Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #833: Worldwake with Ken Nagle

Episode Date: May 14, 2021

I sit down with Magic designer Ken Nagel to talk about the design of Worldwake.

Okay, I'm not pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Coronavirus edition. Okay, so I've been doing a lot of talking with different R&D folk of present and past. Today's present. So I have Ken Nagle with me to talk about Worldwake. Hey, Ken. Hey, Mark. I'm excited to be here and excited to talk about World League. It's my favorite set of all time. So it was your first design lead, right? Yes, it was my first design lead for Zendikar, and it was pretty early. In fact, I remember being in the office with you and Bill Rose, and you're like, office with you and Bill Rose and you're like we'd like you to lead World Wake it's a little like early and rough but uh we'd like you to go for it because it's a small set you know and I

was on the big set Zendikar so so uh recently I did a podcast with Matt Place where we talked all about Zendikar so this is kind of a follow-up to that because where we talked all about Zendikar. So this is kind of a follow-up to that because this is the set after Zendikar. Okay, so let's talk a little bit. So you had been on the design team for Zendikar, and we approached you to leading the set. This was the first set you were going to lead. So what did you do to prepare for leading the set? Well, the first biggest preparation was to be on the set before it zendikar uh to learn that in

and out because a lot of the stuff that was made in zendikar was sort of on the cutting room floor and all became potential stuff to put in the expansion right um and then the other thing that i did was uh there was a lot of card designs that i sort of was brainstorming up into that point and when i was the lead of a set for the first time i sort of got to use them all uh it's kind of a you know a big smattering of shotguns of a bunch of cards that i had previously been storing in a document on my computer. That was the totality of it up until that point. Okay, so let's walk through some of the components and we'll reminisce on how they came to be. So, let's start

with Multikicker, because you just said something that reminded me of Multikicker. So, where did Multikicker, because you just said something that reminded me of Multikicker. So, where did Multikicker come from? Yeah, so Multikicker did not come from Worldwake. It came from Zendikar proper, which has Kicker and had Kicker and had Multikicker.

If I recall on, like, some of the bigger, rarer stuff, it's a world about rich mana, a world about about lands and kicker is a way to use them multi kicker is a way to keep using them right so uh what ended up happening was there was enough stuff in zendikar itself and the larger kicker cards i think there's a cycle of them that have like kicker five or so that change from multi kicker to normal kicker it said hey we don't need to use this multi kicker thing in this set we could actually save it for this small set and so it was sort of a fateful day

to find out that hey the zendikar team doesn't think they need multi kicker and world weight can now run with it. Uh, so that, that's what I recall this, uh, like conquerors pledge here. I have in my hand,

these big kickers on these rares, uh, became large kickers instead of multi kickers, but we kept them multi kickkickers in World War I. Yeah, the reason I think we made multi-kicker was we were bringing kicker back and we're like, oh, we should change it up a little bit, you know, because obviously kicker was an invasion, right?

So we were trying to do something new with it. And then we realized that we didn't need to, that we could just kind of do the basics, and then we saved it. So that happens from time we could just kind of the basics and then we saved it so that that is uh that happens from time to time especially in the world of the blocks sometimes you save stuff for later on the blocks right so what that ended up being is a whole lot of cards changed overnight and then i got to make uh relatively i don't know if you'd call them simple but we tried to make them simple here's a enclave elite it's a cycle of multi-kicker commons that all they

did was get counters and so they were sort of like x spells running around uh and that started as the simple cards and then from there we sort of went up from there up the rarities um so it was fun to explore doing the multi kicker stuff i got to ultimately make an x y card which is what fireball at one point was it had an x variable and a y variable but with multi kicker we could make an x spell and put multi kickicker on it to be the Y component. And so Comet Storm is that, and Strength of the Tijuru is another one that is making use of Multikicker mechanic, where we probably couldn't make this prize otherwise. Okay, so let's talk about another theme. So one of the big themes of Worldwake was land that attacked.

Ooh, yes. So that was pretty cool. Talking to Brady at the time, we wanted the land itself to be about... Brady Dabramath, who was the creative director. Just real quickly, sorry. Go ahead. Yeah, so talking to the creative director, we needed a sort of a gimmick

to where the Zendikar plane itself would rise up and fight. It was a, it was described as sort of like an autoimmune system response, okay? Because what was ultimately going to happen in the next set was the rise of the Eldrazi. But in the meantime, we didn't really know that. However, the land itself could wake up and do battle for you.

