Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #994: Bonus Sheets
Episode Date: December 16, 2022In this episode, I talk about the history of bonus sheets from Time Spiral to The Brother's War. ...
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I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work.
Okay, today is all about what we in R&D refer to as bonus sheets.
I'm not sure we use that term externally, so let me explain what a bonus sheet is, and then I will go into detail.
So, a bonus sheet is usually a slot in a booster that comes from a whole separate sheet, which I'll
get to in a second. Usually they're reprints. They're not always. I'll walk through it. But
the idea is, let me get into detail of how a booster works and I'll sort of explain the
technicality of what a bone sheet is. Okay. So when we make a booster, here's how it works.
Okay, so when we make a booster, here's how it works.
We print magic on large sheets, 11 by 11, sometimes 10 by 11, 10 by 10.
There's different sizes.
And the idea is we print them in the giant sheets, then we chop them up into their normal-sized cards.
And then they have what they call hoppers.
So what a hopper is, imagine taking a whole bunch of cards and stacking them inside this sort of metal chute that lets them out one at a time.
Now, it's also possible the chute could let out more than one at a time.
So, for example, let's say you're building a booster pack.
A normal magic booster pack would have one common hopper, one uncommon hopper, and one rare hopper.
And then probably a land hopper and an add card slash token sheet hopper.
So the idea is, okay, how many commons do I need?
You know, I don't know, ten commons.
How many uncommons do I need? Three uncommons.
How many rares slash mythics do I need? One.
And note, the way that rares and mythic rares are figured out is they're cut on the sheet such that the rarity is correct.
That the one in eight or whatever the ratio is, is there.
It's just built into the sheet.
Sometimes, for example, in the past,
we've had sets small enough that the common and uncommons
were on a singular sheet and they were printed to hit the right rarity.
Attractions and unfanity, for example, the commons and uncommons are a single sheet of the attractions. It's a common thing for us to do. But anyway, the way it works is
we're going to make a sheet, we're going to chop it up, we're going to put it in a hopper,
and then we can tell the machine how many cards from the hopper to release.
how many cards from the hopper to release.
And that's how you build a booster pack, right?
But sometimes we want to have an extra sheet or a bonus sheet, if you will.
And that bonus sheet,
from an R&D standpoint, it can be anything.
Technically what it means is
there is something extra getting added to the booster.
Usually it's a slot.
One of the things you can do is we can make complex drops,
meaning we can say, hey, every other pack dropped four from this and none from this,
and then every other pack dropped three from this and one from that.
this and then every other pack drop, you know, three from this and one from that. Like you can,
you can program things such that not every pack in a row has the exact same drop sequence.
Anyway, the reason I bring this up is we have the ability to, if we want to,
add in an extra sheet to a set. So the place where this started was Time Spiral.
Now, I want to note, I did an entire podcast on the three time-shifted sheets, which as you'll find out today, bonus sheets and time-shifted sheets are not 100% overlap, but I will get
to that in a second.
So today, I'm more talking about the technicalness of how the idea came from, how we execute
on it, how we use it.
If you want to get in the nitty gritty of how exactly we built those sheets, I have
a whole podcast on that.
So if you want to go look like how exactly we built the time spiral sheet, like how we
did it, there's some story there.
I did a podcast on it.
You can go listen to that.
Today's a little bit more about how we use bonus sheets.
So the focus is a little bit different.
Okay.
So we're working on Time Spiral.
And the Time Spiral block had a past, present, future theme.
And so the first set was about the past.
And so I came up with this idea that I thought was pretty cool.
That what if every once in a while a card from the past showed up so I came up with this idea that I thought was pretty cool that what if every once
in a while, a card from the past
showed up in your booster pack?
Now, just remember, Time Spiral
about, I don't know, two and a half years,
three years before Time Spiral, 8th edition
came out, and it changed the frames
of the cards.
So for those who don't know the history of the frames,
Magic had basically a particular
frame for a good, the early chunk of its life.
When 8th edition came out, it changed to what we now refer to as the 8th edition frame.
And then when Magic 2010 came out, it changed to the Magic 2010 frame.
