Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #667: Full-Art Lands

Episode Date: August 30, 2019

In this podcast, I talk about the history of full-art lands and talk about all the times we've used them.

I'm Paul L. A. Driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so today is all about full art land. So I had some trepidation with today's topic because I've talked about a lot of the pieces in other podcasts. But I realized that not everybody listens to all my podcasts and that some people might enjoy hearing the full story of Full Art Land from beginning to end. So I decided I'd do it, and if you're a regular listener, there's some repetition. You guys know that. I'll try to add some new elements to the stories that I haven't told before as I flesh it out. But the story of today really is about something that, when it began, nobody wanted to do, I mean, other than the person who created it.

But I mean, this is the idea of something that started as a thing like, why would players want that? And now it's like, we're constantly talking about when and where we can use it. It went from a thing that no one thought would be valued to a thing of high value. So that is today's story of how exactly, how did it happen that this thing that no one wanted to do become this thing that people were clamoring for? That is the story of Floorlands. Okay, so to understand this story, we first have to go back in time, back to early, early magic. So Chris Rush, and I did a whole podcast on Chris Rush when he sadly passed away.

Chris Rush worked on Magic when Magic first got made. And he and Jesper Mirfors, who was the first art director for Magic, were the two people that did most of the graphic design in Magic. And what I mean is what the card frames look like, what the back looks like, what the logo looks like, what the mana symbols look like. And Chris was very involved in doing that. A lot of the early graphic design, for example, the mana symbols, was Chris's doing. So one of the things that Chris really had on his mind early on was he was very much thinking about how magic presented itself. And that is something that Chris would think a lot about

because he was the person doing the graphic design. So, one day, I think Chris, while, I don't know, I'm not sure what spurred this on, but Chris made the realization that basic lands had all, there wasn't much needed to explain basic lands. Now, given, back in the day, when magic first started, we now have the mana symbol on basic lands. So, if you're a forest, it's just a giant green mana symbol. Magic didn't start that way. Back in Alpha, there

actually was text on the cards. It would say, tap, although I think tap was written out because it wasn't a tap symbol yet. You may add one green mana to your mana pool. I think that's what it originally said. And then, in portal, I believe it was, so the product we made as an introductory product, for the first time, instead of explaining what land did, we just put the mana symbol there. Because what we found was introducing concepts like the mana pool just confused people. And just

putting the mana symbol led them to more likely getting it correct than us actually explaining what you were doing. Testing showed that if people saw the mana symbol, it just led them to more correctly understand what was going on. So we changed it in Portal Three Kingdoms. People liked it. We made the decision, I'm not sure when, but sometime after Portal, to just make it magic. So

magic would then just have the symbol. Anyway, Chris's thought was the basic lands are so integral to the game, and people just know what they do because it's not like you have an interactor with basic land. There's really no way to play Magic and not have some interactor with basic land.

So the graphic designer and Chris said, you know, there's not a lot of rules text that needs to be on the basic land. Even the text that was there was something that if it wasn't there, it wasn't the end of the world. In fact, the fact that a forest taps through green mana is baked into the rules the subtype forest

and the reason that was true was in alpha there were cards that changed lands to other land types so if I change my island into a forest or your island into a forest the rules had to support what that meant and so so it said, oh, well, subtype, the five basic land subtypes, meant that they

tap for a particular mana. It was built into what a forest was. So just being a forest meant you tapped for green mana. We didn't have to tell you that. That was inherent in what a forest was. Also, basic lands were so integral that the idea that people would understand that. Anyway, so it dawned on Chris that there wasn't a lot of rule support needed for it, and he was very visually minded. He was a graphic designer and an artist. So he came up with this idea of what if you just filled up the whole

frame with art? What if it just, you know, the basic land doesn't really need to say much on it. In fact, technically, I think technically it just needs to say it's a forest. And even then there's debate whether there's argument that just having the name forest is enough to say that it's a land type forest.

But anyway, so he came up with this idea of trying to make the art as big as possible to fill up the whole card. Now, back then, I mean, the idea was there would be a normal frame. Just make the land box bigger, basically, was his idea. And he was very excited by this. And I think he, what he did is, I think he mocked them up. And he was very excited. So he And I think he, what he did is, I think he mocked them up. And he was very excited.

