In today's article, we will embark on a tale covering one of the greatest love stories ever told, a journey in which two sides of perception come together creating a super couple the likes of which the world has never seen. If you know and understand the terms Vorthos and Melvin, feel free to skip ahead. For those of you who read those two names and went, “Huh?” I greatly encourage you to read Mark Rosewater’s article covering the topic here. In short:

Now that everyone is on the same page, let’s begin our story . . . 

First, They Met

Richard Garfield's original idea for Magic was a wonderful use of both flavor and mechanics. His design had mechanical genius known by many as the Golden Trifecta, which makes Magic so successful: the idea of a collectible trading card game, a balancing system focused around five card colors that each has its own strengths and weaknesses, and a unique resource-management system. Mark Rosewater has gone into detail about his thought on the mechanical Golden Trifecta, but that is not the whole story. Richard's game also had flavorful genius, three flavor-oriented decisions that I believe had just as important an impact on the game of Magic we know and love. I’m going to refer to these three flavorful decisions as the Gilded Triumvirate: three ideas Richard used in order to add an additional layer to his game. These three ideas were the decision to theme each color as a different form of magic, the idea to create various spell types based on well-known fantasy gaming ideas, and to package his product in a way that would be appealing to fans of the fantasy genre. I could write an entire article about the Gilded Triumvirate alone (and most likely will), but below is a brief idea of what each decision brought to the game.

The Five Colors of Magic

Mechanically, the color pie splits the mechanics of Magic into five different colors, allowing each color to deal with threats in its own way and to have certain types of cards that serve as a weakness for that color, but Richard did not stop there. He also flavored each of the five colors to mean certain things both physically and emotionally. Red is the color of passion and rage and fire. Blue is the color of thought and water and wind. Marrying each color to an identity allowed players to better understand each color and what to expect from them.

The Fantasy-Inspired Card Types

When creating Magic, Richard decided to flavor all cards within the game after popular fantasy tropes. Instead of just being generic cards with different rules functions, when you play Magic, you summon creatures, cast powerful spells and enchantments, and use ancient magical artifacts. Using a fantasy inspiration to create his game mechanics allowed for an extremely flavorful game that played in a way that players expected. And who wouldn't think attacking your opponent to death with a fire-breathing dragon would be cool?

The Artistic Packaging

When packaging his game, Richard decided to add full-color art to each card, depicting what the card represented. He decided to use fantasy-sounding names in order to draw the player into the world in which the game was taking place, and he included “non-rules flavor text” that served literally no other purpose other than to add creative depth to his game. Richard even went so far as to create card frames that looked like pages out of a spell book, and he packaged his product in boxes that created the appearance of a powerful tome, complete with a side that looked like the pages of a book. These visual and literary cues allowed the player to fully embrace the fact that, by playing a game of Magic, the player was taking on the role of a powerful mage fighting in a duel to the death.

Richard took this Golden Trifecta of game mechanics and married them to the Gilded Triumvirate of game flavor, creating the Magic we know and love . . . 

Then, They Fought

Melvin Tried Dating Other Melvins

As Magic grew in popularity, the demand for more sets to be printed was high. After a few years of continuous development, the game’s design started to take a noticeable shift toward creating cards based on the mechanics of the game—and not the flavor. As a player becomes more familiar with the game, being able to relate game mechanics to flavor becomes arguably less important. An enfranchised player will look at a newly released card, read the mechanics, and start to think about how it will interact with all of the other cards at the player’s disposal. Looking at Odyssey is a great example for why this line of thinking is dangerous for the game. Odyssey was the graveyard set and gave us mechanics such as threshold and flashback that were built around interacting with the graveyard. What was the flavor of the set? It was pit fighters on an island continent.

The main character in the graveyard-themed set’s story was a pit fighter named Kamahl, a total disconnect from what is actually happening in the gameplay. While existing players may not have noticed due to the fact that they were more interested in learning about the new mechanics, new players coming to the game would have been entirely confused by this contradicting flavor. An existing player would have looked at Patrol Hound from Odyssey and seen a graveyard-mechanic enabler, while a new player would have looked at this card and thought, “What does being a dog have to do with discard and first strike? How is this a graveyard set again? This card (and game) makes no sense! I quit!” The danger in creating a flavor–mechanic disconnect lies not in your existing player base, but in your new players. Learning Magic can be difficult (and somewhat intimidating) for new players. Having a flavor disconnect will only add to that frustration.

Vorthos Tried Dating Other Vorthoses

Though the majority of early expansions tended to lean more toward new game interactions, Magic’s early days were not completely mechanics-centric. There were a few sets in which the flavor and story of the world was created first and the mechanics on the cards were then designed in order to match this flavor. This line of thinking brought about such beloved sets as Homelands and Champions of Kamigawa.

