Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1143: Modern Horizons 3 Set Design with Michael Majors

Episode Date: June 7, 2024

In this podcast, I sit down with Set Design Lead Michael Majors to talk about the set design for Modern Horizons 3.

I'm not pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work at home edition Okay, we'll have a special guest today Michael majors We're gonna talk all about the set design of modern horizons 3. I Michael Thanks for having me mark. Good to be here. Okay, so I talked with Eric. We talked about the vision design So when the second handed off to set design, I think there are two main themes that were handed off, which was energy and colorless mana, Eldrazi, whatever we refer to that part of it. So we're going to start talking about those and then we'll talk about you added some stuff later. So we'll get into that. So do you want to start energy or start with Eldrazi? What do you want to start talking about? Sure, we'll start with the Eldrazi. Yeah, what I mean, what I think is really cool about

the Eldrazi is obviously there's these lofty expectations of, you know, these are kind of the marquee villains of magic in some sense of the modern era with Emrakul and Kozlik and Ulamog being super iconic and, you know, powerful figures that, you know, the Gatewatch could barely contain and so forth. So there's these huge expectations of delivering on these cards that are going to be dramatic and powerful and exciting. And getting to put a Horizons-esque spin on them was a unique but super cool challenge. And then also just the fact that, again, that're in a modernizing sense, like, what are the interesting mashups that we can do to incorporate into executing on

Eldrazi that we couldn't do and Battle for Zendikar or Rise of Eldrazi or things along those lines. Okay, so what are the challenges of Colus as a cost? Yeah, so I mean, in some ways, you know, it's sort of joked about but it's not really a joke is that it's kind of the six color of magic. So especially in the context of a limited format, you know, you truly do have to give players opportunities to draft Cuddleless mana and incorporate into their deck seamlessly and, you know, be able to play their cards. So you have to both create a reasonable incentive to

actually draft those colorless cards and, you know, you know, sort of pay the cost of having to put those cards in their deck. And also not end up in the doomsday scenario of nobody ever wants to draft up drasi because the cost is too high. So it's a tough balancing act. So what are what are the tricks like the tricks? We've only ever made one set with Colas as a cost, which was over the Gatewatch. How do you do it? What are the tricks of the trade to make it work? Yeah, I think the biggest innovation, so to speak, was I'm pretty sure it was Eric

originally put in kind of like new panoramas, which are from Shards of Alara into the set, which basically, they tap for Colos, and then you can sacrifice them as like a pseudo fetch land to search for one of three different basic land types as a means to kind of bridge it all together where you could draft these, you could play them without the intention of ever really sacrificing them and then they produce Cuddlist mana. But if you need to color fix yourself, you can obviously find one of your, maybe two or three other colors, or you can, if you find a second source

of Cuddlist, then you can finally color fix. Those ended up being a little bit weak, but they actually ended up being the cards that we do see in the file, which tap for colorless, can tap sacrifice for one of three basic lands, and then have cycling of the appropriate colors. So that's kind of like the glue that kind of holds the set together to some extent,

where you can draft these really exciting three-color decks. You can also draft Eldrazi, or you can even like splash Eldrazi in kind of a traditional archetype if you want to go that way. The other interesting question is how do you cross Eldrazi with other themes like modern horizons and double mixing themes? What were the challenges of sort of crossing themes with Eldrazi? Yeah, I mean it's super hard and you know we'll get into it in a second with energy. But like there's quite a few disparate elements in Modern Horizons 3 between energy and Eldrazi and then modified, which we'll get to, and infinity that we'll get to, which is kind of, you know, I mean, that's the fun and that's the

promise of a set like this is you get to draw upon all of Magic's history. But you know, just kind of viewing Eldrazi as a traditional ramp payoff that we do in a lot of different sets, where it's just like, you know, if you work towards getting six, seven, eight mana, then you know, eventually you get to cast your big Eldrazi creature that has a large impact on the game. And, you know, presumably once you get to that late in the game, you'll probably find your total of source. And we also just incorporated some tricks like cards that have cycling, for example, or just various means to fix your draws if it's not all coming together.