So he did it and he showed it around. And the response he got, pretty universally, was, yeah, why would players want that? Why would players, that doesn't look like a magic card. And so, he was all excited. And then everywhere he went, everybody he showed it to just said, yeah, but why would we do that? Why would players want that? What's the point to that?

Um, and eventually he, he sort of gave up on it cause nobody wanted to do it. Um, and that's one thing, like I said, that's very interesting is Chris took it, he mocked it up, he showed what they looked like and the universal opinion at the time was, eh. Now, this was pre-me working there. So what happens is, Chris and I are on a plane going to Gen Con. So my best guess is this would have been 96, my guess 96 or 97 um because i didn't go to gen con i mean i i've only been to gen con a handful of times i know i went to 96 my guess is 96 96 or 97 um so what happened by the way at the the time was Gen Con, so the founder and original CEO, one of the founders and original CEO of Wizards is Peter Atkinson.

Peter was a role-playing gamer, a D&D-er from early on, and he early, fell in love with Gen Con. Gen Con was an event that was made by the people who made... One second, let me take a drink here. I'm coughing. Gen Con was a convention made by TSR, which are the original people that made Dungeon Dragons. And it was a gaming convention, although it was more of a role-playing convention originally.

But over time, it grew a little bit to become a gaming convention, and it ended up becoming the largest gaming convention in North America. Peter was very excited and really... In fact, Magic the Gathering premiered at Gen Con in 1993. That's where it was sold for the first time. That's where Peter, in Peter's mind, this was the center of gaming. This was the premier, at least North American, gaming convention. Peter Atkinson would later go on to purchase it.

He now owns Gen Con. Peter now runs Gen Con. to purchase it. He now owns Gen Con. Peter now runs Gen Con. But anyway, at the time, most of the company would go to Gen Con. It's like, anybody who wanted

to go to Gen Con basically could go to Gen Con. We'd have a giant booth at Gen Con, and it would be a big, big deal. We still go to Gen Con, not quite as... Actually, do we even have a booth at Gen Con? I'm not sure we do. We might. I mean, there are magic events run there, but we don't have quite the large presence we once did, especially in the early

days. And part of that is Peter was so passionate about Gen Con that he just would maybe have a giant booth and send a big companion people. So anyway, on the plane that we were traveling on was a large, like a good chunk

of the plane was we were traveling on was a large, like, a good chunk, a good chunk of the plane was Wizards employees. Um, anyway, I ended up getting seated next to Chris Rush. Um, so I had met Chris Rush through the office. I mean, at this point, um, if we're talking 96, I started working in 95. And at the time, the art department was not part of R&D. The art department was a different section. They were, I'm not even sure where they technically were. But they weren't, right now they're part of R&D. They were not part of R&D at the time. But I interacted with them.

My first interaction with them, I think, was I had done a bunch of stuff for The Duelist. And I know Chris did some of the graphic design for The Duelist. He helped out on that. But anyway, I got to know Chris from around the office. We were friendly. I mean, obviously, I knew his art. I knew of Chris Rush before I got to Wizards. But I got to know Chris.

And you can go look for my podcast on Chris. Chris was an awesome person. He was very sweet, very nice and one of the things that I had been trying to do at the time was just get to know more people the offices at the time when I started working there weren't super big there were 100

200 maybe 200 some employees there wasn't a lot of employees compared to now so anyway we're on the plane and I have a chance to speak with Chris and you know we have a um Seattle to it was Milwaukee at the time I think now it's in Indianapolis but um you know it's a decent ride many hours on the plane so we were just talking and I don't know how the idea for the four-hour land came up. I don't know what prompted Chris to share that with me. I'm sure we were talking about something.

Anyway, Chris pitched this idea to me about the idea of the four-hour land. And he was just sharing with me. He just thought it was a cool idea. And I said something that made him think that maybe I would like it. I don't even know what led to the conversation other than we were just chatting. Um, and he explained the idea to me and I was really excited. That sounds awesome. Are we doing the, when are we doing that? When are we doing that? And then Chris was like, Oh no, we're not going to do that. I'm like, what do you mean we're not going to do that? That's an awesome idea. And Chris was like, look, no one wants to do them.

