Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #883: Khans of Tarkir with Erik Lauer

Episode Date: November 5, 2021

I sit down with Designer Erik Lauer, and we talk about the design of Khans of Tarkir.

I'm not pulling out my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work coronavirus edition. Okay, I'm using my time at home to talk with people all about magic design. So today I have Eric Lauer and we're going to talk about cons of Tarkir. Hey Eric. Hi Mark, how are you? Okay, so this is a set where I led the design. I handed it off to you who did the development. This is back when we had design development. And I've talked a bit about making this set on my side. So I want to really pick up from where you got involved in this set,

which would have been divine. Back when we did design and development, there was like a two-month window where development would give comments, but design would still adapt to the comments from development. So what is your first memory upon seeing Cons of Tarkir? My first memory is that it was a three-color set. And the last fall set before I joined the development of fall sets was Shards of Alar,

which was also a three-color set. And I had some opinions, which the development team didn't share, and so to me this was an opportunity to see, well, how would things turn out if we kind of went in a somewhat different direction, where I thought shards had the problem that very strong players were playing four and five color decks, so they weakened the mana. And my view was, well, you should find the cards that are leading people to play four and five color decks, the strong players, and change those.

So it was like my example was Resounding Thunder. It was a two-ar bolt, and if you had a lot of mana, including black, red, and green, it would do more damage and draw you a card. a lot of mana, including black, red, and green, it would do more damage and draw you a card. And I said, well, every red player plays that, and if you're not playing those three colors, you add a little bit more mana to your deck. So that was my first thought,

was how to make the mana strong enough that most players would have a good time, their mana works, without these strong players constantly going into four and five colors. And my next memory was, Morph is in the set, and Morph is tricky because a three-mana 2-2 doesn't tend to do very much. So I asked you to try a two-mana 2-2, and we did one play test, and I built my deck,

and I put every Morph in my deck and every powerful card and every mana fixer and just played a five-color deck. And then I played against Dave Humphreys and noticed he did the exact same thing. And to me, this was just like a great result because it was complete failure. My thing I asked for was just turned out exactly how I didn't want it. And I felt I'd learned so much and i was very excited by that and i was really delighted that uh you shared my enthusiasm for running an experiment and finding stuff out and even if it when you found out was was totally wrong at least you resolved you got an answer to your question uh yeah this is the wrong thing to do and here's

why it's wrong and we can learn things about that yeah that's my first memory the absolute worst thing that a playtest can happen like my the playtest that i hate are when you finish it going it wasn't great it wasn't horrible like like you just didn't learn anything uh and when it it goes spectacularly well or horribly wrong you learn things and you improve the set. So I agree with you. A playset going horribly wrong usually is super educational and will help you get to the set

to a much better place. Right. It's related to a theory of game design, which is what you don't want to do is what I call design by veto, which each person says something they don't like and you try and make something that no one objects to. And it's like, well, there are a lot of things they don't object to, but you don't like and you try and make something that no one objects to.

And it's like, well, there are a lot of things they don't object to. They didn't have to play your game to not object to your game. I was hoping that there'd be something exciting and fun going on, even if some people didn't like it. You know, this isn't like rations. So that was my first memory. And then, of course, there are the five clans, and each one has their mechanic. And, oh, no, there was more to it.

We debated more then. Then it was more. And then there was each clan has its own mechanic. But that's six mechanics, and it felt like too much. And I didn't understand the block structure and the motivation for the block so it really seemed wrong to me to have such a complicated mechanic as your sixth mana and it didn't even fix your mana or it or really help at all in that respect which is the obvious thing to do in a five color set so this was a big debate but you

really had a view which you i don't know, I guess you should describe your why. When the set started, the whole block originally, the idea was we were trying out a new sort of block structure to do something innovative with draft. And the idea was there'd be a large set, a small set,

and a large set. And the large set and the first and the middle small set, the second set, would play together. But then when you got to the third set, you would draft just the second and the large set in the first, in the middle small set, the second set, would play together, but then when you got to the third set, you would draft just the second and the third set, and I wanted to come up with, well, why was that the case? And we came up with this whole time travel idea, and that, you know, it's the present, and then it's

the past, and it's the alternate future timeline, and we took a mechanic that the idea was, we'll show you the current mechanic, and the past mechanic, and a tweaked version of it and that was Morph and so like we built everything around Morph and it wasn't even a three color set when we started that all came later

