Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #85 - Theros, Part 5

Episode Date: January 4, 2014

Mark turns in the fifth part of his Theros series.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, last we talked about Theros. I had begun doing my card-by-card stories, and I'd gotten up to A, which means today we get to go to B. Exciting. So if those are unaware, normally when I do my design stories, I'll talk about the design, and in the end, I've started doing card-by-card stories. And the reason I do that is, A, I have a lot of interesting stories to tell that have to do with the cards, and B, it lets me sort of catch some stuff I might have forgotten about and just round things out. So, anyway, we're going to start with B, and the first card to talk about is Bident of Thassa. to start with B, and the first card to talk about is Bident of Thassa. Okay, so, two things.

First off, one of the funny stories was so, Poseidon, you know, god of the oceans, had a trident, a very famous object, probably of all the objects of Greek mythology, it's one of the more famous, you know, the trident

of Poseidon. And I think the creative team was trying to mix it up a little bit. You know, they wanted a seafaring thing, but rather than the trident, they decided to have a bidant. So a bidant is a trident, but with two prongs rather than three. The problem is, trident is a pretty well-known, famous thing. And a bidant, not so much. So every time it would come up, this would happen every time, is, you know, I would say, oh, it's the Bident of Thassa.

And the person would go, what? The Bident? What's that? Like a trident, but a Bident. And they go, oh. And it's just funny that, like, for some reason in your brain, even though, you know, tricycle, bicycle, buys two, tries three, people get that.

But for some reason, a Bident as being a two-pronged trident was never obvious to people. And so, anyway, so I thought I'd use the bident to talk about how we ended up with enchantment artifacts. When I get to the Spear of Heliod, I'll explain how we got these things in the first place. But this story is more like, okay, we're going to do them. We have the weapons of the gods, you know. If you had asked me before the whole thing began if I was going to make enchantment artifacts, I would have said

no. Probably emphatically no. And I would have said, oh, that's dumb. Why would you make enchantment artifacts? It doesn't even make any sense. But, and this is how design works, how you get to places that you don't think you'll get to was we had, with the enchantment

creatures, really established that enchantments were the gods and the creations of the gods you know, that the gods have, you know, all the enchantment creatures are creations of the gods, so the things that God creates are enchantments that the way it represents the influence and touch of the gods is enchantments

okay, well, didn't the gods is enchantments. Okay, well, didn't the gods make their own weapons? I mean, someone else didn't make the weapons of the gods, did they? Didn't, like, find them lying on the ground or something. The gods made them. Well, if the gods made them, then aren't they enchantments? It's like, well, yeah, according to

the rules we've laid out, they are. Well, aren't they artifacts? Well, pretty much, they're the finest artifacts. They're weapons and they're, you know... So, yeah, they're artifacts. So aren't they enchantment artifacts? I remember we had this design meeting where somebody brought this up, I forget who,

but as they're walking through, they're like, isn't this true? Isn't this true? I feel like I was in court, you know. Therefore, your honor, I say it's an enchantment artifact. And, you know, it's like, oh, I could not refute the logic. The logic was very tight.

So they became enchantment artifacts. And once again, like I said, the reason I was okay with it is the enchantment-ness meant something and the artifact-ness meant something. Now, be aware that one of the things I was very adamant about was whenever you have cross-pollination of two different card types, I want to make sure that both card types

come through. Like, Loose and Limited, one of my big issues with it was a creature but it didn't feel like an enchantment. So I wanted to make sure these things were both

enchantments and artifacts. And so if you notice in the design that they have both a static ability, much like that you can activate, and then there's an ability that's just there. And so the idea is, one of them is more,

the activated one with the colored man is more enchantment-y, and the other one is more artifact-y. So anyway, we wanted to make sure that they both had that feel. And one of the things that's nice about them is even if you don't have the colored mana

to activate them, you still, I mean, you need the colored mana to cast them, but there is an effect that happens without you spending extra mana to make it happen. But anyway, I enjoyed how the gods' equipment came out. Oh, I keep calling them equipment. So originally, by the way they were equipment

originally when we handed over the file it was artifact enchantment artifact dash equipment and the problem was

when we turned them over development went to talk to creative and creative said oh these are one of a kind items there's not

there's not many spears of heliad there's a spear of Heliod. And so what they did is they said, you have to make them legendary. There's only one. So then Eric had a problem in which legendary enchantment artifact, you know,

hyphen equipment didn't fit on the card. And so he looked it over. He said, well, creatives are legendary, and they're clearly artifacts, and by Mark's rules about the gods, they're clearly enchantments. I guess they're not equipment then. And we decided that these are such powerful things that maybe only a planeswalker can wield them.

