Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #817: Invasion with Bill Rose

Episode Date: March 19, 2021

I sit down with the senior vice president of tabletop Magic, Bill Rose, to talk about the design of Invasion.

I'm not pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the Drive to Work Coronavirus Edition. So I've been doing this thing recently where I'm getting together with designers and talking about sets that we worked on. So today I have Bill Rose and we're going to talk about Invasion. So hey Bill. Hey, how you doing Mark? Okay, so this is going way back. Show how old we are. How many years? So Invasion came out in 2000, I believe. So this is over 20 years ago we worked on it.

It came out 20 years ago. Actually, it came out over 20 years ago. So, wow. Okay, so what is your earliest memory? You were the impetus for this happening. So what got you to pitch invasion in the first place i mean invasion to me is multi i've always always been a fan of multi-color magic from like the get-go um from the earliest designs and i've loved multi-color creatures

spells the lands and i just wanted to commit to a full set of multicolored cards. Like, it's really that simple. Like, Magic at the time never didn't have enough multicolor for me. Yeah, I mean, something I should explain. I mean, you and I know this, but back in Once Upon a Time, we would, like, withhold multicolor, and so whole sets would have no multicolor. It was like, like, we were like, you know, we're going to withhold food from you so that you appreciate food more.

I mean, it was kind of ridiculous, but, like, who, we didn't know back then. Yeah, but, I mean, I always, and we had people who were, like, always uncertain about multicolor, right? Like there was always like there was more of a divide, if I can recall, in R&D of people who liked it and people who didn't. Yeah, you and I liked it. I know that. Thinking back. Yeah, yeah. There's so much that we did back then.

It just doesn't make any sense by today's day. Yeah, well, what did we know? It was really like the middle ages of TCG design. Yeah. Okay, so block design had started with Mirage. That was really sort of the first modern block, I mean, block as we think of them. I mean, Ice Age kind of retroactively kind of did one,

but Mirage was the first time we sort of meant for it to be a block, right? Correct. Mirage started design outside time we sort of meant for it to be a block, right? Correct. Mirage was... Mirage started design outside of the block concept, but when we finished design, we already had worked on Invasion, and we had created the block concept.

So it was designed to be all three. So Invasion was... I think the premise was we started was, it's going to be the first multicolor block. We did not have a multicolor block. Right. Okay. So let's talk a little bit about Spectral Chaos.

So what do you know about Spectral Chaos? Spectral Chaos, Barry Reich's set. Yeah. I mean, it was a submission. Barry was one of the playtesters. Barry is, my understanding is, he is the first person to play a form of magic with Richard. I mean, it was way different. There was one deck, but Barry, in my mind, is

the first person to play the game with Richard Garfield. Okay, so what happened was, the early playtesters all broke off and made sets. So you and Joel and Charlie and a bunch of others made Mirage, Menagerie right at the time. And then Scaf and Jim and Dave and Chris made Ice Age. Barry went off on his own. So what do you know of Barry's venture so he went off on his own

and he like me liked multicolor you know this is where what's the mechanic where all Domain he was the creator of Domain and that was one of the mechanics

I just I fell in love with Domain, yeah. He was the creator of Domain. And that was one of the mechanics. I just, I fell in love with Domain the moment I saw it. To me, like, I can't remember specific cards from Spectral Chaos. I mean, it had a lot of, it had too much. I'll say like that. It had like, it did have too much chaos. But when I saw Domain, I was just like, this is beautiful. Like, this is beautiful design. And so that was the one main thing we took from Spect do it was like a non-basic land that produced colorless mana that counted

as a basic land. And people were like, oh my god, it'll break magic! I was like, I wish we had that back in the day. That's one of, that's the, I guess my biggest regret from Invasion is that I didn't force that thing through. They made Barry's land happen.

Okay, so the idea was we looked at Spectral Chaos, we took some things from it, the biggest thing we took was Barry's domain. And then, okay, so, here's my earliest memories. I mean,

you asked me and Mike Elliott to be on the team, and then our first week of design was... At your dad's house. At my dad's house, yes.

