Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #75 - Enchantments

Episode Date: November 29, 2013

Mark finishes his podcast on card types with Enchantments.

Okay, I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so one of the things I started doing on my drive to work are a bunch of what I call mega series, where they're all about trying to talk about a topic that's big enough that I can't do it during just one podcast. So one of the very first ones I started was on the card types. I think the very first one was I did Planeswalkers with guest star Matt Cavada. And then I did Creatures and Artifacts. I did Artifacts and Creatures. And then I did Land.

And then I did Instants and Sorceries. And now I'm left with one final card type, which is enchantments. And I purposely left enchantments till the end, because enchantments are a big part of Theros block, and so I wanted to be able to talk a little bit about Theros block when talking about enchantments, and I wanted to make sure that it was a known quantity when I did it. One of the things in general that I've been trying to do with this podcast is make it more general and more about kind of the past and make them a little more evergreen and that my column will be a little more about

current contemporary topics. And just so I can carve a little different space, so I'm not saying the exact same things in my podcast I'm saying in my articles. So if you do listen to both, read and listen to each of them, that you will get different content. I overlap a little bit, and obviously from time to time

in my podcast, I will go over topics from my columns, but usually I try to add extra content. Bonus content for you! Okay, so now we're talking about enchantment. So what I've done for each part of this series is I've gone back and tried to get in Richard's mind and said, when he made magic,

why did he make this card type? Okay. I think the answer is, well, Richard knew he wanted the five colors of magic, and that if you think about the kind of spells that you want to do, well, you know, clearly, for example, you want to be able to throw lightning bolts and do things that have a momentary status to them that are like, that are one and done.

You do them and then they're done. You've done the thing. But he also wanted some magic that has some permanence to it. Now, obviously, artifacts had a similar quality in that you wanted artifacts that kind of, you had this mighty artifact and it affected all the environment around it. But he also wanted some of that just flavor-wise, look, I'm a mage, I cast a spell

and it has an effect, it has a permanent effect. And so enchantments came about mostly because, I mean, Richard wanted to enchant things. Richard wanted to, I mean, so I think auras are slightly different than global enchantments. So global enchantments represent just this inherent concept of,

you know, I want to change the environment and forever it, you know, until you dispel it, you know, you disenchant it or naturalize it, whatever, that it affects the environment. Where an aura is the idea that I'm using magic, but instead of an environment, it's all a thing.

I'm enhancing, I'm enchanting a thing. Now, I don't know what came first in Richard's mind. I don't know whether he had auras first or whether he had global enchantments first. I use the term global enchantment, by the way, because once upon a time, we used to refer to them as global enchantments and local enchantments. We now call them auras, but around the time of Mirage, in fact, there's a pair of cards in Mirage, one that destroys a local enchantment and one that destroys a global enchantment.

We never really came up with another term for global enchantment, so one of the things you'll notice in my podcast is if we once had a word for it and we've since decided we don't want to use that word, but we haven't replaced that word with another word, I'll just use the old word. Fizzle is another classic example where, you know, I guess you don't fizzle things anymore, you counter them. But counter means so many different things

that if I want to explain the concept of fizzling something, I'm like, well, I'll just use fizzle. So you can tell my old-timerness shows through a little bit, and I just use some terms that are like, well, it was functional. And one little side note real quick is I'm big on power of words. I mean, we had a podcast on flavor text. One of these days I'll do a podcast on names. But I'm a word guy, and I'm a big, big believer that words, if used correctly, have great power to them.

And so I, in fact, one of my big things in R&D is finding concepts that I think are important and then naming them so that R&D can talk about them. One of the powers of names is that when you graft concepts to names, you now allow people to have a dialogue about those concepts. And so, you know, whether it's the psychographics or it's New World Order or it's just different, you know, virtual cards or even vanilla, vanilla and French vanilla and, you know, all that. I've been a very big advocate of creating vocabulary for R&D because it helps when you're able to talk about something, you become conscious

of it. It's just the way language works that if it's a concept that isn't named, it's so much harder to communicate it and it's harder to have a dialogue about it. Anyway, a little side thing. So, I believe that Richard wanted to enchant things, and he wanted in colors. Like, to say only artifacts could make global things, well, you're missing a lot of cool magic. You know, there might be neat things I want to do that are very color-oriented.

