The existence of Mondrak and Ojer Taq implies the existence of a theoretical 1W 2/2 Legend that says “if one or more tokens would be created under your control, that many of those tokens are created.”
#MTGIxalan
“Wouldn’t it be funny/sad/interesting if the 001/001 ring got lost or destroyed?” actually yes it would this guy John wrote a whole book trilogy based on that idea.
Yesterday we revealed that
#MTGIxalan
will have four commander decks! As the lead designer, I wanted to make sure we could satisfy fans of the original Ixalan despite typal not being the focus of the main set. Hope you enjoy!
#wotcstaff
Happy
#TransDayOfVisibility
I’m Chris Mooney, senior game designer on Magic the Gathering. I’m non-binary and use they/them pronouns. I’m valid and so are you 🩵🩷🤍
There was a question earlier about what we call this kind of red exile "draw" effect, so I figured I'd do a little thread about it.
I will note that this thread will be EXTREMELY inside baseball. This is about how we use internal nomenclature as designers.
#wotcstaff
One day they called me in and said
“We’re sorry Chris but we’re taking you off Doctor Who”
“Noooooooooo 😢”
“And we’re putting you on Fallout”
“Woooooooooo! ⚡️🥳⚛️”
I’ve waited SO LONG for this. Pretty sure I asked every single person I could during the whole process just to make sure we didn’t accidentally forget to do this.
#wotcstaff
My only real contribution to
#MTGNeon
was this core concept right here from the exploratory design team: Tradition vs Modernity represented as Enchantments vs Artifacts. Both the card set and the world building of NEO is inspired by the way these two philosophies interact.
My mom: “why haven’t you sent us any of your Magic cards so I can put them up on the wall?”
Me: “Well they’re not *my* cards, it takes a whole team.”
Mom: “Ok but didn’t you lead a team recently?”
Me: “Yeah but that’s like over 70 cards.
Mom: “Over 70 is better than zero!!!”
Long ago Ari and I sat down and made a list of “cards that should be white”. Krenko was near the top. It’s just such a white effect to double your tokens each turn.
#wotcstaff
Broke: E3 sucks this year
Woke: The pandemic affected devs too, and people shouldn’t be surprised or angry that there’s less to show after such a massive (and still ongoing!) worldwide disaster.
Bespoke: E3 sucks every year
Though the Virtues changed many times, the core concept came from vision design. We wanted a high profile way to represent the old courts of the realm. If you look closely, you might be able to recognize the figures that appear in each of their arts 👀
#wotcstaff
#MTGEldraine
Me after seeing Across the Spiderverse: "wow I need the next one to come out in like, five months maximum"
Me after reading my timeline today: "wow I need the next one to come out in like, five years minimum"
Yesterday in a work meeting there was a presentation asking “do we want to keep making these kinds of cards?” and we flipped to a slide of examples and half of the examples were cards I made lol
Thoughts I had the 1st time I went to a Brazilian Steak House: the salad bar is a trap, it’s meant to fill you up so you don’t eat as much meat
Thoughts I had the 2nd time: the salad bar is a life preserver. You need to eat a vegetable so your body doesn’t kill itself
Now that enough time has passed, I’m collecting thoughts on Lost Caverns of Ixalan Commander.
I’d love to hear your favorite legendary and favorite non-legendary cards were!
#wotcstaff
Found out that
@TierMaker
has a template for War of the Spark. I will definitely be using this from now on.
Here's a tier list of the planeswalkers ranked by the result if you asked them to dog sit for you.
The face commanders from
#MTGIxalan
commander decks were revealed today! When working on this product I wanted to make sure fans of both the original Ixalan and LCI would find fun stuff for them in these decks. It was tricky to get four typal decks to feel distinct.
#wotcstaff
@TheKristenEmily
@ghirapurigears
There are situations where a Fabled Passage can represent any color of mana *right now*, whereas Evolving Wilds only ever represents mana on a following turn.
#wotcstaff
Here are my homebrew Planechase rules for the people who were asking. Hopefully this is easy enough to follow, but maybe I'll make a video one day explaining it too.
Cool Magic cards from the past
#wotcstaff
Do you know about Zurgo? In his original timeline he was a mighty warrior, Khan of the Madru clan. But when Sarkhan went back in time and caused dragons to rule Tarkir, Zurgo’s new fate was to ring the warning bell.
I’m not going to judge anyone for a (mostly) unproblematic ship, I’m just saying that Zuko had infinitely more chemistry with that one girl from Ba Sing Se than he ever did with Katara
In an early
#MTGBRO
set design meeting we were talking about uncommon Urza and Mishra. Yoni wanted them to be a U/R mirrored pair somehow and someone suggested "Urza's a looter, Mishra's a rummager". We all loved that and it stuck all the way to the final set.
