Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #585: Magic Evolution, Part 6

Episode Date: November 2, 2018

This is another in my "Magic Evolution" series, where I go through the history of the game and talk about the design innovations each set brought to the table. In this podcast, I talk about Champions of Kamigawa block.

I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so I'm dropping my son off at camp, and I'm going to talk about magic evolution. So this is, I think it's part six of a magic evolution. So this is a series I've been doing where I'm going through all of magic from the very beginning, talking about each set, and explaining kind of designers, what technology was created, what was the innovations that came from each set. So I'm sort of looking, it's kind of magic history with a designer, a magic designer's eye.

So today we are going to talk about the block Champions of Kamigawa. So it's interesting. Last time I talked about Mirrodin block and Mirrodin block had a lot of things that just went on to become evergreen. Like it was a very successful block. I mean, developmentally it had some issues, but Champion Kamigawa block I think has kind of a different flavor, which is trying interesting things and not quite doing them correctly. So the theme I think you'll find through Champions of Kamigawa is

there's the start of interesting ideas, and then just not quite executed as well as it later would get executed. And let's start with Champions of Kamigawa itself. So probably the best example of this would be flip cards. So when I say flip cards, a lot of people think I'm talking about double-faced cards. But no, there was a mechanic called flip cards before double-faced cards ever existed. But in some ways, kind of a precursor to double-faced cards. So the way flip cards work is it was a one-sided card.

There was a magic back on it. But the card could be oriented two different ways. So the idea is when you cast it, only one side had a mana cost on it. And then when you would do what you needed to do, you would flip it, which means you would turn it 180 degrees. And then the art was done such that

the art box had sort of, you could see different art depending on which way you put it up. And so the creatures had two states. Uh, they weren't even always just creatures. They were always permanent. Um, I think in Champions they were just creatures. I think later on we had, uh, things that like turned into enchantments and stuff.

Um, and the idea behind Flip Cards, uh, Flip Cards were a creation of me and Richard Garfield, actually. Richard was not technically on the set, but he and I, I had some ideas and I remember talking with him and he and I together sort of came up with this idea of the Flip Cards. And the idea was pretty simple, which was creatures that have two states that sort of graduate from one state to another state. was creatures that have two states that sort of graduate from one state to another state. In a lot of ways, the flip cards are the precursors to the double-faced cards. In many ways, they act a lot like double-faced cards. The big difference is the concessions that had to be given to have them all on the same side of the card,

because at the time it never dawned on us we could have them on two sides of the card, caused a bunch of problems. I mean, there's two different problems. There was logistical issues that actually affected gameplay, and there was aesthetic issues which didn't affect gameplay, but just made the card not quite as attractive as it could be. The biggest mechanical issue is you have to tap creatures to attack with them. These were creatures. issue is you have to tap creatures to attack with them. These were creatures. So if I tapped my creature, you know, if it was up and down, you knew which way it was because the top was what

it was. But if I tap the creature, oh, are you supposed to tap clockwise, counterclockwise? We never specify because it doesn't really matter. But the problem was when you tap these cards, you just couldn't tell what they were. And so there's a lot of memory issues of, okay, well, did they turn it into this other creature? And heaven forbid you have two of the creatures and one has been turned and one hasn't been turned, just knowing which is which. From an aesthetic standpoint, trying to get two pieces of art in one art box. Kind of made it muddy. It never... I mean, there were some pretty pictures, but it always was a bit cluttered. One of the things we liked about double-faced cars is you get to showcase that art,

and so the other art gets to go away. So, like, if you're a werewolf that's a human that turns into a werewolf, well, now you're a human. I can see you're a human. Oh, now you're a werewolf. I can see you're a werewolf that's a human that turns into a werewolf, well, now you're a human. I can see you're a human. Oh, now you're a werewolf. I can see you're a werewolf. It's very clear that the art helps reinforce what's going on. Flip cards didn't really do that. And so, like, they were something that we had high hopes for.