Now, one of the ongoing things, I talked about this when I talked about artifacts, is mechanically speaking, there is a thin line between artifacts and enchantments. A crazy thin line. And one of the things that we tend to do in magic is we stretch boundaries. So one of the things is we, from time to time,

will take one of the few differences between enchantments and artifacts and we will stretch those and i i do them because there's reasons to do them and i i kind of you need to be able to stretch boundaries but one of the dangers of the boundary stretching is when the boundaries are so thin as between artifacts enchantments that the stretching of them because in my mind and there's two ways to view magic one is it's an ever-changing game where you're looking at the current version of the game and seeing that it ebb and flows.

And there's another way to look at it is it's conglomerate, that magic is everything. If we ever made a card, that is magic. As a designer, it's hard for me to take the second stance because I have to believe that I can change things and adapt things and that if I just assume like, well, it did it, I guess it did it, it just becomes a hard system to create. The reason we have rotations and the reason we do things

and the reason limit is important and there's standards and stuff like that was we want things to rotate out. We want to have different environments. The magic is more fun if it's not just everything. When you're additive, there's always so little you can change the environment because things exist. And so my take on it is when I stretch enchantment or artifact boundaries, it's just for a little bit of time, and they go back. So right now, as an example, one of the biggest differentiations between enchantments and artifacts is colorlessness.

Or colored or colorlessness. Artifacts, anybody can cast with your generic mana, and they can go in any deck. Where in Enchantment, it has colored mana. And, you know, what happens is, like, along comes, what was the first set to do? I guess it was Shards of Alara,

where we had this neat concept with Esper, and the creatures themselves were improving themselves to the point where they were becoming artifacts. So it was kind of neat to make all the creatures artifacts but not make colored artifacts. And from time to time, like New Phyrexia, also we found a different way to use artifacts in a way where there were colored artifacts.

I mean, it's something where, and once again, in Theros with the weapons of the gods, like every once in a while we make something where it makes sense that it's an artifact, yet it's colored. And also, I mean, the artifacts in Theros is an artifact and an enchantment. We'll talk about blurring the lines. It's both.

But once again, in my mind, those are the exceptions and not the rule. And that, okay, every once in a while, we make colored artifacts, but that's not what defines artifacts. Artifacts are colors. And that, you know, every once in a while we make colored artifacts, but that's not what defines artifacts. Artifacts are colors. And that, you know, every once in a while we bend that, but that's not, the bending of it is a special occasion.

It's not something that's the default. The same is, for example, that enchantments don't tap. And in Future Sight, I was screwing around. We were trying to show you potential futures. I had a tapping enchantment because I wanted to show, ooh, maybe we could do that. I had really no intention of going there. Although, I'll be honest, here's another important thing to understand is I always set down rules. I write columns.

I have podcasts. I set down rules. And then we go to break the rules, and people get mad at me. They go, you said it was a rule. And then I'm like, no, no, no. That's the default rule. Magic is a game that breaks its own rules. And the important thing about breaking rules

is understanding when and where to break them. Meaning, you shouldn't break rules to break them. You should break rules because you were trying to do something, and that makes natural sense. The perfect example is the equipment, the weapons in Theros, which was, we wanted, you know, it all started with,

Heliod had a spear, okay? He had this light spear that he would smite people with. And we're like, okay, well, that's pretty cool. Well,

if Heliod has a spear, how do we not make the spear of Heliod? That seems pretty awesome. We should make the spear of Heliod. And, so what happened was, that, okay,

let's make that. But then we had this other thing that said, well, all the creations of the gods were enchantments. So, you know, the gods are enchantments, their creations are's make that. But then we had this other thing that said, well, all the creations of the gods were enchantments. So, you know, the gods are enchantments, their creations are enchantments.

Well, why would the one weapon not be an enchantment if everything else they make are enchantments? Clearly, they made their weapons. And so, like, well, okay, I guess it needs to be, I mean, it's an artifact.

It's clearly an artifact. And by our definition, it's clearly an enchantment. So we measure mechanically that it represented both. But we're like, look, it needs to be both. It is both. There's not a lot of cases where something should be an enchantment

and be an artifact. But we found a case where it made sense, and so we did it. And that's not us saying, oh, from now on, enchantments and artifacts are going to just be the same thing. No. It's like this one case, it made sense. In Esper, it made sense that the creatures of Esper were colored. Or in Rise of the

Odrazi, I think we made colorless enchantments. I'm not 100% sure, but we could have if we didn't. My gut is we did, but you know, and so it's possible to make an enchantment that doesn't have color. That's possible. We could have made that. I think we did.

