Earlier today it seems that somebody in charge of blogposts on the Spanish WotC site may have pressed a wrong button somewhere, and accidentally showed the Spanish people of the world next Monday's blogpost from Mark Rosewater. This marks the beginning of Dragons of Tarkir spoilers, and MaRo's first post shows off one new card, and a new mechanic!
Being on a Spanish website though, the post was in Spanish. Unfortunately, the majority of the world's population and that majority of MTG players cannot speak or read Spanish (even though the language is obviously incredibly popular) so this post is of little good to the majority of people.
However, using a bit of Google Translate, some intuition, and a Spanish speaking grandfather, I've gruellingly typed out the entire 3000+ word essay in English for all to read. I'll include a summary at the bottom of the page for anyone who, and I wouldn't blame them, cannot be bothered to read the entire thing.
[Text in square brackets like this are comments by me.]
IMAGINE DRAGONS, PART 1
Posted in Making Magic on March 2, 2015
By Mark Rosewater
Welcome to the first week of previews for Dragons of Tarkir, as you know, Sarkhan has travelled back in time and altered the history of his native plane. Let's see what exactly he has accomplished and how we designed the new set to show these changes. As always, I will also reveal an interesting card.
DRAGON BREEDERS
Another of my habits is to introduce you to the design teams that created the sets, so let's get to it:
Mark Gottlieb (leader)
I first met Mark after he wrote a letter to me. He has always been a big fan of puzzles and for a time even worked as an editor of Games Mazagine. Many years ago, I wrote to ask if I could help qith the Magic: The Puzzling section on an issue of The Duelist, our former Magic publication. Mark had realised that there were some mistakes, and offered his expertise in editing puzzles for free. I thanked him for his interest, but I refused.
A few years later, I met Mark in person because he had been hired to help with editing equipment; this was a whole before the computer was a part of R&D. A few years later, Mark got the position as Director of Standards. During that period, he and I had good discussions about how we could implement new cards and mechanics. Later, Mark became a developer, specialising in many complementary products.
One day, Aaron Forsythe (my boss) came to me and told me he was worried because I was overloaded with work. The needs of the design department had grown over the years and I had more and more things to attend to. Aaron suggested creating a new post: Design Coordinator, who would be responsible for leading other designers. That person would supervise people and would manage working time, while I take care of the technical design work. Spending less time coordinating and focusing on design was just what I wanted.
Aaron came to me a few weeks later and told me they had found the right person for the job but wanted my consent. The candidate was Mark and I agreed that it was a good decision. Today, Mark and I work very close together, which is funny because I had joked for a long time that he was my nemesis (Matt Tabak has since picked up that baton, as the new Director of Standards).
When we begin to approach the design of Dragons of Tarkir, I knew it would be a difficult task. There are many changing elements between Khans of Tarkir and Fate Reforged, and Dragons of Tarkir had to adapt and complement the rest of the block. I chose Mark as Head of Design for this set and I've never regretted it. Mark understood all the driving factors and did a great job in overseeing Dragons of Tarkir and providing many comments that helped to improve Khans and Fate Reforged.
Dan Emmons
Dan and I met during his first day of work at Wizards. He had just joined the Games Support Team (called Customer Support then) but came to me because his real goal was to work in R&D for Wizards. I explained that his work in the office would help show to us what he was capable of, but that wouldn't do any good if he didn't excel in their regular work. I suggested he join the Card Contribution Team - a group of employees outside of R&D who want to create Magic cards. Whenever the development process creates holes for cards, the Contribution Team is the first place we consult when it comes to filling them.
Dan impressed us with his proposals, so we included them in several miniteams, or temporary teams that spend a week or two to solve problems in design or debelopment. Dan was great in the miniteams, and we decided to start calling on him to work on Magic sets, first in a complementary set and then normal products. Dan did pretty well on computers and when a vacancy in the design department was opened, we offered the position to him.
Dan left Wizards to pursue other opportunities, but during his time here he was part of many design teams. Dan's positive energy has never wavered since I met him, and will continue for much longer. However, Dan is not yet gone as you can still see the fruits of his labour in Dragons of Tarkir.
