Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #958: Snow

Episode Date: August 12, 2022

In this podcast, I talk about the history of the snow supertype. ...

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:01 I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. We might not all know what that means. But what it means, it's time for another drive from work. So this morning I was doing drive to work and I messed up. But because of our hybrid system, I don't drive into work as much and so I have less opportunity. Now, I know I've done a bunch of like from home, so I can do that. Now, I know I've done a bunch of, like, from home, so I can do that. But I was driving home, and I'm like, you know what? I'm going to try to do this podcast and make it work in my drive.
Starting point is 00:00:31 So I'm doing it on my drive home. My drive home actually is technically slightly shorter than my drive to work because there's less traffic. But I will make sure to get it on a full podcast. So if I need to sit in my driveway, I will finish my podcast. Anyway, today we're talking, ah, we're talking snow. So we're going to talk all about the snow supertype. Where it came from, what we've done with it, my skepticism about it. We will talk about it all.
Starting point is 00:01:05 Okay, so the start of our story is we have to go back to, well, I guess the set came out in 1995. So pre-magic, before magic came out. So we're talking 93 or maybe even 92. So Richard Garfield was making magic and he said, hey, this seems like a fun game. Maybe one day in the distant future we'll need more magic sets. So he got his playtesters to make some sets. Bill Rose and Joel Mick and Charlie Coutinho and a bunch of other folks from the Bridge Club made Mirage. Barry Reich made Spectral Chaos.
Starting point is 00:01:41 And the East Coast playtesters, Scaffolius Jimlin, Dave Petty, and Chris Page made Ice Age. So, one of the things, I think they got the idea early on that they wanted there to be an Ice Age. And they wanted, I think the set had a little bit of a Nordic feel, had a lot of snow and stuff in it. a little bit of a Nordic feel,
Starting point is 00:02:04 had a lot of snow and stuff in it. But I think they decided they wanted to call it Ice Age like very early on. And so they were designing the set and I'm like, well, it's called Ice Age because I think that was even the playtest name for it. And they're like, okay, how do we make the Ice Age feel like an Ice Age?
Starting point is 00:02:22 And so I think they were trying to figure out some way to just make the cold, the snow mean something. And so they stumbled upon the idea of snow-covered lands. So magic normally has its five basic lands. What if, in this set, there were snow-covered lands because it's an ice age? And I think that they got the idea of snow-covered lands, and they're like, okay, well, what can we do?
Starting point is 00:02:51 Why would we have snow-covered lands? And basically what they came up with is, okay, well, what if these are kind of like a marker? What if they're just cards that cared about snow-covered lands, right? What if they're cards that just was relevant? Snow-covered lands was relevant to them? So it's the same philosophy we've done with gates and other things. Like, what if we just make this something we can care about and then have cards that care about it? That was a basic idea.
Starting point is 00:03:17 And I think in their minds that these are just going to be, you know, a variant of basic lands. So you can have the normal basic lands or you can have the snow-covered basic lands. Now, real quickly, my little side here. I think if we had made this mechanic modern day it would have been, I mean like, when they made snow-covered lands there was no super type yet. It was just snow-covered lands. It was just in the title. And then there were things that cared about whether or not you had a snow-covered land. The idea of supertypes, I mean, even, it's funny,
Starting point is 00:03:51 Legendary showed up the previous summer in Legends. And I guess Legendary was a supertype on non-creatures. It was a creature type, it was a legend on creatures. But the Legendary as a supertype on non-creatures did show up. So, and basic had been a thing, I think, since... Actually, basic might have showed up in 6th edition. So, maybe basic wasn't even a thing when Ice Age came out. But anyway, supertypes weren't really...
Starting point is 00:04:16 I mean, they existed, I guess. But they weren't a big thing yet. But they liked the idea of a marker. Now, I think if we were going to make it now, if we hadn't made it back then, I don't think we would have made the basic land. Like, I think we would have made snow lands that produce mana. I think we might have even made snow lands that didn't tap and produce mana.
