Legions

Most Successful Gimmick Set

What was the most successful gimmick set, sales-wise?

Legions, the all-creature set.

Legions

Future Creature Sets

If/When another all creatures set a la Legions? The design space seems very fun and unique.

If. We’ve moved away from “gimmick sets” (everything is ______).

_____ Creatures Design Space If/When Legions

Birthday Sliver Trivia

Hey Mark, it’s my birthday! Can I please get a birthday trivia factoid on either Sliver Overlord or Sliver Gravemother!!?

Sliver Queen had been pretty popular. Legions brought back Slivers, so we thought it would be cool to do another five-color legendary Sliver in Scourge. We picked two abilities we thought would be useful. The tutor ability so you could go get the Sliver you needed in the moment, and the steal ability to help in Sliver on Sliver matches.Happy Birthday!

Birthday Legions Scourge Sliver Sliver Gravemother Sliver Overlord Sliver Queen Tutoring

Henchfolk Card Typing

Why was Mercenary chosen for the henchfolk cards in OTJ instead of Minion? Thank you for answering our questions sir.

We support Minion in that we haven’t changed it from the cards that have it, but we don’t use it on new cards anymore. With the exception of three cards in Commander 2019 that were redone legendary creatures that were originally Minion (Chainer, K'rrik, and Xantcha), we haven’t printed Minion on a card since Legions in 2003 (21 years ago!)

Appreciation Card Printing Commander 2019 Creatures Legendary Creatures Legions Mercenary Minion Outlaws of Thunder Junction Xantcha

Gimmick Sets Workload

This is a random and very obscure thought, but here goes. I know you have said in the past that you won't do "gimmick" sets again, citing Legions as the example, but to all the people that worked on Legions, it was a pretty good set for constructed and limited. It played well and was pretty good for Magic (in terms of gameplay purposes). Granted, it is possible to take a not great idea and execute it very well, and I think that's exactly what happened. Probably very hard to replicate.

The main issue is it’s a lot of extra work and it doesn’t increase player excitement.

Constructed Game Play Legions Limited Replicate

Changeling Inspiration Error

Hi Mark! In your two-part article Looking Back (and I think on a recent podcast too) you mentioned Mistform Ultimus as the inspiration for Changeling, but it's not a legendary creatures from Champions of Kamigawa, it's from Legions (I noticed because I started playing MTG on the Onslaught block).

It was a mistake.

Champions of Kamigawa Changeling Creatures Drive to Work Legendary Creatures Legions Mistform Ultimus Onslaught Onslaught

Mistform Ultimus Correction

Mistform Ultimus deffinitely isn't from Champions of Kamigawa

Yeah, it’s from Legions. I’m not sure why I keep messing that up.

Champions of Kamigawa Legions Mistform Ultimus

Slivers Origin Trivia

Hay Mark! It's my birthday so I wish you can give some obscure trivia about my favorite creature type: the slivers! I started playing MTG back on Legions because of them. Thanks :) PS: If/When sliver homeplane?

Slivers started as part of a personal set Mike Elliott designed before working at Wizards. Wizards bought the rights to it when they hired him. We then put them in Tempest, the first design team Mike worked on. Happy Birthday!

Birthday Creatures If/When Legions Sliver Tempest

Gimmick Set Appeal

Hey Mark, I just finished collecting all of Alara Reborn and I really love the all multicolor theme of the set. I know it's very hard to do in standard, but have themes like this ever been revisited in design, such as having an all creatures set like Legions? I feel like gameplay requires more but I can't get over how unique and cool the set looks as a whole. Even if it's a supplemental I'd love to see more sets like this in some fashion.

We did a bunch of research on “gimmick sets” (everything is a ______) and found that it was a lot of work and had minimal impact in making players more eager to buy it.

_____ Alara Reborn Creatures Game Play Legions Standard

Gimmick Set Impact

"(Gimmick sets) create a huge amount of difficulty to making the set and didn’t seem to increase overall excitement for the sets." Wasn't Legions the best-selling small set for a long time? I'd wager the gimmick had a lot to do with that.

Players liked having a creature-focused set, but when asked didn’t care that it was nothing but creatures.

Creatures Legions

Creature-Only Sets

If you were to apply your scale ratings to the likelihood of another set where every nonland card is a creature like Legions, where would you put that? Would things like mdfc’s and the adventure mechanic make it easier?

We don’t do what we call “gimmick sets” (aka “every card in the set is _______”) anymore. They create a huge amount of difficulty to making the set and didn’t seem to increase overall excitement for the sets.

