Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #827: Zendikar with Matt Place

Episode Date: April 23, 2021

I sit down with former Magic designer Matt Place to talk about the design of original Zendikar.

I'm not pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Coronavirus edition. So I've been sitting down with Magic R&D of past and present to talk about sets we made together. So today is R&D past. So Matt Place is here to talk about Zendikar. Welcome, Matt. Hi, Mark. Glad to be here. Okay, so Zendikar is a set that is a warm spot for both of us. Both of us are very fond of Zendikar. And I've told the story of Zendikar numerous times. So I'm very interested to hear what is your version of the story of Zendikar.

I mean, I'll jump in, obviously. It is my podcast. So what is your earliest memory of Zendikar? My earliest memory of Zendikar is you talking about this I'm going to say four years but you can correct me four years before we even started to talk about anything specific to Zendikar you wanted a lands matters set right you've been talking about this and uh and honestly regrettably baby I I made fun of you right like I was like oh a lands matter set finally in Magic the Gathering lands are gonna to matter.

But when you say it that way, honestly, it doesn't sound like, oh, yeah, I can't wait. We could do dragons, but instead we're going to do lands matter, right? But it turns out we had a few pitfalls we can talk about, but it turns out the end product was phenomenal. I think it got there in a way that was like, yeah, lands matter is super fun. It shores up some of Magic's inherent core design weaknesses right in a really fun way um and i'd be curious what you think of this but i think it also what we learned and what we did right ends in the car impacted all magic sets going forward in terms of like how do you make you know the late game where you might be top decking worthless cards right lands that you don't need later,

how do you make that more meaningful? What do you do? In Rise of Eldrazi, for example, having cards that, you know, if you have a lot of mana, you can turn it into something. We've always done that, but Zendikar did it a phenomenal way.

Yes. I mean, one of the things about magic that the audience should understand is when we do something and it succeeds, it shapes everything that comes after it. And especially if it really... Zendikar is one of the... Zendikar didn't just kind of succeed.

It was a giant, huge... Awesome. Yeah. So, it definitely affected things after it. There definitely is a post-Zendikar magic world where Zendikar affects things. Okay. Yeah, I'd be curious which sets you think did that the most.

For me, Ravnica was a big one. Oh, no, Ravnica's a big one? I feel like that's a great topic for a different podcast, and maybe one day you and I can sit there and talk about what most impacted. That's a good topic. It is a very good topic. Not today's topic, but a very good topic. So I will have you back at some point.

We can talk about the most influential magic sets. That seems like a cool topic. Right. Okay. So you were have you back at some point. We can talk about the most influential magic sets. That seems like a cool topic. Okay. So you were on the design team. Yeah, and the development team. And the development team. I was the liaison. Right.

Okay. So share with me. Okay. So we asked you to be on this team. You were skeptical to start with, yet we still asked for you to be on this team. So what was your memory of that, of being asked on the team um well it's always an honor so my history uh so i was i was on magic for almost seven years right around seven years and so i was brought on and my day one was hey matt built some decks right so i was a play tester essentially right balance person um and then over

the years i got to lead some final designs and developments for sets. And then at the end, you started asking me on a few sets to be on the design team. And I think each of those times I was the liaison. And yeah, and I loved it, right? And it was so valuable to me as a designer, right? To see the beginning and the end, right? I think that's something that made me a much better designer. It's probably good for a lot of designers. But yeah, like you said, I was skeptical but excited, right? Because I knew we would get to something great. But we did have some turns that were not very fun.

We had some honestly bad ideas that we put onto paper and play tested. So let me put a little parameter in here so we can talk about this part of the story. So I want to do Lands Matter. Not a lot of faith in R&D, but I earned the right to try, basically. And so Bill Rose, who's the VP, said, I think it was three months. You have three months to prove this works.

If I don't think it's working, we're audible and we're changing to something different. We're not going to do this. so you have three months to prove it the context to that is the previous three or four years there had been some audibles that were considered bad news when I first got there the biggest one was Champions of Kamigawa

it was essentially I was new and there was a redesign I just want to say it was intense the feeling of we're trying something new. Is it going to work? There felt like there was a lot of risk there. And for me personally, a lot of worry. Okay.

