Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #689: Artifacts & Enchantements

Episode Date: November 18, 2019

This podcast is about the similarities and differences between artifacts and enchantments, and how they've changed over time.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. So, okay. So today's podcast was inspired by a topic of conversation on my blog. So last week, I had my social media preview card for Throne of Eldraine. And it was Glass Casket. For those that are unaware, it is one and a white. It's an artifact. When it enters the battlefield, you may exile any creature with a converted mana cost of three or less for as long as it stays in play. And a lot of the concern was that what this artifact did, traditionally in magic, enchantments and creatures do. And people were like, wait, why is this an artifact?

And it really got us into the conversation of what is the mechanical difference between artifacts and enchantments. So I thought I would talk about that today. Um, so I thought I would talk about that today. Um, so, um, and then I will end up by talking about Glass Casket. I will come back around to the Glass Casket. Um, okay, so let's go back to the beginning of the game. Back to Richard Garfield and Alpha. Um, so when Richard was first making Magic, he was really trying to capture the idea his concept was pretty clean

it's two wizards dueling with magic that was the essence of what magic was so when Richard was first coming up with card ideas and card types I guess it was sort of like, what do you want to represent? ok, well one of the things I want to do is I want to get magical creatures. I want to get elves and goblins and such. Okay, so I need creatures.

He knew that he needed some mana system, some resource system, and it ended up being the land. He wanted to have spells happen. He wanted sorceries

that you, the wizard, could cast magical spells. And then he ended up making three types, sorceries, instants, and interrupts originally. And all that was just sort of when and how you can play them and how they reacted to each other. But they all represented the same basic idea of

I'm casting a magical spell. He also knew that he wanted to be able to cast magic on things. That has some permanence. So the idea is I could do a spell that temporarily does something or I could do a spell that permanently does something. And if I want to permanently do something, I need to have something out showing that this, whatever it's doing is continually happening. Now, maybe I want to be enchanting a particular thing with my magic, or maybe I'm just enchanting the world itself, the battlefield itself with my magic. That became enchantments.

But he also knew that one of the cool things about doing, you know, another cool thing you want to do is items, magical items. That if you look at sort of all the stories, fantasy stories, there's lots of magical items. So he wanted to do was items. Magical items. That if you look at all the stories, fantasy stories, there's lots of magical items. So he wanted to do magical items, so he made artifacts. And so when the game began, enchantments and artifacts were

flavorfully just covering very different things. So let me walk a little bit through each of them of how Richard created them in the beginning. So when enchantments first got made, interestingly, the majority of them didn't say enchantment on them. They said enchant whatever

it is they enchanted. So we've talked to those as local enchantments and global enchantments. Local means it's an aura. It sits on something. Global means it just a general, you know, has an effect that affects, usually, the game in some larger sense. Most of the enchantments that Richard made in Alpha, in fact, were, I mean, he didn't call them auras at the time. They were enchant whatever.

But Alpha had lots of enchant creatures. It had some enchant artifacts. It had at least one enchant enchantment. It had enchant creatures. It had some enchant artifacts. It had at least one enchant enchantment. It had enchant land. The idea really was that I'm a magician, I have magic, and I can affect anything. And I can magically affect any of the permanents that I can play, or I can magically affect sort of the game itself. So all that was under the umbrella of enchantments.

Artifacts, he actually subdivided artifacts into a bunch of different categories so that I can remember them all. Um, there were artifact creatures, there was mono artifacts, poly artifacts, and continuous artifacts. I think, I think those are all. So artifact creatures just meant I'm a creature. You know, no more. You know, using an artifact creature was I'm a creature, but I'm artificial in some means.

I'm not a natural creature. Then mono artifact. Alpha was kind of weird. The tap symbol did not exist yet, but tapping existed. So some cards told you that you had to tap them to use them. But Mono Artifacts, the entire category of Mono Artifacts, just was built into it that you had to tap them. It didn't say that you had to tap them. It just meant Mono Artifact means you can use this once per turn. So essentially it just built into the rules where, oh, you want to use this, you

have to tap it. Poly artifacts had an ability, an activated ability, but you can do that as many times as you want. You weren't restricted to using it just one time. You can use it as many times as you want. And then a continuous artifact didn't have any activated abilities at all. It just did something. And there were quite a number of continuous artifacts in Alpha. There were like 15 maybe. There was Holland Mine,

Anka Mishra, Copper Tablet. There were a bunch of them. And normally what they tended to do is I have a magical item and as is, I have a magical item, and as long as I have the magical item, like a winter orb, as long as I have the winter orb,

things do not untap as normal. And so the nature of the magic artifacts is, they too could have an influence on the environment. The other thing, by the way, about artifacts, just from a mechanical standpoint, is there was a rule when there was a rule when magic came out that artifacts or non-creature artifacts shut off when tapped which meant if somehow

you tapped an artifact it would turn off so if I have a continuous effect like let's say howling mine draw a card oh well if I can tap continuous effect like let's say Howling Mind draw a card oh well if I can tap Howling Mind on my turn then at the beginning of my opponent's upkeep it's not untapped so they don't get to draw a card because it says at the beginning of every player's upkeep they draw a card

but then it could untap on my turn but my upkeep is untapped I could draw a card so you have the ability to turn it off that's something you couldn't do with enchantments you could do with artifacts so the other big difference you had the ability to turn it off. That's something you couldn't do with enchantments. You could do with artifacts. So the other big difference, this is probably the major difference

mechanically, is Richard gave all the artifacts a generic mana cost. So the idea was anybody can play any artifact in any deck. Enchantments were color tied, so you could only play enchantments in a particular deck. Enchantments were color tied, so you could only play enchantments in a particular deck.

