Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #960: Enchantment Types

Episode Date: August 19, 2022

In this podcast, I go through all the enchantment subtypes of Magic.

I'm not pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work at Home Edition. Okay, so today I'm talking all about enchantment types. So you know, for example, creature types, goblin, elf, merfolk, etc. Every card type has types associated with it. So today I'm talking about the ones associated with enchantments. So these are sort of subtypes that go with enchantments. So there are, let's see, I think there are nine of them. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. There are nine of them.

I'm going to talk about all of them, how they came to be, and what, I don't know, what it means for the future. Okay, we'll start with Aura. So Aura is the enchantment subtype. Well, Alpha basically had Auras in it, but they were not called auras. I don't think the aura subtype existed until 6th edition rules, I believe. When Alpha first started, if it was an aura, instead of saying aura on it, it would say enchant and say what enchant creature, enchant land, enchant enchantment. So they were in Alpha.

But basically what happened was it was a little bit, like, it was confusing to have an enchantment and on its type line not literally say the word enchantment. So it's like, destroy target enchantment. Like, well, does this enchant creature? It doesn't say enchantment on it. So in 6th edition rules, they changed

it to say enchantment aura it um so in six edition rules they changed it to say enchantment aura so aura being a subtype uh and then what that means is if you're an aura in your rules text you then have enchant something and that now that then went in the rules text um you can enchant lots and lots of things um you can you can easily enchant all permanent types I think we've enchanted cards in graveyard if you go to the silver border acorn section of the world we've enchanted libraries and all sorts of weird things anyway, the aura is the meat and potato, of all the things I'm going to say today

the aura is the only one that is evergreen. Auras show up in every set. One of the big challenges of making auras, though, is they inherently have card disadvantage. That if I ever put an aura onto a permanent and then you destroy the permanent, not only do I lose my permanent, but I lose the aura. So we've spent a lot of time trying to come up with ways to sort of offset the aura disadvantage. Maybe there are auras that go back to your hand when the creature they're on dies.

Maybe there are auras that you can somehow get out of the graveyard. Maybe there are auras that you can bounce back to your hand. We've made a lot of different versions of this. There are auras that become creatures. There's a lot of different things we've tried to sort of make auras a little more... a little less card disadvantage-y, if you will.

But it's a pretty wide-open... Like, really, the only thing from a design standpoint is, okay, what should this be enchanting? And a lot of times when we're trying to figure out auras, in any one particular set, we have to figure out the dynamics of that set. So, for example, like Kaladesh, we'd introduce vehicles. So, you know, we might say,

okay, well, normally I would enchant a creature, but because vehicles are a thing here, maybe I'll say enchant creature or vehicle. You know, sometimes you have to sort of think about what other subsets and things that exist in your set. But one of the neat things about aura, I mean, from a flavor standpoint, the idea is I'm using magic,

I'm enhancing that thing. So auras are definitely pretty cool in that they have a lot of flavor usage, but they are from a mechanical standpoint, they're pretty tricky, just because, you know,

it is hard to make them competitive. Like I said, we've done a lot with them to try to help improve that, and there are auras that have seen competitive play, but it is one of the trickier of the evergreen things to see play. Okay, so that is the aura. Aura started, like I said, in Alpha,

and then became a thing in 6th edition. Next up, cartouches. So cartouches were first introduced in, in, what's that, Amonkhet. So there were five cartouches, cartouches of solidarity, cartouche of knowledge, cartouche of ambition, cartouche of zeal, and cartouche of strength. So they represented, there were five trials in Amonkhet, and they represented sort of the goal of the trial. And then there were five trials that were cards called trial of of Solidarity, Trial of Knowledge, Trial

of Ambition, Trial of Zeal, Trial of Strength. So they lined up one for one with the cartouches in their name. And it represented, so in the story, the idea was in order to sort of become a perfect citizen of Amonkhet, you would go through five trials. Now, you could die in any one trial. These were harsh trials. But if you made it all the way through to the final trial, then you were killed, but you got eternal life, supposedly. What nobody knew

was behind the scenes, you were turned into, like, a zombie warrior. And mostly the point of the trials was Nicol Bolas was just trying to find the best warriors, so his eternals is what they became, were the best possible fighters. So we wanted to represent the

essence of what these trials were. Oh, another thing, by the way, I guess I should mention this about enchantment subtypes. One of our rules about enchantment subtypes is that, or sorry, enchantment types, as we should call them, is that we don't use enchantment types unless they mechanically matter.

