Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #860: Sagas

Episode Date: August 13, 2021

In this podcast, I explore the history of the popular enchantment subtype Sagas. ...

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 I'm not pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another Drive to Work, Coronavirus Edition. Okay, so today I'm going to talk all about sagas, an enchantment subtype. So I'm going to tell the story of how sagas came to be. I'll tell the extended story, we've got a whole podcast, of how sagas came to be. And then talk through a little bit about different sets. And one of the things you'll see about sagas, which is kind of funny, is how many sets really have discussed maybe having sagas in them. Not all of them did, but it is something we've discussed quite a bit. Okay, so let's go back to the very beginning of our story. And the beginning of our story goes back to Future Sight.
Starting point is 00:00:43 So Matt Cavada comes to me. He was on the team. And he said, you know, we should add planeswalkers to the game. And he was saying that, you know, the whole idea to – one of the problems we always had is that planeswalkers were kind of like god-like in power. And it was kind of hard making cards out of them. is that Planeswalkers were kind of like god-like in power, and it was kind of hard making cards out of them. But the whole reason we were doing the Time Spiral block was to sort of depower them
Starting point is 00:01:10 and make a little more relatable Planeswalkers that were, you know, still were mages, but were not sort of, not god-like in their powers. And what Matt said to me is, look, we want Planeswalkers to matter. We're doing this whole thing to revamp Planeswalkers. We're finally making them. Could we make a card out of them? And that sounded
Starting point is 00:01:30 like good logic. So I said, okay, well, we're doing FutureSight. What if we, and we knew we were doing the future shifted sheet. So what if we made some Planeswalkers and we introduced a brand new card type. We introduced it in on the future sheet. This has not even happened yet, but here's a new thing.
Starting point is 00:01:47 So we decided, R&D had a lot of discussions. We talked with the creative team and the designers. Everybody said, okay, this seems like a good goal. We're doing all these things. The entire story is being revamped, the mending, all that.
Starting point is 00:02:02 We're trying to make it so that we can have Planeswalkers be major characters of our story in a way that the mending, all that. We were trying to make it so that we can have planeswalkers be major sort of our major characters of our story in a way that was hard to do before that. Okay, it makes sense. We should put them on cards. And so everybody got on board of, okay, look, if we're going to make a new card type, if we're ever going to
Starting point is 00:02:18 make a new card type, this makes sense. This is so integral to what, you know, we want magic to be, let's make a card type out of it. So I started doing work on that in Future Sight. And we tried a bunch of different things. And so one of the things we tried, which I guess is key to the story, is we liked the idea that there was a story being told, that you get the planeswalker and it does something.
Starting point is 00:02:42 is we liked the idea that there was a story being told, that you get the Planeswalker and it does something. So the idea we tried originally was that there were three things listed on a Planeswalker card. And the idea was, on turn one, they do the first thing. On turn two, they do the second thing. On turn three, they do the third thing. And then on turn four, they go back to doing the first thing. So the idea is they have a little sort of schedule of what they do.
Starting point is 00:03:12 So, for example, I think the very first one we made was a green creature. It would later be Garruk. It wasn't called Garruk at the time. I think we called it, like, Fendari or something. So the idea was it's make a 3-3 creature. And the second turn it said double your number of 3-3 creatures. And then, or was it 3-3 or 2-2? Might have been 2-2. Maybe it was 2-2, not 3-3.
Starting point is 00:03:40 Anyway, it's make, yeah, I think it was make a 2-2 originally. I think it was make a 2-2 and. I think it was make a 2-2, and then on your second turn, double the number of 2-2s of your token. You know, make a... I don't know, bear. Let's say it was a bear. Make a bear token. Turn 2 was double the number of bear tokens. And turn 3 was all your bear tokens
Starting point is 00:03:57 get plus 2, plus 2, and trample. So the idea is, you know, that this is... The green creature is one with animals, so he summ, you know, the green creature is one with animals. So he summons forth bears and he just makes a bear army. But the problem was, so turn one he makes a bear. And then your opponent shocks the bear. Okay, turn two, double all your bears.