Starting point is 00:04:38 Like, I think that's a possibility we would have made those. I don't think we would have made them basic. My pet peeve on them comes from the fact that they cause confusion. For example, after Ice Age came out, people would put snow-covered lands
Starting point is 00:04:56 not on purpose, just they would get basic lands, they'd put them in their deck and they'd show up at a tournament and then there was a point where Ice Age wasn't legal anymore in standard formats and they would show up at a tournament and then there's a point where Ice Age wasn't legal anymore in standard formats and they would get in trouble for having you know, I have a snow covered plains but that's not legal here
Starting point is 00:05:12 and I think that part of making snow as a resource, meaning oh I have to think about it as a resource is much more interesting if it's not just on all your basic lands the fact that I can go, oh, I'm playing white-blue, and just all my plains and all my islands can just be snow
Starting point is 00:05:30 sort of makes the challenge of caring about it. Like, that's one of my biggest issues with it sort of just being basic lands is, okay, if I can just play as many as I want and they're just like basic lands, it's sort of like, where's the cost of playing snow? Now, it is true in Ice Age, in the original set, there were positive things and negative things. And actually, ironically, they erred in the wrong direction in Ice Age. In Ice Age, the negatives to snow was a little more than the positives to snow.
Starting point is 00:06:04 So one of the biggest problems when snow first appeared in Ice Age was it wasn't, you often didn't want to play snow-covered lands. There are a few particular cards that sometimes you did, and because most people didn't play them, the hate wasn't in the environment, so metagame-wise you could get away with playing them, but overall, the negatives were worse than the positives. That will come back later on
Starting point is 00:06:30 in the story. So when Ice Age first came out, there was confusion from the snow-covered lands. They really didn't make the positives as good as the negatives, so there wasn't lots of reason to play them. There were a few individual cards. But anyway, it was not particularly, it was not a beloved mechanic.
Starting point is 00:06:48 Like, it first came out, you know, there just wasn't a lot of reason to play Snowcrusherland. So, when it first premiered in Ice Age, it was kind of a ho-hum mechanic. No one paid a lot of attention to it. I mean, obviously, it was something a little different, but there just wasn't much to do with it. So, out of the gate, not particularly a strong mechanic. Okay, next, alliances. So, alliances was not designed to be part of the Ice Age block, essentially. I think what happened was they just made alliances, and then, I don't even know who,
Starting point is 00:07:29 somebody at Wizards said, you know what, I think the idea of blocks was coalescing. Like, they sort of knew that the next year was going to be Mirage, and they were going to, like, the idea of blocks was starting. So the first block, Ice Age, essentially, was kind of haphazard. The designers that were designing alliances were not thinking, oh, this is an extension of Ice Age.
Starting point is 00:07:53 In fact, nothing in alliances, anything that's in alliances that makes reference to Ice Age was done after the fact. It wasn't done by the design team. They were just making a brand new set that was its own set. So the snow that's in the set, and there's not a lot of snow in the set. There's just a little bit. We put in, and when I say we,
Starting point is 00:08:14 I actually mean we, the very first set I worked on was Alliances. I did do some outside playtesting for Homelands, believe it or not, but the first set that I was in R&D working was on Alliances. So I actually, I was one of the people who had to say, okay, where and how can we add snow? And so we added a little bit of snow, not a lot of snow,
Starting point is 00:08:37 because it wasn't really part of the design. But we added just enough that, like, when we tell you this is a Ice Age, part of the Ice Age block, you would believe it. So anyway, we made that. There's not a lot of Snow in Alliances, like I'm saying. Under five cards, I believe. There was just a little tiny bit. And it's not super relevant.
Starting point is 00:08:57 It's just there to kind of, with a straight face, say it's an Ice Age set. Okay, so. So essentially, Snow comes out in Ice Age to not much fanfare. Shows up in alliances on just a handful of cards. So, you would think we would never see Snow again. Like, at that point in the story, it's like, wow. Snow didn't have much of a showing. It wasn't that popular.
Starting point is 00:09:22 It caused confusion. There wasn't a lot of reason to play it. You would think that Snow would be kaput. But, along comes... So, okay. So, in the summer of... What was the year? The year that...