The Magic 2010 frame is not, I mean, it is different from the 8th edition frame,
but in more subtle ways.
Probably the biggest difference is the black bar at the bottom that has the information now for the printers.
But most of the change from 8th edition to
Magic 2010 was some functional, we need it for the printer sort of stuff.
The change from original Magic to
8th edition was a much, much bigger change. It changed the general look of it,
how the cards were laid out.
Artifacts changed from brown to silver.
It's a much
starker change.
So the idea was,
well, what if in your pack
cards in the old frame,
old cards, cards that naturally
when printed were in the old frame,
so things that were at least over two, two and a half years old,
showed up in the booster.
And I think when I first pitched it,
I was concerned that it sounded a little out there.
So I remember I pitched it as every once in a while would happen.
And everybody got so on board with it so quickly that it very soon became, how about just every pack has one?
And one of the things we've learned, by the way,
is there's a really strong power to once per pack.
And the reason for that is,
if I tell you that a pack might do something,
you're like, oh, okay,
and maybe you're excited that the possibility exists.
But when I tell you it does do something,
that's very powerful.
We don't make it so every magic set
has a guaranteed thing in it,
but we do it a lot, and we've been doing it more,
and we'll continue to do it more,
just because it's a very compelling sales message.
Oh, well, this thing you want, it's there.
Every pack has one.
It's funny, I think that goes back to Unglued, of all things.
Unglued decided that it was going to do the full art land,
and we just decided to put one per pack
we thought people would like them
and we wanted people to get plenty of them
and so the idea was
and one of the exciting things about Unglued was
you knew you got a full art land
that was an absolute guarantee
and that I think really helped communicate to us
that like there's a lot of power in having a guarantee
but anyway
usually when I'm talking about bonus sheets,
usually, and I'll get to some examples here,
the number one way we use bonus sheets
is that they show up once per pack
and they define the set that they're in.
For example, in Time Spiral,
what we did is we had 121 time-shifted cards that were cards from the past.
Aaron Forsythe was in charge of this sheet.
And the idea was it was a whole variety of cards.
I think in the end, we decided that they were going to be legal and standard.
So that limited it.
Some of the early versions of the list were a little crazier because originally we were like,
oh, these aren't getting added to standard.
Interestingly, we've come around now.
Our bonus sheets now just add to whatever format they're already legal in.
They don't add to standard.
But at the time, it was the very first time we'd ever done it.
So we decided that it might be confusing to people.
Since then, I don't know, we've done a lot more stuff that's...
Our audience is able to handle that.
So we changed our mind on that.
But anyway, Time Spiral had 121 cards from the past.
Now, the interesting thing is the philosophy we had in that very first bonus sheet was
this idea that who knows what could happen.
And we purposely had very high variance.
You could get some really, really exciting cards, or you could get a Squire.
So Squire was one and a white for a one-two.
That's it.
There was even on the sheet,
there was Oratog was on the sheet,
which was one-two, sorry,
was one and a W for a one-two white creature,
like Squire,
except you could just sacrifice Enchantment
and give it plus two, plus two.
So it was like Squire,
but just better than Squire mostly.
I mean, different creature types.
But, and. I mean, different creature types, but...
And so, the...
The idea
of the sheet back then was
we wanted to do a sampling,
and some of the shock value
of what showed up was part of it.
I think
we knew that you were going to play with it
in Limited, and we definitely thought about that.
And there were definitely, I think, there were definitely some cards on the sheet that were
like oh this will play well in limited um but really that first time shifted sheet was more
about showing off the history of magic it was more of a uh a showy centerpiece of the set of
um i mean we did think about, we did think about what people
might want to play in constructed.
I mean, we did, even from the very first bonus sheet, we were thinking like, oh, this will
be exciting to people.
But I think we were a little, we used it more for novelty on some level than we showed up.
I mean, being, be aware, when we introduced it, it wasn't something like, we weren't saying,
oh, this is the thing we're going to do from now on on some occasion. It was
here's a thing specifically for this set.
