Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #944: Deciduous
Episode Date: June 24, 2022This podcast talks about what being deciduous means for mechanics and then goes through the list of all the deciduous mechanics. ...
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I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work.
Okay, today we're talking all things deciduous.
Okay, so let me first define what I mean by deciduous for those that don't know.
So in Magic, we have what we call evergreen abilities.
Stuff like flying, trample, first strike.
Things that every set can do.
Every set, not only can do, tends to do.
Evergreen, not every Evergreen mechanic is in every set, but most sets.
And usually it's in a set.
So, like, flying, it'd be very odd for us to make a set and not have flying.
Or not have First Strike, or not have Menace, or whatever.
So there's a lot of things that are Evergreen.
What deciduous means is any set has access to this.
Any set's allowed to use it.
But it's not something that we do all the time.
It's something we do usually, well, it can vary.
Some deciduous things we do often, but not every set.
And some deciduous things we do on occasion.
But mostly what it means is that if you want to make use of this stuff,
you kind of have free range. You know, there are certain mechanics that I want to use.
I can use the mechanic, but I'm sort of bringing it back. It's not something that we expect
to show up with any frequency, you know. So anyway, I did an article, I don't know, a
month and a half, two months ago, where I talked about this.
And so today I'm going to talk about all the things I listed in the article,
and two things I missed in the article, which I'll put in here.
So I'm going to talk about sort of where these came from and how they ended up becoming deciduous.
Okay, so we'll start with anchor words.
Okay, so anchor words, the example might be in Fate Reforged, you choose cons or dragons.
Usually it's a modal choice, but the modal choice gives you two different, usually flavorful choices.
And then depending on what choice you chose, that's what happens.
Modal things are basically everything. Every magic set has modes.
Anchor words are more like, well,
you have to choose something based on flavor.
Like, the modes have a flavor
component to it.
And the reason it's deciduous
is usually when we do modes
we just list the modes, but
on an anchor word card
we're trying to play up either some
conflict or some key decision.
Something about it that really plays into the idea of you're making a choice,
and depending on what choice you make, that has an impact.
But it's a modal card. It's just kind of a flavorful modal card.
And I think this just came about that we did it a couple times and realized kind of the flavor power of it.
came about that we did it a couple times and realized kind of the flavor power of it.
You know, one of the things that's happened over time is we've really come to understand how potent flavor is in really mechanically making something more coherent, more intuitive,
and just feeling like, giving the card an overall feel to it.
So we're much more willing to do that kind of thing.
So anchor words have become deciduous.
Next, blood tokens.
So blood tokens are a little weird.
Blood tokens first showed up in Crimson Vow.
Basically, it's an artifact token where you can spend one and sacrifice the token to rummage,
discard a card and draw a card.
We haven't reused it yet.
It only showed up in Crimson Bough.
The reason I stuck it here is
we've made a lot of artifact tokens.
I'll call it repeatable artifact tokens,
where the set makes not one of them,
but multiples of them,
and they have a basic effect.
So I considered all the main artifact tokens to be deciduous.
So I put blood tokens here.
I do admit blood tokens are one of the ones that, you know, if you told me something on this list never shows up again, maybe blood tokens is near the top of that list.
So like, whether it's really deciduous or not, it's on the cusp.
But artifact tokens, like, for example,
I'll talk about more later on, we've definitely
started bringing them back. So,
I think that's something that
we recognize as a valuable
tool, and that if there was a set
where blood made sense, and
you know, we're a combat game, it's not like blood
doesn't show up. If we had a set where
blood really was
key to what was going on to the flavor,
the mechanics of it, an artifact lets you rummage. It's pretty useful, as people saw when they played
Crimson Vow. It's just a generally good thing to have. It just lets you get card flow. So I do
think if we got to a place where blood made sense, it is something open and available to the people making it. Next, cantrips. So cantrips first showed up in Ice Age.