You can't give them to your minions. You must use them. That's how powerful they are. Oh, the other thing, by the way, is they all had names. People ask this. Like the Spirit of Helion, I don't know the name off the had names people ask this like the spear of Heliod I don't know the name off the top of my head but the spear of Heliod has a name you know like Mjolnir is the Thor of Hammer see that one I know

so why didn't we put the names on it and the answer was we did and they didn't fit and what we realized was that if we just called it by its name you wouldn't know what it was but if we say spear of Heliod you get oh this is Heliod's spear. So we went with a more generic name so you would understand what they were. But for

those who are in the know, they do have names, and if you want to refer to them as that, you can. Although a lot of people might not know what you're talking about. Okay, next. Boonsader. Okay, next. Boonsader. Okay, so I'm going to use Boonsader to talk about a different concept. So Boonsader is, I think it's a 4-2 creature with Bestow. And it's got Flash, I believe. Bestow.

And it's got Flash, I believe. So the thing that is... One of the things that is interesting is when we... One of the things that we need to do, and development encourages us to do this, is when we hand over a file, we figure out where... Design has to

figure out where we want to push things. What colors are doing such and such. Now, design more control is limited because we're controlling numbers and rarities and, you know, so we have a lot of control over limited. But in constructed, it only takes one good card to really put something somewhere. And so development has a lot of control over constructed. Since design doesn't handle costs, we have no impact. I mean, we have an impact in that we do things that development then follows up but we have no direct, like

we don't cause a particular thing to be in a particular place other than we'll choose number and choose color. So it's interesting that the, that Bestow is an interesting place where for limited it ended up getting pushed in white and black,

which means that there are more white and black creatures that have Bestow, and for Limited purposes, they're a little bit stronger. So if you're going to play Bestow, odds are you have white or black in your deck. I mean, there are good Bestow creatures in all the colors, because Bestow is spread to all five colors, but there's more good ones and more of them in white and black. So in Limited, if you're going to play a very, very heavy bestow deck, odds are that you're pushed toward white-black. But in Constructed, so one of the things that development does is whenever we make a new

mechanic, they can, if able, and sometimes they are and sometimes they aren't, try to make an honest push in new mechanics in Constructed. And the idea is, here's some new stuff, it's fun, let's try to push one or two, at least one or two, to try to see if it can become a constructed thing. And Boone stated it was their push, one of their pushes, for constructed for bestow. So it's interesting to note that

the constructed push was in green, where the limited push was in white and black. And that sometimes, sometimes they line up and sometimes they don't. Where they tend to line up most often is where we isolate them into two colors. For example, in Ravnica, and Return to Ravnica, you know, an Azorius mechanic

is white-blue. It's not going to be anything but white or blue. And if they're going to push it, well, it's going to be in white or blue. It's the only place it is. So in those cases, design is dictating, constructed in the sense that it's limited to certain colors. Like I explained earlier, because of the nature of Theros,

that we needed to spread stuff out a little more, that we concentrated things. Let me talk about this real quickly. I mentioned this in my previous thing. So I talked about how we took Heroic, and Heroic was concentrated in white and black. I just mentioned Bestow was concentrated in white. I'm sorry. Heroic was concentrated in white and blue. Bestow was concentrated in white and black.

Monstrous, the Monstrous were concentrated in green and blue. Bestow was concentrated in white and black. Monstrous, the monsters were concentrated in green and red. I'll get to that when I get to one of my monsters. And what's left? Devotion, and limited was concentrated in green and black, so that every color had access to something unlimited. I'll talk more about these as I get to relevant cards. Next is Bow of Nylea. Okay, so the Bow of Nylea, one of the things that happened was we originally made the equipment and we turned them over. The gods weren't quite done yet.

