Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #819: Champions of Kamigawa with Brian Tinsman

Episode Date: March 26, 2021

I sit down with former Magic designer Brian Tinsman to talk about the design of Champions of Kamigawa.

I'm not pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another Drive to Work, Coronavirus Edition. So I've been doing some interviews with past and present R&D folk about sets we worked on together. And so today I have Brian Tinsman, and we're going to talk about Champions of Kamigawa. So hey, Brian. Hey, everybody. Hey, Mark. So, this is a weird set in which you led the design team, and I wasn't on the design team. I was on the development team. So, I did work on the set. I definitely contributed to it, but I was not on the design team. So, it'll be interesting. I'll be telling development stories today. You can tell the design stories. Yeah. A lot of people touch this set throughout its journey through R&D.

It occupied kind of a weird spot because it was in between OG Mirrodin and OG Ravnica. And it had this mandate to be like a really flavorful top-down design. mandate to be like a really flavorful top-down design and you know my memory is that people in r&d didn't really use the terms top-down bottom-up before kamigawa came along i remember being in meetings and having people talk about okay a top-down set is where you're starting with the story the characters the world the theme the, and that is going to inform the mechanics. And people in the meeting going, oh, yeah, okay, like nodding like it was a new thing that they were getting used to.

So, you know, maybe it's the first time that that really became an idea in R&D. I'm not sure if you remember that. Well, so what is your memory of how Champs of Camagawa came to be? Like, what made it happen? Why did we do it in the first place? What is your memory of how Champs of Kamigawa came to be? What made it happen? Why did we do it in the first place? What is your memory of that?

I think we had been doing a number of kind of really mechanic-related sets that had started with, you know, we're going to do another artifact set. We're going to do a creatures and creature type matters set. That was the onslaught block. And there was an idea. I think they came from you and. It wasn't me. This wasn't my,

this wasn't my brand. Do you know who? Was it all Bill? It was all Bill. Bill, Bill Rose. This was Bill Rose. Bill Rose wanted to do a,

like start with the creative and then build a set yeah and there was always a question of could we do a Japanese mythology related set too when

nobody in R&D or on the team was really an expert in Japanese mythology and we all thought it was an awesome idea. But, you know, how are we going to do justice to the concept and the death? And so we took our best shot at it and came away with a version that I think it really tried to be true to the tropes of mythology. But, you know, with a magic twist on it so we kind of uh spent a while early in design trying to get buy-in from this idea that it was going to be a flavor first and it was going to be a legendary set and which hadn't really been done since Legends set. That was a theme. And so now, that was largely

flavor-driven also. And so this was going to have one foot in Legends. And it came out with 70 or 80 Legends within it. I think 75 Legends were in. All the rare

creatures were Legends, and there were some uncommon legends. Every single creature at rare was a legend, legendary, and then some of the uncommons were also legendary. Yeah, and I think for contrast, in Mirrodin, the large

set before it, I think there were five legends, and half of those were artifacts. So there's only like two or three actual legendary creatures. So that was a huge change. That was kind of like made people's eyes pop out when they first heard about it.

And I think, it's funny, one of the reasons we're talking about Champions of Kamigawa is I think the commander format really kind of breathed life into this set because it was a set full of all these legendary creatures. And so a lot of them quite quirky because when you make 80 or so legendary creatures, some of them can get pretty quirky.

And the set definitely has taken on sort of a fondness after the fact. The modern day people talk with me all about Champions of Kamigawa. It's definitely one of the sets that gets brought up a lot. Yeah, well, bless those people because I think Champions of Kamigawa

was in some ways an unfortunate spot because Mirrodin was kind of plagued by balance issues, you know, and broken formats. And there was an overreaction i think to make uh some of the cards in champions of kamigawa over costed and they didn't want to have that problem again and on the other side of it was og ravnica which is you know good lord one of the

maybe the outstanding set of the whole decade uh and so i think you know in my perception there were some players that kind of got fed up in mirrored and block and took a break from magic for a while and then came back in ravnica and then you know sales for champions was not great comparatively doing those two and so with internally rd there was a perception that like, players didn't like this very much. We shouldn't do this type of thing very much. But looking back on it, there's really nothing like it.