So, for example, with the cartouches, all the trials say, when a cartouche enters the battlefield, return this trial from your graveyard to your hand. Or not from your graveyard hand, from the battlefield to your hand. So the idea is each of the trials had an enter the battlefield effect.

For example, Trial of Ambition, which is the black one. When Trial of Ambition enters the battlefield, target opponent sacrifices a creature. So the idea is, cartouches were enchantments that you controlled, that when enchant creature you control, when cartouche of blank enters the battlefield, you may do something

like Cartouche of Ambition, the black one, you may put a minus one, minus one counter on target creature, and then it grants that creature an ability. Enchant Creature gets plus one, plus one, and has lifelink. So the idea is that if you did the trial, oh,

so in flavor-wise, the trial represented the act of doing the trial, and the cartouche is what you would get if you survived the trial, if you managed to get through it. So the idea is if you played Trial of Ambition, you could... I'm sorry. Whenever you played a cartouche, you could put trial back in your hand so that you can cast the trial again. So every cartouche let you sort of recast the trial. And the way the trials were set up is any trial would bounce for any cartouche.

So if you're playing multiple colors, you can mix and match them. So if I play Cartouche of Solidarity, which is the white one, but I have a trial of ambition on the battlefield, well, I can bounce my trial of ambition when Cartouche of Solidarity. So what I was trying to explain before is, we only use enchantment types, or, to be honest, other than creature types, we only use any subtype if it is mechanically

relevant. So because the cartouches, all the trials, um, mechanically matter by the cartouches, that is mechanically relevant, we were able to make them. Um, one of the nice things about, uh, all the subtypes is it lets you give some flavor. Like, we were trying to get the idea of,

oh, these are the important things you win when you advance. And we wanted to call them cartouches, and so it was a matter of figuring out how to, like, how do you get that word on there? You know, it could be in the name, but making it a subtype and making it mechanically matter just added another layer on, too, which is pretty cool. Okay, the next enchantment up is Curse.

So Curses first showed up in original Innistrad. So the way the Curses came about was, I think what we were trying to do was we wanted to do top-down, like, literally what curses were. Like, one of the things we did early on when we were doing Innistrad was, what are all the tropes you expect to see? What are the things that you think will happen, right? And so one of them was curses. Curses play a big role in, like, horror and stuff.

And so, okay, what did it mean? What did it mean to be cursed? And then I flashed back to... So in Unglued, I made a card called Volrath's Motion Sensor. And the idea of the card was that your opponent would cast it on you, and then you had to balance it on the back of your hand, or else I think you discard a card. But anyway, you sort of had to balance this thing on your hand.

And you literally were putting it on your opponent. So because the unsets do sort of fun things, I said, well, why not make it Enchant Player? You're literally enchanting the player. So we made it an Enchant Player. And that was really fun and it was cool. And like I said, one of the things that the unsets definitely tend to do is sort of push a new space and test it out. And Enchant Player felt cool. And like I said, one of the things that we, the unsets definitely tend to do is sort of push a new space and

test it out. And Enchant Player felt cool. I sort of liked it. So when we were trying to figure out how to do the curses in Innistrad, I said, well what if they what if a curse enchants a player and then it does something bad for them?

You could curse a player. And that went... The flexibility was pretty cool, and we liked it. And then the funny thing was, the same rule, we were going to pull it because it didn't... It wasn't mechanically relevant, right? It was more for flavor. So what happened was, I said, well, I so badly wanted a curse

that we made some cards that could, like, for example, what was the card? It was a witch. Let's see. Was it a cursebound witch? Yes, so cursebound Witch was basically when it died you went and got a curse and so the idea was

oh well it's a witch and the witch dies oh she's going to curse you and then you could go get a curse and then there was I think there were a couple cards we made that cared about curses but the idea essentially was we really liked the flavor of of you know literally it was a curse.