Gaeme Hopkins
I met Graeme when he was among the three finalists of the first Great Designer Search, The three travelled to Renton in order to participate in the challenge, which consisted of a series of three intensive interviews and a final face to face competition. Grame didn't win, but got an internship in R&D and took well to it, so was offered a job in the digital department of the company. Luckily, we occasionally let him work in design.
Graeme has been part of numerous teams, many of which have been led by me. Graeme is witty and prolific, two great qualitues for a designer. It is always a pleasure to work with Graeme and Dragons of Tarkir was no exception.
Colin Kawakami
I met Colin when he came to a job interview. Like Mark Gottlieb became the Design Coordinator, Colin was hired to work as the Coordinator of the Creative Team. Dragons of Tarkir was the first set that he worked with us as a representative of his department. Colin soon joined our team and is a good signing.
We don't always have representatives of the Creative Department in the third set, but Khans of Tarkir block had a complex creative components and we wanted to make sure of everything. Colin showed us a very elaborate network of plot elements and made sure that everything was connected properly.
Sam Stoddard
I met Sam during his first day of work. I had heard of him and had read his texts, but I didn't know him in person. He had also participated in the Pro Tour, but our times never lined up. Sam joined the Dragons of Tarkir as part of the design and development team, but he showed he was comfortable designing cards. As I explained in the Fate Reforged previews, one day we took work home and Sam and myself had the separate idea to create the Dash mechanic. [This is what I guess Google means with the sentence "Sam and I had separate the idea to create the mechanics quickly."]
Sam has an eye for identifying what a Magic set needs and always asks very relevant and useful questions. This was the first team I worked on with Sam, and I realise that this guy will become a great new development member.
Mark Rosewater
When did I meet me... well I do not remember; I think I was quite young. Well, the fact is that the best way to know how the design team works is to be part of them, so I participated in the design of Dragons of Tarkir.
FIRST THINGS FIRST
I have written many articles about the design of the Khans of Tarkir block, but because you didn't know all three sets, it was hard to explain everything. Now that we are finally around to the third set, I thought I would retell this story but without having to leave some important details out that I otherwise had to skip.
I already explained that the preliminary design had decided on making a block with large/small/large sets. Furthermore, the intermediary set was to be drafted with the two large sets. We also knew that we were going to use the archetypal story of time travel to explain that structure. The protagonist would come and discover a world in decline, travel to the past to correct the problem and then return to the present in order to see the consequences of their actions. However, as often happens in these stories, things never go exactly as the hero expects.
We began designing Khans of Tarkir knowing that we needed a world in decline that would become even worse. The creative team took care to think about these two places and then they presented their idea: First, we would create a world devastated and ruled by warlords where dragons were extinct, and then become a plane in which the dragons would take over as warlords. The proposal was fantastic and we go to work.
With regards to mechanics, block structure identified some ideas. We wanted the first and third sets to be very different. They needed some parallels to show that they were the products of alternate time lines, but we wanted the draft and thematic experiences to be very different. When we decided that Khans was going to be a wedge set, we had to ask what Dragons of Tarkir would be. Fate Reforged would have to be designed with this in mind to be combined with the other two sets, and to serve as a bridge in terms of mechanics.
Khans of Tarkir was going to be a wedge set and I did not want Dragons of Tarkir to also be one. So why not use the fragments (the three colour combinations formed by a colour and its two allies)? The problem was that the two tricolours end up becoming too similar as sets because [Shards of Alara?] used a very similar wedge set structure. Furthermore, although drafting would feature new three colour combinations, very similar strategies would be used. In summary, the third set could not be tricolour.
What if we did monochrome? What if a tricolour world would become one single colour? In the end, we found that this was too drastic of a change. Furthermore, Fate Reforged would have had many difficulties in fitting both the tricolour and monochrome themes. For example, three colour sets need lands not needed in a single colour set. We had to ensure that Fate Reforged worked well with Khans of Tarkir, but that later it would also work well with Dragons of Tarkir. This change was too excessive.
