At the end of every set's vision design, the team creates something known as a vision design handoff document. The lead vision designer writes it and walks the Set Design team through the larger goals, themes, mechanics, and structural components of the set to help teams further down the pipeline understand the work done by the Vision Design team. I've published a number of these over the years, as they are popular. Here are the ones I've previously published:

Today, I'll be going over Aetherdrift vision design handoff document. As with all my vision design handoff articles, most of what I'm showing you is the actual document. My notes, giving explanation and context, are in the box below the text. This document was long enough that I've broken it into multiple parts.

I'll also note that this handoff was written prior to us renaming Avishkar. As such, the document refers to the plane as Kaladesh. In my notes, I'll refer to the plane by its current name, Avishkar.

"Tennis" Vision Design Handoff Document

Exploratory and Vision Design Teams
Mark Rosewater (Exploratory Design and Vision Design Lead)
Chris Mooney (Vision Design; Strong Second)
Corey Bowen (Exploratory Design and Vision Design)
Doug Beyer (Exploratory Design and Vision Design)
Donald Smith, Jr. (Exploratory Design and Vision Design)
Graeme Hopkins (Exploratory Design and Vision Design)
Yoni Skolnik (Vision Design)

Creative, Worldbuilding, and Story Teams
Doug Beyer (Worldbuilding Vision Lead)
Michael Lopez (Worldbuilding Design Lead)
Vic Ochoa (Lead Art Director)
Andrew Vallas (Initial Art Director)
Emily Me (Worldbuilding Producer)
Roy Graham (Story Lead)

As always, I begin by listing all members of the two teams that worked on the set prior to the vision design handoff: the Exploratory and Vision Design teams as well as the Worldbuilding team. For Aetherdrift, as an example, only Chris and Yoni weren't on Exploratory Design.

"Tennis" Handoff Sample Cards

"Tennis" is an interplanar death race. Each year, we try to make a set that takes advantage of the cosmological shifts introduced during March of the Machine. Namely, the introduction of the Omenpaths. "Tennis" is what we're calling a travelogue set, where we take a theme and stretch it across multiple planes. In this case, the theme is a race that starts in Kaladesh, goes to Amonkhet, and finishes in Muraganda. The first two planes are revisits, while the last plane is a new setting though we've made individual cards that reference Muraganda). We've chosen these three planes for several reasons. One, they are planes we know players want to see. Two, we wanted a variety of terrains for the race, and these felt like good settings. Three, none of these are planes that we'll be doing a full return to in the near future.

For every set, we do market research. This gives us a better sense of which planes players enjoy and helps us prioritize our returns. This data showed us that Avishkar and Amonkhet were planes players wanted to revisit. Muraganda's inclusion was based on us predicting what players would like, as we have minimal data that's specific to Muraganda.

Here are our main goals for the set

1. Capture the flavor of racing

The number-one theme of this set is racing. We feel the theme has the potential to be popular and taps into interesting trope spaces. When we developed the set's mechanics, we made sure they all tied into this racing theme. We also tried to make sure that we could flavor all our base effects as things that tie into the race. The flavor of racers sabotaging one another works well to capture the spells needed for a game about combat.

I number our goals at the beginning of the document to make sure everyone downstream understands individual aspects of our vision and how we prioritize them.

2. Prioritize settings over their mechanical identities

During exploratory and early vision design, we examined including at least one mechanic from each plane we're visiting. We moved away from that direction for two reasons. One, Muraganda, being a mostly new plane, doesn't have mechanical themes tied to it, save for the unwieldy "vanilla creatures matter" theme. Two, we really wanted to focus on the racing theme and decided that was a better focus than giving each world a representative mechanic. Kaladesh will get a lot of representation, as its natural themes tie more directly into racing. I believe that the story is going to make Kaladesh the home of the race, so that will make sense.

We do plan to showcase these planes with popular characters, creatures, and locations on the cards. We want fans of each of the planes to open cards they want. We're just not using the planes as the source of the mechanical structuring.

I number our goals at the beginning of the document to make sure everyone downstream understands individual aspects of our vision and how we prioritize them.

Vision Design spent some time examining which parts of each plane we felt the audience would expect and enjoy most. This document is more about the larger structure of the set, so most of the card-by-card ideas were included in the card file, the other thing Vision Design hands off to Set Design.

3. Connect thematically to the racing teams

To capture the sense of the race, the Worldbuilding team has created ten different racing teams from across the Multiverse, capturing each of the ten two-color pairs. Each team has a strong flavor that taps into their mechanical identity, but this is not a faction set in any way. The teams do not have unique, named mechanics but rather share all the mechanics in the set. Here's the breakdown of the ten teams:

The idea to create ten racing teams came up early in the process, but you will see that it changed a bit along the way.

White-Blue: Racing Droids. Robot drivers who plug into their high-tech vehicles.

This one mostly stayed the same.