You are cursing your opponent. You're casting a curse on them and you got to use a vocabulary and use those words. Now note that a curse is still an aura. It enchants something. In this case, it enchants a player, but it still enchants something.

So it's an aura curse. But anyway, curses, so auras first showed up in Alpha and basically have been used in almost all of the sets. Cart Auras first showed up in Alpha and basically have been used in almost all the sets. Cartusias first showed up in Amonkhet. It only showed up in Amonkhet. It hasn't shown up again. Curses first showed up in Innistrad.

And then it later came back in Commander 2013. And then we've... It's something we keep talking about like it's oh I think the Recursed is also an Amonkhet right? Yeah I believe the Recursed is an Amonkhet as well just because it's sort of flavorfully fit. So Curses are now

deciduous meaning anybody who wants to do a Curse, it's pretty self explanatory, it's Enchant Player I mean while you might not see Enchant Player a lot it's not that hard to understand what Enchant Player means. And the overall package of a curse is pretty easy to understand. So we like curses in that

they're really flavorful, and the reason they became deciduous is they're self-explanatory enough that the flavor sort of carries explained to what it does. Okay, next up are runes. So runes first showed up

in, or first showed up, runes showed up and have only showed up in Kaldheim. So there were five runes. The rune of substance, the rune of flight, the rune of mortality, the rune of speed, and the rune of might. So the way these

worked was they were auras as well, but you enchanted a permanent, and so it had an enter the battlefield effect, and then as long as it enchanted a creature, it gave it a creature ability, and as long as it was in equipment, it gave it

the equipment and then granted the ability. So rune of flight as an example, when rune of flight enters the battlefield, granted the ability. So, Rune of Flight as an example. When Rune of Flight enters the battlefield, draw a card. Oh, I think all the runes you drew a card will enter the battlefield to offset the card disadvantage potential. As long as Enchanted Permanent is a creature, it is flying. As long as Enchanted Permanent is an equipment,

it has equipped creature has flying. So the idea essentially is you could put a rune in anything you wanted, but if you put a rune on a creature, granted flying, or rune of flight, or if you put it on an equipment, the equipment granted flight. And so that was all sort of flavorful. Now, once again, we liked the idea of

runes. I mean, runes were a big part of sort of the Norse mythology stuff we were playing around with. So we ended up making, I think, two cards, runed crown and Runeforged Champion, that mechanically care about it. Runecrown, you can search your library, hand or graveyard for a Rune card,

and put it on the battlefield attached to Runecrown. And then Runeforged Champion, when it entered the battlefield, you search your library or graveyard for a rune card, and you put it in your hand. And then he makes rune costs cheaper. But the thing with runes,

what's also, a lot of times when stuff like this happens, like runes happen because we were making call time, and we made the list, much like Innistrad made the list, of what are all the top-down tropes. And just, we knew that runes were something we wanted to capture. And trying to understand what runes are,

we're like, well, what are runes? And we're like, oh, they're magic, but it's magic infused on something. A rune is a symbol, but the symbol had power. And so we liked the idea of auras, because, like, okay, well, I'm grafting this symbol onto something, and it means something. It's powerful that it has it.

So an aura did a good job of, okay, well, I'm putting my rune of might on this creature, and because I'm doing that, here is the rewards for having that rune on it. And like I said, a lot of these come about because we are trying to capture flavor. A lot of the enchantment types are really just us saying, here's a cool flavor thing.

Let's do enough to justify it, and we can use it on the cards. Okay. Next up is... Background. Okay, so backgrounds first showed up... First only time has it showed up in Commander Legends Battle for Baldur's Gate. So the idea there was they were trying, one of the

challenges of making a commander draft product is that you need the person to draft a commander. But if the commander is locked to a singular color, like if the commander is multicolor, usually it's not a problem. But if the commander is one color, it is hard to adjust during the draft. And one of the things we want is

how can you, in a commander draft, sort of add in a color? You know, in normal magic, let's say I start drafting blue, and I see a really good red card, okay, I just start drafting red, and then I just gotta put some mountains in my deck. So it's easy

to sort of, in a draft, lean in to like a second or maybe a third color. But in commander, like if I take a mono-colored legend, you know, I take them early on, well, now my deck can't be anything other than that color, but, you know, mono-colored strategies don't work that great in draft. You're so, you know, the way I always think about it is,

let's say it's all mono-colored for a second. That means 20% of your cards will be one color. Well, if I'm only playing one color, I only have access to 20% of the cards. That's a fifth of the cards. So like in a 15 card pack, although one of them is always a land. But let's assume it wasn't a land. That means you'd have three cards to pick from.

