Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #615: Azorius

Episode Date: March 1, 2019

This podcast is the sixth in my Ravnica guild series. In this podcast, I talk about the Azorius Senate, the white-blue guild.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so last fall, when Guilds of Ravnica came out, I started talking about the guilds. And I did five podcasts talking about each of the guilds at each stage of the three stages of, or three different times we visited Ravnica. And I said when Ravnica Allegiance comes out, I would do the other five. Well, it's coming out, at least from my time frame. It came out a while for you guys. So I'm going to start with, we're going to go in order.

So I'm going to start with the Azorius Senate. White, blue. So let's go back. So the very first time we did the Azorius was in Dissension. So it was one of the last guilds we did the first time we visited Ravnica. And at the time we had a little bit of a problem, which was white blue control was causing us problems in Standard. And so one of the dictums that came down to us was, hey, we really didn't want to add to any sort of white-blue control strategies.

So, you know, could you try to avoid Azorius being about white-blue control? Which is a little frustrating, because that's, like, the whole idea of the guild is you want to capture sort of a low-hanging fruit. But we were like, okay, you know, because we're team players, like, okay, how do we make Azorius not control-oriented? And so we were trying to figure out some way to do something that would be kind of cool and would feel white-blue and that would have a little bit of a, like,

we wanted a mechanic that sort of felt white-blue and sort of felt at home in a controller strategy without necessarily being too strong in control. And so one of the things, I mean, we walked through a lot of different ideas. Azorius has always been one of those guilds that has a very clear identity and a very distinct feel, but trying to get the mechanic to sort of make sense, it's definitely one of the trickier guilds to design for, as you will hear about today. We tried a bunch of different things back in Descension, and none of them were quite clicking.

And then I got inspiration from, of all places, a silver-bordered black card. A card called Infernal Spawn of Evil. So for those who don't know, they're unglued. In Unglued, there was this piece of art that had gotten turned in. Ron Spencer is an artist, and he had

turned in for some card, I forget what set it was, he was given I don't know, some horrible, you know, some horror to draw or something, and he ended up turning in this little mouse sipping cocoa. As a joke, I mean, it wasn't his intent. Like, sometimes the artist will have fun with the art director, and they'll submit a sketch that isn't the real sketch, they're just sort of messing with them.

And so he turned in the sketch of this little mouse drinking this hot cocoa. Because one of the things about Ron Spencer most people might not know is he got his start doing greeting cards. And that he in his greeting card life did a lot of very cutesy drawings. And that when he finally got a draw of his

own choosing in magic, he tended to draw creepier things. So magic players were associated with him drawing creepier things. But his background as far as work is he had drawn a lot of very cutesy things. So magic players were associated with him drawing creepier things, but his background as far as, you know, work is he had drawn a lot of very cutesy things. So anyway, he had turned this in. Ha ha, everybody laughed. But when I was working on Unglued, I remembered that picture and I thought it was really cute. So I decided to build a card around it. And so the cart I ended up building was called Infernal Spawn of Evil. And the idea was

that this is the most evil thing in all the universe. And yes, it looks kind of innocent, but no. It really is the most evil thing in all the universe. And so I needed a mechanic that implied evil,

but, you know, was something that at the time we didn't do in Silver Border. So the idea I came up with was, well, what if the card was this big scary thing, but while it sits in your hand, you can show it to your opponent and you can say, it's coming. And it would make them lose life because they'd be so afraid of the fact that this horrible thing was coming that it would, they would just lose life because they were so scared about it. So the card was like, you can reveal to your opponent, say it's coming, put it in lost life. You go and do

that once per turn. I'm not sure whether we restrict it to upkeep or not, but anyway, you can only do it once per turn and on your turn. I'm not sure whether we restrict it to upkeep or not. But anyway, you can only do it once per turn and on your turn. I think we did limit to your upkeep once per turn. Anyway, so we did this. It was fun. But one of the things we realized after we did Unglute, Inferno's Fun Evil was very popular, was that the base mechanic of the card, I mean, the flavor of the card was a little silly,

but the base mechanic of the card really wasn't that far away from something we can do. In fact, I said, well, what if, what if we did that? What if the idea, like, one of the things in general about white-blue is it tends to play a slower strategy. Well, what if its cards could do something while sitting in your hand. That felt really like, you know, it played into kind of the white-blue flavor without, you know, without being, it's control-ish, but it just felt a little bit different.

