Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #204 - Arabian Nights, Part 1

Episode Date: February 27, 2015

Mark begins a 3-part series on the design of Arabian Nights.

I'm pulling up in my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, today I'm going to talk about a set, but an old, old, old set. Today I'm going to talk about the very first expansion, Arabian Nights. Okay, be aware, let me put the caveat here, is most of these stories that I tell you, I was there for us making it. put the caveat here is, most of these stories that I tell you, I was there for us making it. The first set I started working on was Antiquities, and so every set

from Antiquities forward, at least I was there for, at least the development if not the design. But Arabian Nights predates me. So everything I'm telling you is second-hand material taken from first-hand accounts. So I might miss a fact or two, but hopefully I will be pretty accurate.

I previously did a podcast on Homelands, which, while I was one of the playtesters for, I wasn't actually in the building for. So anyway, I'm trying to, over the course of my podcast, hit all the expansions eventually. So why not some of the early ones? Okay, so Arabian Nights, we go back to 1993. So Magic came out in 1993, in July. This product was actually released to some of the world, to some parts, in December of that year. So Arabian Nights had 78 cards.

You heard me correct, 78, and it came out with 8 cards per booster. The other thing that was very weird about the Rabian Knights set was it didn't have rarity quite like traditional rarity. Like right now if you open up a booster pack on average, you'll get 1 basic land, you'll get ten commons, you'll get three uncommons, and you'll get a rare or mythic rare. Fifteen cards. Back then, there were eight cards, and the way it worked was, there weren't, right now there's a bunch of different sheets. Every rarity has its own sheet.

Although mythic rare and rarity share a sheet. But now, or back in the day, there were only two rarity of sheets. There was a common sheet and an uncommon sheet. So there were 51 uncommons and 27 commons. So of the 27 commons, I think nine of them were what we call a C5, which meant they appeared five times on the common sheet. 16 of them were a C4. They appear four times on the common sheet. 16 of them were a C4. They appear four times on the common sheet.

The Aramean Mountain, which I will get to, appears once. And the Desert appears 11 times. It was called C11. So the most common card in the set was the Desert, which was kind of apropos since the Desert is pretty flavorful. And then the rare, there's 51 rares. 19 were what we call U3s. They appeared three times on the uncommon sheet.

And 32 were what we call U2s. They appeared only two times on the uncommon sheet. We consider the U2s to be the rares of the set, although the U2s are only 33% less rare than the U3s, so the rarity's not quite as clean as it is on some later products. And the idea at the time of having clear rarity, we didn't remember, it wasn't until later that we even would say what rarity things were, and so there's a lot less concern about the rarity.

Okay, let me talk about how Arabian Nights got made, because it's a fun story. So here's what happened is, Magic, okay, I said this before, but I'll repeat it again. When they printed what we now know as Alpha, so the first printing of limited edition, they made enough cards to last for at least six months. That was the idea. They wanted about six months worth of cards, and then those cards got sold in a matter of weeks. So they went back on press, and they printed what they thought would now be a six-month supply, and that got known as beta, which got sold in a week.

So it was clear early on that Magic was a runaway success, and that meant they needed more content. Now, Richard understood the idea that there would be more sets. He had actually asked different playthefters to start working on sets, stuff like Ice Age Now, Richard understood the idea that there would be more sets. He had actually asked different play tefters to start working on sets. Stuff like Ice Age and Mirage. There were sets that were worked on early, and Richard knew eventually they would put out more stuff,

but he didn't understand the pace it would happen. He didn't realize that they would need it so quickly. So when Peter came to Richard and said, we need to make an expansion, Richard was the one who made it. Now, Richard had just read Sandman number 50, entitled Ramadan, Neil Gaiman's comic book. Never read Sandman, awesome comic book. And in it, it was flavored around, you know,

a thousand and one Arabian nights. It definitely had that vibe. And Richard, not having time really to build a world or anything, decided that he would just design to one that already existed. So Richard was fascinated by the idea of the book A Thousand and One Arabian Nights. So what he did is he set out to make cards to fit that flavor. So people often talk about what's the first top-down set. The first top-down set was not Champions of Kamigawa.