So, there was, even from Alpha, there was some overlap. If I made a card that said, you know, each turn, blah happens, or just generally affected things,

I could do that as an enchantment or I could do that as an artifact. The biggest differences that sort of got built in from the beginning was artifacts could tap, enchantments never tapped. Artifacts cost generic mana. Enchantments cost colored mana.

And obviously, when Richard interacted with things, you know, caring about whether something's an enchantment or artifact tended to matter. Yes, there was disenchant in Alpha, which could destroy either. But there were a lot of cards like Shatter, which could destroy an artifact, but couldn't destroy an enchantment. So if your opponent had an enchantment, you couldn't do anything about it. But if they had an artifact, you could destroy it.

And there were synergies and stuff. But that is where the game began. Mechanically, they weren't... There were differences, but they were never... When we talk about the differences between artifact and enchantments, a lot of the

differences of them were not about the effects. That is not where the main difference happened. Even going all the way back to Alpha. Like, one of the things I say to people is, if you took all the artifacts and enchantments from Hifter, and just randomly picked 50 of each, and eliminated ones that had

subtypes, because subtypes will tell you what they are. If I have an enchant creature, I know what that is. But if you took away the ones that had subtypes, and then just removed the names, the art, the flavor text, literally just plucked the rules text out, and then if the card is named by name, just replace it with card name,

and then you looked at that, and let's say there were, you know, 25 randomly chosen of each artifact enchantments. And then the question is, okay, by just looking at the rules text, by what these cards do, can you identify whether it's an enchantment or an artifact? You would have trouble because, like I said,

a lot of the weight of what they did was carried in things beyond what they did. Like, the difference between artifacts and enchantments, and like I said, there are some differences. A tap ability would tell you it's an artifact. But there's a lot of overlap in what they

do. In fact, there's ways to tell that something is an artifact but not an enchantment because there might be a tap symbol on it. But there's not a there's ways to tell that something is an artifact but not an enchantment because there might be a tap symbol on it. But there's not a lot of ways to tell if someone's an enchantment and not an artifact. I mean, the subtypes would tell you, enchant creature would tell you. But if you look at the non-subtypes, the continuous global effect type stuff, magic's been doing that since the beginning. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the evolution of enchantments and artifacts. So the second expansion was called Antiquities.

And that was, the flavor Antiquities was all about artifacts. Everything in Antiquities was an artifact or affected artifacts or cared about artifacts or there were a few lands to produce colorless mana that you could play artifacts with um it was very artifact centric um and that started down the path of the idea of cards that cared more i mean there were cards in alpha that cared mostly about can i destroy you or can't i destroy you um or can i enchant you or can't i enchant you or can i copy you or can't I destroy you? Or can I enchant you or can't I enchant you? Or can I copy you or can't I copy you? There were a few of the little things.

But antiquities really started pushing the boundaries and said, you know what? You can build whole decks around things. And that was, antiquities was the first time that we really encouraged any kind of an artifact deck. You know, and gave you the tools to care about an artifact deck. encourage any kind of an artifact deck, you know, and gave you the tools to care about an artifact deck. So artifacts, definitely, early magic, we kind of made things and it was very flavorfully dependent, like mechanically dependent upon what the flavor we wanted to do is. There's a huge amount of overlap, but there's enough other things that were sort of carrying the weight

of what things were. Now, one of the things flavorfully that was the intent early on was because the colorless mana, because artifacts had a different frame because of the generic

mana, I don't think Richard was as careful about defining them flavorfully. For example, Alpha has an enchantment called Castle. That's a thing. I mean, one of the things that happened over time is the idea of we need to delineate a little more. I think

Alpha, while it had some delineation in the mana cost and the frames, was a little looser on the flavor. You know, it's like, I'm going to do stuff, and yeah, I mean, artifacts were always flavored as objects for sure. Enchantments had a much looser sense of flavor. You know, also in Alpha, there's like karma.

Okay, that's more a concept, right? Or there was crusade or black moon. You know, there was, there were different things that sort of, some of them represented sort of flavorful things and some were more concrete like castle. And I think early on, you know, I don't think Richard was quite as concerned with that.

But as time goes on, we start doing more things. Urza Saga, we messed around with enchantments. I know that it didn't... That theme, although if you go look at the design, is pretty plentiful in the theme. It didn't... I don't know what you're doing. Sorry. I have traffic around me.

So, we started messing around with the card types, enchantments and artifacts, and obviously we made a lot of different things. So, let's forward to mirrodin i mean we we'd made a lot of different things over the times we had had we'd cared so mirrodin was we had gotten into the world um uh stage three uh the third age of design where we were starting to care more about sort of overhaul cohesive themes for the blocks. Invasion had been the multicolor block,

and Odyssey had been the graveyard block, and Onslaught had been the tribal block. So the theme I really wanted to mess around with was Artifact. So I pitched the idea of Mirrodin. The idea that I really liked was that it was a brand new world because I was trying to get us to go to new worlds it was a brand new world that was an artifact world

it was artificial in nature and so I worked with a guy named Tyler Beilman so let me give you a little history about Tyler real quick so Tyler, I first met Tyler because he and his partner came and pitched us an ad for The Duelist. This was back when I was the editor-in-chief of The Duelist. And I and the producer of The Duelist, a woman named Wendy, were working on whatever. We were trying to make an ad.