Starting point is 00:04:17 Well, you don't have any bears, so nothing happens. Turn three, all your bears get plus two, plus two and trample. You still got no bears, so nothing happens. Now, obviously, turn four, you make another bear again, but the turn two and turn three just felt very, um, it just felt like they were dumb, you know what I'm saying?
Starting point is 00:04:34 It felt like, here you did, you went and got a fellow planeswalker to help you, and they seem to be an idiot. They have no idea what's going on. It felt a little bit too robotic, that they didn't feel like the planeswalker had any agency, that you sort of, the whole idea of getting a, you know, summoning a planeswalker was another planeswalker is here to aid you,
Starting point is 00:04:51 and you're working with them, and they can help you. But we wanted the planeswalkers to sort of feel like people, and that's one of the reasons that we gave them multiple things, because we said, oh, well, it feels like they're doing something. Because, like, when it works, you know, when the green planeswalker makes a bear, and then doubles the number of bears, and then it boosts the bear, like, over time, it really feels like they're doing something. Because when it works, when the Green Planeswalker makes a bear and then doubles the number of bears and then it boosts the bear,
Starting point is 00:05:08 over time it really feels like, oh, he's summoning all these bears and it feels like something's happening. But anyway, it just felt too robotic and didn't quite feel right. We ended up pushing off Planeswalkers we didn't do in the future site, but we made a whole team to sort of flesh them out,
Starting point is 00:05:25 and that team would end up with what would become planeswalkers as you know them. But anyway, I did like, we dubbed the robo-planeswalkers, the robotic version. I did like it, it just didn't feel right for the planeswalkers. So anyway, as normally is the case with magic, whenever I do something, there's something there. I file away in my brain. Because one of the things to understand in general is when you're trying to do magic, the key to doing magic is you're trying to solve the problem at hand, right?
Starting point is 00:05:58 I'm making a set, and a set has certain needs, and I'm trying to solve the problem at hand. It is quite often you make cool things that just don't make sense for the problem you're trying to solve. And this happens all the time that a lot of people say, you know, like you make a really cool mechanic. I'm like, well, but it doesn't fit the set. It doesn't blend with other mechanics. It isn't communicating what the set's communicating. And so a lot of times we try things and we come up with cool things, but it's not the right place for it. And a big part of doing magic is sort of realizing that there's a lot of cool things that you do. Like one of the reasons that I'm on all the design teams is I really want to be the repository for all this information.
Starting point is 00:06:39 I mean, obviously, we've forever always had this problem of how do you take cool things so that other people can find the cool things? And we've tried all sorts of things in our database, you know, but what ends up happening is you just make a pile of stuff. And once again, when you're looking for something that's a specific thing, it's not that anything will, you know, like, it didn't make sense to go, oh, I'm trying to solve a problem. Let's look at this giant pile of things. Maybe there's something that will help me. Usually, it's not time effective. But having somebody, and it turns out to be a person, I guess,
Starting point is 00:07:14 who knows all the things and sort of can, like if we had a smart computer that can go, oh, you're looking for things A, B, and C, and all the mechanics somehow could be subdivided, it's just hard for a computer to do. But a human brain does a little better than computers. In this one case, computers are good at lots of things. But the human brain is really good at sort of weird connective tissue stuff.
Starting point is 00:07:37 But anyway, so one of the reasons I'm on all the teams is so that I just, I'm a living repository of all the different things we've tried. So, flash forward, we're doing, we're on Dominaria, and we spent a lot of time on Dominaria trying to understand what Dominaria was about. The big challenge of Dominaria was we'd been there for like, you know, 10 years. Like, 40-some sets had been set on Dominaria,
Starting point is 00:08:02 something like that, and 30 to 40. And it was a world without definition in a time where we had crafted such defined worlds, right, that one of the really early magic kind of, even though there was a multiverse, we didn't travel much, we mostly stayed in one place, and then finally
Starting point is 00:08:19 we said, you know what, what's cool about magic is we can move around, and sets can be in different places, and we really started embracing the idea of a multiverse and look at all the cool worlds. And then once we started doing that, we really started defining the worlds, right? This is the Gothic horror world. You know, this is the Greek mythology world. Worlds had some sort of definition to them. This is a monster world. This is an adventure world. That there was some defining trait that sort of explained what they were. And Dominaria had the problem of it was kind of everything.