My dad's house in Tahoe house it was so chaotic back then where we were doing so much that it was really hard to find time to like work on the future and we just like it was crazy back then we're like let's go off let's go off in the middle of the winter to your dad's ski cabin and we'll work um we actually did work we skied some and we worked some yeah we did like it was a really good time it was crazy like we just like would design for hours and hours and hours at a time yeah no i remember it it's uh like putting the set together and i will say between you, me and Mike Elliott, there were three egos in that room.

Yeah, that's great. I mean, it was like, it was a really, I just really have a fond memory of debating everything and debating the cards. And like everybody was on board with multicolor and everybody was pitching their own ideas. It was a really fun time. Okay, so I'm going to talk about one of the ideas I pitched.

Okay. So I had made we had made Unglued, then we made the second Unglued that didn't happen. But there's a mechanic in that that I really liked that I pitched to you, which are split cards. Oh, yeah.

So talk a little bit. I want to hear. I mean, I've told the story from my perspective. What is your story of me pitching you split cards? What is your story? So I'll say this. Like, split cards are something where I did. You 100% designed split cards.

I, I didn't, you, you 100% designed split cards. I, I see myself as the split card champion. Like you designed split cards and like half the company just attacked you. I don't know why. And I was like, Mark, like domain. I saw the split card day one and I was like, this is it. We have to publish it. And then I just started banging on people. I remember.

And oh, my God, the brand team hated it. R&D hated it. It was funny. I know. I remember one time talking with Joel Mick like a year later. And I just said, because Joel at time was um he's a very good friend of mine um now and and somebody who I designed Mirage with me we were friends before we started working on Magic together and he was the um vice president of marketing at the Magic brand

marketing at the time and afterwards I was able to say to joel like i i know i was fighting with everybody loves them now that they're published but i remember i was fighting with a lot of people but nobody will admit they were fighting with me now so i just you know it was one of those things that it was just like so out of the box. And then people are arguing, oh, Invasion has too much. But, you know, I just it was one of it was just it was so clean. It was so classic. I knew it like as soon as it was as soon as it was presented. And I'll say Mike came around pretty quickly.

Mike at first was like, but, but then he was supportive. The person who wasn't was Henry Stern. Oh, yeah. Henry did not like split cards. And at the time, of course, I'm Henry's boss. Right. So Henry was the lead developer on this ad. He was the lead developer.

Right. And for everybody, like, everybody like we definitely like even to this day we have designers and we have developers and the designers can't tell the developers what to do like you hand over the set and it's like you know you you hand over your baby and you have no more set you can lobby them so i went to henry who absolutely hated them and i said henry you must keep them in for a month it's like after a month we'll talk and he was not happy but it was like i and i rarely went i rarely like used my power and ordered people to do something but i remember like i ordered him i was like you will play test these

for a month and then like a month later henry was like yeah we love these so no i do i do remember that was one of the i i had i had forgotten the association of split cards with invasion but as soon as you said split cards yes i remember i remember those things okay so here's here's another mechanic that i believe you create i mean i think it was your brainchild kicker so yeah where did kicker come from the kicker invasion premier kicker that's the first set that i kicker in it yeah um you know for me it's just, I can't say exactly, but I just, it allowed, so, before I wander. So, kicker is a term from Cosmic Encounters. Okay.

I don't know if people played the game, but you would play a kicker and it would just like it would double the value of your card. Like so I would play a kicker and it would increase the value of my combat card. I was thinking like, OK, well, like we have magic cards. Like how do I increase the value of the card? Like I want to be able to pay more and increase the value. And the original kicker idea was just simply not giving you something additional just magnifying like three damage kick to five damage draw a card kick to draw two cards and then we we of course it evolved afterwards but that was just the simple thing of

like like sort of being able to you know have your have your you know i've always loved multi-color and i've always been more a somewhat of a timmy player like i love the big creatures um but i but i'm enough of a gamer that i just know like you're gonna lose if you just stick your deck full of big creatures so i'd love you know the idea of you can have this playable creature for early in the game and be very competitive and then have something that um you can drop your man into later in the game it really makes it good i i will say personally i fall into the trap that i'm like one mana short of being able to cast my creature with a kicker. So I wait to draw land, which I know is just a total, total mistake.

