Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #744: Erik Lauer

Episode Date: May 29, 2020

Erik is my equivalent in set design. He and I talk about our many years of making Magic together.

I'm not pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the Drive to Work Coronavirus Edition. So I've been doing fun interviews with different people involved with magic, and I got a great one today. So I'm here with Eric Lauer. Say hello, Eric. Hello. So what do you do? First, let's tell the audience what exactly you do on magic. you do on magic so i'm the head of final design so you come up are the head of creating the vision of what it is and what we're making and i work on how can we bring your vision to life in the most practical way yeah the metaphor i always use is that my team is more like the architects making blueprints making architectural plans and then er Eric's team has to actually build the house.

Right. Okay, so Eric, let's start what I've been asking everybody. I want to know, how did you get into Magic? How did I get into Magic? Well, I was at Carnegie Mellon, and there was a local game shop, and some people bought some cards, and it looked fun, so I started playing. shop and some people bought some cards and it looked fun so i started playing and at first we were basically playing multiplayer and then got bored of waiting for everyone's turn to come around so we started playing two-player so that's how we got into magic so how long how long was it between you starting to play two-player games and the pro tour what was the gap there wow i don't

remember the number of years, but it was... I started playing really when Beta came out, is when I could buy cards. Okay, so like early 94? Yeah, and I played in the first year of the Pro Tour, but the first calendar year.

First year of the Pro Tour was 95. Oh, no, no, I'm sorry, 96. 96. It was 96. 96. Oh, no, I'm sorry, 96. 96. It was 96. 96. Oh, wait, maybe that wasn't it. Maybe it was 97 now that I think of it. Yeah, the New Yorkers. It was Dallas. Right, Dallas was in 96.

November of 96, I believe. Okay, that was the first time. It was the first time I was ever in Texas. Okay. Okay, so... In fact, it's funny. The first time I ever heard about you was when Randy Bueller won his Pro Tour in Chicago

and I interviewed him. He credited you with making the deck. And I think at the time they called you like the Mad Doctor or something. Yeah, the Mad Genius. The Mad Genius, yeah. That deck, yeah. It was a lot.

It was a Necro deck, which is a black broken enchantment. But it was really partially just a red-white blow stuff up deck. With Disenchant and Lightning Bolt. But it was all the low casting cost fair cards. Well, as fair as Lightning Bolt is. But just fueled to have lots of cards. So, okay. So you had been part of the Carnegie Mellon group.

And then I think your first really good showing was in Rome? Was in Rome, yeah. So I had some health problems I usually didn't do as well on the later days of the Pro Tour. Rome was very combo, very broken. The deck advantage was so large to compensate for that. And so I top-aided that one. Okay, so how many years did you play on the Pro Tour? For about two and a half years but i basically had didn't have enough energy to both play on the pro tour

and go on with the rest of my life so i chose to leave the pro tour okay so now explain so you were not on the pro tour anymore. How did you end up coming to Wizards? So I was working in New Mexico, and it was fine, but I wasn't having a lot of fun, and Randy offered me a position here. Randy is Randy Bueller, real quick. Randy Bueller, the same person who told you I built that deck. Right. And so I came here, and it's a lot of fun, so I decided to stay. What was the first set you worked on?

The first set I worked on was Morning Tide. It was the person who was on both the design and development team of Morning Tide. Oh, so that would be the first team you and I worked on then. Right. Paul Sotosanti was the lead designer. Right, right, right. And Mike Kurian was the lead developer. Okay. So that was interesting seeing the two of them. Okay, so

you came in like most people, you start as a contractor. Right. And then you start as a contractor. Right. And then you get hired full-time. So what was the first set that you led? What was the first set that you were in charge of the development for? Well, so before I led any main sets, I worked on, for Magic Online only, Masters Edition 2, 3, and 4 I led the design of.

Then the first paper set I led was Magic 2010. Okay. It was called M10 at the time, led by Aaron Forsythe. And what was special about that set? Well, it was the first core set

to offer new cards since Beta. um it was really a he aaron was saying what do you think was the best acquisition set of all time was his question to me and i said it must be alpha it started the whole game and the game was a giant success. So really, the idea there was to make, what if we made the best modern version of Alpha? Learn all the lessons from Alpha, excluding probably Moxin and totally broken turn one win stuff. Just what was so engaging about it?