I can't convince anybody that we should do them. And it's funny, as somebody, like one of the things I've learned in my job is, it's my job to come up with new and different things we haven't done before. And often when I come up with something that's new and different, the response I've gotten is, yeah, why do we want that? And so this idea of doing the thing, I mean,

back in 1996, I was not yet the head designer, but it's funny listening to Chris about batting his head against the wall of trying to do something innovative and just people not getting it. It's something that I face a lot, you know, in what I do. So it's kind of funny that at the time, I think I was very sympathetic, but I would get much more sympathetic as I would start to counter that more myself. So anyway, he explained it to me, told me that they weren't going to get made. And in the end, when I heard about it for the first time, I was like, oh, well, I was like, oh, like, I guess we're never making them. You know, I'm sad. But, you know, I was like,

here's a neat idea. Now, the one thing that I know about magic in general is that if you hear a good idea and somebody says no, well, hold on to it. You never know when you'll find an opportunity that maybe it makes more sense. Or the people that say yes or no could change. There's some classic examples like there's some cards that I try to make. The one that jumps to mind is Mindslaver. It was originally supposed to be in Tempest. And it was supposed to be Volrath's Helm for anyone who cares. And the rule manager of the time said we can't do that, it doesn't work.

And so I ended up changing the card to something else. But when I was doing Mirrodin, I was pulling out all my old artifact designs that I hadn't done, and I saw that card, so I went to the rules manager, which was the new rules manager. And I said, what do you think of this card? They're like, yeah, let's do it. So, you know, patience will often win out the day. So anyway, Chris tells me this idea. I like it. At the time, there's nothing I could do with it at the time. So I think this was 96.

Okay, so Slash Ford, not even that much. Maybe the next year. We didn't work quite as far ahead on stuff as we do now. So Unglued came out in 1998, which means I would have been working on it in 1997. So anyway, Unglued, I'm given the task, Joel Mick and Bill Rose come up with the idea of a silver-bordered set where the cards aren't term-illegal.

Now, be aware, at the time that that was made, there wasn't formats, per se. There was, like, normal magic and that that was made, there wasn't formats per se. There was like normal magic and not magic. Like there wasn't, we didn't, I don't think we had, or maybe we had just started standard. Maybe type 1 and type 2 had just started. But anyway,

the idea was, what if we made a product that just wasn't played in either type 1 or type 2? It wasn't a tournament thing. And they didn't really know what we would do with that. Their idea really was, we can make weird things. And they gave it to me. They saw me as being the out-of-the-box guy. And so what I turned into was a product that A, was a parody product.

B, I mean, sort of tie-dye, played around with humor. And C, just did things that Blackboard of Magic for some reason or other couldn't do the rules didn't allow it or it was something we considered to be off-limits or too silly and one of the things I was really interested in the original Unglued was pushing boundaries of just trying to do things we hadn't done before.

For example, Unglued had token creatures, creature tokens. We'd never done that before. I did that for the first time in Unglued. But anyway, one of the things when I was sort of thinking about out of the box is I thought back to Chris's suggestion. And I was excited because I'm like, okay, I don't know where we would do Chris's thing,

but I do know we could do it here. I'm like, you know, this I wanted it to be an out of the box product. I wanted to do weird things. Almost the definition of the things that let's do stuff we won't do in Black Border. And so I'm like, okay, let's do this. Now, the interesting thing that you would think the fight over the Civil Border lands was not whether we should do them or not. Nobody actually said I couldn't do them. I was never told by anybody that like,

when I said I want to put them in, nobody said no. Um, and the reason I think for that is that, um, everybody looked at my product, like you're the weirdo product. Like no one knew what to make of, of unglued. Uh, and I was just plugging away doing my thing and people were like, okay. Um, and because I was kind of this weird product that didn't affect anything to a certain extent people were like okay whatever let Mark have his fun and nobody really told me no on anything

I think the only people that told me no is I had to go talk to legal about some cars there's a few cars that goes oh oh we can't we can't do that that's the only people that told, we can't do that. That's the only people that told me I can't do that. Oh, I take it back. I take that back. Brand, both brand and legal went through it, and brand and

legal each said, no, don't do that. So, there were a few brand things. Brand said not to do Disrobing Scepter, for example, which was a Disrupting Scepter where instead of discarding a card, you can remove a piece of clothing. Probably correctly, brand said not to do that. Actually, as the lessons I've learned with Hurtle and Wrangler,

where people were taking off their pants, that would have been a mistake. But anyway, nobody tried to stop me to make the Four-Eyed Land. The one thing they did do, and the one fight I did have, is they wanted to put a silver border on them. And my fight was, look, everything else I'm making, you can't use a normal magic. And the tokens, it didn't matter if they had a silver border.

