Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #601: Factions

Episode Date: January 11, 2019

This podcast is about how we design factions and build sets around them.

I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today is based on an article I did a little while ago called Faction Pact. It was talking about why and how we make factions, and then I went through all the sets that had factions, and graded them to talk about how efficient their faction was at being a faction. So first, let me start by talking about what is a faction? Let's define what a faction is. Okay, so a set has elements mechanically and flavorfully that represent different groups. The idea of a faction essentially is that you're subdividing things and that they represent something. They represent something mechanically,

they represent something flavorfully. So each group has a mechanical identity. It means that how it plays, how it interacts. Sometimes it will have a mechanic assigned to it. Sometimes how it interacts with the mechanic. But it definitely has an identity that's a clean, clear mechanical identity. It also has a creative identity. It has a certain look and feel to it.

It represents a group. Like, in story, it's always representative of a group, a group that does something. Now, different worlds, what that groups mean, can change a lot. Sometimes it's a civilization. Sometimes it's a part of a civilization. Sometimes it's a certain kind of creature.

There's a lot of different things that can represent different factions. The most important thing is that the relationship between the groups defines the set. That that's important about a faction set is that the relationship between the groups means something. And as you'll see as I go through the various sets that have had factions, some have been very successful and it's very clear who the factions are. Some have been less successful and it's less clear what the factions are. And some of the sets I will name, you might not even think of it as a faction set.

Usually the grades are lower on those because the faction didn't get conveyed very well. Okay, so when you build around a faction, what can you build around? Well, the most often thing we build around is color. You can be mono-color, you can be two-color, you can be three-color. I haven't really done four or five-color yet. That's a little harder to do. But a clean, definitive thing. Color is such a defining trait in magic.

It is very easy for colors to help delineate what things are. Sometimes it's creature type. Sometimes what defines a group is it's a bunch of something, you know, that the creature type could be a good way for us to go, oh, these are a similar thing. Sometimes the color and the creature type can both be used to define something. Also, sometimes it's defined mechanically. Sometimes we do something where certain things that do a certain thing within the game represent Also, sometimes it's defined mechanically. Sometimes we do something where certain things that do a certain thing within the game

represent something. Usually the color and the creature type mechanics, we use some combination of them to work together. It's not always one of them. Sometimes it's multiple working in conjunction. And the important thing when you make factions is that you want to get across the feel of each faction. You want to make sure that when you play with a faction or when you look at the faction

that the audience gets that there's a delineated faction. As you'll see when I go through some of the earlier sets, or some of the sets that have had factions, there's some ones that, like, it didn't do a good job of doing that. And as a result, some of the things I'm going to name today, you might not even think of being faction sets because it really didn't do a good job of delineating creatively and or mechanically in a way that made it clear that they were a separate group. Okay, so another big thing we have to worry about when doing factions is limited and constructed.

For limited, it's about draftability. What are you drafting? What are the archetypes? For constructed, it's the same sort of issue of what can you build out of it? So your factions dictates the color combinations that are drafted. So for example, if I have a set with ally colors, well, then ally colors are something you can draft. If I have a set about enemy colors, then enemy colors are something you can draft. You know, one of the things that's very key here is that the factions sort of say to the audience, hey, the set's about this, and it makes the

expectation that that's what you're going to draft. It also dictates as fan. So as fan is short for as fanned. It talks about how much of a certain portion of something is in the booster pack. And when we talk about factions, one of the things that comes up is it often determines how often we do something so that it's something you can draft around

or something that will be noticeable as a definitive thing. Also, it dictates synergies. That part of knowing who your faction is, is really dictating what kind of things you might be doing. What kind of things are you looking out for? You know, oh, maybe your faction likes artifacts and all of a sudden you got to think about artifacts when you're playing because there's synergies built into it the factions have themes and have things that sort of dictate and also you want synergies between your factions if you're doing your job correctly your factions usually overlap and that when you're drafting or when you're building your decks you have options to not just play individual factions but play factions together and the combining of the factions itself creates synergies.