And that was quite a challenge because it's kind of difficult to have the lands become these vulnerable creature permanents and then have it happen a lot. They're sitting sort of down in your mana they're not supposed to be uh stars and attacks and blocks and surprise people but uh we ultimately made the zendikons at common as our sort of ways to make lands attack and it ultimately became the uh name of the set the world wake the world is waking up um so explain what zendikons are for those that might not know yeah so zendikons is a it's we made a cycle of commons they all enchant a land they turn it into a creature and because that's sort of a vulnerable thing to do we give you a rebate meaning if your land dies you you actually get the land back, and you can play it again.

You don't get the enchantment back, the aura. That goes to the graveyard. However, we knew that we needed to give them a little bit of stickiness, so you can then play the land again and maybe enchant it again, but probably just get a nice landfall trigger out of it. So that was our Zendikon cycle of lands at common to get you to attack um with the theme of the set one of the themes of the set okay also the set has some high profile um lands that turned

into creatures right yeah so uh it was i think pitched by multiple people, and myself included. I said we could do dual lands that become creature lands. Previously, creature lands, very powerful things, lots of constructed, like treetop villages, fairy conclaves, shocking stones. Right. So Antiquities had introduced Mishra's Factory, which I believe was the first land that sort of

animated itself. And then in Treetop Village was Urza's Legacy. Urza's Legacy. There was a cycle in Urza's Legacy. But we hadn't done a lot of it. We hadn't done a lot of it we hadn't done a lot

of lands that kind of woke up and right the big idea here was dual lands that wake up right yeah so the the crazy part was to somehow uh do one better and it's actually really hard to do one better than uh those cards than a mistress factory but uh it was i know that i pitched it in a meeting i said we could do these cool ones here's a red green one here's a white blue one i think i did like a seri angel on the white blue one and i don't know if it was temporary or permanent the permanent way is to do like stalking stones the temporary way is to do like a treetop village but uh they did make it in they were nice and spicy and then i'm holding in my hand a dread statuary this uncommon that for four man becomes a four two it's kind of like the uncommon version this was added by

mike tyrian uh during the set as like we can't just have the theme be this rare cycle is common cycle we need it more than that so we added sort of this uncommon in the middle I said sounds cool to me so it's just kind of for two mistress factory like land okay so let's talk about some other themes in the set um so one of the things that we definitely did was we continued on with things that had been in zendikar right so landfall traps quests and stuff talk about uh some of the evolutions how do we evolve landfall like how did that come about sure so some of the um i'll say some of the evolutions how do we evolve landfall like how did that come about sure so some of the um i'll say some of the stuff that was immediately uh continued so i loved that there were these

common lands that came in the plane did something and so we have a second cycle of common lands this palomar depths and my favorite one the county garden so we those were just pure continuations of zendikar we wanted cool stuff to do with your lands uh we continued with landfall creatures uh here's a caustic crawler uh landfall that's nice and common and the weird thing that i pitched was what if spells could somehow have landfall that's nice and common and the weird thing that i pitched was what if spells could somehow have landfall on them because that's something that wasn't in main sets in dakar so that also became a common cycle uh and it was a it's strange evolution here's a tomb hex i'm holding creature gets minus two minus two or landfall minus four minus four

if a land entered the battlefield new control so this doesn't trigger on every single land it's sort of looking in the past for a land um so that that's an evolution of landfall that wasn't all that deep it's kind of hard to do but but it was something that would be a small set kind of exploration. Do you remember how did you come up with the idea of putting on spells? I was just trying to put it everywhere. It's sort of what happened in the first playtest for Worldwake. It was like over-themed. Because the early playtest, we didn't have multi-k that's all we really had

to go on before doing evolutions of other things so landfall was the first thing to evolve because it was the absolute thing that was staying into the main set of zendikar so it was really safe to just go crazy and try to do more another evolution that didn't make it uh was like forest fall or island fall right that kind of thing so it was a landfall and then it could also do something a better landfall if you played the right kind of land right it had an upgrade if it was the right kind of land yeah and so that that felt cool it an evolution. It ended up not getting into the set because there's just enough design space and landfall in general.