The top-down designs, the ability to brew little stories on cards and seeing how aaron led the set and then okay there's this gin and you had a contest if you could design the best gin and i can see what you guys are trying to make the actual card's not fun i'll make it but i can't get what you're trying to make here so that was what this set was really about and you hit on an important point that I just want to stress here one of the jobs of final design

is vision will come up with neat ideas but sometimes the execution is wrong the idea is a cool idea but how do you make it actually play so that it'll do what you want it to do and that's a big part of what you guys do right and uh but the important thing is the main way i believe the main communication between vision and uh set design design, is the actual file of cards.

Some people say, oh, why do you bother with the file of cards? Because we're making cards, and the best way to say, oh, here are the types of cards I have in mind is the cards. But then you have to talk to the person and draw an inference of, what is it they liked about this card? No, it's not that it's too powerful and you can win on turn two. It's this other thing, and you have to discover, surely there's something here, figure out what that is and figure out how to preserve that and deal with the parts

that you don't like about it and that's that was a lot of what was learning there but it was it was in a period where i think it was on something like 10 consecutive development teams and led three of the 10 yeah you have the record i believe of being on the most development slash set design teams yes i'm i'm actually close to you but you beat me out right uh of course you have the most total i have the most designs but i i have a vision and design but um i was on a lot of development teams in the early days, but not a lot recently. I think I just passed Mike Elliott for

second most total. Oh, it might be, yeah. That's possible. He was on a lot. He was on a lot. Okay, so after you did Magic 2010, what was your first finally you did an expansion set. What was your first expansion set?

So what happened was I led Magic 2010, Magic 2011, Mirrored and Besieged, which was designed by Mark Gottlieb, was my first expansion set. And then my next one was Innistrad, which you led. Right, so let's talk real quickly, Mirrored and Besieged. So that was a challenging set because we had this wonderful gimmick where

at the pre-release, half the people got the Phyrexian side and half the people got the Mirrored inside. I'm sure that was a pain in the butt. Well, so what happened was the set was not designed with that in mind

but Mike Turian thought this was a great idea. But in order for it to work, you have to have the right number of Mirren cards, the right number of Phyrexian cards, so that the set actually works when you split it in two. And this creates a grid of cards that needs to work for each color, and very deliberately. of cards that needs to work for each color and very deliberately and then you need enough of the little artifacts to make metal craft work that are on the mirror inside so basically i had to make my own grid figure out which of uh mark got leap's cards would fit in that grid and which ones would not and start picking them uh among the ones i had too many i got to pick which ones would not and start picking them, uh, among the ones I had too many. I got to pick which ones I liked the most and the ones had too few. But then, um, Aaron decided he wanted with others,

he wanted to change the flow of the story as well. Uh, that, that the timeline of the events and where we were was different, and that meant we had to change the mechanic and change... My favorite thing about the set was it had snap-on equipment, but instead that was removed. So there were just a huge number of changes. For a first expansion set lead, it was just, wow, a lot of work.

Okay, okay. So you did Mirror New Siege, then the next one you said you did Innistrad, and right, the thing of note for Innistrad is it's the first time that I led a design to hand out to you leading the development. Right.

So another thing that happened was two of the other developers decided they wanted to move on and do other things. Mike Turin and Matt Place left. So we had this super green development team and this giant set of Innistrad. And it had what at the time was very contentious double-faced cards.

And I was just trying to make the set work and get away from people who were so upset internally, as you can imagine, about the double-faced cards, and you were trying to tell me, don't cut, take them out, they're great. And so that was an experience to itself. But I also had ideas of, here's how I wanted to make a limited environment work, that I had different ideas than Matt and Mike had been working on. So, yeah, that was, but I was very, just trying to shovel off, and finally Aaron took control of the whole what to do about double-faced cards,

so I could just shuttle people over to him. That was wonderful. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it turned out to be, I think, we talk about just great magic sets. I think it turned out to be one of the all-time greats of magic.

That was very exciting. Yeah, my way of looking at the all-time greats is they are the best set yet. So you don't compare them to future sets because we're intelligent people. We're like, oh, that was was really good what lessons can we learn right uh but there are these big ones which there's a whole bunch of new lessons to be learned because it did a bunch of things that better than was before and part of it was the idea that um they're the allied color pairs you can just pick it up

if you've read a little bit of the story or just look at the art you can get the five tribes and the five enemy color pairs aren't so obvious so as you start playing with the allied pairs and you're like oh but I got a blue

card and a green card what do blue and green do together? Oh, maybe I could add red to this and discover over time. Yeah. Okay, so... Yeah. So Innistrad went really well. So after Innistrad, what was your next set?