And the idea was that, you know, white and blue kind of wants to sit there anyway. What if we give it some resource that you can use in your hands? And so then the idea is, so we made a mechanic we call Forecast. So Forecast says, play this ability only during your upkeep

and only once each turn. So the idea was, you have these cards, during your upkeep, they have an ability in your hand. And we wanted the ability to be pretty cheap and pretty small. And the idea being, that if you cast this during your upkeep and then you cast the card during your main phase, that there might be some synergy between them. We really like the idea that what the card is doing while you're waiting to cast it, and when you finally cast it, that there's some synergy there. For example,

there was one card that made 1-1 flying tokens, and then it was a creature that its power and toughness were equal to the number of flying creatures. So the idea is you could slowly build up these flying creatures,

and when this finally came out, oh, the fact that you spent turns building it up meant that this mattered. So there was a lot of give and take on Forecast. But in the end, in the end, I think that we decided we liked Forecast. That what ended up happening is

that it ended up having a much narrower design space than we thought. For two reasons. Sorry. For two reasons. One was we like the idea that there's synergy

between what you were doing, like what the spell did when you cast it, and what the spell did when you revealed it. Now there are a couple, real quickly, there are a couple

different subsets. Number one was ones that were synergistic. I do something, I do something different, but they're synergistic. Number two was some of them were like

I do something in larger scope, but Iistic. Number two was some of them were like I do something in larger scope but I can do a little tiny version of it. So doing it ahead of time kind of does a taste of a larger thing. And there still were a few others that were thematically connected. Usually they're thematically connected. We try to make them mechanically

connected. But it turns out that the subset of things you can do... Oh, the other reason it was tricky is you have to do this as an upkeep effect. Well, there's only so many things that make sense that you want to do during upkeep, you know. And so it wasn't... It had to be something that made sense. It couldn't be reactionary. It was essentially cast as a sorcery.

I mean, it was cast only during your upkeep. So, I mean, it wasn't, you were never going to react to something. I mean, it wasn't like, wait, if your opponent did something during your upkeep, you could do something. So they had to be things that were sort of more proactive than reactive. And a lot of blue effects are more reactive. So there was a limitation of sort of how many effects that you could do. And that definitely had an impact. And then the combination of things you could do together, you know.

So it ended up making it something that was, I mean, I liked a lot of the designs we made. I think the cards sort of... This was one of those mechanics that had a little bit of a poetry to it. You know, where you really sort of got the... Like, it was kind of neat to see how you can make them work together. And so, I did enjoy Forecast. I do think we made some fun Forecast cards. But it was... they were tough to do. Okay. Then the set came out. The audience

was okay with forecast. If I remember correctly, it wasn't loved, wasn't hated. It was very middle-of-the-road mechanic, I believe, how the audience rated it. And once again, it's one of those mechanics that's very card by card meaning the mechanic in a vacuum like some mechanics like oh well this is what it does and you can you can grade it hearing the mechanic forecast is kind of like if we tell you the mechanic and you're like I don't get it like you got to see cards you know the mechanic the mechanic without its execution you don't understand what it's doing.

So, it is definitely a more nuanced mechanic. And in general, nuanced mechanics don't tend to be received quite as well. Just because it's a little harder to wrap your brain around the entity of what it is. But anyway, we did it. It got... Like I said, there was some it wasn't completely disliked or anything,

but it wasn't a runaway hit either. Okay, so now we get to return to Ravnica. So, in the first time, Azorius was in the third set. In the second visit, it was in the first set of Return to Ravnica. And the restriction,

you know, the being careful about control decks was something that happened in Dissension. But when we came back from Return to Ravnica, that wasn't the case.

We were like, okay, let's lean in this time. You know, white-blue is the control colors. That is what people expect. It matches the flavor of what Azorius was. Oh, let me talk about that. Sorry.

Having not done this series for a month or two, I forgot. Let me talk a little bit about what Azorius means, and then I'll get into the mechanics of Return to Ravnica. So Azorius was white and blue. White is all about the idea of wanting peace. It's all about the idea of, you know, if we all think about the group and think about, you know, big picture, you know, we can provide for everybody. The world can be a wonderful place. It's just in order to do that, we have to sort of think and plan. And so white is very into structure. It's very into making laws.