like the three colorness ended up getting added on top to the factions and so like everything was built around it so it was like hard to take it out it was really integral to all the things that were the block and stuff were built around so I gave you a problem because i gave you something that was kind of complicated and not an easy way to just take it out

right so then there were six mechanics and there was morph and your solution was to not have much morph in uh per booster or as we call it as fan and you were seemed surprised when i worked on it for a while and you look back in every common three color card was a morph and i wasn't really and while i given this feedback of the set's going to be too complex once we decided to have morph i decided well what is the best thing to do with morph not how to diminish its aggressants but how to make it feel integral to the set like of course the morph cards are awesome they're filling a good role and to me it was uh if you have a three color card and you don't have three colors of mana you play face down as a bluff your opponent

doesn't know this is what's going on so they treat the morph totally with respect not knowing now it's diminished because i am missing a color of mana and you get the bluffing aspect and maybe they use a removal card on it and you feel really clever when you you get them to uh to do that so that was that was i felt that i really uh got a lot of value out of morph although it wouldn't have been there if not for the block structure uh and so then there are the five clans each with their own aspect and each with their own mechanic. So I think the first one in the normal order is Abzan, is that right? Yeah, Abzan is first.

So Abzan was white, black, green. Right. And so real quickly, each of the houses was modeled after it had a symbol of the dragon, it was a part of the dragon, and it had a certain quality of the dragon. So Abzan was the scale of the dragon, was a part of the dragon, and it had a certain quality of the dragon. So Abzan was the scale of the dragon

and represented endurance. And then Outlast was its mechanic. Right, Outlast was its mechanic. And the thing about the development team was there were five of us. And so let me see. I think there was Dave Humphries, Doug Beyer, Tom Lapilli, and Sean Main at the time.

And so I asked each one of them to write down on a sheet of paper their favorite three claims to work on. If we each were to lead one of them temporarily and then i would try and give it take a week and actually do that and no one had absinthe in their top three so i let absinthe in uh and my theory was they need some synergy so i came up with this idea of they could refer to, hey, all your creatures with plus one, plus one counters get an ability, a keyword, as a way of kind of unifying the idea

that we're all sitting around getting plus one, plus one counters potentially. But it definitely plays into my feeling of what white, green, possibly black likes to do. I call this the tower defense player. They like sitting around and building up their stuff. They're very attached to their creatures living. And they need a way to win eventually once they've accumulated enough.

So that was that one. Okay. And next is Jeskai. Eye of the dragon. All about cunning, and prowess was its mechanic. Yeah, prowess. I remember reading this and just thinking, plus one, plus one. But we have we, dragonauts, and that's plus two, plus oh, and that's so much more exciting. Why don't we go down to plus one, plus one?

So we tried the thing at various values i'm being told by mark he had tried them i said yeah but simply we want to try that as well turn over every rock break every chest try all the things out it was immediately clear nope what happens is we drag it out to school because it's one creature that gets plus two plus oh but if you have a lot of creatures getting plus two plus oh the game just comes to a sudden end plus one plus one was totally right and that was a for a mechanic for a lot of creatures to happen that was that was a very interesting uh thing to notice to find out. No change, absolutely. It was just dead on correct. Okay, next is

Sultai, the Sultai Brood. Fang of the Dragon, they're all about ruthlessness, and Delve was their mechanic. Yeah, I think at the beginning of Divine, it was not Delve. And I kind of was talking to Sean and you about Delve.

I believe Sean was on both teams. It was, isn't that risky? And I said, yeah, it's pretty risky, but it's also, we should try it. In some set at some point, we should go back to this future site mechanic and try Delve and see what happens. And I think this is,

it needs to be a set with a lot of mechanics because Delve is really risky. So we tried it, and of course, we broke some cards. In modern, we shouldn't even exist when we were making the set, though. Yeah. It definitely was a very strong mechanic

in larger formats, and I don't think Standard had any problem with it, right? It had a little bit of issue, but it played right, about right. I think it was pretty cool. It was definitely stronger with the Fetchlands and one mana Blue Cantrips, but it was a lot stronger with Fetchlands, I think.