And so we're saying that you have slightly less than three to pick from. And sometimes people will take things out of the pack before you so you have even less choice. But anyway, we... So anyway, we need to find a way. So the very first Commander Legends made use of Partner. So they were commanders where if two of your commanders had Partner,

you could play them in the same deck. But the flexibility of that and the combinatorics just made them really, really powerful. And so we knew that we couldn't do it again. So there are different options we looked at. I looked at partner with and different things like that. Partner with is where specific goes with specific things. But once again, in a draft, partner with is hard. So what we decided to do instead, I was not on the team, but what the team decided to do instead was what if there's

a secondary thing that you could grant onto it? And the idea they were playing around with is they really loved the ideas of backstories. Like one of the big things about when you make a D&D character is you get to build the backstory for the character. There's things the character did that affected them and maybe granted them abilities or made enemies or did stuff that you can then play up in the story. So making a

backstory is a really fun part of Dungeons & Dragons and they in trying to like make the D&D sets, you know, they were always sort of saying, what is a cool D&D thing that we could bring to magic? And anyway, so they were trying to solve this problem.

They separately knew that they were interested in backstories and so, okay, well, what if there exists enchantments that represent the backstory, but also grant an ability to the commander? So the idea is, if I drafted one of these, so, the commanders let you choose a you can sort of partner, essentially, with

one background. And so this allows you to say, let's say you take your legendary creature early, I can then pick up a background and all the mono-colored legendary creatures allowed you to partner with a background. So it's essentially partner... I don't think the term was part. It's like choose a background. But the idea essentially is

it allows this subset, the monocolored legendary creatures in the set, and the other subset, backgrounds, to work with each other. So any one of the monocolored creatures from Baldur's Gate can partner, I'm not sure what the correct word is, but go together

with the background so you can have both as your commanders, if you will. It also does something kind of neat in that normally you can't cast non-creature cards from the command zone. Sometimes you have planeswalkers that can be your commander.

But this is just a cool thing to let you have enchantments as a function. And normally what this does, by the way, is the backstory grants an ability to commander creatures you own. So essentially it's improving your commander. But anyway, I thought it was pretty cool. Okay, next up is class. Okay, so class first shows up in battle, well, also

first shows up, no, not first. Backgrounds was the most recent, Battle for Baldur's Gate. Classes first showed up in Adventures in Forgotten Realm. And the idea was, one of the big parts about Dungeon Dragons is, you belong to a particular class.

The way Magic incorporates it is we have a race-class model, so a lot of the classes you would see in D&D exist as a creature type. But they were interested in... So one of the things about playing Dungeon Dragons is you tend to level up. Meaning over time, you get stronger. You get more abilities. You get more spells if you're a magic user.

You might get additional equipment. But you gain skills and spells and things that you get better at. So they wanted to try to capture that. And so what they did is they did something where there's three levels. You can be level one, level two, or level three. And then there are enchantments. I think there are, some are monocolor, some are multicolor, some are two-color.