Starting point is 00:08:55 It's ice world, and it's jungle world, and it's mutation world. And so we needed to get a definition to it. So one of the things we did after lots of time in Exploratory Envision, we finally realized that it's history world. That one of the things that defined Dominaria, both at a meta level and as a story level, is it's a world where a lot of things happened. And not just
Starting point is 00:09:13 within the world, but external in the game. Hey, a lot of sets, the audience is well aware. One of the things about Dominaria having history is it's not just within the world there's history. Outside the world, within the game, there's history.
Starting point is 00:09:27 Oh, I remember Ice Age. I remember Mirage. I remember Odyssey. There's all these old sets that were their own thing and the audience, or some of the audience, does remember them.
Starting point is 00:09:37 And so, anyway, I'm getting off on Dominaria. So we decided that we wanted to do a world about history. And so one of the things when we were talking about, one of the things that I, like one of the things that I always do when I'm trying to sort of make a set feel a certain way
Starting point is 00:09:52 is, okay, what are the component pieces that you need for that? So one of the things that when I was trying to do Dominaria, I said, okay, one of the important things is stories, right? If we're talking about history, well, one of the things that has to be of great importance is if
Starting point is 00:10:08 it's a world in which history matters now, how does history matter now? Now, obviously, there could be things that changed the world that you still live with. Like, the landscape of the world had, like, crashed, fractured ships and things in it. Like, clearly, you could see that something happened to the world, and the world adapted around that thing happening to it. That
Starting point is 00:10:27 was important. But also the idea is, hey, if history is important, it's going to be part of our culture. It's going to be part, you know, and what I realized is how important stories must be, you know, that if the way that the past affects the present is through people sharing the past. And so I decided that stories were really important. Like, okay, stories have to be something, like, stories are sort of so iconic to what this world is, I want stories to mean something mechanically. I really want stories to be something that, like, I want to execute on a story. So the challenge when I first set out was, okay, how do you execute on a story?
Starting point is 00:11:03 What is a story? How do you execute on a story? What is a story? How do you make a story happen? And so, as is the case, I presented myself with a problem. And so I went through my little Rolodex of past things we'd done. And the thing that jumped out at me were the Robo Planeswalkers. Was, oh, well, thing one happens, and thing two happens, and thing three happens. Well, the downside for it being a character
Starting point is 00:11:29 was it made them make poor choices. Well, why would you do thing two after thing one? Once thing one happened, wouldn't you change your strategy? It felt dumb. For a Planeswalker, it felt dumb that they weren't. But for a story, you're like, well, this is the story. Chapter one happens, then chapter two happens, and maybe story, you're like, well, this is the story. Like, chapter one happens,
Starting point is 00:11:46 then chapter two happens, and maybe if something affects chapter one, well, that's still chapter two. Like, it didn't feel wrong. And like, one of the things you want to do is, with mechanics, is find the right feel. Like, it wasn't it wasn't that the planeswalkers couldn't be fun, it was
Starting point is 00:12:02 they didn't feel right for planeswalkers. But I knew inherently, like, hey, there's different effects that happen over time. That seems fun. Like, there's no reason, like, obviously we make mechanics where every turn some effect goes off, and those are fun. But why not mix up the effects?
Starting point is 00:12:18 Why not have different effects? And so, what I realized pretty quickly was, okay, there's something that we tried that was fun but didn't fit what we did. Maybe it makes sense here. So I came to the team, and I basically said to them, look, guys, here's what I'm thinking.
Starting point is 00:12:35 We have this mechanic that we tried, you know, the early version of the Planeswalkers. It has sequentiality to it. It has effects to it. That seems kind of cool. Obviously, it wouldn't loop because that was... The reason it looped for the Planeswalkers
Starting point is 00:12:51 is so they're always doing something. But obviously, you're telling a story. Well, it could just... It tells, you know, thing one happens, thing two happens, thing three something. Okay, end of story.