The first top-down, or Portal of the Three Kingdoms, the first top-down set was Arabian Nights. Now, technically, we have since, for those unaware, it does take place on its own plane in the multiverse, known as Rabia, because they're Arabian Nights. It's from Rabia. But the set was clearly designed top-down

from, you know, 1001 Arabian Nights. It wasn't, I mean, we've since made it our own world, kind of, kind of. But it really, it's, I mean, Richard was directly inspired. I mean, he looked at the books, and there's a lot of one-form correlations, when I get to the cards. I mean, there's directly inspired. I mean, he looked at the books, and there's a lot of one-form correlations when I get to the cards. I mean, there's a lot of just direct, these are stories from 1001 Arabian Nights.

Oh, the other interesting story here is that the original idea was that each new expansion was going to have its own back. And if you've ever, if you go online, I know we printed this in some books and stuff, there was a purple back. And if you've ever, if you go online, I know we printed this in some books and stuff, there was a purple back. So the original idea was Magic the Gathering was just the name of the very first Magic expansion. That is called Magic the Gathering. And then this set was going to be called Magic Arabian

Knights, and then Magic Ice Age. The idea was Magic the name would stick, but the sub thing was going to change. Originally was the idea. Then they realized that they couldn but the sub thing was going to change, originally was the idea. Then they realized that they couldn't do that in order to sort of trademark the name and stuff, that it had to be Magic something. So at that point, they were like, okay, well, it's Magic the Gathering, Arabian Nights. And so the idea was each set was kind of its own back, so that you could know which set came from which.

Richard actually wrote an article where he quotes that he felt it would allow him to be more adventurous because the cards didn't all have to be played together so he could sort of do crazier things than he might do if the game always had to use all the same cards. Little did he know. And so they were planning to do this different back. And then the last minute, there's a lot of

grumbling within the ranks. Scaf Elias once told me that one of the biggest things he ever did for Magic, the number one thing he ever did for Magic was helping to keep the back from changing. So I know Scaf was involved. I think a whole bunch of people were involved. I don't think it was just Scaf.

I think there were a lot of people within Wizards who just realized it was a bad idea, that people wanted to mix their things together, and you wanted magic to feel like one cohesive whole rather than a lot of little separate things. Remember at the time, right now, sleeves are almost like, you know, it's very, very common to play in sleeves.

Sleeves didn't exist at the time. If the backs were different, you could tell when you drew it where it came from because you would see the backs. So that's important to understand is it's not like it was easy to hide them. Changing the backs is pretty significant. And the set also,

by the way, when I say December 1993, some of it came out in 93 and some came out in 94. I think there were multiple shipments. So one of the things that happened in early card sets that I talked a little bit about in my early card by card years podcast is there were a lot of misprints. The company was getting into

the printing business and they were asking things of the printers that the printers weren't particularly used to doing. And so there were a lot of issues as the printers were figuring out how to do what they needed to do. Now it's like clockwork. There's a lot of printers. People know what they're doing. But back in the day, there were a lot of issues as the printers were figuring out how to do what they needed to do. Now it's like clockwork. There's a lot of printers. People know what they're doing. But back in the day, there were a lot of early errors just because it was not a company that printed a lot of materials. And so they just made some mistakes. So in Arabian Nights, the mistake is that some of the cards, I think on the common sheet, had, they changed between, I think they had two different printings.

Because back then, remember, by the way, now Magic is so big that just whenever Magic goes to print on press, it's a giant part of the company printing process. Back then, Magic was just sneaking where it could. It was a tiny company. And the amount of Rabie Nights printed versus, you know modern-day sets is a tiny, tiny, tiny portion. And so they squeezed them in in two different installments, but between the two, the generic mana on, I think, on all the commons, or some of the commons, changed. One version looked more traditional as we think of it, and the other, it was a little bit smaller and darker.

So if you are a collector and you're a hardcore collector, there's in fact two different versions of a number of the commons that you need to collect. I think that it's 78 for unique cards, but I think it's 92 for collectible cards, I believe, if you collect the set. Oh, I didn't mention, by the way, the expansion. So early on, we've gotten trickier over time. It gets harder and harder to

come up with objects to be the expansion symbol. But early on, a lot of the expansion symbols were just simple objects. The Arabian Nights had a scimitar, which is a weapon, you know, sort of an Arabian sword. Okay, so, let me talk a little bit about, oh, so I promised a story about the Monken.

