Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1153: Looking Back, Part 1

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

This podcast is part one of a two-part series based on a Making Magic article where I look back at the first 30 years of Magic and pick the top design contributions of each year.

I'm pulling away from the curb because I brought my son off at school. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so today is the start of a multi, of a little multi podcast series based, called Looking Back, based on some articles I did. So what I did was I looked back at the 30 previous years of Magic and then for each year I picked what I thought was the most innovative element from a design standpoint and then I would pick one or two runner-ups.

So what I'm going to do today is do the same things I did in that article but because it's a podcast I can go in a little bit more depth than I did in the article. Okay start with 1993. So the randomized booster releases of that year were limited edition alpha, limited edition beta and Arabian Nights came in right at the tail end of the year. Okay, so the best addition to magic from 1993, the Golden Trifecta. Now I've literally done three podcasts on this. So the Golden Trifecta are the three genius ideas that I believe Richard Garfield had

when he made Magic. Number one was the concept of a trading card game. It itself is very, a very cool idea. And remember the very essence of the idea that you would take a trading card, which pre-existed, and then make a game out of them and allow you to choose and pick what you build that from any piece you have you can build something. It's a very cool, very innovative idea. Obviously many other trading card games have existed after Magic, but Magic was the very

first. And I do think that the modularity of a trading card game and the idea that right now there are, I don't know, 27,000 plus pieces to the game and you can pick and choose really makes Magic special in that there's not a lot of games that have that much variety to them, that have that much choice, that give you the player that much customization. Okay, the second part of the Golden Trifecta was the color wheel. Longtime listeners of my podcast know that there is no greater fan of the color pie than myself. I believe it's the underpining of magic.

It is the core of both flavor and mechanics. It gives an ethos to the game. It gives philosophy. It does all sorts of amazing things. And I think it's something that the more you study magic and the more you understand it, the more you realize how integral it is. I used to give a talk about it and I called it the special sauce. That it is like the, it is magic secret ingredients that really is the thing that dries everything The third thing that I said was was the mana system. This gets a lot of People love to diss on the mana system

I think it is brilliant and the interesting thing I have made other games for example I was part of the team that made dual masters where we did away with a magic system and the way it works in dual mafters is you can turn cards from your hand into land, sort of. And it's only by taking away the mana system that I realized that I come to realize how important the mana system is. And it does a lot of really, once again, I've done podcasts on all of these individual things. We want 30 minutes on just this topic but the mana system allow me really allows the

trading card game to click makes different cards matter at different times creates dynamism makes surprise just makes a really fun game and anyway so those the Golden Trifecta are the greatest invention, the greatest addition to magic in the year 1993. The runner-up, I said, was flying. Richard introduced a whole bunch of evergreen mechanics. Only a handful are still evergreen. I believe flying and first strike and trample and then protection. I don't know whether protection is ever green or deciduous right now, but flying, flying to me is like the perfect mechanic,

meaning it is, it adds a lot to the game. Invasion's a really important part of the game, but it does it in a way that is so intuitive that like it is one of the easiest mechanics to teach people. It almost is a mechanic that if you just have people guess what it does, it does what they think it does because it is so intuitive and it is definitely the evergreen mechanic that we print the most of.

You know, flying is, I mean, every set will have one or two of the Evergreen mechanics, but it'll have a bunch of flying because flying is so key. So that was my runner up. OK, that was just in 1994. So the randomized booster releases of that year was Antiquities, Revised Edition, Legends, The Dark and Fallen Empires. So the best edition to Magic was Multolored cards. Legends introduced them. Before that in alpha and the early expansions there were just monocolored cards. Cards came

in one of five colors. But the idea that cards could be more than one color was very exciting and has become a cornerstone of magic. From time to time it's a major theme. Other times it's just a supporting element. But it is, it is something that is just, like one of the cool things about early magic is you could just have a set that introduces something so big like multi-color cards. My runner up was mechanical set themes.

Antiquities did this. The idea that we have a set and it's about something. It's about something mechanically Arabian Nights the very first set was about it had a theme What you know, it was a flavor our first top-down set if you will Um, but in Tickley said you know what you can build a set around mechanics it can have a mechanical theme to it artifacts obviously for antiquities and Both multi-color cards and and mechanical set themes are like core, core

magic ideas. Which gets us to 1995. So 1995, the randomized booster releases of that year were fourth edition, Ice Age, Chronicles, Renaissance and Homelands. So the best addition to magic, I think were cantrips, which showed up in Ice Age. So cantrips are when you play a card, you get to draw a card. The ones in Ice Age, you drew a card at the beginning of next turn. We quickly realized that wasn't necessary.