Starting point is 00:09:37 The magic year that original Ravnica came out. What happens is... The powers that be, I don't know, the brand team said, do you guys want to make a summer set? And we said,
Starting point is 00:09:52 eh, no, Ravnica's got a lot going on. We don't think we need a summer set. We'll do Ravnica. We're fine. And then after the fact, late in the process,
Starting point is 00:10:01 they said, you know what? We really want to do a summer set. We need you guys to, you know, instead know what? We really want to do a Somerset. We need you guys to, you know, instead of asking, do you want to make a Somerset? We're not going to tell you we want a Somerset. But they told us very late in the process. So much so that we didn't have enough time to do a regular design.
Starting point is 00:10:19 We had to do an abbreviated design. And so we were trying to think, okay, what could we do on a short turnaround? And the two biggest ideas, one was to do a fourth Ravnica set, just like sort of just all the guilds all together, sort of like, okay, now that you've seen all the individual guilds, here's just a set full with lots of gold cards for all the guilds. That was one idea. The second idea that I think I proposed this idea was it dawned on me that we had all these blocks, but that Ice Age never had three sets because it wasn't designed to be a block.
Starting point is 00:10:57 Ice Age came out, then Homelands came out, that clearly wasn't Ice Age. It was on a different plane. Then we had Alliances, which we said, okay, it's on Terrasier. It was on a different plane. Then we had Alliances, which we said, okay, it's on Terre Sierra. It's in the same world. So Terre Sierra is the continent on Dominaria where Ice Age
Starting point is 00:11:12 takes place. So anyway, we sort of had a block with two sets in it. So I said, well, what if there was a third block? And the idea was, sort of tongue-in-cheek, what had happened, I come from TV, obviously, every once in a while on some old show, because what happened back in the day is
Starting point is 00:11:31 they would make the shows, but they didn't store them as well as nowadays they do. So there are series, I mean, Doctor Who's a good example, where they don't have every, there are shows they made they have no copy of. Doctor Who's a good example, where there's shows they made they have no copy of. And every once in a while, somebody's looking around somewhere, and they find old tapes of something that has a show that they didn't think they had a record of. And so the idea of lost shows is something that's big in television. And I come from television. So I said, oh, well, there's a lost set.
Starting point is 00:12:03 And I think I actually came up with the idea of doing a lost set before I even knew Ice Age. Just like, oh, well if there's a lost set? And I think I actually came up with the idea of doing a lost set before I even knew Ice Age. Just like, oh, what if there's a lost set? But I think when I was like, what would the lost set be? When I looked around, the missing Ice Age set seemed like the most logical, like, oh, well, you know, every other block has three sets. It only has two. What if there was a missing third set?
Starting point is 00:12:25 So I think we started with the idea of a missing set, and then it ended up being the Ice Age set. So anyway, we have to do the summer set that we're sort of being told we have to do. We don't have a lot of time to do it. The two ideas on the table are more Ravnica or the missing set, the missing Ice Age set. And I think everybody spent the whole year doing Ravnica, and we're like, okay,
Starting point is 00:12:47 you know, we're tired of doing Ravnica, let's do something different. Ironically, the Ravnica set would have sold much better, I think. But anyway, so we decide we're going to do Cold Snap. So we look at all the mechanics in Cold Snap. Not Cold Snap, in Ice Age. So, for example, Ice Age had cantrips, where you could draw a card, although it was the beginning of next turn. But we had done... We had done... Like, cantrips have become
Starting point is 00:13:12 just a regular part of magic. So, okay, that wasn't any good. They had cumulative upkeep. Well, we actually had made cumulative upkeep for a tiny period of time evergreen, but it's complicated, and we really had moved away from upkeep costs, and so it just didn't make a lot of sense
Starting point is 00:13:28 to do cumulative upkeep. What else did we have? And, like, there just wasn't, there wasn't a lot in that, you know, there wasn't a lot of mechanics that were, you know, like, you started looking, like, well, you know, cumulative upkeep, I think cumulative upkeep and cantrips
Starting point is 00:13:46 were like two of the big things, and the one other thing was snow-covered lands. So we're like, well, we want to do the missing set, and we want something to be from the set, and like, okay, we can, maybe we can take some cards and make cycles out of them, maybe we can do throwbacks to individual cards,
Starting point is 00:14:02 but the only mechanic that seemed like maybe we could do something with was snow-covered lands. So snow-covered lands got brought back, not because it was a success, not because people loved it, but like, okay, I guess we could do snow-covered lands. So the first thing we figured out was,
Starting point is 00:14:18 okay, let's make a super type out of this. Like, that's how modern day we would do it. You know, or modern day, day i mean at the time and now it's how we do we make a super type so we first of all we made snow a super type so you can have snow car and then once we made snow a super type like okay well the next extension is well it's super type could go on other things if it goes on a land it could go on other things so we started putting it on other stuff um i think in coldtnap, we just put it on permanent. So there were snow creatures.
