Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1154: Looking Back, Part 2

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

This podcast is part two 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 out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, last time I started, I'm doing a two-part podcast based on a series of articles I had called Looking Back. And what I did is I looked at the previous 30 years of Magic and then for each year I named years of Magic and then for each year I named the best addition to Magic from a design standpoint and then I have one or more runner-ups each year. I got through 2008 last time so that means we begin with 2009. Okay the randomized boosters of 2009 were Conflux, All her a born magic 2010 and Zendikar So the best addition to magic was landfall. So that was a mechanic introduced in Zendikar it has shown up in every Zendikar set and

Has shown up elsewhere shown up in a few other places. I think modern horizon sets and such few other places I think, modern horizon sets and such. So landfall was a really interesting, so I had wanted to do a land-based, a land mechanic-based set or block actually, what would become Zendikar. And we spent a lot of time sort of looking at various mechanics.

What we ended up choosing was a mechanic that just Rewarded you for playing land which by the way is something you always do anyway, like like it was a really interesting eye-opener of that hey Every every mechanic doesn't be about tension Every mechanic doesn't be well I have to make tough choices that I could just reward you for doing things you wanted to do and even that had a lot of strategy into it. Landfall is one of the real what I call lenticular, meaning for the beginner it does something they understand it and for the more advanced player

there's extra strategy and the idea is for a beginner look every time I play land I just get a reward it's great. For the advanced player oh because I get a reward every time I play a land later in the game maybe I'm more judicial about when I play my land. But it really it was an eye-opener I would now it was a good mechanic but it also changed a little bit how we thought about mechanics. And then the runner-up is the willingness to put new car designs in more places. So Magic 2010 came out, that was the core set.

It was the first core set that said, you know, we could have new cards, why can't we have new cards? And then we realized a lot of times we were trying to make core sets that we struggled because we were only using reprints. And we're like, look, we have the ability to make new cards. Hey, if core sets could use new cards, why not allow it why why the course that's not the only be returning cards and by adding in new cards it really allowed us to design better things and once again another sort of eye-opener of sometimes you make rules

and you just have to stand back and go okay well does that is that rule important is it important the course that's are only repeating cards you know could we could we make new cards? The answer was yes and it actually made for a better corset because it allowed us a lot of times when you were making a corset you had to sort of do with what you could find and now it's like well if I can't find it I can make it. Okay next up 2010 so the randomized boosters of 2010 were WorldWake, Rise of the Eldrazi, Magic 2011, and Scars of Mirrodin. So the best addition to Magic was Polyphorate, so mechanic from Scars of Mirrodin.

It came about because we were trying to create a sense of the Phrexians and give them an identity and we really liked the idea that the Phrexians and gives them an identity. And we really liked the idea that the Phrexians metaphorically were a disease. And proliferate came out of that exactly. In fact, it started as a single card and then it became a vertical cycle and eventually became a mechanic. And early on when we made it,

it only references minus one, minus one counters and poison counters, because it was specifically like being a disease. And then we realized, you know what? It's just more fun if it's any counters. And it's one of those mechanics that every time we bring it back, if we put it in a different environment, like originally it appeared in scars of Mirrodin,

where there were minus one, minus one counters. Then it appeared in War of the Spark, where the major thing was loyalty counters, because it was a planeswalker theme. Then it appeared in Frexie, all be one, where there were oil counters. And like depending on what counters are the primary counters in the set it really changes how the mechanic works I mean it works the same way but it changes sort of how it impacts the set and that's one

of the cool things about it is it this is the one thing where I opened up to the idea of making our mechanics sort of open-ended when we can. There's sometimes, sometimes we can't for different reasons. But I think making Proliferate hit all tokens, not only was good for Proliferate and made a lot of fun, but it really made us think about how we did mechanics down the road. So Proliferate is my first pick. My second pick is large standalone sets. So that was the year of Rise of the Eldrazi. So it used to be when we started block structures, block planning, we would

do a large set in the fall, in a Western Hemisphere fall or Northern Hemisphere fall. And then we do two small sets. And at some point, I I mean a lot of magic design is us doing something doing it for a while and then going you know is that right do we have to do that and rise of the old rise it was the first time we went large small large who said and not only do we do large small large but we restarted in the middle of the block meaning you would get send a car or not send a car you would get you get Zendikar you get Zendikar You get world like and you drop those together but then we got right so the drives you drafted it by itself and then it had new mechanics and

I think a lot in some ways rise of the Adrazi Was the very early beginnings that got us to our modern process of just letting each set sort of stand by itself. Nowadays, you don't really draft sets together. Drafts get drafted. Like we realize how much complications that drafting sets together did and how much problems it caused. And now people can still draft things together for fun if they want, but we really found that building sets that they're only drafted by themselves really allows us to make the most robust and cool drafting environments.