So that three months, basically, we just tried everything we could that had to do with land mechanics. So what is your memory of those three months? We tried everything. Right. So my memory is we didn't start with landfall right we basically had something that was uh that had the same goal uh but just a much worse like deal like i was saying which was uh you're going to draw lands late how do we make that matter right i believe you were the one saying that early like we want lands late to matter in this format right both for

constructive but especially for limited it can make Limited way better. And so, for example, we had a design which was an enchantment that cost 3W, right? 4 mana, white, discard a land to give a creature protection from a color of your choice until end of turn. And so how good would this be in Limited? Probably quite good. How fun is it to hold your lands knowing you might

draw these cards, not be able to cast your 6 mana spell because you make the decision to discard your 5th or 6th land, right? It turns out very unfun right but the goal was correct so i forget exactly how we audibled into just land at all but i remember we were talking about it as kind of a version of have have your cake and eat it too right like you still get all the value why not just do that protection card or for, for example, the more exciting ones, you know, make a giant beast every time you play a land. So get all the value

without the cost was way more fun. Yeah, so the thing that got us there was we tried a mechanic where a land drop was a cost, where instead of playing a land, you could spend your land drop as a cost to do something.

Oh, right, yes. And so the problem was, I mean, in concept it's great, right? It's like later in the game you have this resource you can't use, so now you can use it. But what happened was earlier in the game you go, ooh, well, instead of playing this land, I'm going to use my land drop to do something else. And then it caused you problems because you need, you really,

the land was always what you wanted to do ahead of time. Right. Huge problems, especially if you, you know, you can trap yourself, right? Now I'm buying by two or three lands. It's just super unfun when you have the cheaper ones. Right. And so. And then I guess we went to discard after that. Is that right? No, I think discard was before that. Because what happened was we said, okay, giving up your land drop is painful.

So we just flipped it on his head. Well, instead of making you choose between playing a land or not playing a land, what if we just rewarded you for playing a land? Like we said, what if we just... The thing to do, we want you to play the land. So let's just reward you for playing the land. Because we were punishing you for playing the land.

Like that's not working. And we flipped it on his head. that's where landfall came from well i like how in hindsight it seems so obvious to the point like i'm like what are you thinking oh my goodness uh but yeah it's yeah it's a wonderful mechanic i don't know how yeah uh and it tied in too to the kind of the theme that you've been talking about since the beginning, since before we started work on Zendikar, right, which was the kind of the explorer travel the land. Right. The Indiana Jones vibe. I remember some of the early art being. Right. But Indiana Jones didn't come yet. So the timeline, we were first figuring out how to make lands work. And Doug Beyer was on the team. He was the creative person. figuring out how to make lands work.

And Doug Byer was on the team. He was the creative person. And Doug's job was, as we're trying to figure out what we're doing, try to figure out what this could be creatively. But Doug actually didn't come up with Adventure World until around, I think, the three... We were working on lands. We got to the point where Bill had to sign off

on it. And we had landfall at that point. And we played with Bill, and Bill sees landfall and goes, okay, we're good. Bill got it. We had figured out how to do it. And then it was Doug that said, ooh, what do you guys think of Adventure World? And then we

liked Adventure World, and then we built the rest of the set to match Adventure World. Right, with allies who are the adventurers. Yes. You guys were going to do better in later sessions right i mean the allies the traps the maps we called them traps maps and chaps i think was what we called them in design funny um only only traps remain i mean maps became quests and chaps became allies right yes maps i remember those too yeah yeah it's interesting the uh a

lot of what zendikar is i think is you know it's why is it so successful i. A lot of what Zendikar is, I think, is, you know, why is it so successful? I think a lot of what it is, is things that Magic players already know they're doing or direction they already want to go, right, was focused on in this set. Right. Sometimes you take a risk in terms of mechanics where you're like, hey, we're going to go somewhere new. Let's see if people like it. And sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't. Right. But some of the biggest failures, obviously, in Magic are those twists that aren't loved, right? And I think what's great about Zendikar is, especially Landsmatter, is you read these cards and you're like, oh my gosh, I'm going to play a land anyways. But I'm also going to get a giant beast for it. Or I'm also going to get this other great thing, right? And there's ways to do it multiple times so I can find Johnny parts of this. But yeah, it's fun for me to look back and say, okay, why is this such a great set? Why do the players love it?