Oh, well, I led the next few fall sets. So my next one was Return to Ravnica. Okay, so that Ken Nagel led that. So, how was Return to Ravnica? Well, Return to Ravnica was, so, there was this

temptation to just do Ravnica again, but I thought there were lessons to learn of how Ravnica could have been done better, which might make sense now, but was sort of heresy at the time. Yeah. And it was, no, see, some of the color pairs linked into their neighbors. I think all of them should link into their neighbors where possible.

And so I tried to communicate that to ken ken kind of didn't like all that constraint so i just picked his best ones the ones that he liked the most he really loved the is it mechanic overload which i thought oh this is good uh but it's not very izzity to me. It feels more green, but everything that Ken likes to make is green. But anyway, he liked it, and it was a good mechanic, so I kept that there and tried to piece together what the rest would have to be

to make things work. Okay, so after Ravnica is Theros? Theros. Okay, so Theros will be the second set that I led and I handed off to you. So what was unique about making Theros? So what was unique about making Theros was you had very much latched into the building up as exciting and how to make that work. latched into the building up is exciting and how to make that work and the problem was some players there are a lot of players who want to do that but there's some players who don't

so it was trying to create enough stuff for the other players that it wasn't all about slapping aura on and build up and up and up and And I think we partially succeeded with that. More devotion, going wide. Some contentious cards, the Grey Merchant. But basically it was, how are we going to get these auras to work? Maybe what we need is creatures with high toughness that bounce off each other, so you play an aura

and it lets you get through. But that was really different. Both how to make auras work, because that's hard by itself, and then how to make things that aren't all about auras work. But a big tool you gave was heroic. That was a very... I loved that mechanic. I, too. I like

heroic a lot, too. Okay, so after Theros, we get to Khans? Khans, yes. Okay, so Khans of Tarkir is another, like Innistrad, it's considered to be one of the sort of pinnacle sets. So let's talk a little bit about how Khans got made. So Khans, the

comparison set, oh boy, was, I want to say it's Esper, Shards of Alara. Yeah. So there's, how, Shards of Alara, the thing was, too want to say it's Esper. Shards of Alara. So there's Shards of Alara, the thing was too many games came down to the first player to get all three colors

online wins. So there was the thought of first of all, much like RTR, make all the neighboring cons What are the cons? All the... Clans.

The clans, we call them. The clans. Make them all cooperate in some way so you can build together a bit. I did that. I did that for you. You definitely did that. And then,

internally, the problem was I came up with we just need a lot more mana fixing than other sets. I thought that was the biggest problem with Shards of allah was not enough mana fixing so you put in piles of mana fixers all 10 dual lands uh just just everything just to make and then uh mediumish mana stones which aren't obvious to some people why they're there they're there because i assume we're wrong and either a mana fixing is too weak or too strong

or not enough so there's just this buffer of if we were too weak you could play these mana stones uh but otherwise you know maybe you don't need them and so that and then there were arguments about morph and some people wanted morph and some people didn't want morph and you really did so we kept them but then i decided morph could also be a tool for what to do with your three color cards at least in common when you don't have all three colors so not so many games would come down to the first person to get three colors wins and so you could play a morph and bluff, but actually you don't have your third color

and then surprise your opponent when you do. So those were the tools that you gave, which I don't think you were thinking morph was mana fixing, but I think it sort of was. I did. I did. I actually did think that. Oh, you did? Okay.

Yeah. I was aware. I mean, the secret behind the story of that set was it was a morph set first that kind of later became a wedge set. And then I realized that, oh, the morph and the wedge could work together. That's why we kept them together. Oh, I remember when you were willing to entertain experiments other than three mana 2-2. Yes, yes, the morph experiment.

And there was a two mana 2- at one point yeah so i was playing dave humphries and both of us came up with the same deck design of every single two one was in our deck every single dual landed or pool was in our deck it was just whatever other powerful cards but we were just spamming the board with two mana two ones yeah. Yeah. And we realized, okay, this is a good experiment. He thought it was bad, and I said, this is a great experiment, because now we don't have to wonder whether this is a good idea or not. It clearly is messed up.