We had taken a stab at them. And when I get to one of the gods, I'll talk about the creation of the gods. But we had taken a stab at them, but we ended up coming back, and then design did another take on them afterwards, and development tweaked what we did, and there was a lot of work on the gods. As a such, since the gods were changing,

it was important to us that the weapons of the gods work well with the gods. You know, if you have the hammer of Porphyros, hey, that should work together well, or the spear of Helion and Heliod, they should work well together. The gods should work well with their equipment. We want synergy. So one of the things that happens during development is we'll create what we call mini-teams, which they're mini-design teams.

And the idea is that we'll take a problem, usually one isolated problem, and then put together a team, and that team will meet for usually just a week or two weeks, not too long, sometimes a little longer for the bigger project, and hammer out sort of you know, it's a team that their only dedication is one problem, so they're very hyper-focused on that problem. So Eric made a design

team for the gods and their equipment. And really what it was is to fine-tune the gods and fine-tune the equipment so they line them up and make them all work. I don't remember the whole time. I know Eric was on the design team. I was on the design team. Aaron Forsets was on the design team.

So Bold Night Leia was made by Aaron. I think what happened was, I work at home on Fridays, and they had a meeting on Fridays, and I think they pulled Aaron into the meeting because I was out. And Aaron came up with the Bold Night Leia. So the Bold Night Leia is supposed to represent,

people are like, why are there four abilities? Well, it's supposed to, she's the god of the hunt and of the seasons, and so they're supposed to represent four seasonal abilities. So the best of my ability, here are what the four seasonal abilities are. People are like, what? I don't get it. So first we have plus one, plus one. Well, that is growth, that's spring,

and representative of the growth and things growing and things getting stronger. Next is two damage to a flyer. Well, that's summer. Because summer's the time of the hunt. And she, you know, she's an archer and very much you want to hunt and take down things. Three life is

autumn. That's the harvest. Because in the summer, you know, especially in ancient Greece, the fall is very important for gathering the food that you're going to use to last through the winter. And then taking cards from the grave and putting them on the bottom of your library was winter, sort of hibernation. And so anyway, that's the flavor that the Boab Nylea is supposed to represent the four

seasons. I know I like it. I mean, I think from time to time it's fun to represent the four seasons. I know I like it. I mean, I think sometimes it's fun to do stuff like that. The card's a rare card. I think it's okay to make people sort of go, what, every once in a while. And then when you find out that there's actually some planning to it, I think it's kind of cool.

But anyway, for those who want to know the Bow of Nylea, there you go. Next, the Breaching Hippocamp. The only reason I bring this one up is just as a funny story, which is Ethan Fleischer was on the team, and before the thing began, I explained that I hadn't put together a document of things. Basically, the document was what has magic done that could be done in Greek mythology world,

and what would make sense in the Greek mythology world that magic hasn't done. And so the first, we had done a lot of it. I mean, literally, if you just walk through magic, I mean, from Gorgons to Pegasus to Cyclops to Centaurs to Hydras to, I mean, on and on and on. There's lots of mythological things throughout magic. But one of the things that Ethan was very interesting in is, what hasn't magic done? What is a good staple Greek

mythological creature that hasn't done? And then Ethan had a small list of ones that he wanted, and then he worked really hard to get those in the set. So one of them was the hippocamp. Now the hippocamp, if I remember correctly, is like half horse, half fish. The Greeks, by the way,

they love mixing and matching their animals. It's half this, half that. It's half this, half that. It's part this, part that. So the hippocamp, I don't know why you would mix a horse and a fish other than a... I don't know. I don't know why you would mix a horse and a fish. It seems like a very quirky

combination. But the Greeks, they were not one to shy away from their animal mixes. So anyway, Ethan was looking for hippocamp, and every time we'd come up with something that he felt could be a hippocamp, he would make it a hippocamp. Because he was my strong second,

he was in charge of the file. So when we would make something, I would let Ethan sort of concept it developmentally, I mean, design-wise. Meaning, he would make it something, and then later on, Jenna, who did the actual card concepting, if she felt Ethan had gone the wrong way or something,

could re-concept. But Ethan was trying to sort of, you know, fill in Greek mythology as we went along. And so since he was controlling the file, you know, sometimes in meetings I would name something or I would say it needs to be such and such and I would dictate what it was. But if I didn't dictate what it was,

