Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #657: Innovation Products

Episode Date: July 26, 2019

We have a line we call the innovation products (things like Conspiracy, Unstable, and Battlebond). I'll explain what they are and talk through all the ones we've made thus far.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so today I'm going to talk about the innovation product. So let's start with what's the innovation product? Well, once a year, starting back in 2009, we made a product that was designed to be played differently. Some product that was just not your normal way to play Magic. that was designed to be played differently. Some product that was just not your normal way to play Magic. And the idea is every year we like to put something out that just encourages you to play a little bit differently.

As you'll see, the Innovation line has had some successes that were so successful they went on to become their own products. But anyway, I wanted to walk through the history of sort of where the Innovation product came from and what spurred us to make the line, and then what all the different things we are were. Okay, so looking at my history, I think the innovation product goes back to 1997. So that was when we released something called Vanguard.

So Vanguard, back in the day, before F&M existed, we used to have something called Arena, which was an organized play system run through the stores. And one of the things Arena would do is they have different seasons and they would play different formats. So we decided it'd be fun for us to make a format where we gave them some external game component where they could play, and that ended up being called Vanguard. Now, I did an entire podcast on Vanguard. So if you want to hear that in great detail, you can go listen to that. But in short, the idea of Vanguard was that you would get a card that gave you a special ability,

and it also changed your starting life total and your starting hand size. And so the idea was that if it was a good ability, it might lower your starting hand size or your starting life total. But if it was just an okay ability, maybe part of you being compensated is you start with more cards or more life. The original Vanguard cards were flavored with characters from the Weatherlight Saga, because in 1997, we were doing the Weatherlight Saga. I think there were four different seasons that used it.

The first two used Weatherlight characters, and the second two used characters from Urza Saga, which was obviously connected to the late saga, but slightly older characters. So, for example, the first batch, the first two batches, was like Gerard and Sisay and Hanna and Karn, and the second two

batches were like Urza and Mishra and Ashnod and stuff like that. So, anyway, now Vanguard was not a product for sale. So, I picked it as being the first, and that is the first time we really

made a different way to play Magic in which we made something, we printed something. Obviously, there have been formats, and like the Duelist was our magazine at the time, we printed alternate ways to play and stuff. We had done that since pretty early on. So the first product we put out

that was the whole product that we sold that would have served the precursor to the innovation line would be in 1998, which would be Unglued. So Unglued at the time, we didn't really understand supplemental products at the time. Part of, if you ever heard me talk about Unglued, and once again, there's a whole podcast on Unglued,

we treated it like it was a small set rather than like a supplemental set, because we didn't understand supplemental sets. And so we overprinted it. Actually, both Unglued in 1998 and Unhinged in 2004. Oh, Unsets, for those that are unfamiliar,

they have a silver border on them, and they have a stronger humor on them and they have a stronger humor component and they do things that we will not do in Black Border, both mechanically and creatively. And it's definitely sort of a parody set. We tend to make more fun of ourselves

and the mechanics are a little more out there. We do dice rolling, for example, in Silver Border. We do we just, for example, in Silver Border. We do we just do things that in Black Border either doesn't work or isn't something Black Border is willing yet to do. Now, one of the interesting things is

there's things that we did in Unglued back in 1998 that are just normal. Like, for example, Unglued introduced the idea of full art land that at the time was this weird novelty. And now we make sets where there's just full art land in them. So it started as something that was kind of novelty and since became something that magic just does.

And so that is something that was... The unsets really are testing in space, but some of that space just becomes normal. Like, another thing we did in Unglued was we had tokens. It's the first time we ever had creature tokens. And now that just shows up normally in packs. So anyway, Unglued and Unhinged were prior to the start of the supplemental product line. They were, neither of them were technically innovation products, and that the innovation product line didn't start until 2009.

Both of those predate that. But in spirit, they were the kind of product that helped inspire the innovation line. And as you will see, obviously, in 2017, the third onset will come on. Stable will come out. I'll get to that. Okay, so let's talk about the actual beginning of the innovation line now that I've gone through some of the early influences. So we're going back to 2009, Plane Chase.

So for those that have never played Plane Chase, the way Plane Chase works is, Plane Chase, we sold it in decks is the way we sold it. Nowadays, I think our innovation products come in boosters. Early on, we experimented with a bunch of different things. I think now, one of the goals for innovation product now is that it comes in boosters. Early on, we experimented with a bunch of different things. I think now, one of the goals for an innovation product now is that it comes in boosters. We like selling boosters. That is not to say that we don't do deck products. We still do deck products, but those tend to be one of separate. And the innovation line now has one of the rules is that it comes in a booster. You'll see as we go along we slowly get there. So plane chase the idea of plane chase is based on an old tournament type that we used to

call enchant world tournaments. So in Legends back in 1994 one of the mechanics was called enchant worlds. We now refer to them as world enchantments, world being a super type. So what a world enchantment was is the flavor of it was it represented the world you were having the battle in. And all of the world enchantments were global effects that affected everybody. And the idea is, oh, you're fighting in this world.