And we talked about earlier on how it affected the future. The idea of rewarding players for doing the thing they already wanted to do, while it sounds so crazy that that was an innovation, when we first pitched it, people were like, yeah, but aren't people going to play Lands? I'm like, yeah, that's the point. It'll be exciting because they're doing it anyway. But you're right.

Some of the reaction is, but that's not new. Yeah. Right? That doesn't sound new. I already play Lands. Why is this new set fun? Right. And there was resistance.

I mean, there was resistance. When we first talked about Landfall, the resistance was the idea of, almost the absence of tension they resistance was the idea of almost the absence of tension they thought was negative. Like, where's the decision-making? Of course they'll play Land. And I'm like, yes, that was the genius of it.

Of course you'll play the Land. And the funny thing is, you sometimes don't play the Land. Like, not in the early game, but in mid-to-late game, you actually, like, one of the things that happens in normal Magic is, I draw a Land in the late game, and it doesn't mean anything. And all of a sudden, it means something in a way that's really cool. Right, so there's definitely a decision there, right?

Why play rate land? Yeah. There's a very obvious reason why not to. It's a really tough decision at the high level, right, with your fifth lane. You play it, but you don't have anything that's going on there. So there's definitely a decision-making there. It's great when you find mechanics that, when you first pitch them to other designers, they don't have anything that's going on there so there's definitely decision making there it's great when you find mechanics that when you first pitch them to other designers they don't sound good but the way that you convince them is playing like that's almost like an extra bar of

like you know this is good if it sounded bad yeah or like actually this is pretty fun yeah landfall but the thing about landfall is people would like be negative about it you know i'm like yeah play with it play it and they play it once and go, this is awesome. You know it's good, yeah. And what's great too is how simple it is, right? And we started, like we were just talking about, we started with honestly some convoluted weird directions. And the same is true for maps and traps as well. We had some ideas that really questioned, maybe you can remind me exactly what they were,

but I remember feeling like traps at some points were like, well, my hand's hidden. How are we going to do this in a good way that plays well? And the refinement led to something that's much simpler that actually is also fun. So early traps for the audience, you would play the card face down. Oh, yeah. And then if the card was face down,

it had a cheaper cost. Oh, yeah. a witch trap and they can look at your color mana and try to figure it out and try to play around it um but it's a huge burden both in terms of what are the rules to that yeah exactly and now that you have a face down card in play uh similar to more it wasn't in play by the way i think it was in exile technically sorry but yes yeah you have it based out on the table not in play and uh right but that burden also has a big cost right like i'm trying to play and you've got this face down thing what am i supposed to do right that's a big cost as opposed to just coming from your hand being the much smoother cleaner design that could have been an alpha right you can take one of these traps and put an alpha that actually makes sense it doesn't need brand new rules and a lot of what happens so traps is a really good example of you start with the flavor you're going for right and and then you just make all the crazy rules to make it work.

And then you figure out what you like about it. And then you start stripping things away. And they're like, you know, it could just stay in your hand. That's, you know. Right. Which, once again, might sound obvious to a comedic degree. But this is a great design lesson. When I didn't know, I would say my first two or three years working at Wizards,

is following that awesome flavor, the excitement right the good vibes and then pulling back right stepping back and going okay what pieces of this do we need and what don't we need and how much better design can be and it can be hard but how much better design can be when you do strip away and you find you still have that goodness probably a much better path to go down right and so it's worth stepping back even if you don't feel it it's worth stepping back and going hmm what can we strip away and still have what we love about this so michael angelo the the artist um he was a sculptor and one of the things that he talked about was the way he thought of sculpture was the the the image was trapped in the block of marble. And your job as the artist was to free it.

Right. And I think the design has a lot of that, meaning that, like, a lot of what you're trying to do is find a cool thing and then keep chipping away until you get just to the core of what that cool thing is. And then sometimes you need to start with a lot because you need to make sure

you have enough that you're capturing it. So that you're like, okay, something cool is here. Now we've got to chip away and figure out what's the cool part and chip away the not cool part that doesn't need to be there. Right. Yeah, that's a great point, right? Is in the beginning, don't worry about having too much. Knowing you're going to chip away later, right? But first, you basically need to learn, right?

