Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #266 - Returning to Worlds

Episode Date: October 2, 2015

Scars of Mirrodin,-Return to Ravnica,-Battle for Zendikar. We've begun to revisit worlds we've already been to. What design issues are there when you start with a world you've visited before? Today's podcast talks all about this topic.

I'm pulling up my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay. So one of the things I did a while ago is I reached out on my social media and I said to people, what are topics you would like to hear me talk about? And I wrote them all down. And so every once in a while I go back and I take something off the list. So today is a topic off the list of people requested. So the topic was returning to worlds. So what does that mean? So four times in Magic's history,

we have returned to a world we've already been to. So the first time we did it, we were on Dominaria for many, many years, but then the Wrath cycle happened, and we actually left Dominaria, and we went to Wrath, and we went to Mercadia. But eventually we came back to

Dominaria, Invasion. So, we have returned to Dominaria. It's a little bit different, because we weren't gone that long. The next time we returned somewhere was in Scars of Mirrodin. We had been to Mirrodin. Now we were coming back to Mirrodin,

but oh, things weren't going so well. And we learned all about the attack by the Phyrexians on Mirrodin. Then we did Return to Ravnica. And we went back to Ravnica and visited Ravnica for a second time. And finally, this fall, this year, we are returning to Zendikar

and finding out what happened. Okay, so each of these four sets, each of these four returns are a different animal. And so I want to talk a little bit about how each of them work. So what exactly, when you design for a set where you're going back somewhere, what does that mean? Okay, first let me get the Dominaria one out of the way because technically it is true, but it's a little bit misleading from the other three because dominaria it's like kind of we went away for a little blip and then we were right back so the early early magic we kind of didn't for all the wonders of the multiverse and this we didn't do a lot of leaving like hey planeswalkers

could travel to anywhere around the entire multiverse. Let's spend nine or ten years right here. You know, and what we did is, instead of going to a new plane that represented a new thing, we'd find a new spot on Dominaria. I think if we had to do it all over again, those, like, Jamora

would have been its own plane, not just a continent on Dominaria. Terrasier probably would have been its own plane, or whatever. We would have taken, oh, Terria could have been its own plane, not just a continent on Dominaria. Terrasier probably would have been its own plane or whatever. We would have taken, oh, Terria could have been its own plane. We would have gone to places rather than just be all, just make the world bigger and bigger and bigger and have the world have all these different

things to it. Probably they would have been different planes. But anyway, so Dominaria is a little bit tricky. We technically have left and gone back, but I want to talk more about the other three because from a design standpoint, I never... We came back so quickly,

there was never like, wow, people didn't expect us ever to return to Dominaria and what's going on. So I want to acknowledge that we've returned there, technically, but I want to talk about the other three because they're much more... They're more playing to what the actual topic is,

which is how do you return to someplace when you haven't been there for a while? Okay, so let's start with Mirrodin. So what happened on Mirrodin was that when we were making Mirrodin, so Brady Donovan was the creative director. He's with us no longer, but he was at the time. Brady realized that during the invasion part of the Star Trek, during the Weatherlight saga, it ended with the destruction of the Phyrexians.

And the Phyrexians were awesome villains that go way, way back to the early, early days of magic. And Brady was like, okay, we're not just going to flush away the Phyrexians. The Phyrexians are a pretty cool villain. Is there a way to bring the Phyrexians back? And Brady loved

the idea that what if this artifact plane had been infected, and we just had little tiny hints of it here, but when we come back later, Brady's original idea was we'd come back and we'd visit New Phyrexia, and then there'd be a big reveal at the end of the block that dun-dun-dun, it was Myrden!

That was the original idea. So what happened was, we knew we were going back. Originally, we were planning to do the new Phyrexia twist, that you didn't realize it was even Mirrodin, but it became pretty apparent as we were designing it that we were missing a pretty important story, which is Mirrodin falls to the Phyrexians. Mirrodin becomes new Phyrexia.