meaning I left it up to Ethan, he would try to fill in his little chart of mythological creatures we hadn't done yet and I know at the slideshow because hippocamp was all over the place he'd make hippocamp and then we'd kill the car not because it was a hippocamp but just cards and flow

and for the longest time he just couldn't keep a hippocamp in the file so I know at the slideshow when he finally saw the hippocamp he applauded I did it! There's a hippocamp in Magic! Bronze sable. Okay, the funny thing about bronze sable is we knew we wanted an artifact creature and we knew we wanted an artifact

like a, we knew we wanted a bronze statue of an animal that came to life. We knew we wanted that. But one of the big questions is what animal? And so I remember, I don't remember, it kept changing in the file because we kept coming up with different animals

and they were tend to be silly animals, but we were trying, what kind of animal did they make a statue out of in ancient Greece? And in the end, I believe Jen had made it a sable because there's sables there. I do know that the card had lots of names

during the cards of design. And, you know, I think for a while it was Bronze Weasel. That's the one that... Or, no, was it Bronze Ferret? It might have been Bronze Ferret. There's some form in the Weasel family. Okay, next. Calvary Pegasus.

So originally... So this is a good example of development tweaking things. So when we made it in the file originally, so this is a good example of development tweaking things. So when we made it in the file originally, it said when this attacks, another target creature gains flying, and the idea is, oh, this creature can climb aboard the Pegasus, and then it also flies. Meanwhile, as development was trying to figure out the set they realized that there was a little bit of a human theme and so they were looking for just a few places

to have humans matter just a little bit not tons and I think somebody pointed out that well can anything ride the pegasus? can an elephant get on top of the pegasus? and so they realized that flavor wise in the stories you tend to see the humans riding the peasus.

They go, oh, okay, well, we were looking for a human-centric card, and flavor-wise, it makes more sense that it gets humans ride rather than just anybody. And also, the other thing it did, which is interesting, is it depowered the card a little bit, because humans just aren't that big. So if you say humans, now, if anything can be a black ball, you can just take your giant beast and make it a black ball, take giant beast and make it unblackable. Take your monster and make it unblackable. And so I think it was a combination of they didn't want that gameplay and they wanted more human matters.

So it was sort of like two birds, one stone. They've managed to solve two problems with one solution. And then we ended up with the cavalry pegasus, which is a cool card. Centaur Battlemaster. Okay,, which is a cool card. Centaur Battlemaster. Okay, so this is the green creature that is heroic that gets 3 plus 1 plus 1 counter.

Starts with a 3-3. So one of the things that we did when we were trying to separate our heroic was to try to give each color a real identity. And so one of the things that we wanted to do is we want one of them to be the growing color and we decided that green being the growing color was a good place and so the idea of the green is

you know a lot of it's got a couple key ones especially there's this one, the one that does two plus one counters where you know the key of a heroic is look you just got to do once or twice and it gets pretty big. This guy like he's a 3-3 you know target him once. In fact, put an ore on him. Let's say I just put a plus 2, plus 2 ore on him. All of a sudden he's an 8-8 with whatever ability that, you know,

like, plus 2, plus 2 in lifelink, and he's an 8-8 lifelink. I'm like, wow, bam. And so, one of the things about heroic that we wanted to do is we wanted a couple creatures that just said, look, just once, just one time. If you one time can heroic me, you'll be happy. And so that's where the card came from. It's just

you know, we wanted to make sure that there was some stuff where like, you know, it's fun sometimes to be heroic a lot, and we had cards that definitely make you want to heroic a lot. But this was a card where like, I mean, not that this card is upset if you heroic more than once, but it can make you happy with only one heroic. It doesn't necessarily need to have multiples to make you excited.

Sometimes what we call a combo of one. I mean, combo of two, but pretty much it just needed one thing and it hooked up. Next, Chain to the Rocks. Okay, so the way this card came to be is one of the things I did during Innistrad. So Jenna was my creative rep on Innistrad. I had her back on Theros. And one of the things I had her do during Innistrad that worked out really well, really well,

was she would come up with names of cards. She's like, here's a good card name that fits this world. And then we in the design meeting would match it. What does that mean? So one of the buildings she came up to was chained to a rock. Now, for those who don't know, in the... I keep on saying Pythagoras, but no, no, it's not Pythagoras.