Okay, next we get to 2011. So the randomized boosters of 2011 were Mirrod and Besieged, New Phyrexia, Magic 2012, and Industrod. So the best new addition to Magic from Industrod was Double Face Cards.rad was double face cards. That was a paradigm breaker. Magic up until that point had a front face and had the back face.

The back face was the back of the Magic card. We were trying to make werewolves work. We borrowed an idea from another game that Magic makes called Duel Masters and we said, okay, what if cards could change? What if the backs didn't have to be a Magic back? And it was one of the more controversial things we did, not just inside the building, but outside the building. There are people when we show them the jests, we're like, no, you can't do this. But the majority of players really enjoyed it. And even some of the naysayers over time,

like it's one of the things we introduced that has a huge amount of design space. There are a lot of different things. I mean, the ones we did in, I actually had best edition matching, I put transforming double face guards. It's such a cool thing that we would do other things later. And I'll talk about that later.

But the idea of I play something and it can become something else. It allowed us creatively to have two pictures, we could tell stories, it allowed cards to change in a way that it was normally tricky for Magic to do. Magic had transformational cars before, but this was just a louder, cleaner, cooler way to do it. Okay. And the runner up is a new take on top down set design. We had done top down design before. Arabian Nights, I would argue, was top down design.

Kamigawa Block, Champs the Kamagawa Block was top-down design. But it really sort of, like the Champs the Kamagawa Block's problem, looking back on it, was that we kind of did all the creative work first, and then found mechanical answers for creative decisions. And it turns out that mechanics are not quite as flexible as flavor can be. But Innisfrad really took the attitude of we're going to sort of craft what we're doing and it just reshaped how we make top-deck sets. And in a lot of ways the modern sort of top-down design really

owes a lot to Indus Drop. It did a lot to sort of how we integrated with creative and how we thought about like the idea of I mean the core to top-down design is that the structure of the set only makes sense if you understand the creative involved. Meaning that bottom upsets, yeah, there's flavor there, but there's a core mechanical connection. Ravnica might be about cities and guilds and all that, but it is still the 10 two-color pairs arranged

in a certain way with a certain pattern with certain cycles running through them. It's very mechanical at its crux. Where Inishrod was like, look, why, how does typal and graveyard and, how do these themes and death and transformation, how do these themes all work together? And the idea is, once you bring in the horror genre,

it just, it starts making it all make sense in a way that, in a vacuum, it all make sense in a way that in a vacuum it would make less sense. Okay next up 2012 so the randomized booster releases of that year were Dark Ascension, Avacyn Restored, Magic 2013 and Return to Ravnica. The best addition to, doing a proper revisit. So we had, I mean, we definitely had gone back to place. Scarsamiriden was us returning. But the idea here of Scarsamiriden was us really rewriting things.

It's becoming Frexy. It was very much a different thing than what the original had been. Return to Ravnick was the first time we went back and said, okay, we're not changing things up. We're just going back and we're doing a return as it was. Remember Ravnica? We're going back to Ravnica.

Remember the core, the essence of Ravnica? That's what we're doing again. Yeah, the guilds will have new mechanics. I mean, it will be a new set, but really sort of saying we can, there is a way to return and revisit what was fun about something in a way that makes a dynamic set.

And so that really was that. The runner up for that year, I put down Gates. And by Gates, what I really mean was understanding the power that land subtypes, I'm tripping over my tongue today, land subtypes can add to the limit. One of the things, for example, we had learned from doing multicolor blocks, we did invasion and after invasion the takeaway was, oh, we could have done more color fixing.