And so we had some copywriters come in to sell us on an ad. And so we had some copywriters come in to sell us on an ad. And Tyler and his partner, Mark, they worked together doing ad copy. They came in to pitch us on an idea for the ad. And so the very first time I ever met them, they came in, you know, all excited. Here's our idea. And I didn't like the idea. I liked them them but I didn't like the idea all that much and I gave a lot of notes and I think they were a little grumpy because I think they were hoping

that we really liked their idea. But we ended up working with them. Both of them would later come to work for Wizards. I think they were both on the brand team for a while

and then Mark ended up going to work on marketing which makes sense it's the background with advertising but Tyler ended up coming working for R&D. And for a while, Tyler ran the creative team.

And that was during this period of time, I believe. So Tyler and I were working very closely. I loved the idea of really, since we were going to do an artifact set, really exploring what we could do with artifacts. And I was very excited, and obviously for those that know Mirrodin, Mirrodin really went whole hog on it's an artifact set. We had an artificial world, you know, the creatures themselves had a lot of artifact components to them. We hadn't yet got to colored artifacts.

I'll get to colored artifacts in a second. But we really pushed the boundaries. And one of the things that I realized at the time was it was a running joke in R&D that artifacts and enchantments just overlapped mechanically a lot. Like, there wasn't a lot of definition between artifacts and enchantments.

We kind of knew that. So, Tyler and I put together a proposal for a way to separate artifacts from enchantments. The main thrust of it was the idea was that artifacts, you used artifacts, and enchantments just were.

And the idea was that an enchantment just would have an effect. And that's what enchantments did. They had an effect. You didn't activate them. They had an effect. So the idea was no more activations on enchantments.

Enchantments didn't activate. You didn't use an enchantment. You want to use it? That's an artifact. But if you want something to just be there and do its thing, then that's an enchantment. Enchantments sort of change things.

Whether it's a local enchantment that changes the nature of the thing that it's enchanting, or it's changing the rules or something in a global way. And artifacts will be things you use. Artifacts, you'd have to tap them, or you'd have to have an activation cost. It might be a tap,

it might not cost you anything, maybe you could just for every turn use it, but it had to have an activation. This was the proposal we made. The other thing we did is Tyler and I divvied up artifacts and made a lot of artifact subtypes. I'm trying to remember this exactly. We had made scrolls, and there were potions,

and there were weapons, and there there was different things and it sort of we were trying to say what if we were we more fine-tuned the kind of artifacts we had to delineate the kind of flavor um also i think there were like uh the miscellaneous with magical doodad sort of things um and the idea was that we were trying to really redefine what the flavor was, make it a little cleaner and crisp and clear, and just create a mechanical definition that if you covered up everything else about the card, just looked at the rules text, you would know whether it was an artifact or an enchantment. The problem with this proposal was that there were artifacts and enchantments we had made

that would become off-limits for us if we followed, if we did it. For example, every core set at the time had Howling Mind in it. Howling Mind is an artifact that lets each player draw a card during their upkeep. And the idea that we couldn't reprint Howling Mind, that we followed these rules, we couldn't do Howling Mine anymore. And what Tyler and I said is, well, you can do Howling Mine, you just can't do it as an artifact.

You'd make a blue card. We now would have a blue enchantment that was Howling Mine. And that's how you would do it. And I think the problem was magic... Now, given this was back when Mirrodin came out, so we're talking 2003 I think is when Mirrodin came out.

So we're talking about 10 years into Magic. Magic is about 10 years old. And so I, and once again it came out in 2003, so I was probably pitching this 2001 or so. R&D felt that we had sort of... There were too many cool things we could do with artifacts and enchantments

that limiting like that didn't make sense. Yes, yes, it would allow you to have a clear idea of what was what, but there were just cool things that we wanted to make. We wanted to do artifacts that had continuous things. We wanted to do enchantments that had activations. So they ended up saying, no, let's not do that. During the design of Mirrodin, I did end up making equipment. Equipment, interestingly enough, started very innocently. The very first equipment essentially were just auras that happened to be artifacts. Like they acted just like auras,

that you had, you paid generic mana for them, and they were artifacts that could be destroyed like artifacts, but you just, you put them on creatures, much like you would do an aura. They were very, almost identical to auras, other than it was an artifact. And the thought process was, auras had a lot of issues, there was the card disadvantage,

which is, if I put an aura on a permanent, usually a creature, and then you later get rid of the creature with a spell, you've not only gotten rid of the creature, you've also gotten rid of my aura, so you've gotten two of my cards for one of your cards. So auras have this built-in card disadvantage, and the idea was could we make equipment such that it didn't have that problem? And so we ended up making equipment such that you put it on the battlefield, you then equipped it to, instead of enchanting

it directly from your hand, you equip it to the creature, but then if the creature dies, the equipment doesn't go away, it just falls to the ground. So it's like, I give a sword to my goblin, he fights, you kill my goblin, oh, cling, okay, now there's a sword on the ground, I can pick it up, and another of my creatures pick it up.

So, we continue down the path of just sort of making artifacts, enchantments, and having some overlap. Then in Future Sight, so Future Sight was where I was hinting at the future. So Future Sight was where I was hinting at the future. So in Future Sight, I made a card called Sarkamite Mirror, which was a mirror that was blue. It was a colored artifact. And at the time, we had never made a colored artifact. And the reason that I had done that there was we were teasing at potential futures,

and I knew there was a potential future that we'd have colored artifacts. I knew that was something that we would talk about doing. In fact, the world I thought we were hinting at, which is why I was stuck in my mirror, was we knew when we'd gone to original Mirrodin that we were going to go back to Mirrodin one day and the Phyrexians were going to take it over and make it new Phyrexia. So I like the idea that maybe that was going to be the place where we're going to do colored artifacts, when we get back to New Phyrexia.