If we did, we could have, but that was a case where, okay know what I mean? That's possible. We could have made that. I think we did. If we did, we could have. But, you know, that was a case where, okay, they all draw their colors. We could do that. But essentially, the dividing line is enchantments are meant to be colored things. Enchantments are meant to represent magic with permanence. So, oh, here's an interesting thing.

So one of the things we did divide is for a long time, creatively, we kind of just said, oh, well's an interesting thing. So one of the things we did divide is for a long time creatively, we kind of just said, oh, well, what is this? Oh, it's a magical thing, you know, and we would make enchantments that represented magical things, and we made artifacts that were magical things. And finally we said, okay, okay, here's the creative difference. Maybe mechanically we will bleed a little bit from time to time,

but let's make a very clear definition of what is creatively an artifact and what is creatively an enchantment. So first off, we said, okay, artifacts are actual physical things. A tangible thing. Why can Red destroy artifacts? Because they're actual physical things. He can just blow them up. Red can blow them up. I don't know why I said

he, Red really, not he or she. Red can blow them up. Okay. So what is an enchantment? Well, enchantment is magic, and it can take form in the sense that it's magic with a form to it, but it's magical energy. That if I have an artifact, it's a thing.

I can knock on it. Someone made it. It's a thing. But enchantment is created from magic. I mean, some of the times enchantments don't even have form, but the things that have form, they have to have a magical form. So, for example, let's say I had an equipment that gave a creature plus one plus one, and I had an enchantment that gave a creature, you know,

or that gave a creature plus one plus one. Well, the equipment has to be some physical thing. It's a sword. It's a weapon of some kind. Maybe it's armor. You know, it's something. It's some tangible physical thing. It's a sword. It's a weapon of some kind. Maybe it's armor. It's something. It's some tangible physical thing. But for the enchantment, maybe it enhances

them in some way. Maybe it makes them bigger. Maybe it makes them stronger. That it's magic that's affecting them. And then maybe it's a magical armor or magical sword, but then it has to be clear in the art that it is made of magic. That it is a sword literally made of

flame, or it is a you know, the armor is some sort of light, physically made of light armor that's magical. You know, and we're more likely by the way that the magic would enhance the creature and change

the creature in some way. So if you'll notice, for example, the plus one plus one equipment is, why is the creature stronger and tougher? Oh, well, they have something. That thing they have is helping them. They're a better fighter. They're more defensive, whatever. Where we tend to make an aura is that it literally enhances and changes the quality of the wearer. Meaning that you are buffed in some way that physically changes you. Where the equipment doesn't change you, it gives you something, and the aura

changes you in some way. That's how we tend to do it. When it's a physical thing, sometimes you have to have a giant fist or something that's made of magic. But usually, we like the idea that the aura is enchanting you, the creature. The creature who has it. I mean, the other thing we said is

we started saying, okay, for a while we were doing enchantments as having a being a place. And we're like, okay, we said, look, no. We divided there. We said, okay, actual places are lands. We said actual buildings,

we decided could be artifacts, but not enchantments. Enchantments aren't buildings. Enchantments aren't, buildings have a tangibility to them. So, now the tricky thing between land and artifacts

is lands represent places and sometimes places have structures on them. And so, there's a thin line we try to divide there. That's more between land and artifact. Lands represent places, and sometimes places have structures on them. And so there's a thin line we try to divide there. That's more between land and artifact. Like I said, the default is that artifacts are colorless and enchantments have color. The default is that artifacts can tap when enchantments do not tap.

We actually had a radical proposal at one point. During Mirrodin, Tyler Beelman, Tyler Beelman was assistant brand manager for a while, and then he was in charge of the creative team for a while. He and I worked together on Mirrodin. We did the initial work on Metal World, and then Brady came in and revamped a bunch of stuff. And Tyler and I were trying to revamp artifacts. And one of the things that we were looking at

is maybe drawing a harder line. And the proposal we made at the time was, okay, what if artifacts didn't do global effects, that artifacts just, that you could have equipment, or you could have some stuff that, like the idea was that we made equipment more... You tap to use it, and that global effects were taken out of artifacts and given that to enchantments.