Okay, next up. Are you done with Assault Eye? Yeah, let's go to Mardu. Okay, the Mardu Horde. So Wing of the Dragon, all about speed, and Raid was their mechanic. Yes, I think they always had something to do with attacking, and before it was a mechanic which punished your opponent for blocking uh and i gave feedback in

divine that the punishment was so large that it was more of an evasion mechanic where your opponent just would be afraid to block and i was curious to see what this was one mark just changed it was like okay we'll figure out what they want to do and came up with Raid and a lot of Raid cards. And Raid was really awesome. Like, wow, that to me was the highlight of Divine was Raid. This mechanic is great. It's super fun. Plays in, makes them really different, especially from Abzan who wants to hang around.

who wants to hang around. And I thought that this one was, it was just like perfect for the color set as well. Okay. And finally, we have the Temur Frontier, Claw the Dragon, all about savagery, and Ferocious was their mechanic. Great.

So Ferocious required you to have creatures with power four or greater to get a reward. It rewarded you for doing that. So it sort of rewarded you for building a deck, but it has the issue, which is hard to work with, of what are the correct cards to be fun when you have power four creatures? Because often when you have big creatures on the board, if your opponent isn't killing them, you're already winning the game. And so this plays into something called snowballing or win more where you're already in a really good position before your mechanic could possibly do anything. So mostly focused on reactive cards,

cards which, if you did have a power four creature but you weren't winning, this would be a good reward. And I think that that played pretty well with the colors involved. So yeah, those were the clans. Okay, so what were the challenges? I know when you make a faction set,

you have to sort of balance them against each other, knowing that people will play cards from colors that overlap. But in a three-color set, that's a lot more complicated than in a two-color set. Right. So in a three-color set, the overlap actually are two, instead of being overlapping colors, they're overlapping color pairs.

And in this case, they are the overlapping enemy color pairs. So, for example, blue and red will both be in Jeskai and Temur. And so you figure out what do those two have in common and what is your blue-red deck about? And if you can figure out what your blue-red deck is about, then you can figure out why Jeskai cards play into that potentially,

why Teemer cards play into that and put the right cards in Jeskai and Teemer so blue and red make sense together, which, first of of all allows someone to say you know what i didn't get any three color cards i'm just going to play an enemy color pair and get some extra mana consistency it's not going to be a frequent thing because there are a lot of cool three color cards and three colors the theme of the set uh but the other thing it does is you can think about that and if you do that for each clan, it's going to have two of those.

And if you balance those two two-color pairs with each other, then you can flow in either direction where you're like, oh, I'm playing Jeskai, I think. Oh, this isn't working out. I could either go to Mardu, keeping red and white, or go to Timur, keeping blue and red. Kind of gives you a little bit of flow to the draft and a little bit of balance and a little bit of why you would add a fourth color to a three-colored deck sometimes.

Four colors doesn't have all the problems that five color has. Five color has a problem where if you're drafting five colors, you just always take the strongest card and it's not fun to sit next to you so uh that was a lot of the challenge figuring out what the two color decks were and balancing those with each other okay so what what else and what else was challenging i mean concerto care has a lot of moving pieces so what what else did you have to solve well there always is the constructed aspect where it's like what is going on with the constructed cards and the constructed cards are more in a three-color set here's the challenge the three-color cards people are gonna, the play design group is going to balance really the decks more than the cards,

which means if you have these three-color rares, they're not going to be the same. I mean, one color's cards will be stronger than another's because they're trying to balance the decks against each other, not the cards. And then there's always going to be this thing where yeah but when it reaches the real world they don't have a they have a way more uh people playing than just our internal group so the problem is even though we're going to be off somewhat why is this going to turn out fun it's not going to turn out completely balanced. And I think Abzan was stronger than the others in construction,

but close enough that it has its vulnerabilities. So planning out what are the vulnerabilities going to be. And Abzan is going to be vulnerable to some combo decks. It's just playing big, tough creatures is not going to protect you against a combo deck. So each deck, each clan has to have its own weaknesses. So if it turns out that this is the one that's too strong, there's some place that other people can go to, and formats can do what we call self-correct. Well, this is stronger than...

Oops. Sorry. Keep going. So that was the initial challenge. It was constructed in standard. So one of the things that I know the audience, like, it's kind of funny. When we built this, we originally thought that we were making

this sort of warlord world. This time would change, and then out would come this dragon world, and people love dragons, but man, they fell in love with the clan version of the set, more so than the dragon version. I'm sort of curious what your take on it. What is the charm of Khans of Tarkir?