Yeah, you bring up another important thing that the audience realizes is when you're making a set, you get archetypes. And so not every color has to do everything. Right. And the drawsy, we're green, blue and red, I believe. Is that the colors? Yep. Correct. Okay. So you let's get into energy. You talked about energy. So energy is all different ball of wax introduced in Kaladesh. In fact, I originally made energy for original Mirrodin. It got cut from original Mirrodin and then it took 13 years to find a home for it.

Ended up being Kaladesh. And suffice to say, the play balance of energy in its first execution had room for improvement. How's that? Yeah, I mean, obviously, since I was a professional player at that time, like I played professional level tournaments with Aetherworks Marvel. Yeah, that card, you know, could have been better executed on but in general, I do think there was a lot of fun stuff that that energy promised and executed on and of course, you know, we we learn through you know Trial and execution and we you know, we get better at it

So this is our you know, kind of our second large attempt at energy And as as Eric and I talked about one of the things you guys were trying to do in modern horizons 3 was Take some themes that more secondary Second-tier themes that players really had wanted to see more of and give them more. And energy, I've been asked, people have been asking forever for more energy cards. It definitely is something where, you know, it just needed more cards. And so finally, I mean, Fallout did some more, but finally we're doing more for, you know, so people can have more energy stuff.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's, it's not a theme that we get to do a lot in our front-list products. So that definitely makes it a good opportunity in a product like Modern Horizons. It also just kind of gives us the chance to potentially unlock people's cards that they own and give them new applications and interesting things that they can do with them. And, you know, I always just kind of view Magic as a giant sandbox puzzle pieces. And you know, it's very fun for me.

You know, I'm just kind of a deck folder at heart to try to find ways to give new context to people's cards. So that was a, again, a unique challenge, but a very fun one that energy offered. Okay. So let's talk about the actual making energy as you know, even in two archetypes right, so is in red, white and blue had energy. How did you make, how do you make energy work? What were the challenges of making energy work? Yeah, I mean, so you know, effectively you can view energy through a couple different lenses. It's like you have cards where they you can view energy through a couple different lenses. It's like you have cards where they typically enter the battlefield and produce energy,

and then you cost their effects around their ability to consume their own energy, and then maybe down the line, you'll play another card that produces energy, and then you get to use it again. And so that's kind of like the base rate that you think about basically building this, like the base rate that you think about basically building this elaborate combination of cards around, which maybe is not the best way of articulating this.

It's kind of difficult, but essentially what we did is like think about various ways to create effects that can be done like one and a half times. So like maybe I can do this one powerful thing and that's kind of the promise of the card and then I have an energy or two left over. And then if I draft lots of energy cards and I'm going to get paid off by being able to execute on those powerful effects. But simultaneously you'd need maybe weaker cards that can either produce energy or give you incremental advantage or can consume kind of that slack energy.

So like basically maybe odd amounts of energy. But it's a tricky thing to all get together. And then basically the archetypes where we view like red white as the aggressive energy color, blue red is kind of the, you know, Johnny engine energy color. Blue-red is kind of the, you know, Johnny engine energy color. And then blue-white is a more like traditional control deck energy color. So I know when I back when we first in energy when Ian was, Ian Duke was the lead of the

set. And the way he described it at the time was that energy had to have a cost meaning, okay, what can you do with energy and that energy had to have a cost, meaning, okay, what can you do with energy? And that you had to sort of figure out what scale of effect in energy is worth so that you can price things accordingly so that if you don't do that correctly, then one card that gives energy might be usable, another card in a way that's abusive. And so you, energy has to sort of mean something from a costing level. Yeah, I mean, it's, I always find it very difficult to try to like quantify exactly what this kind of like nebulous resource