I said, but the lands, if people wanted to play the lands, why couldn't we let them play the lands? The only reason that maybe you couldn't play the lands is they're silver bordered. And it required us putting theance on their own sheet, but I wanted to do one per booster. So anyway, I finally went out and convinced them to just put it in black booster,

which, by the way, was probably one of the most important decisions I made on the whole product because I think one of the successes of Unglued, and yes, I consider it a successful product. We overprinted it. We made too much because we didn't understand supplemental products. But, for the audience that was there, it was very exciting. We did sell a lot of Magic cards. Had we not overprinted and printed the correct amount, it would have been considered a success.

But anyway, one of the big reasons for the success was the four-art land. Because what happened was, people were very excited about the floor at land. They'd never seen it before. Oh, so let me talk a little bit about the making of the floor at land. So the idea I had

was, I wanted to make something that was grandiose. I think I went and talked with Chris and my memory was that Chris was involved in the frames. He might have even made the frames frames I'm trying to remember what happened I know I talked with Chris

because Chris was the impetus of the idea and Chris was very excited when I told him I was going to do it my guess is that Chris made the frames that's what I think would have made the frames I mean the only reason Chris wouldn't have made the frames is he wasn't there at the time but I think he was still there in 97 I think he was

so I think Chris made the frames or at least he helped with the frames we didn't outright make them so we made them kind of overly we made them very stylistic it's funny that while the art is a lot bigger than art had been at the time

we would get bolder as we would continue. You'll learn later on in the story. But we made the frames. We got... The art was done by five different artists. We didn't have one artist do it. Chris did one of the... Chris did fourth, I think?

One of the artists was done by Chris. Chris was excited to get a chance to be one of the full art artists. But obviously, once we knew we were doing full art, we were like, okay, Chris. And Chris said he wanted to do one of the full art artists. But obviously, once we knew we were doing full art, we were like, okay, Chris. And Chris said he wanted to do one of them. But anyway, we made them, and it was, to call them a success was probably an understatement of the word success.

It was so popular that, I mean, when I made them originally, this wasn't necessarily the goal. I liked the idea that there was some functionality in the packs that anybody could use in normal decks. But what ended up happening was, people were so excited by Valands, and this was the only place you could get Valands, that people were cracking packs for Valands. And the cool thing about it is if you wanted Valands and you're willing to buy the pack

to get the lands, well, then you got the other cards for free, and it really encouraged people to sample the product, which I think was a nice thing. That a lot of people that maybe never would have ever opened a booster, because they were guaranteed Valens and they wanted Valens, people bought the boosters.

And so anyway, out of the gate, it was a big hit. Interestingly, nobody at the time, it was still considered this weird, wacky thing, the unset state. So, the second time we did them was unhinged.

So, six years later, so 1998 is when Unglued came out. So 2004, six years later, is when Unhinged came out. Now, I was working on that a year or two before. Probably at this point, we're closer to a year and a half ahead of time. I don't know if we've quite got to two years yet. But anyway, they were super successful in the first one.

So what had happened was, the set had done really well. We were going to do a second unglued right away. And then they had to bury a bunch of stuff because they made too much. And then they go, oh, the product failed. And then we cancel unglued too. That got put in a hiatus. Six years later, um, Randy Buehler becomes the magic director. And he helps me get a second unset off the ground.

And I know that we're doing another Floor of Lairds. I mean, that was, we had done a God Book study. I mean, it was by far probably the biggest success of the first project. People loved Floor of Lairds. Universally loved. I mean, I'm not saying everybody loved them, sorry. There were players that didn't like them, but

they mostly were beloved by players. I mean, a few people didn't like them, but they mostly were beloved by players. I mean, a few people didn't like them, but most players liked them. So we knew we were going to do it again. So what I wanted to do was push the boundaries a little more. So my original idea for them was not to have any border at all.

And there was a lot of pushback from that. So I ended up making two versions, one which had a little tiny border, but we made the art as big as we can make and just made just enough border that there was a border on it. And then we had a version with no border, a borderless version.