So what happened was Richard was originally planning to change the back. There's going to be this purple back. It looked like the Magic Back, by the way. It just had a purple tint to it, and it said Magic, I think it said Magic the Gathering Arabian Nights, I think is what it said. Maybe, maybe it said Magic Arabian Nights, but I think it was Magic the Gathering Arabian Nights, I think is what it said. Maybe it said Magic Arabian Nights, but I think it was Magic the Gathering Arabian Nights. Anyway, because there's going to be a different color back, Richard Fell is important to have basic land so that if you wanted to not have people know that, you know,

let's say you wanted to have decks that was primarily Arabian Nights cards and you did want people to know we were drawing land or something. So the idea was to put land on the sheet so that there would exist Arabian Nights basic lands. So the basic lands would always exist with each back. So at the last minute

when they decided to change the card frame, they pulled all the basic lands from the set. But they missed one. They missed a mountain, which is now known as the Arabian Nights Mountain. So what that means is, at least at the time, I'm not sure with other shenanigans, but at the time it made mountain the most printed card in Magic. Because there are a lot of basic lands, and every time basic lands got printed, they all got printed.

But this one set... So it's a good trivia question, which is, name the only basic land that would get printed in the set without the other four basic lands. And the answer is Mountains in Arabian Nights. Now, there are a bunch of things that Richard did that had never happened before. This set had a lot of innovations. Now, remember, one of the things about early Magic

is whenever you make more cards, is you start doing things that hadn't been done before. So this is a set where, you know they would you would steal your opponent's cards um you know you could uh activate abilities on your opponent's uh cards you could uh there were lands that did things other than tapped for mana you could flip coins to determine things. There was the equivalent of cumulative upkeep. The precursor of a lifelink showed up in the set. You could exile things as a means of

limbo. You could take things, put them away, and they could later come back. There were a lot of different things that Richard did. When I get card by card, you'll see there's a lot of neat and cool things that go on here. The final story, before I get to the cards, has to do with the flavor text. So Beverly Marshall Sailing,

at the time, was the lead editor. She was Magic's first editor and for a long time ran the editing team. Editing early on, by the way, now editing is part of R&D and we worked very closely with them.

There was a period of time where editing was its own function within the building and it wasn't part of R&D and we work very closely with them. There was a period of time where editing was its own function within the building and it wasn't part of R&D. R&D has grown over time. The creative team wasn't originally part of R&D. I don't even think the rules team was originally part of R&D. The editing was not part of R&D.

As R&D has grown, it's sort of absorbed more parts directly of the making of the cards. It now oversees more sections. But what happened was, it was the day before the set was going to ship to the printer. And Beverly, the editor who was proofing the set, made the realization the day before. Now, this whole thing was really, really rushed. In fact, Richard designed the cards, brought in the East Coast play shifters, Scaffolized, Jim Lind, Dave Petty, and Chris Page,

to act as kind of a quick development team. And there's so little time, really all they did is they came up with some more card ideas to add to the set. But anyway, the set was done super, super quickly. They needed to get it out the door so they could get it printed. And Beverly, the night before it was going off to the printer, realized that the set didn't have flavor text. So all of the flavor text from the set was Beverly sitting down with, I think,

three different versions of 1001 Arabian Nights, translated into English, obviously, and using those to grab quotes off the different characters. So all the flavor text you see on the cards were grabbed off three different books from the night before the set went to the file. Okay, so now let's talk a little bit about the cards in the set. So once again, there's only 78 cards. That's not a lot of cards.