It has kind of like this confidence to be weird and quirky. And it's not shying away at all from what it wants to be. And that's a set that has so much character and personality that we don't really see things like it anymore so here's a name i want to bring up so brady dommermuth was the head of the creative team at the time and he and his team went went whole hog like they they researched and you know really really try to um go as deep as they could and one interesting one of the criticisms we get sometimes on the set was

it was a little too faithful to Japanese mythology to the point at which a lot of a Western audience don't even get the references. And it's... So talk a little bit about working with Brady and what was it like trying to bring very Japanese mythology to life? Yeah, he did a very thorough story Bible with all kinds of concepts that were straight out of very traditional Japanese mythology.

And he was a little aware of that too. I know that in, I think, Betrayers, there's one card called Shell of the Last Kappa, which sort of makes no sense if you're not familiar, but there's like a mythological race of creatures that are sort of like the turtle people and they balance water on their head. And if you spill the water then uh something bad happens uh and he he said we're putting that in there just to show that we're not exactly

traditional uh japanese mythology because you know that race doesn't exist anymore maybe it used to but they're gone right and so there's several several items that were like intentionally excluded so it wasn't like a totally on the nose just pulled directly from mythology they're gone, right? And so there's several items that were like intentionally excluded. So it wasn't like a totally on the nose, just pulled directly from mythology. Yeah, another problem I know was this set was not multicolor. At the time, way back then,

multicolor wasn't something that every set had. And this set was allocated not to have multicolor, very little multicolor. In fact, I think there's no multicolor. But anyway, there are a lot of concepts in Japanese mythology. Like, I remember Brady talking about this. There's, like, these birds that are on fire, but, like, they're not red.

Like, A, red doesn't tend to have a lot of flyers, but, like, there are these things that, like, probably would be blue-red, except they didn't make total sense in blue, and they didn't make total sense in red, and we didn't have blue-red. And so there was a lot of, like, it's really hard when you're starting with flavor and you limit yourself for how you can reflect it. I know that was one of the big problems of trying to capture some of the stuff. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure. Another issue that we had was the theme, and this came out of Brady's show and really illustrate that like look there's a

spirit side and there's a i guess today it would have been a human side but humans weren't really an emphasized creature type back then so it was spirits versus everything else i guess and um that came out within like the soul shift and a lot of legend cards were one side or the other. The Myojin, I think in today's interpretation, they probably would have been gods. They had an indestructible mechanic and it was only like the second block when we had been doing indestructible. We didn't really quite know how to balance it back then, so we were pretty conservative with how we used it. Yeah. Had the potential to lock up a board state,

and so it only went on super expensive creatures. So you brought up Soul Shift, so let's talk some of the mechanics. Okay, so Soul Shift, you remember what Soul Shift did exactly? Yeah, Soul Shift is when this dies, you get to raise dead another spirit of one less mana cost from your graveyard

to your hand. Okay, where did that come from? That was Mike Elliott, I believe, trying to tie together um a number a number of different mechanics uh showing that the the spirits were relentless and and uh the the mortals were in a fight for their lives against them. And I think that was the one that won out as being flavorful and cool. So also, this wasn't named,

but Spiritcraft was also another spirit-related thing. So what was Spiritcraft? Was that the code name? I forgot what that was the code name for. When you played a spirit arcane spell. Things that triggered off the playing of spirit or arcane spells. Yeah, okay. So that was like some kind of ability.

I think the Kyren all have that whenever you play a spirit or arcane spell. And I believe arcane spells originally were themed as spirit spells. And then they didn't want to put a spirit creature type onto a non-creature card, and it got changed over to arcane type. Right, we didn't have tribal, I mean... Yeah, we hadn't discovered tribal technology at that point. Right, Lorwyn would do tribal, although we pulled back from it a bit, but... So that was originally spirit spells.

So what's your memory of how... Explain what Splice onto Arcane is, and then we'll talk about where Splice came from. Sure. So Splice onto Arcane is an ability that is on instants or sorceries, and when you play another instant or sorcery that has Arcane, you can pay an extra cost,

show the card that has the splice from your hand, and get that ability while keeping it in your hand to play later or splice again later if you want to. So, right, it sort of staples on that ability onto another spell, and then you've got to keep it, though. You still get to cast the card itself later. Yeah. Do you know where splice on a Drakene came from?

um I remember Randy Buehler was pushing that quite a bit do you know who designed it? no me oh I knew that

uh originally so here's uh originally uh it was you spliced it out of the graveyard

it wasn't your hand it spliced it out of your graveyard so the idea is like you would cast a spell and then you couldiced it out of the graveyard. It wasn't your hand. It spliced it out of your graveyard. So the idea is, like, you would cast a spell, and then you could reuse the spells from your graveyard. But it ended up working better in your hand, so we changed it to your hand. But I was... We were trying to find...