Ironically, when they first showed up, you didn't actually draw the card right away.
Oh, so what a cantrip means is it's a draw a card rider on a spell.
Do something and, hey, draw a card. The idea is that it replaces itself.
Now, in original Ice Age, where it premiered, you actually drew the card at the beginning of the next turn.
They had made a zero-drop card,
and they were worried that if that card
lets you draw right away, it caused problems,
and they liked that card,
so they made all of them a turn later.
We later realized that that just wasn't necessary.
Cantrips became deciduous almost immediately after Ice Age,
just because we realized that the key to a cantrip is the idea that
the card costs you mana, but doesn't cost you a card.
And that lets us make smaller effects that are hard to get on cards.
For example, we can make one-drops that are too tiny in effect
that you could put on a normal one-drop spell.
It just lets us...
It's another costing tool that sometimes, you know,
if you add a cantrip to it,
you can adjust it
to get to the right cost.
Plus, there are sets and times
where cantrips just
thematically play
into what's going on.
Cantrips are deciduous
in that it's not a requirement.
Every set doesn't need
to have them.
Every set doesn't have them.
I mean, there's card drawing
every set,
but a cantrip is more defined as it's not the main thing going
on the card. Card drawing is card drawing. It is, I'm doing an effect. Oh, and
it's a bonus draw card, meaning I'm not charging you the cost of the card.
So we do do that, and we do it often. This is one of the decision-making ones that we use
quite a bit. But anyway, I listed it here. Next is
clue tokens slash investigate.
So Clue tokens were first showed up in Shadows over Innistrad.
And they are the first kind of artifact token of this ilk where, hey, you make a bunch of artifact tokens.
It has a general utility that gets you something.
In this case, a card.
Clue is two tap sack draw card.
I think it's tap.
It's two and sack draw card.
I'm not sure whether it's tap or not.
I think it is.
Anyway, the idea is we wanted, the reason clues came about was we wanted to have the word investigate.
There was a mystery flavor to Shadows Over Innistrad.
And we wanted you to investigate. So we were looking for a cool way word investigate. There was a mystery flavor to Shadows Over Innistrad, and we wanted you to investigate.
So we were looking for a cool way to investigate.
We had toyed around the idea of drawing cards,
but that seemed to be too much card drawing.
So the backup was clues, where the idea is,
I'm drawing a card, but I'm drawing sort of the potential
to draw a card, rather than a full card.
I still got to pay two mana to get the card.
So I'm drawing on the opportunity to pay mana to get the card. So I'm drawing on the opportunity
to pay mana to get a card.
But anyway, we made clues.
They went really well.
The players really liked them.
They were very useful.
So it is something that really opened our eyes up
to artifact tokens.
Does clue tokens have to come with investigate?
So in Midnight Hunt, we did do some more clues,
but we did it with investigate. I do think it is possible to have clue tokens that don't come with
investigate, but investigate's a good word. So, I mean, there's some draw to using investigate just
because it's powerful. You'll note the other artifact tokens
don't have a sort of
a keyword action that
generates them, like you don't cook
food or anything, but
I don't know. I mean, I think
we are free to use clue tokens without investigate,
but investigate is an awesome word,
so I imagine some of the
time when we have clue tokens, we will use investigate,
but we're not required to do that.
Next up, colored artifacts.
So the first colored artifact showed up in Future Sight as a future shifted card.
It was a white creature.
Oh, I'm sorry. That was the first enchantment creature.
It was a blue creature. It was a mirror.
Sorry, that was the first enchantment creature.
It was a blue creature.
It was a mirror.
And ironically, in Future Sight,
we were hinting that we were going to go back to Mirrodin and that the Phraxians were going to take over.
But it turns out that we ended up using colored artifacts
in Alara before we got back.
And then we did do some colored artifacts
in Scars of Mirrodin Block in New Phraxia,
but it was less colored art.
I don't know.