And it lets the pro tour players in the group laugh at me, but I just can't help myself. It feels so good to play a card that's kicked. It feels so good to play a card that's kicked. So here's something interesting. One thing I really appreciate about Invasion was how we had a whole philosophy behind kicker. Remember this? Of whether it was in color or off color. Yeah.

I sort of do, but I don't. I remember more of people demanding a philosophy. And I was just like, I just want kicker. And like, yeah, all right, the philosophy works with what we want to produce, so have your philosophy. I don't care. Yeah, the thing that we did was in color meant you could get bigger. So instead of two, you could do four. But if you wanted to add another ability, we made you go to a second color to get the second ability. Yeah, I mean, that intuitively makes sense to me because you don't need another color

to do what you can already do. I know that we wanted to make sure that when we added another color that there was a... We weren't taking mono color cards and just forcing you to use another color mana. There was some reason that you needed to pay or get an advantage

for using your second color. Or your third color. Go ahead. Okay, go ahead. Okay, so here's a question. Something that I'm curious to get your memory of. Okay, so original invasion actually didn't just have the ally

colors. For a while, we had all ten. Yes. And, we had all 10. Yes. And then we ended up moving the enemy to Apocalypse. What is your memory of how that happened? Well, I guess my memory is there were a group of people that were really, there were definitely people who just didn't want to do off-color, enemy color, multi-color at all.

So there was that group. I kind of remember there was a group that was against it. I remember playing it. It was too much. Like, I don't really remember. Like, I remember at first, like, saying first like saying like no we're not changing it we're going to just keep everything there but i remember play testing the set and trying to get 10 colors in and having it work it was just chaos it was it was too much

like spectacle it was just too chaotic um and that's when – I don't know. Do you remember who had the idea to push it off to Apocalypse? I do. I do. I was thinking if you had a memory. It was two people actually. Okay. I don't – It was me and Henry Stern.

Ah, okay. I mean Henry – like that totally makes sense. I'll tell you. When we go back in the day like there's some stuff like i can remember a lot what i did and i can remember stuff like like this happened and i know i didn't do it and then sometimes i'll remember who did it and sometimes i'll remember who didn't so i i just like i know that i was being pushed i know that after we played i was like i would agree but i was not the person who was driving it.

If I remember the story correctly, Henry and I just independent of each other. We didn't discuss it. Both came to you independently and pitched the idea. And then we realized the other one had pitched the idea to you. And so. Yeah, no, and it made sense. And right. It really I mean, it made Apocalypse really good.

Yeah. Apocalypse was an exciting set at the time. Yeah, yeah. In fact, I think in some ways, Invasion Block was the predate for, like, the planned block. Later on, we did more block planning. That was kind of the first block plan we ever did, where, like, we saved something for later on the block.

I know. Like, there were times where I remember, yes. Well, it was Mirage, Temp remember yes well it was what mirage tempest maybe it was tempest there was one of them where we just got to the third set we were like what the hell are you going to do it was like we didn't even plan we just made the first set we'll just make more yeah but i mean i thought that yeah it was that i was it was a fun time i will say like i just i remember like skiing during the day and then going back to your dad's place and then just like sitting just going over cards and ideas in the file to like the early hours of the morning. I think it was just, it was a really fun time, Mark.

Okay, so I'm going to pitch another mechanic. This one didn't have a name, but we called it the Divi mechanic. The what? The Divi mechanic, putting things in piles and choosing piles. Like Factor Fiction is probably the most famous of the Divi cards. Do you remember where that came from? Off the top.