The really interesting thing about cantrips is there are just some effects that aren't worth a card. And or there are some effects where maybe you don't want the card disadvantage. So when you cast a card, one of the costs you pay is the mana, but another cost you pay is the card. And Cantrips really said, well, what if it didn't cost the card?

And that allows all sorts of things. It really, it allows card flow. It allows, it just allows a lot of things for us to like make a more dynamic game. And cantrips early on were something we did once in a while and then we did a little bit more and then we just did it. I mean, I'm not sure if every set has a cantrip these days but most sets do.

And it's just a very valuable, it's almost a costing tool than anything else. It's like, hey, if I want to, I can discount the cost of the car. And sometimes that allows us to make cards that cost that we need in fun ways. The runner up in 1995, also from IceAge, was the idea of an open print run.

So before IceAge, we would print cards, we would guess, we'd print them, and then that's what there was. And we ran out, we would print cards, we would guess, we'd print them, and then that's what there was. And we ran out, we ran out. Starting with Ice Age, we said, okay, we're going to make this set for a while. Usually open print runs are two, three years. The idea is we're going to print stuff.

And then if people like it, if we get a lot of orders, we can go back and reprint it and make more of it. And the idea is we say for this period of time, we keep making it. If people want it we'll keep making it. We won't just sell out and it's gone. And so the idea of having open print runs for you know premiere sets is mostly where we use it is very valuable. I guess there are other things that open print runs. Okay 1996 the randomized boosters of the year, just two, alliances and Mirage,

which is a quaint difference from modern day. So the best addition to Magic was limited play. Before Mirage, sets were not designed for limited. Not that people did play limited, I played a lot of limited with them, but they left a lot to be desired desired because they weren't designed for limited. For Mirage, it's the first time we say, you know what, we're going to cost these cards and make these cards and think about these cards in the view of making sure limited is

a thing. Now, we've come a far, far away from Mirage. You know, Mirage literally had a common expel, right? A common X, a red direct damage expel, which really isn't a common. Um, but we, I mean, we've learned a lot since then. We've, you know, but just the idea of designing for limited limited become a huge part of the magic experience. Um, a lot of people play limited.

It's how we do pre releases. Um, our data shows that as you, um, what tends to happen with people is at some point you play a little bit less magic in constructed, but you tend to play more limited. And so limited is the format that people that play a long time tend to gravitate toward. The other fun thing about limited is you don't have to do anything ahead of time. It allows you to play with a lot more different cards. It's very skill testing. Everybody's at a pretty even keel as far as,

I mean, there's randomization, but anyway, Limited is a super fun way to play. It pretty much, as we know, it started in 1996. It was us designing for it. The runner-up was block structure. Mirage was also the first sort, I mean, Ice Age was kind of hobbled together to be a block, sort of, but Mirage was designed as a block

and sold as a block. Now, we would later move away from the Block Structure, but the Block Structure served us for two plus decades, so it definitely was something that was very fundamental. The idea in a Block block structure is you would have usually three sets later was two sets. We started with large, small, small. We later went to sometimes large, small, large. We even did large, large, small or large, large, medium.

We tried a different way. We had a block in Lor wind where it was large, small, large, small. And we experimented a lot with the introduction of the blocks with 1996. Okay, which gets us to 1997. So 1997, the randomized boosters of that year were Visions, Fifth Edition, Portal, Weatherlight, and Tempest. Okay, so the best edition of that year, Enter the Battlefield effects, which soon will be just be Enter effects. So it was in, Visions was the first set to have them. Portal also had them, and Tempest also had them. The interesting thing is, I think they're, Tempest designed them not knowing that Visions had

made them, because the large sets work a little farther ahead. So we hadn't gotten into Visions development by the time we had already started Tempest. Anyway, just the idea, the cool thing about Enter the Battlefield or ETBFX is it allows you to kind of staple a spell to creatures. That is proven to be very valuable, a very valuable design tool. It helps a lot in constructed where creatures can get killed very fast. So if they have value when you play them that, you know, a lot of the value can be in that. There's a lot of fun interactions that you get with Enter the Battlefield effects.

