Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #907: Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty with Daniel Holt

Episode Date: February 19, 2022

There's no one in R&D that's a bigger fan of Kamigawa than Daniel Holt. He worked on more Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty teams than any other person at Wizards, so I sat down with him to talk about how we made sure Kamigawa was well represented in the set.

I'm not pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work coronavirus edition. So using my time at home to interview people. So today I have Daniel Holtz, probably the most super fan, Kamigawa super fan in all of R&D. So, hello, Daniel. Hello. Okay, so Daniel was on the vision design team, the set design team, the vision design team for Commander, the set design team for Commander, the exploratory world building team, the world building team, the art review for the main set and Boosterfon, and as always, he works on the UX, the frames and symbols. So, like, you did all of that, okay? So, let's talk a little bit about your love of Kamigawa. Yeah, so it all started back when I started Magic. You know, I started playing back in 2004

with the original Champions of Kamigawa block. I think I got one draft of Fifth Dawn and a Myriad before it rotated, and then it was all Kamigawa all the time. And, you know, when you're a teenager, you can't just continue to get new product every weekend. So me and my friends would just hang out all the time and just use the cards we had on hand. And it was all champions of Kamigawa block. So we would just rebuild decks and play those.

Okay, so when the set started, it wasn't even Kamigawa yet. So when you first got involved, it was for sure Japanese world, but not yet Kamigawa. So what got you involved in the first place? It wasn't even necessarily Kamigawa. Yeah, so I've been pitching Kamigawa since the day I walked into the building. Our creative leads definitely got tired of me requesting that over and over. But we were in one meeting where we had the whole for this set, and they didn't know what they wanted there and i pitched kamigawa because it fit what we wanted we wanted a bright colorful world coming out of um innistrad and going into uh streets of

nikapena and it didn't really take off you know they said yeah we'll think about kamigawa but let's let's explore another trope we've been wanting to test out which is what you just said the japanese inspired uh futuristic world uh and then it eventually became kamigawa but let's let's explore another trope we've been wanting to test out which is what you said the japanese inspired a futuristic world uh and then it eventually became kamigawa because we didn't want to eat into kamigawa's creative space if we chose that instead of a return to so one of the things that's really interesting is there are a lot of people like when i talk to different people like for example i came into this my blog really hammered into me that there was an audience for kamigawa, and I know I was looking out for like, okay, how could this be Kamigawa? And I know that a lot of different people were all like, could

we make this Kamigawa? It's funny that behind the scenes, all these people were like, could this be Kamigawa? So talk a little bit about stuff you, like, how did you help push it toward Kamigawa? Yeah, the 1200 year gap really helped, you know, canonically, it's been 1200 years and kind of be whatever we need it to be. And, you know, we set the we set the tone of the set to be that tradition versus modernity. And there was even that kind of split in the building. You know, a lot of world building folks wanted to push it more tech, more cyber, where super fans like me were like, oh, I still want to make sure this is Kamigawa. I need my Katsune, my Izumi, and things like that. And I think we hit a nice blend there when we did push it.

You know, we got the callbacks on the set that made it feel like Kamigawa. The setting is still Kamigawa. But it's a more modern era. And so everything just kind of fit into place okay so let's talk a little bit about uh how you i mean you being all of us but that how we got as much kamigawa into the set as possible because i know you were a main driver of of making the kamigawa content as high as possible so let's walk through sort of how you did that. So what are some of the things that were done? Yeah, flavor. Let's start with flavor.