So then we did Ravnica and the takeaway from that was, well, we did more, but we could still do more. And then we did Shards of Alara and the answer was, okay, okay, we did more but you know what, probably we can do a little bit more. And so when we got to Return to Ravnica, the answer really was, look, we want to do some simple things, but how do we make the simple things have common not feel way worse than the more complex things that rare. And the answer was that a land subtype allowed to give us a little bit of substance to the

land. Like land designs are tricky. There's not as much space in land designs as in other car types. They have to reduce mana and there's just a lot of them. So dual lands in particular is very limited what you can do. And so the idea of gates really sort of said, hey, we can put a little bit something on them and that's enough.

We don't need, we just need to make a few cars that mechanically care. So it's something in draft you can think about maybe constructed, maybe you can build the runs more for fun. I don't know how much competitive gate decks there were but there were people that did F&M and stuff. Okay, next up 2013, randomized there were people that did F&M stuff. Okay, next up, 2013.

Randomized boost releases of that year. Gate Crash, Dragon's Maze, Magic 2014, Modern Masters, and Theros. The best addition to Magic was Devotion from Theros. I think that, so, Devotion, the big lesson of Devotion was we had made a mechanic, it was called chroma in Eventide. We really had high hopes for it. We really thought it was a cool mechanic and it sort of landed with a thud.

Like it just the audience was like, and we were making Theros and we said, you know what? The perfect tool right now would be chroma. But okay, why didn't the audience like chroma could we could we redo chroma and so we really the problem with chroma was it was a little bit too open-ended it was neutral on flavor and we said okay let's bring it back let's use the flavor we wanted for this that we wanted to show devotion to the gods. And so we added some flavor, we limited just cards on the battle, permits on the battlefield. And that, and just giving a little more definition, a little more shape and a little more flavor went from a mechanic to a really, really popular mechanic.

One that meant a lot and limited showed up and constructed. But it really sort of taught us that bad execution can ruin a good idea. That just because the audience doesn't like something doesn't necessarily mean the idea was bad. It might be our execution was bad. And that was an important lesson. The backup was monstrosity, another mechanic from Theros. The idea of one time changes. We had done transformational things before, but the idea that, especially sort of an activated

one time change, the idea that we had done activations you're going to do once per turn, that we had done, but essentially this was saying, well, how about once per game? And that was something new. It also played around a little bit with the idea of having things gain a state. That was something we played around with other mechanics.

But Metrocity is, I mean, obviously we did a revamped version of it called Adapt and, but it's an area we keep coming back to. There's definitely double-faced car designs that are very much playing in this space. The Frexination, the Frexinization in March of the Machine, for example, plays in my Metroc this space. The the fractionation the fractionization in March of the Sheen for example plays in Monteserrat City space. So anyway a very valuable tool. Next up 2014 the randomized booster releases of that year were Born of the Gods, Journey to Nyx, Conspiracy Takes the Crown, Magic 2015 and Concept Arcear. The best edition of magic is the concept arc here set structure.

We spend a lot of time, I did on the vision design or design I guess, and Eric Lauer did on the development. More of this is on Eric Lauer than me. Spend a lot of time sort of adjusting and figuring out how do you make three color work? Three color design sets are really, really hard. How do I get you to play three color, but not play four color and five color?

You know, how do we do it in such a way that it encourages you and enables you to play three color without playing four and five? That's a big, big challenge. And Eric really found a cool way, realized that the backup things are two color, really understood that get people to draft, at least in a wedge set, draft enemy, and then you have two options of which wedge you're going to do.

So that's the best decision. The runner up was another Eric Lauer design thing, the Morph five-manor rule. So Morph had first shown up in Onslaught last last time talked about how Morph was one of my picks, Morph's a great mechanic. But one of the challenges of Morph was that, like for example, in onslaught, there were two different red commons, one of which was really bad if you blocked

and one was really bad if you didn't block it. And they basically had the same curve. So you as the player playing against a red, a player playing red with morph had no idea what to do. So Eric's idea was well what if we build in a rule and the morph five mana rule is until we get to five mana if you block my creature with your creature and I turn it face up I will not what's called with your creature, and I turn a face up, I will not, what's called eat your creature, which means I will not have my creature survive and your creature die.