I was on the development team. This splice actually came a little bit later, because it happened, I think, in early development. I know I came up with it. I thought it was early development. It could have been late design. That's probably... Randy was on the development team. He probably was trying to sell me on your idea. Yes. But anyway, we were

trying to, like... I think you had the spirit spells and the spirit creatures, and we were trying to figure out, like... Because obviously we had arcane for spirit craft, but we needed... It seemed, like, lame to just be on Spiritcraft, and so, like, oh, is there some mechanic that can make use of it? And then

we sort of ended up with Splice Hunter Arcane. Yeah. I think, did Randy lead the development team? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I was on the development, I did not lead it. I've not led development teams, but I was on the development team. Okay, here's another mechanic in the set.

Bushido. What's your memory of Bushido? Tell the audience what Bushido does, for starters. All right, so Bushido is a keyword ability that was on Samurai, of which we had a lot of Samurai in the set. They were sort of like representing the fighting forces of the mortals. representing the fighting forces of the mortals. And Bushido said that whenever this thing is in combat with an adversary,

it gets plus one, plus one. Or whenever it's blocked by an adversary, it gets plus one, plus one. So what was the inspiration for Bushido? We wanted a mechanic that was very simple and straightforward and that would play well in Limited and that would kind of express the spirit of these mortals that were fighting for their lives, fighting to save their plane. Okay, so it got borrowed from a card

in Magic. Do you know what card it was borrowed from? Like, it was a card that we made a whole mechanic out of. Do you know what the card was? What, Chubbitoad? Chubbitoad, very good. Chubbitoad. Oh my god. I'm impressed, Brian. Yeah. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love Chubbitoad, but I'm impressed, Brian. Yeah.

I mean, don't get me wrong. I love Chub Toad, but I wouldn't have thought it would have been the inspiration for a whole mechanic. I didn't make the connection in my mind. Yeah. But I think that you guys were looking for just a combat mechanic because it made sense that the samurai were good at fighting, so you gave them

a combat mechanic. Like, one of the things was, a big part of the set was the spirits versus the humans, right? So you wanted to give the spirits some stuff and give the humans some stuff. So there was one other big mechanical thing. This was, I don't know if it was technically named, but the mechanic

has a name. Flip cards. What is your memory of the origin of flip cards? Oh. Flip cards. What is your memory of the origin of flip cards? Oh, flip cards. Good old R&D has been in love with this idea of cards that transform themselves for as long as I can remember. I was trying to find different ways to change cards from one functional state to another. And this was one of the earliest attempts and i was bound and determined to get some kind of card

face change happening because it was so different and so novel and there's so much potential there like i could see that changes to the card face really made people eyes open wide when they first saw something that looked different. And there weren't too many changes in card face layout.

I think the only thing that predates flip cards would be split cards. As far as having a frame that's just not your normal magic frame, right? Yeah, right. That's Invasion, right? That's Invasion, yeah. I think you're right. Here's a little history I remember of split cards. So Richard Garfield and I worked together on Odyssey.

In Odyssey, Richard had made a mechanic called Threshold. And the flavor called Threshold. And the flavor of Threshold, we did a lot of lycanthropy flavor in Odyssey, like werebear. It's a man, but now he's a werebear or whatever.

And Richard and I had talked about, was there a way to represent it? And we decided no, it didn't need to, but Richard and I had this discussion about, was there a way to represent it? And we decided no, it didn't need to. But Richard and I had this discussion about was there a way to show two states on one card? And we didn't do it because we thought it was too much. And we didn't feel we needed it, like Threshold didn't need it. We just showed the end state and not the beginning state.