But in the meantime, along comes Shards of Alara. So I get put, we have five mini-teams, one for each Shard, and I'm put in charge of Esper. And so the team was me, Mark Gottlieb, and Mark Globus. So the team of Marks.

And Esper was a world in which it was blue-centered, had white and black in it, had no red, no green. And we liked the idea of these creatures that were constantly upgrading themselves. That blue was all about perfection, right? And so the idea of imagine these creatures that are constantly upgrading themselves. That blue is all about perfection, right? And so the idea of imagine these creatures that there's no resistance and they're just doing everything they can

to keep improving themselves. And that flavor was really cool, but we were trying to figure out mechanically how to capture that. And I think Mark Gottlieb was the one that suggested what if all the creatures were just artifact creatures? What if they had upgraded themselves so much that they had an artifact component to them?

You know, that they were kind of, I mean, when I use the term cyborg, I mean part human, part mechanical. The flavor we'd used, used Ethereum, so I mean, it was a little more magic-based, a little less technology. But it did feel right. And so we liked the idea of we wove in this artifact theme into Esper.

And we made all the artifacts in Esper were colored artifacts. They were white or blue or black, because those were the three colors of Esper. And so that was the first time we had made colored artifacts. We still were making colorless artifacts, but that was the shtick of that set. But once you sort of let the genie out of the bottle, colored artifacts were a thing.

So the next time we used it, I think, was in New Phyrexia. We were trying to show that the Phyrexia, we were trying to show that the Phyrexians had taken over things, and we made Phyrexian mana. And the idea of Phyrexian mana is you didn't have to spend, like, Phyrexian mana was colored,

but you could spend two life rather than spending the color. So if it was, you know, black, black, Phyrexian black, Phyrexian black, that meant you can cast it for two black mana or two life and one black mana or four life. And we liked

the idea to help sort of convey the Phyrexian-ness of it that the creatures that we did with Phyrexian mana, we made artifact creatures. So they needed to be colored in order to Phyrexian mana, but we wanted them to be artifacts to show that they sort of were being taken over and that they'd been flexionized that artifacts there was a strong

tie between artifacts and flexia and so it was a neat way to sort of show the flexionization of creatures then I think the next ones I might be missing something in Theros we were making

enchanted, the gods had made their own weapons. And we used enchantments to show that they were made of the gods. But we also liked the idea of their artifacts, so they were physical, you know, it was the hammer of the red god.

You know, we wanted to physically, you know, it was the hammer of the red god. You know, we wanted to show, you know, it was the bow of the green god. You know, we wanted to show that it was an artifact, right? It was physically an object. So we made them enchantment artifacts. And because they were enchantments and because they were tied to gods, which were colored, we made them colored artifacts and colored enchantment artifacts then in Kaladesh we were making a cycle we wanted to make the cycle of

gearhawks and so we said you know let's imbue a little color here we've done that before and so little by little we started sort of adopting the idea that colored artifacts were something that were open and available to us but then let's talk a little bit about Kaladesh.

Magic had made, we had played into artifact themes numerous times over the years. We had done Antiquities as a set. We had done Mirrodin as a block with an artifact theme. We had done Scars of Mirrodin as another block with an artifact theme. Oh, sorry. We had done Shards of Alara. Then we did Scars of Mirrodin. And then we did Kaladesh. Interestingly, there were some broken cards that came out of Antiquities. And Mirrodin was one of the most broken environments we've ever had.

Mirrodin was one of the most broken environments we've ever had. Scars of Mirrodin causes some problems. Kaladesh causes some problems. There's this really observation that when we made artifacts and pushed artifacts, we tended to get ourselves in trouble. And the reason for that is when you make something that's generic mana, that any deck can play, if you make it it good enough well then anybody can play it anybody can play that thing and so um you know if we make something that's a little bit broken and it's an artifact uh it creates what we

call the blob problem which is and this happened was coined in original Mirrodin, which was you make some broken things, and then people put it in the deck, but every deck kind of had access to it. And so it became hard to sort of deal with it. You couldn't, that banning one card when there was a problem card usually wasn't enough. And artifact sets traditionally have, like, we've done three sets that were primarily artifact block sets. All three of them ended up having some problems. Interestingly, the one that was the least problematic, which was not, A, it wasn't all artifacts.

It was in Shards of Alara. But there was an artifact theme. There were artifact decks. But Shards of Alara. But there was an artifact theme. There were artifact decks. But Shards of Alara had all colored artifacts. So while there were themes and decks, they were very isolated. Like, oh, well, this color can play that deck. But that color didn't have access to everything. You know, if you wanted to play the good artifacts in Shards of Alara,

well, you had to play white, blue, or black, whatever the color of the artifacts that you wanted to have was. And so what we realized was that artifacts were causing us problems. In fact, let's talk about equipment a little bit. So we had made equipment in Mirrodin. We had liked it so much that it became evergreen right away. So we made them in Mirrodinin and then Champions of Kamigawa, which was the very next block,

there were equipment in Shards of Alara. Not Shards of Alara, sorry, Champions of Kamigawa. There was equipment in Champions of Kamigawa. We made it right away because it was flavorful, it was cool, it was fun, but we quickly found that if we made just generally useful

equipment, that why wouldn't everybody play them? They were good. So it really made us sort of kind of hold back on equipment. And what happened was, over the years, equipment got a little suckier. Like, we just couldn't make good equipment. I mean, we can make some very narrow things, but it was hard to make generically good equipment. Because if any deck could play it, well, then just decks played it, you know.