And we talked about that, and we said, okay, we listed all the artifacts that were important, that were global, and said, well, what if, you know, Howling Mine isn't an artifact, it's just a blue enchantment, and what if, you know... And we looked at all of them, and we thought about making a clean break, but in the end people decided that there's just some cool artifacts

that kind of affect the entire state, and they were kind of neat, and there's some things that you want to do in artifacts that made real sense to the flavor of an artifact. You know, idea of this mystical orb that enchants everything. So we ended up not doing it. We talked about it and it would have been a much cleaner divide mechanically. Um, but one of the things, here's a good side to talk about, which is, um, one of the things that's tricky is there's a lot of things that flavor do for you that, um, flavor is dangerous

in that you want to be true to flavor, but that flavor, if you follow flavor all the time, it messes with your mechanics. Like, one of the truisms that I've said is, look, any color, you could come up with a in-flavor way to explain why any color will do most anything.

You know, that it's not like there isn't, the colors are robust, the philosophies are robust. You can come up with things. I mean, the classic example is the bees in green, right? Green has insects, and it's nature nature and you have bees. But the problem with bees is that what bees want to do, to be the flavor of bees, is they want to fly, and green doesn't do a lot of flying. And they want to cause damage because bees damage things, and green doesn't really do direct damage to other creatures.

And so, like, you know, one of the things that's dangerous is that we would do this thing where someone would come up with a card, and mechanically the card didn't really fit, but flavor-wise, oh, it was this. And one of the things that I've been trying to get across to R&D is that just because something is an awesome flavor fit, that the color pie is important, and that flavor is more flexible than the color pie. And sometimes to get the flavor you need, it's just a multicolor card, that every possible flavor cannot be covered by monocolor cards, and that sometimes you want to do it right, look, you want to do Angry Bees,

maybe it has to be green-red or green-black or something in which you can, or actually green-red's not great because of flying, maybe green-black. You know, you have to do something that can convey the things you need to convey. And that you, just because you can come up with the flavor, you know, and the flavor fits in the color pie, doesn't mean that that is justifiable to make the card. And the reality is just, I mean, when you come to the center of it which is that mechanics don't have the flexibility of flavor, flavor is just so much more flexible

and that we're trying to stay true to the philosophies but just because the philosophy can bend in a direction you have to make choices on where you're bending in your philosophy and that if you don't have, if you bend too far, you can

cause problems. And like I said, the enchantment artifact bend is one of the areas where we goof around with the most that's a dangerous area. Part of me, the mechanical side of me, thinks that maybe tiling on my idea was a good idea, just make a

hard fast. But in the end, we're like, okay, was a good idea of just make a hard fast. But in the end, we're like, okay, there's good flavor, we're giving up, we want to be careful. You know, you don't want to abandon good flavor, but at the same time, you can't be victim to flavor and have mechanics suffer due to flavor. So there's a balance. It's a tricky balance. I mean, one of the things is we're 20 years in, we're like, shouldn't we have figured this all out?

And the answer is, the reason we haven't figured it all out is, on a case-by-case basis, we have to make decisions. You know, New World Order is all about saying, we want to limit complexity. That doesn't mean there's no complexity to Common. It means we have to be careful about where we choose to put it. You know, New World Order, 20% of the cards get complexity to Common, essentially. Like, there's a certain number of cards that get red flags that we're allowed to do, and the core of it is saying, well, how do we want to use this?

That's a big part of design, by the way, is not that you can't do something, but understanding restraint. I'm going to give a parallel, which is that I'm on a diet. And my diet basically is that I was having too many sweets. And obviously, you eat a lot of sweets, you gain some weight. I had too much weight. I wanted to lose some

weight. And I realized it wasn't just sweets. I was eating more than I needed to eat. But what I said is, okay, I said, here's what I need to do. I need to figure out when sweets are important to me because I knew if I cut them out I would just never any sense in which I go I'm just never doing something that I want to do eventually will fail you know because

it's just human nature that you can't give up something that you inherently want because your human nature overridingly will will rationalize it away and push you toward it

so what I said is okay the key to making a diet work for me was allocating it and saying I get some sweets but only a little bit and I have to figure out where and when it's important to me okay, the key to making a diet work for me was allocating it. It's saying, I get some sweets, but only a little bit,

and I have to figure out where and when it's important to me. And that way, every time I went to have a sweet, I had to say, oh, is this important? I only get so many sweets a week. Is this important? Is this something that's worth using that allocation? And I've actually lost 20 pounds. And it's been very successful for me to say, look, food is something that I need to have some of. I need to eat, but I need to be cautious about when to eat. And I can't eat just to eat. I have to go, am I eating for a reason?