And then between the logistics and the aesthetics, just the audience didn't really like them. Now, interestingly, we would later do double-faced cards, and the audience loved those. So this is a good example of how execution can mean quite a bit. Oh, the other big execution issue that went with flip cards was you were more limited for space. Because you had less of a text box because everything was fitting on one card, you didn't have room to put a lot of text on it. And that also limited us a little bit in what we could design. Okay, other than flip cards,

so one of the basic flavor of Champions of Kamigawa, for those that have never played it, it was a Japanese-inspired set. And the main storyline is the humans of the world are having a fight with the spirits of the world. So what happens is, Kanda, I think is his name, the emperor, I forget his motivations, but he ends up stealing something from the spirit world. I want to say it's a baby, but it's like a spirit baby. It's not a normal baby.

And anyway, the spirits flip out, rightfully so, and declare war on the humans, basically, attack the humans. And so there's a war between the spirits, the kami, kamigawa, the kami and the humans. So to represent that, there was a mechanic called soul shift. So what soul shift was is, it said whenever a spirit goes to the graveyard, or actually, well, soul shift was on a creature. Whenever this creature went to the graveyard, you were allowed to get a spirit out of your, I mean, these were always spirits.

You were allowed to get a spirit out of your, I mean these were always spirits, you were allowed to get a spirit out of your graveyard with a converted mana cost less than this creature. So the idea is, if I had a creature with soul shift, and it dies, I get back something else. And, if I have enough soul shift creatures, I can keep getting the next lower down soul shift creature. So, you

kill my 5 cost, I get a 4 cost spirit with soul shift. You kill my 4 cost, now I have a 3. Then I have two. So the idea is you can sort of, your spirits keep coming back in smaller forms. So one of the problems with Soul Shift, so I guess let me map out the mechanics. I jumped in to flip right away.

So then there was something we called Spirit Craft, which wasn't named. It was just kind of something we did. It said whenever you cast a spirit or arcane spell, so what's an arcane spell? So there was another mechanic called splice. And all the splices in this set were spliced onto arcane. Arcane was a subtype of spells when it was instants and sorceries.

And what a splice spell was, is you could spend mana from your hand to add its ability to an instant or sorcery with arcane that was on the stack. It would add its effect to it, and then it would stay in your hand. So essentially, let's say your spell drew you a card. Well, whenever I cast an arcane spell, I could pay the mana to splice it, and then it's as if that spell also had draw a card. So the idea is there were kind of repeatable effects, but they only were repeatable

when you were casting this particular subset which was called Arcane. So Spiritcraft cared about Spirits, which was what Soul Shift cared about, and cared about Arcane, which was what Splice cared about. And that represented the Spirit side, the commies, if you will, were represented by Soul Shift and spliced into Arcane, which is what Splice cared about. And that represented the Spirit side, the commies, if you will,

were represented by Soul Shift and Splice into Arcane. And the Spiritcraft. And then, the one other mechanic we had is Bushido, which was, it went on the Samurai, and Bushido says, Bushido N, a number, whenever I attack or block, I get plus N plus N. So Bushido says, Bushido N, a number, whenever I attack or block, I get plus N plus N.

So Bushido 1 means whenever I attack or block, I get plus 1 plus 1. You know, Bushido 5, or I don't think it's that big, 3, would be you get plus 5 plus 3 when you attack or block. Basically, in combat, when you're fighting, you're stronger. And the flavor of Bushido is, I think it means the way of the sword. So there's a lot of interesting things going on here. I mean, there's a lot of experimentation. Oh, the one other thing, by the way, is we also had a legendary theme

where all the creatures at rare were legendary and there were some uncommon legendary creatures. So legendary is a great example where we had a theme, we really had high hopes for it, and then we didn't execute it on it right the biggest problem was was an Asfan problem which is okay, how many packs did you have to open of

Champions of Kamigawa to even realize there was a Legendary theme and the answer was, a lot. Because even though you would open up some rare legendary creatures, magic sets have rare legendary creatures, not every pack had a creature, so it's like I open a pack,

you know, I open pack one, maybe nothing legendary is even in the pack. I open pack two, like I have a legendary creature at rare. Okay, that happens. I open pack three, maybe no legendary thing. I open pack four, I get a a legendary creature at rare. Okay, that happens. I open pack three, maybe no legendary thing. I open pack four, I get a second legendary creature at rare. But you know what? There's normally some legendary creatures.