And we slowly got in a bind where we weren't making equipment that was very good. And artifacts in general, we slowly realized that it was just hard for us to push artifacts. Now, we tried to solve this by making them very narrow and niche-y, and some of that worked. But in the end, what we found was that artifacts, like when you push artifacts and they're colorless, unless they're very narrow, they get us in trouble. And they got us in trouble again and again and again and again. So there were three options available to us. and again. So, there were three options available to us. One was the status quo, which was,

well, not the status quo. One was, we just don't make good artifacts. Yeah, we make artifacts. We'll make narrow artifacts. Maybe once in a while, a narrow artifact will be good enough. But, you know what? Artifacts are for casual play. You know, we probably won't be able to make an artifact set again. You know, we just sort of resign ourselves to artifacts kind of have to suck. Option two

was we imbue them with color. And we just start making colored artifacts. And not all the artifacts have to be colored, but if we want to push something for constructed, probably, yeah, you know, unless it's very niche-y, we got to make it colored.

Option three, I guess, was just maybe we just don't do artifacts. And we had talked over the years, by the way, we had talked a lot about ever wanting condensed enchantments and artifacts. Like, is that something

where, you know, like, we had chatted a lot about, you know, because mechanically they were so similar, you know, was there supposed to be something of just like,

I mean, maybe we need a new word, but sort of like magical thing and it just meant, oh, it could be a global thing or, you know, maybe we need a new word, but sort of like magical thing. And it just meant, oh, it could be a global thing or, you know. And we realized that we liked the flavor differences. I mean, over the years, the other thing, by the way, is one of the things that happened as we sort of spent more time is we started concentrating a little more on what enchantments meant.

Artifacts were pretty clear. It was an object. But we realized eventually that in order for enchantments to sort of make sense in a world where artifacts make sense, we had to stop making them artifacts. So the rule we eventually came up with was that enchantments didn't tend to have substance, or if it did, it was sort of a magical substance. They were magically made things. That it couldn't represent just an object. Artifacts did objects. Enchantments had to be something that was magical in nature. And not just a magical item, because that would be artifacts as well. But if you're going to make an item, it would have to be composed of magic, for example. And so we little by little started giving enchantment

a little bit more of a definition from a creative standpoint. Anyway, the idea of combining enchantments and artifacts, it was messy. We didn't like it. The idea of making artifacts just suck. Artifact sets are very popular. Artifacts are very popular. One of the reasons we've done a lot of artifact sets is the audience likes artifacts. The idea of magical objects are cool.

And so we said, okay, I think the avenue that helps us the most is just adapting the idea that we're going to have more colored artifacts. Colored artifacts, instead of being, hey, we do them once in a while. And like I said, colored artifacts have been part of the game since 2000... What was Charizard Lara? No, the data stopped my head.

But they've been part of the game for quite a while. About 10 years. And we've used them in a bunch of different ways. The audience hasn't really bristled at colored artifacts. But we've used them in a much more refined, limited way. And this path meant us having to open up a little bit and use artifacts a little more broadly as color. And so the idea was we were just going to start

introducing that and doing that. I think it happened late enough. The decision happened sort of after Ravnica was already in motion. So we didn't really sort of after Ravnica was already in motion so we didn't really apply it to Ravnica but we did apply it to War of the Spark you'll notice that there's some vehicles

and there's just some stuff that's imbued with color because it allowed us to sort of represent who it was part of in Ravnica like oh well this is red and white because this is the Boros ship so it's red and white because this is the Boros ship. So it's red and white because it's the Boros ship. It allowed us to do a little bit of definitional stuff with it.

And it allowed us to push it a little bit because the color let us make it stronger than we normally would. Then in Core 2020, we made some code artifacts. We just put them in there and said, okay, you know, just sort of said, this is something we do. We knew that when we were making Throne of Eldraine, we kind of knew that this was where we were going to sort of notch it up a little bit. And the reason was when we looked at our source material, like we were doing fairy tales meets Camelot, right? source material. Like, we were doing fairy tales meets Camelot, right? And when you look at that,

there are a lot of objects. There are a lot of magical objects in fairy tales. Magical, non-magical objects in fairy tales. And in Arthurian legend. I mean, probably the most famous thing in Arthurian legend is Excalibur. It's a famous sword. You know, and we knew

there's the Holy Grail. There's the Round Table. You know, you get into fairy tales, there's the glass slipper, there's this infinite number of objects that made sense, you know. There even were things like the gingerbread man and Pinocchio that were creatures that were essentially artifact creatures. So, we decided that we would up the, and we even decided that we'd have a little bit of an artifact theme. So, what we had done originally, the original thing I had done in vision design, was it came up the idea of multiple costs. So, the idea was, imagine the upper right-hand corner. If instead of one cost, there was a cost, it said or, and there was a second cost. And the idea was, you had a choice.

You could cast this for either cost. And the mechanics that later became adamant was from this. You can cast this for 2W or WWW. W is white. You cast it for 2 and a white or white, white, white. And it does something extra if you cast it for white, white, white. We messed around a little bit with cards that were two different colors.

But for artifacts, the idea was this artifact costs 1 and a white. Or it costs 4 or 5. You know, it had a color cost, it had a color cost and it had a colorless cost.