It, it like Joel's, I think Joel was doing something with it. I don't know where it came. I don't know where it came from. That's what I'm asking you. I don't remember where it came from. I don't know. So I know that I didn't,

I did not create it. Yeah. I didn't create it. I, I, I, I associated my, and I could be wrong.

Somebody else could have created it and I could have found it through Joel. But I think Joel did that. I'm not as interested. I didn't know. I didn't remember who made that. You know what? If a former designer is listening to this podcast and I'm wrong, I apologize. But that's like off the top of my head.

I haven't thought about it in years. I can imagine like Mike Kelly going, I'm wrong. I apologize. But that's like off the top of my head. I haven't thought about it in years. I can imagine Mike Kelly going, I made them! You know what? If Mike made it, I wouldn't have been surprised. Mike could have easily made them, obviously. Yeah, I mean, it's a really good mechanic. You know, it's the way that both

of them kind of, like, it's the type of mechanic that they both would think in that, in that design space interests them. Yeah. And it was, you know, it was a real, it was a nice splashy mechanic.

Um, yeah, it was a fun, it was, I mean, it wasn't cycled or anything. It was kind of just sprinkled about the set and like, well,

it was, you couldn't do a lot. Like it's one of those where, um, I, I, I think that it was a more love mechanic and a splashier mechanic with just a few cards. Like, if we did 20 cards like it, it would have just been a pain in the ass. Okay, so, Bill, what is your – let's talk about some cards making some cards so oh my god when you think of invasion

give me some names of invasion i don't even like okay i'll tell this for everything i'll give you i'll give you some names of cards here one of the things that i like one i'm bad with names and two I would remember the playtest name so even after a card was published I would still refer to it by the playtest name and then my friends who were not part of magic would be what are you talking about I'd be like it's card and they'd be like there's no card like that and it's like oh okay now I'll give you the real name okay so I'm going to name just some famous cards. I'm going to do gold card just because that's known for multicolor.

And we'll see if either you or I remember where the card came from. And I'll read the cards for the audience who might not know where the card is. So Armadillo Cloak. One green-white. It's an Enchant Creature. Enchant Creature gets plus two, plus two when it has Trample. Whenever Enchant Creature deals damage, you gain that much life. So it has something

very similar to Lifelink. Do you remember where Arm delaclo came from? I don't. It's the type of design I could do, but I don't remember doing it. I do remember pushing on people of like we, enchantments are terrible.

We just keep making terrible terrible creature enchantments. And I want invasion keep making terrible, terrible creature enchantments. And I want Invasion to have really good in creature. So it could be like, maybe I said, I want really good creature enchantments. And then you made Armadillo Clerk because that's, that design cycle happened a lot. Yeah, I think I would say, I think I might've made Armadillo Clerk. You would come back the next day and go, like, here it is. And I'd be like, perfect.

Is that your memory? It seems very much like, okay, I need a green-white aura. Well, what does green add to the picture? What does white add to the picture? Oh, yeah, that seems like it goes together. Also, like, Invasion, we were definitely trying to make creature auras good. Right? Like, is Invasion not, like, one of the first

sets that just had good... I won't say across the board, but we had some good, you know... Yeah. Good creature auras. Okay. Next. See if you remember this one. Fires a Yavimaya. One red and green

enchantment. Creatures in control have haste. Sacrires a Yavimaya. One red and green enchantment. Creatures in control have haste. Sacrifice fires Yavimaya. Target creature gets plus two, plus two, and will end of turn. You remember? So I know one thing about this card. It was a cycle. I know that. It was part of a cycle. This was the famous

one. This was the one that was good. But we had a whole cycle of enchantments that had a global effect and then you could sack them to do something right and again it was just like if you destroy my enchantment i got something to to counter like i don't yeah that one i don't remember why we tried this cycle yeah i think we were just trying to do something cool. Yes. There were times where we were like, I remember being like, some of our better cards maybe were powerful cards, but maybe not better designs, where we were like, yeah,

we had four-fifths of a cycle, and we were like, we need a common card that's a creature enchantment that's these two colors. We'd go and put it together. Okay, here's one that I think this is you. Absorb. So it's white, blue, blue, counter target spell, you gain three life. To be honest, I don't remember.