You're like, it's not until maybe you get your fourth or fifth one, you're like, oh, wow, I'm getting a lot of legendary creatures. And even then, you don't even necessarily realize it's a theme. You know what I'm saying? So the set really didn't care about legendary creatures in any way. They existed, and, I mean, it did care. At high rarities, it cared a little bit, but it wasn't baked into it. Like, when we came back in Dominaria and redid the theme, we made historic, we did a bunch of things that sort of

we make sure we put one in every pack. Like, we did a bunch of things to pull down the as-fan and make the relevance of it at a more... at a basis by which Unlimited is going to come up and matter. So this is a good example of, like, it's the first time we really play around with the theme. While we had had things, like, Legends

clearly had a lot of Legendary characters, it didn't really care about Legendary as a caring about the super type. And, you know, we come back in Dominaria, I think we handle it much, much better and it's a super success. So, like, for example, my theme is

we do flip cards, people don't like it. We do them a little bit differently and better, I think, and players really, really like it. We do a legendary theme, we come back, and we do a little bit better and, really like it. We do a legendary theme, we come back, and we do a little bit better, and players really like it. So, like, Champions was a set where there's a lot of good ideas, just not quite executed well.

And one of the reasons for this, real quickly, is the decision at the time was Bill really liked the idea of doing a top-down set. We hadn't really, I mean, Arabian Nights by Richard, I could argue the top-down set, but really ever since we had designed internally Tempest Forward, we hadn't

really done a top-down set and he was interested in saying, okay, so Bill's idea was, let's build the world first. Let's build a really cool world and then we'll make our design match the world. That was the idea. The problem with this, and once again, this is a good example of a neat idea executed poorly, is creative is just so much more flexible than mechanics. That once you kind of lock things in and say, oh, here's a really cool,

flavorful world, we really had a lot of problems with, oh, okay, well, how do you reflect that? Okay, it's the samurai. The samurai are all good fighters. Okay, uh, guess we give them all a mechanic that helps them fight? Okay.

You know, and then there were, like, the snake people, and, like, what do the snake people do? And they go, well, maybe if they hit you, they have venom so you don't untap. And we did a lot. The moon folk had a sort of bouncing theme. We sort of, in order to capture the essence of what the different creatures were, we sort of had to give them a mechanical identity. But then there was a lot of like, oh, well, this creature type always does this, and that creature type always does that.

And it gives you a little bit of ham-fisted. Like, I feel that what we learn to do, like with Innistrad, a good example, is we say, okay, let's figure out the essence of what we're doing, and then weave it in so that the gameplay matches the essence and allows us to do a lot of top-down stuff.

Like, we've gotten a lot better at top-down. This was our really first attempt at doing a top-down block. And we just made some errors. I mean, the other error I think we made was the creative team really had this idea of, they really got into this one aspect of Japanese mythology and the spirits and really got into it. And while it was really true to Japanese mythology,

it wasn't, they didn't tap nearly as much into kind of what people knew. Like, part of what you're doing top-down is you've got to do the stuff that people know. Not, I mean, the way I explain it is, let's say we're doing Greek mythology. I have nothing against doing a hundred-handed one,

which is a big part of Greek mythology, but it's not well-known. So, splashy, cool, flavorful, rare, a great spot for it, but not a common. And a lot of what Shem Kamekawa did is it did a lot of hundred-handed ones and put them in common, which is like, I don't know what this is.

It seems weird. And now it makes it harder for me to grok. One of the things I joke about is hundred-handed ones and put them in common, which is like, I don't know what this is. It seems weird. And now it makes it harder for me to grok. One of the things I joke about is it was a block, year-long block, Japanese flavor. How many ninjas were in the entire block? Six. Six ninjas. Not a lot of ninjas, you know.