And so white is very into structure. It's very into making laws. It's very into like, how do I protect as many people as possible? You know, how do I make sure people act correctly? Well, if I create rules and laws and stuff that sort of say, well, this is how you have to act, I can protect society as a whole. Blue, it's all about the idea of you're born a blank slate. It wants to get perfection. You know, it believes that if you have the proper tools available to you,

your tools and experience and planning and training, that you can become anything. And when blue looks at society, it has the same feeling. That it's looking at how do I perfect society? How do I get society to be the best that it can be? And blue is very much about technology and very much about systems that help, you know, tools that help. So when you get white and blue, you know, you get the sides that lean into each other and they get very societally minded, which is white is like I'm trying to create peace

and blue is like I'm trying to create peace, and blue is like, I'm trying to create a perfect society. Well, you start blending those together, and you get a very bureaucratic organization. You know, that the Azorius is kind of like, we're going to make things better. How are we going to make things better? By creating rules and laws

and structure to perfect society. That, you know, left to their own regards, people will do horrible things. So we've got to create a system that sort of keeps everything in check. So white-blue really ended up becoming the bureaucrats. They write the laws. They also oversee the judicial system. They have a police force. The Azorius are the people that are

trying to keep order and make sure that things work the way they need them to work. Now, one of the things about being the people that write the laws is it gives you a lot of control. So we talked about how white-blue is the control colors. Well,

in Azorius, in Ravnuk itself, it's very much the control colors. Well, Azorius in Ravnuk itself is very much the control guild. They're much about keeping control and making sure that things work the way they want them to work. In fact, the entire guild pact was made by Azor, the Sphinx that we all met in Ixalan. He made the Guildpact and the Guildpact is basically a very structured way of making it run. People ask me about what colors as a plane Ravnica is and I always say white-blue. That is a very structured plane. It's very much like, oh, there are these set factions

that are created and established know, it's very much like, oh, there are these set factions that are created and established in that, you know, it is very much like the Azorius in some ways have the biggest footprint on Ravnica in that the guild pact defines Ravnica and essentially the Azorius or Azor made the guild

pact. So when you're trying to sort of capture the essence of White-Blue, they're very controlling, they're very exacting, they're rule-setting. And so when we got to return to Ravnica and the shackles were off and we do anything we wanted, you know, like we had some, we were restricted a little bit in dissension, but we weren't in return to Ravnica. So in Return to Ravnica, we're like, okay, we want to play up this control aspect. So the first place we went, and we tried a bunch of different things,

but the place that we seriously was, what if we played more on the idea that Azorius is enchantment-based? They're the rule-setters. They make the rules. They're the bureaucrats. What if we made white and blue care more about enchantments? And the idea is that the way we play them up as being the rule makers is literally in

game play they're constantly making rules. And it was playing into a side that both white and blue do some of. And, okay, we'll make these enchantments that sort of dictate things, and that through that, we would have this very control aspect. We'd have instants and sorceries and stuff. It's not that blue wouldn't do its normal spells, but that maybe it'd be a little more enchantment-centric

to play up its rulemaking. So we ended up coming up with a mechanic. We call it Enchantment Fall in design, but you guys might know it better as Constellation. Which basically means whenever Enchantment gets played it's a trigger and something happens.

The problem was one of the things about Ravnica mechanics, guild mechanics is that you need to play nicely with the guilds that you overlap with. And the reason for that is when you're playing a guild set, we want you to have choices and options. And if, let's say for example, half the blue cards are for Azorius and half the blue cards are for, what is it, is it in Return to Ravnica? Let's say you did that.

So half, well, if half of them only work in blue-white and half of them only work in blue-red, then when you're drafting, you early on have to decide whether you're blue-white or blue-red if you're taking blue, and then you're kind of locked in. And then white-blue always plays the same cards, and white-blue-red always plays the same cards. What we want to have happen is we want blue cards to make sense in either a blue-white deck or a blue-red deck, giving you choices. And that if you drop certain cards, it takes your deck in different directions.

