Last week, I started looking at the original design handoff document I made when I finished Khans of Tarkir's design. Today is the second and last part of the look at that document. Everything below is from the original document except for my commentary in the blue boxes.

A Sense of Uncertainty

To create the feeling of a warlord-centric setting, we need several things. First, we need the warlords, each with a distinct clan. Next, we need to create a mood of distrust and secrecy. We've done this through multiple avenues:

Everyone in R&D was on board with doing a wedge-focused set. The main debate was whether the set needed morph. We already had five clan mechanics, so a vocal subset was pushing for us to remove it. I had two big problems with that. One, it was core to the block, as I talked about last week. Two, as I explain below, I'd made it so central to the structure of the set that taking it out would require an extensive reworking.

Morph

There are three reasons we chose morph for the "Huey" block. First, it is a high-profile mechanic that draws attention to itself. That allows us to use it to show the contrast throughout the block. Morph is normal morph in "Huey," a proto-version (currently called recruit) in "Dewey," and a tweaked version with two morph costs in "Louie."

I don't remember the third morph variant. My best guess is that it gave you two morph costs, one of which was like kicker in that it let you get a bigger and better creature.

The second bonus of morph is its interesting use of hidden information. Morph creatures are unknown, and interacting with them is a different experience from normal Magic. This sense of mystery and intrigue plays very well in a warlord-centric setting, creating a sense of uncertainty. It makes the player feel like the inhabitants of the setting, where they never quite know who they can trust. It helps create a mood of paranoia that we feel is important for the set.

We wanted the set to focus more on combat than usual, so I liked having a mystery that sat on the battlefield. That was one of the reasons I chose morph to be in the set.

Finally, we are also able to use morph to give identity to the clans. Here's how each clan makes use of it:

  • Abzan: The endurance clan has larger morph creatures that can be turned face up in the late game to help you win.
  • Jeskai: The cunning clan has morph creatures that can surprise you when they turn face up, sometimes with triggered abilities and sometimes by having qualities that take an opponent by surprise.
  • Sultai: The ruthless clan has morph creatures whose true deadly potential is hidden until they turn face up.
  • Mordu: The speed clan has the cheapest morph creatures and can use their morph creatures to get out efficient attackers.
  • Temur: The strength clan has morph creatures that tend to win a fight when turned face up. Their morph creatures are aimed at the mid-game.

Development wasn't as exact in their use of morph as I laid out, but you can see a lot of this philosophy in the final set.

Lastly, at Development's request, we made sure that no common or uncommon morph creature was capable of "defeating" (defined at killing and surviving in a fight) a face-down 2/2 without a converted mana cost of 5 or more.

This was an idea from Erik Lauer that we adopted. It has since become the gold standard for building sets with face-down mechanics.

Information Matters

Another way to help create the necessary tone and aid morph gameplay is to make information a resource. All five colors use peeking, defined as looking at a face-down card, as a rider on spells, especially at lower rarities. There is a cycle of common peeking spells and a cycle of common peeking artifacts. We believe this is very important because the security of tools that reveal hidden information helps offset one of the biggest downsides of morph: the feeling of hopelessness.

Note that it's okay if these cards aren't the most powerful, as we feel that the option to use them is more important than them getting used often. In fact, it would be actively bad if players always knew what their opponent's face-down cards were.

In addition to helping morph, an environment where information becomes a strategic part of the game reinforces the feeling of a warlord-centric setting, where learning about the threats and who is doing what is a key part of survival. There are also other tools such as the uncommon cycle of morphs that use revealing as a cost. This trading of knowledge for power is a theme of the set and something that plays well in an environment where players have unknown qualities on the battlefield.

While most of what is presented in this document made it to print, this aspect didn't. There were enough moving pieces in the set and this aspect didn't justify its space. However, morph spells with a reveal cost did make it.

Increased Bluffing in Combat

Part of creating the mood of uncertainty is making combat less clear. Morph helps here, as whenever a morph gets into combat, the outcome isn't clear. To help increase this bluffing, we also added other factors (raid being the main one) that makes understanding motivations a little harder. For example, did an opponent's morph creature attack because they're willing to sacrifice it? Or can they turn it face up and win the fight? Or do they have a trick in their hand? Or is its controller merely trying to get a raid bonus?

Morph and raid did the lion's share of this work.

Greater Focus on Combat

Another way to get more fighting to happen is to make more elements of the set point towards combat. Hunker-down is about trading combat for a bonus. Kung fu boosts creatures and allows for surprises in combat. Delve gives trading and chump blocking a secondary use. Raid encourages attacking. Power-up makes power-boosting effects more useful, which gives Temur decks more opportunity for surprises in combat. Okay, that one's a stretch. Temur's focus on combat lies in its overall deck, not the keyword.