Well, that's a pretty big thing. How did that happen? So we decided we were going to make the block about that, that the final set would be new Phyrexians. Mirrodin becomes New Phyrexia. Well, that's a pretty big thing. How did that happen? So we decided we were going to make the block about that, that the final set would be New Phyrexia. It wouldn't start being New Phyrexia. It would end being New Phyrexia. And Bill had come up with this really cool idea of we'd have a war and that we wouldn't even let you know what the last set was. And so anyway, it became a big, cool thing.

But today's topic is, okay, we're going back to Mirrodin. What does that mean? So here's the balance about going back to a place you've been before. Is you need enough familiarity that it feels like you're going back, but you need enough difference that it's not just a rehash. There's a balance you want. Like, people like, like, one of the things early on, and it took me a while to come to this,

is a lot of our sensibility in early Magic was everything's disposable. Mechanics were disposable. Worlds were disposable. You use it, you use it up, and that's it. You're probably never going to see it again. And as the game aged a little bit, we're like, you know what? That was a good mechanic. That was a good world.

Like, we made things. We're like, why are we throwing these away? These are perfectly useful. And so we decided that we had to start thinking of these tools as things that we could use, not as, you know, disposable items, but as reusable items. And originally we did that with mechanics. And it's like, oh, we can bring back mechanics. But eventually we're like, you know what?

We could bring back worlds. And so Mirrodin was like, okay, was a big test for us of can we be nostalgic enough and have enough quality to be Mirrodin, but have enough newness to it that it felt like it was a new set. You weren't just literally, you know, reprinting Mirrodin. Okay, so Mirrodin had a couple challenges. Well, the thing that helped Mirrodin the most was some worlds are a little subtler in their theme. Not Mirrodin. Mirrodin, I mean, Mirrodin came about originally

because we wanted to have an artifact theme block, and we wanted our world, early, early magic, our mechanical themes and our worlds didn't really click. It wasn't like, oh, well this is the perfect world to have this mechanical identity. It wasn't like, oh, well, this is the perfect world to have this mechanical identity. It's just like, okay, we're in this place,

and here's our mechanics. During the Weatherlight Saga, it's the first time I really tried to go, okay, now, we worked backwards in Weatherlight Saga, which is I figured out things I knew we wanted to have in Tempest, and then I figured out ways for the story to involve those things. How could the slivers be part of Tempest, and then I figured out ways for the story to involve those things. How could the slivers be part of Tempest? How could, you know,

it wasn't like slivers existed because we had to make sense for some flavor aspect. Slivers existed as a mechanical, existed first as a mechanical aspect, and we figured out how to weave them in so they were part of it.

We would later get much better at saying, okay, that the world should reflect the theme. And Mirion's a really good example of that is we're going to do an artifact theme. Well, let's make a world that's not just any world. It's an artifact world. And we really got into this idea of artifact as biology. That these things, artifacts just aren't these tools they use. They themselves are artifacts. And that would allow us to have

a lot of artifact creatures, and even the creatures that weren't artifacts technically had a lot of components and artifacts to them. So when we were coming back to Mirrodin, okay, we knew that we had to have that quality. Like, the creative team, just as I'm explaining what the

design team has to do, the creative team, they have a giant world building and when we return to some place, they go, okay, let's put up

everything we know before and let's figure out what do we do right, what can we improve upon. Obviously, some time has changed. With Mirrodin, obviously,

there was now, you know, what started as a really, really subtle thing in the first Mirrodin needed to be a little bit less subtle in this Mirrodin, that you needed to really get a sense of the Phyrexians are here and they're a threat.

Mechanically, we said, okay, what are we going to do? And so we actually looked at the mechanics. And we had a problem in Scars and Mirrodin. So here's the problem. First, we have equipment. Well, equipment went evergreen. So meaning we could have equipment, but it wouldn't necessarily feel like every set has equipment. So okay, okay, we get more equipment than normal because the original Mirrodin introduced

equipment had more equipment. Okay, but even that, it's going to be hard to say that means that much. There are blocks we do that have more equipment. So equipment didn't really define Mirrodin. We had to have it because you would expect it, but it didn't, because it went evergreen, it no longer just said Mirrodin. Okay, next we had Affinity. Now I wanted to do Affinity, I fought to do Infinity, I put Affinity in the set, but in the end it was just too much of a risk that the Mirrodin set had kind of went really sour and a lot of people left Magic because it really, it fell apart. I mean, the standard just collapsed. Our two greatest failures developmentally are probably Urza Saga and Mirrodin. We're just, you know, the entire constructed environment fell apart.