It used Phraxian mana, which you didn't have art. I don't know. It means Phyrexian
mana, which you didn't have to pay color for and stuff.
Anyway, sorry, deviating.
So, colored artifacts
are something that we introduced
as what we thought was this
flavorful tool. It has turned
out, after doing enough artifact
blocks that sort of blew up in
our faces, Mirrodin caused
those problems, Kaladesh
caused those problems, whatever.
We've had a number of sets with an artifact theme that have caused those problems.
It turns out that having all artifacts be generic mana is problematic.
And so what we basically said is, hey, if we need to make artifacts colored, we can.
Not colored.
Colored, we can.
And so it just became something that we can do.
Now, this is another one that is really close to being evergreen.
We do colored artifacts a lot.
I'm not sure if we're quite at every set having colored artifacts,
but we're very, very close.
So this is one of the ones that's right on the bubble.
Like maybe if I wrote an evergreen article, I might include it in there.
This is really, really close to being evergreen.
But yeah, it is something that we felt we needed.
It was a knob we needed.
And I understand, I know one of the complaints about colored artifacts
is that
artifacts and enchantments just keep growing closer and closer to each other, and the reality
is what we've really come to conclusion of is, look, they're flavorfully different, they represent
different things, cards care about them differently, what cards work with them, what cards can destroy
them, what cards can get them back from the graveyard, tend to differ between artifacts and
enchantments, so it matters, and they're
different, and we like them in the game, but yeah, they are growing closer together, and we've
stopped trying to avoid that because, you know, we need, we want artifacts to be part of the game
flavorfully. We kind of need them to be colored from time to time. We really can't push them
unless they're colored, and we do want to push artifacts from time to time. So anyway, colored artifacts, not deciduous.
Okay, Curses.
So Curses first showed up in original Innistrad.
A Curse is an enchant player, an aura that's enchant player, and then it does something
negative to the player enchanted.
One could argue, by the way, that the very first Cur kind of was in Unglued. There's a card
called Volras Motion Sensor.
It was the first card that was
an enchant player
card, and it did make
the player, they had to balance something on their
hand. So
it did
do something that made them
like, it did kind of, I mean
it's curse-like. Not technically curses.
It's not a curse subtype or anything.
That didn't happen until
Innistrad, but the precursor
to them. Anyway,
curses are just super flavorful
and they have showed up in other places.
Like Amiket was, oh, we're
in Egypt and hey, that kind of makes
sense for curses. And they've showed up a couple
different places. So it is something that like, hey, if your set makes sense for curses. And they've showed up a couple different places.
So it is something that, like, hey, if your set makes,
if curses make sense for your set,
look, Enchant Player is something that you can do.
That's something that is available to you.
And the general flavor of it, nothing about it is too far from kind of normal magic.
So anyway, that is deciduous.
Next, cycling. So cycling first showed up in
Urza's Saga. A little trivia, or little, I don't know, for those who don't know, it originally
showed up in Design for Tempest, made by Richard Garfield, as an idea of, hey, sometimes you have things
that are kind of narrow,
but if you have a cycling cost,
cycling means you can spend
some amount of mana,
discard it,
and draw a new card.
You can sort of replace it.
The original cycling
was all cycling too,
but we've since done
other cycling costs
and even non-mana cycling costs.
Anyway, it was originally in Tempest.
We didn't have room for it.
We had too many mechanics.
It got pushed off to Urza Saga.
And it is one of the mechanics
that we have brought back the most.
It showed up in Onslaught.
It showed up in Amonkhet.
It showed up in many places.
Ikoria.
It showed up in a lot of different places.
We finally decided,
as of Streets of New Capenna
what happened was
we wanted to include, we had made
these cycling
tri-lands in Ikoria
which were the
wedge ones. Well we're now
in Streets of New Capenna, hey it's
the shards or the arcs
and so we wanted to make the lands but they
had cycling. And we're like oh but the set doesn't have cycling. And we're like, oh, but the set doesn't have cycling.
