An Epic Story
Now that I’ve gotten the design team out of the way, let’s get to the meat and potatoes of this column – the epic mechanic. For starters, I can tell you that the epic mechanic is a single rare cycle (meaning there are five of them, one in each color). Each one works the same. Once you play the spell, it will repeat itself at the start of your upkeep every turn. The drawback? It’s the last spell you’ll ever play in the game. Because once you play it you are no longer allowed to play every spell. Don’t worry though, the epic spells were designed to have a lot of game. As Enduring Ideal demonstrates, the gameplay isn’t over once the spell is played. In many ways, the game is just beginning.
So where did the epic spells come from? The answer is not what you might expect. Where did epic spells come from? Legends. Or rather I guess I should say legendary creatures. You see, for those of you that don’t bother to look at your rares, the Kamigawa block has a little legendary theme. (Oh, that’s why all the rare creatures are legendary.) And while we started with creatures, other card types jumped into the fray. Legendary artifacts and lands started appearing. Even legendary enchantments made their premiere. All this made the Saviors design team ask an important question: where are the legendary instants and sorceries?
Brian Tinsman seemed compelled to crack the riddle of the legendary spells. The problems though were plentiful. Legendary permanents made sense. What does it mean for an instant or sorcery to be legendary? At first they explored the idea that only one could be on the stack at any one time. The idea turned out to be just as lame as it sounds. Next, they tried making the spells only playable once per game. The first incarnation could only be played if no copies of the card where in any graveyard. Second, they tried having the card remove all copies of itself from the library when played. Nothing was working.
What does it mean for an instant or sorcery to be legendary
The problem the team realized was that legendary meant two different things. Mechanically it was an object that couldn’t exist in any number greater than one. But creatively, it represented a person, item or place of great historical context. The first definition seemed out of reach, but the team still thought there was hope for the second. So they scrapped the idea of the legendary label and instead decided to create a series of spells that felt like they were legendary in spirit.
It was this idea that led them down the path to spells that stopped all other spells. A spell so mighty that it would always be the last spell you played. But a spell had to be pretty powerful to have this kind of handicap. They experimented with effects but realized that the spells needed something more. This led to the idea that the spells would keep going off every turn. The player would be giving up playing all other spells to get a guaranteed (and free) spell every turn. The team liked it. It felt special and was definitely venturing into virgin design territory. Only one problem remained. What would these spells do?
This is not as easy as it might seem at first glance. Here are a number of things the spells had to do:
* the spell had to have an interesting effect; something this grandiose couldn’t just do some bland effect that gets done every set
* the spell had to have play value; that is, it needed to do something that created interesting game situations turn after turn
* the spell had to allow the caster to win without guaranteeing victory; this is a very gentle balance; the team had to make effects that would lead to winning but not instantly win
* the spell had to be worth its cost; not being able to play spells is a huge drawback; the spell’s effects had to measure up
* the spell had to allow the player ways to interact with it; just because you’re done playing spells doesn’t mean there’s nothing left to do; there’s activated abilities, creatures that can attack and possibly even new keywords that get around the restriction
Yes, the epic spells were an epic challenge. Interestingly enough, Enduring Ideal was one of the first effects the team came up with. You’ll have to wait for Saviors to see the other four.
Once, Twice, Three Times a Set
There’s not too much more to say about the epic mechanic, so I thought I’d take a little detour to talk about one of the biggest challenges of Saviors of Kamigawa, what I’ll call the “third set identity crisis”. For those of you out there that have done any reading on childcare (which I’m guessing is a minority), you’ve probably run across the birth order effect. The idea behind it is that birth order has a huge impact on a child’s development. Being the first child, for example, is a very different experience than being the baby or being a middle child. Why do I bring this up? (Not to talk about childcare, I promise. Hmm, great design mistakes as seen through parenting snafus? Nah.) Because I think set order has a lot to do with expansion identity.
The first set is always shiny and new. It introduces the theme(s) for the year as well as the block mechanics. The second set gets to expand upon the work of the first set makes all the obvious twists (and some of the less obvious ones) on the mechanics. But the third set has a bit of an identity crisis. It can’t just expand on the themes. The second set did that. But it’s still part of the block so it has a certain responsibility to keep the feel of the first two sets. In the end, the set has to always find a new twist to add into the block that feels like an extension of the earlier themes but still feels new. This was the challenge of the Saviors design team.
How did they solve it? What theme did they choose? That sounds like a wonderful topic for next week when I introduce another cool Saviors card and dig a little deeper into what you can expect Saviors to add to the Kamigawa experience.
引用元
EPIC STRUGGLES Posted in Making Magic on May 9, 2005
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/epic-struggles-2005-05-09
《不朽の理想/Enduring Ideal》のプレビューです。
もっとも、話のメインはカードそのものよりも「歴伝」メカニズムです。
特に、メカニズムが「残りのゲームの間、この呪文だけを唱えることができる」というものだとザックリ説明した後の、その開発経緯が本題と言えます。
神河ブロックは伝説がテーマなので、伝説のクリーチャーをはじめとして、伝説のアーティファクト、伝説の土地、伝説のエンチャントなど、さまざまなタイプで伝説カードが作られました。
そこで、「伝説のインスタントやソーサリーはないのか？」という疑問が浮上しました。
「１度に１つしかスタックに置けない」「１ゲームに１回しかプレイできない」「１度プレイしたら他のカードをライブラリーから追放」など、試行錯誤されましたが、どれもうまく行きませんでした。
そこで、伝説の意味を改めて考え直したところ、上記のような「１つしか存在しない」以外に、「歴史的に重要なもの（人物・道具・場所）」を表しているとの考えに至ります。そこで、伝説という特殊タイプを与えるのではなく、伝説的な呪文というフレイバーを表す方向に変わりました。
このアイデアから、「他の全ての呪文を使うのを止める、最後の呪文」という発想から、「毎ターン同じ呪文をタダで唱え続ける」というメカニズムに至りました。
後は、そのような呪文にふさわしい効果を探し、そのバランスを調整する段階です。
これはプレビューなので、その結果どのようなカードになったのか全てを明かすことはありません。
ただ、この《不朽の理想/Enduring Ideal》の効果は、歴伝メカニズムができてから最初に思いついたものです。
新メカニズムのプレビューカードに選ばれるのに、相応しいと言えるでしょう。
しかも、このカードは歴伝サイクルの中でもっとも活躍したと言っても過言ではありません。
理想的なプレビューと言えます。
補足１
この記事の主題ではありませんが、第三セットのデザインに苦労することについても軽く触れられています。
それをどう克服して行ったかはその後のお楽しみ、ということですが。
補足２
このような開発経緯の歴伝ですが、その評判はよくなかったようです。
そこで、伝説をテーマとした『ドミナリア』で伝説のソーサリーというメカニズムが登場しました。
この点については、過去の記事で取り上げています。
神河資料 - 伝説の呪文
https://researchofkamigawa.diarynote.jp/201912272150307305/
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