Starting point is 00:13:00 And so I said to the team, okay, this is the core of the idea is can we flesh this out into a mechanic? So one of the members of my Dominarian team was Richard Garfield. You all might know him as the creator of magic. If you don't, he's the creator of magic. Ideally, I hope if you're listening to my podcast, you know that by now. But if you don't.
Starting point is 00:13:22 Ideally, I hope if you're listening to my podcast, you know that by now. But if you don't. Anyway, Richard had left Wizards many years earlier. But from time to time, we're working on a project. And Richard likes to, every once in a while, come be on a team. And I love having Richard on my design teams. Obviously, he's an amazing game designer. And so we were going back to Dominaria for Dominaria's 25th anniversary
Starting point is 00:13:48 not Dominaria, Magic's 25th anniversary I'm like, oh, what better if ever there was a set that said Richard Garfield should be on the set, how about the nostalgic return to Magic's home on his 25th anniversary felt like Richard should be on that set so we asked Richard to be on it. He was very excited to join. And this particular
Starting point is 00:14:08 project, Richard, I think, I mean, Richard has fun making individual cards, but the thing that Richard loves most, and this is just the game designer in him, is we're doing something we've never done before. How do we, you know, like, the really, Richard loves sort of bold new ideas.
Starting point is 00:14:24 And so he really got excited by this. He was like, okay, we're telling stories. Magic's going to have a story mechanic. And it's sequential. So Richard came back. And these are, we've actually posted, I posted them in an article. And they've been posted elsewhere. Richard mocked up some versions.
Starting point is 00:14:38 So Richard's version, the big thing Richard did is said, okay, imagine if we had a track like a board game. And then we use icons to represent effects. So the idea is, you know, there's a little path, and maybe the path is five squares or something. On square one and four, this effect happens. On square two, this effect happens. And maybe on square three, nothing happens. So the idea was you would go along this path, and then different things would happen as you get to different points of the path. And the cool thing was that the icon meant that we could
Starting point is 00:15:09 write down below what happened but you could use icons so that the same thing happened multiple times because you only have so much space to write the effects on the card. But the idea of using an icon said, okay, well if this effect happens on multiple times then
Starting point is 00:15:24 we only have to write it once, and you just use the icon. And the idea, if you haven't seen, so essentially, imagine the art takes up the whole card, and then there's sort of a path going through kind of where the art would be, and then where the text would be, there's a box near the bottom that sort of
Starting point is 00:15:42 explains what the icons mean, essentially. And in Richard's version, it didn't bother to explain how the whole card worked. That is something probably, if we had really, like, you would eventually need to do. We did do.
Starting point is 00:15:54 But anyway, we love this idea. And Richard had presented a lot of different ways to execute on it. Split paths, locked paths, all sorts of cool stuff. But anyway, we handed it over
Starting point is 00:16:08 to Set Design. Oh, the one difference when we handed it over, I think our versions were all... I think we had experimented with lots of different chapter lengths. Actually, I think we handed it
Starting point is 00:16:24 over with a bunch of different chapter lengths. They weren't all three. We handed it over with... I mean, some were three. Three might have been the main one. But we handed over a bunch of different chapter lengths. And we... Originally,
Starting point is 00:16:37 either the turn had to go by, or you could pay mana. So in the original version, you could advance chapters by paying mana. I forget, like three or four or something. It wasn't cheap, but it was sort of the idea is, well, you just play it and it'll naturally happen, or you can spend mana to advance it. So the idea
Starting point is 00:16:53 was if you draw it late or something, you know, I have a lot of mana, I might be able to play it and then, you know, speed through the story was the idea. So we handed over to set design. What set design ended up doing was they sort of consolidated a lot of stuff in the end they said okay let's just stick to three
Starting point is 00:17:10 chapters it's nice it's simple and I think they decided that it would happen as soon as you played it I'm not sure whether we had done that or whether they added that but the idea is to make sure it's relevant like the effect goes off the second you play the card.