And they're like, you know what?
Let's just make them.
We don't, let's just make cycling deciduous.
So we've decided to make cycling deciduous.
And what that means is, hey,
if a set wants to have a couple of cycling cards, it can.
It's a pretty easy mechanic.
People understand it.
And we're not going to like,
well, in order to have cycling,
you have to bring the whole cycling mechanic,
have about 20 cards.
If you want to have a cycle of lands instead of cycling, more power to you.
So we've chosen to make cycling deciduous.
In the article, when I mentioned that, I said that we are looking to be a little bit more open about what's deciduous.
So R&D is looking at mechanics right now to say, like cycling, what is something we use so often
that, you know what, if we use it, we're just going to label it. You know, if we use it, we're going to
tell you this is what it is and just let sets have access to it. We're figuring that out. We got a lot
of feedback from my article. So, you know, it's a topic I'm still, if you want to contact me and let
me know if you're like, oh, this mechanic really should be deciduous, let me know.
Okay, next, double-faced cards.
So double-faced cards first showed up in original Innistrad, and they showed up as transforming double-faced cards,
meaning you played the front side, and under some conditions, you could go to the back side, the back face,
and under some conditions on some of them, you could come back to the front face.
So some go back and forth. Some are a one-way transformation that never comes back.
Then in
Zendikar Rising, we introduced modal double-faced cards, which were double-faced cards that you could play either side,
but there's no means to go between the sides. If I choose to play side A, then it's always side A.
It's never side B. Now, I could bounce it or something, or it could die, and I could get it back from the
graveyard and then cast the other side, but nothing allows you while it's
on the battlefield to change the sides.
Okay. Oh, so sorry.
Double-faced guard. So, often when I'm driving, I get distracted
by my driving. I apologize. Although,
safety first. We've learned over time that double face cards are very useful. They show two states
in a very flavorful way. You get two pieces of art. You get two full cards. You get two full
rules decks boxes. So, it really allows us to do some things that we weren't able to do.
And a lot of magic sets have dual states.
Now, not every magic card with a dual state is going to be double-faced.
But it is a tool that we have.
It's very splashy.
The audience generally likes it quite a bit.
And so we've started using it more.
Recently, we've used it a lot.
So we've started using it more.
Recently, we've used it a lot.
We did MDFCs, modal double-faced cards,
in Zendikar Rising, Kaldheim, and Shrixhaven.
And then we did transforming double-faced cards in Midnight Hunt and Crimson Vow and Neon Dynasty.
So six out of seven sets in a row,
premier sets, had double-faced cards.
Streak of theperado does not.
We are not going to be using it at that frequency,
although I do think, like, every set now can say,
hey, do I want these double-faced cards?
And it comes with a cost.
It's not something we're going to do all the time.
But it is something that, hey, if it makes sense
and we think it really adds value to the set,
it's something we have access to.
Next, food tokens.
So food tokens first showed up in Throne of Eldraine.
They are artifacts that you two-tap sac to gain three life.
They were, like I said, the first ones we made were the clue tokens.
The second were the treasure tokens, which I'll get to.
And the third were the food tokens.
Then fourth were blood tokens.
Treasure tokens, sorry, not treasure tokens, which I'll get to. And the third were the food tokens. Then fourth were blood tokens. Treasure tokens...
Sorry, not treasure tokens.
Food tokens are very flavorful.
Food, there's a lot of tropes with food.
The reason it happened in Throne of Eldraine
was just realizing how much food plays a role in fairy tales.
Oh, Hansel and Gretel drop breadcrumbs,
and then they find a house, a gingerbread house.
Hansel and Gretel drop breadcrumbs, and then they find a house, a gingerbread house.
Or, you know, Little Red Riding Hood is bringing food to her grandmother.
Anyway, there's just a lot of food that pops up.
So, you know, Magic Bean for Jack and the Beanstalk.