78 cards is actually, it's funny because we make a set called Dual Masters, it's something we make in Japan, and a small Dual Masters set has 60 cards, and I've designed a couple of those, and it's very refreshing, like 60 cards, that's nothing, I can do that in a night, 60 cards, you know, and this was very, very close, 78 is definitely, it's the low, I mean, what you'll see happens is, as the sets start getting made, they start going up in size. This one was so small because they had to be made so fast. And I cannot stress enough, like, this thing was made super, super fast. And that being said, there's a lot of cool things in this set. So I think what happened is Richard had some ideas

of things he wanted to do. Okay, let's start. So, I'm going to talk, I'll see if I can talk about each of the 70 cards. I don't know how much I have to say about each one, but I'll say something. So, first is Abu Jafar. So, Abu Jafar is Summon Leper. Once again,

this is early Magic, so they weren't, all the creatures were Summoned. So, Magic's first Leper. So, this card basically Magic, so they weren't, all the creatures were summoned and stuff. So, Magic's first leper. So, this card basically said, if I die, and you dealt damage to me, meaning if you get in a fight with me, and it was a 0-1, so if it got in a fight, it was going to die, the leper. But, it killed anything that got in a fight with it. So, and, I mean, it definitely had, I mean, once again, this whole set was

Richard doing top down. This was a top down leper. You know, this was like, I'm diseased and you get in a fight with me. Yeah, yeah, you'll kill me. But well, you're going to get diseased too. And so, um, that, uh, this was an interesting card. It's funny. Richard in Arabian Nights, not Arabian Nights, in Alpha,

had Thicket Basilisk and Cockatrice, which were the early versions of Death Touch. And so, this is another card that is a little bit of a Death Touch-y feel. It's not technically Death Touch. I mean, it doesn't even do damage. It just requires on it, I think on it blocking. Oh, no, no, no. Actually, it says if it's participating in an attack or block.

A lot of these early texts, by the way, Magic, around 6th edition is when we start consolidating all the texts and getting the rules text to sort of read the same way in all the different cards. we start consolidating all the text and getting the rules text to sort of read the same way in all the different cards. Up until that point, there's a lot of very creative, a lot of very creative wording that goes on. Okay, next, Aladdin. Oh, by the way, Abu Jafar was a 0-1 and cost one white mana. So it was a W for a 0-1, and then if it attacked your block and got killed in combat, any creature that damaged it would die. Okay, Aladdin costs two red and red, so four mana for a 1-1 creature.

And then for, I think it was one red and red, you could tap it to steal an artifact. So if you know anything about the story of Aladdin, Aladdin is a thief. In fact, he originally steals the lamp, not knowing what he is stealing. And so in the story, Richard decided he wanted to do that. So the interesting thing early on is, nowadays, permanent stealing is blue and temporary stealing is red. This is Richard trying to do top-down. So permanent stealing at the time was probably undefined. I think Richard felt Aladdin, character-wise, was a red character.

You know, he wasn't up to no good. It wasn't that he was inherently selfish. He was more a thief because he had to be. And so I think Richard felt he was more red, that he definitely had this sort of not following the law. He was a lawbreaker. I think that's why he put him in red. He wasn't selfish.

I don't think he was a lawbreaker in a black sense, but more in a red sense. He needed to do it because he needed to do it, but he didn't care about the law. And clearly, if you're a lawbreaker, red is the color that least cares about laws. Black will break them, obviously, but just because it's willing to do anything.

But anyway, I had a lot of fun with Aladdin. Aladdin is one of those cards that I made a whole bunch of decks around. It's fun, because early magic red definitely had a decent amount of stealing. I had a deck I made way back in the day that was a deck that stole all my opponent's stuff

and it was blue and red. Because early, early in magic, blue and red are two colors that stole things. We shifted away from that for a little while and then started going back. We ended up making red stealing more temporary and blue more permanent just to give them different feels. But red and blue are the two major stealing colors. Okay, Aladdin's Lamp.

So Aladdin's Lamp is interesting. It costs $10. But when they printed the card... Oh, before I get to that. So Aladdin's Lamp costs $10. And you can spend X. And instead of drawing a card from the top of your library, you draw X cards, but you only choose one to put in your hand, and you put the leftover

cards on the bottom of your library. So what you do is, it allows you to draw more cards for your draw. You still only get one card, but you get a look at more cards. And this is Richard trying to get the idea of, you get your wish. What do you wish for? Because obviously Aladdin's lamp is where the genie comes from. And this is Richard trying to get the idea of, you get your wish. What do you wish for? Because obviously Aladdin's lamp is where the genie comes from. So Richard needed the card to cost 10.