It was just too broken. And the fear was, even though we thought we could do affinity and do it correctly and not have it be a problem, whenever we do something, there's always some chance we miss, and the idea that we would miss in Mirrodin in the same place was just we felt too much of a risk. The last thing we wanted to do was have the thing, and if we couldn't push it and couldn't try to do what we wanted to do, we knew we'd have problems.

So we ended up doing Metalcraft, which kind of was a lighter version of it. It had a feel of it, but not quite Affinity. I didn't fight for Affinity. I wanted Affinity. I felt like it was a risk, but I thought we could handle it. But at the end of the day, I understand that it was a really big risk, and it wasn't probably worth taking. Next mechanic we had was Entwine. Entwine was a fine mechanic.

It didn't really speak to Mirrodin. I mean, Mirrodin had the mechanic, but it didn't really speak to it. And so we're like, well, we could have Entwine, but Entwine doesn't really say Mirrodin, you know. And so we felt like that would be a returning mechanic that wouldn't really hammer when we needed to.

Okay. Then we had Imprint. Okay, Imprint could work. The problem with Imprint is it's really narrow design space and it's complex. Can't go uncommon. There's just not that many cards you can make with it, so we could bring it back, but there's so much weight it could carry. Then we had Darksteel.

Well, once again, Indestructible had become an evergreen thing. So, we had it, but it wouldn't be particularly exciting in that we had had it before. It's something we had done. Darksteel also had what else did Darksteel have? It had Modular.

The problem was, because we wanted to do Poison and we wanted minus one, minus one counters, we couldn't do Modular. So Modular was off the table. And then we looked at Fifth Dawn, and Fifth Dawn had Scry, which hadn't yet become Evergreen, but Scry didn't really say Mirrored,

even though it came from Mirrored originally. We'd use it a bunch of different places. It didn't really say, hey, I'm an artifact thing. And then the last one was Sunburst. And Sunburst, once again, it didn't really speak too much. So we had a bit of a problem.

So we said, okay, we're going to do artifacts. We're going to do artifact matters. We're going to do metalcraft as kind of a lighter version of Affinity. We're going to break that imprint, do as much imprint as we can. Okay, we're going to break that imprint as much as imprint as we can. Okay, we're going to have to lean a little bit more on iconic things. So one of the things we did in Mirrodin

is we said, okay, what things do you expect to see? We expect to see Mir. You expect to see the swords. You know, we wrote up on the thing and we wrote down a lot of the iconic things we expected to see. And then the neat thing for this set was

because there was a Phyrexian invasion that part of the flavor was you wanted to watch Mirrodin slowly fall to the Phyrexians. So one of the ways for us to do memorable things but in a new way was like Blightsteel Colossus is a perfect example. Like Darksteel Colossus

was like the weapon. The mightiest weapon of the Mirrodin people. And like when that falls to the Phyrex you're like, okay, we're in trouble. Like, when our mightiest weapon falls to the bad guys, to the invaders, like, oh, what are we going to do? This is serious business. We're in trouble. Now, the other thing that helped us with Mirrodin is, because we had a very different component coming in, that was something where we had another layer to layer on top of it.

One of the things about design is, I always talk about how when you design something, you want it to come from a different vantage point. And so the idea that you were coming back to Mirrodin and got to see Mirrodin things, but through this lens of their being invaded by the Phyrexians, really allowed us to have a very different sensibility. So I was a little less afraid of bringing back things you would know,

because A, there wasn't that many things I could bring back, and B, there was a completely different sensibility. This wasn't just Mirrodin Part 2. It was, in some level, Mirrodin meets Phyrexia. And the Phyrexia component, even though it was there in really small drips and drabs in the original Mirrodin, wasn't, was something that was going to be a new component to Mirrodin. And so it really gave it its own identity. So I didn't, I didn't feel like I had to worry about Mirrodin being too much a rehash. There was plenty going on. So I could bring a lot of things back. And we

did a lot, there's a lot of iconic things and a lot of creative things we brought back to sort of go, hey, look at this. I mean, we talked a lot about reprints. I mean, we brought the mirror back. We brought mind flavor back. You know, we talked about what could we bring back. And we were much more aggressive in design of what reprints we could bring back.