A lot of the characters are dead. It's been 1,200 years. A lot of the mortals you know just aren't here anymore. So we got to lean on, you know, the Kami are immortal to a certain degree. So they're still here. You know, we got to do the dragon cycle. We got some yojin callbacks

kiyoda is still around but then once we made sagas i think that really let us be like oh we can tell the stories of the past through the voices of today and so the living historians are running around telling the stories of the past so that fans still get to hear about toshiro mazawa about machiko kanda kiki j Breaker is still in there. You know, just fan favorites all over. And we, in regards to mechanics, we did explore, you know, bringing back a lot of them. The first day of set design, once you handed it off to Dave,

I sat everybody down and we drafted Champions of Kamigawa. I wanted to kind of set the tone for set design. And, you know know we got to bring back things like ninjutsu and channel whereas the other abilities didn't really fit but we we made some callbacks um you know discover the impossible is a love letter to um uh the unspeakable because i couldn't get the whole set in the cycle. The original Unspeakable being cast these three arcane spells and summon the Unspeakable. Yeah, the Unspeakable gets referenced in a card. Like, one of the things that's really interesting is how much we managed to reference.

Like, not everything even was around anymore, but we can make references to things. And there were a lot of references to different cards. And I think that was really cool. Mm-hmm. Awesome. Flavoring the sagas was one of my favorite things. You know, we did all the research in early world building where, you know, I read the 21 short stories we had available,

all three novels, and I just had a list of things I wanted to, like, shove in there. And every time Dave would make a new saga, I'd be like, okay, this could be this flavor. Let's tweak it a little so it fits. Things like that. So what was your favorite saga? Which saga are you proudest of?

What story are you proudest of getting in there? Oh, man. And you could have more than one answer. Doesn't have to be one. Yeah, I mean, it's any of the big names. I think Toshiro Iwazawa being one of my favorite characters from the set. Him and Machiko Kanda. So getting them sagas was pretty

early on. We got them, you know, Azusa and Kiki Ziki. Yeah, so let me re-react. One of them is Life of Toshiro Umazawa, who's the main character of the original Champions block. So it's a saga, one and a black. Choose one.

So chapter one and two is choose one. Tiger of Creature gets plus two, plus two until end of turn. Tiger of Creat Tiger creature gets plus two plus two until end of turn. Tiger creature gets minus one minus one until end of turn. You gain two life. We'll talk about that in a second. Chapter three is exile this saga, then return it to the battlefield transformed under your control. And then on the back side, memory of Toshira. It's a two three. Enchantment creature, human samurai. Tap pay one life, add black mana. Spend this mana only to cast an instant or sorcery spell. So let's talk about how this brought to life Toshiro Umizawa. Well, the front abilities may seem a little familiar from a card in the past

that is a direct reference to Toshiro's Jitte, Umizawa's Jitte. I wish I was the one to say, let's put that on a card, but I'm pretty sure Ethan Flesher beat me to it and put it on there in the early card file it just made sense and it stuck since the day we put it on there and then it flips into actual Toshiro's likeness

and my only request when we were designing that was that we make it work with the actual Toshiro Imazawa card which is all about casting instance from your graveyard. So the fact that it taps to add black and does that. And also, we made... It's also a 2-2.

We made it so all... The backside of all of them are enchantment creatures because that plays into the theme of our set of enchantments versus artifacts and stuff. So what was the other one you said? What was the other saga you said? Michiko Kanda. Okay.

Where is it? The Fall of Lord Kanda? Oh, that's actually one of my favorites. Okay, so the Fall of Lord Kanda is two and a white. It's a saga, a champion saga. Chapter one, exile target creature on opponent controls with mana value four or greater. Chapter two, each player gains control of

all permanents they own. Chapter three, exile the saga, the return of the battlefield transformed under your control. And then on the back side, it's Fragment of Kanda, one and a three, enchantment creature, human noble, defender. When Fragment of Kanda dies, draw a card. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about Kanda. This is the end of the novels. Kanda's punished for what he did,

where he stole Kiyodai from the spirit realm and just caused a lot of trouble for Kamigawa. So the first one is it exiles him. He was put into stone, and we made sure that this first ability hit the original Kanda, which is a seven mana value creature. And then the second one shows Kiyodai,

second chapter, shows Kiyodai, second chapter, shows Kiyodai being returned, you know, set free, you gain control of everything that was taken. And then it flips over and he's in his rock form and he does get smashed at the end of the story. And that's what happens.