This is a funny story. And at the time, they couldn't fit two characters within the generic mana bubble. Now, obviously nowadays we are able to pull that off, but back in the day they couldn't do that. So they were trying to figure out the solution. How do you solve this problem? Now, the interesting solution probably would be to make it cost 9 and not make it cost 10, since 10 was really a lot more... 10 was a bit expensive. It didn't need to cost 10.

But they wanted to cost 10. So the solution they came up with is they put two mana bubbles on it, each costing five. Thinking of, it costs five and five. Now, if magic had done cumulative, I've talked about in my podcast on how I do magic, I started over, that I would have more individual generic mana. But when you do it and it doesn't match anything else that's in the set, people were reading it and going, it costs 55? Isn't that a lot? $55,

man. And there's a lot of confusion what the two symbols of five meant. But anyway, a lens lamp was, I believe it was the most expensive car when it came out. There was no card in Magic that ever cost $10 before, I believe. There were some cards that were expensive in Alpha, but I think they cost like $8 and $9. I think $10 was the new I believe. There were some cards that were expensive in Alpha, but I think they cost like 8 and 9. I think 10 was the new high point. There's another fun thing about putting out new sets is you just get to do things you'd never done before.

So next was Aladdin's Ring. It cost 8. And for 8 mana, it was a... So remember, early Magic, there weren't tap symbols. It would tell you if you wanted to tap it. And for artifacts, if you could only use it once, it was considered a mono-artifact. And that meant it could only be used once

and you had to tap it. So, essentially, instead of giving you a tap symbol, it would just tell you in the card type line that it essentially had a tap. So, this thing could be tapped. You had to do... You spent eight mana to do four damage to any, it said to any target, which at the time meant to target creature or player. But it's a good example of, if the template hadn't quite existed yet.

But it allowed you to do four damage to anything, and it cost eight mana to play. Next, we get Alibaba. So Alibaba and Forty Thieves, that's another story. And Ali Baba in the story figures out the bad guys, the thieves, if you will,

have a secret hideout. And the secret hideout hides all their goods. And they have a secret... Is it Open Testament or something? They have a secret code word that opens it up so they can get to the riches. And I believe Alibaba spies on them and figures out what their code is and then uses it to get in. But Alibaba was wall-oriented.

So he's R for 1-1, one red mana for 1-1. He is just Alibaba. Oh, the other thing, by the way, is legendary creatures didn't exist until Legends, which was a set two sets later. So there are a whole number of creatures in this set that for all intents and purposes are legendary creatures, I mean, flavorfully. Aladdin is Aladdin. Alibaba is Alibaba.

They are specific characters from the stories. But because legendary didn't exist yet, they're just listed as creatures. There's no rule around them. They're not considered technically legendary from a game standpoint. But, when I'm talking about this, yes, it's Aladdin. Yes, it's Alibaba.

Yeah, Sinbad. I mean, there are a bunch of characters that show up here. But Alibaba is R for 1-1, and for one red mana, you can tap a wall. He taps walls. That was Richard's interpretation. And the idea, essentially, is remember

early Magic had a lot of walls. Alpha had a lot of walls. And kind of what this thing did is it just got you by walls. For one red mana, you could tap a wall, so it meant that you could, if you had a bunch of mana, walls really weren't going to be able to stop you. Now once again, early Magic, Richard was doing a lot of top-down. The color pie, the philosophies had been very well set.

But some of the executions of the color pie, I mean, we've spent a lot of time over the years refining it. And what happened was Richard was just doing it really, really fast. So I don't even think Richard had a great time to sort of, it's just like, where do the characters feel right by color? And he just stuck it in the right color. Aladdin made sense as a red character. Okay, he's red. So he kind of put the cards where they fit philosophically and then did top down. Since then, we have definitely been a little more careful

about where certain things go. Even in the early days, Richard in general was pretty good, but especially in the Rabie Knights, where he was quickly doing top-down stuff, like tapping walls, tapping other creatures really isn't something Red normally does. But he felt that the character made sense as a Red character, and this ability made sense for what he did

so he made them okay next, army army vala so it costs one white white, it's a sorcery I'm sorry, it's an instant all attacking creatures get plus two plus O until end of turn so white has always been the army color

he definitely was playing into that it's funny that the plus N plus O, later on, that would become more of a red thing, and white would be more plus N plus N. Usually a plus one plus one. White boosts the team, but normally it's smaller. This guy ended up pretty good, because three mana to bust your whole team, plus two plus O.