You want to make sure factions can work together, especially the overlap colors. And finally, it also really dictates what your archetypes are for drafting, for deck building, that when you make a faction and you define the faction, that often will sort of define, here's a deck that can be drafted slash built. And it really sort of says to the players, this is something that you want to think about. This is something that's going to affect how you think about it. Okay, so what I want to do now is I'm going to go back and look at every set that I thought, even remotely,

had a faction component to it, and then talk about, so my grade, I'm going to give them a letter grade, A through F. What I'm grading them is not overall how the set was. What I'm grading them on was how good were they of factions. I'm grading the factions as a faction. How efficient was the faction? Okay.

So we're going to start with Fallen Empires. So Fallen Empires is the first faction set, for those that like their history. So there were five mono-colored factions. There was the Order of the Leaper. That was the white faction. The Videlian Merfolk was the blue faction. The Order of the Ebon Hand was the black faction.

The Dwarves were the red faction. And the Elves were the green faction. And the way it was designed is each faction had a major role and then there was an upstart within the faction that was causing trouble. Like the elves had grown the phthalids as a means of

I think it was producing their food and then it got kind of out of control and then the elves end up fighting the phthalids. So in each faction there were people like the Ebon Hand had created the Thralls got out of hand. The dwarves had to deal with the goblins.

In each case, there was some subgroup that they had to deal with and they had to worry about. The Order of the Leaper had, there was a faction within them, a religious faction that broke apart from them that was causing trouble. In each case, you had to figure out what was going on and that they had to deal with their factions.

The factions in Fallen Empires were very what we call siloed, which means that within each color, each had a very clean and clear identity. In fact, the major group had an identity and the subgroup had an identity, and they were made so they could be played together. But, so each color had a very clear identity. The thing was, this was kind of before we really built sets with limited in mind.

And as part of that, they really were only thinking constructed and only worried about making monocolored strategies. These strategies didn't really combine. I mean, a few of them did in that clearly you can mix and match to some extent. But they weren't made in a way where the synergies were built into it. So I ended up giving Fallen Empires a B-. In some ways, I gave it a little higher than it would be

if I don't take into account when it was made. Being the first faction set, being something that did something that had never been done before gets it some extra kudos. It's a little loose in its lack of synergies

and its means. It is not the easy set to draft. You can, I mean, one of the problems in general with drafting is it is hard. Mono car strategies are difficult to do in draft. They're difficult to do without a lot of support. And so you are, usually in draft, you kind of need to pick up a second color, and this was not, this set was made for you to play one color. So drafting was kind of tricky.

So when I say B-, it's just, in a modern eye, in some ways I feel bad. I feel like we're grading cars that this is the Model T. Against the modern standards, a lot of things it didn't do. It didn't create this energy. But it really was pretty innovative for it today. So my grade is very much the present looking back. In its day, at its time, it was revolutionary.

We'd never done factions before. I'm just sort of grading with a modern eye that there's a lot of things that we now expect out of factions that it didn't do. But be aware that I'm grading with a modern eye that in its day, in its time I think it was a very revolutionary set in how it did factions

okay, next, Mirage so Mirage, this is one of those sets where you're going to go Mirage was a faction set technically in the story there were three kingdoms there was the militaristic Zalfir there was the religious Femrith, and there was the trading Sokata Empire. And from a flavor standpoint,

the three, like, it was important that there were three empires. I mean, there also were these four wizards that interacted, but the wizards interacted with the empires, and, like, it was an important part of the structure. If we were making it today, if this set was being made made modern day we would make a big deal out of these factions

we would give them identity um i give this an f because the factions are there solely for flavor they do almost zero mechanical support i mean they have a little tiny bit but very little and not in a way that's easily noticeable. So we talk about sort of the factions of Barrage, like I said. I don't think anybody even thinks of this as a faction set. That's how undefined the factions were. But the reason I listed it is, it's a set that kind of wanted the factions to mean something. The factions were important to the story.