Why do you think people like it so much? I think it's because you can identify with whichever clan you like. The different personalities of the dragon. And then it's not saying you're a dragon. It's saying you're you, but you have an aspect of a dragon. And I think that's much cooler to most adults than just saying you're a dragon. And I think that's a lot of the charm. That like, you know what what I'm really tough I'm like absent or I'm really smart I'm like the Jess guy and I have I have the I have the eye of the dragon which I

guess is sort of a rocky ish thing with the eye of the tiger but I think I think that that's a lot of the charm that this it's people more relate to being a person and have being awesome like a dragon not just being a dragon so do you find faction sets easier or harder to make well of course uh in some ways, both. So they're easier to make appealing in things people want to play. They are harder to make. They're harder to make.

OK, so, Eric. OK, yes. Sorry, Eric? Okay. Yes? Sorry, we lost you for a second. So, how are they harder to make? They're harder to make what I call replayable. That it doesn't just turn out the same way every time. Where, oh, the little creatures are evasive and the big creatures can't stop them. Or some little thing like that.

Is how they're harder. Right? It's appealing to see how it turns out. creatures can't stop them or some little thing like that is how they're harder, right? It's appealing to see how it turns out, but you need it to turn out differently from game to game to be replayable. And magic is about playing your game a lot of times. So that's how it's harder. Okay. So what is your,

when you look back at concept art here, what are you proudest of? What am I proudest of what am i proudest of that it worked i know it sounds weird but like a three-color set can turn previously did not turn out that well so that's really what i'm proudest of is just yeah it played like a three-color set not like like there wasn't, it didn't work well enough to be a three-color set, and not like, oh, you just jam all the strong cards and ignore the color pie. It was really a three-color set. And I feel we delivered that, and that's what I'm most proud of.

Yeah, one of the interesting things looking at sort of the history of Magic is we did a lot of multicolored sets over the years, but it really took us... In some ways, Conjuring Star of Kira is the first time we really understood a multicolored set. A lot of our earlier multicolored sets, be it Invasion, be it Shards of Alara, we hadn't quite understood the mana,

we hadn't quite understood how to balance things. A lot of this is owed to you, Eric, but I really think that kind of cons is like the modern philosophy of how to do multicolor sets. Yeah. Yeah, that's what comes to my mind, and yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it's funny, because of the sets I mean there are sets that I started on that changed but this is one of the sets that really in some ways from where I thought it was going to go to where it ended up

was kind of one of the biggest journeys like I said it did not start as a three color set at all that wasn't even a thing like the most defining quality of it wasn't even a thing whencolor set at all. That wasn't even a thing. Like, the most defining quality of it wasn't even a thing when the set started. But I agree with you. I'm very proud how it ended up. Oh, see, that's a difference of perspective

because I like giving you your time, really. And so I didn't even look at it during the period where it wasn't a three-color set. Like, by the time I was really looking at it, you'd already gotten through that journey. So By the time I was really looking at it, you'd already got through that journey. So to me, I was always delivering on your vision of a three-color set that happened to have morphed.

Well, I mean, obviously the whole point is, by the end of it, I'm trying to hand off something. This is what we're trying to make. And early on we're experimenting. It's just funny from my perspective of, this is one of the sets that just went through the greatest amount of change from where I thought

it was going. And, I mean, one of the things that's fun, like, one of the enjoyable parts of design is that you don't know where you're going. You know what I'm saying? Like, you learn along the way and you discover along the way and that you, the designer,

are as much kind of entertained by where you end up as the audience is, that you're trying to solve problems. And as you solve them, you find solutions, but they're not necessarily solutions you knew you were going to find until you look for them. Right. Yes. The constraints breed creativity.

You bring up a lot, yes. Okay, so is there any aspect you'd love to talk about? Something that we haven't talked about yet on Abzan, not Abzan, on cons in general that you think is interesting to discuss? Well, I know that internally, some people really had their doubts about three colors. That was interesting. Was that Aaron who thought this should be a three-color world?

And where did the confidence to do that come from? Well, here's how it happened. So here's how it happened. I was building a world, and I knew I wanted factions because the world we had set up was this world of the warlords, right? And I'm like, okay, well, if we're going to have warlords, I guess we need to have different groups so you can have different warlords. Otherwise, it didn't make sense. The world wanted groups.

And so we had planned it to be a faction set. But what happened was we made, originally we made four factions. And I balanced the colors. In fact, I balanced them the way we ended up doing in Ixalan, where there were two two-color and two three-color. And then at the last minute, like, Brady wanted to add a fifth one.