And the idea being, oh, well, if you want to play this efficiently in tournaments, you're going to be playing this for its color. But in limited, hey, maybe you want this effect and maybe, you know, maybe you'll put it in a deck

that doesn't have that color, but okay, you're paying, you're not getting it at the best cost, but you're getting it at an artifact cost. You know, and artifacts always cost a little bit more, you know, how we've done them. But what happened was, when they were playing, they found that people mostly just played it for the colored cost, and the colored cost didn't come up as much as I was hoping it would come up. So they ended up getting rid of the alternate mana cost, and obviously the one

turned into adamant. The other ones went away. So the idea was, you know what? Let's just do colored artifacts. We're talking about wanting to do colored artifacts. You know, it's... And by the way, it's not as if artifacts haven't had a colorful flavor to them. Like if you go all the way back to Alpha, there was a card called Gauntlets of Might.

That all... I think it was global. This goes out how things worked at the time, but all mountains tap for an extra red and all red creatures got plus one plus one. I think that's what it said. That card very much says I'm a red card. It goes in a red deck. Now it didn't require

red mana, but you had to have mountains and red creatures. You know, for all intents and purposes, that could have cost red. You're not playing that in a deck that doesn't cost red. Like why Kormis Bell, you know, turned all your swamps into 1-1 creatures. Now, other than weird sideboard tech, you play that in a black deck where you cared about turning your swamps into creatures. And so the idea of Artifact 7 color had been imbued from early Magic, from a flavorful standpoint.

So we decided to bite the bullet and just do it. Okay, which brings us to Glass Casket. We get back around to Glass Casket. So Glass Casket, so for those that don't know, one of the things we did is we did a lot of research on fairy tales. So it turns out there's a Grimm's fairy tale called Glass Casket and in it I think it's like a tailor and he goes on a quest to find the glass there's a woman, I don't think she's a princess though

but anyway there's a woman trapped inside a glass casket and he's got to go find her and rescue her she's not dead or asleep or anything she's literally trapped in a glass casket and he has to find her and he finds her and rescue her. She's not dead or asleep or anything. She's literally trapped in a glass casket. And he has to find her. And he finds her and frees her and then I'm sure he marries her or whatever. And

anyway, when Walt Disney was making Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, he was familiarizing himself with the Grimm's Fairy Tales and stuff and he liked the story of the glass casket. He liked the imagery of the glass casket. So when he made Snow White,

he put her in the glass casket. I mean, she bites the apple. Spoilers for people that haven't seen Snow White and the Dwarves. He bites the evil queen, Trix, she bites the apple, puts her in a deep sleep. Everyone thinks she's dead. So the dwarves put her in a glass casket.

Obviously, Prince Charming comes along and wakes her up with a kiss. Drew loves kiss. Anyway, so I like the glass casket. It was kind of cool that it had its own story. But also, I knew that people

thought of it as being a Snow White thing. Because it being in the movie brought it into the Snow White mythos even though, like I said, originally it was its own story. People ask sometimes about why we didn't do more obscure things in Thorn of Eldraine and my answer is A, we did some obscure things but the other thing is

there's so much well-known stuff it's hard. There's so much well known stuff. It's hard to sort of justify doing the unknown stuff when there's so much known stuff and there's so much material. One of the things that fairy tales really let us do is we could really cut deep. There's a lot of things. If I

talk about a story from the Greek mythology, it's the story of Icarus. There's not that much people know about the story of Icarus. Maybe they know the wings held on by wax. You know what I'm saying? So maybe we can make Icarus' wings. But they don't know the beat-by-beat story quite as well.

But you talk about something like Cinderella or Jack and the Beanstalk or Hansel and Gretel, people just know the beat-by-beat story better. And so it's more like, oh, we've got this and this and this and this and this. And you can slice and dice it much more thin. Anyway, we wanted to do Glass Casket.

We were doing colored artifacts and the idea of the Glass Casket is I put you in the Glass Casket and then until someone frees you from the Glass Casket, you're in the Glass Casket. You're sort of, you can't do anything. You're trapped in the Glass Casket. So we glass gasket, you're in the glass gasket. You're sort of, you can't do anything. You're trapped in the glass gasket.

So we realize that, you know, normally we do an O-Ring type effect. That is an effect we do in white. Sometimes we do it on enchantments. Sometimes we do it on creatures. Have we ever done it on Planeswalker? I'm sure one day we will if we haven't. And the idea essentially is I usually want to enter the battlefield, I exile whatever, use a creature,

and then when you get rid of this, you get the creature back. So, this is something white does. And I should explain, by the way, the way the color pie works is we do not divvy the color pie by card type. There's no such thing as this is a white thing. Well, okay.

There are effects that white can do. There are things that are unique to a card type like creature ability. So, yes, we have white creature abilities. But if white, for example, has first strike, we can make a sorcery that grants first strike, or we can make an enchantment that grants first strike. So the idea essentially is the way the color pie works is if you have an ability, if you can do something in that color, that color can do it. It doesn't matter what card type, that color can do it. For example, if I'm in white, if white

can flicker things, exile things and bring them back, for example, one could argue the O-ring is kind of extended flickering. If you can flicker things, well, you can flicker things on an instant, or a sorcery, or a creature, or an artifact, or enchantment. I mean, whatever. Whatever it is, you can do it on

if it's white. So the idea we had was, look, here's an ability we normally do as an enchantment or an artifact, but it perfectly captures the flavor of the glass casket. That's what the glass casket is. Now, we could put it in artifacts and just make it cost more, but, hey, we're trying to make colored artifacts. We're trying to go in and do new stuff. But, hey, we're trying to make colored artifacts.

