Boy, Odric, Lunarch Marshal sure can grant a lot of abilities! Here’s a look at the original design. We shaved a number of keywords after development raised concerns about “rules confusion”, “tournament time limits”, “shuffling nightmares”, and “how on earth would you even print this”. Take a look for yourself if you want to really flip out!
When Magic was first released in 1993 it was met with critical acclaim. The idea of taking these myths and fantasy tropes and reducing them to a collectible item, and a populist one at that, spoke to the spirit of the times. They were addicting, ironic, and above all consumable; perfect for the anger and energy of a post-Cold War, globalized world. With the success of the first set, Alpha, and the later Warholian reproductions Beta and Unlimited, the public wondered what milieu Garfield would tackle next. Arabian Nights dealt with ideas of appropriation in a U.S. becoming more embroiled in Middle Eastern conflicts (with cards like the masterpiece Juzám Djinn which pokes subtle fun at the Iran-Contra Scandal) while The Dark confronted environmental issues in a neo-gothic aesthetic (Ashes to Ashes, Brainwash, Marsh Gas).
While Magic has always been very socially conscious with its parallels, such as New Phyrexia as a parable of gentrification or Onslaught Block as a mirror of how we perpetuate genocide, I think it has become too brazen, even over-the-top, in its political statements. Gone is the subtlety of cards like Goblin Balloon Brigade. Instead we are left with shlock like Return to the Ranks. We get it. 9/11 happened. I’d like to take a moment to hearken back to a time when Magic was designed, not just manufactured, and focus on a set, half-finished yet full of promise. Magic: Motherland.
While many of you know that Richard (I can call him that) holds a PhD in Mathematics, few know that his undergrad was in Russian literature. You can see traces of the writings of Dostoyevsky and Gogol in his work, but it was in Motherland that he let himself indulge. Much as Arabian Nights was based on the titular collection, Motherland draws from the strongest and most enduring texts from the other side of the Curtain. And each card is a masterpiece. Take for example this card:
A chaotic mess from art to text box, Bureaucracy is wholly itself. Whose upkeep? Doesn’t untap ever? The life and/or(!) mana requirement further obfuscate this card, though it’s clear that it slows the game down. Also notice the counters, which become a recurring theme in the set.
Or take the following:
Taken from Chekhov’s play of the same name, Sea Gull is what the character Nina is. Empty. Pointless. Uninteresting. Limited fodder. The kind of thing that could be reprinted in 9th Edition and then forgotten about. Sea Gull is Quag Sickness is Ke$ha is Coke Zero. Art as forgettable as the card itself. A piece of cardboard to throw away. This is by no means the only card inspired by Chekhov’s work:
The story implicit in this card is palpable. Vanya is pained but powerless to do anything about that pain. And his aggressive costing as a 2/2 for 1G encourages combat. A being who only lives by the violence he inflicts, but is too cowardly to inflict it on himself. There is this card in each of us. Complimented by its wonderful art, grotesque and confronting so that we don’t have to confront ourselves.
Of course Gogol and his work make an appearance. Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin is a poem. Much like Uncle Vanya, so much is carried in so little text. The detail of not specifying “counter” in the second line causes us to think of the overcoats that we attempt to put on ourselves day in and day out. A marked improvement over its predecessor Pearled Unicorn, except for the art which Richard’s father stood for. Richard’s work was by no means limited to the Russians; Czech and Polish literature provided a fertile ground for ideas to take root:
I see a lot of parallels between the work of Richard and Franz Kafka; the shuffling, the obsession with paper and numbers, the competitiveness over small shifts in prestige. Wizards of the Coast itself has become that shadowy bureaucratic authority that Richard and Kafka set out to critique. And Gregor Samsa is a scathing critique. Life as a process of toil until death. The specification of it being Gregor Samsa, the totally arbitrary change counters, all of this speaks to the minimum wage jobs Richard was working as a starving artist at the time of Magic’s conception. And finally, my favorite card of the bunch:
This card is a home run, oozing with flavor and artistic flair. The mounting action of its murders, the weight of the counters making the card heavier and less easy to manipulate, the mere cost of a mana to kill again. Some believe the green background was a printing error but Richard was sending us a message about the savagery that lives inside of each of us.
With the slog of beat-you-over-the-head sets being released today, Battle for Zendikar being only the newest and worst in an egregious line, its important to look back at our roots. Magic was a game about self-expression made by a starving artist on a basement Xerox machine. However, I do think that Magic is coming out of a dry spell: Magic 2010 tried to recapture the essence of what made Alpha such a powerful statement, Modern Masters is a wonderful stab at nostalgia and how it alters our patterns of consumption, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited to see David Lynch’s direction in the upcoming Magic movie. As usual, the Technocrats of the Coast have not invited me to attend the Richard Garfield Memorial Hotdog Eating Contest this Sunday in Renton, but he will be in my heart.
Peace.
Evan Erwin in a Beret is a Good Gamery correspondent.
The recent stream of extremely well forged dollar bills flooding all markets has forced the United States Treasury to take action. On January 16th, a new bill design was presented to representatives of the press.