You need to play with some stuff, even if you're pretty sure they're a bad idea. Find out what's going on. And then as you go, chip away. Well, and find the cool thing. The thing I would say is, especially in early design, is I want you to have fun playing it. If it's complicated, like complexity we can work on, logistics we can work on, fun. Like it has to be fun. Are you enjoying it? Is it cool?

Is it flavorful? Like, that's the part we need to find first. We can, there's a lot of things we can fix, but adding fun is a lot harder than, like, shaving complexity or something. Right. And, you know, and honestly, I feel like we got there accidentally with some other ideas, right? When you have a really good idea that's simple, you kind of naturally get to that space where you don't have too much complexity too much purposeless stuff going on zendikar though is definitely the best example of the michelangelo sculpture where we did have a lot going on that we needed to chip away um yeah it was it was a great set for that i'm glad we kept going and got to the simple and still had the fun. So, okay, quests.

Do you have any memory of quests? Maps in design? Gosh, yes. What did we do? Did we have counters or something? No, no, no. We went much crazier. So the early version of maps was it would be a card that would list three different things on it.

Oh, yes. And then you would put a marker on it to know you've done it. And then once you've done the three tasks, then you got the reward. Right. Yes. Much crazier. It was much crazier, yes. But the vibe is cool, right?

It's a map. Right. In each case, like, it's a map. How do you represent a map? Yeah. And then what we found was, well, if we had you do the same task multiple times, it's a lot less words on the card. Like, one of the problems is, like, we had cards that, like, the editors would go, that doesn't remotely fit on a card.

Right. Why didn't we just use the back? There's the whole back. I know. Well, the technology, that technology didn't exist yet. You guys should do that. You guys should do that someday. That's a good idea.

Yeah, and we started much crazier. And that's a similar thing it's a lot like the the quests were very similar where we started with a really cool flavor that was really out there that was super wordy and complex and we kept shaving down till we got to this cleaner version right yep okay now the next one this one you and i were very involved in what is your memory of allies oh my memory of allies is quite clear so um in early on i forget exactly when but some point inside of design i wanted to do super slippers do you remember sleeper slippers well tell tell the audience the audience yeah the so basically they were slivers but also they grew as you played more slivers uh so probably wasn't balanced.

I wanted something that was like, oh my gosh, I love slivers, and I'm going to love this even more. We playtested with that for a while until we made essentially a massive flavor switch to the ally, which was kind of the adventurers, right? So the idea was characters that work together in a sliver-ish way, but the vibe and the flavor and the mechanics would be much more of a team traveling this Zendikar world,

you know, hanging on ropes off these floating islands, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, what am I missing? Well, no, so here's the big part of the story, which you and I are very involved in, is we had some early version of them, and it wasn't quite working. And in development, after

design was done, in development, you and I made a mini-team, which I think was you and I, to work on them. And we came up with the idea of having different kinds of allies. Remember this? The clerics and the wizards and the fighters. Right.

So what we did is, the fighters were ones that got bigger. That's sort of playing into your super-sliver idea. So the fighters got bigger the fighters were ones that got bigger. That's sort of playing into your super silver idea. So the fighters got bigger as you played more. They got plus one, plus one counters. The wizards, I think the clerics generated effects that helped you, that had temporary effects that helped your team. And the wizards did things to the opponent, I think is how we originally.

And then, oh, there was another thing. There was a fourth, yeah. There were some things that gained an ability temporarily. Maybe that was the rogues or something. So there were ones that I got... Whenever another ally came into play, I got an ability to end a turn. And there were ones that pumped the team, and there were ones that generate an effect. I think we call those fighters, rogues, wizards, and clerics.

Right, and so I remember this team. Oh, my gosh, I haven't thought of this in so long. I'm embarrassed so much I forget. But, yeah, it was under, it was exciting. It was under threat. Of removing it, yeah. I believe it was Henry. Yeah.

And Bill Rose. Yeah. Some powerful people. And, hey, we're cutting this whole piece of the set. And so we went to a meeting where that was kind of the conclusion almost. Is that right? Well, no. We had a mini team.

We made a mini team. We had multiple meetings. Yeah. Basically – I remember a meeting and then you and I went into the room. Yeah. And we were like, OK, we got to save this. We got to have something in this space.