Anyway, food shows up a lot, and so we put it in Throne of Eldraine.
It's the kind of thing that we have found super flavorful.
They showed up again in Modern Horizons 2. It is definitely the kind of thing that we have found super flavorful. They showed up again in Modern Horizons 2.
It is definitely the kind of thing that we've seen the value of them.
There's definitely a flavor there.
It's nice and simple. Life gain is a pretty clean
ability. The thing about
artifact tokens, by the way, is you want to do things that
most decks want. Oh, do you want
to draw a card? Yeah, most decks want to draw a card.
You want mana? Yeah, most decks want mana.
You want life? Yeah, most decks want life. You want to rummage? Yeah, most decks want mana. You want life? Yeah, most decks want life.
You want to rummage? Sure, most cards want it.
We tend to do things and artifacts
that most decks can make
use of. That they're not super narrow.
They're pretty general. And food,
it's pretty much a flavor hit.
The idea that food gets you life, you know, it all
ties together. And so
food is definitely something that became
deciduous almost immediately. Hybrid mana.
So hybrid mana first showed up in original Ravnica. So hybrid mana
are mana symbols that are two different colors, so like red or green.
And the idea of a hybrid mana symbol is you have to spend red or you have to spend
green. You don't need to spend both, just one or the other. But for example, if I have
a card that's two red or green hybrid, red or green hybrid, I can spend a minor red, I can cast that for two red
red, I can cast it for two green green, or I can cast it for two red green. So the idea is that it is
something, it's a tool that allows us to make multicolored cards that are or rather than and.
I almost would say it's a tool more than a mechanic
in that there's a lot of different utilities for it
and it's proven to be very, very useful.
The story I always tell is
when I first came up with Hybrid Mana in Ravnica,
I remember showing it around
and just nobody was impressed with it.
Everyone was like, oh, okay.
And I was very like, oh, no, no.
It's this great tool.
We do all these cool things. And I think over time, as
people had to make set and solve problems, and, you know, like
Fate Reforged was like, oh, I need to be a three-color card to work with
the wedges, but I need to be a two-color card to work with the enemy colors, so how do I work with
Conductor Cure and Dragon Star Cure? Oh, Hybrid Mana lets you do that.
Or, you know, I'm trying to
make companions and I want them to be
in as many decks as possible. Oh, Hybrid
helps you. Like, Hybrid's proven to be very
valuable and lets us do a lot of different things.
So, and it's the kind of
tool that every set doesn't need, but it's
definitely something a lot of sets have
made use of.
And it's been, like I said, it's been
used in lots of different ways.
We use it now sometimes
for color identity purposes.
So if we want something to be a certain
color identity for Commander, but we want
to make it a little bit easier to cast,
sometimes we'll do it in activation costs.
Anyway, Hybrid has lots and
lots of uses, and so it has become
a staple in
it's deciduous because a lot of sets want to use it has become a staple in, um, in, in the, it's deciduous because
a lot of sets want to use it, but not every set needs to use it. Okay. Next keyword counters.
So this is something that wasn't in the article. So the bonus content for you on my podcast.
So keyword counters first showed up in Ikoria. Um, so basically it's a counter that says flying
or first strike or vigilance
it's just a basic usually evergreen keyword
that by using a counter it's permanent
so normally if I grant you flying
it's like until end of turn
because if I said if I want to be permanent
usually has to be an aura or equipment or something
but the keyboard counter allows us to do something permanent
we usually want to do punch out counters when we're doing keyboard counters
so there's something to remember it by.
So this is a deciduous thing that we don't use often
but we have made the decision on high rarities and low frequencies
that we will use it in sets because,
oh, we want this planeswalker to permanently grant something.
Okay, it's not going to happen a lot.
You know, when it happens, you can mark it.
So we don't necessarily need to have counters
in the set. But when we do it at
low frequency, we put counters in. When we do it
at higher frequency,
in a low amount of cards at higher frequency,
we let sets have it. But it's something
that has proven very useful.