We're trying to go in and do new stuff. And one of the things to be aware of is magic makes the same effects time and time again. You know, a lot of what makes a trading card game tick is we are making... The basic essence of the game is the game. We're making things, and what you can do is what you can do. The color pie is the color pie. Now, any one set might introduce a few new abilities and maybe we have to figure out who does them and find the right color for them. But there's not that

many things in a magic set where like, here's an ability that you've never seen before. Yeah, there's a new mechanic or so, but even the new mechanics are usually playing in a space that some cards played in before. And so the idea there was, it was kind of cool. Here's something that we hadn't done before,

at least never as a white artifact. It was flavorful. It fit with the last casket was. It was just a real, like, oh, this really captures it. Now, we understood that traditionally, if we were doing this normally in the set, it would be an enchantment or it would be a creature. But, okay, we're trying to have more artifacts play in there, and I'm trying to change things up.

You know, I like the idea that if I have a set where I care about artifacts, hey, maybe I want to play this over some enchantment version or a creature version. Likewise, you know, when my opponent is playing against it, hey, this particular effect is vulnerable to some stuff the other one isn't, but maybe it's, you know, protected against some stuff. Maybe my opponent, you know, if they're playing red, well, they can destroy this. And people were saying, oh, this fundamentally changes the ability of O-Ring. No, we do that ability on creatures.

We do Banisher Priest. That if I'm playing against red and I do it as a Banisher Priest rather than as an Oblivion Ring, meaning a creature rather than enchantment, well, you know what? Red can deal with the creature and it can't deal with the enchantment. The issue is not Red can't deal with Oblivion Ring effects. The issue is Red has trouble with enchantments. But since the color pie says White can do this on whatever it wants, okay, well, if I put it on a creature, Red's issue is with the enchantment card type not with the abilities that enchantments may or may not do

because those abilities can be crossed among any card type so the idea that here's an ability that more often is done as an enchantment or a creature well yeah, we haven't done a lot of card artifacts this is a new space but it's not violating anything. It's not breaking the color pie. Now, it is making things a little bit different.

Oh, it's an Oblivion Ring variant, and it has some differences from Oblivion Ring. Okay, but that's not a negative. That's not a bug. That's a feature. The fact that we can make yet another Oblivion Ring-like card, but have it be something different we haven't done before, that is upside.

That is positive. Now, one of the things about that is, I mean, the reason, like I said, there are three major differences between Artifacts and Enchantments up to this point. One was the mana cost. For reasons of game balance, it's going away. Well, there's only two other reasons left

one is how things interact with it meaning that there are things that are synergistic with artifacts that are synergistic with enchantments that are things that are good against that are answers to artifacts or enchantments and changing what it is means that different cards interact with it differently

that is still true the other one is flavor that like I said if it differently. That is still true. The other one is flavor. That, like I said, if I'm going to make a magical object, meaning a made object that exists in the real world, it might be magical in nature, but it exists, you know, it has magical properties, but it's a thing.

It's a hammer. It's whatever. It's an orb or something that someone has made. That is an artifact. An enchantment has to be magical, magic in nature, and not have sort of a form and substance of a made object. I mean, it can be an object made of magic. We do that a little bit. You know, I'm binding you and the binds are magical binds or something.

But we have made that separation. And the one thing, the one note that I'm getting is, for example, we made a card that in design was called Roundtable. Because it was supposed to capture the roundtable. And it was a card that had knight synergy and not only helped knights, but made knights. And it was, get it, it's the round table. It's where the knights gather. When they were making the set, we cycled out every,

we wanted every court to have a magical item, a rare, legendary magical item. And so it made sense for the round table to be white. Because whites all vote loyalty, the white courts all vote loyalty. And the idea of, you know, they gather around. That ended up, through story reasons, being turned to the circle of loyalty, which is this magical item that you have to walk

through to prove your loyalty. And anyway, the nature of it is a little vague, and it definitely has a little bit of that ring of magic feel to it which i know people are saying oh this feels a little enchantmenty and that's a good note um i mean i will stress once again um i said this in my blog that um a lot of times people talk to

me as if this is a design thing you have to be conscious of and my note there is oh we made the round table when it was handed, it was the round table. It was an artifact. It acts like an artifact. It taps like an artifact. It has all the properties of being an artifact mechanically. That's the card concepting thing, which is a good note, and I'll pass along to the card concepting people,

which is, you know, in a world in which artifacts and enchantments are getting even closer in their identity, more and more is leaning on the flavor of making them feel distinct from one another. And that's a fine note. And the other thing in general, and so one of the things that I said on my blog is whenever we do something new, whenever we make a change, there is resistance to that change. It does not matter what the change is. You can pick any change in magic and even changes that were generally positive, even changes which most of the people liked the change, there's always a voice of, what are you doing? You know, double-faced cards is a fine example,

where most people really like double-faced cards, but there were, there was a small minority that hated them, hated them. Um, and so anytime we do anything, there is always a little bit of resistance to change. Now, some of the time there is what I'll call rejection, where the audience is like, what are you doing? Um, where it's really like, it doesn't feel right right and one of my things when we try something new is i have to feel is it disorientation from it being new you know and oh we just do this for a while and the audience will get used to it and then it'll just be the way we do things or is it some sort of rejection where oh this is just fundamentally not sitting right with people and man we really have to reconsider this choice. And one of the things is I interact with that all the time.

You know, every time we make a change, I'm going to get people. And I've learned through the years of just how people interact, the way they interact, the words they use, you know. I have a good sense of whether it's disorientation or whether it's rejection. And this particular one, it's disorientation or whether it's rejection. And this particular one, it's disorientation. Like I said, we've done colored artifacts before. It is not as if the audience is fundamentally against that. We've done it. We've done it numerous times in numerous sets.