And the factions were important to the environment. The fact that there were three kingdoms meant something. And the fact that how they interacted with each other was supposed to mean something. But it is a good example of where when you don't give support mechanically or even creatively

in the way that normally we would nowadays. It just doesn't hold to something that is that. So I mostly wanted to bring this up as something that kind of modern day, we would do it differently. We'd make the empires matter. We'd make you notice them. But I really felt like it was

not supported in a way that it was even noticeable as being factions. Okay, next. Invasion. So Invasion was the first set in which we have two factions. It's a conflict set. Invasion is about the Phyrexians invading Dominaria. It was the end of

the Weatherlight side of the story, which took place over four years. And the Phyrexians invade Dominaria, and then all the Dominarians get together, called theia, and then all the Dominarians get together, called the Coalition. And so all the different parts of Dominaria that normally don't get along all that great,

but when you're invaded by outside invaders, you band together, went to fight them. I gave Invasion a D+. The reason for that is there's a little bit of definition in the sides their mechanics, although it's got pointed out to me Kicker is supposed to represent

the coalition coming together but there are even a few cards that have Kicker on them that actually show the Phyrexians rather than the coalition and Domain I think was supposed to represent the coalition coming together, there, I think, was supposed to represent the coalition coming together. There's a little bit... We definitely... The Phyrexians had a little bit

of a feel to it, so you can sort of... When you see the Phyrexian creatures, at least, there's a little bit of a sense to the Phyrexians. But, in a bigger picture way, this is not what we now build sets that are sort of what I'll call conflict sets,

where you have two factions that are fighting each other, that what you want to do is you want them to be in such a way that they fight against each other, but that there's synergistic elements that you can play so that you can mix and match them in the gameplay. Because one of the things we learned is if we do a two-sided conflict and the only thing you can ever do is play one side or play the other side, it becomes much more narrower. Well, if you only play this half, just the amount of things you can do with that half is less. And what you can do with the other half is less. And that, if you can't mix and match the components, it really sort of lessens what you can do. The other strike against this set is

at least you knew there was a conflict and you knew there were sides. We didn't do a wonderful job of letting you know who was who. I mean, the Phyrexians at least have a look to them. But the Phyrexians have a lot of variety in how they look. And like, this is prior to us doing watermarks, but this is the kind of set that watermarks would have helped a lot. It's definitely a set that, like,

having a little more delineation of who's who and mechanically giving that delineation. I mean, I think Invasion is better than Mirage, and at least you knew there were sides and you knew there were factions. And even if I asked you, if you're paying somewhat attention, you'd have some idea maybe what the factions were.

But they didn't play a certain way. They definitely didn't have a mechanical identity. Not in a way that's cohesive enough to really hold them together. And they were not synergistically built to be played together at all, which is an important part of making factions work in Limited. Next is Onslaught. So Onslaught was our first tribally focused faction set.

And what I mean by that is the first in which the factions were broken out by tribes. So for example, Onslaught Block had beasts and birds and clerics, dragons that didn't show up until the final set, or didn't focus on until the final set, elves, goblins,

the Mistform, which were the creatures that could change their creature type, soldiers, wizards, and zombies. And this was definitely us trying to make the different factions have meaning and feel. They had a strong mechanical identity, which was

we did a lot to make the zombies feel like zombies, and the clerics feel like clerics, and the beasts feel like beasts. This is very early tribal design. We made a couple mistakes. I gave it a C-. One is we did not build a lot of synergies between them. One of the things about tribal sets is you want to be able to mix and match your tribes. We did not do that.

You really got... You were very siloed into the one you were playing. We did a few things to help a little bit. We did a little bit of crossing, but not, not much, not nearly as much as we should. Um, and the other thing we did is, this is the day and age when, uh, we did tribes and it was mostly monocolored. Um, for example, elves and goblins and soldiers and wizards and zombies were all mono-colored.

Beasts and birds and clerics... I miss form was mostly blue. Beasts, birds, and clerics, okay, at least mixed up with a second color. Nowadays, whenever we make tribal matter, we tend to put it in two or more colors. Just because we want to give you options of how the deck plays. For Constructed, we want to give you different ways you can build the deck. For Limited, we just want to give you options of how you can draft it.

A lot of times, we'll put them in two colors, and that's a draft archetype. In Onslaught, it was hard to do that because they were monocolors, so it was hard to draft monocolor. So Onslaught, now Onslaught had Morph in it, so there were some things we did to help you supplement and fill out a deck so that you could focus on a creature type, yet have other things that were sort of in the deck. So there was some support to work it. You could play this in Limited. It wasn't that it wasn't unplayable in Limited.