It's a clean way to say flying for the rest
of the game, or well, flying as long as the
creature stays on the battlefield, you lose the counters and it loses the battlefield. Or, well, flying as long as the creature stays on the battlefield.
You lose the counters, then you lose the battlefield.
Well, step facing. We'll get to that in a second.
Anyway, it has proven to be a valuable tool,
and it is something that we've given sets access to in small amounts if used judiciously.
Now, you also can use it in large amounts.
It just means that you have to have punch-out counters.
That is something.
I actually didn't list puncher cards here
because I don't know if they're a mechanic as much as a tool,
but hybrid was a tool.
Puncher cards are another thing where sets have access to that.
It's something that sets can use if they need it.
Really, puncher cards are not so much a mechanic as,
oh, I have some memory issues.
Well, here's a tool I can use for memory issues.
But puncher cards are something that sets have access to. Okay, next, I have some memory issues. Well, here's a tool I can use for memory issues. But punch-out cards are something that sets of access to.
Okay, next, protection.
So protection first showed up in Alpha.
Protection's gone through a lot of changes over the years.
It meant different things at different times.
For example, in Alpha,
a black knight with protection from white
couldn't be destroyed by a wrath of God.
That's no longer true.
At one point, somewhere around 6th edition rules, maybe 6th edition rules,
they sort of clarified how protection worked.
It now grants four basic abilities.
So you can't be targeted by a thing of the quality.
You can't be blocked by a thing of the quality.
You can't be enchanted or equipped by a thing of that quality, nothing can attach to you, and you can't be blocked.
Did I say blocked?
Oh, sorry, all damage from things, anything that damages you for something is reduced
to zero.
So you can't be targeted, blocked, equipped, enchanted, or attached,
or you can't be damage reduced to zero.
Can't be damaged.
Protection, like colored artifacts, is really on the cusp,
whether it's evergreen or deciduous.
We don't use it all the time because it's a little bit complicated,
but we do use it as much as we need to just because it's super flavorful.
It actually got kind of, what happened was it was evergreen, it became deciduous, and
then it went back to kind of pseudo-evergreen deciduous, where it's like somewhere in the
middle.
I put it on my deciduous list because we don't use it every set, but it's pretty close to
being evergreen.
If I made an evergreen article, I probably would list it as well. I probably would list colored artifacts and production in both the evergreen article and the deciduous article
because they're on the cusp. Anyway, it is flavorful.
It is complicated. When we were talking about bringing it back,
we did look at finding a simpler version of it, but we didn't find
something that worked quite as well.
And anyway, magic has some complexity.
That's some of the complexity.
Next, prowess.
So prowess was in Concertar Kier.
It was the Jeskai mechanic.
So it says whenever you cast a non-creature spell,
it goes on creatures, this creature gets plus one, plus one.
We made it evergreen for a while as sort of the crossover for blue and red.
It ended up sort of, there was
a lot of times the set would be doing
something that prowess kind of got in the
way of and we would not do prowess.
And so we kind of decided, okay,
instead of being evergreen, we'll make prowess deciduous.
When you want to use it, you can use it.
If a set needs it, there's sets that really like prowess,
it's available to you, you can use it. But it set needs it, there's sets that really like prowess, it's available to you, you can use it.
But it is not something that we've decided to do all the time.
There's just enough sets where there's something going on
where we don't want to use it that we pulled it back.
And this is a good example, by the way,
of something where it came on a set,
we liked it, almost instantaneously became evergreen,
and then we realized we had to pull back,
and then we made it deciduous.
Okay, next, phasing.
So this is another...
Oh, I should realize I went out of alphabetical order, but...
Phasing is another thing that I forgot to put in my article.
Phasing first showed up in Mirage Block.
The way phasing works is something with phasing
every basic...
