darksteel is we sort of messed around with the idea of what else could affinity be. And so one of the interesting things about that was we knew that we were in a place

where it was an artifact set. So what else would you expect in an artifact set? We got to have lands. So we did affinity for basic lands. And we put them on artifacts so that it allowed you at some point to make them free. For some reason, these ones weren't quite as problematic. I think the biggest issue is

if I need three mountains before it's free, well, it can't be free until the third turn. And that's assuming I draw mountain, mountain, mountain, and I can play all three mountains. So it gave you a dream of something that could happen, but it couldn't happen for a certain amount of time, because the game's limitation of getting lands

makes it a lot harder to get there faster. But it did kind of demonstrate the idea that we can sort of riff off of mechanics. We've done that before. This was definitely a little broader and kind of said, look, there's other ways to use Affinity.

You know, Affinity really is a lens you can apply and that you can apply it very, you can care about very different things. The other interesting thing about Dark Steel, by the the way for those that like a little trivia is it is where artifice are the creature type artifice are first premiered um one of the things we're always looking for by the way when we make new sets is um creature types are weird in that there's two different audiences for creature types um there's the people, sort of what I call the Mels and the Vorthorses, if you will.

The Mels, the creature types are a mechanical hook. So like, oh, well, if I get enough creatures with the same creature type, I can build a deck around it. Oh, look, I can make a goblin deck. I can make an elf deck. And then there's like, oh, I can make a horse deck. I can make, you know, and they're starting to get narrower and narrower.

So the Mel request is always make more, especially the ones we don't have a lot of. Hey, you have a card that cares about horses, make more horses. Mel especially cares when there's cards that specifically care about the creature type. They're like, look, you made cards that care about it, you know, I want more. You know, I want more of that creature type. I have a card that I really enjoy playing with, but you need to give me more. So there, I want more of that creature type. I have a card that I really enjoy playing with, but you need to give me more. So there's a lot of pressure on that side to make more creature types of existing creature types.

Meanwhile, on the opposite side, you've got the Vorthorses of the world, and they're like, creature types are a creative expression. It's less a mechanical thing. And so they're like, hey, expand more. You know, yeah, yeah, yeah, we've seen 8,000 goblins. Whatever. Boring. Show us new things. Can we see this? Can we see that?

Here's this thing from fantasy. Here's that thing from fantasy. And so the Borethrower's End really wants us to be inventive with mechanics. What they want is to see new and different creature types. And so there's a balance of trying to sort of make sure there's some consistency so we add to the things we're already doing

while occasionally doing something new. And usually the balance is, are we making something that we think has some legs? Like, I don't think we make a creature type right now without hoping that maybe there's some long-term potential for the creature type. There are a few exceptions where we make something that's more tied to a world. But even then, you know, the Aetherborn, for example, from Kaladesh, the idea was maybe we see the Aetherborn somewhere else. We sort of invented them, we made something, and even then, Aetherborn didn't have its own creature type.

I think it was elemental, right? Was the Aetherborn elemental? I think he was elemental. I'm not 100% sure on that. Okay, the last set of the Mirrored in Black was Fifth Dawn. So Fifth Dawn got in a weird space because by the time we got there we realized how broken the set how uh mirrored in and dark steel were kind of broken and so we were asked to not do like while we i think we had one affinity card as a nod toward it um i think we had one imprint and one affinity card.

We definitely had equipment. I don't think we had a twine. And so we needed to sort of go in a different path. And so what we ended up doing is we came up with Sunburst. And Sunburst said you get a counter for every color you use to cast this generic artifact. If they're creatures, they're plus one, plus one counters. If they're non-creatures, they were like charge counters or some sort of thing you could use.

And Sunburst was interesting. The biggest problem with Sunburst was we didn't plan for Sunburst. It wasn't something we... In some ways, Mirrodin Block really educated me with the need of block planning. So what happens is Mirrodin Block happens educated me with the need of block planning. So what happens is Mirrodin Block happens. Then in the middle of Champions Block, I become head designer. So I don't, Champions is kind of mid-flight.

I just sort of finish it out. There are a lot of choices made that I didn't agree with, but like it didn't make any sense to switch it mid-year. So I sort of rode that out. And then Ravnica was the set I started with. And the thing I did with Ravnica is I mapped the whole block out. And that came from Mirrodin. Mirrodin literally was watching 5th Dawn happen and realizing, oh, Sunburst could have been so much more interesting if we knew

we were coming to Sunburst and we could have set it up. Mirrodin did almost nothing to set it up. Darksteel did a little bit because Darksteel wasn't done yet when we were making 5th Dawn. So we were able to sneak a few things in. But it really, especially since Fifth Dawn was drafted last, we hadn't yet got to the technology or the latest that got drafted first. That would have helped a lot. But we weren't there

yet. And so I think Sunburst is one of those things. I mean, it's another thing that we've kind of limited to artifacts. I don't think it's mechanically tight artifacts, meaning in theory we make Sunburst is one of those things. I mean, it's another thing that we've kind of limited to artifacts. I don't think it's mechanically tied to artifacts, meaning in theory we make Sunburst without knocking on artifacts, but it's thematically tied to artifacts. And it definitely was something that taught me...

It's us playing with mana again. It's really one of the earliest times, in fact, it might be the first mechanic, where what color mana you use matters to the card. There's some individual cards that mesh in that space, and there's definitely some cards that cared about mana in different ways. But this was the first mechanic that really sort of cared about what color you were spending, and that definitely influenced some things down the road.

And it definitely was the inspiration for what would later become Devotion. What do we call it? In Future Sight, we had, what is it called? It's called Chroma. So it definitely was the precursor to sort of the influence for Chroma. Okay, and the last mechanic, which is the evergreen mechanic of this set, like I said, every set had an evergreen mechanic, was Scry.