And I showed them around and there were just a lot of people nervous about no border. And so we ended up going with the teeny tiny border version. So on Hinge, what we did for the first time is we got one artist, John Avon, who's known for drawing land. We got John Avon to do it. And we had a teeny tiny border. So the art now went out as big. I mean, on Unglued, the art had gone out wider than it

had ever gone before. But I was like, okay, let's push Boundary some more. So we had a little teeny tiny border on Unhinged, and those went out. And once again, all five lands were done by John Avon. And again, giant hit. People loved them. A lot of Unhinged boosters got sold so people could open up those lands. Very popular, very successful.

So, flash forward a few years, we're working on Zendikar. So Zendikar, I had sold as, I mean internally as, I wanted to do a set based on land. It's about land mechanics. Ended up having landfall and land creatures and lands that had to enter the battlefield. The fact is, it was very land-centric. It was a set all about land. And animating land, and all sorts of stuff.

And I think it was Brady, Brady Dommermuth, who made the proposal of, look, if it's the land set, why don't we put foreign land in it? And obviously, it did not take me more than one asking to go, yes, let's do that.

I'm kind of mad I didn't think of it, but Brady is the one who suggested it. And I'm like, yes, we should do that. And then I went to R&D, and R&D was like, yeah, let's do this. Interestingly, the success of Land in Unglued and Unhinged had sort of, I think, was enough proof to people that people liked them. The set had a theme of being land. So, Zendikar and Worldwake, they used the same picture. The picture didn't change between them. But Zendikar and Worldwake had for land.

First time we'd ever done them in a blackboarder, sorry, in a non-Silverborder product. I guess they were blackboarder in the Silverborder product. And they went over like gangbusters. People were very excited. We had never put them in. And, for example, one of the things we had done was, what did we call it back then?

The Fat Pack, I think we called it in the day. All the lands in the Fat Pack ended up being full art. Because all the basic lands in the set were full art. And we didn't accommodate for that. And they just sold out overnight. People wanted more of them. And it's just one of many ways to talk about how excited people were

for the full art lands. People were very excited. Interestingly, we did not do them again until we went back to Zendikar in Battle for Zendikar and Oath of the Gatewatch. And again, they were new full art lands. But Battle for Zendikar and Oath of the Gatewatch. And again, they were new forward lands, but Battle for Zendikar and Oath of the Gatewatch shared their forward land. The only forward land

that was in Oath of the Gatewatch that wasn't in Battle for Zendikar were the Wastes. We did forward Wastes. And that was in Oath of the Gatewatch. But we did them, and they were very exciting. People really liked them. So in Amonkhet, we tried something a little different. In Avin Khet and Art of Devastation,

we did Fora Land, but not all of the art was Fora Land. Instead, I think it was one in four was Fora Land. So we tried it where we were trying to introduce something, but something in which there was, they were sort of, it was a surprise that you could get some of the time. And that went over quite well.

People liked that. You can tell I was playing around a little bit with, like, how often can we do them. One of the notes we got when we did them in Battle for Zendikar was, I love Foratlan. I'm glad you're doing them again. But, hey, I have Foratlan on the plane of Zendikar. Could you please do for a land on other places?

Now at one point we did do a judge program judge promos with lands illustrated by Therese Nielsen that were for art that ended up being very popular, we didn't make a lot of them but they were very, very popular some of the hardest to get basic lands in existence

and those went out somewhere around this time period. So Amonkhet was playing around with the idea of being in it. So one of the reasons Amonkhet, I think, didn't go full hog on it was Unstable was coming out, and we knew that Unstable was coming out. So when Unstable was the third unset, I'm like, okay, let's continue to push the envelope. So I decided to do the thing that I'd want to do in Unhinged and just do it, which is borderless. Which is, okay, now be aware, when you go borderless, it requires, when you print it, the little printing thing, is if you're going to print all the way up to the edge, you can't have the cards butt up against one another.