At the beginning of your turn,
if it's in play, it leaves... Well, the way it originally worked was if it's in play, it leaves, well
the way it originally worked was if it was in play it
left play and if it was out of play it came back to play.
Now the way phasing works is
you treat it as if it's not on
the battlefield. It's still on the battlefield, but
you treat it as if it's not on the battlefield.
And where phasing is different than flickering
is phasing
auras and equipment and
counters, things that are attached to it don't come off it.
So if I phase out something that has an aura
or an equipment or counters on it, they stay on it.
They don't come off.
It no longer technically leaves.
For a while, it used to exile it,
but to make it cleaner, it now just treats it
as if it's not there.
So anything that looks to care about it
doesn't care about it.
And because it answered some problems, we sort of pulled it back.
Like for a long time, we did phasing and didn't touch upon phasing.
And then we sort of realized that phasing helps solve some problems
because sometimes we don't want flickering because we don't want it.
Like there's a core mechanic that's using auras or equipment or something
that we don't want to make it too easy for you to flicker.
So phasing is a tool that we use, and it's become deciduous in that
there's just different effects we kind of want phasing on.
So we don't use phasing a lot, but we do it from time to time,
and it's now sitting in deciduous space.
Next, sagas.
So sagas first showed up in Dominaria.
It's an enchantment, and it has chapters,
and each turn, the turn you play it, you get the first chapter,
and then beginning before draw, you advance to the next chapter.
If there's no more chapters, it goes away.
It basically is an enchantment that does something different over multiple turns.
It's interesting in that it came from,
we were trying to make Planeswalkers way back when.
We made something that, early on we had were trying to make planeswalkers way back when. We made something that,
early on we had a version where planeswalkers
would do effect A, then effect B, then effect C,
in order.
And it made them feel like they didn't have agency.
They felt kind of dumb.
And so we ended up not doing that with planeswalkers.
But when we were trying to figure out
how to make stories into a thing,
we realized that the prescriptiveness
that worked against the feel of Planeswalker
actually made sense with the story.
Yeah, it's prescriptive. It's a story.
This is what happened. This is the order it happened in.
And sagas first got included in Dominaria.
They were super popular and have just become a very...
We've gone back numerous times.
Kaldheim had them.
Anyway, we've used
them in a bunch
of different places
and they have been...
They're just something
that we can do.
They're pretty
straightforward.
They have their own
frame, but the frame
looks really cool.
And anyway, we've
definitely sort of
established them as
a cool thing.
People like them
and it is something
that any set can
make use of.
I will say for some of these
deciduous things, we do think about
like double-faced cards,
sagas. Like, we try
to sort of divvy them up a little bit
so they're not everywhere. That's kind of cool
if double-faced cards aren't around all the time.
It's kind of cool if sagas aren't in every set.
So we do sort of, some of the deciduous,
we kind of look at who is and isn't using them
so that we can dole them out so that they're kind of cool when they show up.
But deciduous means any set can use them.
That doesn't mean you might not choose not to use them because things are wrong and you
are using them, but it means that you have access to them.
But we still do think about who's using what.
So a lot of times with deciduous stuff, if somebody near you is using it, we want to think twice about it.
Not that we don't do it.
We obviously double-face cards for a whole bunch of sets in a row.
But we want to be careful when and where we use it.
Next, split cards.
So split cards first showed up in Invasion.
Originally, they were going to be in the second unglued two, as I call it,
that never got made.
BFM had been in unglued.
It was a card so big it had to be on two cards.
So it was very popular.
So I made a card so little that two of them fit on one card.
I pitched it for Invasion.
They were controversial at the time, but they went in Invasion.
The audience loved them.
And it's just become a thing that we can do from time to time.
They're just a fancy way to do a modal card.
It does let you do a modal card in which each mode has a different cost.
So that's nice.
And they can be different colors.
So split cards have come back a bunch of different times.
They've proven to be...
They're a useful little tool, and they're flavorful, and the players like them.