And that allows both white-blue and white-red to have more variance in gameplay. So the problem with Enchantment Fall slash Constellation was it just didn't play nicely with others. You know, we tried, said, well, what if there's more enchantments? So blue overlap with blue-red

for Izzet, and white overlap with green for Selesnya. So we're like, well, what if Selesnya and Izzet, you know, what if white and blue just had more enchantments, and we made some of them, we made enchantments that Selesnian would want to play, we made enchantments that Izzet would want to play.

And the idea is, oh, well, the way it overlaps with the other guilds is they're just playing enchantments. I tried that. It wasn't, the problem with enchantments the reason we make enchantments work in Theros is because we make enchantment creatures and your overall adds of enchantments gets higher high enough that you can sort of care about them

and even then Journey into Nyx was really the only Theros guild that cared about enchantments in an enchantment matters kind of way but the reason that worked was because of enchantment creatures. We're not doing enchantment creatures here. There's only so many slots you can put enchantments in. Izzet already has the problem of it's carrying my Instants and Sorceries.

So trying to get Izzet to also play auras when it's already fighting to play Instants and Sorceries, it just was a losing battle. And so we ended up realizing that while it was a cool mechanic, obviously we ended up making it in Theros, or in Journey to the Next, it just wasn't going to work out. So we needed to get a different mechanic. And I believe what happened was, I think we turned over Enchantment Fall from design, I think. Or did we change it? No, no, no. Well, this is back when design was a full year.

I think we actually changed it before we handed it over because we got feedback from then development that it wasn't going to work. So we then came up with the idea of detain. So detain is a keyword action, meaning it's a verb. So, until your next turn, so you detain something. And until your next turn, that permanent, the thing you detain, can't attack or block, and its activated abilities can't be activated.

So, the idea essentially was you were locking something up. Like I said, Azorius controls the police force and the legal system, and they run the jails. And so part of dealing with things that you think are bad is you can lock them away. That's kind of Azorius' answer is, oh, there's a seedy element we don't want? We will lock you away, and now you can't harm or hurt people.

And so the idea of detain was that it allowed you to sort of lock something down temporarily I think we had messed around with a little bit also the oblivion ring so oblivion ring is an effect where you play this enchantment sometimes it's a creature, oblivion ring is an enchantment but what we call the oblivion ring effect is youion Ring is an enchantment, but what we call the Oblivion Ring effect

is you play a permanent, usually enchantment or creature, and then you exile something, and for as long as this thing is in play, your permanent's in play, that other thing is exiled. And so we played around a little bit with maybe that would be the Azorius mechanic,

but it was a little, it was hard to do too many effects that did that. So Detain was kind of like Oblivion Ring Light. It allowed us to sort of have that similar sense of, oh, you know, I'm detaining a thing, but it was a little bit more temporary. But the thing we liked about it was Detain played really cleanly into a control strategy. It allowed white and blue to have answers, but not permanent answers, temporary answers.

And so, one of the things in general about the way white and blue tends to play, and this is how control decks play in general, is once I establish control of the game, I'm going to essentially win. But the problem is, I have to get to the point where I've established control.

And so a lot of the gameplay for a control deck is delaying and holding off the inevitable to get to the point where you have the upper hand. And so the things we like to do in Azorius, in White and Blue, is stuff that sort of helps you, but it's sort of a temporary help. And the idea is I'm slowly trying to keep what I can and you know hold off the inevitable well hold on not necessarily inevitable but hold off your attack because every turn every time the game goes a bit later and I build up my mana I have more resources white blue you know Azorius tends to have more late game strategies And so their job is to sort of make the game last later.

And so a lot of the tools we like giving them are things that are delaying type stuff. So Detain worked out really well. And now Detain, to be honest, is like, one of the things we think about in general is our goal is to make a mechanic that makes the people who want to play that guild happy. And one of the things about Azorius is the people that are playing control decks are very interested in a lot of small, nuanced things.

