Battle for Zendikar Block

When I started working on Battle for Zendikar, I began with only one given—we were going back to the world of Zendikar. What that meant, what was going to happen there, and how the design was going to work was all left up to me. At the time, we hadn't yet embraced the new push for story (Magic Origins design actually started after Battle for Zendikar design, even though it was coming first chronologically, and even then, the realization of what Magic Origins was going to become didn't happen until halfway through that set's design), so I had nothing to work with regarding the story as I started up exploratory design.

I looked back at where the Zendikar block ended. The Eldrazi had gotten released from their thousands-of-years imprisonment and were causing great destruction to the world of Zendikar. The Zendikari gathered together their heroes to fight the Eldrazi—and scene. The block ended. What happened to Zendikar or the Zendikari or the Eldrazi? None of that was explained. That was a pretty big cliffhanger, so I decided that we needed to follow up on that storyline. For those who read my preview articles about the design of Battle for Zendikar (part one and part two), you'll remember that I walked through how we went about bringing the battle of the Eldrazi versus the Zendikari to life, but I didn't spend much time examining why the story had to be about a battle. The reason for that is that I never examined a different story.

Our previous visit ended on a cliffhanger, the cliffhanger implied conflict, and Magic is, at its core, a game about fighting. I never even considered any other possibility. Of course the return to Zendikar was going to be an epic battle between the Eldrazi and the Zendikari. What else could it be?

And that was my mistake. It was a pretty big one in retrospect. To understand it, I'll need to first fill you in on some facts about the block. Original Zendikar came about because I was convinced we could do a cool design built around land mechanics. Most everyone else was skeptical, but I'd earned enough goodwill that I was given some time to prove the concept. I succeeded and it led to us making a high adventure world inspired by things like Dungeons & Dragons and Indiana Jones.

Original Zendikar was very popular, as was Worldwake, the small set that followed it. But because there was some hesitance with my idea, the plan was to have the third set, a large set, take place on its own world. The creative team didn't have the resources to build a whole new world, so they came up with a story conceit for why the last set could reboot the mechanics yet stay on the same plane. This is how the idea of the Eldrazi came about.

Rise of the Eldrazi was very different from the first two Zendikar sets. It made use of what was called "battlecruiser Magic," where the gameplay discouraged faster strategies to allow for giant creatures (either straight-up goliaths like the Eldrazi or built-up-over-time ones like the level-up creatures). The unorthodox Limited gameplay was embraced by the enfranchised players, who still today list the set as among one of the best Limited environments ever made, but was firmly rejected by the less-enfranchised players, who were just lost. Basic strategies that had always worked became traps where less-enfranchised players would lose time and again. As a result, the set sold poorly, especially when compared to the very popular Zendikar.

We chose to return to Zendikar because the original set was so popular, but instead of embracing what made it popular, I embraced the very aspect that we knew was the least popular part about it. Even worse, to make room for the battle between the Eldrazi and Zendikari, I had to exclude all the adventure world tropes—the very stuff that I now believe was what made the first set so lovable.

Here's my analogy. I took my family to Disneyland. They had a great time. They loved all the rides and the characters and the treats. At the end of the last day, I was exhausted, so I took them to the Hall of Presidents so I could rest in an air-conditioned room. They were antsy the whole time because they could care less about animatronic presidents—except my wife, who actually found it interesting. Many years later, it's time to return to Disneyland because I know my family loved it. What do I do? I take my family to all the animatronic shows.

This brings us to my lesson:

When returning to a world, you have to return to the things that players loved about it the first time you visited.

Shadows over Innistrad is the perfect example of us embracing this philosophy. We didn't return to Avacyn Restored. We returned to Innistrad. Battle for Zendikar, in contrast, didn't return to Zendikar. We returned to Rise of the Eldrazi.

Looking forward, I know that returning to worlds is something we're planning to do half the time, so this lesson is a very important one for me to learn.