is going to be, especially when it has to interact with like 25 to 40 or 50 other cards. So like, trying to like boil it down to like an energy is worth like scry one or whatever is it's kind of difficult for me to wrap my head around as a designer but like Yeah, the way I thought about it's like if you can, you know, obviously cards, you know modulate mana costs and then it's basically You know traditionally creatures have either like an e to be or an activated ability throughout all of magic and all of mechanics and then you just map what energy they produce to that card plus whatever excessive resource they can do plus what how well it scales doing multiple times turn

over turn and then you kind of think backwards about how to agree archetypes that make sense with all of these, you know, abilities working in tandem. But yeah, I mean, I mean, throughout the set, you'll see like, two energy on a two drop is not going to have the same value as two energy on a five drop, right? That's kind of obvious. But it also gives you incentive to maybe hold your energy or it also makes the context of like, I draw my two drop late in the game pretty different if I already have my powerful five drop on the battlefield and I get to reuse it. So what are the other challenges with energy?

And this is true of any alternate resource is there can be a snowball effect where like, you want to make sure that energy is playable by people that aren't nothing but energy. So how do you do that? Yeah, and that's kind of speaking specifically to what I was referencing where it's like, you know, a lot of the cards if you just play them as a one contained card, they can they do something. They either have like a pseudo, there's a battlefield effect or an activated ability, or maybe they get a triggered ability where they

get a counter or something like that. We saw that in Kaladesh. You're going to do that once and then you have a fine card, but it's certainly not scaling to its full potential. So, you know, for example, there's, there's a Murphocleuter style card that uses energy, so you get to use it twice to loot if you just cast it and activate it twice. But that's not nearly as powerful as having a Murphic Luthor for the entire game.

So we're talking about Tempest Harvester, I believe. One in a blue for a 2-1. When Tempest Harvester enters the battlefield, you get two energy. Tap, pay an energy, draw a card, then discard a card. So, you know, a very nuts and bolts card for a lot of decks that a lot of, you know, decks just want to play on curve is a two drop, two mana, two, one, nothing to scoff at. You get to loot twice, also nothing to scoff at. But, you know, if you're really going in on energy, you can fix your draws for the whole game. Or, you know, if you, like I said, if you have something like, I believe the name is Voltstorm Angel. Okay, say Voltstorm Angel. Volt, yeah, Voltstorm Angel, three white, white, four, four, it's an angel, flying.

When Voltstorm Angel enters the battlefield, you get three energy. At the beginning of combat in your turn, you may pay two energy. When you do, choose one. Voltstorm Angel gains vigilance and lifeline until end of turn. Other creatures you control get plus one, plus one until end of turn. Right, so is there a truly linear relationship where one energy equals a loot and two energy equals that? Hard to say, but that is the context that energy gives you where it's like, you know, early in the game, I can use my energy to loot away cards and fix my hand.

But late in the game, I can use it just to kill you. Yeah. Another thing that's really interesting, when we do draft is the idea that cards have value to different players and some players might value it slightly higher, but if they don't take it early enough, other players will take it and that makes for a good draft. Okay, so those are the two, so Energy and the Eldrazi were two that were handed off. But there were some other themes that you needed to add. So let's talk modified next. So why did you guys add modified as a theme to the set? I think modified is just kind of the perfect

Modern Horizons bucket of mechanics basically, because so I've worked on now all three Modern Horizons and kind of the litmus test for like, is a card cool? Does it make sense in the context of this product? You know, it's like, okay, does this does we also want cards that are, you know, comprehensible in the context of magic, of course, but it's like, you know, asking the question, like, does this belong in Horizons? Is this kind of unique enough? Is this interesting enough? Is this even weird enough is a question that gets asked a lot when you're trying to make even commons and uncommons for modern

horizon sets so Modified just like gives us this gigantic playground basically to throw all of magic's mechanics at it in various ways It's so broad between you know Plus and plus encounters or as an equipment that we can find tons of ways to mix and match mechanics and make really cool and satisfying cards. So making modified or broader theme basically just gives us, unlocks so much access to like matchups and just cool and interesting ways to combine mechanics. And the nice thing about that is there's just, there are whole mechanics that play into that.