#wotcstaff
I love unique draft formats for fewer player counts like 2 or 4.
If you ever want to draft with a group of 4, here's the house rules I've used for the last few years:
3 packs, take 2 cards per pick, everyone gets a free Evolving Wilds. (All other rules same as normal)
Sometimes we wanted to give a card flashback, but flashback wasn’t in the set so we’d write it out.
Recently we decided hey, maybe we should just write flashback on the card anyway. This cleans up the text and adds a bit of backwards compatibility.
#wotcstaff
We are very excited to present our
#MTG
Phyrexia All Will Be One preview! Viral Spawning!
A 💀Toxic💀 Token producer that has Flashback when opponents are corrupted!
Thanks to Wizards for the
#FreePreview
Card!
All of the Pirate partners up until now have been either blue or red, but many pirates are black! And thus, enter Francisco! In design we envisioned him as the pet of Malcolm and Breeches, so his ability is modeled directly after their cards from CMR.
#MTGIxalan
#wotcstaff
I can’t express how huge the difference was between how much I didn’t care about the Brothers’ War story prior to working on this set vs how hyped I am for it now.
#wotcstaff
I think slivers are cool because they play into a specific nostalgia that all Magic players share no matter what age they are or how long it lasted: nostalgia for the time before you really knew what a board sweeper was.
You’re on the battlefield and you see this beautiful young woman. Her dress matches her shoes and she’s here with 15 of her closest friends.
How do you open?
In older artifact sets, Green was either relegated to being anti-artifact or ignored artifacts for other themes. Starting in
#mtgbro
, color pie decided that animating artifacts felt like appropriate Green space, especially for sets with loud artifact themes.
#wotcstaff
I know impostor syndrome is a real issue, but I find it difficult to feel it as a game designer because gamers are so loud about their bad game design takes.
Like it’s impossible to feel unqualified after reading that “chess doesn’t have tech trees” tweet lol
"Lizzo acquires random ancient artifact" is a fun meme but it misses the point that Lizzo is a trained flautist.
The apex form of the meme would be giving *other* celebrities with random skillsets ancient artifacts befitting *their* expertise.
I see this thrown around a lot and feel it needs clarifying. Treasure creation is not entirely out of pie for white, only proactive, unconditional treasure creation. The attached white treasure cards are all in pie.
#wotcstaff
Given that treasure creation is currently out of White's color pie, and thus Smothering Tithe is considered a color pie break: what would be the right color combination for it?
I'd say Orzhov. Black has treasure creation (secondary), and White is primary in taxing effects.
Portal is one of the few games that I think is both good enough that everyone should play it and short enough that I could reasonably recommend that anyone play it.
What games fall into this category for you?
@CubeApril
*Definitely* a deck that’s changed throughout the years to not use any original pieces. “Affinity” with no actual affinity cards in it is the prime example imo
My favorite part of this gag is that a dragon owned museum is genius from a hoarding perspective: you literally get to charge people money to look at your giant pile of stuff!
The Green Knight is one of the few Arthurian legends players asked us for after Throne of Eldraine, so it was high on our priority list for WOE. This story is also featured on the new art of Karmic Justice.
#wotcstaff
#MTGEldraine
Ok, let's talk about Planeswalkers in Commander.
Usually I give a standard
#wotcstaff
disclaimer about certain topics not being my area, but CMD *is* my area. In just over a year, I've worked on four CMD products and am heavily involved with all of our ongoing discussions.
1/
Hey everypony, I have a request.
I worked on Ponies the Galloping 1 and 2, they have a special place in my heart. I would love to be tagged in photos/stories involving these cards, but ESPECIALLY if anyone ever activates Twilight’s ability and has everypony win!
#wotcstaff
I really hope people don’t interpret this this way, I ask literally every player I ever meet this question. Hearing people’s magic life stories is one of my favorite things.
Obviously tone is everything, but still.
After a swift 0-2 defeat after my first round at the pre elease, opponent asked "How long have you been playing magic?" which, I just realized, is the deepest insult in the game.
The CDC is no longer recommending Americans to stay home after testing positive for COVID-19, a major shift in policy that comes as much of the country has moved on from the height of the pandemic.
BTW now that the second cycle is out, and don't have "triome" in the name, I'm personally gonna switch over to calling all of them tricycles, as god intended.
Sorry folks, I tend to try and focus on magic and memes here just to keep things upbeat, but it’s gonna get real political for a while.
Actually, I’m not sorry.
New Capenna is a world of crime families who wheel and deal. Alliances of convenience and backstabbing are their bread and butter. Because of this, the SNC commander decks have a higher emphasis on multiplayer politics than average.
#wotcstaff
Hey everyone, a reminder that 100% of the proceeds from our WotC pride merch goes directly to
@Lambert_House
. This year is especially important so please help by giving directly or purchasing merch via the links below.