Starting point is 00:17:25 You have to wait a turn. I think early versions, like, it started at the beginning of each turn, so you had to wait a turn for your first effect. And I think set design said to us, no, no, no, let's just get that effect right away. And then they, instead of doing icons, the way the frame ended up getting built is the idea that we could share, we could write the text,
Starting point is 00:17:46 but then have chapters. And it tells you, and the chapters work well with the idea of the story. So the idea was we could have a bunch of text, but that might go on for more than one chapter
Starting point is 00:17:59 to allow us to fit it all on. I mean, there are a few where every chapter is different, but most of them, chapters overlap on what they do, and that allowed us to fit it all on. I mean, there are a few where every chapter is different, but most of them, chapters overlap on what they do, and that allowed us to build that. And this guy named James Arnold, who's no longer with Wizards, but did a lot of our frames and graphics,
Starting point is 00:18:15 and he made these frames. We originally tried Richard's idea, like it goes through the art, but it turns out that there's all sorts of art issues and things. Like, it's not that easy to just have things run through the middle of where the art is. So what we ended up building, what James ended up building was the left side is the text box and the right side is the art. And then that allowed him to link the chapter so that you could sort of have repeat things happening. chapter so that you could sort of have repeat things happening.
Starting point is 00:18:53 But anyway, so, and then we had talked about InDesign representing stories in the art itself. Like one of the things I thought was really cool was I liked the idea of, I think we called it the puppet show. Like I love the idea that it was like the Brothers War told through a puppet show. puppet show. I love the idea that the Brothers War told through a puppet show. The idea that in this world that this story had gotten so ingrained in the psyche of the people that little kids could just watch
Starting point is 00:19:12 a puppet show. That felt like how do you speak, how do you show something that's more ingrained than there's a puppet show of it? Kelly and I had talked a lot about the idea of we wanted the idea of history to be in the art as well as in, you know, the cards.
Starting point is 00:19:31 And we wanted the sense of how do we communicate the people valuing their history. And so we had talked about the idea of art representing sort of the art of the world, right? That because the Psyduck represents stories, it's neat to see how that civilization tells its stories. And it turned out that the vertical dimensions of the art really allowed them to make cool things that are hard to make in normal magic. Like we could do these stained glass windows or statues. There's a lot of cool things that are hard to make in normal magic. Like, we could do these stained glass windows or
Starting point is 00:20:05 statues. There's a lot of cool things we could do that's a little tricky to do in a normal, you know, there's a neat way to take advantage of this vertical space that we made. But anyway, so, you know, set design really embraced them.
Starting point is 00:20:21 The art team really embraced them. Like, everybody very early on understood this was kind of an exciting thing. And everybody really, you know, it really sort of came together in a way that was,
Starting point is 00:20:32 like, from the very early on, from the very earliest of us messing around with it to through set design and play design and art direction, everybody really
Starting point is 00:20:41 saw the beauty that these could be. And they came out amazing. The sagas really, I think there were, what, 15 sagas? Yeah, there were, oh no, no, there were three white, three blue, two, no, four black, two red, and two green. So that means there were 14 in Dominaria. Anyway, it came out. It was quite popular. And
Starting point is 00:21:09 I think we had high hopes for the sagas, but they just, they hit in all cylinders, and the audience just ate them up. I mean, some of them, like History of Benalia was very strong, and that helped definitely. But I think that one of the things that you try to do when you're designing something is capture the essence
Starting point is 00:21:26 of what something is and there's something really powerful about stories and I feel like we did such a good execution that I don't know it really sort of embodied what a story was and the art embodied what a story was and the mechanics embodied
Starting point is 00:21:41 it just did a great job of being this cool evocative thing and stories are already something that is so imbued people love stories and it's cool to have stories embedded in the world so anyway
Starting point is 00:21:56 let me continue my story here, so Saga's come out huge hit, like giant hit one of the most popular things in maybe the most popular thing in Dominaria big Maybe the most popular thing in Dominaria. Big, big hit. Now, we work ahead of time, right? So, the first set where we even considered like, could we bring sagas back?