And
the interesting thing is when we first came up with the time shifter
sheet, the original idea was it was only
going to be in time spiral. The idea
was cars from the past, this is the set about the past,
okay, well that's going to be in that set.
So anyway,
we made it, oh, we also
put a different expansion symbol
not expansion symbol a different rarity
color on they were purple
I think we've come around to like
trying to figure out what rarity they are
where they came from to give people some sense
of how rare they are from you know
like oh this was a rare so we marked it a rare
we don't
I don't think we do the unified
rarity symbol anymore anyway
rarity color.
Um, but anyway, the set came out, it was a brand new thing.
It was pretty exciting to people.
It went over very well.
So much so, or sorry, I had so much hope for it.
I guess this, this, this is before it came out, but I, I was very optimistic about it.
Um, so Time Spiral was my second year, full year of being in charge, being head designer.
I had become head designer like in the middle of Champions of Kamigawa, but it was like,
it was already in progression. I mean, I helped finish it, but the vision of that set was not mine.
Ravnica, which was the next set, was the first set that I kind of drove the vision of, and Time
Spiral was the second. And I was getting really, really into, like,
block planning and stuff like that,
so that's why the past, present, future.
Anyway, when we started working on Planar Chaos,
it was the present set, which is a complicated idea.
So I came up with the idea,
it's the alternate reality present.
That it's, and because I saw the time shifter sheet
in the bonus sheet in Time Spiral,
I was like, wow, I want to have that.
So the idea I came up with for Planet of Chaos
was because it was alternate reality,
we took a bunch of cards
that were magic cards from the past
and we did them again with new flavor
and shifted to a different color.
Damnation is probably the most famous of them.
So we took Wrath of God, a pretty famous card
from Alpha, and we made a black version
because black can do that. So we made a black
version we call Damnation.
And the art was made to be
a riff off Wrath of God.
We very much
we sort of
the idea of the time-shifted sheet was,
it was us having fun with the idea of, what if in this alternate reality,
things you knew were slightly different, and that slightly different were,
A, they were a different color, and B, the creative matched the color,
so they had a different creative.
Sarah wasn't an angel, she was a sphinx, and she was in blue.
the color, so they had a different creative.
Sarah wasn't an angel. She was a sphinx and she was in blue.
You know, so
and that
like Time Spiral, that was
done as a bonus sheet, meaning that
when you open up Planar Chaos packs,
you could open up some number
of cards. I think the thing we did in
Planar Chaos, I'm trying to remember this exactly, is
I think we allowed
I don't know
whether it was one per pack or whether there was, my memory was it was higher than one per pack,
that you got more than one per pack, but I think it was a locked number, like three per pack or
something. I think it was a locked number. Anyway, then we get to FutureSight. So FutureSight,
interestingly, so today's topic is bonus sheets. Future Sight was not a bonus sheet.
So let me explain.
So rather, I mean, so we did the same thing we did in the first two sets,
means we had time-shifted cards, meaning that each of the cards had a different frame.
The Time Thrower cards had an original, you know, pre-8th edition frame.
The cards in Planar Chaos,
we came up with this alternate reality frame,
which was kind of a mix between
original Magic and 8th edition frames.
They were sort of halfway in between.
And then for the future site,
we made a futuristic chain,
where we changed how things were done
and where the mana cost was,
and we made it different.
And so that was a time-shifted card,
but it wasn't technically a bonus sheet card, because the way that was a time-shifted card, but it wasn't technically a bonus sheet card
because the way we did the time-shifted cards in Future Sight
is I think we put them on the same sheets.
So the rare sheet had normal cards and time-shifted cards.
And what that meant was when you opened a pack, two things.
One is when you opened up a Time Spiral or a Planar Chaos pack,
you were guaranteed
to get whatever
the bonus sheet,
how many slats
the bonus sheet had.
It was one in Time Spiral.
I'm not sure if it was
one or more than one
in Planar Chaos.
But you always got one.
And if that sheet had,
you got a rare,
because there were rares
on that sheet,
you'd get two rares.
You'd get your normal rare
and your bonus sheet rare.