One of the reasons, for example, that more enfranchised players play control decks is it's harder to play a control deck than play a lot of quick faster decks. Not that there isn't nuance to faster decks, there is, and I think playing aggressive decks really well takes a lot of skill. But if you're just starting to play, or not just starting to play, but if you've been playing for a while, the idea of I play creatures and I attack with creatures is pretty straightforward. A lot of the control strategies is like understanding nuance of exactly what spell do I need to counter and what am I supposed

to unsummon and understanding like I need to get where I'm going and there's a lot of very subtle plays that need to get there. So the thing that we like for Azorius mechanics is Azorius mechanics don't need to be splashy. They don't need to get there. So the thing that we like for Azorius mechanics is Azorius mechanics don't need to be splashy. They don't need to be, you know, we want to do something that the player

that wants to methodically think things through and gain incremental advantage over time, you know, tend to lean toward white-blue or blue-black. And so we want to make a mechanic. In Detain, what we said was, look, Detain is not an exciting mechanic And so we want to make a mechanic. And Detain, what we said was, look, Detain is not an exciting mechanic. It's not a splashy mechanic.

But it is a functional mechanic, and it is a very useful mechanic. And for the kind of player that likes Azorius, it's a really interesting mechanic. For example, I can Detain something. What do I want to Detain? What's the threat? You know what I'm saying?

Like, one of the things the Azorius players really enjoy doing is being a good Azorius player is understanding the board state, is understanding your opponent and their resources, and knowing what part you're supposed to be afraid of. Because detain is kind of like a counter spell, which is, look, they have a lot of permanents. Which one do

I care about? Which one am I trying to stop? And knowing sort of where the threat lies gives you more power to play better. And Detain plays right into that. So Detain did a little bit better than Forecast. I think it was something, like I said, Forecast was a little cutesy and really required a lot of execution, where Detain, you got it. And especially for the kind of player that likes to play Azorius, it was very clear and clean what it was doing. Now, once again, it wasn't at the top of the mechanics

just because the splashing mechanics tend to rate higher. But what we found with players who liked playing Azorius, Detain was very popular. They really liked Detain. And, like, for example, when we were working on the third set, or when we announced the third set was coming out, and we said that we might bring back mechanics, a number of people said to me,

oh, ooh, maybe Azorius is getting detained back? Detainment's pretty cool. Okay, that brings us to Ravnica Allegiances. Okay, so this time, Azorius was in the second. So, third for a second, although there's no third, but it was in the second set. So I'm wondering, I wonder how many mechanics showed up in the first set, a second set, and a third set. Actually, I can figure that out real quickly because there's only one third set, so you had to have been in the third set to do that. The other two were Rakdos and Simic. Simic's

never been in her first set. Simic's always been in one of the later sets, so that's not Simic. And Rakdos showed up in... Oh, Rakdos. Rakdos is the other one. Because Rakdos is in Ravnica Allegiances. Is that right? Yeah. So both...

In fact, Ravnica... Now that I think about it, Azorius and Rakdos have always shown up in the same set together. They were in Descension together. They were in Return to Ravnica together. And they were in... Ravnica Allegiance together. So they're buddies.

I'm not sure. Anyway, a little... Figuring that out on the fly. Okay. So we were starting to do Ravnica Allegiances. Remember, we did the Vision design for all ten sets at once. So

we did Guilds of Ravnica, all ten Guilds at once. We did Guilds of Ravnica and Ravnica Allegiances together in one. At the time, Vision was six months long. We went to the three-in-one model. It shifted over to four months. But anyway, it was six months at the time we worked with them together though

and the idea we had for Azorius was really interesting so let me walk you through it it is something of all the mechanics that we made that, um,

uh, when I get to Orzhov, I'll talk about that. That was probably my favorite mechanics we made that didn't end up getting, uh, to print. Uh, but my second favorite was addendum,

not addendum, was, uh, precedence, which I'll talk about in a second. Um, so once again, we started from a place of,

we liked the idea that Azorius is rule-setting, but we also understand that it has a lot of, you know, it wants a lot of incremental advantage. So one of the things that I noticed is that the nature of how Azorius plays is it tends to like to have permanents that have enter-the-battlefield effects, especially creatures. Because a lot of what White-Blue likes to do is get a lot of incremental tiny effects. Like I said, White-Blue is

about sort of surviving and the reason Detain worked is it likes to have these little sort of small incremental gains and that works well on enter the battlefield effects. Because we need to have a bunch of creatures, just because we have a lot of creatures and Azorius definitely has a lot of wanting to sort of control things. So it just worked out that

Azorius liked to have enter the battlefield effects. So we're like, okay is there a way to play into this? So the idea of precedence was each card with precedence would have an enter the battlefield effect. They were

all creatures. And the idea was when it entered the battlefield you could swap it for any enter the battlefield effect on any permanent, not any permanent, I think any creature. any creature you had in play. So for example, let's say I had a creature that said, when it's the end of the battlefield, draw a card

on a little 1-1, you know, 2-U, when it's the end of the battlefield, draw a card. Or maybe it's 1-U, I forget what it would cost, probably 2-U. Anyway, if I played my precedence creature, let's say my precedence creature looted, you know, it Precedence creature looted.