Starting point is 00:14:50 I think there's a snow artifact. I'm not sure if we had a snow enchantment. But we put it on some creatures. So for the first time, by the way, there now were other snow things. It wasn't just a treatment of land. Although we did have... The basic lands returned. Because we're like, okay, that's what people expected. We're doing Ice Age Part 3, so we'll bring the lands back.
Starting point is 00:15:14 Although they now are snow basic lands. And the other thing that we decided was, how else can we make use of snow-covered lands? And that's when we came up with the idea of, well, what if there was a snow cost? And I think at the time, we just used it for activation costs. I don't think Cold Snap had mana costs with it. It might have.
Starting point is 00:15:41 I mean, Call Time does. So, I mean, obviously we did later. But at the time, I don't, I think we just put in activation costs. But the idea was, if, I think, and once again, because snow was only on permanents, I think we
Starting point is 00:15:55 said that snow mana comes from any mana produced by a snow covered permanent. We would later change that to snow covered source when we get to call time. But anyway, the change that to snow covered source when we get to call time. But anyway, the idea of a snow covered sorry, of a snow symbol was
Starting point is 00:16:11 really interesting, I thought. And it was actually like, I thought that we sort of took something that had been not well received and put some spins on it to make it a much more enticing thing. I think Snow's a super type
Starting point is 00:16:26 was cool. I like some of the cards we made. We made a conscious effort to start making some good snow cards. For example, there's a Red Direct
Starting point is 00:16:35 damage spell in it. I'm blanking on the name. It's not Skull, but something like that. Anyway, that was very good. There actually were reasons when Cold Snap came out that in competitive play, people were playing snow-covered lands,
Starting point is 00:16:49 which very rarely happened when Ice Age. Maybe there was a little tiny bit, but very little. But all of a sudden, there was like a whole deck strategy that actually wanted to have snow-covered lands. So anyway, so it comes out in Cold Snap, and it gets better received. Cold Snap as a whole did not get that well received, though. Like I said, we had, I think design was like a month to two months.
Starting point is 00:17:14 Like normally, at the day, design would be like a year. We had a normal amount of development. So this is back during design development. But anyway, we made Cold Snap. It was not us at our best. I mean, there were things people liked about it. There were cards people liked. Not that there wasn't some cool stuff in it.
Starting point is 00:17:34 But we had experimented a bit. And anyway, when the dust settled, Cold Snap was not super highly considered. Okay, so we did the mechanic once in Legends, sort of to blob reception. We did it a second time on just a smattering of cards.
Starting point is 00:17:53 No one seemed to care. We brought it back, and we did some new stuff with it that we hadn't done before. But even then, the set that it came back in really didn't do particularly well. So you would think, that's it. back in really didn't do particularly well. So you would think, that's it. Snow is gone. But it's not.
Starting point is 00:18:13 So the lesson of the story today, by the way, is snow is the little mechanic that could. That every time you thought that snow was out, it gets back in. So the next story comes during Modern Horizons. So originally, we had some, I don't remember what it was, we had some dual end cycle that we thought was cool. There was some new, innovative dual ends.
Starting point is 00:18:35 And it was going to be a big part of the set. Like, oh, these really cool dual ends, they're new, they're splashy, they're cool. And then they ended up not working. So they got pulled.