This left us with two colour options. Now, I wanted there to be parallels between the first and third sets. To achieve this, I decided that we were going to use a number of factions. Each set would have five factions led by warlords. This generated a robust parallelism that allowed us to define the identity of each set. Therefore, I had to decide whether the clans of Dragons of Tarkir would use enemy or ally colours. Are you wondering why we wouldn't combine these and use both? We could have, but when two collections are contrasted and one looks neater than the other, the aesthetic is strange. If I wanted to mix two colour factions, we should have done the same with tricolour, and we did want to because there was so much demand for [Fetchlands?] in a wedge set.
Therefore, I reviewed our options and made a decision: Dragons of Tarkir would use a theme of enemy colours. We had never done a cycle of legendary dragons of opposite colours. I also liked the idea that dragons generate many conflicts of power, and the enemy colours would serve to represent this. Note that we had not yet began designing Dragons of Tarkir. First, we had to plan what we were doing well, to ensure that Khans of Tarkir did not occupy the design space needed for Dragons of Tarkir.
Then, Erik Lauer came to me. Erik is the lead developer, i.e., my counterpart, in the development department. Erik told me that it seemed wrong to use combinations of enemy colours. Here's why: the right way to draft a wedge set is starting by choosing cards from two opposite colours; that way, you can later choose between two factions in different wedges. For instance, if you are drafting red-blue, you can then add white to go into Jeskai or green to go into Temur. Indeed, drafting enemy colours would be too similar, Erik suggested that we use ally colours.
At first I was a little surprised. By topic, I liked a dragons set that utilised opposing colours, but then as I thought about what Erik had proposed I realised he was right. Our main objective was to develop a structure for drafts never before seen; to achieve this, every step that we took had to be very different. Also, when I researched it, I found that we had not created a cycle of legendary dragons of ally colours either. The truth is that was plenty of design space left to explore.
But then, what about the guilds of Ravnica? Had they not proved the popularity of two colour factions? The players like multicoloured Magic and it only has a limited number of combinations. Well, if we wanted to continue creating very powerful sets (and this theme is very popular), we were going to have to deal with combinations of different forms. The truth is that we found it very novel to use the allied colours to form clans and dragons rather than guilds.
Now, let's step back and see how this decision affected the whole block. I wanted there to be five clans. We were going to see their tricolour and there duocolour versions, in addition to the prototypes that seemed to be the precursors of both. I also decided that each clan should have a main colour, because that would help us to address two colour combinations from another perspective. In the case of wedges, the obvious choice was the opposite of the other two colours, because that would be the axis. But there was one problem: if the wedges were to become allied combinations of two colours, the enemy colour would have to go. For example, only the green-white combination could come after Abzan.
This meant that the main colour of each wedge had to be one of the two allies. I knew there was opportunity to surprise the audience a little, but there wasn't any choice. For me, it was more important to preserve the parallelism between the clans, because the structure of the Time Travel set was based on it. Each clan would develop differently and we wanted the links to be clear. If we had set up five clans that had five two colour combinations without direct correspondence, we would have contradicted the theme of timelines. In short, two colour combinations were to represent the next evolution of the clans.
In short, we bit the bullet and decided that the main colour of the wedges would be one of the two allied colours. Then, in Fate Reforged, we emphasised that each clan had a dominant colour, and that this is he reason wedge clans were structured in this way.
[Art of Stratus Dancer is currently unavailable :( ]
METAMORPHOSIS
We also had to deal with how we would use Morph (rather, the cards face down) to represent history. This Morph symbolised Tarkir. Manifest is the prototype of Morph from the past. Therefore, Dragons of Tarkir needed to give a new twist to face down cards. We had two options: to create a variant of Morph hat reflects the new developments, or develop a variant of Manifest to show that, in the new reality, Morph does not come into existence.
We opted for the variant of Morph for two reasons. The first was an excess of mechanics. In each block, we usually see between six and twelve mechanics, so on average we get nine. For example, the Return to Ravnica block had eleven, and that seemed enough. Well, Khans of Tarkir block already has twelve mechanics: the five wedge tricolour clans, the five bicolour clans, Morph and Manifest. That is, we had already reached the maximum. With a variant of morph, we could achieve the effect we wanted without having to create a thirteenth mechanic. It was enough to have something that resembled Morph and proves easy to understand.