You know, it drew it and discarded a card. I could choose to do whatever effect I wanted. You know, like every time I enter the battlefield, I could take any enter the battlefield effect and I could use it. I think Precedence originally, the first version we tried, you only could swap for another Precedence creature. So it's like I have an enter the battlefield effect but if there's another precedence creature I could use their enter the

battlefield effect. And then we said you know what it's just more fun if instead of using precedent ones because it's very parasitic, what if I could use any enter the battlefield effect? Because if I can only use precedent effect it's hard to make me it's hard to overlap, what if I could use any enter the battlefield effect? Because if I can only use precedent effect, it's hard to make me it's hard to overlap with the other guilds.

But if I can overlap with any enter the battlefield effect, well that just means, okay the ones connected to me have to have an enter the battlefield. So when we get into Ravnic Allegiance let's see, white overlaps with Orzhov and blue overlaps

with Simic. So the idea is, okay, well if I want to make my white cards work for both Azorius or Orzhov, and I want my blue cards to work for both Simic and Azorius, all I need to do is just have enter the battlefield effects.

Well at the time, Simic had proliferate, which wanted to have a bunch of enter the battlefield effects. And Black and White, Orzhov had Det, which mostly was an enter the battlefield effect. It just was working really cleanly. Like the mechanics that, you know, the other things we're using tended to be on enter the battlefield effects anyway. It was a perfect seeming thing. So we changed it to make it open-ended so you could do any enter the battlefield effect.

Okay. So we get to we hand off. Vision hands off, okay, this is what we want. Precedence. That's our mechanic. So when it got to set design, there were a couple problems precedence had.

One was the rules that it's very easy to say, oh, I just get any enter the problems precedents had. One was the rules. That it's very easy to say, oh, I just get any enter the battlefield effect. You know, you get it. Sometimes things that conceptually are very easy to understand get much more complicated when you have to write them out.

What exactly is an enter the battlefield effect? You know what I'm saying? I worked with Eli when it was in Vision and Sam, who led Ragnarok Allegiance, worked with Eli after

and that it just was a lot wordier and just not as clean or as clear as we wanted. And the other problem was we were making a set with five mechanics.

That's more mechanics than we tend to put in a set these days. It was making it a little bit complex to have five mechanics. So we wanted to make sure that each mechanic wasn't itself too complex. And the Precedent was also kind of complex. It was wordy. It had rules issues. It was complex. It played really well. Well, I'll take that back. It was a lot of fun.

It was a very fun mechanic. The problem was when play design started getting their hands on it and do a little bit of testing, because we were saying any enter the battlefield effect, enter the battlefield aren't of equal power level. And the problem was, if I can make my precedent cards anything, well, the correct strategy was play a strong enter the battlefield effect

and then just make every precedent effect with the same effect. And that kind of what we wanted was, like, the goal of the design was we wanted you to always have choices and options and we wanted you to choose different things. And we could control that if we limited it to just precedent creatures, because then we could set a bar for how powerful is a precedent creature,

how powerful is the inter-battlefield effect, and we could make those kind of even if we wanted to. But then that made it not synergistic with the other guilds and anyway, after dealing with all the different issues, said design decided that while it was splashy and fun, it just had enough issues that it wasn't worth you know, they needed to find a new answer. So they went in search of a different mechanic.

As far as the future of precedent, I believe the following to be true. The biggest problem right now is the wordiness of explaining when enter the battlefield effect is. We keep talking about one day keywording enter the battlefield just because of every piece of text we use. If we could shorthand any piece of text, it is something we use a lot.