_____ Creatures Legions Mechanics

Podcast Feedback Request

DTW #988 Designing for an Eternal World (Belated Feedback)Hi Mark,I have been listening somewhat regularly since the pandemic, but I'm not all the way through your back catalog yet. Episode #988 was one of my favorites in recent memory, and I would love to hear more like this.It was interesting to hear about big-picture challenges across eternal formats. I particularly enjoyed the short discussion on R&D power-level mistakes. Your thoughts on mistakes put a lot of things into perspective for me as someone that was pulled back into the game from my earlier casual high school days to get hooked for life and play pretty seriously for several years because of a design mistake (Bitterblossom). It must be difficult to be on the design side of things regretting putting out a mistakenly overpowered card that suddenly has legions of loving fans because of its power level. I can see why you would not have any desire to further support strategies built around such problematic cards.Although, as someone who has cherished memories of using such a card, I wanted to say that my experience with that deck has kept me hooked on Magic. Not only that, but my whole group of friends has been hooked due to this period years back where we all enjoyed the game so much that we lived and breathed Magic as we played competitive standard religiously. Also, even though I certainly had the advantage with u/b faeries in standard, some of the most fun I had with that deck was actually playing at a disadvantage in Modern because scraping together any wins was always that much more rewarding.(P.S. I really enjoyed #988, but may I request you throughout an ask for people's top ten favorite DTWs )Thank you

Okay, two questions: 1) What are people’s favorite “Drive to Work” episodes? Why?2) What topics have I not done would you like me to do an episode of the podcast on?

Appreciation Bitterblossom Casual Play Competitive Play Dimir (U/B) Drive to Work Eternal Faerie Game Design Legions Modern Power Level Standard

Creature Set Probability

Hello Mark, where would you put an all creature set (like Legions) on the storm scale?

A 10. We’ve moved away from what we dub “gimmick sets”.

Creatures Dub Legions Storm Scale

X-Men in Magic

How many Magic creature types can you name that are also the names of past or current members of the X-Men? (There are at least eight.)

X-men that are creature types: AngelBeastPhoenixCyclopsWolverineRogueJuggernautWarlock SageScoutX-men that are mechanics: Storm ChangelingArmorCypher (mechanic spelled Cipher)FrenzyX-men that are expansions:MirageLegion (expansion is Legions)

Angel Beast Changeling Cipher Creatures Cyclops Frenzy Juggernaut Legions Mechanics Mirage Phoenix Rogue Scout Warlock Wolverine

Considerations for Card Type Exclusions

You've mentioned the problems encountered previously with sets excluding all but 1 card type (I belive it was legions that was only creatures), but what about a set or series of sets that excludes some non creature card type? Creatures already have ETB (and/or dies) effects and activated abilities that mirror a variety of instant/sorcery spells. And we have creatures (like collector oofe) that mirror artifacts (null rod). I'm not asking for or if we should, but more what major problems would have to be addressed?

If a set is optimized by not having something, the possibility exists for us to do it, but it needs to be done to serve the set and not for novelty’s sake.

Artifacts Card Types Creatures Enter The Battlefield Instants Legions Non-creatures Null Rod Sorceries Spells

Maximum Occurrence of 'Creature' Word

"I’m pretty confident that is the highest percentage of a single word appearing on cards in a set." I think this was already pointed out some time ago but Legions has "creature" in 100% of the type lines.

Yeah, I think I’ve made this same mistake twice.

Creatures Legions

Mechanics from Set Constraints

Oh yes… Legions! And I thought fight was partly inspired by provoke, which was in the same block. It feels like the “all creatures” set constraints produced two mechanics that have gone on to use a lot of use. I could imagine other deeply restrictive settings could also produce similar results, like a creature-less set as a pure exercise.

The earliest designs that eventually led to fight predate provoke, although it did help move us in that direction. As for restrictions, we’ve found you can have them without having to be all or nothing. Strixhaven had a strong instant/sorcery theme, but the set wasn’t all instants and sorceries.

Creatures Fight / Bite Instants Legions Mechanics Provoke Provoke Sorceries

Gimmick Sets and Creativity

I know you guys don’t do gimmick sets like Scourge anymore, but scourge gave us morph, and inspired fight. Internally do you guys play around with severely restricted environments (a no creature set for example) to get the creativity going for the actual sets you work on, or would that be too much time/effort away from the sets meant for players?

Our sets have plenty of constraints without needing to add artificial ones. : )By the way, Scourge was not a gimmick set. Did you mean Legions, the all-creature set right before it? Onslaught, the set before Legions, introduced morph. Fight was introduced, as a keyword, in Innistrad.

Creatures Fight / Bite Humor Innistrad Keywords Legions Morph Morph Onslaught Onslaught Scourge

Possibility of a Roman Set

I'm not sure why Roman mythology is a particular sticking point for a Roman inspired set. Most popular conception of Rome really just does not fixate upon its spiritual aspect so much on its martial, architectural, and statecraft aspects. Gladiator games, legions marching, senators and emperors conspiring, trade with China... all of these are more prominent than the gods we named planets after in most depictions of Rome, including most history books.

Most stories don’t have to worry about having a the breadth of creatures Magic needs.

China Creatures God Legions Statecraft

Possibility of All-Sorceries Set

In reference to the ask about revisiting legions, what about an all-sorceries set (with the instant supertype implementation in this thought experiment)?

We’re not interested in gimmick “everything is _____” sets anymore.

_____ Instants Legions Supertype