So you have to, what do they call it, gutter cut. Now, with new technology, maybe you don't do gutter cut these days, I'm not sure, but for a long time, if you wanted an art going all up the edge, the cards couldn't literally be next to each other unless, unless the intent was they over, like,

in the original Unglued we did some cards where the art went from one card onto another card and those we printed right next to each other because the intent was they'd spill over onto other cards on purpose. But when you don't want the art, when you want to go to the edge but not spill over

you basically print a little bit in between it and then you cut it out. It's called a gutter cut. It's possible with modern printing you don't need a gutter cut anymore. But in the day, you did. So Unstable, I was like, okay, we're going to the edge. We're doing borderless, baby. And the interesting thing, so here's the thing I find funny, is how every time I push things, and when I did them in unhinged, people were like, oh, no,

no, we have to have a border. And when I did them in unstable and I just didn't put a border on them, I didn't get the pushback. Now, maybe it's because we had done the other version. I'm not quite sure why when I tried to do them in unhinged, there was so much pushback. And when I did them unstable, no one seemed to blink. Maybe it's just as people get more

used to things. The other thing that's interesting before it lands is, I think early on people were very skeptical. And then every time we tried something, they were wildly successful. Then I think people were more like, I'm not sure if people liked them. But every other time, I think the success of them had emboldened us some to sort of be a little more brave with stuff. So we did them borderless. One of the weird things I will say

when you do a borderless card is it loses less shape as a magic card. Meaning, there's a lot of... In the graphic design, there's a lot of things that make a card look like a magic card. Now, I'm not saying we didn't do a few of them. There's a text box.

I mean, there's a name box, card title box and stuff. There's a few things that definitely read I'm a magic card, but it definitely is something that if you're playing magic for the first time and this is one of the first cards you see, it would throw you. But what we learned is people really embraced it.

Now, once again, I think the borderless lands were a lot like some of the other lands. Not everybody liked them, but they were liked enough that, again, I think the Borderless lands were a lot like some of the other lands. Not everybody liked them. But they were liked enough that, again, sold a lot of packs, got people real excited. Oh, we again got Jon Avon to do the lands, because he does

amazing lands. So, it is definitely... And at this point, the funny thing for me is when we started with them in Unglued, they were this shocking thing. And by the time we got to Unstable, I mean, we were still trying to push the envelope. But the funny thing now is if I did, hopefully, when I get the chance to do a fourth unset, I've got to think positive. I mean, there's going to be some kind of basic lands in them. unset. Gotta think positive. The, uh,

I mean, there's going to be some kind of basic lands in them, and, uh, it's become such a staple of what Silver Border is, of what unsets are, that it went from this thing that, like, I got in that no one wanted to do, to this thing where of course, you'd have to, how would you not do that, you know what I'm saying?

So it's kind of funny watching the evolution of the Floor of Land. Okay, but we have one more product that is Floor of Land. Modern Horizons. So, Modern Horizons at some point in set design, not during vision, but in set design, decided to add snow. It's something that players

have been asking for for a while. We needed to put more snowlands. It's a theme that was in, because Cold Snap was in Modern. And so we knew we were going to do snow-covered lands. And this was a special product. And, you know, we were like, okay, we're going to do snowlands. Let's do full art. So we decided to do full art snow-covered lands. We had never done that before.

let's do 4R. So we decided to do 4R snow-covered lands. We had never done that before. It allowed us to make them, you know, A, it allowed us to make new snow-covered lands, which we hadn't made since Cold Snap, so there's a lot of demand for them, one of the reasons they're in the product. And by going 4R, it allowed us to do some 4R thing we'd never done before.

So, that was definitely kind of fun. As far as the future of 4Lands, we are as far from where Chris started as we could be. Like I said, Chris had the idea. Nobody wanted to do them. We're now in the world where everybody wants to do them.

And one of the things that are an issue now is that we want to keep them special. So one of the questions, let me answer this question, is why shouldn't all lands just be four lands? One of the arguments we get is, these look beautiful. Look, just make that the default of magic. Why are we wasting our time with normal-looking lands? And the answer to that is, one of the things that's important is, in a trading card game especially, is we need things that get people excited.

We need people to want to buy sets. We need people to want to crack packs. We want people to get excited about what's there. And four outlands are still something that sell packs, that people get excited by and buy packs. And as long as that is true, as long as it's a resource that really gets people excited and wanting to open things, it's a resource we're going to use. Maybe there'll come a day where they're so commonplace that they don't move the needle anymore. And then maybe that's the time we decide, okay, let's just default.

But while they're a resource that sells packs, while they're a thing that gets people excited, look, we need things to get people excited. We need things to sell packs. And so, you know, I get that they're cool looking and I get people want them, but as long as people want them so badly that they drive excitement and demand, you know, that is something that we... It's a resource that R&D can't squander. It's a resource that's important.

