Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #917: Lorwyn with Aaron Forsythe

Episode Date: March 26, 2022

I sit down with Designer Aaron Forsythe to talk about the design of Lorwyn.

I'm not pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for Other Drive to Work at Home Edition. Okay, so I'm using my time at home to interview people. I'm trying to continue that. So today I have Aaron Forsyth with us, and we're going to talk about Lorwyn. Hey, Aaron. Oh, yeah. Hello, hello. Okay, so I'm going to set a little, for the audience here uh understand what was going on so this was back in a time where i was sort of training you to be the next me and uh trying to teach you how to do design and and and um so you had led a couple sets before this but this was the first large set that you led right and this was back when large set meant like fall set fall set yes um they were there typically weren't other

large sets right i guess now it was always like the large sets were these big um things that were supposed to set the tone for the whole year and and have follow-up content other small sets that came after them so yeah i had led dissension um that might have been it, a core set or something like that. But yeah, this was the first big, big deal. And the big thing about this was kind of, I mean, what the fall set was all about back in the day was you were setting up the world,

you were setting up the whole year. There was a lot of figure out what this is and what it wants to be. So there was a lot of structure making. That's a big part of it. Right. At least in principle, that's what should have been happening. I think at different points

in time, we were better and worse at that. Sometimes we'd just be leaving the large sets, we'd kind of leave the small sets to fend for themselves. I think we were trying to do a little more structure here this year, especially because once we decided we were going to do large, small, large, small with Shadowmore.

Well, Lorwyn is pretty early in me taking over as head designer and one of my big things was I didn't want to leave small sets abandoned like we did, and so I was doing a lot more block planning. This set came out in 2007, just to actually

put it in context. But also, we worked two years ahead. We worked on it in 2005. I took over in 2003. This was relatively early. I think it's the third block that I oversaw. I did Ravnica, then I did Time Spiral,

and then it was Lorwyn. Do you remember the codename for Lorwyn. Do you remember the code name for Lorwyn? What was the code name for Lorwyn? Peanut. Oh, right. Yes, it was peanut, peanut, butter, and jelly. And then we had a fourth set that no one knew about. That was sandwich, I think.

Donut. Oh, donut. Jelly donut, right? Jelly donut. Even tied was donut. Yeah, donut, that's right. So we kept a secret. We kept our secret.

Okay, so basically, a little behind the scenes is, Bill had said that he wanted to do four sets in a year, because previously, like, cold snap had been the last time we tried that, and I said to Bill, I go, next time you want four sets, can you tell me ahead of time?

I'll build it in. Just tell me when you want four sets. So Bill's like, okay, I want four sets. And the idea I pitched him was the big little, big little plan where we have two mini blocks that go together. And all we had really... I signed you up for a tribal set. That was the one thing

we knew going in, was that the mini block of Lorwyn was going to be tribal-focused. Okay, so why don't you pick up the story from, okay. Yeah. So, I mean, we'd worked with, you know, Brady Donmermuth, who was the creative lead at that time was on the design team with us. And we were, I don't know if he was the one that came up with the kind of light dark is

that the two elements of, of the two blocks adding together um but anyway he kind of took that and mapped it onto what he was calling you know the sealy and the unsealy courts of like celtic i don't know if mythology is the word but or fairy tales exactly um folklore yeah maybe yeah celtic folklore folklore with the boggarts and the the elves and fairies and things like that um so that that was definitely the source material that we were loosely influenced by we didn't do this was not like a big top-down set where we studied celtic folklore and tried to bring all those characters to life or whatnot. It was just more like, here's a tone. Celtic folklore, light and dark.

And we liked the idea that Lorwyn was kind of the nice set and Shattermore was the mean set. Part of night and day was light was not as scary as the nighttime and a little nicer. In the nighttime it got very freaky and scary.