If you could bring things back, you could flicker them, you could raise them from the graveyard. It just does a lot of fun things and it's a pretty cool effect. Runner up was Slivers. So Slivers were designed by Mike Elliott. In fact, he originally designed them for a homemade set called Afterlways and then when he got hired by Wizards they bought the right to his set. So the very first set that Mike worked on as a designer was Tempest and we put them in Tempest and they were a smash hit. And by the way they're one of my

examples so they're a very what we call linear mechanic. In, they're one of my examples. So they're a very, what we call linear mechanic. In fact, they're also what we call parasitic, meaning when they first came out, the only thing you play them with was other slivers. But it was fun and we made more slivers. We made a bunch in that block and then we would bring them, we brought them back in Legion and brought them back in Time Spiral and we've just brought them back in different places. One of the Core Sets brought it back in Time Spiral, and we've just brought them back in different places. One of the core sets brought them back.

And the idea that they were inspired by plague rat, which was an alpha, and plague rat got bigger for every other plague rat, and sort of Mike's thought was, well, what if we took the idea of plague rat, but just expanded it? What if I'm around, all other slivers get flying, get trampled, get, you know that?

And the idea that your slivers as a hive, so the flavor we ended up using in when we made them in magic, Mike did something a little bit different in after ways, but in magic the idea are the there's this hive mind and they're mesomorphs, they can change their shape, so one of them might have watched birds and learned how to make wings so it can fly. And as long as it's close enough to the hive mind, then any other member of the slivers, they know how to grow wings so they can fly. So it's a really flavorfully, it's cool. Mechanically, it's cool. And it is uniquely magic. No one else slivers are 100% magic. So that's pretty cool Okay, next is 1998

The releases that year were stronghold Exodus portal second age unglued and Urza saga Okay, so best addition to magic was cycling So cycling was something created by Richard Garfield Originally, he made it for tempest design Design, or it first showed up in Tempest Design, but we take there's too much in Tempest, so we took it out. It showed up in print for the first time in Urza Saga. The idea behind it is Richard realized that a lot of times you had dead cards in your

hand and that if you put cycling on it, cycling allowed you to pay mana to discard it to replace it basically, discard and draw a new card Originally all cycling was for two. We've experimented with many other costs later on Cycling was the first mechanic we brought back. I will talk about that in a little bit but anyway, it is Super solid. I think cycling as far as deciduous mechanics go super solid. I think cycling as far as deciduous mechanics go, or not even decisions, just mechanics. It has been brought back in more sets. Other than ever green that are always there, it's been brought back in numerous sets use

cycling. It's just super valuable. And the thing we learned about it is it allows you to put stuff in your set that might otherwise have trouble being in the set. That you can put more narrow cards or things that are more expensive or things that normally you can't play that much of, but because they have cycling, it will allow you to put them in your deck. And then if they're not right at the time, for example, you know, you can put larger creatures, but if I don't have the mana yet, well, I can discard it. And then later, if I draw them and I have mana then I can play them. The runner-up was from Unglued. BFM, well what I put is frames as a design tool. One of the things that we did on Unglued was each card in Unglued was kind of, was art directed in the sense that we sort of built them manually.

You could think of the whole card as being kind of a picture. Most of the picture of the bottom part looked like a magic card, but it allowed us to do things like interact with cards and, you know, the lexivore can rip off a piece of the card and be eating up a piece of the rule text of the card. Anyway, BFM, it was a card so big that it had a left side and a right side that you had to cast both sides from your hand. And it really sort of was the first time we said, OK,

let's make a frame that's not a normal Magic frame. We had a frame that first sideways frame was there. Anyway, we started messing around the frames as a means to do things we normally couldn't. And it took us years to really get the... The first time we did it in Blackboard of Magic, I think it was Split Cards, which I think I will get to. But anyway, it was...

Frames as a design tool, very valuable. Next up, 1999. Okay, the randomized Boosh releases of that year were Urza's Legacy, 6th Edition, Portal Three Kingdoms, Urza's Destiny, Mercadian Masks. The best addition to that word, I just talked about earlier, the Flicker mechanic. So when we were playing around in Mirage Block, we had a mechanical phasing. One of my favorite things to do with phasing, an idea I was really enamored with and I made a bunch of cards, was the idea of using phasing as a way to save your creatures. But my one pet peeve about phasing is things that phased sort of kept all the qualities

of what they had, and it meant that they didn't trigger enter the battlefield effects. But I thought that was cool. So when I was making Ursa's Destiny, it was the one expansion where I designed it by myself I was the design team. I made a vertical cycle in white Using sort of a riff off What we had done with phasing that I called slickering and the idea was that you take a creature you put it in the Exile zone, but then bring it back either immediately bring it back or end of turn bring it back Now the development team ended up knocking it down

to just one rare called Slicker. But that effect has become a staple effect. We do all the time. It's evergreen, most sets have Flicker effects. They're super fun. Sometimes we build draft environments around it. It's a super fun effect. The runner up for that year was the importance of keywords.

