Then and Now, Part 1
In Magic, part of doing a return to a setting often involves making callbacks to things we did on our previous visits. Today and next week, I'm going to look at a bunch of different cards in Lorwyn Eclipsed, talk about what mechanical callback it's making, and discuss how each card was made.
The Champions
One of the things I was interested in when we were working on the original Lorwyn set was trying to understand the various ways we could use typal themes. Richard Garfield had introduced typal themes in Limited Edition (Alpha), and they were mostly focused on creatures helping a specific creature type, usually buffing them in some way. As more sets played with typal themes, we started expanding how we interacted with them. We created noncreature cards with typal effects. We started caring about certain creature types being in the graveyard or being cast. But there was one space we hadn't really explored, the hand.
In Unglued, the first Un- set, I made a card around the concept of a creature that looked cute and innocent but was secretly malevolent. I could give him big stats and scary abilities so that once he got in play he would do "terrible" things, but most of the time the card was stuck in your hand. Was there a way to tap into that flavor and give it some functionality in the early game? The idea I came up with was an activation you could use in your hand. It would allow you to show the creature to your opponent (you also had to say, "It's coming," but hey, it was an Un- set) and because he was so scary, it would cause your opponent to lose life. Just knowing he was coming was enough to damage your opponent.
I had you reveal the card from your hand out of necessity. I simply didn't know how else to use the card. That ability would send me down a path of exploring cards in the hand as a resource. I spent a lot of time investigating this theme. For example, in Urza's Destiny (the set where I was the entire design team), there were two different cycles that explored effects that scaled based on how many cards of a certain color were in your hand.
This brings me back to the design of Lorwyn. I was intrigued by the idea of showing cards from your hand to express a typal theme. The design team ended up making two cycles. One was a common cycle of creatures that are cheaper if you reveal another creature of its core creature type.
The second was a rare cycle of dual lands that enter tapped unless you revealed a card of the appropriate creature type.
Then, in Dragons of Tarkir, we used this technology to solve a problem we were having. The set had a Dragon typal theme, but Dragons are expensive, so it was hard to care about them if you only looked at the battlefield. We made a number of cards that cared about whether you had a Dragon on the battlefield or in your hand.
This would lead to the creation of a new keyword action, behold, when we returned to Tarkir years later. Behold was so useful that we internally dubbed it deciduous, meaning any set who needed access to behold could use it. It was a useful tool that we knew we'd need again.
Before we continue, there's another cycle from Lorwyn I want to discuss. Champion was an attempt to bring a sense of evolution to a Magic mechanic. Instead of one creature becoming another creature, we tied the connection to a creature type (it was Lorwyn after all). With champion, any Elf could turn into
But even with all our ideas, champion proved to be a bit hard to use. A few cards saw some play, but when we had our initial meeting for Lorwyn Eclipsed and looked back at mechanics from the Lorwyn and Shadowmoor blocks, our note on champion was that it would be nice to do again if it played a little better.
For Lorwyn Eclipsed, Vision Design didn't hand off champion or even a champion variant, but Set Design decided to take a pass at it. They came to the same conclusion we did, which was that champion needed something a little bit more. But they thought of something that Vision Design hadn't thought of: behold.
What if you extended where the appropriate creature card needed to be? Adding the hand created a lot of value and meant you wouldn't have to lose a permanent on the battlefield. The team played with it and liked it enough to commit to creating a rare cycle of creatures. As with most cycles in the set, it matched the five creature types we were building Limited archetypes around. They made monocolor cards for each creature type's core color.
The team explored whether they could use the actual champion mechanic, but the problem was they were changing how it worked. Using extra rules text to add behold to the existing champion mechanic proved unwieldy (and worked differently than champion because the creature returns to your hand). So, they made the choice to write it out and make the callback through the title of the cards, all of which included the word "Champion."
They decided that the championing aspect was connective enough that the other ability on each card could do its own thing. The white one had a static ability, the black card had an activated ability, and the other three cards had a triggered ability. Each ability played into the core mechanical theme for that typal archetype.
I should also point out that we did an uncommon creature cycle where you can reveal a creature card or pay extra mana, except this version uses behold to allow you to get the discount if you have the proper creature type on the battlefield.