So it's not something we do a lot, but it's something we have access to,
and we do from time to time.
Next, treasure tokens.
So this is another of the artifact tokens.
Treasure.
We did gold tokens in Pharaoh's Block on a couple cards.
And then when we did Ixalan, we decided we needed them to tap because of the interaction.
There was a mechanic in Aether Revolt where you could tap artifacts.
And we didn't want you tapping treasure.
It was kind of like Convoke. I'm blanking on the name, but
it was like Convoke for artifacts.
Anyway, so we decided to
rename them and add a tap to them.
We decided to add a tap to them, which forced us to rename them.
And then we decided to pick a little more generic
than just gold. So treasure is nice
in that if you want to represent gold,
you can call it gold treasure.
But it can represent a lot of different things.
Like it was Halo in Streets of Capenna.
So like, you can use treasure
it just means something that people value
and what that can be, you know,
what that is can vary from place to place.
Even within the same set, it can vary.
You know, what is treasure in green might be different than what's
treasure in red, for example.
Much like clues and
food,
it's just proven very valuable.
The idea of wanting a resource and wanting mana.
Streets of New Campana is a good example where,
hey, we had a three-color set.
We needed a way to make sure you could play your cards.
You know, Treasure was a nice tool that let you do that and was super flavorful.
So Treasure definitely falls in that camp of,
and you've seen it.
I mean, I think we use it a lot in Streets of New Campana because it was a
three-color set, which needs a lot more help than normal.
I don't think you can see treasure in quite that
volume outside of something
like a three-color set that
really needs extra help.
I think it'll be used in a little more
lower
volumes in future stuff. I think Streets of New Campana
is a little quirky in how much it used.
But it is very useful
and it's very flavorful, so we will use it again.
Finally,
we come to vehicles.
So vehicles first showed up in Kaladesh.
They represent
sort of artifacts that
you can
drive or, you know, the things
that you can ride or drive,
you know, and we've used them to represent boats and cars and trains and all flying vehicles, all sorts of different things.
It became deciduous almost immediately.
They were very, I mean, they were a little bit overpowered in Kaladesh because we were sort of learning how to cost them.
But it became clear that it's just a flavor that a lot of sets want.
But it's not every set.
Not every set needs vehicles.
Some worlds more so than others.
But, oh, there's pirates. We want ships.
Oh, there's, you know, certain places do want vehicles more than others,
so we can make use of those.
But anyway, it is something where it's proven to be a very useful, flavorful thing.
The way the mechanics work for vehicles
is that it has
a crew cost
it's an artifact
that is not a creature
but if you pay
the crew cost
which is tapping
some power amount
of creatures
so crew two means
tap creatures
whose combined power
is two or greater
and then
you crew the vehicle
which means it
animates
it becomes
it has a power toughness on it it becomes a creature and then you until the vehicle which means it animates it has a power toughness on it
it becomes a creature
until the end of turn and then you can attack
or block with it. And like I said
vehicles is another thing that have
become useful and super
flavorful. You'll notice one of the
through lines in all the Sigur stuff
is things that are A
usually pretty flavorful and
B just have a lot of general
utility to them.
So, or they tend to be either super flavorful, super utilitarian, or both.
And one of the things I'm hoping from today you realize from this is that there's a lot
of different tools available in Magic.
One of the advantages of being a game almost 30 years old is we've invented a lot of stuff over the years, and we've found a lot of those tools to be
very useful. They're in our toolbox. It's not that we need to use all of them all the
time, but there's a lot of them we can use some of the time. And so I hope today
it's just a look through what those are, a little bit of their history, and how they became deciduous.
But I've gone through everything that I had to talk
about, and I just parked.
So we all know what that means.
It means this is the end of my drive to work.
So instead of talking magic,
it's time for me to be making magic.
Hope you guys enjoyed this indigenous talk
and I'll see you next time.
Bye-bye.