Not all bonus sheet cards are rare, so you didn't always get two rares. You can get your normal rare and your bonus sheet rare. Not all bonus sheet cards are rare,
so you didn't always get two rares.
But in Future Sight, we put the time shifter cards
on the same sheet.
So the rare sheet had the time shifter cards on it.
The uncommon sheet had the time shifter cards on it.
So what that meant was when you opened up a pack,
you had a variety.
How many time shifter cards?
I think you could theoretically get
zero, although I believe it was very, very
hard to get zero. I think you had to get, you
tended to get one or two,
barring weirdness.
But you could get as high as, I don't
remember how many, ten? I mean, you could
get a whole bunch.
And what that meant
was you never got,
your rare was your rare slot.
It might be normal.
It might be time shifted,
but you couldn't get a normal rare
and a time shifted rare.
So technically speaking,
FutureSight did not have a bonus sheet
in how I'm defining bonus sheets today,
meaning that it lives separately on its own sheet
and has its own slot.
That is not what happened in FutureSight.
Okay, so then
Time's Pro Block ended.
In general,
the time shift of cards
went over well.
People liked them.
They were kind of cool.
But what happened was,
I think we tweeted bonus sheets
like, okay, here's a cool thing.
And it kind of just,
you know, we went on
and did other things.
But then came Battle for Zendikar.
We were trying to come up with some cool tweak for Battle for Zendikar.
For some reason, I don't know, people were worried internally
that people would be excited about Zendikar, so some reason, I don't know, people were worried internally that people would be excited
to put Zendikar, so we decided
to do a promotion
and maybe I'm being
harsh on Battle for Zendikar.
I think in general they just came up with a neat idea
which is, what if we took the bonus
sheet, but instead of
dropping one per pack,
we dropped one per,
I don't know what it was, per case, per box? Might have been one per pack, we dropped one per, I don't know what it was, per case, per box?
Might have been one per box,
or roughly one per box,
maybe 1.5 boxes.
I don't know the drop rate.
But the idea was,
let's take really famous old reprints
that people would be very excited to get.
So the first one was in Battle for Zendikar,
and they were called Zendikar Expeditions.
The whole thing was called the Masterpiece Series, but the ones in Zend and they were called Zendikar Expeditions. The whole thing was called the Masterpiece
series, but the ones in Zendikar
were called Zendikar Expeditions.
They were lands, and there's a lot
of exciting lands.
You know, lands are, a lot of deck
needs dual lands and stuff, so there's a lot of
cool lands. We put them in a special Zendikar
frame. I think we tried to flavor
them as if they were on Zendikar,
and the idea was, hey,
whenever you open up Battle
for Zendikar, you could get a
fetch land. You could get these
invocations, expeditions
that were really exciting,
but they were infrequent.
And the idea was
at your pre-release, hey, a few people
would open them, but not a lot.
And you yourself might never open one.
I guess it was less than a box.
If you bought a box, I'm not sure you necessarily saw one.
Anyway, it happened.
It was infrequent.
If you bought enough cards, usually eventually you found one.
But not everybody who opened cards got one.
And some people got more than one if they got super lucky.
Okay, then a year later in Kaladesh, we did Kaladesh Inventions.
Those were artifacts.
The same idea.
They were set in Mirrodin.
Not Mirrodin.
They were set on Kaladesh.
And they had, like, filigree in the frame,
that special frame.
And they looked really cool.
And anyway, we did the same thing.
They released at a very low rarity.
And then in Amonkhet, we did the same thing. They released at a very low rarity, and then in Amonkhet, we did invocations,
and those, they were in both Amonkhet and Hour of Devastation.
In Amonkhet, they were,
oh, and this is the same for,
the Zendikar expeditions were in both Battle for Zendikar and Oath of the Gatewatch,
and the Kaladesh Inventions were in Kaladesh and Aether Revolt.
They were in the whole block,
although at the time,
these were two-set blocks.
So Amonkhet and Hour of Devastation had them.
There were different cards between them.
We did change cards, I think,
between the two sets,
but kept to the theme.
Amonkhet got a little trickier.