Starting point is 00:18:46 And so there was a big void in the set that was trying to get filled. And one of the ideas that came forward was snow-covered. What if we made snow-covered dual lands? And sort of the thought process was, well, that doesn't mean anything. There's not enough snow cards. That doesn't mean enough without some more to it. Oh, another factor that came up was because we had made Cold Snap, there were a few cards in Cold Snap that were good enough that snow-covered land was showing up in some older formats. And because we hadn't made snow covered land since Cold Snap, there weren't a lot of snow-covered lands since Cold Snap, there
Starting point is 00:19:26 weren't a lot of snow-covered lands. So there was a desire for more snow-covered lands. So the idea was, well, if we made snow-covered dual lands, we could put in snow-covered lands. You know, maybe we make snow a thing in Modern Horizons. Modern Horizons, like, we were bringing back old mechanics. It didn't sort of have new mechanics. It had a lot of old mechanics. So snow seemed like the kind of thing that maybe we could bring back, and it would let us make the dual lands, and let us make basic lands, and we could make full art basic lands. It would be
Starting point is 00:19:54 exciting, because we knew people wanted, you know, um, actually, was there full art? Maybe I'm complaining. But anyway, it allowed us to make, um, to make new snow-covered lands that people could be excited by, that people would want. I think they were double. I think they were full-art lands, I think. Anyway, so it basically started as we were trying to fill a void.
Starting point is 00:20:16 And then once we started going down the path of snow-coveredness, it just kind of grew with time. And so, like, it started in the set as being a small thing it just ended up becoming a much bigger thing in the set the other thing that modern horizons did is modern horizons was aiming for modern right it had a power level a little bit higher than a normal standard set because it's it was trying to make cards viable for the modern format which is a higher powered format so not only did we make snow covered cards, but we made snow covered cards of a power level that made snow a little more attractive. And we probably made the opposite error we made in original Legends, where we made a
Starting point is 00:20:58 lot of reasons to play snow covered lands and not enough reasons not to play snow covered lands. So all of a sudden, in certain strategies like you want to play all snow covered lands because it's so powerful. And so the other interesting thing is, so Modern Horizons is like, look, we're riffing on things, we're playing to a much more enfranchised crowd. You know, like if you are playing Modern Horizons, there's a much higher chance you more enfranchised crowd. You know, like, if you were playing Modern Horizons, there's a much higher chance you're enfranchised,
Starting point is 00:21:28 you've been playing for longer, you're more familiar with Magic's past. So we really were able to dig deeper. So we're like, okay, this is a little more of a deeper cut, but we know Magic fans will know Star-Covered Lands and, you know, the more enfranchised people. And so anyway, we made it, and we didn't know how it would go over,
Starting point is 00:21:42 but we're like, you know, it's tapping into something, and fit the rest of the set and it just ended up being a, it filled the set in a way that complimented the other parts of the set. Okay, so Modern Horizons comes out and, oh, a little story I should tell. In between Cold Snap and Modern Horizons, I noticed on my blog some requests for more snow-covered stuff. Basically, I think what had happened was snow-covered,
Starting point is 00:22:12 because of some of the cards we made in Cold Snap, had got a little bit of a founding in some of the older formats, and players had some fondness for it, and time had gone by. We hadn't made it for a while while and so I just saw on my blog more and more people asking for hey you think you
Starting point is 00:22:30 ever been back snow-covered lands I even answered a question once interestingly where I said we ever bring back I go maybe but I'm skeptical we'd ever bring them back you know in, a standard legal set. I would eat those words, I guess. Anyway, so we bring them back. We're like, it's more a franchise audience. Anyway, they really loved them. Snow-covered land and snow-covered, you know, snow super type went over wonderfully.