Bestow is an aura mechanic, Living Weapon is an equipment mechanic, Fabricate is a plus one. There's just mechanics from the past that play into all those themes. Absolutely. And if you lined up all those things, they don't look like they would belong together, but again, that's the beauty of Modified, is that it kind of all, it bridges everything together. Yeah, it's funny, in the modern era, batching's become very important, that is like, let's take things that have existed for a long time, but put them together,

and it makes new themes in a way that's backward compatible, but makes new themes, so that's always cool. Right. So where did Modified end up? What colors did you put Modified in? It's primarily in Abzan, but- White, black, green. Yeah, black, white, green.

But to your point, you're gonna see living weapon across various colors. You're gonna see bestow in various colors. So there's lots of things that allow you to hook into the Modified themes throughout all five colors, but it is primarily in black, white, and green. Okay, so you also talked about affinity. So affinity is sort of the audience, real quick history. It first showed up in original Mirrodin. Energy didn't stay, but affinity did stay.

And I don't know, there's a big argument whether Urza Saga block or Mirrodin block was the biggest train wreck from a developmental standpoint. But Affinity caused some problems to say the least back in the day. We had to ban eight cards or something. So it was, so we've always been a little bit gun shy about Affinity because it back in the day caused lots of problems, but it's a fun mechanic so let's talk a little bit about affinity. Right totally I mean it is known for being an extremely powerful mechanic and that's obviously very attractive. We you know it's kind of known for being on artifacts but over time we've also just incorporated affinity for other various types of, you know, permanence that you can put on the battlefield and find

cool ways to execute on that. But yeah, I mean, just modern is a large card pool. Obviously, there's lots of artifact themes over the years. So it's just fun to print more affinity for artifacts cards. And this is also kind of hooks back into something you mentioned at the top talking to Eric just like trying to identify themes that have kind of hooks back into something you mentioned at the top talking to Eric, just like trying to identify themes that have kind of fallen by the wayside. Despite the fact that, you know,

Mirrodin produced bands many, many years ago, Affinity hasn't been very popular and competitive modern for quite a while now. So it actually is an opportunity to try to bring back some of those cards that have kind of lapsed in popularity. The other trick we learned is when we did Affinity originally, it only went on artifacts. So you could get to zero, right?

Artifacts, at least at the time, artifacts had generic costs. Now we do colored artifacts and we will put it on colored things. And so we've learned some tricks to like adjust it a little more. You know, that helps, I think. Yeah, I think kind of one of the marquee cards in the set is I believe it's M.Skier Iron Eater. So that's a black red card that is not an artifact, but does have affinity for artifacts.

Yeah, so M.Skier Iron Eater, six black red, five five, legendary creature demon, affinity for artifacts. M.Skier Iron Eater enters the battlefield, you draw X cards and you lose X life where X is half the number of artifacts you control, rounded down. Three in a red sacrifice an artifact. M-Scare deals damage equal to the sacrifice artifacts mana value to any target. Yep, so obviously it's telling you to put a bunch of artifacts in your deck, but it

itself is not an artifact. It's also trying to tell you to place some expensive artifacts in your deck, so there's kind of some tension between I need to fill my deck with cheap artifacts to unlock affinity, but then also I want some big payoffs maybe in the mirror enforcer space or things along those lines. So yeah, black red is also just kind of a different take on affinity for artifacts. It's been traditionally a blue or a blue-red deck. So it should be fun to see how it pans out in the modern. Okay, so we're talking architects. So I want, we're talking archetypes. So I want to get into the archetypes a little bit. We've mentioned a few of them in passing,

but I just want to sort of walk through them just so the audience understands. If you're drafting the set, and once again, the archetypes aren't the only thing you can do, but they're the major thing, you know, the most, the thing that most are encouraged to do. So I'm just going to go in Wuburg order here. So let's start with white blue. So white blue is energy flyers. So what does that mean? Energy flyers, energy control. Yeah, less aggressive than the red white energy deck. Less kind of the fun spin my wheels do assemble contraptions and various other engines and blue red. So,

you know, kind of the mid range energy deck, so to speak. Okay, blue black. Blue black is drawing extra cards and various ways that you can convert that into basically presence on the battlefield. So it's kind of a control deck, but it is built around just getting creatures into play and recurring things and various other triggers. Okay, black red. We just talked about this one.