Commands
Aaron Forsythe was hired as the editor-in-chief of DailyMTG. He would eventually join R&D. He first led the design of Dissension, the third set in the Ravnica: City of Guilds block. He then led Alara Reborn, the third set in the Shards of Alara block. Lorwyn was Aaron's first time leading a large set design. Different designers have their favorite kinds of abilities, and one of the things Aaron really enjoys is modal effects.
The very first Charms appeared in Mirage. The design team (Bill Rose, Joel Mick, Charlie Catino, Don Felice, Elliot Siegel, and Howard Kahlenberg) expressed interest in exploring effects that were too small to go on a spell. By putting three of them together, they gave these modal cards enough value to be viable. Magic R&D and the players instantly fell in love with Charms, and we have used them numerous times since Mirage.
In Lorwyn, Aaron was interested in upping the power of modal effects. Was there a way to make even more exciting modal effects? Aaron found three ways to up the excitement:
- Instead of three choices, you get four.
- Instead of picking one effect, you get to pick two.
- By making the spells a little more expensive and of a higher rarity, we could give them more impactful effects.
Aaron called these Commands and made a rare cycle of them.
The Mirage designers made Charms to add smaller effects to decks. Aaron was interested in larger, impactful effects that you would play in a competitive deck even if that was the only thing it did. The modes allowed for greater flexibility and gave the spells higher utility, increasing their power level. The Lorwyn design and development team spent a lot of time on them making them the best they could be. Many of them, especially
The Lorwyn Commands were so popular that we've brought them back numerous times. Dragons of Tarkir did them as two-color cards for each ally-color pair. Strixhaven: School of Mages did them as two-color cards for each enemy-color pair. The Brothers' War did them again as monocolor cards. When we made our initial list of things that needed to return in Lorwyn Eclipsed, Commands were on the list.
Let's walk through what the Lorwyn Eclipsed design team did with them. The original Commands were monocolor cards with very general abilities, allowing them to be included in most decks of that color. The design team was interested in something different this time around. They wanted to make them more focused. They'd be strong but aimed at a very specific deck.
Thier focus would be on typal effects. The set had five creature types that it was focusing on (Kithkin, Merfolk, Goblin, Elemental, and Elf). Each of those creature types focused on a two-color pair, but it was a departure from how we normally divide things. Those five two-color pairs were neither all ally colors nor all enemy colors but rather a mix. Kithkin in green-white, Merfolk in white-blue, Goblins in black-red, Elementals in blue-red, and Elves in black-green. Each color was represented twice.
The decision was to make the Commands two-color cards and focus on the five two-color typal archetypes. To help focus them on the typal archetypes, the design team decided that at least one of the four effects of each Command would be a typal effect. This allowed the cards to be very strong within their typal archetype but less useful outside of it. When working with the typal theme, one of the design team's goals involved finding more ways to get typal cards that aren't creatures into a typal deck.
Most typal themes tend to enhance creatures or count cards of that creature type. Thus, you are heavily encouraged to put as many creatures of that type in your deck as you can. This pushes most typal decks in the same direction, and the design team was interested in finding designs that were good enough to warrant adding cards that weren't creatures of that type. One of the keys to doing that is creating spells to fill roles usually filled by noncreature spells, things like creature removal and card draw.
To aid in the typal theme and help with typal synergies, the design team decided to make this cycle kindred. Kindred, formerly known as "tribal," was a card type introduced in Lorwyn to help expand typal themes to noncreature cards. It wasn't quite as successful as we hoped. It turns out most typal effects really focus on the cards being creatures, so we found the card type adding words for not a lot of benefit. But this was a return to Lorwyn-Shadowmoor, the place where the card type originated, so we felt it was appropriate to included the card type in the set. Lorwyn Eclipsed ended up with thirteen kindred cards: a common colorless artifact, an uncommon cycle, two uncommon reprints, and a rare multicolor Command cycle.
The design team ended up choosing to make the typal effect the same across all the cards. It lets you create a token that's a copy of a creature you control of the relevant creature type. The other three effects are a mix of effects that couldn't be done in just one of the colors. At least one of them helps you interact with creatures, and all of them play into the typal strategy of that archetype. I know Play Design spent a lot of time tuning these five cards, so I'm hoping they see a bunch of play in their typal archetypes.
Encumbered Reejerey, Reluctant Doungard, Moonshadow, and Bristlebane Battler
When making a set, we always try to figure out how to design cards that cover multiple themes. For example, when we were designing Eventide, two of the major themes were -1/-1 counters and colors matter. Was there a way that a card could care about both?