Anyway, I think a lot of the lessons here was trying to understand the nature of trying to combine flavor with mechanics is you have to bake things in much earlier. You can't sort of solidify your flavor first because some of your flavor decisions just won't be easy to execute mechanically. And part of what you want to do is you want to go back and forth to figure out where can you do cool mechanical things and how can that be paid off through the flavor. And a lot of our best flavor is, you know, we say, oh, we think we need this for mechanics and they go, oh, well, if that's true, we can incorporate it. Like I like a lot, for example, how energy was incorporated into Kaladesh, that it really shaped what the world was, this energy source. Like, it wasn't just, oh, we heard you were doing this in the game. It's like, oh, this is a neat thing you're doing. Okay, we can pay this off in the creative of the world. And then energy becomes this neat thing that really means something story-wise, as well as mechanically. And that's ideally what you want to do.

Another thing that went on in Shams of Kamigawa is there were a lot of things we were doing that were unnamed. I mean, some of the stuff was named. I mean, Bushido was a mechanic, Soshif was a mechanic, Splice was a mechanic. But a lot of the

arcane subtype, the legendary creature matters, the flip cards at least had a different frame, so you knew those were different. Spiritcraft wasn't named. There was a lot sort of going on that was kind of subtle, and a lot of it that was very prescriptive, meaning, you know, a lot of the set is, oh, it's this thing? Well, it has that mechanic, one for one. Every samurai has Bushido. Every creature with Bushido is a samurai. And there's a lot of that. And I think that

it really sort of, part of what you want to do in a top-down set is recognize all these cool and innovative things that feel really fresh and one-off. And this set is almost the opposite. It's very cookie-cutter in that, you know, in order to represent something, everything of that thing is that mechanical identity, and it loses a little bit of the kind of special splash that a top-down set likes to have. The other thing, by the way, that I will point out, this is in some ways more creative than it is mechanics, but another, what I consider to be a flaw of the Champions Block, and it's something we're very conscious of now, is in trying to sort

of get names that sort of fit the feel they were going for, the naming really got rid of a bunch of conventions that are used to help the audience know what card type things are. So my example is, we have a card called Council of the Soratami. That's the name of the card. What is it? Is it a creature? Is it an enchantment? Is it an instant or sorcery? Like, what is it?

I mean, it turns out it was an instant, I think, as a card drawer. But a lot of the names were very kind of flowery. And so what happened was the names are sort of a really important function, which is they allow people to sort of lock on and remember what things are. It's a shorthand to sort of talk about what the set is. And when your cards don't have the footholds to remember, they're a little too slippery and you don't remember them. So one of the problems with the Champions block was

players had a real hard time remembering the names of things. And when you add that to the idea that a lot of the representation is like wispy spirits of weird things, you know, that you... It becomes something in which just trying to remember what is what. You know, the art sometimes doesn't help you. The names aren't helping you. And there's a lot of, a lot of the big lessons of this set is there are functional things that the flavor does.

And that you need to make sure that the flavor is doing those functions. And that when you start taking them away, it just becomes harder to use and harder to remember. So Champions, like I said, was trying a lot of neat things. Things that we came back, did better, and were well received. People do like top

down sets. They do like dual state creatures. They do like legendary mattering. But the execution of how we did it, a lot of it was a little bit off. And I think that is one of the big takeaways is

you see us introducing interesting ideas and then we have to come back later and execute them on them better. So let's get to betrayers of Kamigawa. So that had two new mechanics. Ninjutsu and offering. Ninjutsu and Offering. Ninjutsu was a mechanic that says,

if you have a creature that is unblocked in combat, you may pay this mana in your hand and exchange this card, which is always a ninja, for the creature. And the flavor of it, by the way, was that you had the ninjas had magic to disguise themselves.

Oh, you thought it was this creature? No, it's a ninja using illusion to fool you. Ha ha, it's a ninja. And the ninja all had saboteur abilities. When they hit you, they did something. So it's sort of like, you were always nervous whenever you let something go by

because it could always turn into a ninja. And then offering, offering were, I think, sorceries that you could cast as an instant if you sacked a particular, like, the offering would say what kind of offering it was, goblin offering.