Well, because of that, blah. You know, because of that, something's happening. You're fighting in the abyss and creatures are dying. You're fighting in the concordant crossroads and everything is haste. You know, you're fighting in, you know, you're just, the idea, oh, and the idea was as soon as someone played a new world enchantment, the old world enchantment went away because the world enchantment, you can only be fighting in one world. So the idea was whenever you would play a new one, now that because the world's enchantment you can only be fighting in one world so the idea was whenever you would play a new one now that's the world you're in the old one would go away and back in 1994 this mechanic was

strong enough due to some of the cards the Abyss and Nethervoid being the two biggest ones really for a little tiny back in 1994 shaped the tournament scene for a little bit and that you kind of had to play an enchant world in your deck just because you had to deal with some really dangerous enchant worlds. For example, I, at the time, if you've ever heard my story, used to play this little weenie blue-green deck of Flying Men and Scribd Sprites, and out of the blue, I would turn them into a 20-20 creature

and kill you in one false swoop. I used to run Concordant Crossroads. That's the green world enchantment that grants all your creatures haste. Because I needed an answer to, I mean, hey, it fit my deck. My deck liked having the ability to do everything in haste because I was trying to beat you quickly.

But it also was in there because if I ran into someone who was playing an Abyss or something, it was my answer to the Abyss. So, anyway, the world enchantments, or enchant if I ran into someone who was playing in Abyss or something, it was my answer to the Abyss. Anyway, the world enchantments, or enchant worlds as they were known at the time, inspired a tournament format called

the Enchanted World Tournament. And the way it worked was you would have a tournament and then you would ring a bell, or something. We'd ring a bell. And then say, okay, stop. Okay, we're changing the world.

We're now in a new, the tournament's in a world. In the beginning, it was just enchant worlds. Later, we just would add other enchantments and sometimes artifacts that were fun. But they were always global effects. And so the idea is, okay, stop. Now this global effect is happening to everybody. And the way it worked is because that effect kept changing, it just would sort of impact the tournament.

Like you might be in trouble, but all of a sudden, the Enchanted World would just be to your favor, and what looked like an unwinnable game might be winnable. And the fun thing about that was it was just a little bit more chaotic of a tournament. You didn't quite know what was going to happen. And that was, it was a very fun tournament. I mean, like I said, it wasn't for the people that were, it was more casual because it just had a little more randomness to it because you didn't know what was going to happen. But from an exciting standpoint, just, it was neat just as things would change, you never quite knew

what was going to happen. And so, anyway, I ran a bunch of Enchant World tournaments. They were popular back in the day. So when we were trying to, in 2009, we were trying to come up with a brand new product. Like, we started the innovation line. And so the idea is, what is a format that we've never sort of, we as Wizards, have sold? So the idea we came up with was, inspired by the Enchant World tournaments, we liked the flavor of of what if you're moving from plane to plane? You know, the planes are a big part of Magic's flavor. What if we had a product that sort of played into that? The idea we came up with, and this product I think was led by Ken Nagel with Leading the Design, was Plane Chase.

And this product, I think, was led by Ken Nagel, who was leading the design, was Plane Chase. So the idea of Plane Chase is that you are fighting in the multiverse and that you're always on a plane. And the planes are represented by larger than normal cards. So normal magic cards. A plane is, I think if you take two magic cards and put them side by side, is that? A plane is about that size? Maybe slightly bigger. But anyway, the plane, so the way it was originally sold was it was sold in decks. So you got a deck and you got a stack of planes.

I'm not sure how many planes you got, 10 to 15. And originally the way the rules worked is each person had their own planes. And that when it was your turn, there was a die that came with the product called the planer die. And that you could roll the die and some of the time there would be a planeswalker symbol and some of the time there would be another

symbol. I forget what it's called. But the planeswalker symbol meant you planeswalked, you went to a new plane and then you would turn up a plane from your deck. Most of the way people play now and even back then was just making one unified planer deck and just you would go to the next card in the planer deck. If you wrote the other symbol, what that meant was instead of planeswalking, you would generate an effect that was unique to that world. And so the idea was in Plane Chase, you're playing a normal magic game, usually multiplayer, although you could play two player.

You're playing usually a multiplayer game, and then what happens is, where you are kind of dictates something about the game state that you're in. And the way it works is, every turn, you get to roll the planer die to have a chance to move to a different world, if you want to. And then, you get to pay mana, like the first one's free, and then you can pay mana for future die rolls. And so the idea essentially is, if you get to a place that's really bad for you, you might spend all your mana getting out of there because you want to get to a new plane.