Blue-Black: Evil-Eye Warlocks. Dark spellcasters who use magic to thwart their enemies.

This team kept the general feel but specifically tied it to Duskmourn. That wasn't done until later because Duskmourn: House of Horror was still in set design at the time.

Black-Red: Wastelanders. Mad Max-style warriors, punks, and fuel pirates.

The general vibe of the black-red team stayed, but some complexity was added to their backstory.

Red-Green: Goblin Rocketeers. Goblin racers who love to hit the nitro.

Another team that mostly didn't change.

Green-White: Beastmasters. Expert riders who ride the fastest and toughest beasts in the Multiverse.

This team was always tagged as one that would be more about riding Mounts than Vehicles, but the actual specifics changed quite a bit.

White-Black: Amonkheti Mummies. Undead charioteers who can't die.

The original idea was to have each host plane field a team. Two of them stayed, including this racing team full of mummies.

Blue-Red: Kaladeshi Aether-Racers. Inventors and pilots who modify their vehicles as they race.

This team originally started in blue-red as the Avishkar are very focused on artifacts and invention. It got moved to green-blue because the Worldbuilding team came up with a band of shark pirates and blue-red was a better fit.

Black-Green: Muragandan Dino-Riders. Ferocious warriors who ride dino mounts.

This was originally the Muragandan team. Eventually, it was decided that it felt a bit weird for the prehistoric world to host a team. We also decided that we didn't need two teams focused on riding creatures.

Red-White: Team Monaco. Expert, Formula One-style racers with high-performance vehicles.

We wanted one team with real-world driving influences. Red-White was our first guess and it never moved away from that. Many teams in the set used real-world cars to shape the language of their vehicles, but this team specifically used racing cars.

Green-Blue: Insectfolk. Mantisfolk who grow their vehicles rather than building them.

This idea stayed, but it moved to black-green.

To capture our goals, we made three main pillars to the set:

  • Vehicles
  • The Race
  • Energy

Longtime readers will know I usually like to break my designs down to three core pillars in my handoff documents. This helps focus the design and makes it easier to absorb. Three pillars (or occasionally four) have been the easiest for people to process and remember.

Let's go through each one:

Vehicles

Mull Drifter {4}{U}
Artifact — Vehicle
Flying
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, draw two cards.
Crew 2
2/2

We were close on this one. The printed version is called Hulldrifter. It costs instead of , has crew 3 instead of crew 2, and is a 3/2 instead of a 2/2.

Tractor {2}{G}
Artifact — Vehicle
Vigilance
{oT}: Untap target land you control.
Crew 2
3/3

Model XJ63C {2}{W}{U}
Artifact — Vehicle
Flying
Tap two other untapped artifacts you control: CARDNAME becomes an artifact creature until end of turn.
Crew 3
4/4

It wouldn't be a race without things to race, so that obviously means the set will have a high focus on Vehicles. Here's how the Vision Design team decided to treat them. There exists a spectrum of how many Vehicles exist in any set. At the low end is having no Vehicles, which some sets do. "Tennis" should be the set at the highest end of the spectrum. We weren't sure exactly what the upper end should be, but whatever it is, we felt "Tennis" should be the marker at the top end. We trust Set and Play Design to figure out what amount is viable. Vehicles are the first, and most important, pillar of the set.

Often during vision design, our job isn't to solve a problem as much as it is to define what the problem is. That means we often create questions for those downstream of us to answer. For Aetherdrift, the big question was "what is the highest number of Vehicles a set can have while still being fun and balanced?" Vision Design's job was to lay out our objective and create enough tools so that Set and Play Design could come to the right answer.

To allow ourselves the ability to maximize the number of Vehicles, we did a number of things:

There's no "Vehicle deck" – Our goal isn't for Standard or other formats to have a deck that's primarily Vehicles, as we know such a task is difficult. Rather, we want to make enough Vehicles that most Standard decks can run one or two.

We did investigate making a Vehicle-themed deck. It had a higher variance that we liked, as there were draws that you simply couldn't win with.

Most Vehicles have a secondary purpose – We spent a lot of time studying Vehicle cards that were successful in the past, and they most commonly have a purpose beyond being a Vehicle. Maybe they produce mana in the early game or have a broad affect that synergizes with a deck. Maybe they have an enters effect that mimics an instant or sorcery. We spent a lot of time figuring out how to give a Vehicle a secondary function in your deck increasing your willingness to include it.

Figuring out possible secondary purposes proved to be the lion's share of Vision Design's work with Vehicles.

Many Vehicles have an additional way of becoming a creature – Another way we specialized Vehicles for different deck themes was to give them an additional way to become a creature, which allows them to attack without the need for tapping creatures in certain decks.

This category was so important because the alternative way in which a Vehicle turns into a creature relates to where it will see play. This meant we needed to figure out what kind of archetypes we wanted to support and then work backward to figure out what type of Vehicle would play well in that archetype.