And I forget the individual designs, but yes. They liked it. The big thing we did is I think early on they all worked the same. No matter what you did, it just got crazy. Slivers was always our inspiration for Allies from the very

beginning because people loved Slivers. We're like, oh, can we do something Sliver-ish but with a new flavor to it, not slivers. And also, we wanted to make it slivers, but a little more toned down. Like, slivers were, they always gained abilities to all the creatures all the time. And that, like, we said, okay, let's do that.

But instead, when they come into play, something happens was the idea. So as you play more, something happens. And I think when we turned it over, it was too much one thing. Maybe it was plus one so as you play more something happens um and i think what we when we turned it over it was too much one thing maybe it's plus and plus one counter it is too much of one thing and the takeaway you and i had was hey let's there's a lot of space here let's map out the space and then we'll divide it up by flavor and colors and so that way it would play very differently depending on what colors you were playing right and this is a and i don't know how much you guys have changed r&d i know it's changed a lot

since i left this is a great example of kind of the two teams creating value together right where one team is like hey we know why this doesn't work and the other team the design team is like hey but we know there's something valuable here and understanding the development team's concerns and then coming back with something else is a great way to get to better stuff it's awesome that it worked out that time yeah i mean the it's funny like one of the things when we go back and look at sets a lot of what it is that i i think people get very enamored of the eureka moment of like i was in the shower and it came to me that you know and what they miss is and then there's like months and months and months of work to actually make it happen and that a lot of a lot of what design is is not getting the idea i mean the idea is fine there's there's a sexiness to getting the idea but really the actual hard

work of design is taking an idea that might be a good idea and figuring out how to make it work and the story today is like well we started here and tried this and tried this and tried this, and eventually we wheedled down to something that seemed simple and obvious, although, you know, simple and obvious isn't always so simple and obvious when you haven't done it before. Simple and obvious is anything but. Yeah, there's an effect in design, in invention, they call it the paperclip effect,

which is when you look for a paperclip for the first time, you're like, how else would you ever attach papers? It's such a beautiful design that's so crisp and clear and simple that the idea is like, well, that wasn't much invention. Wasn't that just obvious? And like, no. Many, many years went by before

someone came up with a paperclip. A really good idea seems so obvious, but it's not obvious until someone comes up with it. Landfall was something I'm really proud that we created because it seems really obvious. And since then,

we've done, you know, Constellation as Enchantment Fall. We've taken Landfall and applied it elsewhere. But that was... It's interesting. It just said, what if we do this? It's funny looking back how any idea that's kind of new and different, there's a little bit of resistance to like, really? And then like, no, no, no, this is cool.

Yeah, totally. It's funny to look back too at how many ideas do feel simple and obvious that weren't in the first few years of Magic. Oh yeah yeah i mean gold was early right multicolor is early yeah but yeah there's tons of them that are like gonna be evergreen because they're so good yeah there's thought of for years and years and years i love making something that if richard had just done an alpha no one would have blinked, right? Right, yes. Like Landfall had been, no one would have blinked, you know? It just would have, you know,

it just, ooh, that's a cool thing, you know? So here's a question for you. What other memories, we've been talking about the mechanics, but what other memories do you have of either design or development that you worked on both? Like what are your,

what are your Zendikar stories? It's balanced, right? There's a lot of controversial balanced stuff with Landfall specifically. Lotus Cobra. What was Lotus Cobra's name originally?

It wasn't Lotus Cobra. It's funny because those names are often what I remember. I actually remember the correct name on this one. What was Lotus Cobra?

Originally it was like an elf. It wasn't a snake originally. It was remember the correct name on this one. What was Lotus Cove? Originally, it was like an elf. It wasn't a snake originally. It was like an elf. Okay, yeah. I mean, it was probably something like Landfall Elf

or something for the first year. Yeah, but adding Lotus to it was a controversial thing too because that's a power word. But, uh... Well, no, wait. Well, real quickly, just for the audience.

What happened was there was a big fight about whether to make it rare or mythic rare. Oh, yes. I did not want to make it mythic rare. I wanted it to be rare and I fight about whether to make it Rare or Mythic Rare. Oh, yes. I did not want to make it Mythic Rare. I wanted it to be Rare. And I fought very hard for it to stay Rare.