Right. So that niceness of trying to make this set that was friendlier, that's in some strange places. Initially, we were just talking about the level of removal should be really low or removal should be really weak because there's not a lot of killing going on in this in this world like um the goblins are throwing pies at each other not stabbing each other um and that's a really tough um thing to try to do in a magic set you know where you want the game to progress and things

to die and you don't want the board to become full of a thousand creatures um ultimately i think we did not end up sticking to that but boy did we spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to make a magic set where there wasn't a lot or where there was tons of creatures and not a lot of removal and so part of that was uh we were using minus one minus one counters with the flavor of oh you're just you're not killing them. You're just injuring them. And then it just became apparent so quickly that like, it just felt meaner. Like it didn't feel nicer.

And so Persist, Persist got actually made in early design. But when we decided to push off the minus one, minus one to Shadowmoor, Persist went with it. But Persist was made... Oh, who made Persist? It was...

Nate. Nate made Persist. Nate Heiss made Persist. Yeah, so all that minus one stuff, Persist, Wither, the kind of wounding of stuff, all got moved to Shadowmoor,

and we decided to use the beneficial counters, the normal plus one, plus one counters in Lorwyn, which gave us a great mirror, which was, I think, we were trying to put the two sets together. So very early on, we sat down, and like you said, Brady was on the team. We carved out the creature types, I think, super, super early. Yes, that was important in order to figure out what the heck we should be making. Figuring out the tribes,

what colors they were in. You know, we needed some that were large creatures, some were small. So we ended up, you know, giants and tree folk were important to make sure we could have big creatures in in red and green um we we decided we weren't going to do humans i was going to be a big a big ksp or a big thing that made this set stand out from from others was no humans at all so coming up with whatever that whatever the white race was tricky um yeah i don't know where like

kithkin or um in legends initially there's like one card that was a kithkin yeah kithkin uh i don't even know i don't even know if that word is real or not, or if it's just made up for magic, or if it had predated magic. But somebody said that. I think it might have been Brady that said we should use these as kind of our halflings. They're not human, but they can be civilized and relatable. So that was kind of a bold move. And the other tribes are more traditional tribal set. Elf, Goblin, Merfolk. Elementals were kind of cool because they filled both the role

of the blue-red small creatures, but also in five colors across all different shapes and sizes. We ended up seeding these tribes into the Time Spiral block. We knew early enough what the eight tribes were going to be so that we showed up

on cards in all the Time Spiral sets to make sure there were some of each already in standard by the time this set came out. So that's why there's some Kithkin Rebels in Time Spiral. There's a couple Treefolk, Fairies. So, you know, we did a pretty good job of committing and laying those seeds early.

Another thing I want to mention real quick is Merfolk. So there was a period in time where the creative team they didn't like merfolk. They live in water, we fight on land, this is just sort of weird. And so there's a period of time where they tried to take merfolk out of the game. And that was during Onslaught.

And so the tribal set didn't have merfolk in it. And so when we came back and did the next tribal set we're like, we have to reclaim merfolk and we had to get we knew that merfolk in it. And so when we came back and did the next tribal set, we're like, we actually, like, reclaimed merfolk, and we had to get, like, we knew that merfolk was very popular, and so I know we brought merfolk back specifically so that we can sort of give

them a tribal outing that they hadn't had before. Right, and they don't have legs. There was a point in time where we were doing them with legs, and here I think they're just much more traditional. Yeah, so the set that we had kind of looked at for inspiration, obviously, was Onslaught, the one you just mentioned, the tribal set, which was really popular. That came out. That was the set that came out in between when I finished playing and when I got hired.

So I didn't get to work on it, but I had waited a bunch and I enjoyed it a lot. And the weird thing about that set, or the weird thing that people don't remember, and I certainly didn't, was that there weren't that many tribal cards in the set. The set was mostly about morph and cycling, honestly, when you played Limited. But there were a few really high-powered, lower-rarity tribal cards like Sparksmith or Timberwatch Elf or Noxious Ghoul or whatever that really paid you for drafting a bunch of a tribe. Can I explain why that was so, Aaron? The average gain of tribal cards was not that high. Yeah, yeah. So basically what happened was I was really gung-ho on Tribal, and the rest of R&D was not nearly as excited as I was.