So if one day we sort of shorthand and we essentially keyword it, sort of shorthand and we essentially keyword it, that would make this mechanic have a lot easier time rules-wise defining what you're talking about. Because if there's a word and you can say whenever the word happens, it just makes it less wordy. I don't know quite how to solve the play design issue. I guess if you knew you were doing the mechanic and you, in the sets and standard

around it, you were a little bit more vigilant about it. It's the kind of mechanic that like, in the right time, in the right place, with a bunch of work,

maybe it could work. It is a very, very fun mechanic. So anyway, I'll leave it with, I'm not saying we'll never see it. It is a particularly

fun mechanic. It was fun. If we can make you actually have to pick different things, that was really fun to do. So anyway, maybe one day we'll do Precedence, but it has a lot of baggage to it, and it had too much baggage for a guild mechanic.

Okay, so Sam and his set design team then set out to find a mechanic that would play nicely with Azorius. And due to the factor of what else was going on, all the other guilds were doing mechanics that really leaned heavily into doing creatures. and so he decided that he really, really wanted the Azorius mechanic to be spell, to be something that could go on spells, just because he needed to balance, you know, having all the mechanics really lean heavily on creatures was, you know, you don't want all your mechanics to lean heavily on creatures.

So, another strike against precedence, by the way, although I think the other things were a bigger strike against it. So they spent a lot of time looking at different spells. So the idea was, what's a spell-based mechanic that really hit the flavor of Azorius? And once again, the Azorius player tends to be

someone who's more into nuance, more in... Like, it's a little more spiky of a, uh, of a guild. And so they were looking for something where there was interesting decisions to make that, that sort of gave you incremental power if you understood how to use it correctly. Um, and then I'm not sure how they got there, but there was a cycle of cards we did. Where did we do them? Was it Odyssey? I think it was Odyssey. Where did we do them? Was it Odyssey? I think it was Odyssey.

Where I was... We had done some cards in Invasion where you could spend extra mana to cast them as instants. And the idea, like, Rout is the famous one, where it was a Wrath of God, but it destroyed all creatures. But if you spent two extra mana, you could play as an instant. But if you spent two extra mana, you could play as an instant. And I like the idea of caring about things that could be either instant or sorcery. And so the idea that I played around with was,

what if you had instants that if you played during your main phase, they had extra ability toward them. And so anyway, we made a cycle of cards in, I believe it's Odyssey. And they were interesting. They played well. We never really did much with it. But somebody on the set design team, maybe Sam,

maybe someone else on the set design team, when they were looking for cool things to dead, remembered that mechanic and said, what if we made an ability word that basically did that? What if we made a bunch of spells that, look, it goes in instants, but if you cast them during your main phase, essentially as sorceries,

you know, they had added value. So the idea was, like, one of the things about the control player is the control player often will play things as late as they can because they want to leave their options open. So one of the neat things about Addendum is that it really says, oh, well on some level I have kind of a split card in my hand. One side is an instant and one side's a sorcery. And the instant kind of does what the sorcery does, but it does a little more. And that choice, that decision, like really plays into the mindset of what the Azorius player likes to do. This idea

of, I can sort of take advantage of a resource in a way that's subtle, but, you know, requires some nuance to play correctly. And this is the perfect example, which is, in general, control decks like to leave open their mana. They want to be reactive on the opponent's turn. But now, here's something that says, look, you can give up some of that flexibility to get extra value. Well, that's a really interesting thing. Once again, it is not a super splashy mechanic. It is not a mechanic that, you know, is going to do crazy things. It's the kind of mechanic that does a lot of small, incremental, but interesting things.

And the act of the decision of when to do and when to not is an interesting one. Once again, very much in the Azorius playbook. You know, as I talk about the guilds, one of the things that we always care most about is

I'm not trying to make something that everybody will love, I'm trying to make something the Azorius player will love. You know trying to make something the Azorius player will love. I being all of design. And I think one of the things that was really interesting, something that we've sort of learned over the years with Azorius is the Azorius player really does appreciate nuance and subtlety and playing the mechanic at the right time

and making the right targets and stuff like that. And so addendum, it's one of those things that on the surface feel like I will say this, if you look at forecast and detain and addendum, they feel a little more scattered than some of, like, you know,

when you look at the Golgari mechanics and like graveyard, graveyard, graveyard, like you see the theme through them. When you look at the Simic mechanics,, and like, graveyard, graveyard, graveyard, like, you see the theme through them. Or you look at the Simic mechanics, you're like, plus one Conrad, plus one Conrad, plus one Conrad. You get the theme through, you know what I'm saying? It's very mechanically much more exact. Where, you know, forecast and attain and addendum, they all want to go on the same deck,