But it matches sort of all the classes. And we had done most of them in Adventures of the Forgotten Realm. I know Artificer Class was in Battle for Boulder's Gate. So they've since tried to make a few new ones. But anyway,

so the way classes work is it's an enchantment. You get an ability. You can pay mana to go to the second level. And you pay more mana to go to the third level. And each level that you go to just grants you more abilities. Kind of in very D&D terms,

as you level up, there are more things you're capable of doing. And so these... So the way we ended up doing them is we sort of swapped, like, Saigas have a certain look to them. I'll get to Saigas in a second. These sort of have the same art, long-stretched art with text, except it reverses how Saiga works. Normally, Saigas are pictured on the right and the text is on the left. For the classes, the illustration is on the left

and the text is on the right. So this mechanic is loosely based on, there's a mechanic called Level Up in Rise of the Odrazi. Brian Tinsman was very interested in the idea of things got better over time. In, what was it called? He made a creature in Eventide, a red and white creature,

a figure of destiny, that you could spend mana over time to make it better. And these classes, I think were kind of inspired by that. And making use of some of the visual technology from how we do sagas. And anyway, it made a really cool card, something new.

I think this is one of the ones. I assume there were a few cards that cared about class. Normally if we're going to put it on a type line, we care about it. So I did not look that up. But I assume that is true. Okay. Next up, Saga. So Sagas are very interesting.

I've done a whole podcast on Sagas. I'll do the short version of Sagas. Mostly we wanted it to represent the idea of telling the stories. And enchantment felt like a cool way to tell the story. We tapped into something we had tried when we were making Planeswalkers. There was a period of time where Planeswalkers had three abilities. In turn one, it would do the first ability. In turn two, it would do the second ability.

In turn three, it would do the third ability. In turn four, it would do the first ability. In turn two, it would do the second ability. In turn three, it would do the third ability. In turn four, it would do the first ability. So it would just keep looping. But the problem we ran into is, so for example, Garruk. The early version of Garruk was make a wolf. I think they were two, two wolves.

Or maybe it was a beast. Was it beast or wolf? Oh, it was probably a beast. Make a beast. Three, three beasts. Make a beast. The second turn, it was double the number

of beasts you have. And the third turn was like all beasts get some boost. Get plus 2, plus 2 or something. But the problem was, let's say I play a beast on turn 1. And then turn 2, my opponent, or sorry, at the end of turn 1, my opponent destroys my beast.

Now turn 2 comes around. I get a double on my beast. except I have none. So that doesn't mean anything. And then my third turn comes around, and I make all my beasts more powerful, but that doesn't mean anything. I don't have any beasts. So, like, it just felt like, oh, he did something, and then he couldn't, like, correct for it. And we decided

that we wanted the Planeswalkers to have more agency. So, like, let's you give them a choice, so, like, you could choose what makes the most sense, and you could sort of feel like they're making that choice, even though, I mean, technically you, the player you give them a choice so, like, you could choose what makes the most sense. And you can sort of feel like they're making that choice, even though, I mean, technically you, the player, are making the choice. Anyway, that felt too robotic for Planeswalkers. But the idea of a story being a little bit robotic, like, this is what happened in the order that it happened, and it felt more like it made sense to stories. And so we came up with this idea during

Dominaria, we made them, and they went through, like I said, I did a whole podcast on them, so you want to have a longer, drawn-out version of the story. You know, Richard came up with some really visual, cool things, and other team members came up with lots of cool things, and it really was one of those things that got

adjusted over time. Anyway, what ended up happening with them is they became so popular that they're now deciduous. We now do them a lot. So, you know, sagas are definitely something that we, that you see pop up from time to time. Okay, next are shrines. So shrines were introduced in Kamigawa,

so Champions of Kamigawa. So champions of Kamigawa. The Handens, they were called. So Handen of Cleansing Fire. Handen of Seeing Winds. Handen of Night's Reach. Handen of Infinite Rage. Handen of Light's Web. And basically the way shrines work is

they're legendary enchantments. Or at least the initial ones were legendary enchantments. Are they all legendary? I guess they are all legendary enchantments. So yeah. So initial ones were legendary enchantments. Are they all legendary? I guess they are all legendary enchantments. So yeah, so I guess all shrines are legendary. And it basically said at the beginning of your upkeep, do something based on

the number of shrines you control. So the idea is, as you got more shrines, the effects got bigger. But there are only five shrines, and they were in each of the colors. It was cycled through the colors. They were uncommon. So anyway, it was this fun play pattern. It made were in each of the colors. It was cycled through the colors. They were uncommon. So, anyway, it was this fun play pattern. It made you want to play various colors.