The problem was a lot of things that were popular at the time were so high power level because, like I said, developmentally Mirrodin was, there was a lot of power more than it should have been. And so a lot of stuff we wanted to bring back, we couldn't because it was a little bit too unbalancing that we were trying to meet modern standard, not standard from back then. So, okay, let's move on. Let's go to return to Ravnica. Okay, so going back to Ravnica was a little different of an animal. Mirrodin

we had gone back, and Mirrodin was like, it's being invaded by outside forces. Well, that's a whole different storyline. Mirrodin was a little trickier. Really what we decided was, I mean, there was going to be a story, but in some level the story was secondary. Sometimes the story drives the design.

Not the case here. It's like, we knew we were going back. We knew there was a structure we had to meet. We knew that Ravnica was the guilds. And when we had done original Ravnica, one of my guidelines in designing it was, once Brady, I had given Brady the idea of doing two-color pairs, ten-color

two-pairs, all of equal value, on equal weight. Brady came back with the idea of the guilds, and I was like, that's awesome, let's run with it. And then I did the 4-3-3 plan, which is the first set showed off four guilds, second set three, third set three. So, you know, original Ravnica had four, original Ravnica showed off

Selesnya and Dimir and Boros and um, who am I forgetting? Dimir, Boros, Selesnya, and why am I forgetting? Uh, Boros, Selesnya, and... Why am I forgetting? Boros, Selesnya, Dimir, and Golgari. And then Guild Pack had the Izzet, the Orzhov, and the Gruul. And Dissension had the Azorius, the Simic, and the Rakdos.

So we're coming back. So the first thing we wanted to figure out was we knew we wanted the guilds. We knew we were going to do two-color pairing. We were going to do mechanic. We were going to do the basic structure for how to make guilds guilds. But we wanted to do the things a little different.

So we spent a lot of time talking about that. Brian Tindon was actually the one that said, what if we, can we have a set where we smash them all together? And I think Brian's original idea was actually the one that said, what if we, can we have a set where we smash them all together? And I think Brian's original idea was four sets. There was like, we do four, three, three, and then all together. And then it came clear that we couldn't, we didn't have the fourth set. For a while, what later became, what later became Rise of the Odrazi,

we were thinking of that Innistrad would be two sets, or not Innistrad, Zendikar would be two sets, and then there would be a four-set block, a two-set block and a four-set block.

That's not that idea. Anyway, I like the idea of we structured differently. We ended with all of them, so we let you play with all of them in the end because now here's more toys for everybody. But in the end, we didn't think

that we could make four blocks work. Three blocks were tough enough to make people interested for four blocks if it felt like too long. So we then came up with the idea. Brian, I think, had pitched, maybe we do five, five, ten. And then I said, well,

the only way to make that work is to do two large sets. And then we got right off two large sets, and then okay. Then Rise of the Dragon would be five sets. Guild Pack would be five sets. Not Guild Pack. work is to do two large sets. And then we got right off two large sets, and then okay. Then Rise of the Dragon will be five sets, Guild Pack will be five sets, not Guild Pack, Gatecrash will be five sets, and then Dragon's Maze ended up being all ten sets.

Now, there was some wonkiness there, but anyway. The different thing about going back to Ravnica was I decided that the guilds were so strong that the guild identity was such a major component of what was happening that I just didn't need to bring back any mechanics. Now, it turns out we did bring back split cards. I mean, we added Fuse to change it a little bit. And we brought back Hybrid, although Hybrid at this point is evergreen.