And that actually ended up on like Akum Hill Kites. And there's like a Tazim Sinks and stuff in the Oladers Indicars set where it actually did do landfall something bonus if you're on color um so a lot of times when you make stuff uh luckily you can sort of put it in the back burner put it in your little card catalog in your head and bring it back up later when we inevitably make more cards using the mechanic or go to the same plane or try to do throwbacks or something like that

now would you remember any other evolutions um there was the the spell lands the land falls that were specific to land falls those those one made it one didn't i don't remember other things we had a bunch of stuff that i got cut that we cut though so what do we what do we cut let's talk about some stuff we got cut i had i had some bizarre like things that would charge up like imagine if you could somehow uh like keep your lands tapped you know You could pay for things and then leave your lands tapped to make them better or something like that.

So it was like Kicker but Echo and Kicker at the same time. Something like that. But it was trying to count your lands that you were doing it with. It was really weird and not very cool. We had this other bizarre version of Landfall, which was not Landfall. It was you didn't play a land, right?

And that was terrible because it's the opposite of what you naturally want to do. Right. That was the precursor. The precursor to Landfall was using your land rep as a cost to do other things with it. And right, it led to people mana-screwing themselves, and it wasn't fun. Yeah, we thought it would be like, your land is now a resource.

You just, did you play a land? Okay, what if you didn't? What if you somehow generated ways to play lands and didn't use them? That'd be cool. It was, you know, very, very not cool. Yeah, it didn't play well. Yeah, that's sort of a Zendikar thing.

I feel like a magic design in general rewards players for doing what they already want to do. They want to play a spell, they want to attack, they want to play a land. Just normal things instead of just inverting everything to be weird for weird's sake. So we just kept staying the course of doing only the things that just made sense in moving your game forward. Yeah, so other things I know, we messed around.

So traps were introduced in the first set in Zendikar, but we started messing around with their cost a little more right yeah so traps were early zendikar as and uh we had really bizarre ways to play them outside the game that ended up being foretell in a very very future place but the traps we ended up with, they just cost less if your opponent sort of trips them. If they're doing the wrong thing, it triggers your trap. And then I think maybe the very first card I added to the World Wave file

was a Boulder Trap because it was somehow cut. And I was super, super appeased that we just didn't do a giant boulder trap that would just roll over you and crush you yeah uh and so i specifically remember logging in only to type in a single card uh which became stone idol trap uh and it does have a goofy goofy cost reduction that has to do with if more than one thing is attacking you and people don't seem to like that but i mean i've read a tournament report where someone was able to block multiple things with multiple stone idol traps because uh they cast more than one of them in the same turn which is what i was getting at which is it's a trap that can be triggered in a scaling way

and maybe multiples of them get triggered in the same turn. So it may not be obvious from the card design itself, but that is an evolution of traps that's subtle and probably you know

wasn't conveyed very well anyway. Okay, so I want to talk about some individual cards. Yep, yep. Okay, so probably the most famous card from the set is Jace the Mind Sculptor, one of the most powerful Planeswalker cards you've ever made. What is your memory?

How did Jace the Mind Sculptor come about? what is your memory how did jace the mind sculptor come about what is your memory of this card all right so my my memory of jace the mind sculptor was we're gonna have a jace in this set he's gonna be sort of on the key art he is going to be a four ability planeswalker he's gonna stay mono stay mono-blue, nothing crazy. Just the four ability part is the crazy part. We're going to invent a new frame for it, so it needs to be drawn up. His art's going to be, like, squished, and then...

So, real quick, I just want to jump in. It wasn't actually a new frame per se. I mean, it was a new frame, but when we first made the frames for the planeswalkers, I said to them, we're going to do a four one. While you're making the three

loyalty one, make a four loyalty one. We're going to do it one day. Let's make it now. And so, we actually had it in our back pocket. We were waiting for the right place to use it. And I felt like Jace was the right place to use it. So I think, I put my foot down and said, this is the first four.