“All dollar bills have been given a copyright notice that really stands out to the viewer,” a spokesperson stated. “The darn Chinese counterfeiters won’t be able to miss it!”
You’ll also notice a little silver oval in the bottom center of the portrait of old Franklin. That’s a new unique holofoil stamp that the US Treasury will be applying to all rare and mythic rare bills going forward.
“This stamp makes those bills feel more special, as well as guarantees authenticity,” the spokesperson said. “Certainly the Chinese can’t create holographic stickers and insert them into cardboard.”
measures to the bills does not come without new costs, however. To finance the increasing costs for printing these bills with added security measures, printing operations have been outsourced to a large company in the Tianjin province (天津市), China.
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by Fake Mark Rosewater |
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Welcome to Innistrad preview week! It’s once again time to delve into a new and exciting block (it feels so good to be saying that after sitting on this thing for more than five years). As you will see, this time we’ve taken the set design in a whole new direction. What are we doing, and what inspired us to do it? Before today’s column is done, you’ll know.
Ever since we announced Innistrad it’s been known to the public that the set has a gothic or medieval look to it. After enduring a fierce, action-packed metal world, with its own ‘tainted’ flavor, both the design and art teams wanted to get back into traditional fantasy. In fact, they both came to me independently asking to swing the pendulum back from the crazy chaotic feel of war in the Scars of Mirrodin block. They were eager to build a world steeped in a misty full-moon setting, with horrors lurking around every corner (horrors without infect). I hope you’re ready to delve into Innistrad!
Innistrad, the forgotten plane
To get in the mood, I have to tell you something about the story. It so happened that the ancient planeswalker Feroz came across Innistrad, a once-beautiful plane, now ravaged by war and darkness. At the last unspoilt oasis on this plane he met fellow planeswalker Serra, whom he married. Together they worked to restore the plane, and to protect it, Feroz’s Ban was created. Feroz died during its creation, however, and the grief-stricken Serra abandoned the plane. In her absence the isolated civilizations of the plane fight amongst each other while the vampires plot with the secretly lurking Liliana Vess to take control of the plane under the fading Ban of Feroz.
Innistrad is truly an ancient plane, and as such the art team wanted ancient artwork to go with it. They’ve organized a dream team of artists, including Rob Alexander, Mark Poole, Mark Tedin, Anson Maddocks and Kaja Foglio, whose outstanding efforts have defined the plane and the set of Innistrad.
A high knight stands on a precipice, overlooking the plains of Innistrad.
Innistrad is filled with mystic places, where clerics sing mystical chants.
Many horrors lurk in the snowy mountains of Innistrad…
…such as raiders and bandits.
I’m confident that players will be equally impressed by the wow! factor when they open their first packs of Innistrad as I was. This is going to be an amazing fall in the world of Magic!
Force the flash mechanic!
Normally when you design a set (you do that all the time, right?), you start with the mechanics. No block set since Homelands has been without a whole array of new keywords and mechanics, and in this regard Innistrad surely delivers.
The difficulty of being head designer of a Magic set is knowing about cool stuff and not being able to talk about it for years – I don’t think I’ve mentioned that before. In any case, the first mechanic I’ve wanted to highlight for the last five years is featured on this card:
What’s this? Forceflash. If you pay an extra cost, you force the spell through, kind of like Force of Will, only somewhat like Force Spike but not at all like Force of Nature. The forceflash cost is an alternate cost, not an additional cost.
Then how on Earth did we come up with forceflash? From my point of view, it’s simple. Players like when things happen unexpectedly-or at least when they do for your opponent. I knew I wanted a push towards instant-speed interactions. When I proposed my idea during the initial Innistrad development, the team agreed (as I’m their boss). The biggest challenge for the team was trying to find a way to approach the “instant-speed” theme in a way that didn’t just feel like Time Spiral 2.0.
Forceflash’s design story begins with the design of Invasion and the instant-speed rare cycle (Breaking Wave, Ghitu Fire, Rout, Saproling Symbiosis and Twilight’s Call). Here we had five cards that could be cast at instant speed if you only paid 2 more colorless mana. Mechanics like these played directly into this design. I had been longing to exploit this kind of mechanic for years, but (as you should know, if you’ve been reading my columns) a set mechanic isn’t a set mechanic unless you can make it work at the common level.
To that end, I decided that we were going to treat the instant-speed cost as a separate cost. As it came to be, one day (while tossing scrapped designs into a paper bin from across the room), it hit me. It didn’t have to be two colorless mana all the time! It could be anything! I ran down the stairs and up again, screaming with joy. In this setting, you could cast a common spell for four mana more, possibly even colored mana. I knew I wanted some form of innovation involving color. Colorless mana is boring.
Take a trip, slowly
Cantrips are fun. Magic is about fun. Thus, since what I say, goes, Innistrad is about cantrips. But while cantrips are fun, anticipation is a key element in gameplay. Starting with Innistrad, we’re introducing a new revolutionary (and magical) keyword: Slowtrip.
Isn’t that fun anticipation? You’ve cast an awesome spell and are waiting in deep anticipation for your next turn. What could the next card be? While you’re waiting, you can even play spells and interact with your opponent! We believe that this will both work as the format’s draw engine and make the game even more fun to play.