There were a few tools we brought back. But pretty much what we said is, you know what? This set doesn't need returning mechanics. That's not what defined Ravnica. Ravnica was not defined by mechanics. And so the idea being that we just needed to give every guild an identity. So one of the rules was, if you took the guild from the original time, the cards from the guild with the watermark, and it took the new guild,

so it took old Golgari and new Golgari, threw them all in a deck, they should play well together. That was, like, we wanted the sensibility close enough that just you could mix old and new and it would play well together. That was our guideline of how mechanically we're like, we need to be enough on the same page that Golgari is Golgari from a play standpoint. That it felt, that you could just

play Golgari with Golgari and it would feel right. But I made the call not to bring any mechanics back. The reason was I wanted everybody to feel like they were having something fresh and new, and I felt like there was so much familiarity in the guild structure that I didn't need to have more familiarity in it

that there would be enough identification. One of the things about going back to a world is you want people to feel like yay, I'm back in the world I know and love. With Mirrodin, like I said, there's a lot of making sure the visuals are right and having a little bit of a mechanical identity, having

a theme, artifacts being a strong theme, just the asset of artifacts. So with Ravnica, it was about the multicolor and the guilds. You know, the guild structure was so strong that just repeating the guild structure, I mean, we changed it up a little bit to make how it played, how the drafts were different, but I mean, the basic guild structure is like, I'm a guild. I will have certain things represent me. We'll have cycles of 10. I'm going to have gold traditional multicolor cards.

I'm going to have some hybrid cards, you know. And then, like, you're going to see guild mages. There's just things that you would come to expect that would be part of it. I know early on in development it brought back the idea of bringing the Shocklands back, the dual lands from Ravnica, which we knew players would be very excited to buy, and would help reinforce we're back in Ravnica.

We did look out for some repeats, and there's a few reprints that run through this, that not tons, like I said, the one thing that was unique about Ravnica is it has such a unique structure to it that it's hard to not feel like Ravnica. I mean, we wanted to make sure we hit the guilds. And I know both Ken led Return of Ravnica and I led Gatecrash along with Mark Gottlieb. And the three of us were all, one of our guidelines is to make sure that all the guilds felt like the guilds. But we knew that we didn't have to do that rehashing things. We could have new components and new mechanics and new things that could do that. At the same time,

I wanted to make sure that we were doing some new things. Like, one of the things that I actually did in Gatecrash and I got Ken to retroactively do in Return of the Raptor God is, I said, you know, we didn't last time do charms. Let's do guild charms.

And I just made them put them in Gatecrash and then Ken was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, fine. I do guild charms. And I just made them, put them in Gatecrash, and then Ken was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, fine, I can have charms. And then he put them in Return to Ravnica. One of the things you want to make sure when you're returning

is you want to carve some things of what could we have done but we didn't do last time. That's another thing to look back at is when you revisit something, saying, okay, when we did Mirrodin,

a good example of Mirrodin was we made two swords. We made the sword of fire and ice, and we made the sword of light and dark. It was a white-black one. I'll call it sort of light and dark. I'm blanking on what it's called. Shadow and light. Anyway, we change code names all the time, so I'm not always the best on the final names. Anyway, we had a white-black sword, and we had a blue-red sword.

And people were always like, well, there's three other enemy combinations here. What's going on? So when we came back, we're like, oh, people had been annoyed we hadn't sort of finished it. Let's finish it. And that's another thing about returning is, was there opportunities left on the table? Was there something that you didn't do? And there's all sorts of reasons we won't do things. Sometimes we don't see the pattern that players see.

Sometimes we try to do something, but it just didn't work out. Sometimes numbers didn't work out. Sometimes we were trying to balance something, and just something fell through the cracks. There's lots of reasons why we might not do something. Sometimes we didn't want to do it for some reason, and that reason changes, and now we're willing to do it. So another thing about going back is, you then want to figure out what could you have done that you didn't do. That's another way to do new things. And charms were a

good example of, I remember during the original Ravnica, a few people had talked about, hey, it would have been cool to do charms. Like, well, it would have been cool. We just didn't do them. I'm like, oh, we're back now. Hey, now's the chance we could do charms. Charms is pretty cool. have been cool, we just didn't do them. I'm like, oh, we're back now. Hey, now's the chance we could do Charms. Charms is pretty cool. Let's do that. And so, Return to Ravnica, like I said, there's a big difference between

Scars of Mirrodin and Return to Ravnica, just in the general nature. Okay. Now, it's funny because when I'm recording this, you all don't know what's going on in Battle for Zendikar. But I know how far ahead I'm working,

and I know by the time I talk to you, you will know. So this feels weird to me. This actually is the first public talking about Battle for Zendikar. So if I'm a little bit hesitant on things, I know you guys will know, but I'm still talking about it at a time where every instinct in me is not to talk about it. Like, one of the things that is interesting when you have information, because I have to withhold information for a long time. Like, I hand over a set. There's a 16-month gap, at minimum, before the public's going to see what I've handed off.