Or, the other thing is, because you can generate an effect, sometimes you're trying to generate the effect, although whenever you risk generating the effect, you risk planeswalking obviously. So anyway, Plane Chase came out. I wouldn't say it was a runaway success, but it definitely, I mean, it did well enough

that we're like, okay, let's continue the innovation line. We would do another Plane Chase. Obviously, it didn't do too bad. Okay, in 2010, we put out a product called Arch Enemy. So Arch Enemy was loosely based on an idea Bill Rose had had back in the day that he called Power Lunch. And the idea of Power Lunch was Bill had joked about putting out a set where the average card, where Ancestral Recall,

which is a single blue mana to draw three cards, which is one of the most powerful cards in Magic, one of the Power Nine. The idea was that in Power Lunch, Ancestral Recall would be an average card. Because one of the things that when Richard first made Magic, the boons originally were all common. The boons being pay one mana, do three of something. So the white one was Healing Salve,

gain three life or prevent three damage. The black one was Dark Ritual, get three black mana. The red one was Lightning Bolt to do three damage. The green one was Giant Growth, plus three, plus three. And originally, at common, blue had Ancestral Recall. Now, pretty quickly, they realized that one mana draw three cards was crazy powerful. Way, way more powerful than everything else. And the funny thing is, only Giant Growth is still made today in Standard. Maybe, maybe we'd make Lightning Bolt if we bent the format around it. Dark Ritual is considered too good.

Healing Stab is not too good. It's just in a modal way we don't make cards, but Healing Stab power-wise could be made today. But anyway, it's to note that a lot of the other cards are just, they are also more powerful than standard, but nothing holds a candle to Ancestral Recall. So Bill's idea of power launch was kind of like, imagine if Ancestral Recall had stayed a common. What kind of set would if Ancestral Recall is a common common? What kind of set would... If Ancestral Recall is a common, what kind of set of magic do you have?

What kind of set warps around that? What if that was the average power level? Now, we never ended up making Power Lunch, but the idea was once we saw Plane Chase and we had the giant cards, we came up with this idea for a new format in which the giant cards represent a spell effect for one player who's just more

powerful. And the idea of Arch Enemy is that multiple people take on the Arch Enemy. It's not one-on-one magic, it's three-on-one or four-on-one. And the idea of the Arch Enemy is that the cards, the Arch Enemy, the Arch Enemy gets one card a turn and it generates an effect. It's basically free. So basically you get to play one card a turn for and it generates an effect. It's basically free. So basically, you get to play one card a turn for free, and it does something. And it sometimes will scale on how many players there are, so it allows you to take on more players. But the idea is you're trying to beat the Arch Enemy. That's the flavor of Arch Enemy. We would later make an Arch Enemy tied with Amonkhet called Arch Enemy Nicol Bolas.

That wasn't technically part of the Innovation Line, but like I said, once we introduce something in the Innovation Line, sometimes you'll see it show up elsewhere and not necessarily in the Innovation Line. I'll talk more about that. But anyway, Arch Enemy wasn't quite as popular as Plane Chase. Plane Chase, I would say, was somewhat popular.

Not a runaway hit, but somewhat popular. Where Arch Enemy did okay, but not amazingly well. I mean, well enough that we continued the innovation line. But its response was... Like, Plane Chase... I would say Plane Chase had a good response. Not a great response, but a good response. And Arch Enemy was a little bit cooler than that.

Okay, in 2011, there was this format that a lot of people were playing. It was called Elder Dragon Highlander. So what had happened was, some judges, I think at the Pro Tour, but also maybe at Grand Prixs, after they were done judging, they came

up, they invented a format. It was originally based on the five Elder Dragons from Legends, Nicole Bolas being probably the most famous of those. And the way it worked was you picked one of those five dragons, and then you had to build your deck around it, meaning whatever the colors of the dragon were, that's the only colors you could play. And then you made a 99-card deck, singleton, so other than the basic lands, no reprints.

And then there were a few other rules that got put into that. But anyway, the format was growing in popularity, and we were trying to do weird and fun innovations. So like, hey, what if we made a product that tied into this format? So we made our very first commander decks back in 2011. We made five Commander decks. Now, at the time, Commander, I think we

I don't remember the first ones did. We looked at what players were asking for, and at the time they were, I'm not sure, I forget whether we did Arc or Wedge, I think we did three-color in the first time. But anyway, we made decks, we'm not sure, I forget whether we did Arc or Wedge, I think we did three color in the first time but anyway, we made decks we made five decks

and we officially gave the format a more formal name, which was Commander, this is why it started being called Commander we made Commander decks, that's when we named it now the rules committee we left, like the people who invented the format had the rules committee, they still do

the rules stuff today. But anyway, we made a series of decks. And they did, remember I said, Plane Chase did good. And Arch Enemy did okay. Well, Commander did great. Great, great, great. We sold out of the decks. They were a giant hit.