The solution to that problem started down two slightly different paths, though. In Shadowmoor, we explored cool things to do with -1/-1 counters. I came up with what I thought was a very elegant design.
Injured Bird 2W
Creature — Bird
3/3
CARDNAME comes into play with a -1/-1 counter.
Here's a dramatic reenactment of every time I showed this card to another member of R&D.
Me: I just made this new card. What do you think of it?
Them: Isn't this just a 2/2?
Me: In a vacuum, but it's in a set where -1/-1 counters matter. There are ways to remove counters, move counters, get value for having counters, and spend counters. It'll matter.
Them: But isn't this just a 2/2?
Me: In a vacuum.
Them: But when people see it for the first time won't it be in a vacuum?
Me: Yeah, but Magic players will say, "Hmm, why isn't this a 2/2?"
Them: Yeah, that's what I'm asking.
Me: I added "Hmm." That means it's an interesting question to think about.
Them: Can't you make it matter?
Me: Yeah, I could. I will. But does it have to be on this card?
Them: I think it should be.
Basically, the note I got from everyone was that the vanilla version was confusing for no reason, so I ended up cutting it from Shadowmoor. I did eventually put it into Eventide as a hybrid card. Everyone had accepted that I really wanted it, although Eventide being the second set in the Shadowmoor block probably helped.
This story is important because I got into the habit of giving cards that enter with -1/-1 counters an inherent way to care about them or remove them.
The other part of the story takes us all the way back to Alpha in the summer of 1993.
The Laces were a much behated rare cycle from Alpha. For one mana, you could permanently change the color of a permanent. The consensus was that the effect was too little to be worth a card and wasted a spot for what could be a cool rare. I, in contrast, loved them. My little Johnny brain adored trying to figure out why changing the color of cards could mechanically matter, especially in surprising ways. Back in the early days of Magic, I was constantly building new decks, and many of them had a Lace in them. That is until Legends introduced a cycle that let me change as many creatures' colors as I wanted for one mana. I loved the idea of colors mattering being a theme since my earliest days.
During the design of Shadowmoor, I had established it was going to be a "colors matter" set where half the cards were hybrid. I really wanted to play into the multicolor aspect of hybrid, so I wanted to care about when you cast spells of a certain color. We ended up making two common cycles of creatures.
The first was the Duo cycle. They are all hybrid creatures that have two abilities. The first is whenever you cast a spell of a specific color (one of the colors of that card, but it went through the cycle), the creature gets +1/+1. The other was that whenever you cast of spell of the card's other color, the creature gets an evergreen creature keyword tied to that second color.
The second was the Initiate cycle. These are monocolor creatures with a single ability. Whenever you cast a spell of this creature's color, you could pay
This brings me back to the problem we were trying to solve. How do we combine -1/-1 counters with a "colors matter" theme? If we wanted something to do when you played a certain color, we could have them remove a -1/-1 counter. One of the things I'd realized about -1/-1 counters is that they allow us to make effects where the creature can grow, but unlike +1/+1 counters, we can cap the effect. If a 6/6 enters with five -1/-1 counters, 6/6 is its upper limit. This whole thought led to the following cycle in Eventide:
The Hatchlings are an uncommon cycle of hybrid creatures. They are all 6/6 creatures that enter with five -1/-1 counters. Each has an ability shared by the two colors and each removes a -1/-1 counter whenever you play a card of either of the card's two colors. But why did we write out the counter-removing ability twice? Because this way, if you play a card that is both colors (like a hybrid card), you get to remove two -1/-1 counters.
Often when we do a callback to a cycle, we do a whole new cycle. This is an example of a mechanical theme we just did on a handful of cards and didn't worry about every color getting a card with the callback. Because we had the freedom to mix Lorwyn- and Shadowmoor-inspired mechanics, we chose to make the triggers something different than "colors matter."
We've run out of time for today. I hope you've enjoyed hearing about Lorwyn Eclipsed cards and the things that inspired them. I'd love to hear any feedback on this article, any of the cards I talked about, or Lorwyn Eclipsed itself. You can email me or contact me through social media (Bluesky, Tumblr, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter).
Join me next week for part two.
Until then, may you enjoy the many cards from Lorwyn Eclipsed.