But it did not mix and match as clearly or as cleanly as we like. And the mechanical definition was light, but it could have been a little heavier. Okay, next. Champions of Kamigawa block. So this is our next conflict, two-sided conflict block. So this time it was the mortals of Kamigawa versus the kami of the spirit world. This was

definitely, so I gave this one a C. This one was a little more mechanical oriented. There was more mechanics built into the sides. The interesting thing is the kamis were more connected as a singular faction

we had a bunch of mechanics that cared about spirits there was definitely a spirit theme going on you could bring spirits back and there were cards that specifically cared about when you played spirits there was arcane

magic that I think the arcane magic was tied into the commie and there was a lot of kami. It was a creature type. So, like, the kami side more felt like a singular side. The mortals kind of broke apart into their separate sections. And so, like, oh, you can play

the snake folk, or you can play the mist moon folk. Or you could play, you know, like, there were a lot of the niz play... There were a lot of... The Nizumi. There were a lot of... It felt less like the mortals were a singular group and more like broken up individual groups.

And that they didn't have a... The mortals didn't have a cohesive identity nearly like that the spirits did. And you got that there was enough in it that you got... we had a few cards that would refer to one or the other. But in some

ways it felt more spirit versus not spirit, which was not quite as cohesively clean of what they were. I feel like champions you can sort of see as we start doing combat-oriented sets, we get better as time goes on

of giving the mechanical identity and of figuring out. This is another one where the two sides weren't really created to have synergy with each other. They were a little looser in how they were put together, so you could mix and match them, but not because we built that in as much as just the themes was light enough that you could just pick colors to play. But that wasn't

ideally built in. Okay, next we get to Ravnica and all the Ravnica blocks. So original Ravnica block, return to Ravnica block, guilds of Ravnica block, or not Ravnica block, but guilds of Ravnica and Ravnica legions. So anyway, this is the guilds. So this is the first kind of

more modern set of us building around factions in a very... A lot of these other sets I've talked about had factions, but this is the first set that's really kind of constructed around factions. In fact, it's the first time

we did block planning, and it's block planning building around factions. So Ravnica is an A. Ravnica to me is the gold standard of faction design. You got the Azorius, the Dimir, the Raktos, the Gruul, the Selesnya, Orzhov, Izzet, Golgari, Boros, and Simic.

We're now on our third visit to this. We have fine-tuned, like, each of the color combinations has a philosophical bent to it, has a mechanical bent to color combinations has a philosophical bent to it, has a mechanical bent to it, has a flavor bent to it. When I say Azorius, that means something.

And you have an idea of what kind of cards and what kind of gameplay and what kind of draft archetype and what kind of deck you'll build. And you have a flavor set. The whole package is there. Gills is really us doing factions at the best that factions can be done.

In some ways, it's almost... It's so good that it makes it hard to do other factions because it is hard to live up... It is tough to live up to the guilds. The guilds are such a perfect embodiment of what factions can be. And the other thing, like, I'll notice, and we did this more in later

Ravnica sets than early Ravnica sets, but we really now build them so that they overlap, that if you want to draft, you can draft two-color decks or a three-color deck where you combine two factions that are guilds that overlap in a color. You know, for Constructed, we not only, you know, we actually

think about building the guilds through blocks. So, like, if you took all the Dimir cards from the first time we were there, and the second time, and the third time, they all will play together. You know, whatever you pick, you know, we've designed them so that there's a through line and there's a continuity to it. That if you mix and match the Boros cards, they work together. And so that is something that's clean and really a... Like, in some ways, it is what we aspire to do. Whenever we make a Factions, we're always kind of looking at the guilds of Ravnica as something to achieve.

Next we get to Lorwyn. something to achieve. Next we get to Lorwyn. So Lorwyn was our next tribal our tribal block and we went all out on it. So Lorwyn and Morning Tide so Lorwyn focused it

on a bunch of races. So we had elementals, elves, fairies giants, goblins, kithkins, merfolk and treefolk. And then we also had the Changelings, which were kind of the glue. Changelings, by the way, is us showing that we are trying to do more mixing and matching of the tribes. We did more cards that bridge tribes, where this card made you want to play two tribes together.