They were gone. We went back to print, I think, a couple times. But anyway, Commander was such a giant hit that it would lead to us starting a Commander line. So in 2011, Commander was the innovation product. Now it's just we make Commander decks every year. It just went from being an innovation product to being its own line. And this is not the only time this has happened with the innovation product.

So the innovation product is So, the Innovation product is a nice place to do some testing and stuff. And when we find big successes like Commander, they can branch off and become their own thing. So,

but anyway, the Commander decks, we put them on 2011. That's the only time they were part of the Innovation line, technically. In 2012,

we did something kind of intermediate thing. And starting in 2013 we started making decks every year. I believe since 2013 2013-2014 maybe it was 2014. But anyway

once we saw that the decks were a success, right away we started making more decks. But our lag time is about two years so I forget whether it was 2013 or 2014. But anyway, once we were able to get the second batch of decks out, it started becoming a yearly thing. And since then, it's been a yearly thing.

Okay. In 2012, we made Plane Chase 2012. So that was just us revisiting Plane Chase. You know, we added a few new rules. visiting plane chase. You know, we added a few new rules. Like, I think there were now giant cards that weren't just planes. Like, the first time we did plane chase,

all the giant cards represent a place on a plane. So each one was not just a plane, but like this particular location, Llanowar on Dominaria. And one of the cool things we did about plane chase, by the way, real quickly, back on plane chase, is we made a bunch of planes that at the time, either we had only hinted at or were hinting at places we might go.

Now, it turns out some of the planes that we hinted at, when we finally went there, we ended up giving them different names for sort of dumb legal reasons. So, like, Argos became Theros, and Mung Sing became Tarkir. So, we hinted at some worlds that we were going to go to. Not all of them ended up using the exact same name. It's a long story. But anyway, so Plane Chase 2, or Plane Chase 2012, came along. It added new planes. For the first time, it had some giant cards, I think, that weren't just planes,

that there were giant events that could happen. So in your planer deck, you could have some planer events. I think that's what we called them. But anyway, so Plane Chase 2012 created some more Plane Chase. Okay, in 2013, we did Modern Masters. So the idea of this product was a product that did reprints, all things that were in Modern. We were trying to find a way to support Modern in a way that was exciting in a slightly different format. And so the idea was, what if we took cards that were

in Modern and only in Modern and made a reprint product that allowed us to make a very dynamic and a more complicated draft. One of the things we had learned over time was that our most experienced draft, there's a differential between what our most experienced drafters are capable of dealing with and what the lower-end drafters are capable of dealing with. For example, time's probably in Cloud's example where our franchise players really liked it and, you know, organized play was up,

but the lesser franchise players were overwhelmed and really did not like Time Spiral. So Modern Masters was us trying to say, you know what,

maybe there is an audience for us to do something that's a little more complex, as you will see. We even go farther down that path coming up. And the other thing was, we knew there were a lot of cards

that people in Modern wanted, so I was kind of trying to do two things at once. Like, whenever we make a booster product, we want to have a draft environment with it. Drafting is a big portion of the game for a certain segment of the audience. And the other, real quick, one of the things to keep in mind is

that no matter what format we are making cards for, you can't make every card workable in the format. That formats aren't big enough that a large set, every single card is viable. So the thing we tend to do,

and one of the reasons Drafts is important is that it allows us to make a lot of cards that, you know, we have to fill out the product and make other stuff. And a lot of people are going to use the product to play their casual decks

or fill out other formats like Commander or something. And so Draft allows us to make more cards that have a relevant purpose in the thing. And Draft is a very, very popular way to play Magic, one of the most popular, especially in stores and stuff. So anyway, we made Modern Masters. This was the first time we restricted, like normally we would print as much as we thought we could sell. Modern Masters was the first time that we limited how much we printed. And the reason for that was

that because it was an all reprint product, our goal was to get more copies of cards out there, but not sort of, like one of the things we're trying to balance is magic is a collectible. We want to make sure things are collectible, right? It's something that is a key identity to a trading card is that it's something people can collect.

And so our goal in doing reprints is letting new people have access, but without, you know, not making people who already have the card unhappy, right? So there's a gentle balance there. So Modern Masters, by definition, was sort of limited. Now, we sold everything we had, which is, I guess, one of the advantages of a limited product. But it was very, very popular. People really enjoyed it.

I would say it got a great reception. So modern mafters like Commander would later go on to be its own thing and have its own line for a while. As you will see it it stays in the innovation line a little bit longer but eventually that was where it goes. Okay in 2014 we have Conspiracy. So Conspiracy was the brainchild of Sean Main. Sean came in second in the second grade designer search. Sean had this idea for a product that was half a drafting matters product and half a multiplayer product. That was this weird combination.