So Scry was created by Aaron Forsythe. He was really interested in making a mechanic that kind of just helped the game play a little bit better. I think one of the things we had done and mirrored in the nature of artifact blocks is they tend to be a little more Johnny-Jenny-ish, and that means you kind of want your combos to work. And so one of the things that Scryde does really good is it kind of maximizes you getting access to cards you need

because you're just sort of looking at more cards. And the idea that Aaron Roy liked was that it was something that was fast and simple, but, like, long-term kind of just generally greased the wheels of your deck. It was subtle, and it was something that Aaron knew that the tournament players would get,

and that he hoped it would trickle down. So what happened with Scry was Scry didn't immediately become evergreen. Scry was just something like, oh, this is a cool spell. Then when I think Eric was doing the core set, and at the time in the core set, we were bringing back

mechanics. And I think the first time it was Eric brought it back in M11, I think. 2011, I think. It might have been 2012. 2011 or 2012. And it just was a perfect fit, and it was really flavorful. I mean, Scry means to look at the future, so the flavor is really cool.

And it's just the kind of thing that you can go into any spell. It's super flexible. So then when Eric was making Theros, he knew he needed, because Theros had a lot of common rhetorics to it, a lot of combining things, because it was about building up. So he decided that scry made a good sit in Theros. The Greeks loved their omen seekers and stuff, so it was

a good fit there. And then at some point we were going to bring it back again and we were like, why don't we just let this have access to it? Why don't we just let this have this? And we eventually just decided to keep it. And then once we kept it,

then it got integrated into the Mulligan rules. And anyway, Scry is definitely very much ingrained into the base game now. The interesting thing, we made it in fifth on. Like sometimes you make something, like I think when we made equipment, in the back of our heads,

we were like, well, if this works out, maybe we can just, it can just be an evergreen thing. So I mean, I think we made equipment with the idea that maybe we can make it evergreen. Scry was not at all that. Scry was just something that was kind of really useful and players liked it

and then just we started using it more and more until we finally were like, look, why don't we just have access to this? This is something we really need. It's flavorful, it's simple, you know, and it's funny because when we first made it, one of the big questions at the time was, are only certain colors supposed to scry?

We eventually decided that everybody can scry one, that everybody can peek a little bit, but that only certain colors, like blue is sort of the center scry color. And red usually does the least amount of scrying because red is, like blue is the most look forward and red is the the least amount of scrying because red is, like blue is the most look forward

and red is the least look forward. So like red is sort of like living in the moment. So like you don't want to have too much future telling in red. That's just not, red's like live from the moment, not think about the future. Where blue in the verses don't make any decisions who thought out everything. So seeing the future is a huge deal for blue.

So of course blue is going to look. That's just something blue is going to do. So blue is future is a huge deal for blue. So of course blue's going to look. That's just something blue's going to do. So blue is top at scry, but we definitely let everybody have access to scry. Now there are a few other things in fifth dawn. There's the echoing spells,

which was we had made a card, I made a card called lobotomy, that you made your opponent discard a card and then got rid of all copies of that card. So this played in a similar space where I got to affect a creature or affect a card, and then I affected all cards of that ilk.

And this definitely sort of playing around... One of the things we've been playing around from time to time is kind of encouraging a little bit of diversity in spell type of, hey, don't just play all four ofs. Maybe you want to play two of this and two of that. And the echoing

stuff is definitely us playing a little in that space of there's a danger to overcommitting to have too many of the same kind of card. We also were the pulses where you did something and then if your opponent still had more of the resource than you did, you got the card back.

In Tempest, we mess around with buyback. I think it's us trying to figure out ways in which we can let you cast things a second time, but in a way that's less dangerous than buyback. Buyback was, you know, assuming I'm going to spend the mana, I can just keep doing it. And that proved to be a little bit more, a little more resilient, a little more repetitive than we liked.

So then we had stuff like flashbacks that said, okay, here's a clean way to, a little more resilient, a little more repetitive than we liked. So then we had stuff like flashbacks that said, okay, here's a clean way to do a spell twice. And we keep messing around with ways

to start to do spells more times. I don't think Pulse was a particularly great experiment. I mean, we really haven't done a lot of stuff

like that before. In general, one of the things that we learned doing stuff like that was comparative stuff. When I have to care about whether I have more than you

or how much more than you, it's just a lot of sort of constant updating and it's kind of mentally taxing and it's not particularly fun. So we do a lot less of that. Not none, but a lot less of it. But anyway, I think when I look back at Mirrodin,

Mirrodin Block developed mentally, there are all sorts of problems, I didn't really get into that, Mirrodin block, developmentally, there are all sorts of problems. I didn't really get into that. Mirrodin block actually kind of almost broke standard. And, you know, so there was all sorts of developmental issues with Mirrodin block. But from a design standpoint, a lot of really cool things. Like I say, equipment and indestructible and scry all became evergreen. That's a lot.

Every set in the block picked up something evergreen. That is a pretty telling thing. And if you look at that kind of where we messed around with entwine and infinity and imprint and modular, like, you see a lot of future mechanics kind of the early of us sort of messing around in space and

messing around with modal and messing around with memory issues and messing around with cost reduction. That there's a lot of us playing in space in this block. This definitely was, if you had to ask me for blocks that kind of were jumping off points, there are certain sets where just we really, design really went to town, and this was one of those blocks. This was definitely a block where a lot was learned very positively.

Now, next time we talk, the next set block I'm going to talk about is Champions of Kamigawa. That's the reverse, where we learned a lot, but in the other direction. But we'll get to that next time. But anyway, I'm now parked, so we all know what that means. And 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. Bye-bye.