Okay, okay. So, yeah, okay. It's supposed to be a good experiment. Okay, so that's cons. So the next thing, Battle for Zendikar, is that the next one? Battle for Zendikar, yeah, that, if? Battle for Zendikar, yeah, that... If you make ten sets, one of them is going to be the weakest of the ten. That's the logic of the scenario.

That is the weakest. From my set, as far as me handing off a set to you, that is the worst handoff I ever gave you was that set. Yeah, so... It had a lot of problems. This led to timeline problems because the way it worked was I get a set, and just a couple weeks later, the art team starts illustrating, making cards, the illustrations.

So they were like, well, which allies are soldiers or clerics? And I was like, I don't know. I've been told to redo a lot of the set. I've been told to redo a lot of the set. So that created a lot of stress and led to, in part, the whole idea of changing from design development to having vision and set. So the timeline is different. Yeah, yes, yes.

Okay, so after Battle for Zendikar, are we to Kaladesh? that next yes okay so kaladesh was interesting in that you and i both did the same thing in that we had a junior person we were training and so i did the first half of design and handed off to sean main and you did the first half of development and hand it off to Ian Duke, right? Right. So I hand it off to Ian Duke, and my biggest concern was the set would be too complicated, and then that would overwhelm the testing,

and the set would break. That was my big concern I was trying to work on. Yeah. And so I made some progress towards making it less complicated. There was a whole, in addition to everything else, there was a whole additional mechanic. Yeah. Which involved drafting cards, getting them out of your sideboard. And I was like, this is too much.

It's just going to break and overwhelm people. And then I handed it off. And surely enough, it just climbed to complexity and broke. So I was learning how to mentor someone, and I just didn't use a heavy enough hand. Sure. I'm very happy.

I think Cowlish is a very fun set. I agree with you. It's a little more complex than it needed to be, but I thought it was a very fun set. Yeah, but the number of challenges was also just too much and was too likely to make too many broken parts. No, no, I realize that. Like, yeah. For example, we should have handed off one less mechanic, and you killed it

pretty early in development, but we shouldn't have even given it to you. So... But once again, I was also training somebody, so it was definitely a learning experience. I think part of the lesson was let's not both train someone to hand it off on the same same time yeah it's probably good okay so after kaladesh what's the next that you led did you um you didn't do amonkhet because

that was dave uh did you do no ixalan was sam um it actually was was so we had a three step one as we transitioned from the previous thing to the new system. Dominaria was actually three. Were you handing it off to me? So Dominaria is the next one that you had a handle on.

Right. Okay. And that was interesting because I got to hand off to dave humphries yeah so what was dominaria like what was the challenge of dominaria it was a really strong uh handoff i thought it just didn't include enough stuff from the past. The most memorable thing was I don't think it had sapperlings.

You added sapperlings, okay. There was just room for more stuff. Sure. The description was getting the gang back together. Yeah. Well, the story was that they were gathering all the different characters to come together to solve the big problem.

Yeah. So I rewatched the Blues Brothers to get a sense of. OK, that's good. And then I was like, oh, you've left some stuff out from the past that we could fill into more colors. Yeah. And also trying to describe to people why, how legends and artifacts have a similar mind space and how this is a great mechanic.

I was trying to just back up the sales pitch. No, this is really good. But that's something I remember. Okay, so after Dominaria, was Guilds of Ravnica your next? Yeah, so there was Guilds of Ravnica and

Ravnica Allegiance. Okay, and technically Sam did Ravnica Allegiance and you did Guilds of Ravnica, right? Well, I did both, handed them both off and then went back to Guilds of Ravnica, right? Well, I did both, handed them both off. Okay. And then went back to Guilds of Ravnica. So Gavin led Guilds for a little while and Sam led R&A.

Okay. But you did Guilds of Ravnica at the beginning and the end of Guilds of Ravnica. Right. So that was your second rap. So that was the first time you returned to a world, right? You led a return to a world that you had done before. That I'd done. Yes.

Um, so what was it like doing, doing, doing Ravnica yet again? Wow. Um, it was a little odd cause I was in that chain of Dominaria to guilds to, and back and forth.