Starting point is 00:22:14 Once we saw the reaction to the public, we were like, okay, clearly we've got to do more of these. These are awesome. There's some tricks to designing them, but I mean, it's open-ended enough that there's a decent amount of design. The design space is rich. There's a lot of things we've learned about them,, but I mean, it's open-ended enough that there's a decent amount of design. The design space is rich. There's a lot of things we've learned about them, and like I said,
Starting point is 00:22:30 the fact that they have to take place over time, there's some issues with how you want to balance them and stuff, but there's plenty of design space. So, the very first set that we thought that maybe, maybe we could bring them back was Throne of Eldraine. And the idea was, well, it's a mechanic about stories.
Starting point is 00:22:49 Fairy tales are all about, they are stories, right? Like, you know, like one of the things that we found about sagas was, in order for us to use sagas in a world, one of two things, I guess, had to be true. There might be a third one. Either the world is connected to some real-world source
Starting point is 00:23:08 that the players already know the stories, like, for example, fairy tales make sense, or the set that followed it, Throne of Eldraine, not Throne of Eldraine, sorry, Throne of Eldraine Beyond Death, the Greek mythology. Oh, that has a lot of stories that people already know. So, you either want
Starting point is 00:23:24 stories that the audience already knows that you can do your riff on, or you want to be in a world that has enough history to it just from us being there before that we could tell the story of the world itself. So what happened was, Throne of Eldraine was interested in doing sagas. Theris Beyond Death was interested in doing sagas.
Starting point is 00:23:42 Even Ikoria, which was sort of the monster set, said, oh, you know, there are a lot of tropey monster stories we could tell. So all three sets are like, we could do this. We could do something cool. And in the end, we decided that the set that needed it most was Theros Beyond Death. Partly because it has all the built-in mythology
Starting point is 00:24:02 to play off of. Partly because it's a world we've been to before, so some of the stories could, in fact, tell stories from before. And it's an Enchantment Matters set, right?
Starting point is 00:24:12 It's a set where enchantments play a larger mechanical role than normal. So we looked at Throne of Eldraine and said, oh, there's a lot of cute things we could do. We looked at Ikori and said,
Starting point is 00:24:20 oh, there's a lot of cool things we could do. But, okay, like, we're not going to do it everywhere. So, okay, Throne of Eldraine felt like the right place to do it. And the cool thing about Throne of Eldraine was, like I said, like, we have Elspeth conquers death, right?
Starting point is 00:24:37 It's the story of what's going on with Elspeth. It's not a pre-made story, but something that we're trying to communicate that goes on in the set. And one of the neat things was it allowed us to do some world building. It allowed us to sort of tap into stuff people already knew. Like, Kiora Best the Sea God is a story that took place last time we were in,
Starting point is 00:24:56 for those that don't know, like, Kiora has a fight with Thassa and ends up stealing her bident. And in fact, Thassa's bident, I mean, the bident that Kira currently uses is from Thassa, but she stole it from her. So it allowed us to sort of, you know, like there's some neat things that we could do
Starting point is 00:25:15 where we really could use the story to tell different things. The other thing that we did, I believe, for the first time in Theros Beyond Death was, hey, does it have to be three chapters? Maybe it could be four chapters. And so there were plenty of three-chapter ones, but then we started doing some four-chapter
Starting point is 00:25:32 just to say, okay, look, this saga has some tweaks we can do to it. Okay, so the next year was Zendikar Rising, Kaldheim, and Strixhaven. Again, so one of the things that's funny about sagas, this behind the scenes, is every set, like, there's this phase of, could we use sagas? Ooh, what would we do if we had sagas?
Starting point is 00:25:55 And, like, every set goes through this, what if we have sagas? And then every set walks away with, we could do cool things with sagas. And then we're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, we don't know. Every set doesn't even have sagas. could do cool things with sagas. And then we're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, we don't know. Every set doesn't even have sagas. And so like, Zendikar Rising is like, okay, it's the third time
Starting point is 00:26:10 we're in the world. You know, there's a lot that's happened here before. We could tell the stories of, you know, the Andrazi. We could tell stories of the Royal. Like, there's all sorts of stuff we could tell stories about. You know, and we're in an adventure world. We have top-down tropes. There's a lot of fun tropes we can play with.