And there's a mirror, right? There's one where you gain three life, there's one where you gain three life. There's one where they lose three life. Yes. I'll run across that in a second. Blue, blue, black. Yes. Those kind of like.

I think that was your design, by the way. That's my memory of it. I like the mirror. I mean, it makes sense. I like the mirror designs. Like if I could do like the ad, we'll lose three life. I like the mirror designs. Like, if I could do, like, the ad, we'll lose three life, we'll gain three life, back and forth. What was the blue-black one?

Undermine. It was called Undermine. Yeah, blue-blue-black, counter-target spells, control, lose three life. It was a mirror. It was a straight-up mirror. Right. Okay, do you remember the dragons? So, the dragons in the cycle.

So, I'll read one of them. The Croesus the Purger. Three generic, blue, black, red. It's a creature, a dragon legend. Flying, 6-6 flying. When Croesus the Purger deals combat damage to a player, you may pay two black. If you do, choose a color that player reveals his hand

and discards all cards of that color from it. Yes. Do you have any memories? So these are all 6-6 creatures. They all cost six mana, three generic and three of the appropriate color. They all flew, and then when they hit you, I think all of you spent two and a color to do some effect.

Oh, yeah, we cycled them. Yeah, we cycled them. Yeah. We cycled them because we wanted, and I remember there was one, um, like at first, like they were going to make the black, red, green dragon,

not fly. But we, we said no to that. Yeah. But yeah, no, I don't remember. I specifically,

I do remember like we wanted we wanted dragons we wanted to make um sort of more expensive three color so that your deck would work now like the cde cards are are fun to play with at times but they're they're really hard to balance okay here's a weird one. Coalition victory. Three callous, white, blue, black, red, green, sorcery. You win the game if you control a land of each basic land type and a creature of each color. I believe that came from spectral chaos.

Did that come from spectral chaos? I believe that came from spectral chaos. Again, I'm not going to say I'm 100% certain, but I believe that came from Spectral Chaos. Again, I'm not going to say I'm 100% certain, but I believe that came from Spectral Chaos. Yeah, that's a good guess. I don't know if you remember, like, back in the day when we were designing Mirage and Ice Age, we always designed an anti-card

and we always designed an alternative victory card. Okay. So that was just kind of like, I don't even know where it came from. Maybe it was something that Richard had said, but Ice Age, Mirage, Spectral Chaos, they all had these cards. I believe Mirage is the last set that was published with an anti-card. Yeah, I think so. It was around then.

Yeah, yeah. Anti didn't last that long. Huh? Anti did not last that long. No, but keep in mind, like Spectral Chaos came in with an anti-card. I'm sure it did, right, because it was an earlier set.

But it also came in with an alternative win condition. So this is a story I'll tell just because... So these are two popular cards, Captain Sisay and Hand of Ship Navigator. Captain Sisay is two green-white for a 2-2 legendary creature. Tap, search your library for a legendary card, reveal that card, put it in your hand, and then shuffle your library.

And Hannah was Hand of Ship Navigator, one white-blue, one 2, legendary creature, one white blue, one two, legendary creature one white blue tap, return to our artifact or enchantment card from your graveyard to your hand I made both of these cards the reason they're in this set is we were trying to do all the Weatherlight crew and

I felt these two characters were multicolored so I saved them for the multicolor set so we didn't do them earlier like obviously Tempest introduced the Weatherlight crew. We were doing the crew all along the times. Captain Sissay was just a top-down. She's the people that gather together all the people

for the crew, so I like the idea of her searching for a legend. And Hannah Ships Navigator, there was a card in Antiquities that got you back, or Giving Archaeologist, that got you back an artifact, and I loved that card, and I said, I'm gonna make a new, I'll give you an Archaeologist

and then, eh, we'll add enchantments, why not? And so, that was just me remaking a card I loved and putting it on Hannah, because I like the character of Hannah a lot, so. Cool. Yes, I remember I remember the you adding a lot. You and Mike Ryan, I think, were writing the story at the time?