We found a way to make a creature function like a Vehicle – In exploring the Vehicle theme, we came across a flavorful way to capture riding a creature. The ability is currently called "crew steed" and goes on creatures, allowing you to tap creatures to basically crew them. Instead of becoming creatures, they gain an ability, usually tied to attacking. That ability makes use of the crew keyword and is affected by anything that affects cards with crew (see speedy below).

Leaping Leopard {4}{W}
Creature — Cat Steed
Crew Steed 2 (Tap any number of other creatures you control with total power 2 or more: This Steed becomes crewed until end of turn.) 
Whenever CARDNAME attacks, if it has been crewed this turn, it gains flying until end of turn.
4/4

Muraganda Mammoth {3}{G}
Creature — Elephant Steed
Crew Steed 2 (Tap any number of other creatures you control with total power 2 or more: This Steed becomes crewed until end of turn.) 
Whenever CARDNAME attacks, if it has been crewed this turn, target creature must block this turn if able.
4/3

Pet Panther {1}{G}{W}
Creature — Cat Steed
Crew Steed 3 (Tap any number of other creatures you control with total power 2 or more: This Steed becomes crewed until end of turn.) 
Whenever you attack with one or more creatures that were crewed this turn, put a +1/+1 counter on one of those creatures.
3/3

Crew Steed has played great, has been very intuitive to play as it's tied to the crew rules, and we think it's possible that this could be a deciduous answer for creatures you ride in the future. We're aware that "Quilting" is playing around in similar space flavorfully and are having conversations about this.

It's interesting when two sets approach the same problem, because each set is influenced by the concerns of its set. Aetherdrift was aware that it had complexity issues, so we were looking for a simple way to capture the flavor of riding, ideally in a way that allowed us to affect Mounts the same way we affected Vehicles. Outlaws of Thunder Junction (or "Quilting") had a much more top-down approach, which was flavorful but significantly more complex. The decision for Outlaws of Thunder Junction to use saddle didn't happen until set design.

The Race

Skilled Starter {2}{W}
Creature — Fox Pilot
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, enter the race.
Victory Lap — As long as you've finished the race, you may cast CARDNAME from your graveyard. It enters the battlefield with a finality counter.
3/2

Stall Out {2}{U}
Instant
Enter the race.
Tap target artifact or creature. Put two stun counters on it.
Victory Lap — As long as you've finished the race, you may cast CARDNAME from your graveyard. Exile it as it resolves.

Since we were looking for ways to simplify Aetherdrift, I understand why the spells with start your engines! were removed. However, I did like how they played. We considered giving those spells flashback, but having two different mechanics listed on the card was awkward.

Speedy Scrapper {1}{B}{R}
Creature — Viashino Berserker
Haste
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, enter the race.
Whenever CARDNAME attacks, it deals 1 damage to each opponent and you gain 1 life.
Victory Lap — CARDNAME gets +2/+2 as long as you've finished the race.
2/2

Now that we have the Vehicles we're racing with, we want to represent the race itself. To do that, we created a mechanic called "enter the race." When you enter the race, you go and get the following game piece from outside the game:

The Race

When you enter the race, you begin on start. You can only enter the race once per game.

Once on each of your turns, you advance to the next leg of the race when an opponent has lost life equal to or greater than that leg's number this turn (1 life, then 2 life, then 3 life).

When you finish the race, you create a Treasure token, plus an additional Treasure token for each other player who has not finished the race.

We tried numerous versions, but the 123 model has proven to be the best in terms of flavor and gameplay. It gives a sense of advancement while keeping the minigame connected to the larger game. It also allows us to have three legs to tie to the three planes we're racing through.

We experimented with starting the race for everyone once one player started the race, but we couldn't find a clean way to balance giving the opponent free resources in a way that would make you want to play it. As it stands, the mechanic is prevalent enough that multiple players will join the race in Limited.

Note that the main reward for finishing the race is not the Treasure tokens (that's more for flavor) but rather that every card that enters the race has a victory lap mechanic that gives you some reward. Set Design is going to play around with how much reward you get directly from the race versus how much payoff victory lap gives you.

It's always interesting to look back at designs with 20/20 hindsight. There's just so much going on here that is unnecessary. One of the jobs of Set Design is to streamline what a mechanic is doing, boiling it down to its essence. Start your engines! is a great example of this. The change that made me the saddest (though I fully understand why) was the move away from the 123 damage structure. I played a lot of interesting games where the rising damage led to some unorthodox and memorable plays.

Taking a Pit Stop

That's all the time we have for today. As always, I'm eager for any feedback on today's article, the handoff document, or Aetherdrift itself. You can email me or contact me through any of my social media accounts (X, Tumblr, Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok).

Join me next week, for part two of Aetherdrift's vision design handoff document.

Until then, may you be off to the races.