So Mercadian Mask came out that year, and the interesting thing was the two main mechanics, or three main mechanics of the set. There was a rebel mechanic, there was a mercenary mechanic, and there was a spell shaper mechanic, none of which had a name. Spell shaper was a creature type, rebels and mercenaries were creature types,

but it wasn't marked in any way. We didn't name it. And one of the biggest complaints about Mercatian Mass was why didn't you guys have new mechanics? That it really sort of shone a light on how important is that we name and identify our mechanics. A, it helps people realize like people see it and identify and talk about it. B, it just gives some flavor to it. But really, Verkating Maths sort of taught us how important that was and that is something it really changed how often we named things but it definitely sort of taught us stuff. Next up 2000, the randomized boosters of that year were Nemesis, Prophecy, and Invasion. So the number one addition to magic is the Kicker mechanic that got introduced in Invasion

created by Bill Rose. The idea was what if spells had extra cost and if you paid extra cost you got extra ability. The spell got bigger or better or did extra things. Kicker is, I mean, it's funny. One of the downsides of kicker is it's so broad and so useful that a lot of mechanics we make are basically just kicker. So maybe looking back, I would have been a little more, not that we wouldn't make kicker. I think I would have been a little more exacting what kicker was, but anyway, kicker as a thing is super useful.

If you said to me, we had to pick five, other than Evergreen mechanics, if we had to pick five mechanics, five non-Evergreen mechanics, and then those are the only mechanics we ever got to use ever for the rest of Magic, Kicker is a snap pick for top five, no doubt. The other ones, maybe I'll do a podcast one day on that topic but uh, anyway next up runner up in 2000 was block themes

Invasion so before before invasion the way blocks used to work was each set would have two new mechanics It's flanking and phasing its shadow and buyback. It's cycling and echo And then that mechanic would run through the whole block It's cycling and echo. And then that mechanic would run through the whole block. But there wasn't, I mean, the block might have some flavor story or something, but it wasn't very cohesive. So Invasion said, okay, hey, what if the whole block is about multicolor? That's the theme, all the things tie into it.

And started with Invasion. So Bill Rose took over as head designer with Invasion. And this was a big thing Bill pushed was our block should have themes okay next up 2001 the randomized booster releases of that year were plane shift seventh edition apocalypse and Odyssey the best edition of magic was the flashback mechanic cycling kicker and flashback to me are like the grand three mechanics that we made in relatively early magic and just keep bringing back. They're just all very solid. Flashback, the idea that we knew from buyback and some stuff other stuff we had done that people like doing

things twice. Flashback is just kind of the cleanest simplest version of it which is I can cast the spell and then usually for a bit more man they usually I mean there's some exceptions But usually the second time I use it is a lot more expensive than the first time But the idea that I have extra utility and that things once I cast spells so that I can cast them again It just become and flashback Had definitely inspired a lot of other mechanics The runner-up threshold, so that was also a flashback and a threshold with an Odyssey. It's not, so

what I'm talking about when I say threshold, threshold was a mechanic in Odyssey where if you had seven cards in your graveyard, things would upgrade. It's not even that I'm talking about thresholds specifically that mechanic, as much as the idea of threshold mechanics. The idea of I need to do something and when I do it, my card turns on. A threshold mechanic basically means there's an off and an on, you have to accomplish something. And usually once you accomplish it, it stays accomplished.

There's some things like threshold that can be undone, although it's not easy to undo threshold. But anyway, the idea of threshold mechanics is so prevalent that it's part of our vocabulary when designing sets that we'll talk about a threshold mechanic or threshold one, for example, is a mechanic that just needs to have one of the thing you care about. But anyway, very valuable. Next up, 2002, the randomized boosters of that year were Torment, Judgment, and Onslaught.

So the best addition to magic, typal themes. So we had done, Alpha had three cards that carried both types, you know, had Goblin King and Lord of Atlantis and Zombie Master. But it was something that we did in small doses. We occasionally made a card that carried. Onslaught said, what if that was a theme? What if the set was about that? What if that's something you could draft? What if that was a theme? What if the set was about that? What if that's something you could draft? What if something you could build and constructed and mean it like early on early decks that use creature types? Sort of floundered a little bit and this is where we put them on the map and said, you know What type of themes are strong themes are popular themes. We know players already like them. What if we made them strong?

