Robot Viking

My first day at Gen Con, I was escorted past the velvet ropes (well, there weren’t really velvet ropes) to the exclusive Wizards of the Coast press area. There, amidst leather couches and seemingly random room lamps, I spoke to Magic: the Gathering brand managers Paul Levy and Mark Purvis about Scottish highland dance competitions. Right, these guys are Magic brand managers…we talked about Magic.

I feel like I need to address the Steel Cocktail Lounge in some way, but I’m not sure what to say about it. It wasn’t really a cocktail lounge (and that’s not what they called it — it didn’t seem to have a name, as far as I could tell), there were no beverages served, but the couches made it sort of feel that way. I actually learned that WotC employees are forbidden from drinking alcoholic beverages while wearing their official Wizards polo shirts. In practical terms, the lounge was a nice place for interviews, slightly out of the bustle of the exhibit hall (though it was certainly not quiet up there), but still close to all the action. It offered the best view of all the exhibitors (I’ve got a photo I’ll post along with the other interview I did up there). It still felt a little weird though, since no one was ever allowed up there except select press people. I guess I’ve always been bothered by any kind of perceived elitism, even when I’m one of the ones who gets to go to the secret special area. I know that there have to be secret special areas for practical reasons, but sticking it right in front of everyone was a little off-putting.

That said, everyone I talked to at Wizards was extremely cool, Purvis and Levy no exception. We talked about a lot of different things, so let’s start with something I found quite interesting: the Deckbuilder’s Toolkit. This is a product that came out in June and snuck right under my radar. It’s a nice looking sturdy storage box full of Magic cards, 285 of them. Purvis described it as “the second purchase a new Magic player should make” (the first being an intro pack/pre-constructed deck). The cards are all commons and uncommons, along with an essential assortment of basic lands. It’s designed to get a new player’s collection off to a strong start.

A lot of new players get boxes of cards like these from friends who’ve been playing for awhile. The problem is, they get a bunch of leftover, terrible uncommons and mostly unplayable commons to start building their first decks with. Pretty discouraging. The Toolkit is filled with good, useful, bread and butter Magic cards. It’s randomized, but there are “blocks” of cards that work together in each one. You might get a Toolkit with an elf theme, or a black discard theme. No two Toolkits are identical, but each newbie should end up with a solid selection of Lightning Bolts, Overruns and Condemns. The set has already been reprinted twice, and the plan is for future reprints to have updated cards so new players can always get a solid collection of current cards. Plus, it comes with four booster packs, so you might snag some sweet rares too. This seems like an altogether fantastic idea. I might pick one up just for the cool box.

Next, we moved on to premier decks. In September, Elspeth vs. Tezzeret will be released. Not only will the decks tie into the artifact-centric Scars of Mirrodin, it will contain a foil Elspeth, Knight Errant, which single-cardedly almost makes up for the cost of the decks. In November we’ll get a premium deck along the lines of last year’s Slivers deck called Fire and Lightning. The cards will all be foil, but will be made using an all-new foil treatment which Purvis said was even cooler than the one used on the From the Vault cards (and if you’ve ever seen one of those, they look amazing). Some cards will have new art, and there will obviously be a ton of good burn spells in there. I asked if they’d made any efforts to balance the deck against other Wizards products, since one major problem with the Slivers deck is that it’s too good to really play it against anything else. He acknowledged the issue and said that the premium decks were designed for balance against the “versus” decks like Liliana vs. Garuuk or Elspeth vs. Tezzeret, but they would always be on the high end of the pre-constructed spectrum.

WotC has been pushing casual multiplayer formats hard lately, even calling this the “Summer of Multiplayer.” They had some cool multiplayer events at Gen Con, including tournaments, a Grand Melee and a player submitted format. They’ve been sending Archenemy promo cards to retailers to help support multiplayer game nights and events. The goal with the various multiplayer formats being supported is to allow a game store to customize in-store events to the demands of the customers. If it’s a hardcore competitive crowd they can play Standard every Friday, but host Planechase events on Saturday afternoons, when the casual crowd comes in.

I was curious if any products were coming to support formats that are already popular in the Magic community, like Elder Dragon Highlander or Cube drafting (which I have recently become a huge proponent of, article to come). Both brand managers suggested that R&D is aware of those things and considers them when planning new products, but didn’t mention anything specific in the release pipeline (although the From the Vault series is perfectly geared toward Cube drafters). And though I pried and pried, I couldn’t get Purvis to spill any info on next summer’s multiplayer format. He reiterated that they will revisit older formats, so we know Planechase isn’t dead, for instance, and even though he refused to come out and say it, I would guess that next year will see another new multiplayer format.

Finally we moved on to Scars of Mirrodin, October’s “big set.” I hate to say it, but I didn’t really like Mirrodin and I’m not especially excited about Scars. Not a fan of the art style or artifact heavy sets. They did spoil some art at Gen Con, and other sites have posted it by now. There will be a new Planeswalker introduced in Scars, and the story picks up right after Fifth Dawn.

One interesting thing mentioned was that Richard Garfield himself has been working regularly with Wizards again. He’s been a part of the company, or at least a consultant, all along, but he’s been in the offices lately participating in the development of the fall 2011 set, codenamed “Shake.” Purvis in particular seemed very excited about Garfield’s design ideas. “Richard is a very talented game designer, let’s just leave it at that.”

Fair enough.

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