Now that I’ve rattled your brains somewhat, let’s do it completely. The world of Innistrad will not only introduce new mechanics and keywords, but will look and feel radically different from the previous block. In fact, it’ll come in a different container.
Booster packs
Innistrad will come in 8-card booster packs, and… wait, WHAT? Has Mark(eting) gone insane? Yes, it’s true, and no, he hasn’t (at least not me, I don’t know about marketing). The rationale behind this change is actually really simple. In recent years we’ve been experimenting with selling 6-card booster packs at large mass-market stores like Target or WalMart. What we learned from that experiment is that smaller booster packs are selling in large quantities simply because people love to crack packs and frantically inhale the Magic smell. We also noticed that players didn’t miss the rules tip card in the smaller packs, but they did long for tokens.
The Innistrad block will be sold in 8-card booster packs, featuring 1 rare or mythic rare card, 1-2 uncommon cards and 4-5 common cards. The last card will always be a basic land or a token. In limited, two Innistrad boosters equals one regular booster (say, of Magic 2012). That is, a sealed pool would consist of 12 Innistrad boosters.
We spend much of our time designing powerful rares, many of which players never get to slam on the table. It is our hope that players will come to enjoy opening twice the number of rares. This feature will both reduce the value of chase-rares on the secondary market, as well as increase Wizards’ revenues.
One last thing
To round off this preview, I’m happy to announce that the release card will be called Liliana’s Chime. I can’t tell you what it does yet, but I can assure you that it’s a truly amazing card (I admit, I designed it). Liliana’s up to no good and she stops at nothing to get what she wants!
That’s all for this week! Join me next week as we delve deeper into the horrors lurking within Innistrad.
Over the years at GoodGamery we’ve had our fair share of exciting preview cards. As part of the Rise of the Eldrazi alliance we spoiled the Timmy-est card in a Timmy set, Spawnsire of Ulamog. For Magic 2011 we eschewed such whimsy for a card the average player on the street could really connect with: limited workhorse Quag Sickness. Those were heady days indeed, but two sets have gone by since then without so much as a whiff of exclusive news. Has GoodGamery been forgotten? That’s a rhetorical question. The answer is no.
Today we are privileged not just to kick off the Innistrad spoiler season, but to give a tantalising glimpse into the fabric of the block itself. We have been entrusted with one of the fundamental components of the Innistrad universe: its dual lands. From Tundra in Alpha to Flooded Strand in Onslaught, from Hallowed Fountain in Ravnica to Seachrome Coast in Scars of Mirrodin, dual lands have always been a cornerstone of both fantasy worlds and tournament environments.
But what exactly is a dual land? The Oxford English dictionary defines a dual land as “a land card that provides two colours of mana, or an indirect means of acquiring two colours of mana.” While technically accurate, this definition fails to account for the soul of the dual land, an intangible phenomenon that has touched the hearts of countless magic players. An exciting new dual is the perfect way to kick off exploration of an exciting new block, and we’re pleased to say our dual is quite a doozy. Are you ready to discover the horror lurking within? Don’t worry, we’ll be right there with you. Let’s go!
(This land has, of course, been generated randomly for your convenience by the magical dual land generator. To share this specific card with other people, click here and use the share code at the bottom of the page.)
On the plane of Grimneath, Unblinking Bleb would be an eye. Elsewhere in the Magic universe, he isn’t, despite all apparent evidence to the contrary.
This isn’t surprising, really. In Magic’s history, there has been a long tradition of almost-but-not-quite-actually-eyes. There have been artifact eyes, creature eyes, land eyes, and enchantment eyes. There have been spells that you’d fairly expect to shower you in an explosion of eyes. But there have been few actual eyes.
In fact, there are exactly two creatures with the creature type Eye in all of Magic: the infamous Evil Eye of Orms-By-Gore and his modern cousin from Urborg. Despite their modest numbers, these ocular bogeymen represent an archetype, one with an uncanny ability to evoke an emotional response. They’re mysterious and menacing and memorable, because ultimately, well, eyes are creepy. Specifically, disembodied eyes are creepy. Gigantic, man-sized eyes are especially creepy, and gigantic, malevolent disembodied eyes are perhaps creepiest of all.
For this reason, I’ve always found them strangely compelling. So when I set about designing my world for the Great Designer Search 2, I was drawn to the sordid realm of Orms-By-Gore for inspiration. What might a Magic world populated by eyes look like? Well, it would be dark. Oppressive. Based on the meager available precedent, it would seem that eyes don’t play nicely with other creatures. I pictured them as captors, subjugating other races. Perhaps they’d oversee a mining operation. An underground plane seemed like a natural setting.
And thus Grimneath was born. Though I unfortunately didn’t make the latter rounds of the GDS2, I did continue working on the set for my own edification. From the beginning, it felt like a set that I’d be excited to play with, and I’m pretty happy with the results. The entire 200+ card set is linked below—follow the link below for a brief visit to the world of Grimneath. And remember that if you see a bleb there, it probably really is an eye.