Well, at that point, we were no longer doing the story, but we had created the story once upon a time. Okay. Let's talk about this a little bit. So the story of the invasion, when we made the set, we had no idea what story. We weren't trying to make a set that was the invasion set right right right yeah we were making a multi-color set back then we i mean again it's like we were in the dark ages we like

made the set and then we made the story and then we tried to make the match yeah right the set was not made at all with that in mind. It was made to be multicolored and fun, just like, you know, standard magic. It's not today's technology,

that's for sure. Well, it was an earlier time. No, as I said, it was, you know, it was cutting technology for the moment. Yeah, I mean, like, you look back at the Model T and like, hey, it was pretty impressive when the Model T came out.

It was, like, Invasion was state-of-the-art for 2000. So what is your memory of it coming out? What is your memory of Invasion? Like, what do you remember of seeing the public interact with it? What is your memory of Invasion? What do you remember of seeing the public interact with it? I just remember it came out, it was very positive. You know, I do remember if there was any grumblings,

there was a little bit of grumbling on the Pro Tour because of the mana base, and it made things a little bit more random. But the general Magic fan was very, very happy with it. Yeah, it's funny looking back. We really didn't understand mana base. This set does not do the greatest job of giving you the mana base you need to play it. You know, one of my pure joys in playtesting

was to play like, uh, like we would do a draft, um, and to play a five color deck and like on turn six to have a basic land of each color and to be casting a domain spell and to our player on the other side would just be, I want to strangle me.

Yeah. But you know, for every story that that works out I drew three swamps and an island and I have a handful of red and white cars so I'm almost to my desk here so as we wrap up any final thoughts of invasion you know I mean on the 20 plus years later

I think that Invasion really, I don't know that we're going to go back or, you know, do Invasion 2, but I think it had a lot of positive influences on Magic and on what we did with Multicolor. Like, I think it just, it opened another door. And like now that Mult multicolor is just part of magic i mean can you imagine commander without multicolor like it would be terrible

right it's just you know i you know i look back on it and it's it's one of the the invasion is one of the building blocks of magic i think you know know, when I look back at the sets in the early days, if a block didn't exist, how different would magic be? And some blocks had a lot of impact and some blocks didn't. And invasion's one where if invasion didn't exist, Magic would be very different today. Yeah, and I agree. Multicolor kicker. Yeah. You know, split cards and everything else,

like double-faced cards, sagas, like, are they split cards? Well, not exactly, but I think split cards, in my mind, like, unlocked the ability to think in that direction. So there's just a lot of positives with Invasion. Yeah, I agree. I think there's certain sets that are really sort of

touchstone sets that really, like, a lot built off them, and I agree. I think Invasion's one of those sets. It was interesting at the time because we had all we had all worked together and worked apart and we had all like led our own sets at different times and i think it was like it was the one time like is it is this the only set that you me and mike worked on together really as leads for sure it's the only one the three of us alone did. I don't think the three of us even were on another team together. I mean,

other than there were some sets, maybe that lots and lots of people were on the, all of us were on at some point. I mean, everybody worked on everything and I was like, you know, at some point I was like overseeing all sets, but yeah,

I mean, invasion is, it's, it's funny. It's like from the early days, the big three, like you, me and Mike got together.

Yeah. You know, it makes me go back in hindsight of like, why didn't we ever do that again? I don't know. I don't know. We were all like off leading stuff and doing things. So yeah, it was good times.

Good times, good set, good memories. Okay. Well, with that, I'm now at my desk. So we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So thank you, Bill, for being on the show.

Hey, thanks for having me, Mark. To be honest, I have so much fun just talking all the time with people. So it's just a lot of fun. It is fun. It's so much I didn't even remember. Okay, well, thanks, Bill. And everyone, I will see you next time.

Bye-bye.