Starting point is 00:22:57 It really went over well. Okay, so now let's get to call time. So when we were doing the vision design for call time, the idea for snow came up. We're like, oh, well, you know, if you're doing, you know, I mean, we're doing sort of, you know, Scandinavian sort of feel. We're doing Norse mythology. You kind of associate snow with that, right? So the idea came up of doing snow, but Modern Horizons hadn't happened yet. And so I'm like, well, we did in Legends, it went really badly. We did in Alliances, no one really noticed. We did in Cold Snap, and like, okay, a few cards did well. But, you know, none of the time we've done it has gone over that well. And I, yeah, I recognize there's a little bit of noise from
Starting point is 00:23:42 people who want it, but it's a really enfranchised crowd. Eh, maybe it doesn't make sense. But then it went to set design, and Modern Horizons came out. And all of a sudden, the question got asked again. It's like, should we have snow? And like, well, you know, people have been asking for snow, and snow went over really well in Modern Horizons. So set design said, okay, maybe we should have snow.
Starting point is 00:24:04 So snow got added toons. So set design said, okay, maybe we should have snow. So snow got added to call time in set design. And they looked a lot at what went on in Modern Horizons and looked at that as a marker to try to get a sense of where it was. And so we decided, okay,
Starting point is 00:24:19 let's bring it back. So this time it got put on Instants and Sorceries, which it hadn't before. So the snow symbol had now represent snow source rather than just a snow permanent. We put it in mana cost, which it hadn't been for just an activation cost. And we just sort of played around more.
Starting point is 00:24:40 Like, snow is what we call a marker in the sense that, hey, do you have snow? Are you a snow card? You know, we can refer to it, and so anyway, we brought it back in call time. It went over pretty well in call time, enough so that I think the next, like, if we went back to call time,
Starting point is 00:24:58 I assume there'd be snow. If we went to another world where snow is just iconically part of the world, like if I tell you we're going to such and such a place, you're like, oh, I expect snow there. Yeah, that's something we would consider. It's funny watching snow go from really an unbeloved thing
Starting point is 00:25:17 to something that people were championing, which is a good sign, by the way, that execution is really important. That you can take the best idea, like the coolest concept, and just execute it poorly. And the players will be sort of sour to it. But you execute it right, and you get a lot more response. And so, snow is one of those stories. Snow is the Rags to Rich riches story where it started out poor.
Starting point is 00:25:48 And the funniest thing to me when I tell the story is each time that it came back early on, it really was not because we wanted snow, but kind of like, well, I guess we need snow. It really was kind of a begrudging I guess. And even in modern horizons, like it wasn't there from the beginning. We just kind of got ourselves in a bind, and it ended up being something that we were trying out. And then it snowballed, ironically, and became something and fulfilled more. And the more we've used it, the more sets that have had it, the more fun things we've found with it, the more places we've sort of made organic things.
Starting point is 00:26:27 Now it's made a new problem. So let's talk about that. I'm almost done, but anti-traffic today. So you're getting your full 30 minutes today, guys. So the problem we've run into, and this is one of the reasons we are careful with supertypes, is snow is what I call a flavor-based supertype, right? It represents this flavor of something. Well, guess what? We
Starting point is 00:26:49 do make cold things from time to time. And when we make cold things, one of the questions that pops up is, okay, is this supposed to be snow? Like, flavor-wise, it's snow. But one of our rules is sort of, well, we only make things snow in a set where it matters.
Starting point is 00:27:06 We don't sort of put markers on things if the set the marker is in doesn't care about the marker. Now, there's big debate about that. As we get into more of an eternal world where people are playing older formats, especially Commander, like, oh, well, this snow-covered thing, sorry, this thing flavorfully with snow on it, being snow is something that would matter, you know, looking back. Now, in Modern Horizons sets, I think they just put snow on it. That's a set that sort of has the rule in Modern Horizons is, hey, if it's an old magic thing, like, we don't do new things,
Starting point is 00:27:43 but if it references an old magic thing, sure. So Modern Horizons sort of has the freedom to do that. Premiere sets don't quite have that freedom. We're definitely playing around now a little more with what can be deciduous. But I will admit that Snow still has that sort of like, there's an upcoming set, I can't tell you which set, but there's an upcoming set that definitely has some things in it that were flavored as snow. And I raised the question. I said, hey, do we want this to be snow?