And they really felt like, oh, this is the morph set. And I remember after the pre-release, there was a meeting where Randy was talking about it like, wow, people really see this as the tribal set and not the morph set. And I was like, I've been saying this forever. But that is why

everybody didn't really embrace it. I mean, we embraced it. It was in the set. But it wasn't... I think people saw that as being like the secondary thing of the set or something. And I really had trouble

making them understand that the players just love tribal. That there's something about sticking lots of creatures together. They're the same. That's just very lovable. So I remember we played, we busted out some old onslaught packs and played sealed deck with onslaught as preparation, getting ready to work on Lorwyn.

And then we, I played a whole match of sealed and the only tribal interaction that came up in the entire match was my mobilization which was an enchantment that gave all soldiers vigilance my mobilization gave my opponent's soldier vigilance that was the only tribal interaction that came up the whole time we played and i was like wow i'm just misremembering how much of this was in the set because there were just, there were some, there was a small number of very focused tribal cards that were very

memorable. And that kind of made the whole set feel that way. So with Lorwyn, we decided we were going to kind of go the other way. We were going to make tons and tons of tribal cards that were a little, a little more, a little lower synergy level. Like if you control a giant, you get to do this, or put a counter on a Kithkin you control, or whatever. Just, like, much lower

ceiling effects, but a lot more of them. Were all the commons threshold one? So that's... No, there were some, like, I remember Silvergild Dowser was, like, tap, give target creature minus X minus O till end of turn, where X is the number of fairies and merfolk you control. So there were some scaling effects. They were not nearly as powerful as Timberwatch Elf and Sparksmith were in Onslaught,

but they did exist. But honestly, we went way too far with this. We did. The whole set did so tribal and like every card once you drafted a Kithkin card like every other card you took just told you to draft more and more Kithkin and it got

on rails so quickly that there weren't always very many decisions to make in drafting and it was often just like whose deck had the highest density of stuff that mattered we thought we were putting in more like branching paths or decks to go in different ways we had changelings that was really cool like we took the mist form ultimis ability which was this really standout

card from onslaught and decided that was something that could be on tons of cards so there's tons of changelings there's actually changeling instance and sorceries with the tribal supertype, which we can get into if we want to. We have creatures that were like Cloud Goat Rangers, a famous example where it's a giant that makes three Kithkin. I remember initially in design, I was hoping we could make a card that was a giant Kithkin, meaning it was a giant and a Kithkin.

And it was like the giant was the card and the Kithkin were the tokens but if the tokens died the giant was still the giant Kithkin which didn't feel right so it was just a giant that made Kithkin tokens we were trying to make cards that branched between tribes but ultimately that was not enough to overcome the sheer amount of synergy within each

tribe and it was both put you on rails and increased the board complexity by having all these interconnected tribal effects happening all at the same time which got even worse when we added in morning time with its class tribal though that combination of things eventually led us to want to do new world order so ultimately what i'm saying is that the amount of tribal interactions that we with its class tribal. That combination of things eventually led us to want to do New World Order. So ultimately what I'm saying is that the amount of tribal interactions that we put in Lorwyn was wrong and too high and too dense.

So a great plug. Last week I had Matt place on to talk about New World Order. So if you do not know what that is and want to learn more about it, go listen to my podcast on New World Order. Yeah, Matt was one of the developers that worked on all these sets. Okay, so let's talk through some of the mechanics.

Do you want to start talking tribal? Yeah, sure. So, tribal is a supertype. Is that right? No, it's a card type. It's a card type. People say it should be a super type is that right? no, it's a card type people say it should be a super type

they're probably right I obviously just misremembered what it was it's a card type it's a bizarre card type it springs forth from very kind of noble, flavorful goals of like shouldn't there be elf spells if there are elf creatures, shouldn't there also be elf

spells like wouldn't the spells that elves cast be elf spells so if we said tutor for an elf spell you could get you know this cool spell that an elf cast um the problem is like magic was not set up that way from the beginning so it was really hard to retrofit it in and the only way we could come up with something that let us put creature subtypes on non-creature spells was to create a second card type that could have creature subtypes which was tribal so all tribal really is is a flag that lets you assign creature subtypes to non-creature cards um we did not retroactively go back and errata all the old stuff we did not make goblin grenade a tribal sorcery dash goblin um maybe we were supposed to if we really wanted this to work maybe we had to go all in but i think we were skittish about it it was a short-lived experiment

we did it here in this in this block we did a few more in Rise of the Eldrazi, and that's mostly been it. It was just extra complexity, very weird, hard to explain. And it turns out that, like, 80% of the effects you want don't make sense with spells. A lot of what you're doing is creature-centric.