Homelands was a set in which the world and the story of that world was written and cards were designed afterward to match the story. Eron here was known for his immortality, and he proclaimed himself King of the Goblins at Koskun Keep, where he was killed dozens of times, but he continued to rule due to his magical ability. So how does this translate to the mechanics in game? Well, goblins are red, and he rules over goblins, so I guess his being red makes sense. And he is immortal, so I guess he would regenerate. The flavor is there, but the issue is that red does not have regeneration as a part of its color pie. New players (having known the backstory) would understand this card and understand why it did what it did, but new players would look at this card and not understand why red all of a sudden had a black/green ability. If we look at Greater Werewolf, one could argue that the -0/-2 counter is an attempt at creating a flavor of the werewolf biting you and giving you a disease, which would be interesting to newer players, but for most enfranchised players, the mechanic is pretty boring, and the creature it is on is overcosted.

Fate Brought Them Back Together Again

Magic 2010 was different than every other core set before it (other than Alpha) in that it was the first set to have new cards. More specifically, the new cards found within M10 were specifically designed to be evocative designs that married great mechanics to solid flavor. In Mark Rosewater’s M10 preview article, he mentioned that this idea came to Aaron Forsythe while he was looking at the uncut Beta sheets that hang outside the pit at Wizards.

Specifically, Mark recalls his conversation with Aaron, in which Aaron stated:

This line of thinking brought R&D back to the original mindset Richard had when he created Magic. It’s the idea that, while having great mechanics is nice, and having amazing flavor is really cool, the real beauty lies in the union between the two. When a card is mechanically relevant and flavorful, it can resonate with the player, evoking in that player the same awe inspired by Alpha.

In Acidic Slime, we saw a card that was created in order to represent an ooze creature composed of a highly corrosive sludge. How could we represent that through flavor? Name it Acidic Slime, and give it some great art looking all corrosive and gooey. How could we represent that through mechanics? Give it deathtouch, and make it destroy artifacts enchantments and lands as a way to play up its acidity and corrosiveness. Looking at Baneslayer Angel, we saw a mighty, winged warrior who protects our lives from the other flying monsters in the world. How can we represent that mechanically? Flying, first strike, and lifelink on a 5/5 body should do the trick! What about the flavor? Name it Baneslayer Angel. Get some art of a beautiful but deadly winged champion, and tack on some trinket text giving the card protection from Dragons and Demons. Adding flavor text couldn’t hurt either:

M10 marked an important turning point in R&D, when they stopped thinking about Melvin and Vorthos as being two separate entities and began to wonder what cards would be like if they worked together.

They Fell in Love

Realizing R&D was on to something great, Mark Rosewater decided to turn it up to 11. Why stop at designing resonant cards with mechanics that matched their flavor? Why not build an entire set so that the resonant cards also played in a resonant way? Why not create a marriage between Melvin and Vorthos in order to create gameplay that perfectly encapsulated the story they were trying to tell?

Enter Innistrad.

Going into Innistrad design, the initial idea was to capture the flavor of top-down horror design. In order to do this, R&D built a block around five resonant horror tribes: Vampires, Zombies, Ghosts, Werewolves, and the Humans being preyed upon. Mark Rosewater and his team could have stopped there and created a fun and resonant tribal set based on these classic monsters, but instead, they went deeper. Mark’s genius idea was to use the mechanics of the block to invoke a feeling of dread in the players themselves. When you watch a horror movie, the story is scripted and shot in a way to build suspense and instill within the viewer a sense of horror. Mark and his team decided to try to do this exact same thing through gameplay. If you look at the mechanics found in Innistrad, you can see that each mechanic was designed in a way to invoke a feeling of dread and fear into the opponent.

Werewolves

The Werewolves of Innistrad (and the double-faced cards in general) all became better when they transformed to their other sides. This made the opposing player fear the change, hoping to get rid of the creature before it could take place.

Vampires

The Vampires of Innistrad made you fear combat, knowing that if they were able to sneak through for damage, the dark creatures would only grow stronger.

Flashback

Flashback made you dread milling your opponent or causing him or her to discard, for fear that you would actually be helping to generate card advantage for your opponent.

Morbid

Morbid made you fear killing a creature in the event that another player could capitalize on the death.

Undying

Undying made you dread using removal, as it would cause your opponent’s creatures to come back even stronger.

Fateful Hour

Fateful hour made you fear damaging your opponent below 5 life, knowing that it could potentially empower his or her spells.

Miracle

Miracle made you dread your opponent’s top-decks, knowing there was the potential for a miraculous draw.

Not only were the cards in the set resonant, they created patterns of gameplay that matched the overall feeling that the set was trying to invoke. This type of design is not strictly Melvin or Vorthos, but a beautiful marriage between the two entities, forming a super pair I like to refer to as Melthos. So while there are some players out there who prefer cards with interesting mechanics, and there are some who enjoy the flavor, I think that it is beneficial to the game as a whole if we all work to create more Melthos experiences, where the line between great mechanics and great flavor is not black and white.

And Melthos Was Born