They might trade, they might both die. They might bounce, neither die. My creature might die and your creature live, but we're not gonna have a situation where my creature lives and your creature dies. So, and knowing that as you get more into advanced strategy allows you to play morph in a much cleaner way. And the reason that was important

was not just the rule itself. I mean, we brought more back and disguise and stuff and we still use that rule. But the idea that we can sort of make rules for ourselves of one of the ways to balance it is make a rule and then advertiser will make sure the public knows the rule But that is a way to sort of balance stuff is build in security and structure Into the mechanics such that it acts in a certain way

There's a second runner-up mechanic in 2014 That was the monarch from conspiracy takes the crown the idea of the monarch is somebody becomes the monarch, they get a card, there's a, I'm not sure if it's a token, it's more like an emblem, but you get the monarch and there's only one monarch. So the way the monarch works is if you control the monarch, you get to draw cards. But if someone deals damage to you, then they get to become the monarch. And so you're fighting over this resource. It was based on a mechanic called the edge that Richard Garfield had put in another trading card game he made called Vampire the Eternal Struggle. It is probably the most successful of the multicolor mechanics.

We've used it many times. It just makes fun dynamics. It makes people want to attack. One of the problems in multiplayer games is There's a lot of politics and who to attack and making mechanics They just sort of say attack this person and then all of a sudden is not a political thing It's not like I've chosen to attack you as much as well. Look, there's a huge incentive to attack you Okay, 2015

randomized booster releases of that year were fate refforged, Dragons of Tarkir, Modern Horizons 2.15, Magic Origins, and Battle for Zendikar. The best addition to Magic is Manifest, which was in Fate Reforged. We were doing sort of proto-Morph, and the idea is you can take cards from any zone, usually off the top of the library, and then they become two-two colorless creatures that if they're creatures, much like Morph, you can turn them face up. It really showed how you could take something that was already a core good mechanic and

really tweak it and advance on it. And it really was something that said, hey, Morph is really cool and fun, but there's more we can do with it. And in fact, when we retweet retweet morph in disguise, we retweet manifest in the cloak. Okay, the runner up exploit that was from drags of Tarkator exploit was really interesting. It's a mechanic where when you play the creature, it has the ability to sacrifice another creature to generate an effect. And on the surface, you would think exploit would be a mechanic that players don't like. In general, players don't like sacrificing things.

They don't like what they consider to be downside mechanics. But actually, it had good flavor and it played really well. And it definitely taught us the lesson of, it's very easy to make general rules for yourself in design. But be careful not to let those general rules for yourself in design but be careful not to let those general rules guide you too much. Yes, players don't necessarily like downside mechanics but when flavored well and play well we can do some of them. We have to be careful when and while and it's actually really important they're super flavorful but that's something we can do. Okay next next up, 2016.

Randomized Bush releases of the year. Oath of the Gatewatch, Shadows Over Indestrod, Eternal Mafters, Eldritch Moon, and Kaladesh. Okay, the best addition to magic was Artifact Tokens as a game resource. That's Shadows Over Indestrod, introduced Clues. We had done creature tokens. I mean, Alpha had the first creature token

and we had done creature tokens as a theme, probably on-flot, I mean, fallen empires maybe on-flot, depends, where do you want to, fallen empires was the first people to do it as a larger theme and then on-flot's the first one to do it sort of as a meta block theme um but anyway shadow of the industry tried the same idea but with artifact tokens we had made artifact one you know one of artifact tokens before but the idea of hey a lot of cards make the same artifact token um we had made clue because we were trying to figure out how to do

draw a card that was less than a full card and the idea of making a token that you have to still put mana in to get the card was sort of the half a card answer we liked. Anyway, it inspired us. We did clues there. We did treasure in Ixalan. We did food in the Thorn of Eldraine. We did blood in Crimson Vile.

It really said this is a valuable tool that in the right place can be used. We did cocoon in March of the Sheen. We've done a bunch of them and they can be very valuable. Power stones and the brothers were. Next up, energy. So energy showed up in Kaladesh. It was originally made for original Mirrigan block. It got forced out. I made too much stuff. Energy is a very cool mechanic. The audience was pretty fond of it. Okay, we didn't balance it correctly, so we had to ban a bunch of cards.

But it is a fun mechanic. It's a cool resource. And it's something that allows us to do some neat things. And Energy recently came back. It was in Modern Horizons 3. It was in Fallout. I do like Energy. I do think it's a fun mechanic.