And made them competitive and made it something you could actually play in tournaments? And anyway, it was a little bit at the time, people were unsure of it, but it ended up being one of the, I mean, not only was it successful on onslaught, it's become one of the themes that we do almost every set. Almost every set has a typal theme, not a hundred percent, but most sets do. And every once in a while we do a typal theme set, like onsla most sets do. And every once in a while, we do a typal theme set, like on slot, like Lorwin, like Ixalan, where the set is about the creature types.

OK, the runner up. I have two runner ups. Runner up number one was Morph. So Morph was created by the rules team. They were trying to solve their two cards in alpha, camouflage and illusionary mask, that Richard had cards that you put cards face down. What does that mean? How did the rules work?

And they came up with the idea, but what if we define a face down card, and they define it as a two two, a colorless two two without a name. And they realized they could make a mechanic where you could have cards that had this mechanic, they called morph, and you could play it face down, and then you could pay its morph cost to turn it face up.

Morph was a solid, solid mechanic, something that really cemented a lot of cool things. We've come back to it. Murders at Cuddle of Manor made Disguise as kind of an upgrade of Morph. We did Cloak slash Manifest, so there's a lot of cool stuff there, and is kind of upgrade of morph. We did cloak slash manifest. So there's a lot of cool stuff there. And the idea of having hidden information

on the battlefield, very cool. The other runner up, I mentioned this before. Onslaught is where we brought back cycling, which might not seem like a big deal, but at the time we did not bring back non evergreen mechanics. Basically we make new mechanics, either they became evergreen or they didn't. If they didn't, it's like, bye-bye.

And I had to convince people to bring back cycling and onslaught. I did convince them, obviously, it came back. But it was just a different mindset. Just the idea that, you know what, mechanics are tools. Just like cards are tools. Just like we reprinted cards, why can't we bring back mechanics? And that mindset, I mean nowadays, most sets bring back mechanics. Not 100%, but most sets will bring back a mechanic.

And, you know, a year doesn't go by without us bringing back a bunch of mechanics. So the idea of bringing back mechanics was super important. And that took until 2002 to figure that out. Next up, 2003. 2003, the randomized sets were Legion, Scourge, 8th edition, and Mirrodin. The best edition of Magic was Equipment. We had talked about for a while. We definitely made artifacts that kind of mimic the feel of equipment. We decided with Mirrodin, which was the artifact, an artifact theme block, that we were going to finally do it. We tried a bunch of different things. We ended up with the final version where you played them and then the creature died and

stuck around and somebody else could pick it up. The runner up. So Mirrodin was also the first set where we world build to match mechanics. We wanted to make an artifact theme block, so we made an artifact world. We made a world infused with metal. It was a brand new world made by Karn. And anyway, it was the first idea. It really changed how we did world building.

That Myriden, a lot of modern day world building where world building and design go back and forth and Design effects world building the world effects design that sort of back and forth really started in 2003 There was some earlier stuff where we did do so it wasn't the first time we did world building But the first time we really did mechanical in that way Okay, 2004 the randomized boosters were dark steelel, Fifth Dawn, Champions of Kamigawa, and Unhinged. The best addition to magic is the naming of vigilance. And I use that to represent not just the naming of vigilance, but the idea of we find mechanics

and when they get time tested, and we realize they're very, very useful, the idea of shifting them into an evergreen way Where we label them and just the idea of the importance of doing more labeling early on magic had a lot of mechanics that we were printed but we didn't name them and People couldn't talk about them or they had a shorthand them, but people use different shorthands Like vigilance was kind of called the Starra ability because of Starra Angel. But different people use different words for it

and finally just giving it a name really helps cement it as something. And the idea that like later on in future site we would do this a bunch more. We would name Life Link and Death Touch and Reach and I think Shrod which would later become hexproof or we'd riff to hexproof. The runner up for that year is the introduction of the indestructible keyword.

It's something we made for torment. It came about because I was trying to think of what do players most dislike? Having theirself destroyed. What if it couldn't be destroyed? Uh, and indestructible originally was not a vocab. It was not a mechanic, not a mechanic in the sense that it wasn't, it wasn't a name mechanic. We just originally use it as like, as an English word. You can't destroy. That's what indestructible means. Uh, enough people thought it was a keyword.