I lost, obviously. But when it moved to Mythic Rare, I said, well, it has to have a name. So I'm the one that pushed Lotus Cobra. I'm like, give it a power word. At least it's going to be Mythic. Make it sound Mythic. So it didn't have the name Lotus until it went to Mythic. I remember all the controversy

before and after the set release on that being mythic yes you got some feedback yeah by the way there's nothing more fun

than fighting my hardest to keep something from happening than have it happen and then I gotta defend it to the public oh there's nothing more fun than that when really it's

it's somebody else's fault like mine I like it that's great yeah so so the controversy was in the power level because you could be obviously everybody knows When really it's somebody else's fault. I like it. That's great. Yeah, so the controversy was in the power level because you could be, obviously everybody knows this, that they played with Lotus Cobra.

You could do some really crazy stuff. But we wanted to push it, right? We wanted landfall to be really powerful. And we had Valakut, right? The red land that had landfall. So we're trying to thread the needle, get everything in a spot where we feel like we can ship it.

Maybe we're on the high end, but we felt like we should, right? And I remember being in the meeting that Del does where she puts every card up on the wall. Del's the head editor. Del Longo's the head editor for those who don't know who Del is. Oh, yes, yes, yes. And she will – she runs a meeting with as many people that have touched the sets so that we can all say yes this all looks correct nobody's got an issue with it there's no typos or mistakes etc and she puts valakut up which is arguably you know one of the most powerful cards in the set right one of those

powerful cards printed that year and it's just one mountain short it's saying a number one less than we meant because there's a little bit of a logic twist there uh so i remember just debating this over and over and over and we almost shipped the card we probably would have had to thank goodness somebody said something uh yeah uh yeah steve warner i remember built that deck and had us do it change it and i guess it just didn't get recorded in the file i don't remember what happened but uh but yeah we uh development side i think we did a good job of, we got to make sure this is splashy, right? Because a lot of what was still resonating through the resistance to landfall was it just doesn't on its surface sound very fun. So I think the correct solution is, okay, well, what are the outputs then for the people that do need that, you know, splashy card, right? splashy card right and uh is it what is the yeah anyways i forget the names of some of the cards but the the green rare that made the giant tokens right is a great example of how crazy that can get with you know cards like harrow or sack lands where you're getting multiple land plays per turn

you just think a lethal team instantly super fun um yeah obviously valica right these cards that really put it in space there's a good lesson there right you can you can make the outfits exciting enough if you have a good fun mechanic you can make the outfits exciting enough that you still have the splash even if the inherent mechanic doesn't sound to some number of you know maybe spikes or high level people uh as exciting as you know other other themes that are done like two-sided cards or whatever the other thing for the audience to understand is um we know the audience is going to play with it. You know what I'm saying?

Like, Magic is enough established game that, like, it's not like someone's playing Magic for 10 years and a set comes out and they go, ah, I'm just not going to play with it. They're going to play with it. So if we make something we know is fun, that we know might not at first blush look as fun as it is,

we don't want to make a whole set of that. We'll surround it with other stuff. But, I mean, we're willing to put something out that we believe in, even though it might not at first blush look as fun as it is. We don't want to make a whole set of that. We'll surround it with other stuff. But, I mean, we're willing to put something out that we believe in, even though it might not at first blush seem as cool as it actually is, as fun as it actually is. Right.

And I remember because of that, Aaron had cards he wanted to add at the end to make sure we got that, you know, first spoiler read splash, if you remember those. Yeah. The other thing I should stress is at every level, from the beginning of Zendikar to the Zendikar coming out, Spoiler read splash, if you remember those. Yeah. The other thing I should stress is,

at every level, from the beginning of Zendikar to the Zendikar coming out, upper management was worried about it. The whole time they were worried about it. And we just kept... For example, I remember when Brady made the suggestion for the Full Art Lands. Now, I put the Full Art Lands in all the unsets. I was a big advocate of the Full Art Lands.

And Brady said, well, what if we'd never done them before in a Blackboarder product? And Brady's like, well, what if we put them here? That would make lands matter. That makes lands matter. And I'm like, yes, let's do that. And everybody said, okay. And we just kept piling things on. We wanted to make sure that it was fun and exciting. And the thing I always remember is

I was in Bill's office and Zendikar would come out. It was a couple months the thing I always remember is I was in Bill's office and like Zendikar would come out. It was like a couple months after Zendikar would come out and Bill says so when are we going back to Zendikar? I'm like yes! I'm like say that again Bill! Say that again Bill!