And I do think it kind of shows how if you're careful and you want to be careful when and how you do this, but extra resources can be very interesting if you're very careful. One of the things we learned about energy is that it requires a certain amount to get like, it's hard to play energy in commander without having enough energy cards. One of the reasons we just did more energy this year. But once you dedicate to a resource and you generate enough cards, like things that are parasitic become less parasitic as you make more of them. Next up, also in Kaladesh, vehicles.

We had kind of talked about doing vehicles for a long time. We had a few cars that sort of were pseudo vehicles. We had kind of talked about doing vehicles for a long time. We had a few cars that sort of were pseudo vehicles. We realized that Kaladesh was the place to do it. We figured it out. It took a while to figure it out, but we ended up making something that instantly became, I'm not sure whether they're called evergreen or deciduous, but it's something we do a lot. And we found creature power as a resource to be a really interesting resource. That's definitely a well we've gone back to.

Anyway, it's just something we invented that is super flavorful that just played great. Next up, one more runner up was meld. This is from Eldridge Moon. The idea, we had tried for a long time. So BFM was a card that was in Unglued, where you had two halves of a card that came together. It was really fun. It was the number one rated or number rated two cards from Unglued. We had tried for a long time to figure out how to sort of replicate that in non-Undamagic.

And finally the answer was double face technology Like I said double face is very powerful You can get two things and then they could flip up and both could turn to their backside and then join together in the larger card It is really There's things we do in magic that just have a strong visceral feel that just the first time you're seeing like wow and and meld really Has that quality. We did it again in the Brothers War and we don't do it a lot.

It is hard to do. There's lots of challenges to it. But when we do do it, it stands out and it really is a splashy thing. Next up, 2017. The randomized booster products releases of that year were A, the Revolved, Amonkhet, Hour of Devastation, Ixalan, Iconic Mafters, and Unstable. So the best addition from this is from Amonkhet was Punchout cards. Now once again, I'm talking from a design standpoint. It is a very interesting resource. It allows us to do some designs that's hard to do without it. A lot of times when we do counters, there's a lot of memory issues and that

if we make too much memory issues because remember normally with counters a lot of times you're using coins or dice and if there's more than one it can get complicated what's what and so one of the things we learned was that a punch out a punch out is something that it's the size of a card and it allows us to make a number of counters essentially on a single card. That tokens you get maybe, I mean you don't even get a token in every pack so tokens don't do quite as good job at fulfilling the role of counter. So anyway punch out has been something, not only do we use it in things, we also nowadays

in pre-release packs, part we also nowadays in pre-release packs, part of the box in pre-releases have Punchout components. So it really was, from a design standpoint, a very interesting resource and something we definitely make use of. The runner-up was Treasure Token. So Ixalan was the second set after Shadow of the Inner Stride and Clue tokens to make use of non-creature artifact tokens. In some ways you could argue that treasure was the most successful token.

All the tokens are deciduous. We can use them when we want. But treasure is the one that we use the most often. Mana is a core part of the game. Treasure is great flavor. And anyway, it's become one of the more staple of our non creature. In fact, the most staple of our non creature, in fact, the most staple of our non creature tokens. Okay, next up is 2018.

Randomized boosters of that year were Rivals of Ixalan, Mafters 25, Dominaria, Corset 2019, Guilds of Ravnica, and Ultimate Mafters. So, this was, this is a tough one. The best addition to magic I decided for this year was Sagas. So Sagas came from Dominaria. We were returning to Dominaria, a plane that where magic began, the first 10 years of magic most sets took place in Dominaria. But we hadn't been back there in like 13 years. And so we really were trying to give Dominaria definition, which is tough when so many different things took place there

We found side we wanted to go with the idea of history And part of history is this is storytelling So Sagas was we took a mechanic that had been an early version of planeswalkers where every turn something happens It made planes walkers not have enough agency because they did dumb things But it made a lot of sense for stories because the story has a beginning, middle, and end. We introduced sagas in Dominaria. We gave them a fun frame treatment. It sort of, there's vertical art that were done in the art style of the world. Anyway, it was super popular. It became deciduous almost overnight. I mean, not overnight, took a year or two, but it became deciduous pretty fast. And nowadays it's just a tool that every set has access to.