The issue here is more a volume and execution thing. And I take to heart, like, I understand that Glass Casket feels weird. And the major reason it feels weird is it is something that you tend to associate with white enchantments. Now, I will note, white creatures do it just as much as white enchantments.

But it is something that you associate when you think of white permanents, at least ones that sit around without having another function. Yeah, okay, you associate it with enchantment because that's what had done it. Part of making card artifacts, there's going to be a little bit of, oh, I haven't seen

and once again, we made allied hedron network. This is something we've done as an artifact. You know, if you go back even to like Taunus' coffin, there's a little, I mean, you know, duplicate. I mean, there's different things we've done before where artifacts are sort of removing a creature on some level.

We've done that. It's not something we've done a lot. Yeah, yeah, we've done a lot more enchantments and creatures. Um, but one of the things about colored artifacts that I think is cool is one of the reasons that we shied away from certain stuff was we didn't want to step on the toes of certain colors, and

you know, we were trying to sort of be respectful but one of the things about opening this up about making colored artifacts is it's going to allow us to do some stuff that we've kind of wanted to do but had trouble doing does that mean that there'll be things that you recognize like will we take things that are iconically things that have normally be done on enchantments and doing artifacts yeah we will we will. I don't see that, once again, feature not bug. You know, magic has to keep doing the same effects again and again. And that we're going to continue to do stuff where it matters. Artifacts and enchantments are going to matter.

We're going to continually doing things, you know, where, hey, I'm doing historic, so I care about artifacts, but I don't care about enchantments. Or I'm playing Constellation, so I care about enchantments, but I don't care about artifacts. You know, we're going to keep doing things where there is meaningful difference between artifacts and enchantments. Or I'm playing Constellation so I care about enchantments, but I don't care about artifacts. We're going to keep doing things where there is meaningful difference between artifacts and enchantments. And so the idea

that we can invent things and say, you know what? Hey, if you like this effect, we will give it to you as an enchantment. We will give it to you as an artifact. We'll give it to you probably as a creature. That gives you choices as someone building to have a lot of options to do different things.

That is good for magic. Those options, those choices are good. Now, the thing I'm getting from the players who are upset, and when people are upset, my goal is not to go, eh, I don't need to worry about that. Whenever somebody's upset, you want to understand why they're upset and get to the crux of what it is. What is making people sort of unhappy?

And I think the crux of it is even though there was a thin veneer between mechanical definition of artifacts and enchantments, it mattered to people. And so one of the things going forward, you know, I'm going to have the conversation again with R&D

about when and where and how, you know, it might be, for example, we lean certain directions for enchantments and artifacts, and we play up the fact that there's certain things that enchantments do that artifacts don't, artifacts do that enchantments don't. It's something that we can reevaluate some of those lines. But I will say that, you know, there's going to be some overlap in the nature of, especially in sort of continuous ability type space,

there's going to be some overlap between artifacts and enchantments. I don't think that's going to go away. It does mean we have to be extra careful in our card concepting. It does mean that we have to be a little more crisp in what it means to be an in what what it means to be an artifact or what it means to be an enchantment from a flavorful standpoint and from a mechanical

standpoint you know we need to figure out when it matters and it's possible for example if i could do something with a tap ability or not that maybe i find ways and artifacts to lean toward doing the tap ability version where in Enchantments I lean toward not doing that. I'm going to take this to heart. I'm going to look and see when we make things, are there subtle ways where we can make,

are there subtle things we can do that make artifacts feel more artifact-y in Enchantments More Enchant Me in the world where we're doing colored artifacts? Because that is a world we're in. Hopefully, my big takeaway today is I recognize some of the discomfort. Some of it I do believe will go away with time. Some of it is just

like, I'm used to this being an enchantment and now it's an artifact. That seems different to me. But what I have found is there'll come a point where you're like, oh, okay, now this one's an artifact this time. I don't think long-term that's going to be a big problem. But I do see the desire for having some sort of loose definitional stuff. And that's something we'll look at.

In general, what we have found is top-down slavery tends to, you know, like making a really cool glass casket that felt like a glass casket that did what a glass casket wanted, um, was the priority at the time. And yes, we did something that a little bit leans more toward enchantments than leans toward artifacts, at least historically. Um, and I, I think part, part, part of what will happen is we need to be a little more careful moving forward. I think what will happen with time is I think we need to take baby steps and be a little more careful and slowly nibble our way there. And that I think with time, we'll get to the point where it'll feel more natural. But in

the run-up, as we're making that transition, yeah, we have to be a little bit more careful about what feels what. And that is something that I will be more conscious of moving forward. So I don't want people who complained about this to feel like I didn't understand that you're complained or I didn't feel that complaint had warrant or anything. I get it and I understand it and I want people not to feel ill at ease. But in the same sense, there's larger things being balanced.

So it's an interesting thing where I think there's some subtle things we can do to help avoid some of the, you know, I get the problem with the circle of loyalty and how it feels enchantment-y in its nature. Even though mechanically it feels artifact-y, it flavorfully feels enchantment-y, and that

feels sort of wrong to people. So there's some things that we can fix. There's some lessons we got here. But anyway, I had major traffic today, so you got a lot longer talk on this topic than I expected. But anyway, I hope this was today, so you got a lot longer talking this topic than I expected. Um, but anyway, I hope, I hope this was good. I hope you guys enjoyed it.

I like sort of taking topics that come from you guys and sort of walking through and talking about them. And it's fun to talk about history. So hope you guys enjoyed today's podcast, but I got, I got, I gotta go work. So, uh, we all know what this means. It's 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.