Yeah, so the only planeswalker in the set is pulling a lot of weight. So we knew we wanted some kind of poem, right? You should read, since there's four things you can write on there. We wanted it to sort of like then and then and then and then like it tells a story right so a lot of planeswalkers they can sort of tick down to nothing and the other plan is to tick them up into an ultimate um the ultimate is the one that probably changed the least i i remember putting in the ultimate because it's the story of him mind wiping oh homer at his teacher so that actually is a story thing where you exile your opponent's

library and their hand becomes their library it's actually trying to be a top-down story moment uh and i've heard from many people that they have never lost if they've ultimated a geese the mind sculptor uh the goal is not to to where you can never lose you know ever it's not supposed to win the game it's supposed to get you really really close um but uh i've actually never heard of anyone losing after ultimating him but yeah the rest of him did change very much and uh it was tyrian the lead developer who wanted to do a brainstorm effect um because you can like do combo-y things if you use a brainstorm you can then sort of mess with it after you use it so that's why he's got this fate ceiling scrying thing with a brainstorm thing. Those two combo together.

So not only was he the first four loyalty planeswalker, he was also the first planeswalker that had zero loyalty ability. Did that happen in Vision or was that in development? It was not. I don't remember specifically wanting to do a zero.

It was just a sort of knob, and this guy has lots of slots on his character sheet, more or less, so he could make use of that kind of thing. Yeah, it was definitely new in many different ways, and because it had so many moving pieces, many different ways and because it had so many moving pieces uh we more or less it i did less on jason mine sculptor than i get credit for i will say that out loud um i don't get it nearly as much now because we've we've made many many planeswalkers uh now but at the at the time they were like what were you thinking? Obviously this part is wrong or that part is wrong. I was like, well you know, he's got a lot of

stuff on him and we tried hard to get him strong and still fun. But anyway. Just don't I should have said this earlier. So Jace the Mind Sculptor, by the way, costs two blue blue four mana total, two which is blue.

He's got a loyalty of three. His plus two is, look at the top card of the target player's library. You may put that card on the bottom of that player's library. He's got a zero ability, which is draw three cards, then put two cards from your hand on top of your library in any order. He's got a minus one ability, which is return target creature to its owner's hand. And then his minus 12 is

exile all cards from target player's library. And that player shuffles his or her hand into his or her library. Okay, I want to talk about another card that did something pretty weird. Eye of Ugin. So let me say, I should have done this last time up front.

Eye of Ugin is a legendary land, colorless Eldrazi spells you cast cost two less to cast, seven and tap, search your library for a colorless creature card, reveal it, and put it into your hand, then shuffle your library. And the flavor text was, So what's going on here? Yeah, so there's a lot going on here. So Ayubugan is the first mythic land. So that's a new thing that is trying to uh

live up to the next part is it's trying to be this like story moment okay where it's sort of uh the Eldrazi are coming it's like this teaser okay uh but we don't want to just say it I need to just tease, right? It's trying to ride the line here. Right, so at this point the Eldrazi, that word doesn't mean anything to anybody. I don't know if they knew, I don't know if they even knew the next step was called

Rise of the Eldrazi yet. So when we say call us Eldrazi spells the game didn't have Eldrazi spells. So you're like what does that mean? It didn't mean anything and nothing spells so like what what does that mean it didn't mean didn't mean anything and nothing in the set tells you what that means right so there's there's no context for half of the card right and so uh this is f you guys have seen the final card you didn't see all the iterations before this where it wasn't like this at all it was trying to be this weird mythic

land it was trying to tease the story beats um the like yeah and eugen's a character in there oh my god it's so hard so i actually didn't make this card in fact very we had to be rescued by brian tinsman this is brian tinsman's card he he took all the parts that were a teaser a mythic land and this the story story beat of the eldrazi showing up and ended up with something really close to what you see here um the colas eldrazi spells is a throw forward because he was leading rise of the eldraossy um at the time the set after this and then to make it not completely blank it does let you find a cola's creature card right so it can do something uh if you happen to open it so it's not a total whiff in the time it's been

printed uh i know it caused a lot of conversation that was kind of the point okay so like i was very flabbergasted that of how close to correct this card was um after the fact and i wanted to congratulate brian tinsman of doing a very good job where i sort of failed as a designer to come up with something that could satisfy all the criteria of this crazy card and what it was trying to get across. However, if I forward a bunch of time and now