And the idea was, when you were drafting, there would be cards that cared about what you're doing when you're drafting, and it was a multiplayer experience. You would play usually in groups of four. You would draft in eight and play in two groups of four. And then when you were playing, there were a whole bunch of mechanics and stuff that were geared toward caring about the fact that you're playing a multiplayer. So some of the mechanics were draft-related.

Some of the mechanics were multiplayer related. And there was voting and different things that you were doing. And we made its own... The first time I think we really made for a supplemental product, we really developed a world. The Conspiracy took place on Fiora.

Fiora is a medieval inspired plane that first showed up in the Dak Fiora. Fiora is a medieval-inspired plane that first showed up in the Dak Faden comics. Many years back, there was some comics made, and at the time, we didn't want them using

any of the existing planeswalkers, so we said to them, you can design and make your own planeswalker, and they ended up making Dak Faden. That's where Dak Faden came from. And Dak Faden's home base was on a plane called Fiora.

So Conspiracy, by the way, also printed the Dak Faden Planeswalker card since I think this was the first supplemental set, I think, that had a Planeswalker. There was not a Planeswalker. Normally Planeswalkers showed up in stand-in legal sets. I think Conspiracy was the first non-

non-stand-in legal set to have a Planeswalker, I believe. Anyway, Conspiracy was quite popular. People really liked it. And it's funny. This is a perfect example of what an innovation product is for in that it was a weird thing. Like, when

Sean first pitched it, there was a lot of skepticism. Like, well, who's playing that? And Sean, what he did was he sort of mocked some stuff up. And he made some drafts happen. And said, look, let's just do this. And people played it. He made a prototype. And they're like, wow, this is really fun.

And he ended up getting pretty fast-tracked too. I think we didn't know what the 2014 product was going to be. The funny story behind the scenes, by the way, during all this is I, at this point, had started making Unstable, and we were trying to convince him that we should make Unstable. But at the time, because Ungluten Hinge had been overprinted, there was a lot of perception that people didn't want an unset. And so we were, the Council of Marks was inside Wizards trying to compete.

And the fact that they didn't know what to do in 2014, I was trying to convince them, well, I know what to do in 2014. We have an unset. Ta-da! But anyway, Sean managed to convince them that we should do conspiracy, so we did conspiracy. But it's just one of the things I used to tease Sean about was

within us starting to make Unstable, so many sets would come on in the meantime. And we had started Unstable before Sean had pitched conspiracy. But notice that conspiracy comes out in 2014, and Unstable comes out

three years later in 2017. Anyway, Conspiracy went on to be quite successful. Okay, so in 2015, we made Modern Masters 2015. So, 2015 originally was going to be Unstable. That's where we put Unstable. So, I couldn't convince them to do Unstable in 2014, but I did convince them to put it in 2015. So that was where Unstable was first originally going to come out. But then Modern Masters had done so well,

they said, you know, we need to do another Modern Masters. Okay. And at the time, we didn't think of it as being its own product line. It was still an innovation product. So like, oh, well, we don't want to wait. So, you know, we'll do Conspiracy, and then we're going to go back and do Modern Masters. And sorry, Unstable, you can come on 2016. That was the plan.

And so, okay. So Modern Masters 2 came out. We called it Modern Masters 2015, which came out in 2015. Only the Core sets are a year ahead, by the way. When people ask me why this year's Core set is Core 2020, but it's 2019. The reason for that is the core set sits in the mass stores for over a year.

Well, it sits in all the stores for over a year, but mass market stores won't carry it if it has an old year number on it. So if we call it 2019, come 2020, the mass stores won't carry it because it's outdated. It's not. So we go a year ahead. We use the car modeling not number four. So

that is why the core sets are a year ahead. Other products in which they come out and they come out all at once, they're not going to stay out much like this product. We just call by the year it comes out. So I know that can be a little confusing when in the same year one of the products is one year and one's the other year.

That is confusing. But anyway, Modern Masters 2015 did come out in 2015. It again was a success. By the nature of how we do the master sets, because they're all reprints, we have to limit how much we can print. So usually we sell out of them because we, usually the demand, like the essence of printing something is figuring out the demand and then just being close to it so that it sells out. And in this particular product, because we were trying to sort of be careful, the demand for the product exceeded what we were willing to print.

So it was kind of destined to be a product that would sell out. It was at this time that we figured out that Modern Mafters was doing really well. And so we then started just making Masters set. They stopped being an innovation product and started becoming their own line. It was funny because at the time, I think the one after Modern Masters,

I forget what it was, Vintage Masters or something, and I'm like, because we had knocked out Unstable to put in Modern Masters 2015 and then right after that we're like, oh, it's its own line. Like, we could have made its own line a year earlier. So anyway, I had wanted Unstable to be out in 2014. Conspiracy beat me to it.