So Werebear is a bear, but you don't see the man that becomes the Werebear. Yeah, that's a good example of transformational cards. Right, so I think is a bear, but you don't see the man that becomes the Werebear. Yeah, that's a good example of transformational cards. Right, so I think we had talked to you, at some point it had come up, and then you got very excited by the idea. Yeah. So, like, Rich and I,

I talked you through what Rich and I had talked about, and your eyes lit up, you're like, we're doing that. You were very excited once we told you the idea, and then you fought very hard for them. I remember that. Yeah. I indexed super high on the explorer mentality.

And I value novelty. And so I pushed hard to do new things. And, you know, I think it was worthwhile. Like, the flip cards are probably not the best execution of that transformational type of mechanic, but we were not ready to do dual-sided cards. Yes, we had to work our way there. And in fact, I led the charge for dual-sided cards in some other products that we did that kind of proved out that they were possible to do in Magic. that we did that kind of proved out that they were possible to do

in magic. This was the precursor. Yeah, so this was an early ancestor of dual-sided cards. And dual-sided cards even came up in discussions when we were talking about the flip cards, and they were

sort of immediately dismissed as being ridiculous. Oh, come on. Don't be silly. But here we are years later, and nobody thinks twice about it. It is funny. Conversations we'll have in the past,

like, we can never do that. It flashed forward like 10 years later. We're doing it. Yeah. Okay, so I'm going to ask you, there's a few cycles I want to talk a little bit about, see if you have a memory of the cycles. Okay, the

Handan. Do you remember the Handan? Yeah, for sure. Our legendary enchantments. I don't think legendary enchantments had been done. There had been enchant worlds before, but not straight up legendary enchantments. And they all beefed each other up.

Yeah, the shrines. Yeah. So how did they come about? How did that come about? I don't have a good memory of who was pushing them. I mean, my best guess is legendary was a theme. And so knowing you, you're like like what else could be legendary let's figure out how to make other things legendary and that's my guess how you got there well and i think

they ended up having this is sort of like a a sliver mechanic where they all increased each other's ability because they were legendary and so we knew that it would be more difficult for people like you know stack them up in a standard deck and get a whole bunch of the same ones out, all buffing each other up. And then again, here we are years later with more Shrines available. Yeah, people ask all the time for more Shrines.

And they were excited when we made the last batch. Yeah, I'm glad we did that. Okay, next, the Myogen. You talked about these a little earlier. Yeah, these Myogen are godlike spirits that if you play them from your hand, they'll come in with a divinity counter, and as long as they have the divinity counter,

they are indestructible. And then you remove it to do something of each color, such as make your opponent discard their whole hand or drop anything you want on the battlefield. And the red one is blowing up all the lands. So the red one the red one is blowing up all the lands. So do you remember

the history of these? I don't remember how they're designed, no. Okay, we'll jump to another one. The Spirit Dragons. Remember the Spirit Dragons?

Oh, I love the Spirit Dragons. Yeah. Let me see how I do. Yusei, Kaiga, Kokusho, Ryusei, and Jyugen. Very good. The triple green dragon. I don't know how we got that through.

Yeah. The other four were so strong that they, you know, they let the triple green dragon into the club somehow. Yep. So how did those come about uh we knew that we wanted to have like a whole bunch of these are like these representations of uh the various factions of the the spirit um enemies that were that were warring against the mortals and uh a lot of them were like really weird like if just go look in gatherer or something at uh spirits in common and kamigawa and they're just like super bizarre concepts like the uh a couple of the the kami of the painted road is like this big hand with an eyeball and and makes no sense but we knew that we wanted to have something that was like really recognizable

people would really identify and think they were cool and so uh like dragons were definitely going to fit the bill there and um they all had a when dies ability to tie back into this idea that like yeah you can defeat these spirits but they're they're still going to be relentless and and unstoppable uh you know whether you defeat them or not you'll pay a heavy price there There was an old mechanic called Bloodbane, I think in a very early version of the set, which said you cannot damage this creature unless any player pays to life. And so this was an idea that like yeah you fight these things but you're

going to give a part of your you know part of your health or your of your your soul in order to uh you pay a price for fighting them and eventually i never made it into the set but it was found in a lot of commons in like early design play testing And I don't think we've ever done that before, too. I guess it didn't play that well. Actually, I do think it plays well, but we didn't do it there. I don't think it plays poorly. Okay, so here's a mechanic I remember

that was in early playtesting that never got made. Hopefully you remember more. I just remember a very... So you had this martial arts mechanic where players would throw cards back and forth and like I'm throwing a punch and you're blocking. It was a martial arts battle. Do you remember this?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Because I know you like martial arts. I mean, I know you're a black belt, right? Yeah, I've got a black belt in karate and I've got a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. And that's the hard one to get, man. Like, if you're going to go get a black belt, that takes a hell of a long time.