And then if you sacked a goblin, it allowed you to cast this as an instant. Betrayers really played into, I mean, it didn't have a lot of ninjas but definitely played off the ninjas the ninjas are interesting that's another good example of a mechanic the idea of I have things you don't quite know what they are

is something that I think there's a lot of promise in it's one of those spaces that we haven't done much with that we can do more with than we have. The jutsu is one of the better mechanics in the block. It's a little bit limited in some regards, but it definitely opens up. It has a lot of neat ideas to play with. And so it is something that I definitely enjoy,

and I feel like... I mean, the biggest mistake, interesting to me, is the decision to save ninjas for Betrayers of Kamigawa. And I was involved in that decision. I think we were trying to figure out

how to make Betrayers more exciting. But interestingly, then we only made six ninjas. I don't know. I'm not sure. I do think one of the things I've learned is while there's things you can sort of wait and

get the audience to wait for, you kind of got to know what you're leading with and what are the things the audience expects. And you don't want to hold back that stuff too long. Like, I think I might have put some ninjas in the first set, even if the second set had more. And I would have put way more ninjas in the second set. I wouldn't have tied them one for one to the mechanic. Once again, I think that's a mistake. I do like ninjutsu, and I think some of the ninjas could add ninjutsu.

Okay. So the third set of the block was Saviors of Kamigawa. So the first set of the block, Champions, was led by, the design was led by Brian Tinsman. The second set, Betrayers, was led by Mike Elliott. And the third, Saviors, was led by Brian Tinsman again. So he introduced three new mechanics. Brian really, early on in Magic, the way it worked is the second and third set in a block didn't

introduce things. They just expanded upon what was already there. And then little by little, we started adding in things that weren't named mechanics from new mechanics and eventually we just started saying, oh, okay, new sets could have new mechanics. So Saviors, for example, Brian really, whenever Brian did a third set, he tended to pull away

from the theme of the block, just to do something a little bit different. So Saviors messes around with hand size mattering, which has really nothing to do with the rest of the block. And the three mechanics he introduces in it, there's channel, which are cards that you can discard and pay a cost to do an effect. So essentially what it did is it said, oh, you can have effect A or effect B. It kind of tacked on a second effect to the card. I'm not a giant fan of channel only

in that I think spells just could do that. I don't think we need to name that. And I'm not a big advocate of naming something that has just a lot of space and making it something that could feel unique on a card by card basis and making it feel like, oh, you're doing that again. Then there was epic.

Epic were spells that when you cast them, no spell could be cast for the rest of the game. But this spell would go off every turn. I think this came about because Brian was trying to find a way to do legendary spells, because there was a legendary theme in the block. I'm not sure whether actually even the end were legendary or not, but that was where the flavor came from.

And this is a good example of, I mean, I like Brian's always pushing the envelope and trying new things. This is Brian trying to do legendary spells. Obviously Dave Humphries, when he did Dominaria, would approach that again and definitely do some stuff that was not... I mean, a different take on Legendary Spells. I'm not sure it was 100% as effective of Dominaria

when I talk about Dominaria. I feel like Legendary Spells were... Most of the set went over really, really well, and Legendary Spells went over okay. Not as strong as most of the other stuff. But you can see us, Brian, messing with trying to figure out what Legendary Spells are and sort of how to do most of the other stuff. But you can see us, Brian messing with trying to figure out what legendary spells are and sort of

how to do something grandiose. I like what Brian's doing here in that I enjoy experimenting with really trying something bold. And epic spells are pretty bold. Can't cast spells for this return is a bold effect. Then the final mechanic,