They were sort of like the gods
and influence of the gods,
and then they were,
so they were more spells, and then they got meaner for Hour of Devastation. They were more of like the gods and influence of the gods. And then they were, so they were more spells.
And then they got meaner for hour of devastation.
They were more destructive spells.
But that theme was a lot fuzzier.
And we got a lot of feedback from the audience that, like, it just,
A, it was hard for us to make themes where we had enough cards.
And such that the theme matched the world.
Like, we had planned to do Ixalan
Explorations, which was going to be
all cards that searched or fetched the library.
Cards that somehow interacted with the library
in some way. Either they looked at the top of it,
or you tutored a card from it.
But in some way
interacted with the library. And what we
realized was, our themes
were getting, I mean, we were only a couple in
and our themes were getting sketchy
and it didn't necessarily
match the theme of the set
so cleanly.
And the audience,
the feedback we were getting
from the audience was
when we first did them
in Zendikar,
the Zendikar expeditions,
people were very, very excited.
But soon, A,
our themes weren't quite as exciting
as lands, which are super exciting.
And I know, like, with the Amonkhet invocations, we did something weird.
Like, the names were in sort of this hieroglyphics thing.
If you look really closely, were the letters, but at first glance, it didn't seem like the letters.
And those were the, I don't know, people complained about those,
and anyway, we, I think
we were trying some stuff, and
the audience's response was sort of
it didn't quite have
the impact we wanted.
And so we retired
the Masterpiece series.
So anyway,
our story continues,
several years later
so we made a set called
Strixhaven
so Strixhaven was a
top-down set playing on
the magical school trope
and
it had a theme
it had an enemy theme
and it had a theme of caring about artifacts
I'm sorry, caring about instants and sorceries.
We used
instants and sorceries as
small themes for like Red and Blue and stuff like that.
But we really hadn't done it as a major theme
for our set. Strixhaven seemed
like the right place. It was a school, you were learning.
So we decided that
we could represent teachings and stuff.
And so
we made it about instants and sorceries.
So Yanni Skolnick was the set design lead,
the lead set designer.
And he came up with the idea of
what if every booster pack had
an instant or sorcery from the past?
So he came up with the idea
of what we call the mystical archive.
And so the idea was that they would be
instants and sorceries that
we think people play a lot not necessarily super rare things there were common things as well
um but things that you know like i think counter spell was one of them they were they were spells
that saw play in different formats that we thought players would be excited by. And then it was done in a really cool sort of new
art style.
We had started doing booster fun in
Throne of Eldraine. And so the idea was,
what if we do this, like, so it's a bonus sheet.
It's an instant sorceries,
but it has a really special look
to it. So the idea is, you know,
hey, I play some of these spells in my
decks. I might love to have these.
And we did two versions, by the way.
We did the normal version,
which had its own sort of look to it.
And then we did a Japanese,
it was Japanese artist,
a Japanese inspired version.
And so the idea was, is like,
oh, and the other thing was,
it was woven into how the set was made.
It wasn't just an afterthought.
I mean, I know in Time Spiral,
we've thought about it.
It wasn't like we ignored the fact that they had something to do with Limited.
But I think it was less a factor where I know Yanni spent a lot of time.
I mean, he wanted to pick things that were exciting,
but he also wanted to pick things that made sense in play.
Now, Instants and Sorcerers were the theme of the set.
So, you know, there's a lot of synergy.
Like, if you were ever going to play Instants and Sorcerers, this was a set where you'd probably play a higher amount than any other set,
just because it mattered more, and the set was set up to let you do that more.
So anyway, Yanni really wove it in and made it part of the play experience.
They meant something for Constructed. You were excited to open them and increase the experience of opening them. But it also played into the limited play.
Also, as I said a little bit earlier in this podcast, the decision was made on this bonus
sheet, and this was true of the masterpieces as well, that being there didn't mean it got entered into standard.
All the time-shifter sheets were standard legal cards.
And I should note, by the way, that in Planar Chaos and in Future Sight,
all the time-shifter cards were brand new cards.
Here, so the time-shifter sheet in Time Spiral and everything else I'm talking about,
I think was mostly reprints.