I mean, obviously we're trying to make an amazing, awesome game, but we're also a business and we're trying to sell the game. And so one of the things that R&D has to think about all the time is we want every set to be something that people want to play, A, because it's a fun game, and B, because there's things in it that they want and that we do have to think in terms of excitement and think in terms of what compels people to want

to purchase. And so we, there's not an endless amount of those things and so we do have to be careful with them. That is why not everything has basic lands. But we are in a world now where we recognize that players like basic lands, sorry, full art basic lands, and the real question is where and how to use them. It is now a resource that R&D considers to be a valuable resource and you'll continue to see full art lands. We know players like them. We know it's something that people like. The other thing, by the way, that we're

more conscious of is trying to find for the people who like full artlands, making sure that we can make different Fortlands. I think you'll start seeing them show up on other planes. I think we're going to find ways to put them and use them in places that are fun and exciting. We have no plans to

give up on Fortlands. If you like Fortlands, the future will have Fortlands. I mean, if you like Fortlands, the future will have Fortlands. They have proven themselves. And it's funny, as I, like, I was in a meeting not that long ago, where multiple sets,

we were having a meeting, and we were talking about whether a set was going to have Fortlands, and so we were talking about other sets around and this and that, and there was sort of an argument about who wanted to have the fort lands and there was like multiple sort of uh groups arguing that their product should have the fort lands uh and i just thought back like i like to think that chris rush is watching from above uh and seeing this like this thing that he couldn't get anybody to do and now people are fighting fighting to do it. I think that is a nice nod to Chris.

So that is something that, we've come a far way. And by the way, so not only, not only, the thing I should mention, since I'm almost at work, but I have a few minutes. So the four at land has spread. So in future site, we had some future shifted cards, and I actually did some full art creatures. Um, so we needed to do, I wanted to figure a way to do some vanilla creatures in the set, because the set was complex, and I wanted some simple stuff. So the idea was, I could put them on the the future frame and just show a brand new frame.

And so the frame there was a full art creature frame. So we have used full art frames there. We've done a bunch of promos. That's just a whole series of promos that use full art. Usually what we do is we show full art and then we back, we take the text and we invert it and make it white usually. The full art, so we've done that. And I think you'll see us messing around with more

full art, not just lands, but other things. Lands are the easiest because it doesn't need information. Full art, other things need some information. But I do think you'll see experimenting with more full art, other types of cards. And the planeswalker card type, so if you ever looked at a Planeswalker, the Planeswalker, the art fills up the whole card, and then the text goes over the Planeswalker, but it's see-through,

so you can see the art underneath it. That treatment for the Planeswalkers came out of the success of Full Art Lands. In fact, in some ways, like I talked about on my Splitcard podcast, that us doing different things with frames has really emboldened us to the power of frames.

And you will see we're getting much bolder, much bolder with making cool and different frames. And that, I think as magic continues on, you will see that if you like sort of experimentation with frames, more and more of that is happening. We're more willing to sort of,

especially from a design standpoint, of using frame technology as a means to help communicate stuff and make play easier. But since we're talking 4R lens, some of it also is what looks cool. What is something that we can make cards that you can play magic with, but man, they look cool.

And we're also playing in that space. So, I mean, I think the legacy of 4-art lands really is a big one. I mean, like I said last time, I think split cards, and there's a bunch of different things where we really started deviating a little bit. But I feel like 4-art lands and split cards, and there's a bunch of different things where we really started deviating a little bit. But I feel like four lands and split cards,

and there's a lot of the early investigation of pushing boundaries of what a magic card could look like. That has gotten to where we are now. We're much more free and willing to experiment with that. And I think four lands, in some ways, four lands even predate split cards, because split cards came out of Unglueue 2 and first appeared in Invasion. But Four of Lands first appeared in Unglue back in 98, so

both Four of Lands and the tokens, we also made token cards, so those were a different looking treatment. So, anyway. This is my ongoing saying of how Unglue was very, on the forefront, the cutting edge. A lot of cool stuff came from Unglued. But anyway, my friends, that is all there is to talk about, about four art lands. It's been quite the journey. But it's funny now that it really has become a staple, something that players love and that we love to do.

And you will see more of them. So anyway, I hope you enjoyed today's story. And a nod to Chrische for his awesome invention. And that, my friends, is I guess everything there is to say about 4 Art Lands. But anyway, I'm 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. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.