And there are a few effects, like Get Stuff Out of the Graveyard. I mean, there are a few effects like get stuff out of the graveyard. I mean, there are a few effects that interact with it. We kind of fell in love with the few that we knew worked really well, like regrow a zombie card. You can get nameless inversion, which is a changeling instant back from your graveyard if you regrow a zombie card.

And that feels really fun. But there's like four or five cards that work that way that are really cool and the rest is just bizarre. And something we weren't committed to doing all over the place. And I think ultimately that just doomed it. Okay, next up.

Champion. So Champion... Let me read what... When this enters the battlefield, sacrifice it unless you exile another type. So it's champion A type that you control. When this leaves the battlefield, that card returns to the battlefield.

So it would say, like, champion an elf, and it's a creature that when you enter the battlefield, you have to get rid of an elf. The elf kind of turns into it, but when it dies, you get the elf back. Right, so we have long looked for mechanics, and we continue to do so, that show creatures leveling up or evolving into bigger things or whatever. If anyone's played Pokémon, you know the feeling of turning your Charmander into a Charmeleon and then into a Charizard is really cool. So I could magic play in that space as well.

Just here's my small guy, and I turn him into a big awesome version of himself. I actually think the mechanic's pretty fun. It requires a real high density of the thing that you're championing in order for the card to work at all. So some of the more successful ones were the changelings that just championed a creature, or any creature.

But yeah, we got to write some ridiculous text on some of these cards. You know, a 10-2 for 4 mana or whatever. Nova Chaser. I thought it was pretty fun. When they died, you got to reuse your comes-into-play effects, enter the battlefield effects as they're known now. Yeah, we started, by the way, with a card became an exact,

kind of like what you were saying, this creature becomes that creature, and it was just way too restrictive, and it just never happened. And so that's when we said, okay, well, we're a tribal set, what if, you know, what if you... Meaning, like, you had to upgrade your... Yeah, like, this specific creature

became that specific creature. Became Kithkin Master Armor or whatever. Yes, yes. Exactly. Card A and Card B. Right. And... I don't remember that. I mean, it was very, very early on. But we learned really, really quickly that Jess was too restrictive. And so then we leaned into

okay, well what if it's any of a certain creature type that upgrades, so that felt like you're already, we're asking you to build your deck around creature type, so we felt like that was more of something that people could do. So next on my list here is Changeling. So we brought up Changeling. So Changeling says, technically,

this card is every creature type at all times. It was, in fact, based on the Moonfolk Ultimis. Yeah, Moonfolk Ultimis. Misform Ultimis. Misform, sorry, Misform Ultimis. So what happened was I had made Misform Ultimis back in Onslaught block because I was just trying to be interactive

with the theme at the time. And I know this came in about the middle of the playtest, the middle of the design, where I recognized we didn't have enough glue, and so Aaron and I would talk all the time, and I pitched, well, what if we put Misfire Ultimates in the set? And I know the creative team wasn't happy about it because they had to figure out some way I pitched, well, what if we put Misfire Ultimates in the set?

And I know the creative team wasn't happy about it because they had to figure out some way to make it work creatively. They didn't want them to be straight-up shapeshifters because they felt that changed the story too much. Like, if there were racial creatures that could just look like anybody, it so dominated what the story would want to be. And so they came up with, we joked about the jello molds, the green see-through creatures. Yeah, the art on them

is pretty ridiculous. When you look at something like avian changeling, it's like a goose with a goofy see-through head or whatever. Yeah, they're their own race. They can approximate other creatures, I guess the in the flavor

in the story um in gameplay they just are all creature types um the creative solve was i think executed a little goofily um i mean the whole set kind of has that tone but i think the mechanic was good in fact we brought it back both in Modern Horizons 1 and in Kaldheim, and the execution on both of those sets creatively is actually pretty cool. Yeah. So, I'm going to chalk this up as a win. Obviously, we've come back to it multiple times.