So then it was scheduled for 2015, but Modern Masters 2015 was there. So that meant Unstable could be in 2016. It was on the schedule. We've been bumped once. Clearly, we wouldn't be bumped again. And I'd be wrong. Because Conspiracy Takes the Crown

came out in 2016. So, what had happened was Conspiracy had done well enough that they wanted to do another one. They asked Sean to do it. So obviously, Sean was happy

to do another set. So the story here, the real quick version of this is Sean was looking for multiplayer mechanics and we had tagged for Ixalan. So there's a game

called Vampire the Eternal Struggle originally called Jihad. It was the second trading card game Richard ever made after Magic. And the idea was it was based on the role-playing game Vampire the Eternal Struggle, and

one of the mechanics in it was called The Edge. Which, I don't know if The Edge is in the role-playing game or not. If something was in the trading card game, I never played the role-playing game or not. If something was in the trading card game, I never played the role-playing game. But the way the edge worked was if you had the edge, you had an extra ability, but only one person ever had the edge and then other people could take it away from them.

So it was a resource you fought over and then the point of the resource was it granted you abilities that only the person that had the edge could have. And so it was a cool mechanic that I'd always eye in the back of my head as, hey, here's something neat that magic hasn't done. What if we use the edge in magic? So when Ixalan first got created, like early, early on, when it was just kind of like the

age of exploration world, one of the things that I was asked was, hey, what kind of mechanical hook do you think you can find for this world? And so what I said is, if we went from, instead of having one, sorry, two factions, so originally there's two factions, what if we made this a three-faction world, which we had not done, or not done in a long time, and not done formally in really forever. And let's use the edge as a means to sort of give a, they're

fighting over resources. Meanwhile, before that set started, Conspiracy Take the Crown, Sean came to me and said, we really think that we have an industry mechanic that's like the edge. Do you mind if we do that? And so what I had said to him was, well, feel free to experiment with it. See if it works. I said,

I'll start up an exploratory design team for Ixalan so that we can look and see if we think Ixalan could use the Edge mechanic, and then we'll get back together. And I said to him, be aware, if the two are going to fight each other, the standard legal set's going to have priority over the supplemental set. So anyway, Sean went away. They, you know, they worked on it. I went off and explored their design, and we worked on it

to see how the edge played in two-player play. And what we found at the end was it actually worked pretty well. I was pretty happy. I was like, oh, this actually played in two-player play. And what we found at the end was it actually worked pretty well. I was pretty happy. I was like, oh, this actually works in two-player. So I came back to talk to Sean, and Sean said, oh, it works amazing. It's amazing in multiplayer play. It's a great mechanic.

Please, please, please, can we have it? And I was like, okay, Sean, I was very clear about this. We went together. Look, this is scheduled for Ixalan. Ixalan's, you know, a standard legal set. It's a much bigger set. You know, it has priority.

And then Sean went over my head. I mean, Sean, I mean, not, this is the system. This is how the system works. Sean appealed my decision to Aaron, who's my boss. And Aaron ended up saying, he goes, look, because Modern Horizons was done. They were supposed to go to development, where Ixalan had not yet started design. And Aaron said, look, I get what you're saying, Mark, but he's in a bind. It's the best mechanic.

They don't have anything else. You haven't started yet. You have time. Let's just give them the mechanic and you'll find a different mechanic. So take the crown. The monarch mechanic ended up going in Conspiracy, take the crown.

And then Ixalan ended up... So Ixalan ended up getting... We ended up going a tribal route that we hadn't originally. Instead of three factions, we had four factions. And a bunch of stuff changed in Ixalan. But anyway, Conspiracy took the crown.

Literally took the crown. Took the Monarch Mechanic. So it went on. People liked it. It was fun. It was again in Fiora. It introduced Kaia, by the way. The Planeswalker was Kaia, who would go on to join the Gatewatch many years later.

Anyway, so that was successful. Okay, now we get to 2017. So 2014 is when I'd wanted Unstable to come out. 2015 is when I was promised it would come out. 2016 was when I was promised for the second time it would come out. And then 2017, so originally it was going to come out in the summer of 2017, and then it got pushed back to December of 2017. So it got moved three times. But finally, in December of 2017, after many years, Unstable came out. So that was the third onset. The only onset that technically

was part of the innovation product line. Part of what Unstable was trying to do was I really needed to sort of introduce the unsets to a modern era. We had not done it for 13 years, since 2004. So that was a long time. And I often talk about how the average Magic player

plays like nine plus years or whatever. But the average Magic player, more than half the Magic players had never played an unset. And so it was definitely something different. And one of the attacks we took with Unstable, and once again, I have a whole podcast on Unstable. A bunch of things I talked about today,

or some of them I have podcasts on. All the unsets I have podcasts on. Vanguard I happen to have a podcast on. I think I might have a podcast on Commander Vanguard I happen to have a podcast on. I think I might have a podcast on Commander. And I might have a podcast on Conspiracy. Anyway, I was able to do an unset for sort of modern times. We have world building.