At minimum. So that means for at least a year and a half, after I've done something and poured my heart and soul into it, and I'm really proud of it, I have to wait to talk about it. So you sort of compartmentalize, and like, okay, I'm not talking about this, I'm not talking about this. And at some point, you're allowed to talk about it,

and it's very liberating. So anyway, this is my first chance talking about this. So be aware that every interesting sense, I'm not supposed to talking about this. So be aware that every interesting sense, I'm not supposed to talk about this. So I will... Okay, so the neat thing about Battle for Zendikar was we ended on a cliffhanger. Last we were in Zendikar,

there was a cliffhanger, okay? The... For those who don't remember, we went to Zendikar. Zendikar was an adventure world. It was wild and, you know, there was rich in mana, so planeswalkers were attracted to go there.

But there's something weird going on, and we learned that inside were these ancient beings called the Eldrazi that had been trapped inside. Okay, so, thanks to some shenanigans by Bolas, Sarkinval and Shandranalar and Jace Baleran end up in the Eye of Ugin.

And they unlock it. Now later learned, I think Nissa is the one that technically opens it. But by getting them all in one place, they unlock the lock, metaphorically speaking. And then it allows Nissa to later unwittingly, I don't think she quite understands what she's doing

when she does it but unwittingly releasing the Eldrazi and so and then rise Eldrazi where's the Eldrazi are there and we kind of

ended on this cliffhanger like hey it's adventure land oh the Eldrazi are trapped inside hey the Eldrazi are out and

and and what and what so And what? So when we came back, the interesting thing here was, the first thing I knew is we had to address that. Like, we had to address and, and what? You know, like, we came back to Zendikar and we're like, oh, yeah, the Andrazio aren't here.

They went somewhere. The audience was like, what are you talking about? They were just here. So we felt like really what we needed to do was address the Odrazi and Zendikar. That's the major cliffhanger. But here's the tricky thing about Battle for Zendikar is

we had two worlds we were revisiting. Zendikar we were revisiting, the world, but also the Odrazi, which were part of Rise of the Odrazi. And those are mechanically remember, Zendikar and Worldwage were mechanically completely different from Rise of the Odrazi, which were part of Rise of the Odrazi. And those are mechanically, remember, Zendikar and Worldwage were mechanically completely different from Rise of the Odrazi. There's no overlap in mechanics.

Like when we did Absinthe Restored, there was a little bit of overlap. No overlap. Completely different mechanics. So what I realized is, I had to represent the Zendikar and the Zendikari, and I had to represent the Odrazi, and so the big question was, how do I do that? How do I... I mean, there was a lot to fill in. I mean, there was a conflict coming, obviously.

I mean, we had to come back and figure out what was going on with the Eldrazi and what was going on with the Zendikar and what was the relationship between everybody. Mechanically, though, I had to figure out, okay, well, what do people expect? So we literally... I had a meeting where I said to my team,

let's write down everything that went on in the entire Zendikar block. What was everything that went on? We wrote it all down, and then we said, okay, what can we do and what can't? Well, first off, we said, what can we do and what can't we do? One of the things about the original Rise of the Odrazi was Brian Tinsman was the lead designer Brian went to town he went full throttle toward the Odrazi

the problem was at the time we had just instituted New World Order and Brian wasn't very familiar with New World Order and really kind of ignored New World Order of all the sets since New World Order got introduced it's Felice New World Order, and really kind of ignored New World Order. Of all the sets since New World Order got introduced, it's Felice New World Order-y. Order-y. Order-ish. He just did

a bunch of things that we wouldn't... That in retrospect, looking back, we're like, wow, that's not really the choices we would make now. It wasn't choices we should have made then. But anyway, so one of the things was we wanted to capture Zendikar and the Odrazi, you know, the Zendikari

and the Odrazi. The Zendikari, by the way, are the people of Zendikar. We wanted to capture the Zendikari and the Odrazi mechanically. So we wrote down everything that we had done, crossed off all the things we didn't want to bring back, which was significant, and then we ordered them.