You smash him and you draw your card. Yeah, I should point out, by the way, something kind of clever that the original champions did is the main protagonist of it was a black character uh you know in magic colors and the main antagonist was a white character so like normally a lot of people think of like white is good and black is evil but we sort of put it on his head and kind of like the good guy was the black character and the bad guy

was kind of the white character i mean though once again, Kanda had his reasons for doing what he did. I mean, he thought he was doing good. Obviously, he caused lots of problems, but. And, you know, in the same way, Toshiro was kind of out for himself still. He was still very selfish in ways. Okay, so was there a third saga? I think I went to the wrong side.

Was there a third saga you were referencing? Yeah, we can talk about Machiko's. The Reign of Machiko? Reign of Truth? Oh, hold on. I forgot the actual name of it. Reign of Truth. Oh, Machiko's Reign of Truth.

So, one and a white, enchantment saga. Chapter one and chapter two, target creature gets plus one, plus one until end of turn. For each artifact and or enchantment you control. Chapter 3, exile the saga, then return it to the battlefield, transformed under your control.

The backside is Portrait of Machiko, enchantment creature, human noble. Portrait of Machiko gets plus 1, plus 1 for each artifact and or enchantment you control, and it's a 0, 0 creature, so essentially it's power toughness equal to artifacts and enchantments. So what's going on here? So this actually points to one of the things you teased in your article about an unnamed mechanic.

This one was called Balance in a lot of our testing, and it cares about having both artifacts and enchantments. It's kind of being that centerpiece of the war of tech versus tradition. And Machiko becomes the emperor at the end of the story after her father Kondo's death. And she's hoping with Kiyodai to help restore balance to the world. And that's kind of

what this card is doing. She's influencing with her reign and then tells the story of her becoming a symbol of balance. Oh, that's cool. I mean, one of the things that's neat is literally every saga in this set is telling, like all of them are referencing something

from the original Champions block. And so that's kind of cool. Like one of the things that's really interesting for me and sort of my behind the scenes ploy to get us to Kamigawa, was that the neat thing about new versus old is old means something if old actually is old, right? That we could have made a world where there's a new and there's an old, and we just make up the old, but that doesn't have the same oomph of, no, no, literally 20 years ago, these things in real magic time happened.

And I think that is, that's why the, it's a lot of fun for me to sort of, like, we get to sort of look back much like they, the people of the world, look back. And that's kind of cool. Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, compare it to Kaldheim, where it's cool to get those deep, insightful lores of the sagas

there, but it was our first time on Kaldheim. It's like, everybody was learning about that lore for the first time you come to neo uh neon dynasty and pick up a saga you may just know the story because you played 18 years ago personally okay so other than the sagas let's talk about some other ways we you we all of us imbuedued the set with more Kamigawa. Oh, man. So all the favorite creature types, like I mentioned earlier, are back. You know, the Kitsune moon folk.

Let's go one at a time. Let's go one at a time. So let's start with the Kitsune. Kitsune. Let's talk Kitsune. Kitsune are back. Light Paws is one of the main characters at the Imperial capital, working with the Emperor and originally Kaito. I actually found out from the art director, Zach Stella, that he commissioned this as a callback to Eight and Half Tales, which all kitsune have tales, but he specifically wanted the kind of look of the card to be a reference to that.

Eight and Half Tales being a popular Fox commander from original Kamigawa. So another fun thing, one of the things that we were always, so, there were two parts of the set going on at once. So, today we're talking a lot about sort of the ancient set. The Look Back, the Kamigawa references. Meanwhile,

we were also, the other half of the set was doing something we hadn't done last time we were there. When we, when Brady Brady Domermuth and the creative team did the original Champions, they really went into Japanese mythology, Shinto, and a lot of real-world things, but things that were maybe not really well-known by people outside of Japan, or people who were fans of Japanese mythology. So one of the things we did in this set is we really take a look at pop culture.