I think it was a Billy word, was called Sweep. And what Sweep said is, if you return a certain number of lands, it would generate an effect. Um... This is another one of those where I'm not really sure we needed to keyword it or ability ward it. Um... But it made a bunch of cards

where you sort of, um... You could sort of use the land that you had played to sort of generate effects. Um... Using sort of land in play as a resource. I think a lot of what, I mean, the interesting thing to me of Saviors is Brian was definitely,

he liked the idea of playing around with hand size matters and caring about why would you have a big hand, what would you do with it, and maybe there's sack effects, or maybe there's sweep was a means to make your hand bigger. So if I have things that care about your hand size, oh, I can use a sweep spell and put the cards back in

my hand so it gets bigger. I also think epic was a way in which if I'm trying to just have grandiose large hands and I catch epic, my hand will just keep growing because I'll be drawing cards and I can't cast them. So all of these were very funny. Like, Brian started having a mechanical identity

and playing around it. I think hand size is something that we've messed with. It is not... I don't think it carried the weight that Brian put on it. Like, I think it's something that could be a minor theme in the set, but I just don't think it's big enough to be the major theme. And Brian really tried to play it around with the major theme. But I do like, I mean, the thing I enjoy watching a lot of Brian's designs is

Brian likes pushing boundaries and likes trying stuff. And so while I ultimately think some of Saber's was unsuccessful, I kind of admire him trying to push in a new direction. And there were some lessons of how to do hand size matters. I mean, it's definitely a thing you'll see us do in small doses. And a lot of that really came out of looking at what Brian had done in Saviors.

I mean, I think when you look at the block as a whole, it definitely is... It is not us not trying to do new things. In fact, it's very much us doing new things. It is just us doing new things with an execution that is kind of

just a little bit off. It's funny, because Champions of Kamigawa was a block in which I did no design on the block, but I did some development. I was on the development team for Champions of Kamigawa. And in some ways, like, when you do a design, it's sometimes hard to get that sort of third-person,

you know, objective stance of looking at something. And in some ways, because I didn't work on the design, I feel like I have some clarity that I'm not shaded by, shaded by what we were trying to do and I think a lot of what happened is I think a couple things happened I think the idea to lock in flavor before mechanics really made it hard

for Brian and company to do a lot of the stuff they wanted and it kind of forced their hand and in that in forcing their hand they try to find ways to be innovative, to push some innovation in the set. And I think there are some cool ideas in the set,

but of a combination of not sort of having the freedom based on some of the parameters, or on just making some decisions that were, in retrospect, a little ill-fated, that pushed in the slightly wrong direction.

And, you know, I look back in Kamigawa now, and what I sort of see is a bunch of designers with some really cool ideas that, in the end, didn't quite find the best execution for their ideas. But I think when you look back at Magic and say, oh, we've been, you know, 25-plus years, that one of the things that you always want to look at is, are people always trying to do things, pushing for new space? And some level I'm happier with a set where people are really experimenting and failing than a set where, okay, it's safe and, you know, it's okay, but there's no sort of exploring anything.

That one of the things about constantly doing magic is, I like that we keep exploring and trying new things. So my hat's off for this set of, it definitely was a set that pushed toward new things and would pave the way for a lot of cool things down the road. Just its execution, for the most case, wasn't quite right. And that, my friends, in One Car Ride, is Champions of Kamigawa block.

There were cool things there. I know, by the way, my one comment on this block is there's a lot of people who, a lot of enfranchised players that really have grown to sort of retroactively fall in love with this block. Part of it, I think, is

when you get to pick individual cards you want to play with, there's a lot of cool individual cards, but the mechanics as a whole don't quite hold to it. I don't think people love the mechanics as much as they love components and some flavor. And some of the things they like really, okay, this is cool, but we went

on to find a better way to do it. Flip cards are cool, but you know what? Double-faced cards are better. And so some of it, I think, is they see sort of like, oh, this is a cool idea and now you know way to do it. Flip cards are cool, but you know what? Double-faced cards are better. And so some of it, I think, is they see sort of like, oh, this is a cool idea and now you know how to do it. So let's take the flavor we like

and the know-how of how to do this better and do it. And that's why the enfranchised player push for Return to Kamigawa. Anyway, guys, I hope you enjoyed this.

I always enjoy the historic sort of design history podcast. But anyway, I'm now parked, so we all know what that means. This enjoy the historic sort of design history podcast. But anyway, I'm now parked, so we all know what that means. This is 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.