Oh, I think changing is a great tool. It always works really well whenever we do it. Yeah, I think changing is a great tool. Okay, next up. I'm going alphabetically here. Clash. So Clash says, each clashing player reveals the top card of their library,

then puts that card on top or bottom. A player wins if their card had a higher converted mana cost. Yeah, I'm not exactly sure how we got to this point. I mean, it is a kind of card flow mechanic, meaning whenever I cast a Clash spell, I do get to, much like Explore and Ixalan, decide if I want to keep the next card I'm about to draw, which can be good. I think it might have had to do with kind of that we don't want actual violence, so we're just kind of like sparring with each other. kind of that we don't want actual violence so we're just kind of like sparring with each other anyway it was it was tough to balance

the card because you didn't want like my removal spell didn't work because of what was randomly on top of my opponent's deck so I don't know this one obviously we haven't ever come back to so it clearly did not work great I don't know. This one, obviously, we haven't ever come back to, so it clearly did not work great. I don't know what recollection you have of it, but...

We had high hopes because we're like, oh, it smooths your mana, so it helps everybody, makes the gameplay better. And one of the things about Tribal is there's a lot of synergy connections. You want to draw the right cards and stuff, and so having a smoothing mechanic really helped that. But yeah, in the end, we had high hopes

and the audience was not a big fan of Clash. Yeah, I mean, as a designer, I'm always looking for little moments, little victories you can have even if you don't win the whole game, that you accomplish some small goal. And I guess I thought this might be this might feel that way where it's just like well you you beat me but we didn't have that cool turn

where we clashed and i won and something good happened but like it's just so random like it's just like literally playing war like flip the top card up who did it's not like i've really cleverly won the clash we put a few cards in to help you, but yeah, it mostly was just random. Yeah, like Ponder or whatever. Yeah, we wanted... Obviously, we tried to allow

you to min-max the clash result, but often it was just you had to cast spells on curve whenever you could afford to, and randomly things happened or not. It was not particularly rewarding. Okay, next up. Evoke.

So this, Evoke goes on creatures that haven't entered the battlefield in fact, at least in Lorwyn. I think they had to leave the battlefield in Morning Tide. And then there's mana you could pay and if you pay it, they stick around. Otherwise, they sack at end of turn.

So the idea behind these were they could be spells or creatures. In my original design for these, they were spells, and you paid to turn them into creatures, but the rules at the time did not want us to do that, so the workaround was to make them creatures with ETBs that left at the end of turn if you didn't pay for them. Yeah, I remember, yeah, spellchairs or something. Yeah.

We wanted a terror effect and then it could turn into a creature that was like an embodiment of terror. Yeah. Ultimately, that became Shriek Maw was the card we actually printed. um ultimately that became shriek ma was the card we actually printed um i like the mechanic yeah it's quite powerful you can use it as a spell early and then later on once you have enough mana the creatures are all basically two for ones uh we skimmed all the them as elementals so they were kind of embodiments of different spells. The creative was like they were just mashups of different creatures. It's like a ladybug with a pig head or something.

Just, you know, all really strange looking things. Yeah, this is one of those mechanics that I'm always on the lookout. Like, I would love to bring Evoke back. I need to find the right place and whatever. But it's definitely on my list of one day we should do it again. I'm a big fan of Evoke. we uh we used it in modern horizons too to uh incredible effect the the some of the most powerful cards and that's it are mythic creatures

that evoke by discarding um or exiling a card of their their color uh like solitude and Grief and Fury. So yes, Efoque is a mechanic that I expect we will be using quite a bit going forward. Okay, last mechanic. Name the mechanic. Hideaway. So this has a really

interesting origin. You want to tell it this is your mechanic? Yeah, I mean as a first time being set lead i mean i was trying to put stuff in the set that i wanted to put in magic for a long time and like i said about i like little mini games with rewards and so i was trying to make a mechanic that was uh kind of captured the feeling of searching for hidden treasure or digging up treasure. So there was, for a long time in design, there was a series of cards where some of them had a treasure mechanic, which was exile the top card of your library underneath a land you control.