Anyway, they were pretty popular. Chantham Kamagawa itself was not super popular, although we did go back, but anyway, people liked the shrines. So, in Magic 21, they made five more shrines. Sanctum of Tranquil Light, Sanctum of Calm Waters, Sanctum of Stone Fang, Sanctum of Shattered Heights, Sanctum

of Fruitful Harvest. And then they also made Sanctum of All, which is a five-color enchantment. And the idea is, those started messing around a little bit with it. They still have a scaling effect based on how many shrines you have,

but it started experimenting a little more rather than just be an effect that scaled. Like Sanctum of Tranquil Light makes the activation cost cheaper. The more shrines you have, the cheaper it is to activate. But anyway, so we had those. Then we just recently went back to Kamigawa. Uh, and so we ended up doing, um, another cycle, uh, the Go Shintai. Um, so Go Shintai of shared purpose, of lost wisdom, of hidden cruelty, of ancient wars,

of boundless vigor. Um, and then there also was Go Shanti of life's origin, which was a green card that had a five-color activation, but it was legendary. So it allowed you to build... The whole idea was it was a commander for shrines if you wanted to make a shrine commander. Anyway, shrines have some play design issues in that most of the shrines all scale on their effects,

so we have to be careful how many shrines we make because every time we make more shrines, it just makes all the shrine cards more powerful. So it's one of those mechanics So we have to be careful how many shrines we make, because every time we make more shrines, it just makes all the shrine cards more powerful. So it's one of those mechanics you've got to be careful with how often and where you make them. But it was something that was definitely enjoyed by the players. Okay, the final enchantment type is Shard. So Shard is interesting in that only one card makes a shard, and that is Nico Aris.

Nico, they were a planeswalker introduced in Call Time, our first non-binary. Well, I don't know how I want to count Karn, but anyway, not counting Karn. Nico Aris is the first non-binary planeswalker. Um, but anyway, so Niko, uh, one of his ability, their abilities, one of their abilities is when they enter the battlefield, they create, it has an X in their mana cost, X, Y, blue, blue. And when Niko Aris enters the battlefield, they create X shard tokens. Um, and shard tokens are, tokens are they're enchantment tokens.

They have two sacrifices enchantment. Scry one, then draw a card. And so it's kind of like a clue in that clues you can sacrifice to draw cards, except these let you scry before you draw. I think the idea when we made this was that shard tokens

would just be a Niko Aris thing, although they haven't come back yet. So we haven't had an opportunity to do that. So this is the only card that makes Shard Tokens. But it is the only Enchantment Token right now that has kind of a locked effect. If I did a podcast on Artifact

types, which one day I probably will, that has clues and treasure and food and blood. So that is a lot more sort of locked in types where shard is the only one, although there's only one of them right now.

Anyway, the thing I do think, the interesting thing about the shards is I do think we've really enjoyed making tokens that have sort of a shared like, a set has a theme and that theme is a token, and

all the tokens do the same thing, but it allows you to sort of have a more grandiose gameplay and make some more connective tissue. Like, it's really fun that, you know, the vampire set had blood in it, or the fairy tale set had food in it. I do think that we will find

places to do more enchantment tokens. I think as we look forward, that it's one of those places we haven't tapped in too much, that I do expect someday we will tap in more. But, the coolest thing in general about these is there's lots of fun flavors

in subtypes, and when you look at all the stuff we can do be it curses or sagas or runes or classes or backgrounds, there's a lot of really strong flavor there and so I definitely enjoy seeing

the enchantment types because they really add some value and it's something that as time goes on as you know one of the tricks about making a. And it's something that as time goes on, as, you know, like, one of the tricks about making a game in its soon-to-be 30th year is, we've done a lot. There's a lot of things we've already covered. And trying to find new space to carve

new things. And tokens have done a fun way of doing that. So, I do expect to see more enchantment types. I can't talk about the future, but it is something I do expect to see more of. Anyway, guys, I can see my desk. So we all know what that means. It means the end of my drive to work.

So I hope you guys enjoyed sort of the jaunt through enchantment types. And I guess I'll talk to you next time. So it's time for me to stop talking magic and start making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.