Uh, so it was a bit of a blur in that respect. There were new people. So it was interesting having the same discussions where I was saying, no, no, we've already discussed this. Here's why we did blank. And then realizing,

oh yeah, you guys weren't here when we made Guilds of Ravnica. Yeah, yeah. So that was interesting realizing I've been here so long, I'm just dealing with another generation of designers. Yep. That was the lesson.

Hey, tell me about it. True. Okay, so after you did Guilds of Ravnica, is Throne of Eldraine the next set you worked on? Because you did a little bit of Arne in the beginning. War of Spark was Dave. You didn't do War of the you did a little bit of our name in the beginning um where spark was dave you didn't do one of the spark i don't believe no okay uh so throw so eldraine uh actually godly was leading it for a while okay for quite a while and then but but he he it's interesting he was like stepping from design, from vision design, which used to be design, into set design. But he got partway through and didn't really have a lot of clarity as to how to continue it.

So I took over and was like, oh, the most interesting spot to me was this discussion of what does it mean to draft a monocolor deck? And he was on you can have up to five cards of your second color and i was thinking well what makes that different from drafting the two color deck like i have a blue white deck with uh 18 blue cards and five white cards and i play these mono blue reward cards why Why is that different from the other one? So I came up with a new idea of you have these hybrid cards, and it is your mono blue deck will play hybrid cards, quad hybrid, and you might get two of those and piece them together,

and that's going to say what the blue deck is with the splash. It's something that can combine the elements of the hybrid cards. Oh, interesting. So there were interesting puzzles like that to work on. Yeah, one of the things that I was very entertained by when you were working on Throne of Eldraine was you were not as familiar with the source material, just because fairy tales weren't

something you had done a lot growing up. Right, so I tried to avoid Throne of Eldraine for that reason. I just know you and I would have fun conversations where I would explain that Little Red Riding Hood wasn't a princess stuff like that Yes, I was very confused by all the princesses

where's the warrior princess in these stories Yes, so That, yeah Okay, so... That... Yeah. Okay, so... I believe the next set you worked on is not out yet, right? Because you didn't work on Theros Behind Death

and you didn't work on Ikoria? No. So the next set, yeah, not out yet. So Zendikar Rising is the next set you worked on? Yes. Okay, so we can't talk too much about that. So we're actually, I'm almost to the office here. So in the last few minutes,

is there any interesting aspect you want to talk about, about your job or something that you, you know, for people that might not know what you do, that it might be fun to sort of talk about? Oh, interesting. Well, there's all the other sets i worked on so uh along the way uh there was master's edition where the first master's edition was aaron and max mccall believe created it and handed it off to me. And that was tremendously fun.

And we didn't really know at the time if it was going to become a series. So I worked on some of those. And at the time I got here, R&D was just a much smaller group. So I was handed all the random mathy tasks. Yeah. Because that's your background. Your background is math. That's my background. so I was handed all the random mathy tasks. Yeah. But now we... Because that's your background. Your background's math.

That's my background. I'm a mathematician. Computer science and math. But now we just have so many more people and more mathematicians. Ari is a mathematician too. And Kenny is a... Right?

Kenny is an economist. Yeah. But even just a pure designer, Ari is a mathematician. Although, we've had others in the past. Yeah. Well, and Richard, obviously, is a mathematician. Richard, yes. Discreet math.

Anyway, so one of the things that's fun, the reason I like having people on my podcast is just so people can get different experiences. They hear me talk a lot because it's my show, but, you know, there's a,

a lot downstream of me that goes on. That, you know, my job's coming up with, with crazy ideas, but, it is your job

and your team's job to make those crazy ideas and turn them into reality, which is sometimes not so easy. Right, but it's a lot of fun. The job changes with every set you make.

That is true. So anyway, I need to round up because I've now reached my den. So I want to thank you, Eric, for joining me. Hopefully people got a little more insight in what you do, and I hope they have a... I'm hoping with all these interviews that I get people get a little more insight in what you do. And I hope they have a...

I'm hoping with all these interviews that I get people get a larger sense of kind of how magic works. Because there's so many people involved in it. But thank you very much for joining me. Thank you, Mark. So as I reach my den, we all know what that means. It means the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So thank you so much, Eric. Thank you, Mark. And it is drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So thank you so much, Eric.

Thank you, Mark. And it is time to go. So I'll see you guys all next time. Bye-bye.