It is Prometheus. Pythagoras made mathematical equations. He actually existed. Prometheus was a titan who gave fire to the humans. And who, I think, mythologically might have made the humans in the first place? Anyway, he gives fire to the humans, upsets the gods, the gods torture him. And the torture is they chain him to a rock and they have an eagle tear at his liver every day. And then it grows back and every day it tears at his liver again.

Until, I guess, Hercules eventually frees him. Anyway, so she had come up with Chain to the Rock. Chain to a Rock was the name of the card originally. And so we're like, okay, what does this card do? And we're like, it seems like it's some kind of imprisonment. So we're like, okay, well maybe we could do some form of a

you know, Oblivion Ring type card, right? One of the things that White is real good is what I call answers with answers, which is I can answer your threat, but my answer could be answered, meaning as long as this is in play, your guy

can't attack or is removed. And so we knew we wanted the card either to be a pacifism arrest variant or be a Oblivion ring variant. We weren't quite sure. I think we were leaning toward Oblivion ring because we hadn't had variant. We weren't quite sure. I think we were leaning toward Oblivion Ring because we hadn't had one. We kind of wanted one.

And then somebody in the meeting, I don't know who came up with this, said, well, what if it was, you know, Enchant Mountain? And we were like, you can tell when someone has a great idea, everybody's eyes in the room just light up and we're like, done! Now, originally, by the way, it was any mountain. It wasn't your mountain. It was just a mountain. You can tell when someone has a great idea, everybody's eyes in the room just light up and we're like, done.

Now, originally, by the way, it was any mountain. It wasn't your mountain. It was just a mountain. And so it ended up being a very good sideboard card of white against red. What happened in development, though, was it was too good. It was so good that it was causing people to choose not to play red. And that was not the intent. The intent was not to be a super color hoser. So what it ended up being was kind of like, if I'm playing white, well, I need to have red. And that was not the intent. The intent was not to be a super color hoser. The event was. So what it ended up being

was kind of like, if I'm playing white, well, I need to have red. It's for the white-red deck. Now, we like to have cards that sort of push in certain directions. So in some ways, it's a white-red card. I mean, you need a mountain to make it work. In Constructed, there are ways

to get a mountain without actually you know, not painlands, lands from Ravnica lands. So there are ways to get planes without actually having to have red stuff in your deck. But anyway, we made that card. In the same meeting, we also made Rescue from the Underworld. And I loved both those cards. In fact, they're my two favorite cards in the set. And I remember saying in the meeting, like, guys, like, before we left,

I said, okay, see these two cards? These are the cards. This is what I want. This is what the set needs to be. If we can make cards like this, we will succeed. And I was very, very happy, and it really was, in a lot of ways, this card, in other words, the guiding principle that sort of steered us in the right direction. Oh, one last thing ways, this card, in other words, the guiding principle that sort of steered us in the right direction.

Oh, one last thing. So the card, the actual card is called Chain to the Rocks. Why? Why was it chained to a rock to change the rocks? I ask. I don't know. It's something like that he probably wasn't tied to a singular rock, but like a mountain, which would be a bunch of rocks. Anyway, they're both good names.

But it's one of those things where I was really used to the name, and it almost stayed. I still sometimes call it Chain to a Rock, and then people are like, you mean Chain to the Rocks? I'm like, well, anyway. It's a fun card. Oh, the other thing that's interesting is when we first made it, it was common, and it was really, really good.

So we moved it up to uncommon because it was too good for limited. And then it turned out it was still too good for limited, and development moved it up to rare. Because they liked the card, they wanted it to be good, but they didn't want it to warp limited. And so it got moved up to rare. People often

ask, by the way, one of the roles of rare, the rare rarity, is there are things that cause problems in limited. And when things cause problems in limited, what we do is we put them in rare, mythic rare, to make them not happen as much in limited. But if the card is for somebody,

we have to put it somewhere. Meaning, if we want to do the card, and the point is not for limited, we want to do the card is for somebody, we have to put it somewhere. Meaning, if we want to do the card, and the point is not for Limited, we want to do the card, then it has to go in Rare and Mythic Rare. And I know there's a lot of cases where there's some card that is a bomb in Limited. Like, why did you make this card? Like, well, if you see it in Rare or Mythic Rare, it was not made for Limited. At best, we understood it impacted Limited, and we moved it out of common-uncommon to minimize its effect on limited.