So just kind of stash a card under one of your lands and then there's another mechanic that i don't know if it was called dig or dig up treasure or dig but that let you pay some mana and tap the creature and the land to get the card into your hands basically you draw a card um and it was flavorful and cute and there was it was a lot of steps and a lot of words and two different mechanics on different cards and eric laurer who was pretty new to the department at the time was just like if i can do this why would i ever do anything else with my creatures let me just draw cards all day and i won't i won't ever attack or block and it's just too much it's too much and that was sad he right, but it was sad.

So I was hell-bent on figuring out how to get something in this vibe of like, can I play a land that stashes a card, puts me on a little quest, and then whenever I complete the quest, I get the card. And the Highwaylands, Shell Dock Isle,

and Spine Rock Gnoll, and the rest were, were that. And I actually, I actually like how those cards turned out. Yeah. No, I, I,

I, it's funny how much iteration that treasure went through, but I do think in the end, hideout was kind of fun. So, um, but that started as a very major mechanic that was throughout the set at all rarities and ended up being this,

you know, cycle at, at, at rare. So. Yeah. And actually we're going to probably see that mechanic again soon, if I remember

correctly. So it's not one that we use a lot, but I'm happy to see that it had some legs. And yeah, and treasure, obviously, is something the concept was powerful and we turned it into tokens, like little

lotus petal tokens that we use quite often now. So I'm glad we found a good use for that word and that concept because it is powerful and very fantasy and cool. And so that, yeah, that's how Hideaway came about. Okay, so I can see my desk here. So almost to work.

You forgot one big mechanic. Oh, what did I forget? Planeswalker. Oh, Planeswalker. Okay, let's talk, let's talk. That's right. You forgot one big mechanic. Oh, what did I forget? Planeswalker. Oh, Planeswalker! Okay, let's talk Planeswalker. That's right. That is a big mechanic. Let's talk Planeswalker. Actually, okay. I'm sure we've told this story before. We have, we have, but we get to tell stories

more than once. That's my specialty. Originally, these things were meant to go in Future Sight. They're exactly the kind of gag that future site was was hot hot to trot on you know new card types we had wanted to we had wanted as a brand to find ways for to have characters that could persist from world to world you know something we felt we lacked we always tell a story in a world go to another world all new characters the players were planeswalkers but we had nobody we could show on cards we did great work creative team alexi bricklow the artist came up did the original lorewin 5 are just awesome characters i'm glad they ended up in lorewin instead of

future sight so they had a whole large set to shine in that said they're pretty out of place right they're not part of the story they're like the only humans in the whole world. We didn't explain anything about who they were or why they were there. They didn't like solve the problems of Lorwyn or whatever. They were not involved in the story at all. Yeah, pretty weird that they're there. But those cards are – those cards stand up pretty well. For the first attempt at us not really understanding them all that well,

like Jace Bellerin and Chandra Nalar and Garrett Wildspeaker are quite fantastically developed and designed. And, man, I'm glad they were too because they set Planeswalkers down. I don't know, set us on a path where Planeswalkers are just such a huge part of our game and our IP. And I think a lot of it is because how well we executed those first five and by the way making a brand new card type is no easy business right that that like the fact that they came off as well as they did i'm given we took a while working on them but um i'm there were versions of them that played more like sagas where they would just kind of procedurally go

through their list of abilities and then start back at the beginning um there were versions that were like landscape where they were sitting on the table sideways they kind of look more like driver's licenses than magic cards tons and tons of iteration so many knobs as we like to say in development like so many things you can change to tweak the power level of these cards. They have so many numbers on them, so many words on them. They're really hard to make. And the graphic design was new, and the rules were new. They all worked out.

It did. It worked out. It worked out phenomenally. Really proud of those. So I realized there's one last thing I wanted to ask you about. These were one of your babies. So you have always loved choice.