Like, Japan has a lot of very popular pop culture that the rest of the world has seen. And so one of the things we also looked at is, were there fun opportunities to make cool references? So like, as we talk the Katsuni, you know, like, where is it?

It's, what's the, oh, a hotshot mechanic, right, you know, like, where is it? It's, what's the pilot? Oh, a hotshot mechanic, right? You know, or, you know, the fact that we can do Fox pilots. In fact, there's a couple Fox pilots. Kitsune Ace. Like, that's something that just is making sort of subtle references to something that is a popular thing. And there's a lot of that is in the set, too.

So it was fun to find where we could take existing Kamigawa stuff and cross it with sort of cool references. So that also happens as well. Right. It just still feels natural because it's, you know, flavored as Kamigawa. Okay. So we talk Kitsune. Who do we want to talk next? Let's do the moon folk.

Okay. So. Just go in. Weberg order. Okay. Let's talk moon folk. So. What? So the moon folk. So. Okay, let's talk moon folk. So, uh... What?

So the moon folk were... So here's a challenge to the moon folk. In the original Kamigawa, in fact, this was true of most of the creatures, is we did a lot of one-for-one mechanics. So, for example, all the samurai had Bushido. All the ninja had Ninjutsu. All the moon folk had a...

You bounce land to your hand to, you know, generate effects. You know, the snakes all locked you down. Like, there was a lot of one-for-one tying of mechanics. And I'll let people in on a secret, not great design. It's very hard when... Everything of something has to do the same mechanical thing. It is very, very hard to... I something has to do the same mechanical thing.

It is very, very hard to, I mean, you can do it a little bit and certain mechanics allow you to do it easier. The moon folk mechanic was not an easy mechanic to replicate. I think we did do one in the set. So yeah, I specifically requested this. It's a Temeshi Reality Architect. I designed this legend to play well with the Moonfolk. Oh, let me read that real quick so they know what it is. Oh, yes, go ahead. Okay, Temeshi Reality Architect, two and a blue, legendary creature, Moonfolk Wizard, so two, three. Whenever one or more non-creature permanents are returned to hand, draw a card.

This ability triggers only once each turn. X and white, return a land you control to owner's hand. Return target artifact or enchantment card with mana value extra less from your graveyard to the battlefield. Activate only as a sorcery. Okay, go ahead. So the first ability is what I really pitched. I was like, hey,

let's get something that triggers when you return lands to your hand. But originally it was just anything. Like, let's make a balance commander, basically. So it also would work with ninjutsu um i was just trying to get a good slot in the set and dave's like no that's interesting enough on its own let's make a let's make the cool second ability that goes with the first and still plays well with the moon folk so now it is just non creature permanence uh but still works with the original moon folk and yeah the moon folk were interesting in that a lot

of the creature types, we had them in the set, but we picked the animal they were closest to, so fox or rat or snake or whatever. But Moonfolk, we actually made a creature type. Moonfolk is its own creature type because I guess we

felt they weren't close enough to something. We didn't call them... They weren't something. Like, we didn't call them... They weren't quite rabbit, so we didn't call them rabbit. That's fair. But, yeah, it is... I know that... It's funny, when I went to the... So, I knew we were doing the set, but the audience didn't know this yet.

On my blog, people ask questions all the time, so I'm constantly asking questions. So, the audience doesn't necessarily know when I'm asking and I care, versus when I'm just curious curious um so i actually asked what if we did kamigawa because return kamigawa was a big theme on my blog uh what's the most important thing to come back and the number one answer by actually a decent margin was the the races the specific races um okay so we talk moon folk let's go to black the Nozomi What are we going to talk about here? There's a lot of good ones

We finally see Nashi on a card Let's talk about him Okay, let's talk about Hold on, let me read Let me read Nashi's card Okay, Nashi, Moon Sage Nashi, Moon Sage's Scion One black black,

legendary creature, Rat Ninja, three two, Ninjutsu for three and a black. Whenever Nashi, Moon Sage's Scion, deals combat damage to a player, exile the top card

of each player's library. Until end of turn, you may play one of those cards. If you cast a spell this way, pay life equal to the mana value rather than paying its mana cost. Okay, so who's Nashi? Why is he here?