Starting point is 00:28:11 Like, this, like, you know, there are things that reference snow. And it's kind of fun to have things that are snow. And while nothing in the set cares about it, this set is flavorfully that. Do we want to consider it? And there's a little discussion in the set cares about it this sit is flavorfully that do we want to consider it and there's a little discussion in the end like well we don't want to add words for cards that are not relevant there's nothing in the set that cares about it and if we sort of have trained people that if you see snow in a set that means snow matters and um so we decided against it but i i'll be honest i'm i'm not sure that was the right call. I'm not sure if we made the right call there.
Starting point is 00:28:46 Maybe we're supposed to be more willing to do that. One of the things that, and I've talked about this on my blog, is if we had magic to do all over again, I don't know if we would take some of the elemental elements, like fire, like water, would those, if that was a trait we could put on cards, and I guess in super type, meaning that you could have a fire deck,
Starting point is 00:29:13 which all your fire things would play together, or a water deck. Like, is that something that would be cool? And is that something worth the words? Now, I'm not sure. I don't know whether it's worth the words or not. It is a cool thing. It is kind of neat that, like, I'm a fire mage and I interact with fire things,
Starting point is 00:29:28 or that Chandra can, you know, look at the top cards and take a fire thing or something. There's some flavor there. But one of the things we're always looking at is, like, there's infinite flavor you could do by putting words on cards. At what point are there too many words on cards in which, you know, yeah, this word makes it more backward compatible with this one mechanic, but, you know, on some level, there's lots of things you could do, and where do you overburden? I mean, there is extremes.
Starting point is 00:29:54 I think where you never do it is wrong, but where you always do it is probably also wrong. So, trying to figure that out. But anyway, guys, that is the story of Snow, the little mechanic or the little supertype that could. Now, I guess since I have a few minutes here before I reach my house, the question is, will we see snow again? What are the chances of seeing snow again? Now, when I was asked in between Cold Snap and Modern Horizons,
Starting point is 00:30:19 when I say skeptical, I was honestly skeptical. I really did not think we were going to do snow again. And now that we've played it out, now that it's been modern horizons, it's been in call time, I think we're much more up. I do think snow will return. A, I do think one day we'll go back to call time. And I have trouble believing we'll go to call time and not have snow. I mean, maybe we visit.
Starting point is 00:30:44 I mean, not all the realms in Kaldheim have snow, so maybe we visit a non-snow realm or something. But I do think there's expectation for that. Probably we meet it. And I think if we did a brand new world where snow was an organic part of what the world was, off the top of my head, I don't know what that is. But if we made such a thing, I do think snow is on the table.
Starting point is 00:31:04 Like, when we were asking, do we want to do snow in vision design for call time? The thought was, oh, snow is kind of, there's like a net negative to snow. And I think now it's sort of, there's a, uh, a net positive that people generally think positively of it. I mean, I, I still would go back to my time machine and make the basic lens not basic, but, um, okay. I wouldn't actually do that because I wouldn't change time. I do believe that if we
Starting point is 00:31:27 had to do it again, I would do that. But other than that, I've grown to like snow. I think there's fun stuff with snow. I think there's some cool, flavorful things that go on there. And I think as we lean, like, one of the things that's interesting to me as I age as a designer, as I become, you know, as I
Starting point is 00:31:43 do this job more and more, it's funny. I'm sort of going back full circle to like I started this job as a guy who was formerly a writer. And like words matter, words matter, words matter. And then I'm sort of coming back to like, wow, like I really one of my big things now in design is i want the right words on the cards i want evocative words on the cards so a lot of modern design is how do we get those evocative words on the card such that what you want to see the literally the words you want to see to convey you want to convey are there and so um that makes me i think a little more receptive to snow anyway that's so a little mindset okay guys I can see my driveway here
Starting point is 00:32:26 so I hope you guys enjoyed a rare drive from work it is possible by the way now that I drive to work less just because I'm working more at home that I might have more drive from works I mean I drive from work at home so at least drive from work I'm driving
Starting point is 00:32:42 which is more in the context of the whole thing. But anyway, guys, I'm now at home. So we all know what that means. That means instead of talking magic, I'm, I guess, thinking magic because I'm not making magic because I'm at home.
Starting point is 00:32:53 But I'm at least not talking magic. So anyway, guys, I hope you guys enjoyed today and I'll talk to you next time. Bye-bye.

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