Okay, so do you remember this mechanic I'm talking about? I vaguely remember it. I remember playing those cards. I don't remember the names or mechanics of it. So here's my memory. Maybe I can jog your memory a little bit. That the cards would have moves on it. So the card would do its normal thing,

but it would have a special little box that would have, like, this is a jab or what. I don't know karate moves or whatever, but this is some sort of move. And then you would get in the fight, and then you would use your hand, but you weren't throwing the cards away. You could only use each card once.

And you would have a little battle based on what was in your hand. Yeah, you'd have to reveal if you had a block or a counter strike or something like that in your hand. And then if you had the right one, then you would counter the guy's spell and do

some damage to him I think it was like a little sub game happening on instants and sorceries yeah that you could it was trying to set this dilemma of like I want to bolt this creature but I also want to keep this in reserve in my hand so I can reveal it and counter his move if he tries to bolt my guy first. That was cool. I forgot about that.

So here's another question. Probably too fussy, though. It was a little too fussy. You were kind of excited by it, and then you were like, eh, okay, it doesn't play that well. But it was exciting in concept. Okay. Well, a lot of things

get left on the cutting room floor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's part of the problem. That's how design works. You try stuff, some works, some doesn't. Okay, so here's my question for you. Do you remember

how all the rares ended up being legendary? No. I do, so I'll tell you the story. I'm curious sometimes if you know the story, just I'm curious to hear your vantage point in the story. So one of the... I was on the development team.

I wasn't on the design team. And one of my pet peeves on the development team is I wanted it to... What is the set? What is the main focus? Is it top-down Japan? Is it a set that cares about legends? Is it a war between the

spirits and the humans? Like, we had to pick one thing to be the major focus. And, like, the set had a lot of things. I'm like, well, what's our main focus? What's the main thing that's important? And I kept bugging the development team. I'm like, we keep saying all these things are important, but something has to be the most important. What's the most important?

And so one day we're in a meeting, and Randy goes, okay, legends matter. That's the most important. And I go, fine. Then all the rares are legends. I was just like, I was getting frustrated, and I literally was my, okay, if that's the theme, then here, blow it out.

Do the theme. And it came for me just being frustrated with randy and randy's like okay we'll do that do it okay yeah i i get that and then and then there's a little moment uh in that kind of situation when everybody's sort of like wait can we really do that like that's happened a lot of times before in design meetings yeah well what if we're not being facetious here? What if we're actually trying to do it?

Yeah. I think that, yeah, I think that happened in the last set of the Shards of Larblock when we were

like, everything's gold or legions. Everything's creatures. Yeah. Well, both of of those started with that as a premise before they built design

I think the so okay so we're I'm almost to my desk here so let's wrap up what is any finishing thoughts

on Champions of Kamigawa looking back many years later there's so many great cards that came out of there uh that like i i don't know if they if they would if they would have come out in a different kind of uh theme set um uh kiki jiki and all the snakes matters sets are cards or cards in there that didn't really have snake support. They're just weird and quirky.

And Sensei's Divining Top and Time Stop was one of the first turn matter, like messing with the turn other than taking extra turns, but messing with that little piece of the rules. And I feel really lucky and privileged to have gotten to meddle around so much with weird spaces that hadn't been entered in too much before in design and probably won't again for a long time if ever so uh it's great that it exists, even though, you know, for a while I was

sort of feeling like, man, was this a good idea to try all this weird stuff? But now, I'm really glad. I'm really glad we did, and I'm proud of the set, and thanks to everybody out there who's loved and enjoyed it, and

fist bump to all you guys. There is a contingent that bugs me constantly for us to return. So much so, it's like a running joke on my blog about people bugging me about it. So there is a diehard group of fans out there that really did love it, Brian. They really love Kamigawa. That's awesome. So anyway, guys, I am at my desk. So 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, Brian, for being with us today. Thanks, Mark. Thanks, everybody. And guys, I'll see you all next time. Bye-bye.