It's not quite every green, we don't use it every set, but it's one of the things closer to every green. It's super popular, super flavorful, and it actually plays quite fun. There's some fun design space in it. The runner-up was batching. We needed to make history a theme. We wanted to take... We couldn't use the graveyard because of other stuff around it, which is another place to go for the past. But we took the idea of artifacts, you know, objects of

the past, legendary things, which were remnants of the past, and sagas, which were stories of the past and sagas, which were stories of the past. And we put them together in historic. And it almost didn't stay. Just people weren't reading it. They're like, I don't get why these things are together. And the solution to it was if we take these things, we give them a flavorful word. The rules text just uses the flavorful word. And then reminder text, we explain what that means

proved very successful. And since then, we've done modified and outlaw and party, I guess you can argue is bashing. We've used it in a bunch of different places. It's a really valuable tool. We will continue to use it. It definitely helps with trying to make backward compatibility. Like outlaws really nice in that commander right out of the gate can make an Outlaw deck because there are years of cards that are Outlaws.

If we had made a brand new creature of Outlaw, there just wouldn't be enough cards for some of the larger formats. Okay, next up, 2019. Randomized Boots releases of the year. Ravnica Allegiance, War of the Spark, Modern Horizons, Corset 2020, and Throne of Eldraine. So the best addition to magic comes from Throne of Eldraine was Adventures.

It was a really cool idea. The idea of having two spells on one card. We had done them with split cards way back in Invasion. Oh, I didn't add split cards. Looking back, maybe split cards. Oh, I didn't talk about split cards. When we did sixth edition, I didn't talk with six edition rules. There are a few things that are really important elements of magic that in my article, I did a pretty good job, but I missed a few things.

Anyway, adventures were great in that you could cast a spell and then later cast the permit the spell was on in certain other creatures, but we've since done other things. It was very flavorful, very popular, had a fun frame treatment and people really liked it either runner-up this is war the spark was backdrop sets the idea that I can go to a world and that world that mechanics of the world are not the core what that world's about we went back to Ravnica after being in Ravnica but we went back to Ravnica for war the spark there's a giant story a giant war between Nicole bolus and all the Frexians, sorry, Nicol

Bolas and all the Planeswalkers, and then the Eternals were the zombie army of Nicol Bolas. It was cool in the fact that we could be on Ravnica, and it was important that it was Ravnica, and elements of Ravnica peeked through, but it wasn't a Ravnican set in the sense that it wasn't a guild set. It wasn't what you normally did on Ravnica. And backdrop sets, we have to be careful. We went back to Ravnica and murdered the Cardle of Manor, and maybe that wasn't the best execution of a backdrop set, but I do think it's a valuable tool and something we need to use. The other runner

up was food tokens that was created in Throne of Eldraine. I think food tokens after treasure have been the second most popular non-creature artifacts. There's a lot of flavor on food. Gaming life is generally useful, so they've been very useful. Okay, 2020 randomized bushrooves of the year. Theorists beyond death. Icaria, Lair of the Behemoth, Core Set 2021, Jumpstart, Double Mafstard, Zendikar Rising, Kaladesh Remafstard. Okay, so the best addition to Magic was Modal Double-Face cards. So I talked about Transforming Double-Face cards in Enderstrad. We tried something new in Zendikar Rising. What if you had a card that was like a split card, except instead of all being on one card,

they were on two sides of the card, and that allowed us to do permanents. A split card can only be instance of sorceries. Once again it was very valuable. We learned some important lessons. You want the backside to be simple. Lands worked very well. We can do simple creatures and simple effects. Both sides being very complicated and not related proved to be a problem as we learned on the Deans when we got to Shrek's Haven. The runner-up to 2020 was fast deck building. Jumpstart came out. The idea that one of the big struggles for new players is building decks. What if we majorly eliminated that? And the idea of

jumpstarts, you just take two different jumpstarts and smash them together. And that it really said, like one of the big lessons is, hey you know we can do deck building in a way that's a lot simpler and the idea was fun for jumpstart If you buy jumpstart, you can mix and match any two sets to make a deck and you can then pull them apart and mix other two decks together The runner-up Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry now we get in 2021 the randomized booster releases of that year were Call of Time, Time Spyware Mastered, Strixhaven School of Mages, Modern Horizons 2, Dungeon Dragons, Adventures in the Gone Realm, Innistrad, Midnight Hut, and Innistrad Crimson Vial.