The final set ended up very combat focused.

Warrior Tribal

"Louie" is being designed as a dragon-focused set, so we put a significant amount of Dragon tribal effects into the set. To parallel this in "Huey," we have included a small amount of Warrior tribal effects. There are only currently three cards (two at uncommon and one at rare) each in a different color (red, green, and black). We included two of these at uncommon so that they could be build-around cards in Limited. Originally, these were Human tribal effects, but we changed it to Warrior tribal after a request by the Creative team.

The Warrior typal component of Khans of Tarkir went on to be quite popular.

Overlap of Purpose

A warlord-centric setting is a setting constantly in conflict, not just over territory but people, or in Magic's case, creatures. Each warlord knows that the key to growing in strength is to convince others, even some from other clans, to join them. To capture this sense of changing loyalties, we worked hard to make sure that each clan's cards work with their intersecting clans.

This was accomplished in several ways:

Synergy of Clan Mechanics

Tom commented to me that the set plays better than it looks. I took that as a compliment about how the different parts flow together, which is hard to see until you actually get to play with the cards. This blending of keywords was done on purpose, because we knew that each clan would actually have access to three keywords.

We also supported these synergies by creating mechanics that play well together. Additionally, we put in support cards that work for multiple clans. Kung fu and raid's lack of synergy was solved by making the raid cards creatures. Kung fu creatures work in a raid-style aggressive deck, while raid cards can work with Jeskai's evasive creatures.

The last thing we did was combine traditional spell effects with our keywords, mainly on cards that had additional synergies in connecting clans.

With Shards of Alara on our mind, we spent a lot of time making sure the mechanics were synergistic with connecting clans. This is another aspect that has become standard in any faction set.

Off-Color Activations

Another way to create cards for multiple clans is to use off-color activations. Originally, we tried centering these off-color abilities in the central color, having one ally off-color activation and one enemy off-color activation. That proved problematic because cards with an ally off-color activation only went into one clan and discouraged our intended strategies. We fixed this problem by turning the cycle with ally off-color activations into a second cycle with enemy off-color activations.

This is the one place in the set where we centered the enemy colors of each wedge. All the off-color activations were built around the enemy color.

Enemy-Color Gold Cards

Another tool to help push overlap was to make two-color enemy gold cards. This allowed players flexibility when drafting and made gold cards that apply to multiple clans. We originally had one cycle at uncommon but added a second uncommon cycle at Development's request.

The set ended up having three enemy-color cycles, two at uncommon and one at rare.

Use of Multicolor

The clans' worldbuilding predates the set's wedge theme. As we were creating a structure for the five clans, it became clear that wedges could be grafted onto the five clans. We want to start the block with a bang, and a wedge set is a common request from the public.

The next step was for the design team to figure out what the audience would expect of a wedge set. We set out to make sure we hit as many of those as we could:

Legendary Wedge Creatures (Mythic Rare)

One of the biggest reasons for the desire of a wedge set is more legendary creatures in the wedges' colors. The set needs mythic rare warlords, and the clans are each three colors. This cycle of mythic rare legendary creatures was a no-brainer.

This cycle made it to print. These were the leaders of each clan.

Intro Packs and Prerelease Cards (Rare)

This is a cycle of rare creatures whose purpose is to be the face card of the set's Intro Decks and the Prerelease cards for each clan. We made them legendary because there is a lot of external pressure for more legendary creatures in wedge colors, and this block will not have an opportunity to produce more. Note that the legendary supertype is a tertiary focus and is something we can remove if it causes development problems.

This cycle made it to print (Ivorytusk Fortress, Sage of the Inward Eye, Rakshasa Vizier, Ankle Shanker, and Avalanche Tusker). We ended up making this cycle of creatures nonlegendary.

Power Spell Cycle (Rare)

These cards fill a similar void as that of the Ultimatums from Shards of Alara, being big, splashy three-color instants or sorceries. This cycle is intended for Constructed. If they must shrink in size to be better in Constructed, that is fine.

I believe this cycle turned into the Ascendancy enchantments, such as Jeskai Ascendancy.

Charms (Uncommon)

We have made monocolor charms, two-color charms, and three-color charms but never three-color charms in the wedges' colors. 

This cycle made it to print.

Tri-Lands (Uncommon)

This cycle is of lands that enter the battlefield tapped and tap for three colors of mana. Shards of Alara did the arc versions. While these aren't gold cards, the audience would be upset if we excluded them.

This cycle made it to print.