Starting point is 00:26:26 We would do a great job. We would do a great job. We should have sagas. Then call time is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We are in Norse mythology. We are built around stories. In fact, the word saga comes from, I believe, one of the
Starting point is 00:26:42 Scandinavian languages. It's a Norse word, I believe, or close to there. They're like, okay, clearly, we should have it. And then Strixhaven is like, oh, you know, we're a classroom. We're like, you know, think of all the cool sort of, like, stories we could tell, you know, hitting in the idea of how Classroom makes use of stories. And in the end, it's like, okay, well, Call of Dimes seemed to have the strongest case for it.
Starting point is 00:27:10 The other thing we were able to do is we had never done multi-color sagas before, and there were ten two-color worlds, so the idea was, like, each world could kind of have a saga. It ended up, the stories don't actually line up one for one for all ten worlds, but it does for a lot of them. But it allowed us
Starting point is 00:27:27 for the first time ever to sort of do gold sagas, right? And that was really cool. And then the one other saga that exists was in Modern Horizons 2, the first Enchantment Land saga, Ur Land saga, Urza saga. And the idea there was somebody realized that if you made an Enchantment Land,
Starting point is 00:27:52 you could make an Urza saga. So you can make a card called Urza saga that literally subtype is an Urza saga. And they made, because it had to be a saga, they made a story and it talks about Urza and what Urza was up to. And so it sort of tells the story of Urza. Urza's saga, if you will.
Starting point is 00:28:07 And that was a really fun card. So the future, I'm almost out of time here, the future of sagas is bright. And the reason for that is they are super flavorful, they are super popular, there's a lot we can do with them. In fact, we've been slow rolling what we, like
Starting point is 00:28:23 for example, it took a lot of restraint to say, okay, Theros Beyond Death, your new innovation is you can have a fourth chapter from time to time. Okay, Call of Time, your innovation is you can do multicolor, you know. Like, we're really trying to slow roll, but there is sagas in our future.
Starting point is 00:28:41 I can't tell you when or where, but sagas have been a giant hit. And like I said, there's not a set that can't go, well, we could use sagas in our future. I can't tell you when or where. But sagas have been a giant hit. And like I said, there's not a set that can't go, well, we could use sagas. And so it has become a deciduous thing. What that means is any set who wants it has access to it. We are trying to
Starting point is 00:28:58 be careful. It's the kind of thing we think is fun. You want some of it there, but we don't want to make, we don't want to, like, make people tired of it. And so there are, there are, and not only, I'll tell you a couple things about future
Starting point is 00:29:14 sagas without giving away winter wear. We're, there's more innovations coming. We're definitely doing more and different things with sagas. And there are, we're finding a lot of, like, everybody at every level is finding fun new things to do with sagas. The artists are, we're finding a lot of, like, everybody at every level is finding fun new things to do with sagas.
Starting point is 00:29:28 The artists are coming up with the cool stuff. The design teams are coming up with the cool stuff. And the storytelling, using them as a way to talk about, like, I mean,
Starting point is 00:29:39 Therese Beyond Death did this, but like, using sagas as a way to tell the magic story has been a very cool thing. So, if you like sagas, you are in luck. There are more sagas in your future. They are a big, big hit, and we will be making more. I can't tell you where or when.
Starting point is 00:29:54 I can tell you I did make a saga that I'm really proud of that is an out-there saga, but it plays great. So at some point, you guys will get to experience, I'll let you know when it comes out, which was the one that I made. Although you, you might know when you see it. Anyway, that my friends is the story of Sagas. There's lots of cool things. Like I said, it's a neat thing.
Starting point is 00:30:19 I'm really glad we made them. They've been a huge hit. They've become an integral part of magic. You will see sagas will play. I mean, they're not going to show up every set, but they're going to show up from time to time. There's lots of cool things we're doing with them. Like I said, on every level, story, art, mechanics.
Starting point is 00:30:34 Anyway, so if you love sagas, there's lots of cool sagas coming your way. If you hate sagas, sit down. I have some bad news for you. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed our sagas about sagas. But anyway, guys, I see my desk. So we all know what that means.
Starting point is 00:30:49 It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to make it magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.

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