Affinity for artifacts like we just talked about. Yep. Anything special about Beyond? I mean, obviously it wants a lot of artifacts. Anything else about it? Like how aggressive is it? Pretty aggressive. Yeah, probably the big common

that's maybe causing some proper controversy is the cranial ram. So that kind of gives you an idea of how aggressive the deck is trying to be. So cranial ram real quick, black and red for artifact equipment, living weapon. So when this equipment enters battlefield, create a zero zero black, phrexium germ token

then attach to it. Equip creature gets plus x plus one where x are the number of artifacts you control equipped to. Okay, next, red green. So red green is one of the Eldrazi combinations. This one cares particularly about having a bunch of Psions and you can leverage them to be a little bit more aggressive if you want. Okay green white. Green white is the more Aura-centric of the modified deck so lots of bestow. Okay white black. White black is also a modified deck but cares a little bit more about sacrificing your modified creatures in some way. Okay, blue red. So blue red is the engine energy deck.

More mid-rangey? Mid-ranging is approaching combo. You know, get my people together and see what kind of machine I can build. Okay, black green. Black green is the counters modified deck. So you'll be seeing adapt and various ways to put counters on your creatures. Okay, red white. That's the aggressive energy deck. Is that the most aggressive archetype?

aggressive energy deck. Is that the most aggressive archetype? I'd say so, probably slightly more aggressive than green, white, and black, green. And then finally green, blue. And green, blue is kind of the very traditional rample drossy deck. Okay, so what were the biggest challenges for you from a set design? Like what caused you the most headaches in trying to make this set? Yeah, I mean just how different all the things we just went through are. It's like auras and counters and sacrifice themes

and artifacts and Eldrazi and energy. There's a lot and drawing extra cards, there's a lot going on. Yeah, so for the audience, a little history. So way long ago, we made a set called Time Spiral. And Time Spiral Block was crazy complicated. It was nostalgia driven. And what we found was the enfranchised players

really enjoyed it. We had a lot of tournaments, the play was up, but sales were down because it was just too complicated for a lot of players. And so was up, but sales were down because it was just too complicated for a lot of players. And so we didn't repeat that in Premiere, but when we actually made Modern Horizons, it was inspired by Times Brawl Block. We're like, look, there's an audience that really likes this high complexity. And so one of the interesting things about this is this is just a higher complexity than

we really make anywhere else. As you're saying, there's just so many moving pieces going on. Do you find higher complexity sets harder to make? I think so. Yeah, I would say so. I mean, I kind of alluded to it previously, but like, you know, in a lot of those, you know, the sets that we make on a day to day basis, it's it's acceptable just to put, you know, like a French vanilla in a set. It's just like this is a role player. It does what the limited archetype needs. It's a good creature

on the curve. It's going to be nuts and bolts. Fantastic. That's fine. That's good enough. And again, here with Horizons, it's like, okay, does this actually belong in the context of what we're promising to the players? Which, as you said, is kind of a, you know, sort of a time spiral to love letter to magic. Like, is there is there something here that people are going to latch on to outside of just a very traditional game piece? And so that's it's very fun, because you get to kind of dig deep and find various ways to, you know, draw inspiration from magic's past, but it does

doesn't make things very complicated. Yeah, I always refer to Modern Horizons as decadent design in that. Yeah. You've access to everything, which is very fun, but also you can't just make a simple card, as you're saying. That is a challenge.