And I go, okay, Brady, we can add a fifth one, but then I'm last minute, like, Brady wanted to add a fifth one, and I go, okay, Brady, we can add a fifth one, but then I'm going to, like, I can't do a power of five and not reflect that, and then we figured out that we could make it so that all of them were wedge colors, and we hadn't done wedge. Alara had been, you know, the shards, and so it just kind of, like, once we had five,

I knew we had to color balance it, and then it just became apparent that I could make it wedge. So I'm like, okay, we've never done wedge. People keep asking for wedge. I guess we'll make it. Like, this seems like it wants to be that. Oh, that's so interesting. Yeah, four, from a development point of view, four

is much harder to do than five. Yeah, I mean, Ixalan taught us that. That's really hard to do. Well, yeah, I came up with a solution that's really hard to do well uh yeah I came up with a solution that's a little off topic but for uh ZNR it was like I think the way to do five is to just

four is to kind of kick one color out and I picked green uh and just have the other four colors mix and match the four right and then the fifth color sort of does a little of everything. Right, I just think that was my solution. No, no,

it's a good solution. Okay, let's stay on topic. We're getting on to other stuff. Okay, so the I mean, like I said, yeah, the three-coloredness shined through. Morph ended up playing like it's kind of funny for all

like I had a lot of people who told me to take out Morph. That was a very common note I got near the end of design just because there was a lot going on. But I felt like I couldn't. But I love how integrated you made Morph. Like Morph, like it feels very integrated into what the set is doing in a way that doesn't

feel added on or anything. It feels very organic. Yeah, so we actuallyaron ran a meeting to just straighten this out and just say we're going to do more basically was the end result of his meeting and so yeah to me it wasn't like oh i'm not i thought that was very that was really great where it was like yeah it's not like maybe we're doing more maybe we're not let's do a little more it was like we're doing more okay what then my thought pattern was just on well what is the best thing to do with more and uh what are the most fun more there seems to be a theme through some of the sets i handed off to you where i hand something off i really wanted to do it. There's big debate in

the R&D whether we should do it. I go to Aaron and convince Aaron we should do it. And Aaron just puts his foot down and goes, we're doing this. Yes. The biggest of those was definitely Innistrad. Yeah, yeah. The double-faced cards, obviously. But Morph was here, yes. Yeah, I thought that was

really great. So, yeah, I also put Morph in a color pair of green-blue. That part of the way, like I said, you want five things for the five enemy color pairs. So green-blue was about Morph. That Teemer could have big creatures with Morph makes a lot of sense. And Delve... And Saltite, yeah.

Delve is like, well, you killed my Morph, and now later that's going to fuel my graveyard. So they both had their reasons for wanting Morph, and it's a good color pair for it. So, yeah, we definitely played up Morph a lot. Oh, here's another thing, just as a little tiny story that happened. Originally, my plan for the block had been

Dragon's Dark Hero was going to be an enemy color set and not an ally color set. And you were the one that said you can't do that because it'll be too, like, the way you draft Conjuring's Dark Hero is drafting enemy first. So it'll be too similar. And so we had Audible to make it ally. Right, well, I didn't go so far as to say

you can't do it. I just said it wouldn't be very different. No, I mean, but you said, right, the whole point of the whole block was, you know, the times change and now it's radically different. And so I didn't want it to draft the same. I wanted to draft differently. So it was a good note, I thought.

Yeah, maybe it was too hard to work. I hadn't really thought it through. I was like, well, if you want to make it really different, it has to be this way. I really hadn't thought through, but it's also harder. Because I forgot about the middle set, that the middle set needs to bridge the enemy and the ally. Yeah, that's true.

That was Dave's problem. That was Dave's problem, yes. I mean, the... So anyway, Eric, I... This is... When I look back at all the sets that I've done, I've done a lot of sets, this is definitely one of the ones I'm proudest of.

I mean, a lot of that is owed to you and all the work you did. Like, I think the finished product of Concert of Kira was just one of the best magic sets we've ever made, a really strong set. Yeah, I agree. I definitely think this is one of the best magic sets we've ever made, a really strong set. Yeah, I agree. I definitely think this is one of the best ever. And this and Innistrad are the ones that come to mind from that era.

I mean, I like the others. I like Theros. I like RTR, but those two really come to mind. So I want to thank you, Eric, for joining us. It's always fun talking with people about making sets, and this was a fun set to make. Thank you. I enjoyed this a lot, Mark.

So anyway, guys, I can see my desk. So we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So thank you so much, Eric, for being with us. Thank you, Mark. Bye-bye. And all the rest, I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.