We made Bablovia, which was its own plane in the universe, which is the multiverse for the unsets. The uns in the Universe, which is the multiverse. The Un sets have their own multiverse, different multiverse. There's a lot of overlap of characters and things. Like, there's an Urza in both. Ours is just a disembodied head. But anyway, we were able to make it. The biggest thing that I did with Unstable that I had not done with Unglued or Unhinged was, when I originally made those sets, the philosophy I had was,

the whole point of them is to mix them in with existing sets. So are you going to draft a set? Well, take out one of the normal packs and put in an unpack. And that'll just, you know, give a little extra something. The idea was it was meant as a way to sort of mix up what you're doing. What I found was, no matter how much I told people that they can mix unhinged and unglued with other stuff, they didn't. They just did it by itself. So I said, okay, I'm just going to make a draft environment that plays by itself.

And the idea being was, look, I'll introduce new cards that you can add to whatever format you want. And we were very conscious of other formats. We made cards with cube in mind. We made cards with commander in mind. We made a lot of casual cards in mind. And the idea being, like a lot of the stuff in the unsets, I mean, while there is some silly stuff, we unstable kind of dialed down the, what I would call the silly mechanics. There's a little bit of physical stuff and a little bit of vocal stuff, but a much smaller notice, and a lot more was us playing in what I call future space.

For example, we did contraptions, which had an external deck. Magic's never had an external deck. Will it one day make use of an external deck? Maybe. And it's the kind of thing we're experimenting now in Silver Border that can maybe pave the way. We also

did host and augment which allowed you to have sort of a meld variant where you played a creature which was the host and then you could augment onto it sort of a half a body and then it would become a combination and so you could make something, you know, half squirrel, half pony or stuff like that.

But anyway, we really did a silver border with a modern sort of... Like, whenever we do unsets, I always try to take whatever is currently... whatever tools Magic has available to it. And so we did a faction set. That's something that, back when Unhinged had been made in 2004,

we hadn't yet done a faction set. Or not in the way that Ravnica had done them. Obviously, you could argue stuff like Fallen Empires had factions to it. But in a modern sense, we did a faction set, we did world building, we just did a lot of things

you don't normally get to see or hadn't gotten to see before in a Silver-Bordered set. Unstable did really well. The stat I like to do on Unstable is it was the best-selling non-master supplemental set. So it did very well. Hopefully that bodes good things for the future. For some reason, every time I want to do an unset, it always is a little bit of a battle.

But I'm stubborn, so I'm hoping, I'm hoping. Next, in 2018, we did Battle Bond. I'm hoping. Next in 2018 we did Battle Bond. So Battle Bond was inspired by the idea of I think once after the last plane chase in 2012 I think we made the decision that we liked the idea of making innovation products be in the boosters. In general, the reason for it, boosters just are our best moneymakers and the innovation product already has to kind of support itself. Every time, you know, every time we're doing something,

we're doing something that's unknown. And so, I mean, unless we're doing number two or something, usually it's an unknown thing. So there's some sort of, there's always risks to unknown and that booster products are our safest product to make. And so we've kind of made the choice of doing an innovation line since then in booster products.

Anyway, BattleBond was trying to take a popular format two-headed giant and try to put it in a booster. What if you made a draft product that you could play in two-headed giant? That was the philosophy behind BattleBond. And so the idea was that it was designed so that you would draft it head-on-head, a two-headed draft, you plus another team. And then you would play. And it was designed so that your decks were synergistic. It had the partner mechanic where if one player gets one card,

the other player can get their card card and the cards play well together. We introduced Will and Rowan, which are twin, our first, well, we didn't know at the time that Urza and Ugin are twins. Not Uza, sorry, Nicole Bullis and Ugin are twins.

Ugin and Urza are not twins. But anyway, we introduced them and they got to partner with each other. So it was definitely... Once again, like I said, the innovation product's trying to always push boundaries and go to new and different places. So it was kind of cool to see BattleBond do that.

BattleBond went over pretty well. So it took place on the plain of Kylim, and it took place in an arena called the Valor's Reach, is the name of the arena. And it's where all these battles take place. And so creatures from across the multiverse come here and battle. Anyway, and it was playing up a lot of our sports metaphors and stuff. Kind of fun. We did a bunch of top-down sports stuff. Okay, then in 2019, we made Modern Horizons. That's our innovation product. And that was inspired by

Time Spiral. Time Spiral was this weird thing where the enfranchised players really enjoyed it. Organized play was up. But the average players really had an issue, and that was something, like, we realized that it was hard for us to make that kind of product in the standard legal set.