So, top of the list, top of the list was Landfall. There is no mechanic, Landfall is one of the most beloved mechanics of all time. Not just for that, not just for like Zendikar, like we do these guidebook studies, we rank mechanics, and

you know, although here's the funny thing, on the guidebook study, Landfall did really, really, really well, but it wasn't the top-rated, and I use mechanic in quotes. You can't see my air quotes, but I'm air quoting. The number one mechanic in the set was... Full Art Basic Lands! Everybody likes Full Art Basic Lands. Not really a mechanic,

but it was listed as a quad, and so it was listed in our mechanics section. And so when the people who do our market research came back, you know, the top rated mechanic is Full Art Lands. I'm like, yeah. So we obviously brought that back. I mean, we actually brought it up on the board. I think number one actually was Full Art Lands.

But that was kind of a guinea. We knew we were doing that one. Landfall was next, and we knew we were doing Landfall. But Landfall was just the kind of thing you had to do. We looked at the Odrazi. The Odrazi was tricky in that we did not want to bring back, for example, Annihilator. What we found with Annihilator was it was just like, I'm going to win the game, and maybe, you know,

I'm going to win the game, and you're going to lose, and it's going to take a little bit of time, and there'll be this tiny illusion that maybe you could do something, but you really can't, and you're going to lose. And the first thing that happens when

you attack with Annihilators, you Annihilator their land, usually. Meaning that it was hard even for them to get out their Eldrazi. Eldrazi on Eldrazi with Annihilator became a lot harder to happen. And developmentally, it's really tricky to do, and you can't put it on cheap things. Annihilator just caused all sorts of problems. Plus, Annihilator was not well-received. I know there are people that love Annihilator just caused all sorts of problems. Plus, Annihilator was not well received.

I know there are people that love Annihilator and one of the things that's funny is whenever I look at conglomerate data, like it's very easy to go, oh, people like this thing and go, I didn't like that thing or I did like that thing and I go, well, I'm looking at what the majority believed and that doesn't mean there's not people

other than the spectrum. There were people that loved, loved, loved Annihilator, but that wasn't the majority opinion. Annihilator is very, very frustrating to play against. And it's very hopeless to play against, that when someone starts attacking you with Annihilator 4, it's sort of like, I'm not going to lose quickly, I'm going to chomp and do things, but I'm not really going to come back from it.

And so it ended up being this kind of feel bad thing and so we were like, okay, we don't want to do Annihilator so we're not bringing Annihilator back and we looked at other things we wanted to do and I mean, obviously there's a sense of size to them although everything couldn't be as big

the original set had sort of pushed boundaries of how big things were. I mean, we knew we could do that a little bit, but not at the amount it had done before. The one thing I really felt like we could bring back, well, the two things that we could do, one was the colorlessness of the Eldrazi,

and that ended up being the defining trait because Annihilator didn't, you know, we couldn't, we didn't want to bring back Annihilator. We couldn't make every Eldrazi giant. You know, we had to have a range of things in order to represent an army and have them be a side. There needed to be a range of things. And then the Eldrazi have their drones and spawns

and scions and all this sort of stuff. So, I mean, there are a lot of components to them, so we were able to make different size things. But Kallus was really a defining trait, so we ended up using that. And then the one thing for Odrazi that we wanted to bring back was the spawn, the Odrazi spawn.