The other problem was that while we were designing Dragons of Tarkir, we still did know the destiny of Manifest. Remember, Dragons of Tarkir is a large set, so we started developing it several months before Fate Reforged. The design team loved the state of mechanics, but it was strange and complex. It was relatively unlikely to survive the development of Fate Reforged [Manifest, that is]; or at least it would change a lot. Therefore, it was too risky to mess with Dragons of Tarkir, so we opted for the variant of Morph. Well, that was one of the many reasons for why we came to that conclusion.
The first variant of Morph was born during preliminary design and was called AuraMorph [this is written in Spanish as Auramorfosis, which is much nicer as a noun, but not sure on what they decided to call this in English]. All cards with the Morph mechanic were Auras. When played face down, you could automatically attach them to a creature of your choice. That resulted in a very different game experience. For example, you could attack with a creature face up and one face down. With Morph, you tend to block the face down creature because it can too often flip up and deal a tonne of damage. With AuraMorph, it was better to block the creature face up, because that had the greatest chance to hit hard.
AuraMorph had two big drawbacks. First, the preliminary design team had worked on Theros block and had created Bestow. Although the mechanics were not exactly the same, it seemed too much to include it in consecutive blocks. Second, the design team did some tests with AuraMorph and saw that once you figure out the trick, the game experience became forced and was not as fun as Morph.
Then we created BearMorph [I assume this title would never make it to the game but nice]. The idea was that Dragons of Tarkir Morphs could be cast for 2 mana (like Runeclaw Bear, hence the name). The problem was how these interacted with Morph in Limited. Remembering if a player had paid 2 or 3 mana for each card was difficult and created a lot of confusion. That made us wonder if all Khans of Tarkir Morphs should cost 2 to cast, but that's a story for another article.
The next idea that we tried was SuperMorph. Cast cards with SuperMorph for 4 mana, and it gets a +1/+1 counter, functioning as a 3/3 creature. It was a pleasure playing with SuperMorph. It looked like Morph, so it was easy to learn, but it worked very differently at the strategic level. In addition, it gave an incentive to play Morph creatures face down rather than hard cast them, because you would get that extra +1/+1 counter. Besides, unlike BearMorph, SuperMorph could be distinguished from Morph.
So what happened to SuperMorph? We had a little problem, it wasn't compatible with Morph. When you cast a card with SuperMorph, you knew it was not a Morph, so there was little interaction between them. Cards cast with Morph [i.e, for 3] could only be Morph creatures and cards cast with SuperMorph [i.e. for 4] could only be SuperMorph creatures. As an advocate for this mechanic, I argued that it would be acceptable. Yes it had a disadvantage, but SuperMorph also had many advantages.
The final variant of Morph proved to be an evolution of SuperMorph. Not paying 4 mana to cast 3/3 creatures, but retaining the idea of "get a +1/+1". The name of the new variant in testing was MegaMorph, and this caught on and was chosen as the final name. Creatures with MegaMorph are like creatures with Morph, but have the advantage when turned face-up as they get a +1/+1 counter,
To demonstrate, allow me to reveal today's card. World, I'd like you to meet "Strata Ballerina". [Stratus Dancer]
DRAGONS FOR ALL
There is still much to tell about the design of Dragons of Tarkir, but I've reached my limit for today. Luckily this is part 1 of the article, so I will continue this story next week. As always, I'm interested to hear your opinion. You can write to me via email, or any of my profiles on social networks (Twitter, Tumblr, Google+ and Instagram).
Come back next week when I start talking about the other mechanics in the new set, and about the overall structure that the block operates on.
Until then, I hope that your Morphs are MegaEffective.
Summary - Dragons of Tarkir is definitely using ally colour clans, MegaMorph is a new mechanic coming off the back of BearMorph (pay 2 mana, get a 2/2) and SuperMorph (pay 4 mana, get a 3/3) that gives the creature a +1/+1 counter when it is turned face up. A new card names Stratus Dancer has been unveiled that utilises this mechanic, but as the page has been taken down and there are no screenshots of the card itself, I can't give any details about this card's stats, art, or abilities other than MegaMorph.