Every card has to meet this bar of, is it Modern Horizons-y enough, which really is adds an extra layer when you're trying to make a sad nor do you just have like you know constraints can breed creativity sometimes where it's like if you have like you said if you have literally access to everything it's you know you kind of racking your brain to figure out exactly how to maximize each one so there's one more thing that we didn't talk about that I want to bring

to and I'm curious so double-faced cards was something that previous Modern Horizon sets didn't have. They didn't make them. So this time we did, and we used them in two ways, mainly in the set. There's a cycle of planeswalkers that have a legendary and then turn into their planeswalker version. And then we have MDFCs, modal double-faced cards,

where there's a land on one side and a spell on the other side. So what were the challenges of making DFCs in the set? Well, I love Magic Origins, which is kind of the inspiration for the Planeswalker. So I was super on board with those. Those were in there from Vision. It was just a matter of developing them.

So those are A+. I have fond memories of playing with the original five from Magic Origins. I was super on board to make those cards for Modern. Challenging to develop, but nothing incredibly out of the ordinary. The lands themselves, the MDFCs are pretty tough because they kind of have to strike a fine balance of like, you know, you have to respect the fact that these are extremely low opportunity costs to put in your deck because they're lands, especially with the monocolored ones where they can enter on tap by paying three life.

So getting them kind of in a sweet spot of developing them properly was fairly difficult. But a challenge that was super, you was super worthy of our time and effort just trying to get these, basically these building blocks that people can put in their decks for years to come. And they're never gonna be the most powerful card in your deck, but by virtue of having that low opportunity cost as a spell, but also being a land, they're just really exciting

and offer players a lot of options. So I'm happy with how they ended up. Yeah, one of the fun things from a design standpoint is you can put effects on them that are hard to put on a normal card. You know, that... It doesn't have to be a full card, basically, because obviously it's coming with a lot of other stuff. Right, like, you know, I believe it's...

Oh, gosh, the Bogart one, the one that exiles graveyards. I can't remember his front face. Hold on, I will figure this out. Give me a word to look for and I'll find it. Bogart Bog, I think, is the land? Oh, Bogart Bog, yes. Okay, so it is Bogart Trawler, two in a black for a 3-1 goblin. When Bogart Trawler enters the battlefield, Excel target player's graveyard. It's a three, one. And then on the backside, Boggart Bogg is a land.

As Boggart Bogg enters the battlefield, you may pay three life. If you don't and enters the battlefield tapped, tap add black. Right, so this I think is a great example speaking to your point of like, this is not a card that people are very excited to put in their main deck,

just a three mana, three, one that exilesiles card to players graveyard but it's extremely valuable to have access to a creature that can exile a player's graveyard it's just do i you know do i want to pay the opportunity cost of putting this in my deck well if it's a you know effectively a swamp then then yeah absolutely i'll put this on my deck and then every once in a while i'll draw it and it's going to be extremely powerful and satisfying to play with. Okay, so we're almost out of time here. So final thoughts on the making of anything we didn't talk about that you had any final thoughts about the making of this set?

Yeah, I mean, I guess I'll just, you know, we talked a lot about the, you know, kind of the skeleton of the set, the archetypes of the set, a lot of the limited focus. But I guess the thing that I just want to briefly touch on is just that my hope of this set is to offer players lots and lots of options, which is kind of reflected in the archetypes we spoke about. There's lots of disparate pieces, things that you can experiment with. I'm hoping that people have a great time just brewing interesting decks with kind of cards and new strategies and new engines

that are not totally obvious where they fit in the modern. So I'm super excited to see what people end up doing. Yeah, I know, like I said, one of the metaphors I like to say is that we, the designers are making tools and then the audience will do whatever they do with the tools. So I shared with you, I'm really interested

what people do with this, because there's lots of very quirky cards that do odd things that, you know, that's, it should be a lot of fun. Yep, absolutely. So I just want to thank you for being with us today, Michael. Thank you for walking through the set and it was fun to hear from you.

All right, thanks Mark, appreciate it. So guys, I'm at my desk. So we all know that means the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you all next time. Bye bye.