I mean, not so good that we can't print stuff in the general area, but at the time, this was actually pretty strong. But, I mean, this so good that we can't print stuff in the general area, but at the time, this was actually pretty strong. But, I mean, this is early Magic. One of the things that Richard had made Crusade and Alpha, and definitely there was a flavor Richard was trying to hit. I mean, as much as he was making a new set, there was some continuity that was going on, and you start to see some colors sort of representing key things.

The idea of the army very much was showing up in white and having mechanics that kind of said, hey, I want to play a lot of small creatures together. That is white strength. It's small things bending together to make one huge big thing. And Army of Al clearly plays directly into that. Next is Bazaar of Baghdad.

So Bazaar of Baghdad is a land. And so what you do is you take two cards from your library and then let's see if I this is a very powerful card. Let me make sure I get this right. So you take two cards from your library,

after which you must immediately discard three from your hand into your graveyard. And if you don't have three, discard all the ones you have. So the idea essentially with this card is, I get to draw cards, but I have to discard cards. So I'm losing cards. I'm netting less cards, because every time I tap this card, I'm going down a card, but I'm getting access to new cards.

And this has become very, very popular in decks, especially like dredge decks or decks where a lot of the game is going on in the graveyard. Because this allows you access to new cards while also giving you the freedom of getting cards into your graveyard, which in certain decks is very, very important. So Bizarro Baghdad,

one of the things that Richard did, I talked about this a little earlier in my podcast, is he was trying a lot of new things. One of the things was the idea of having land that had functionality beyond just mana. So the lands in the original alpha, there were the five basic lands and there were the five basic lands,

and there were the ten dual lands. And all the lands, basically all they did was tap for mana. And this set, Richard starts goofing around, saying, well, what if lands start doing other things?

Um, in fact, this land, not only does this land do this thing, one thing, it doesn't even get mana out of it. You know,

um, we later made the decision that we, in order to make lands fill more than lands, the rule is lands must interact with mana in some way. They tap for mana, they get you access to land that'll provide you mana. Not that they can't also do other things, but they must have some tie to mana.

Because this card in some ways was just an uncounterable... You might think of it as an enchantment artifact, however you want to think of it. Something that you get in play, your opponent can't stop and it can't be countered and it was very hard to deal with.

Although remember, early magic land destruction was a little more prevalent and a little cheaper. So there are a little more answers to stuff like this early on. But over time,

we've shifted. Like I said, this has gone on to be a very, very good card. Especially because there's just some graveyard strategies that are so popular. Okay, my final card of the day before I drive up to work is Bird Maiden.

So it's two and a red for a 1-2 flying creature. So one of the things that Richard started early on and continues on to this day is red and green were not particularly good at flying. Um, this is a very weak creature. Um, it's sort of like, here's a red creature. You want a flying red creature? Here you go. But it is on the weaker side. It's not particularly strong. Um, it was something flavorful. And the idea was at higher rarities in red, you did get dragons, but, um, at low rarities, you just didn't get particularly strong creatures. Red and green weren't

the flying colors. And then, they were each given weapons to fight against. Turns out red didn't really need the weapons. That drug damage is a fine weapon against flyers. But green ended up getting reach and getting more spells that directly affected flyers. Okay, I'm only up to Bird Maiden, so

obviously, there's 78 cards, and I've talked about 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. So using my powers of math, I have 69 cards left to talk about. So that means I have a podcast or two. So the plan is I'm going to go through the set and share some stories about just different cards from the set. Hopefully you guys are enjoying

the slight peek at early, early magic. There's some charm to a rugby night I just did some stuff that was I mean in some ways it was I mean like sometimes very early means it's very innovative and it's doing a lot of things for the first time but it's also making some mistakes that we later realize how to do things better

so it's a quaint set to look at just because it's a very unique set. But I have parked my car. So we all know what that means. It's time for me to end my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. Thanks for joining me,

and I'll talk to you next time.