You love charms. Anything that gives you choice. And I know charms had showed up in Mirage and then we'd done them a bunch of times. But I know you got inspired. So talk a little bit about there's a very famous cycle from this act that

that it was your baby yeah the commands so cryptic command um profane command etc austere command um yeah i i love modes i love modal cards i i remember even working on fifth dawn which is the first design team i was on made mode man i wanted to have just creatures that were atb charms and we've since made a bunch of those but they're um so we were looking to make like one thing bill rose would always ask us of like what's the theme of your set okay it's tribal okay what do you have for people that don't like your theme that's always a question he's asking like are people going to want any of the cards from your set if they don't like tribal or they don't like this art style and they don't like whatever it is like the the main course is what do you have for them so okay if people don't like creatures or people don't like weenie decks or whatever it is

we're pushing let's make a rare spell cycle that's new and different and uh i just choose instead of just choosing one from a list, like choose two from a list. It's a simple change, but it was pretty eye-opening and opened up the combinatorics of any given card a ton. And they felt very flexible and cool and novel. So yeah, and we have gone back to that well quite a few times since. So yeah, it's a real simple thing

that I think had a high ceiling and and paid off really well and those cards are especially cryptic command um have gone on to become quite quite famous yeah it's it's the thing i always love is when you you change one thing like just saying instead of three pick one four pick two doesn't seem like that different but it is you, just the way it plays, it's quite different. So it's, I love finding stuff like that. But anyway.

Yeah, really proud of that cycle as well. So any final thoughts? I'm really proud of this. Yeah, proud of the cycle. It's an awesome cycle. It was, the set was, we learned a lot working on it, both on like what to

do and what not to do we still talk about it all the time there's so many examples of things that went right and things that went wrong the things that went right went really right the things that went wrong went really wrong I imagine one day we're going to come back and kind of give it a fresh coat of paint

and take all the lessons we've learned and make a new version of Lorwyn, a new take on Lorwyn. Um, so I, I, I think we could talk people into that. I,

it's, it's gotta be a cool idea. Well, I've been pitching return to Lauren forever, so I'm happy to hear you say that. So yeah, yeah, there there's,

there's lovable stuff here. Yeah. It's, it's interesting looking back. One of the things that's always, one of the reasons I love doing the lookbacks on the podcast is, like, this was a while ago, right?

Lorwyn was, when did Lorwyn come out? 07. 07, so it's 15 years ago. And the set, like, did a lot of things for the first time and really claimed a lot of space and did cool things. And it also made some classic mistakes that sort of taught us not to do that

and go in different directions. Like, yeah, this block inspired New World Order. This and Time Spiral inspired New World Order. And it's neat. I don't know. I love going back and looking back and seeing... I don't know. It's fun.

It's fun looking back. Oh, yeah. it's fun it's fun looking back oh yeah so any final thoughts about Lorwyn before we head off for a minute sure we can talk about Morning Tide or you can talk to Mike Turin about Morning Tide but you know for all the craziness we did here we kind of doubled down on it

as we figured out our block plan of like we're gonna care about different parts of the card we care about the race in lorwyn we care about the class in in morning tide and we're gonna care about the mana costs you know it was just we we the whole block added up in a pretty crazy crazy way yeah Yeah, it did. It did. It's funny. There's a lot of decisions that I made. Like, let's have morning type be about class. Let's change up what colors are what creature types between the two mini blah.

Anyway, a lot of decisions I made. I look back and I'm like, what was I doing? You were trying stuff. Yeah, I was trying stuff. But anyway, it was a lot of fun. It's fun. Thanks for joining me, Aaron. It's fun reminis stuff. Yeah, I was trying stuff. But anyway, it was a lot of fun. It's fun. Thanks for joining me, Aaron. It's fun reminiscing.

Yeah. I do like... Who was on the team with us? Andrew Finch, Brady, Nate Heiss, Paul Sotosanti, who ended up being the leader of Morning Tide, and you and I. Yeah. So I guess you and I are the remaining members of the Lorwyn... Yep, that's right.

But anyway, I can see my desk, guys, 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, Aaron, for joining us. This was a lot of fun. You're welcome. Thanks for having me. And for all you, I will see you next time. Bye-bye.