The Changelings in particular really allowed you to sort of splash multiple things in one deck. So I gave Lorwyn a B-. So part of it is Morning Tide then, instead of focusing on the races, started focusing on the classes. So like Soldier and Wizard and such.

And that muddied things up a little bit. Lorwyn also was a little more siloed than we like. We did a bunch of things to try to branch it out, but it did, in drafting especially, it did really push you toward playing one and only one. We built some stuff in to help you a little bit. It's a little better than Onslaught was, but there's still room to grow

we also did tribe at a pretty high percentage I think too high a percentage that's part of what caused some of the siloing problems was everything was one of these 8 tribes or 9 chain flings and you really sort of had to commit

that really kind of locked you in we did this time branch out, and everything's in two colors, so we learned that lesson. So there's a little, like, Lorwyn is a step up from Onslaught. We've learned more things, but it definitely was still a learning time for us, in that we sort of trying to figure out how better to do factions based around tribes. You know, tribes can have a lot of flavor, but there's some issues that come in with doing tribes

that are different from doing colors. Okay, next is Shadowmoor and Eventide. This is another one of those that I don't know if I'm even supposed to list it as a faction set. of those that I don't know if I'm even supposed to list it as a faction set. Especially Shadowmoor continues the tribal stuff that comes from

Lorwyn, but it color shifts some of the stuff. And then there is... Very much the mechanics of the set, the hybrid of the set, makes you want to play... There is this weird thing where there's this color faction going on with the hybrids, and the hybrid symbols kind of, especially because we did so much, like 50% of the cards are hybrid,

it kind of feels in a way like doing a multicolor set, in that it... multicolor often will feel faction-y, in that you have, you know, when you're building your archetypes and stuff, they latch onto that. And so, you know, Shaddamore had the Kithkin and the Fairies and the Merfolk and the Elementals and the Dolphins and the Giants and the Elves, although it didn't have the tribal support to make you want to play them mechanically. But it did, they did put them in colors and then Hybrid gave you mechanical reasons to want to play them together. So it sort of, um, it definitely forced you to sort of think about and draft in a certain way, just

like even Tide did that with the enemy colors. Um, but it was fun. I gave it a D- in that if you kind of squint, there's faction components to it, but they're not really built in a way that feels like factions, so I gave it a D-. I not really built in a way that feels like factions. So I gave it a D-. I kind of want to point out that we kind of were partway there, but didn't really commit to it.

And so it's one of those sets that kind of feels like a faction set on some level, but very much doesn't feel like one on another level. And that's just not what you want on a faction set. So I wish we had more committed or less committed. We kind of got in the middle of the road, which gave it a little bit of a faction feel without completely being a faction feel, and I think that's not great.

Next, Shards of Alara. So Shards was, we did three colors for the first time. So we had Bant, Esper, Grixis, Jund, and Naya. Each one of those with their own world so this is the first time we did factioning where the factions didn't intermingle creatively I mean they eventually later in the block would intermingle

but when we started out they didn't, they were each their own world and that's the first time we had done factions that were kind of segregated creatively from one another I gave Shardalara a B. I think that it did a really, really good job of giving each set an identity,

each faction an identity. You know, Bant and Espert and Crixus and Jund and Nigh each felt very distinctive. They had a creative, like, you creatively understood what they were. They played in a very particular way. So, it was

the first time we did three-color, and I felt like you really, really got the sense. You didn't miss it as a faction set. The two big mess-ups, one is I wish we had used watermark technology and did a little more to kind of cement the factioning. We didn't use all the tools for factioning.

And the second thing is we did not make them to be playable with what's around. Some of them were. Naya and Bant actually were pretty synergistic. But, like, Esper was not synergistic with the stuff that was surrounding it as much as it needed to be. And so, that was one of those sets where I feel like within the factions, we were really good. They had a strong flavor. They had a strong mechanical feel. But we didn't go to the next level of linking them together and creating the synergy. So that's why I gave it a B.