So in the original Rise of Odrazi, there were 0, 1, so you could sac for 1 Colossus. They were one of my favorite things about the original design. I really liked the spawn. Originally, by the way, I've never mentioned this, probably have, originally what they were going to be was just tokens

that you could sacrifice for a colorless mana but because we had because the set after it was what was the set right after it? Resodrazi was right before oh, Scars of Mirrodin because it was right before Scars of Mirrodin. Because it was right before Scars of Mirrodin

and we knew that we were going to have poison and poison counters, we didn't want you collecting counters. And so he ended up turning them into creatures and the creatures

were way more interesting. So we knew we wanted to bring Spawn back and they're all designed by the way, they were Spawn. They were 0-1 Spawn. Development was the one

that said that they felt they could play better if they were 1-1's instead of 0-1's, so the spawns became Scions. So the idea was they still had something similar. They still were creatures. You could stack them for a colorless mana, but they just upgraded a little bit. The other thing that we

had done in the design that Development definitely played around with is we had tweaked a little bit of the mechanic for the allies, and development had come back to us and said, you know what we really like? Could we just take the mechanic the allies had the first time, clean it up, name it,

and then use that? And we're like, okay. That is a way to sort of give some familiarity to the allies. So, anyway, one of the things that was interesting about the Rise of Eldrazi, as far as going back, was we were like, we tried as much as possible to get mechanics we could go back and back to

Mirrodin. Ravnica, we didn't even try that, but we knew we needed it. We knew we needed it somewhat in Battle for Zendikar, so we did bring back Fallen Lands. We did bring back Landfall. We did bring back the Spawn, although they ended up changing a little bit. We did bring back thefall. We did bring back the spawn, although they ended up changing a little bit.

We did bring back the colorlessness, and we really ramped that theme up. And we did bring back the allies, and we cleaned up their mechanics. So the change for those who don't realize, Rally, which is the mechanic, is it used to be whenever you played an ally, it affected your allies.

This is whenever you play an ally, it affects everybody, all your creatures, not just your allies. So what we said is, we want you to play with allies, but before, you kind of like, not being an ally was so painful, and now we're like, no, no, no, you want allies, and allies are helpful, but hey, you can play other good creatures

with your allies, they will be benefited from the allies. Having allies doesn't mean your deck can only be allies, and so that was an important change. But anyway, today's focus is more about bringing things back, and when you redo something. And I'm hoping if you look at the three sets between Mirrodin

and Ravnica and Zendikar, each one of them had really different requirements that when we came back mechanically, what we had to do. You know, Mirrodin had a strong theme, had a strong

look. Ravnica had a structure in the guilds. And Zendikar really had to rely a lot more on the feel of the Zendikari and of the Odrazi, because the land of Zendikar itself was a

battleground, and so we did find ways to bring some of that up, but we looked for new territory. And each one, like, if you notice, if you look at each of the sets, we tried really hard to make sure there was a familiarity that, okay, I am back in the place I know. I have returned to

this place. I'm back in Mirrodin. I'm back in Ravnica. I'm back in Zendikar. We wanted to make sure in each case you saw enough of it, you recognized you were returning, but then we wanted to shift. And it's interesting that both Mirrodin and

Zendikar, something is going on that wasn't going on before. I mean, I guess in Zendikar you started to see it before, but we're we've escalated what's going on. In Mirrodin, the same sense, although it was much, much smaller the first time around. Ravnig was different in that we didn't really...

I mean, technically, I guess there was a dissolution of the guild pact in the downtime. By the time we come back, it was back, because we realized that the guild was the coolest thing we had. We wanted to make sure we had the guild. The guild pact was really important, so that kind of happened offscreen just so we could get the guilds that people wanted.

But anyway, probably what I'm trying to say today is that when you come back, there is a lot, each world has its own requirements and its own things you have to think about, and that you have to definitely take into account what does it give me, what do people expect, what was the focal point before? And if you said to me, what's the focal point of each of the things? If I went back to Mirrodin,

what would people expect? It goes, well, I better have artifacts and artifacts better matter. I go back to Ravnica, I better have guilds and multicolor and that better matter. You go back to Zendikar, I better have lands being a center

and the allies and the Eldrazi. Have that sort of flavor be there. So each of those we went back and we did return to have that element you wanted. And then for each we put a dash of something new. Okay, guys. But I've made it to work. In fact, I've been sitting here for a few minutes

to finish up. But I'm now in my parking space. So we all know that means instead of talking magic, it's time for me... No, I messed that up. But I'm now in my parking space. So we all know that means instead of talking magic, it's time for me... No, I messed that up. You think if I said this every day, I wouldn't mess it up.

So I'm in my parking space. We all know what that means. It means I'm in my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So talk to you guys next time.