Every once in a blue moon,
we do a tease from a future set
where the thing hasn't come out yet, I guess.
We've done one or two of those.
But they were, for all intents and purposes,
basically reprints.
Okay, and then, flash forward, I don't know,
a year and a half, two years,
Yanni's working on another set,
The Brothers War.
And Yanni says, again,
I have a set that has a theme
that seems like it'd make an awesome,
an awesome bonus sheet.
And that theme was artifacts.
So we were,
The Brothers War is a war
between Urza and Mishra
who are fighting with mighty artifacts
dug up from the past.
And so the idea of digging up old artifacts
was like thematically built into it.
The set had an earth and prototype.
And it was all about artifacts.
And like thematically, the story is about digging up old artifacts.
That's what an earth is in the set.
So it was kind of neat to say, what if we brought back artifacts?
And then the shtick to this one was we put them in the old frame.
Remember, the old artifact frame was brown, not silver.
And so it just looks very different. And so we took a lot
of artifacts that are popular artifacts
that people like, and we
put them in the old frame
so that people could have access to them.
And in addition to that, we did
another version of
them we call the schematic versions.
And the schematics look like if
the wizard was drawing plans to make
that artifact. And so it has
this sort of like sketchbook quality to it.
There also are
I believe numbered ones.
I think it's 500.
I'm not 100% sure.
But the idea is in collector boosters
there's a limited
number of them with rainbow foil I believe.
And you can only get them in the collector boosters
so the idea is I think they're numbered
and that there's only
I think there's only 500 of them
but anyway so once again
Yanni worked it in it's part of limited
these cards
they're one in every pack
they have a special frame so you can identify
them
another interesting thing about the bonus sheet that we've started to do and you'll notice they have a special frame so you can identify them. Oh that's another
interesting thing about the bonus sheet that we've started to do and you'll
notice the the through line here is we tend to put different frames on them
meaning we want you to know they're there. Oh in Time Spiral they're the old
card frame. In Planar Chaos they're this alternate. Future Side which isn't
technically a bonus sheet but still different card frame
in all of the
Masterpiece series
they had a new
unique frame
Mystical Archive
new frame
Brothers War
retro frame
you know
we really are making it
such that when you
open it up in the pack
it's drawing attention
to itself
that the idea of having
a bonus card
isn't being subtle
it's being pretty
blunt and in your face.
Because we want you to be excited by, hey, there's this separate thing that we sort of are giving you at some level, depending on which version we did.
Okay, so I'm almost to work.
So let me talk a little bit about the future of bonus sheets.
I know when we made them in Time Spiral, I was really, really excited for them.
I thought they were a very innovative thing.
And I'll be honest,
when we made Masterpieces,
I was kind of sad
because they just didn't show up that much.
You know, like, as I said earlier,
the sort of predictability of seeing things
in one per pack
was one of the things I thought was lovable
about the time-shifted stuff.
So when Mystic Archive came back,
I was very excited when I hear about Brothers War.
I will tell you that there are more bonus sheets in the future.
I think one of the things we've realized is
one of the challenges living in an eternal world
I did a whole podcast on that
is there are more desires for reprints than there have been in the past
just because people are playing decks that actually play with those cards
and so we're trying to figure out
how best to get reprints in people's hands
and bonus sheets are a really fun way to do it
because they are very organic to what the set is.
They really add something extra to the set
in a way that's exciting,
that makes people eager to have the set.
So Aaron Forsythe laid down some rules
about our bonus sheets.
So one is we need to be careful with pacing meaning while bonus sheets are a tool in our toolbox
I guess a tool in our toolbox
it's an arrow in our quiver
it's something we should use when it makes sense
it's not something we're going to use all the time
it's something we're going to use all the time. It's something we're going to use when it
makes sense.
Aaron's big thing is
he wants to make sure that when we do a bonus sheet
that it is
organic
to the set it is in.
Oh, Mystical Archives makes
perfect sense in
Strixhaven.
You know, the idea that this is the deposit of all the knowledge of the spells in the multiverse
was a really cool thing that built up the world.