Okay, next. Scars of Mirrodin. So Scars of Mirrodin was our next conflict set. So two sides, the Mirrodins and the Phyrexians. Another invasion, which Phyrexians do. So I gave this one a B+. I felt the mechanical identities of these were

very strong. You very much got a sense of where the Mirrens, you very much got a sense of where the Phyrexians. Each side had a mechanical identity, had keywords tied to it. It was very much, like when you played the Mirrens or played the Phyrexians, you got and you

felt like that side. And I thought the play was very evocative. In fact, this is the first set where we really got into the idea of part of what makes a faction a faction is the emotional feel it gets from you. And that we really wanted, when you're playing the Mirrens or playing the Phraxians, to kind of hit an emotional note

and that the Phyrexians, we spent a lot of time on the Phyrexians, we wanted you to really get an essence of what the Phyrexians were and we wanted you, from a story standpoint, to really learn to fear the Phyrexians in a way you hadn't before. That before they were this creepy, crawly sort of enemy that, like, in concept felt scary but when you were playing against them they felt scary.

And I really enjoyed the play value of how we made them play. The reasons B plus and not a little bit higher is based on how the set got developed, some of the as-fam got changed from some factors and the ability to mix and match sides

wasn't as clean as it was put in design. Design spent a lot of energy doing that. For example, we had wanted proliferate to do a lot of work to carry between because there was a whole charge counter theme that played proliferate on the

mirroring side. But development decided to sort of lower the as-fan of proliferate, so it just didn't show up very much in common. And so a lot of the archetypes we'd built in ended up not working. So it was a set that did a lot right. There's a lot of very cool things about it. It might be my favorite enemy faction. In fact, I think it is my favorite enemy faction set

as far as really feeling like a conflict mechanically in the gameplay. And each side had a strong feel. But the lack of synergy really keeps it from being in the A category. Next, Innistrad. So Innistrad, once again, has tribal factions. Monster tribal. So spirits and zombies and vampires and werewolves. And then humans sort of fill out as the victims.

They're color-coordinated, it was an ally thing. So this is where tribal played an interesting role, where it was there at a lower amount. That if you wanted to draft it, you could. Especially when Dark Ascension got put in. But,

and if you want to build around it, it was clearly, clearly there. But it didn't require you to do it. Like, for Lorwyn, you kind of had to commit to the factions, the tribal factions. Here, you didn't have to commit to them. There are other strategies and other things you could do that you didn't necessarily have to play a faction,

but you can opt into if you wanted to. I administered an A-. I think this is the best tribal faction set we've done. I was very proud, once again, mechanically, how the monsters especially felt like monsters. That, you know, the zombies played, like, part of giving the feel of the zombie was the actual gameplay of zombies made them feel like zombies. That they were slow and plodding, but they kept

coming back and growing, and eventually they would just overwhelm you with this giant horde of zombies, and that felt very zombie-ish for example to me. And each of the tribes, you know, the werewolves we spent a lot of time of, you know, in their human form, they're not that bad, but you know at some point they're becoming werewolves, and that's scary, and you're

trying to stop it, and then eventually they become werewolves and then you're in bad, but you know at some point they're becoming werewolves, and that's scary, and you're trying to stop it, and then eventually they become werewolves, and then you're in trouble, and, you know, it really, you know, there's a lot of what was going on that I thought was really cool. The only reason I gave it an A- versus an A is, I felt like the tribes were probably a little lower than we wanted them to

be. It could have mattered a smidgen more. But in general, it is us doing tribe faction very well. Okay, next. Cons of Tarkir, favorite forge. So this is Wedge, so three-collar. So Shards with Arc, which are three things that are next to each other, we call Arcs or Shards.

It's a colorant to allies. Cons is what we call Wedge that it's a colorant to allies. Cons is what we call wedge, which is a colorant to enemies. So cons and paper foraged had five color. It was very strong. Each one had a clune identity. We made it so they drafted together. I gave this an A-.

I feel that this is probably after Ravnica. This is probably the factions we did the strongest, where the players really resonated with the flavor, and they had a clean and clear, crisp mechanical identity. In general, I think, like I said, it's...