and they definitely have synergy with each other. But it's a good example where what Azorius wants is a little bit more of a style of play and a style of decision-making. And so that's what we work hard to do. One of the things that's very interesting about designing for the guilds in general is we always design for players. Like, anytime I'm making a card, things that's very interesting about about designing for the guilds in general is um we

always design for players like anytime i'm making a card i'm trying to figure out who wants to play that card i want to make the card maximize what the person wants to play it the guilds are interesting because it allows us to kind of focus um and you know factioning in general and then you really get a design toward the type of players that's attracted to that kind of faction. And that's one of the things that is, like I said, one of the challenges of Azorius is because the player who plays Azorius wants this sort of nuance, those are not easy mechanics to make. Like, I mean, each guild has its own challenge. I'm not going to say that each guild, it's easy to do all the guilds.

But at least when I'm doing Boros, I'm like, look, I'm doing an aggressive attacking mechanic. I want to make. I'm not going to say that each guild, it's easy to do all the guilds, but at least when I'm doing Boros, I'm like, look, I'm doing an aggressive attacking mechanic. I want to make sure I'm doing that. Look, it's going to be active on attack, and it's going to be something that just says, hey, attack. Now, finding a good mechanic, finding something that's fun, that is

a challenge, but I know what I'm aiming for in a very sort of clean, clear way from a mechanic standpoint. Azoria says, know what I'm aiming for in a very sort of clean, clear way from a mechanic standpoint. Azorius says, look, I'm controlling, I want to give you incremental advantage, but there's lots of ways you can do that, and if you look at the mechanics of Azorius, they each kind of did it in a

different way. Forecast was like, okay, I'm getting small incremental advantage during my turn with this large combo I'm trying to enable long term. Detain was something where it was much more reactive. It was more like, I'm trying to enable long term. Detain was something where it was much more reactive. It was more like I'm going to answer things and deal with things. And it definitely was done when you needed it.

And Addendum is definitely something that now takes place in the main phase. Where I have, you know, like it's kind of funny that, you know, Forecast made you make a decision during Upkeep. you know, forecast made you make a decision during upkeep. Detain made you make a decision a lot of different times,

but often on the opponent's turn. And addendum makes a decision during your main phase. You know what I'm saying? Like, you know, that is very interesting in that, you know,

one of the things we're trying to do is find places and times to make interesting decisions. And one of the things we're trying to do is find places and times to make interesting decisions. And one of the ways we do that to find new space is find new and different places to make the decision. I find that interesting. One of the things that's cool about talking through the guilds with you guys is kind of sharing the challenges of designing each of them. And the big challenge of designing Azorius is that it is a guild that's more about a feel and a style of play than specifically a mechanical. A lot of the guilds are focused on a mechanical execution.

Like Boros is very much about the attack. Both Boros and Gruul have a very aggressive creature-based, attacking-based sort of feel. Where something like Simic is about changing things and plays in counter space. And, you know, Golgari is much more about the graveyard and recycling things. So, you know,

it's kind of neat seeing how each guild has its own flavor and its own, you know, inhabits its own element of the game and has its own means for style of how we make it. So anyway, the Azorius is definitely one of the more challenging mechanics to design. But I think we're getting better at it. I think that, well, I don't dislike forecast.

I made forecast. You know, I think they're both detained in addendum. Or slightly, you definitely can make more designs with them. And the decisions you make with them, I think are a little more interesting. Forecast, I mean, the big decision forecast is, when do I stop keeping this in my hand and cast it? But a lot of times the answer was,

do this every upkeep you can, cast it when you can. And it wasn't quite as clear. Where both detain and addendum, it's a little, you know, there's a little more interesting decision of when you do it, and you might change when you do it based on the circumstances of what you're doing,

and that's kind of a fun Azorius mechanic, where you really have to read the scenario to understand what's going on. But anyway, guys, I'm now at work. I hope you enjoyed the talk on the Azorius today. They're a very interesting mechanic to be designed for, and I know for people that like to play Azorius today. They're a very interesting mechanic to design for and I know for people that like to play Azorius,

they're of a quieter taste but a fun guild. But anyway, I'm now at work so we all know what that means. It 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.