Colossal Drazi are not gigantic things that cost tons of Colossal mana, they're just really efficient low drops and it has to get banned for that reason. But it's because it was not designed to throw forward that far it was only throwing forward one set and not throwing forward you know 12 sets so uh i will say congrats brian tinsman a wonderful throw forward for one card

has been a wonderful throw forward for one card and it was going to break at some point because we just can't anticipate that far in the future. Okay, so Ken, we have a little bit of time left. Are there cards you'd like to talk about? Any card that you have a fond

memory of or a fun story for? Yeah, so I have a bunch. I'll just try to hit the top ones. So I have this Tarassodon in my hand, one of my favorite cards that I've ever designed. It's this 8-mana elephant who's a 9-9. He enters a battlefield, destroys up to three target non-creature permanents. And for each one destroyed, its controller gets a 3-3 green elephant. And so this was a sort of, I mentioned back of my mind in my sort of card catalog design that I wanted to do,

is some way to sort of blow up stuff in a green way that was pretty decision-intensive, right? And it's like 18 power of elephants all at the same time in one card. You can grief with it and blow up some lands. Or you could be pretty cool with it. I think it's net positive fun. And I just like designing giant green monsters in general. It's one of my favorite things to do.

You do love green. For those that don't know Ken, Ken is a big fan of green. Yeah, it has all the fun stuff in it. It gets to do all the fun mechanics of making creatures, making mana, getting lands, gaining life, killing your opponent with way too much damage. That's all green stuff. I've been told by Aaron Forsythe that he thinks Terestadon is the most kin-nagel card. The most ever kin-nagel card. That is what I'm bringing up.

If you cast a Terestadon, you are embodying my spirits the most, I suppose. Stone-autotrap I mentioned. I'm pretty happy with this Pilgrim's Eye that I put in the set to go get a land. There's lots of small things that I like a lot. So Pilgrim's Eye, three mana, artifact creature, one-one, flying,

it's a Thopter, and then when it enters the battlefield you search your library for basic land, reveal, and put it into your hand. Right. It's been reprinted once or twice.'ve like the the times when i'm pretty happy is when i make a card and then someone else decides to reprint it uh you know unbeknownst to me in one of the many products that we make uh this nature's claim i designed as sort of this uh thought-provoking way to destroy an artifact champion.

It's a green mana instant, destroy a target artifact champion, its controller gains for life, and people were actually casting this in, like, vintage as a single mana way to, like, bust up a combo where poor life may not matter. But once in a while, you aim it at your own stuff to get life at instant speed. So I didn't expect it to get adopted in, like, very ruthless, constructive formats.

That was not what I was going for. I just wanted a... Just like the Terrasseidon, you lose a thing but get a thing. I kind of like those cards more than usual. So there's a green card I need to ask about now that I'm looking at it right now. Can we talk about Omnath?

How did Omnath come to be? So Omnath came as totally top-down design. Omnath is a creature in the World Guide completely made of the mana of Zendikar, an embodiment. And so that's sort of what I tried to do. It is based off of a card design I made in my sort of job interview

of creatures that sort of just got bigger as you were adding mana to your mana pool and so it is a top-down thing of mana and i thought that the brian tinsman design of upwelling was cool where mana just doesn't leave your pool however it's kind of hard to track so if we just say green mana, it's way easier to track. And that's a mono-green way to sort of float your mana and have this sort of creature that is the embodiment of it

walking around the battlefield as Ender Barret. So anyway, I'm almost to my desk here. So any final thoughts about Worldwake? I'll just say world rakes my favorite set i'm totally ecstatic i made a video about it even uh wrote a scripting language to animate cards even so you can look at world wake video tour and find it on youtube uh and if you ever get the chance to lead a magic set i highly recommend it don't say no

yeah the handful of people where they get to do it it's super awesome you'll learn so much of just how difficult it is to make a game to make uh mechanics to make cards, to make a format, right? There's multiple formats, multiple audiences you have to satisfy. And it's a huge learning process and a wonderful time. And you have something that everyone can enjoy, including, like, you know, your friends and family. And you can talk about it on our Preserver podcast way in the future. Well, anyway, guys, I can see 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 to be making magic. So thank you, Ken, for being with us today. It was wonderful, Mark. I love talking about my favorite things ever. Well, thanks, Ken, and to all of you, I will see you all

next time. Bye-bye.