And, you know, and that design is very similar, which is you get resources allocated to you. There's things you get to do. But just because you get some doesn't mean you get as much as you want. And as a designer, you need restraint. I don't talk about restraint a lot. I think I talk a lot about the free and open creative mind and do what you need to do. And early in design, it is very true that you need to sort of explore. And if you want to try out 20 mechanics, try out 20 mechanics.

You want to try 20 mechanics all at once? If you have a reason to do that, fine. You know, early design is about sort of indulging to a certain extent. But later on, there comes a point in design where you need to allocate and say, okay, I have a resource, and a very good example is, I have a cool new mechanic. But common can only be so complex. How much of it do I want to put in common? Where do I want to use it in common? What's the best place to use it? You know, complexity is a lot like suites, a lot of rarities especially, where

it's like, I don't get a lot. I got to pick and choose. And when I choose a card, much like me choosing a suite, I go, is this really where I want to spend the points? Is this where I want, you know, is this where complexity is going to do me good? And part of the time, you know, one of the ways that New World Order, I think, has done us a lot of good is just making me, or, you know, R&D in general, have to think about when and where we do things. Much like my diet is just me saying, okay, when and where am I going to have the things I want to have? And that I think there's times before where we're like, ah, whatever, sure. And we just make comments that in the big picture we shouldn't. Just like I would eat things, did I care that I ate them?

I just tasted good and I ate it. But when I stop to think, I go, wow, I only get so much sweets a week. Is that worth my sweet? And the funny thing is now, my quality level of my sweets is so much higher because I just don't eat garbage. Like when I go to eat something, I'm like, okay, I'm going to allocate and I'm going to make sure that I have something that I want. And that I've cut out a lot of junky sweets.

Like really? Did I need? Just like New World Order cut out a lot of junky complexity. It was like, really? Do we need that? No. And so, I mean, one of the fine lines, I mean, it's interesting this conversation comes up between enchantments, is that we have tried to figure out where to hold a line on enchantments and where we get to have our sweet treats, if you will. Notice, the only artifact enchantments in 20 years in the game

are on five super high-profile cards that are very, very evocative of what we're trying to do. You know, the idea of having gods with equipment, I mean, it just goes to Greek mythology, you know. And we wanted that. We're like, look, Heliod has his spear. He has it. That's important. And if Heliod's going to have a spear, we want you, look, Heliod has his spear. He has it. That's important. And if Heliod's going to have a spear, we want you, the players, to have the spear.

You know? And I feel like, did I allocate it correctly? Did I put it in the right place? I think I did. You know? And it's not saying, hey, artifacts and enchantments mean nothing. It said, look, here's a place. Here's a tiny place.

The stars align. It's important. You know, they're rare cards. it was a cycle, it's something that has a lot of focus, it's okay, I'm going to do it there. You know, and that trying to figure out when and where, I mean, one of the problems actually with FutureSight, when I look back about

FutureSight is, FutureSight wasted, FutureSight if you will, was the idea of me saying, okay, oh, I'm going to fill this up with just every treat you can imagine. And it's kind of like someone comes, and I think the reason that people love future site is it's fun to go to a room full of treats and sample. And, oh, this is good. Mmm, that's good. Mmm, bodily delight.