So we actually met Nashi on in a eighth year revolt story where a johnny goes to visit tamio and we found out nashi is this adopted uh nozomi son of tamio because nashi's village was uh destroyed by tezzeret um and his parents were killed and it's it's really tragic but she takes him in uh raises him as her own and uh there's just a loving connection there and so we wanted to give him a character and he actually played a much larger role in the story uh the original story pitch um i think he did a lot of what kaido was uh doing in the final story but we realized canonically he was just a little too young for that. I think he's around

12 or so, and a little dangerous endeavor Kaito gets in, so we shifted the character focus there. Okay, so we get to Red. Red was... The Aki. The Aki, yeah, okay.

Our goblin. Yeah, Goro Goro. Okay, so That's one of my favorite cards on the set. Yeah, Goro Goro. Okay, so let's talk Goro Goro. Give me a second. Okay, so Goro Goro, Disciple of Rusai? Ryusei. Ryusei.

One and a red, 2-2, legendary creature, Goblin Samurai. Red activation, creatures you control gain haste until end of turn. Three red, Red activation. Creatures you control gain haste until end of turn. Three red red activation. Create a 5-5 red dragon spirit creature token with flying. Activate only if you control an attacking modified creature and equipment auras you control with counters or modifications. Yeah.

This little guy I pitched was a disciple of Ryusei. This is before we knew that the dragons were going to be reborn. So in my head Ryusei. This is before we knew that the dragons were going to be reborn. So in my head, Ryusei was still here. He makes a five five to mimic Ryusei. And then we found out they were being reborn. And I was like, can we actually keep this?

Like, it's actually really funny if this goblin is still worshiping a dragon that isn't around anymore. And so creative really rolled with it. And they made they made him follow Atsushi, the new reborn red dragon, still singing worship to Ryusei. And Atsushi just tolerates him because Atsushi gets enough things of value as a tribute to them. Okay, so the last creature type, the most controversial one here, we'll talk about it, is the snake folk. So let's talk about the Orochi. Yeah. So, okay, first of all, let me explain what the controversy was.

So in the original version of Champs-Élysées, the Orochi had six appendages, two of which were legs. The Orochi had six appendages, two of which were legs. And there was a lot of... When we first talked about going back, it was the one race that we were talking about maybe having died off because the snake with legs was not very popular within the world-building team. And we eventually decided to come back and we... Well, okay, they lost their legs.

I'm not even sure the explanation of the story, but it's 1,200 years later and somehow they evolved um do you know there's a saga for that oh what's the saga for that uh teachings of the kirin teachings uh well you pull that up okay um the there was a there was a decision that had to be made about if the oroshi were returning or not i was certainly on the side fighting for them to return, because some people just love them as a favorite creature type. But because of the artistic choices, we just didn't know. We didn't even know going into

concept push. The art director was trying to lean another way, and we were testing both at the same time. Eventually we decided, hey, let's just cosmetically change them a little. They've evolved over time, like you're about to read in the saga. And they did stick, but another creature type that came out of it was

the Nintico Orchid Mantis creature. It's one card in the set. Zach still loved it so much that he put it on the rare ninja card. Okay, so Teachings of the Kirin. One and a green. Chapter one. This is Enchantment Saga. Chapter

one. Mill three cards. Create a one-one colorless spirit creature token. Chapter two. Put a plus one, this Enchantment Saga. Chapter 1, mill three cards, create a 1-1 Colorless Spirit creature token. Chapter 2, put a plus one, plus one counter on a target creature you control. Chapter 3, exile the Saga, then turn the battlefield transformed under your control. And then it's Kirin Touched Orochi. Enchantment creature, Snake Monk, 1-1.