Here are additional cycles that we felt players would either expect once they understood the make-up of the set or that allowed us to make gold cards the audience would enjoy:

Power Creature Cycle (Rare)

Development wanted some three-mana, three-color creatures for Constructed, so we made this cycle.

This cycle made it to print. The most famous of them was Siege Rhino.

Empires (Rare)

There was a sense that the set was low on innovation, so we were tasked with coming up with a splashy rare cycle à la the Wish cycle from Judgment. The Design team liked the idea of these representing empires because we felt it had strong flavor and fit well into the set.

We went through many iterations, but the one we went with is a cycle of enchantments that cost the wedge's colors. Each has an effect that triggers when its controller deals combat damage with a creature of the clan's colors. Once that happens, the player gains dominance and the empire's effect turns on. Then, the opponent can deal combat damage with a creature of at least one of the colors of the clan, to take away dominance turning off the enchantment effect.

Our Limited playtests show some promise, but of the entire set's design, this is the piece that I have the least confidence in (mostly because we haven't put it through its paces). If the Development team feels this cannot work, please contact me, and I am willing to put together a team to find a replacement.

This is another aspect that didn't make it to print. They ended up being a little complicated and didn't pull their weight. It's possible this is the cycle that became the Ascendancy enchantments.

Three-Color Morph (Uncommon)

We wanted each clan to have a morph creature that was in all three colors. Each tries to play into the theme and play pattern of its clan. These creatures are all currently {2}{C}{D}{F}, both in mana cost and morph cost.

This cycle stayed. Their mana values all stayed at 5.

Enemy-Color Spell Cycle (Uncommon)

As I talked about above, this is a cycle of enemy-color spells to help the Draft environment, allowing players to start by drafting enemy-color decks.

Enemy-Color Creature Cycle (Uncommon)

This is the matching creature cycle we made when Development asked us to add a second enemy-color cycle.

We had two enemy-color cycles at uncommon, but they weren't specifically tied to creatures or noncreatures. Each clan got the cards it needed.

Three-Color Creatures (Common)

This cycle is to give a little push for the three-color decks in Limited. This cycle currently costs two generic mana and the clan's colors. They are designed to match the play style of their clan.

This cycle stayed but moved from a mana value of 5 to 6.

Philosophy of Gold Cards in the Set

We are trying hard to make multicolor cards a core component of the set without taking over as the major theme. Because we'll likely go back to Ravnica in a few years, we don't want the set feeling like a multicolor set. That is why we followed the 1.5 as-fan goal for multicolor cards set by Development. The set is currently at an as-fan of 1.4 multicolor cards. This allows us to add more cards to fill the wedge theme of the set.

We also made sure that all the common and uncommon multicolor cards (with the sole exception of the Charms) cost more than one mana of each of the clan's colors. This helps make splashing the third color a viable strategy for three-color decks in Limited (and possibly Constructed).

I believe Development ended up being less worried about the as-fan of multicolor cards in the set. R&D, as a whole, has gotten comfortable with having more multicolor cards in a set. The return to Ravnica was also later than expected. (Guilds of Ravnica came five years later.) We did follow through on the philosophy of not having many common and uncommon three-color cards with a mana value of 3.

Final Notes

This set's design has been through a lot, including an entire alternate file (not to be confused with the alternate-reality set "Louie"), but I feel it has ended up in a good place.

The alternate file is referencing our trying out of "borph" (i.e., morph effects that cost {2} rather than {3}). We found it was too aggressive, and players seldom turned up the morph creatures. Here's the article of me talking about it.

As with every set, I always want to stress that the Design team is going for a particular feel. This time, we are trying to create the sense of a warlord-centric setting, complete with intrigue, aggression, and paranoia. We want a larger focus on combat and hidden information. The story hinges on this being a setting that Sarkhan wants to change, so it should have a little more edge than the average Magic set.

The set has a lot of pieces that all hinge upon one another. As it's impossible to covey all the nuance in a single document (although I've tried for ten pages), please feel free to talk to me if you are unsure how a certain element fits into the larger structure of the design.

I'm very eager to see what Development can do with the set. I am very optimistic that it will be something great.

"We Khan Do It!"

That's the end of the document. I hope you enjoyed getting a peek at a document from Tarkir's first outing. As always, I'm eager for any feedback on today's article, this document, or Khans of Tarkir. You can email me or contact me through social media accounts (Bluesky, X, Tumblr, Instagram, and TikTok).

Join me next week for my first Tarkir: Dragonstorm preview article.

Until then, may you have fun figuring out which clan you want to play when Tarkir: Dragonstorm releases on April 11, 2025.