I only gave Continent an A-, I think, because it's not quite as good as Ravnica. I'm just kind of measuring it's Ravnica. But I think cons was us really showing we could do really cool factions. Both the Innistrad and cons are showing us starting to do other kinds of factions and doing it really well.

Okay, next, Dragons of Tarkir. So, now these are ally. They're the broods that are tied to the dragons. So the Ojetai Brood, the Silmangar Brood, the Kolaghan Brood, the Atarka Brood, and the Dromoka Brood. I feel that these aren't quite as flavorful as the cottons were. I gave this a B+. I feel like the whole block kind of had this idea of these proto-clans that went two different directions.

Like, the clans that they show up in Fate Reforged are kind of the proto-clans, and they go one way in cons and another way in dragons. And I think the cons one just ended up being a little bit more flavorful, a little more fun. A little more flavorful, a little more fun. I feel like we spent a lot of energy making sure that dragons and cons both drafted well with Fate Reforged. But dragons could have used a little bit more love. The factions just aren't quite as crisp

as the cons factions. I mean, they're not, it's a B+. They weren't bad. But there was room for improvement. I think the reason that people fell in love with Khans more than with dragons of Dark Ear had to do with kind of how we did the factions, but maybe humans are just easier to bond with than dragons, that might be part of it. Okay, next, Battle for Zendikar.

So this is our next two-faction combat set. So this is the Zendikar, Zendikari, fighting the Eldrazi who are invading them so I give this a C+. The factions were defined you knew who was who and we spent a lot of time trying to give the Eldrazi this very alien feel

I mean I do think we gave them a mechanical feel I just wasn't super happy this set had a lot of issues. It was kind of messy, and I think Sam McCart didn't really want to be about a war, and a bunch of things. But as far as, okay, we were doing the war, we had factions.

I think it was clear, like, it was delineated. You knew there was a conflict, and you knew what the factions were, and you knew what the sides were, and there was a mechanical identity to the sides. It just wasn't... It's not that identity to the sides. It just wasn't... It's not that it wasn't there. It just didn't quite play as well as I wanted.

I felt it was a little bit muddier than some other ones we've done, and it didn't quite evoke as strong as we wanted. The Allies, for example, I think didn't resonate as much as the Allies did in original Zendikar, and the Eldrazi didn't, in some ways, didn't resonate as much as they did in original Rize Eldrazi, so, like, it's kind of weird it went back and didn't quite capture the things that they'd been before as good as we could. It's definitely one of those factions that I look back on and I'm like, ah, we could have done that better. Okay, next is Aether Revolt.

So I didn't list Kaladesh, because in Kaladesh, they're not really fighting. It's not until Aether Revolt that they start fighting. And it's the Consulate versus the Rebels. I gave this a C. There are sides. You can see where the sides are. We do some mechanical to the sides. There's mechanics representing the Rebels and stuff. But it's one of those sets that

while it is true that we did things we need to do to represent who the factions were it's also true that I don't think a lot of people even necessarily think of it as being a faction set I mean I guess most people understand creatively there was a conflict but I don't think the mechanics

do a great job of reinforcing that part of the problem was you're drafting with the large set and the large set wasn't doing that but I don't think the mechanics do a great job of reinforcing that. Part of the problem was you're drafting with the large set and the large set wasn't doing that. So Ethan Revolt kind of picked up a challenge in that, hey, it's group A versus group B and the first set, eh, they're there but not really defined and only the second set really defined it. So Ethan Revolt was kind of doing something weird.

So, I mean, it didn't do it great. It gave it a C, but it was trying something interesting. So Amonkot, this is another set that I'm not sure whether you want to count this as a faction set or not. There were the five gods, Oketra, Kefnet, Bantu, Hazoret, and Ronas. And their

followers, there definitely were some mechanical themes that were woven in and the idea of the trials and the definition of what the colors meant was really interwoven into the set. But it's one of those things in that did it feel like a group?