To get Bill from I don't know if we should do it to when are we going back felt like quite the climb. So I'm wondering from your perspective so I left the following year do it to when are we going back felt like yeah quite quite that quick climb so so i yeah i'm wondering from your perspective so i left uh the following year so i wasn't at wizards when zendikar launched so i didn't get to you know have the the cake at the party the zendikar party but uh uh i'm curious how you guys look back on it now because i love talking about this just kind of the pivotal sets right mirage is one is one, right? Invasion is one.

Original Ravnica is one. Is Zendikar viewed that way inside of R&D? Oh, yeah. Oh, definitely, definitely. Awesome. Yeah, I mean, I think Zendikar, I mean, you can kind of tell, for example, the three sort of big modern era sets, if you will, are Zendikar, Innistrad, and Ravnica.

Yeah. As far as, I guess, I mean, there's newer stuff that's definitely influencing the future, so the last couple years, there's some very influential sets, but if you talk about things, the fact that we've gone back to all three of those worlds two times now, or Innistrad's coming, but

the fact that we've returned to them multiple times, the audience knows that, it's not a surprise. But anyway, that really shows that they were very fundamental. I mean, not necessarily they were popular with the public, but there's something very core about them. I think that Zendikar and Innistrad and Ravnica all really had done something we hadn't done in a way that really showed

we could do sets like this moving forward. Innistrad is one of my favorite sets of all time, and I got to experience that as a player. Did Innistrad influence going to the fairytale thing? Oh, for sure. Eldraine would not exist had Innistrad not been popular.

Like I said, we'll do the podcast where we talk about the influential stuff. Let's stick with Zendikar. I'm almost to my desk. We need to wrap up. I mean, looking back on Zendikar, my memory of Zendikar was I'd wanted to do it for so long. You said four years,

but four years was not actually correct. The way it originally happened was Randy Bueller, back when he was my boss, had me make a five-year plan, which turned into a six-year plan, which then turned into a seven-year plan because I added Zendikar at the end of it. Like, here's the plan.

And, like, Randy's like, okay, well, at the end of this plan, I know you want to do this thing. We'll stick it at the end of the plan. And I think maybe Randy was like, well, if I put it at the end, maybe it keeps going to the end. We'll never get there. I don't know. But anyway, eventually we got there.

Somehow we got there, and Randy was like, okay, we're here. Randy was a defender of it. Randy did believe that, hey, we should do experimental stuff and every once in a while, let Mark do something. You know. Turan, I remember, was also into it.

Yeah, Turan was the one real champion, other than me, of Zendikar. In my mind, he saw it could be a fast environment that he would enjoy. Yeah, and I just saw it as an opportunity to make fun of you. I should have been a believer. But you became a believer. You were not a believer in the beginning, but you became a believer.

So when did you make that plan? Is that like 2004, 2005? I mean, it was a seven-year plan, and the seventh year was Zendikar. So 2003. Plus, we worked two years ahead. So I think it's like nine years before Zendikar came out, probably.

Before I even started working in Wizards. Yes, I think so. You weren't there yet to make fun of me. But I will say, another quick story before we go, is for a while I was calling it Lanzapalooza. Do you remember this? Yes. And somebody came to me and said,

okay, we need a better name. This is not inspiring. Everybody's already worried that you're focusing on lands, that everybody is worried about it. And so I started calling it the money set. I said, people are going to love it and everyone will want it.

So I said, I'm calling it the money set. And then Bill goes, well, that's better than Lands of Belusa. That's great. You're going to make money. So anyway, but it is fun. So thank you. Thank you for going on this journey.

It is one of the things that the audience doesn't know necessarily is I've been doing these podcasts where I have people on and talk about it and I have a lot of fun. So these are, these are as much fun for me to do as it is for the audience to listen to.

Yeah, this is super fun. Thanks for inviting me on, Mark. I love sitting and reminiscing with friends about stuff we worked on. So it's fun. Yeah, it's awesome. But I am at my desk. So we all know what that means.

This is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So thank you for being here, Matt. This was a lot of fun. Awesome. Thank you. And guys, I will see all of you next time. Bye-bye.