And so we had a hackathon. I just did a whole podcast on Modern Horizons, but we had a hackathon. Ethan and I each pitched a slightly different version, but the idea that we had was similar enough that we did the same hackathon, which was what if we made a product kind of like Time Spiral that was more complex, more nostalgia-driven, something in which,

for the enfranchised player, it's just lots and lots of Easter eggs and mechanical throwbacks and something that's a little more complicated that we don't want to do in a standard legal set, but we do think there's an audience that really would enjoy it.

And that led us to make Modern Horizons. And as I'm recording this, we are just on the tail end of the Modern Horizon previews, and it's been going over really, really well. So I have high hopes for Modern Horizons. But it's funny

kind of looking back, like, I'm not saying everything we've done, but it's interesting. All the things we've done, for example, we did unsets, we've made more unsets. We did plane chase, we made another plane chase. We did arch enemy, we made another arch enemy. We made commander, we made more

commanders. We made modern masters, we made more master sets. We made conspiracy, we made more conspiracy sets. I mean, Battle Bond and Modern Horizons are too new for that to be true, but I think both of them, sets. I mean, Battle Bond and Modern Horizons are too new for that to be true, but I think both of them well, I mean, Battle Bond I know did well, and Modern Horizons looking like it will do well. I think both of those

have potential to be seen again as well. Anyway, I mean, the innovation product line, like I said, is I'm a huge, huge advocate for it because I believe that one of the things that makes Magic so special is that, as I always like to say, it's not one game. It's a whole variety of games using a shared rule system and card set. And that there's lots of different fun ways to

play the game. And that one of the reasons I think people stick with Magic so long is that we provide you a lot of different ways to play. That if you get tired of playing one way, oh, there's another way to play. Let's say you really enjoy Standard, but at some point you want to play something else. Okay, you can do a Draft, or you can play Commander, or you can play Modern,

or you can play Sealed, or you can play Pauper, or Infinite. I mean, there's can play pauper, or infinite. I mean, there's formats aplenty. Some formats are stuff that we make. Some formats are stuff that the fans make. You know, there's a lot of stuff out there and a lot of ways to play. And I like that the innovation product is just reinforcing this idea

that magic, there's lots of ways to play magic. You know, I really enjoy that a lot of the products, for example, push toward multiplayer play. That one of the things that standard doesn't do as much is say, hey, you want to play with all your friends a whole bunch at once? You can do that. And so I like the fact that we've done a lot of pushing of plane chase and arch Enemy and Commander and Conspiracy and Battle Bond

are all just different ways to play with a bunch of people. And so if you and your friends want to play, hey, you know, there's a bunch of different ways you can do that, and we introduced to you a bunch of ways to do that. I'm happy that stuff like the Unsets really communicate the idea that there's more casual, fun ways to play. That magic can be about having fun and laughing and not necessarily just about being serious and being competitive. Not that magic can't be serious and be competitive, but I like the idea that that is a way to play and not the way to play.

And I really appreciate what the unsets have done to sort of say, hey, it's okay to sort of sit back and laugh and have a good time and not worry quite so much about winning. Not that you're not trying to win, but, you know, hey, let's do fun and weird things. And I love how the Unsets do that. And it's just, the

innovation products in general have had this really nice sense of just letting people experiment and play in lots of different ways. And so now I'm also, I mean, I live in the future, so I know of future innovation products. And in fact, I want a team right now that, codenamed Canoe, that is working on potential future innovation products. And not just innovation products. We're doing blue sky work. But one of the things we're trying to do is what are future future innovation products. Not just innovation products. We're doing blue sky work.

But one of the things we're trying to do is what are future possible innovation products as well as other products. And I will say this, as someone who currently is working on potential future stuff, there's a lot. I mean, magic is a super rich and deep game.

There are so many ways to play magic. And so I'm excited and happy that as I look in the future, that not only have we made, you know, 10 plus years of innovation products, we're going to keep making innovation products. And as someone working on the future of them, there's a lot of really cool ones coming. There's a lot of neat things. And some might be old favorites coming back. Some might be new things that you've never seen before. But the innovation line isn't going anywhere. We have a lot of cool

innovations. And so anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed today isn't going anywhere. We have a lot of cool innovations. And so anyway. I hope you guys enjoyed today's podcast. I know I had a bunch of traffic. So you got a little extra. A little extra. You got to hear more about innovation products today. But I am now at work.

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. Innovative magic. Anyway I'll talk to you guys next time. Bye bye.