Mmm, tasty. And, you know, I have a little of this and a little of that. And you gorge yourself, right? And at the end of it, I don't know how good you feel, but during it you feel awesome because you just, it's this taste sampler of all this deliciousness. But at the end, you probably have a stomachache, and then it makes it that much harder. Next time I'm going to deliver something, you go, oh yeah, oh yeah, I had that before, I had

that once before, and it's like, oh, like, I, you know, I'm not sure if having the one place where you, checking in the taps, like, was that some random card that no one remembers, that, that's where I'm getting my, you know, like, anyway, I feel like future sight, and a lot of my lessons here is that a lot of early designs, I wasted a lot of stuff. And now we're suffering the consequences to a certain extent. That it's like, I only have so many tools at my disposal to surprise me and do cool things. And every time I do something that I've done before, I have to find a new way to do it. Or I have to find a context, you know, a creative context that it makes

sense in, and that just becomes harder and harder. I mean, one of the tough things about my job is that I always joke that the audience is the Borg, because in Star Trek, one of the big enemies is the Borg, and the Borg is a collective, and once you do something against it, it learns about it. So every weapon is only usable once. Once you use a weapon on it, it adapts, and now that weapon's no longer usable on it. So every weapon is only usable once. Once you use a weapon on it, it adapts and now that weapon is no longer usable on it. And I joke that the audience is like the Borg, that I have my tricks, but like, you know, no, I mean, we can repeat things and time helps us a little bit and, you know, players are excited to see things come back. So it's

not 100% true that I can't reuse things, but I have to be careful and using something that isn't really, using its potential makes it harder for me to use it again. It's kind of wasting something, and that's careful. What else about enchantments? I think the thing about enchantments is, and Theros plays into this, which is, let me talk about auras for a second. Auras are this interesting thing in that when you make the game and you study beginners and you study sort of the learning curve of a player, one of the things you learn is that beginners tend to do what they think is fun. And that beginners make this false assumption, which is if they think

it's fun, they assume it must be good. Now, to be fair, in design, a lot of what you're trying to do is make sure the things that are the most fun are good. And so I think where it comes from is that when you play games, if you play good games, you know, the most fun part about the game usually is good. And one of the things in Magic which is interesting is we have found sections of the game that the players enjoy that happen not to be that good. Orbs is a classic example. And that, orbs are, they seem awesome, like my creature gets better and now I just beat you up with my bigger creature. But because card advantage is so important, the idea that, you know, that your opponent can spend one card and you lose two cards,

that, you know, I have a creature with a Chemin on it and they destroy it. Well, now I've lost two cards. That disadvantage in card advantage makes auras usually not good. And we have spent 20 years trying to figure out ways to make auras better. Because here's the thing. People like auras. They are fun. They are fun. In fact, I used

to do a thing called deck clinic, where we'd go to conventions and I'd sit down and people would show me their deck and I'd make advice on how to make their deck better. And one of my common deck advice back in the day was, here's a tip. You want to have more creatures than creature enchantments. People love creature enchantments. The beginners

love creature enchantments. And one of the reasons I knew Theros would do well is, one of the maxims is, if I see people doing something and it sucks, the strategy sucks, but they keep doing it, what I say is, oh, that means they enjoy it. They're having fun. Because they ain't winning. Winning is fun, too, and sometimes you will do things just because it wins.

It's intoxicating winning. You will do mechanics that you don't find fun, but they win because winning is fun for you. But if you keep playing something, you keep losing. I mean, the reason I knew people, I knew Poison had a lot of fans. The reason I knew Tribal had a lot of fans is in the early days, they sucked at strategies,

but people kept playing them because they were fun. And I knew that if I made an environment where we would call it Voltron environment, which means you build it up, you know, you have a creature, you keep building on it. But I knew we made an environment like that where strategically it actually was the right thing to do that players would have a blast. Because you know what? It's fun.

Auras are fun. It's fun building things up. And one of the things we've done over the years is we know auras are fun. And so we've tried to come up with every possible way we can think of to try to make auras better. In Tempest, we did... We'll see.

In Mirage, we did auras that you could cast as an instant, essentially. They went away at the end of turn. Essentially, they could be instants or enchantments, but they could double as instants. We'd later just make flashing... Like, auras are so bad, you can make them flash good enough.

You know, that's an advantage. Tempest had flick... We call flickering... Oh, flickering's a bad term, it means something now, but we called them flickering at the time. It had enchantments that you could return to your hand. So the idea was, if you had mana open and your creature was about to die,

you could put it back in your hand. Or you could move it if you wanted to put it somewhere else. Urza Saga had the rancor enchantment that if they died, if they were on the creature and died, you got them back in your hand. We've done... We did Lysids in Tempest, where they were auras that hopped off and became creatures,

and hopped back on and became auras. Over the years, we've tried all sorts of different things. We've done a lot of cantrips. We've done auras that had ETB effects, like in Ravnica. We did a bunch of auras that had an effect, so a lot of their value was in the effect versus the aura. We've experimented over the years to try to make auras that had an effect so a lot of their value was in the effect versus the aura. And we have experimented

over the years to try to make auras good. I mean, Bestow is the latest in just us going, hey, auras can be good. We did auras that when they fell off gave you a creature. We've done all sorts of things.