It really added to what the set was and reinforced the theme.
Likewise, The Brothers War was about the brothers digging up ancient artifacts and fighting with them.
Oh, wow, you couldn't get more on theme for a bonus sheet with artifacts from the past.
That's right there.
So a big question about, or a big thing about bonus sheets is,
Aaron really said, look, if we're going to do bonus sheets,
it needs to be because the bonus sheet is adding value
and it is doing something that is enhancing what's in.
The idea of just throwing random cards in a random set.
That's not what we want.
We want the bonus sheets to be something that is a tool that enhances what we're doing.
But I am excited.
And there's a lot of fun things that you can do with bonus sheets.
And like I said, the idea of being able to play around with frame and booster fun and art and all that is something that's definitely exciting.
Oh, I didn't want to mention that.
So the thing that happened in Time Spiral was we just reprinted the cards as they once had been.
I think we retemplated them, but they were in the old frame.
But they were all the old art.
Now, in Planar Chaos, and Teacher's Day if you want to count it, they were brand new cards. They had brand old art. Now, in Planar Chaos, and teachers, if you want to count it,
they were brand new cards, they had brand new art.
So in some ways,
although I do want to point out that Planar Chaos points out that it is possible
to do a bonus sheet with new cards.
Bonus sheets aren't inherently a tool
that has to be used for reprints.
If they're a really good tool for reprints,
I will say when we use them,
I think reprints are the most common way we use them.
But the point I want to point out,
and Planet of Chaos makes this point,
there are ways to do bonus sheets with new cards.
That is something that you can do.
Now, when we got to the masterpieces,
we did brand new art,
because they were showing up so infrequently.
But that really sort of set the bar to say,
hey, can we do new art? Mystical Archive does new art because they were showing up so infrequently. But that really sort of set the bar to say, hey, can we do new art?
Mystical Archive does new art.
In the Brothers War,
we sort of split the difference.
We redid the old art because a lot
of people wanted that existing art
that they knew in retro frames.
And then we did a secondary thing where
we did a new art with a schematic. So we sort of
split the difference where it was
both old art and new art.
And so, like bonus sheets,
I think it depends on how the bonus sheet's being used,
why it's being used.
I do think that we like having alternate frames
when they make sense.
I do think we like having new art when it makes sense.
And because we're trying to make bonus sheets something,
like we want to make bonus sheets exciting,
I do think you'll see more of them
with new frames and with new art.
I do think as we move forward,
that's something, I mean,
I'm not saying we'll never have old art.
Sometimes with like the retro frame,
you want the old art.
So I'm not, there will be a mix.
But anyway, I,
one of the things that's really interesting about magic
and sort of design technology is you design something for the purpose of what it's in.
The reason I made the original bonus sheet in Timesprout, where I came up with the idea in the first place, was not, oh, we should make a bonus sheet.
It was, wouldn't it be neat if past cards mysteriously showed up in packs?
That was my inspiration.
I didn't, when I came up with it, it wasn't even, it wasn't even like I said, like, once we figured out how to do it, we had to do it with a bonus sheet.
But the idea of it was that I didn't come up with bonus sheets, really.
I came up with this neat idea, and then the way to execute it turned out to be bonus sheets.
And then once we had that tool in our toolbox, get my metaphor right,
then that's something we were able
to look at in other places.
And I can say, like I said, it
is a valuable tool.
I think
like double-faced cards, it's definitely one of those
things that we made, it was kind of splashy
at first, and we slowly dipped our toe
into it, and the more we
dipped our toe, the more we found there's a lot of interesting
executions, and so
I'm excited for the future of bonus
sheets. There is
a cool stuff coming your way.
So I can't tell you when or where or how.
I can't tell you there are more bonus sheets coming.
But anyway, I hope you enjoyed
today's talk all about bonus sheets and all the cool
things that bonus sheets can do,
and how we did them, and sort of why they came about. about but i'm now at wizards so we all know what that means
means this is my end of drive this is the end of my drive to work so instead of talking magic
it's time for me to be making magic i'll see you guys next time bye