The best addition to Magic were cards external to the deck. Um, what is that from? I'm trying to look at what we... Oh, the idea that, yes, that's talking about strict savings and lesson learn. The idea that you can have cards that don't start in your deck that can be pulled into your deck. We originally, it's a mechanic we had messed around with. We almost did it in Kaladesh with what we called inventions at the time. But the idea that you have cards that then you then could go pick what you get.

And there were certain lessons and you could play lessons in your deck normally, but you could then go also go fetch them. And it really was something sort of cool. The idea that not everything has to start in your deck and definitely inspired us to do other things. The runner-up. It was the year of external things, external game pieces. That is Dungeons from Adventures of the Forgotten Realm. The idea that you have game pieces where, hey, part of the fun of here is there's a

little thing going on, but it's complex enough that we can't explain it on the card. But we can say, go get this external game piece, and that game piece can explain what's going on. And we have to be careful. We can't overdo it. But there is just a lot of design space and external game pieces. Okay, 2022, randomized booster release of that year, Kamigawa Nian Dynasty, Streets

of Nuka Panna, Battle for Baldur's Gate, Double Master 2022, Dominar United, Infinity, The Brothers War, Jumpstart 2022. Best addition to Magic, nostalgic revisits. Kamigawa Nian Dynasty was the big success of the year and people have been asking my blog forever to go back to kamigawa the challenge I said was we had done original kamigawa it did horribly it sold horribly it did horrible in market research there really was nothing redeeming about it from any of the metrics that we look at but people had fond memories of it and the commander format for example made we look at. But people had fond memories of it.

And the commander format, for example, made people look at a lot of a legendary because it had a strong legendary theme. Anyway, essentially what happened was we decided to do a new Japanese world based on Japanese pop culture. And then we're able to incorporate old Kamigawa into that. So there's a modern universe tradition theme,

but half of that was kind of old Kamigawa. Anyway, a main hit and it really sort of made us rethink, once again, there's things that you do and rules you set up for yourselves and saying, oh, well maybe, maybe if we have a good, like, yes, we made mistakes in the past. If we have a way to address those mistakes, if we have a really good idea, we shouldn't, the lesson was not just do old things to do old things,

it was do them smartly. But if you can do them smartly, there's a lot of rewards and revisiting things that people have fond memories of. And then the runner-up was Prototype from the Brothers War. The idea that I have a card that has two states, and you can choose what state to play it in. Players really love multiple versions of their cards. It's why double-faced cards are popular. It's why a lot of Different things we've done over the years have been popular Prototype is a different way to do it and very super flavorful And it's something that has inspired how we think about about that the final year

2023 the randomized booster releases of that year were Dominaria after The best addition to magic, Universe is Beyond. A very controversial topic. When we first started doing it in Secret Lairs, it was very controversial. But Lord of the Rings kind of made a pretty loud statement that when done well, when done flavorfully, when done with something that players are very excited about, it's the best selling magic set of all time. Beating up modern masters too.

Something that we learned is there's something really exciting about taking the mechanics of magic and applying it to other flavors, to other properties that has proven to be a winning recipe. You know, Warhammer 40,000 was the best selling, best selling commander decks of all time. Now Fallout is the best selling commander decks of all time. Now Fallout is the best selling commander decks of all time. The Lord of the Rings is the best selling randomized booster set of all time.

So there's something. Now the lesson is we have to do it well, we need to be flavorful, we need to be respectful of the property we're adapting. But when done well, and it's proved to be Really valuable to get people into magic that a lot of people who said I'm not sure We'll try it out because the property they love is now there and then once they play they see how fun a game magic Is and they've tried other things The backup the runner-up for March of the Machine was battles

It is not often we make a brand new car type, but we did and we did I um Dave Humphrey's set design team we had started on the path in addition, but really battles were made by the set design team They came they were really interesting. They're very cool. They were popular We are doing things with battles in the future, we are, it is something we do plan for you to see again, we were a little cautious with it, we were waiting for it to come back, I'm sorry, we were waiting for it to see how it got responded by players before we really started integrating it, but we saw it was popular, so we are looking at ways to use them, like I said, it's not easy to add a new car type or do something that other cars just don't do.

And Battles works really well. Anyway guys, this was a slightly longer run, but being that I had done the first half in the part one, I really needed to do the second part in all in this one. So thanks for sticking with me. But anyway, it's always fun to look back and I hope you had fun. But I'm at work! So we all know what that means. This is the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you all next time. Bye-bye.