Whenever Kirin Touched Orochi attacks, choose one. Exile target creature card from a graveyard when you do create a 1-1 color spirit creature token, or exile target non-creature card from a graveyard when you do put a plus one plus one counter on target creature you control. So what story is being told here?

Okay, this is a weird saga. It's actually a mesh of two. There's an original story about the five monocolored Kirin. They're having a meeting, and they talk about how they interfere with mortal lives. They're just all telling these ghost stories almost around the campfire of, oh, I did this before to a mortal, and ha, ha, ha.

So they're really, they meddle a lot. So the first side is making the spirit, and then it meddles with something. But then the back side is actually an opportunity we took to tell the story of how like kieran uh and the spirits touched the orochi because the orochi were um kicked from the jukai forest just like everyone else when uh tawashi was spread the city was spreading so much and the spirits were angry but the orochi started losing their powers and to get a connection back

to the forest and to their magic they were like hey we'll offer anything you want all this stuff and the the spirits didn't really believe them so they tested they're like hey give us your arms and your legs and they're like oh take everything we don't care and they're like oh you really want this and I'm summarizing real quick obviously uh but they eventually just gave them this new form of the long tail, but they still have their arms. And now they're more connected to the forest like they once were. So,

I can see my desk from here, so we're wrapping up. So, I want to get to a few final stories before we finish. So, is there any other thing from Kamigawa that you had to make sure happened in the set that you did oh man we covered a lot of it uh I think it just had to it had to feel like Kamigawa you know every card has to be like okay I know what setting I'm on uh I I care about this the story ended up

so much cooler than I expected when I was proofreading that. Grace Fong and Emily Tang led a lot of efforts there. The callbacks is really what had to do it. It's been 1,200 years. That's my final answer. We had to get references to the original characters that people knew from 18 years ago in our time,

but 1,200 years ago in canon. I'm glad we had a nice solution for that with the sagas. Yeah, like I said, it was... One of the big challenges was 1,200 years later, like, I remember we sat in a meeting, we're like, who would still be alive? Like, what possible, you know? Like, okay, you know, it's magic,

so they're magical creatures and some last some time, but 1,200 years is a long time. So, you know, and then what's possible, you know, like, okay, you know, it's magic, so they're magical creatures and some last some time, but 1,200 years is a long time, so, you know, and then we even said, okay, are there ancestors, you know, like, how do we make reference to it? And we had done this before on our in Dominaria, right, when we had gone to Dominaria, Dominaria has a long history in magic, you know, as well, and

so we did a lot of callbacks in Dominaria, and so I think we learned some techniques there, we applied here, and then, right think we learned some techniques there. We applied here. And then we had some new technology that we applied as well to try to get it. But it's funny. I think sagas were designed in Dominaria

because we knew we needed to talk about the past. And then it ended up being the same tool we needed to tell about the past. Yeah. Okay, so one last story I want to talk about here

since this is a controversial story is Tamio. To tell about the past, so. Yeah. Okay, so one last story I want to talk about here, since this is a controversial story, is Tamio. So let's talk a little bit about, so the interesting thing, and I've mentioned this before, is we knew that Tamio was going to be completed, like, super early. Like, I think before, like, we knew it was Kamigawa, we knew she was going to get completed, right? It was pretty early on.

It might have come shortly. I don't know which one actually came first. Man, that's probably been the hardest secret, but, like, it's been hard to keep Kamigawa coming back bottled up, like, in my social media, with my friend circles. It's been real hard. But then, like, knowing also Tamiya was going to be completed, like, just on top of it. Yeah, so my memory is I'm pretty sure we knew that

before I started vision design. I believe that was a known thing. When we started vision design, my big thing at the time was, okay, let's decide later whether this is a Kamigawa. Let's just make an awesome Japanese-inspired set