We eventually made it into a keyword. Okay, next 2005, the randomized boosters of that year were betrayers of Kamagawa Saviors of Kamagawa and Ravnica city of guilds The best addition to magic was faction sets We had messed around that space fun empires obvious done some early things But kind of what you think is a modern-day faction set the idea of it's divided and each faction has a mechanic. You know, a lot of the way we think about it and that they're built to be draft environments and just sort of the modern day sense of a faction set comes from Ravnica. The runner-up was hybrid mana. Well, so

Ravnica was the second gold set, multi-color set. So I was experimenting with what multi-color meant, and I came up with Hybrid Man as the or to multi-colors and, or to golds and. The idea that what if a card was red or green rather than red and green? And it was a really valuable tool. The story I tell all the time is how when I first came up with it and showed it around that nobody was quite as excited as me. But it's funny to flash forward many, many years. It's become a super, super valuable tool. We use it all the time in

R&D. It really allows us, especially in limited, allows us to do some texturing. It helps us solve problems like Faper Forge had to have a set that drafted both with a three-color set and a two-color set. How do you do that? The answer, hybrid mana. We use hybrid mana now with commander to help with color identity so that it works in a mono white deck, but it also is a blue card

for color identity and stuff like that. Okay, next up, 2006. We're close to my... Okay, 2008's the halfway. We're gonna power through here. I'm at work, by the way, but I'm gonna power through to finish this up. Okay, so 2006. Randomized releases of that year were Guild Pack, Dissension, Cold Snap, and Time Spiral.

The best edition of Magic was bonus sheets. Time Spiral said, what if you got an old card in every pack? And so we made a special sheet, a special sheet, it had its own rarity, and it was something we had never done before. We ended up doing for all three sets in the Time Spiral block, and it was very powerful. We would later bring it back,

and now it's just a staple tool we use all the time. The runner-up, the snow supertype and snow mana. Cold snap, so cold snap was the lost third set, it was a gimmick set. And original Ice Age introduced snow, snow covered lands, but we were really trying to riff on it. The weird thing was a lot of stuff from Ice Age either had become evergreen or we did think there was a lot more design in it. So we were really riffing off snow cover and came up with the snow mana and the snow supertype. And at the time we thought it was just going to be a cold snap thing. We ended up bringing it back from Modern Horizons

1. It went over really well. We brought it back for call time. So anyway, it's a tool we use. It really reshapes a little bit how we think about mana how we how we think about super type So it it does a lot of very innovative things Next up 2007 the randomized booster releases that year were planar chaos future site 10th edition and Lorwin the best edition of magic Planeswalkers the Lorwin five which was the first five planeswalkers which was let's see if I can name them It was a Johnny and Jace and Liliana and Chandra and Garrick We planeswalkers had been the game since the very beginning you were planeswalker

The very first rule book had a story by Richard about planeswalkers fighting But we had never represented them on cards and after future site not future site after but we had never represented them on cards. And after future site, not future site, after time spiral block, which had like de-sparked them, it allowed us to finally make them. They originally going to premiere on this time shift sheet in future site. We couldn't figure them out.

We pushed them back to Lorwin and they showed up in Lorwin. The runner up from that year is a changeling. We made changeling to help Lorwin solve that we needed glue for it. Typal themes are very, very hard. So we use changeling to help Lorwin solve that we needed glue for typo themes are very very hard so we use Changeling as glue for that it's become very popular Changeling are you are every creature type and so we've used Changeling in a bunch of different places 2008 the randomized bush releases of that year were Morning Tide, Shadamor, Eventide and Shards of Alara. The best addition to magic was colored artifacts.

We had teased it in FutureSight, but really it was Esper in Shards of Alara where we wanted to show that this world was advanced, that people had infused themselves. And so we made colored artifacts. And colored artifacts have proven to be very valuable. We learned the hard way that doing too much powerful, generic, costed artifacts just makes problems

and constructed. And so we've become much more use of colored artifacts. The runner up was a single card, Figure of Destiny. Figure of Destiny is a card that Brian Tinsman made for Eventide. And the idea was you would spend mana to upgrade what the creature was. And there were like three different stages you could upgrade.

That model, I mean, it inspired the level up mechanic. It inspired classes. Like we've made a lot of cards like that. And so it really, it might be one card, but the kind of style of what it did of a card that upgraded itself and made itself bigger and better really inspired a lot of things around. Okay guys I've now hit the halfway point so we will continue the rest of these the second half in my next podcast. So anyway I hope this was insightful and it

was it's fun looking back and sort of talking about design innovations. So I hope you enjoyed this. But I am at work, which I've been for a little while. So we all know what that means. This is 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 guys next time. Bye bye.