Did they have an identity? I gave this a C- because I think you recognize the gods and I think you recognize the feel of the gods, but I don't think the factions quite felt like they were something that... I don't think they quite quite felt like they were something that, like, I don't think they quite felt so faction-y. It's kind of there if you sort of

look for it. Like, once I say, oh, these factions kind of exist, you start looking and start seeing the connective tissue. This is another example where we built things through monocolor and then created synergies between the monocolors, so there's work that was done there,

but the reason I gave it a C- was I just don't think people see it. And so it can't be that good if your audience doesn't really perceive the faction element of it. Next, Ixalan. So Ixalan had four factions. The Brazen Coalition, which were the pirates. The Sun Empire, which were the dinosaurs. The Legion of Dusk, which were the vampires. And the River Heralds, which were the Pirates, the Sun Empire, which were the Dinosaurs, the Legion of Dusk, which were the Vampires,

and the River Heralds, which were the Merfolk. So this was one of those things that was another tribal set. Wasn't quite as high tribal as Lorwyn, but higher than Innistrad. For creative reasons, we tried not to mix these mechanically. That was a mistake. I think this was a set that got you much more siloed. Also, we experimented

with having two three-color tribes and two two-color tribes. With the three-color tribes having more options of how you could play them. They were the pirates and the dinosaurs

because those were the brand new things that we really hadn't done much before. I gave this set a B- because I feel that I do think that we gave each creatively gave a strong identity to each of the four factions. You knew who they were.

They mechanically had an identity. But the lack of synergy between them and the lack... It's kind of like we made factions that got siloed and that you really were kind of forced to play one of the four factions and you didn't have the joy of mixing and matching, which is kind of what makes limited and even to some extent constructed kind of fun. And so I gave it a B-. I feel like we did a good job of defining the factions.

You knew it was a faction set. You knew who they were. You knew who they represented. They had a mechanical identity. They did all that. But it didn't quite hold together quite as well as the faction set wanted. One of the things you'll see today as I'm talking about these is the interconnectivity of the factions, how the factions relate to one another is a sign of really factions hitting on all their gears, of really making a set that makes it shine. Okay, the final set to talk about today is Unstable.

So Unstable was an allied set. It had the Order of the Widgets, the Agents of Sneak, the League of Dastardly Doom, the Goblin Explosioners, and the Crossbreed Labs. It was our mad scientist set, and these are all wacky inventors doing their wacky inventor thing. But one of the

things that we did is we made sure that each clan had its own identity. They had their own mechanical identity their own creative identity. And then we did things so you can mix and match them together. In retrospect, I did this in A-. I think I could have upped their mechanical identity. Well, not that I didn't have it. I could have been a little bit louder about it. One of the things that I did was I imbued them all with a pretty strong mechanical identity, but I didn't put as many cards

to sort of clue you in on what they were. We made it a little bit more like discover them. And for the people that are really into magic, I think that's fun, but I think for people that want a little more hand-holding, the set could have had a little bit more hand-holding in it. I think that

the themes were... I was very happy with how they woke together and how they played together. All the factions could play together and do fun things. But it was a little subtler than probably I needed to be. That's my takeaway, was really, when I say it's in my mind, it's like I could have added maybe a couple cards

in each faction that just had a little bit louder voice of making you understand how the faction worked and being a little more blunt about it. I think it was a little not quite blunt enough. But anyway, so Unstable gets an A-. Anyway, those are all the faction sets. Those are all the sets that had... I mean, there's arguments for a few sets I didn't talk about.

Pharaoh says the city stays. There's a few sets where there's components that you could argue maybe have some factions elements to them. But usually if it wasn't something that... If the set wasn't defined by the factions and the factions didn't have a mechanical identity, I tended

not to include them. So there are a few that maybe I could have included. A few of the ones I did include, I tried to point out how they mattered, but how they failed include, I tried to point out how they mattered, but how they failed. So I want to point out how they kind of did something, but didn't do it all the way. So some of my examples were ones where I was trying to point out how we did it badly, so you could see the whole

stretch of what we did. If you look through the ones I went to today, there's A's, there's B's, there's C's, there's D's, there's F's. It's the full spectrum. I wanted to sort of show you that. Anyway, I'm now at work so we all know what that means means this is the end of my drive to work

so instead of talking magic it's time for me to be making magic see you guys next time