Coming to help you, going to help you. We've just upped the strength level of auras. Part of getting people to do auras is saying, well, you're two for one but it's really good. Yeah, yeah, it's really good so maybe it's worth the two for one

if you can get enough you know it gives you enough card advantage in what it's doing that it's worth it and I mean ores are particularly fun so the other thing to talk about enchantments I guess is something they did in Legends something at the time they called Enchant Worlds

which we now call World Enchantments and the flavor of those were that you, which we now call World Enchantments. And the flavor of those were that your battle has literally been taken to a new place, and that new place you're battling has rules and an environment that affects your battle. And then when you played a new one, you got rid of the old one because now you've shifted to a new, you're now in a new world fighting with the flavor. And it had mechanical issues, so we sort of didn't continue them for mechanical reasons. But the flavor was kind of cool, and

there definitely are some neat things that you get to do with enchantments of creating a game state, of creating sort of a world. Another big thing that we've been going back and forth on is enchantments, kind of by flavor, want to mostly be global. Meaning i if i shift and change the nature of the you know the world around me doesn't everybody doesn't change it for

everybody uh but we've learned mechanically that those are tricky and they're hard and a lot of them like become worse for you because your opponent gets to take advantage of it for you get to take advantage of it um and so over the years we've been leaning a little bit more toward some of your global championships aid you and don't aid your opponent. I mean, sometimes the slaver

will make ones that still affect everybody, but we've been doing more and more of the global championships that affect you and not everybody. Oh, the other big thing

that happened, I guess, is there's a big shift, the hatred. So early on, when magic first started, that disenchant really was the definitive enchantment removal spell. And the reason was that it had such utility to it that you could play it in your decks

because, well, it had both enchantments and artifacts. And so one of the things we realized was that we shifted things. So we realized that the green-blue conflict really has green-hating artifacts. That blue is all about natural things and disliking artificial things. And while there are a few artifacts that green likes because they're artificial, they're natural, but a lot of it are man-made and created, and they're really not green's thing. And so we realized that green needed to be the number one card to hate artifacts. And so what we did is we said, okay, we shifted, we realized that it was weird to have white and red and green all have artifact destruction.

And so what we said is, okay, red likes to blow things up. It's a good definition of red. What we'll do is, we'll allow red the best artifact destruction spell and white the best enchantment destruction spell, singularly, but we will make the best combined one in green because that way green, in the end, will kind of be the best at destroying artificial things. And the flavor of naturalize is,

when you use magic, like, you have technology or magic that's changing the natural order, green's the one that comes along and goes, no, that's not the way it's supposed to be. And so we liked the idea that green's flavor of not wanting artifice, we were able to give it naturalize to do that. And so that was a big shift. The funny thing is the end result of that was

we ended up making white a little bit more the focus of individuals on enchantments and then green the focus of either or. Anyway, I'm at work. Today I drifted today. Today was a drifty day. I mean, I think the things I said were interesting. I think one of the things that I've learned about my podcast is that really my topic is a chance for me to get a jumping off point.

I try to stay on topic, but I go places that I think are interesting things to talk about. And that makes for the best podcast. I've tried a little bit where I structure things and I have an outline, look at the outline. I don't know. I tend to find my most interesting podcasts are ones where I just let my brain go where it wants to go. So today was a little deviation. I talked a lot about enchantments, but I definitely hit some other things.

So anyway, I finished a mega series. I've never finished a mega series before. I don't think I finished one. Anyway, so now, until I make a new card type, we've now talked about every card type in Magic. And hopefully you guys enjoyed the series. Obviously, I have other mega series going. I will continue to make some new ones.

But it is fun to actually finish one. So that my friends are all the car types. And because I am now parked in my parking lot, I realized that it is time for me to be making some of those car types. So goodbye for now, because I need to be go making magic. Talk to you guys next time.