and then we'll come back to the question, is it Kamigawa? But going in, we knew, I believe we knew it was tamio um i think we there's a point where we re-examined it like oh does it have to be tamio and looked at other options um but it turned out like the other options were like tezzer it makes no sense and

you know um like we just introduced uh kato so he's a brand new character and and wanderer and the one right the wonder we just had this giant reveal already for the Wanderer, so two big reveals didn't make sense, and so it just, none of the other, and the other big thing about it is, from a storytelling standpoint, is like, look, this was a big moment, we needed

the audience to care, it needed to be something that was endemic to this world, like it felt weird to bring a character that had nothing to do with Kamigawa, and then change that character, that didn't feel to this world. Like, it felt weird to bring a character that had nothing to do with Kamigawa and then change that character. Like, that didn't feel right, so... And remember what I was saying earlier. Nashi was originally one of the main characters involved with the story.

It was so much more gut-wrenching for Nashi to be there when Tameo gets captured and completed. Like, that was one of the original story pitches. And that was rough. Yeah, I think it's interesting is right. We had pitched early on, we liked

the, we had wanted to find a home for a ninja planeswalker. I mean, for years it had been on our, like, could we possibly find a place to do this? And then, like, well, if we're going back to Kamigawa, like, yeah, that seems like the place to do it. So, I'm happy that finally happened. So, any last thoughts?

We're wrapping up here. Any final thoughts about Kamigawa or Neon Dynasty as a set? Yeah, I'm glad we finally got to go back. This was such a huge passion project, you know, slaving over it for two years, two, three years. I still feel like it's not out the door,

even though it's releasing in a week or two uh but i'm glad we have a new modern kamigawa to reference for in the future like maybe it won't be 18 years before we go back again maybe in supplemental products we get some more nods to it a little more frequently than we got things like okagachi and yuriko and those side products it's just it's more accessible now that we've spent the time to visualize what it looks like in modern day. Yeah, and one of the things for the, I get asked this in the audience a lot right now, which is, I've constantly said how hard it was to go back to Kamigawa

just because the first one didn't do well. And they're like, well, if this one does well, does that make it easier to go back? And like 100% it makes it easier to go back. You know, like whenever I, when I'm going to higher ups and like 100 it makes it easier to go back you know like whenever i when i'm going to higher ups and pitching someone like kamigawa like they look at the last kamigawa but if this one's successful we just put we pointed this one and they go okay so uh success breeds repetition as i like to say so it makes it a lot easier yeah the fans reaction is probably my

favorite part it's so heartwarming to see everyone loving the set, new and old. They love the throwbacks. They love all the new stuff they're seeing. It's really nice to see this work finally paying off. Yeah, I got a tweet a couple days ago, or maybe it was on my blog. Maybe it was a post on my blog. And the person said, look, I'll be honest. I hated the old Kamigawa.

I had no interest in coming back to Kamigawa. I was upset when you said we were going to Kamigawa. But now that I've seen the set, I love it. So the fan response has been awesome. And so that's great. I mean, I'm not even as big a Kamigawa fan as you, but it is exciting to see the fans all excited. And like I said, this was the number one request on my blog.

So it is nice to be able to finally, like, after years and years of saying it'll never happen. I mean, I, for years, said, guys, it's never going to happen. And then I had to keep saying it's never going to happen since I knew it was going to happen. But I had to continue not to change my story. We can't leak it anymore. That's probably the best part.

That's the biggest relief. Yeah, by the way when you when something big happens and you want to tell people what you can and you have to wait for two years before you can tell people um i mean i this has been my life forever so i'm used to it but it yeah it is so it is so nice when you can finally tell people that so like i like i always get excited the night before a big release when we're finally telling people something just i'm i'm so excited to see the audience reaction to it. So, and I'm sure like the day before we announced Kamigawa,

you were just waiting to see. Oh yeah, oh yeah. But anyway, I am at my desk, so we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So I want to thank you for being with us, Daniel. Yeah, thanks for having me.

And for all you, I will see you next time. Bye-bye.