But, look, we make cards for many reasons, and if a card has a reason to be made, it will be made. And that just because a card impacts unlimited, we're not going to take a card that we think somebody would really like that's for somebody else and not make it because it'll mess up limited.

We will restrict how much it gets in limited by changing its rarity. But there are lots of ways to play Magic and lots of different audiences of Magic. And so, you know, there are cards that, like, yeah, maybe their bomb's in limited, but they're also making someone else happy somewhere else. And, you know, that's something...

Magic is a game for many people and many players, and we have to make sure that every single set is for every single member. And that is tricky. That's probably one of the hardest things about Magic is, I say this all the time, Magic's not really one game, it's many games, and every time we design for it, we have to design for, at least for core sets, I've got core sets, normal expansions. Supplemental products we can aim a little bit that are more for specific subsets, and we try to shift around so that different subsets eventually get a supplemental product. But the main

booster expansions, we've got to make sure that everybody can have them. That's important. Okay, next I have Chronicler of Heroes. Oh, okay. So Chronicler of Heroes is an uncommon white-green card that you get to draw a card for every creature you have in play

with a plus one, plus one counter. So this is a good example of something we do in design, and this card might have been made in development, but something design does and development does, is one of the things that we really like to do is to make cards that help define draft archetypes. So for example, there's an archetype that we made where you draft white and green cards.

It has a lot of heroic. You beef up your creatures. So a lot of them get bigger, and a lot of them have plus one, plus one counters on them. And so the idea was there's an uncommon cycle of gold cards in Theros, and the role of that cycle was to encourage you to go down these different paths. And so we figured out each of the ten paths, and then there's cards to encourage those paths. Actually, is there an enemy cycle? There sure is an ally cycle.

I think there's an enemy cycle. Okay, so this is white-green. So the role of this card is to say, if I open up this card in pack one, it's pack one, pick one, and I see it, I go, oh, okay. I see, I want to go white-green, and I want things that are plus-plus-plus counters.

Well, coincidentally, that's exactly what that deck wants to do. And so it just is something that encourages you to sort of build around. So I talked about the role of rarity. One of these days I will do a rarity podcast. One of the roles that Uncommon's is to provide guidance for drafting. And the reason Uncommon does that is you have no rare cards that show up very infrequently. But Uncommon cards show up in some regularity. What that means is you won't see them every draft, but you'll see them, you know, every third draft maybe.

Maybe every second draft, depending on the size of the set. But the thing about it is that we really want to be able to do some cards that sort of send you down interesting paths. Because one of the neat things is if you get a certain card early enough, it alone might encourage you to do some strategy. And so we sometimes make Uncommons that push down traditional strategies that we want you.

And then every once in a while, we'll make ones that go, oh, this is special. Here's a special thing you could try to do. And like an Innistrad, I'm going to blink at the card name. The Innistrad has a green card where you get the one, two spiders based on creatures in your graveyard. Spider spawning? Spider spawning. And that was made to enable a green-blue strategy that we had built in the set.

And the idea was, here's something fun you can do, and that, you know, if you get this card early, hey, here's a strategy, here's a plan, here's a thing you could do. And drafters really like those cards, and so it's something that I've been,

I've been working hard to try to encourage, because, you know, we really do like to have, we want to make sure that, I mean, drafting is yet another way to play the game. And part of making a good draft environment is giving the tools for drafters to do fun things. Both to have certain paths they can go down

and to have special one-off things that they can try if the stars align. Okay. So I managed to get through the entire first column of my first sheet. So, holy moly, we've got lots to talk about.

Anyway, I hope you guys are enjoying this. And it's fun. I like talking about Theros. Like I said, this is a big experiment to see what happens if I talk about something recent. The big, big plus is I know so much about it and I have a lot to say. So there's lots to talk about. Hopefully it's not also a downside. So I hope you're enjoying the ever-ongoing Theros podcast.

But anyway, I'm now at work. I see the wizard sign in the wizard's building. And while I love to talk about Theros, and I love talking about all the magic that I've made, it's time for me to be making magic. Talk to you guys next time.