Editor's Note: Discussion thread can be found here.
This article is a surprise for me. I'm back in school, working, moving into my first house, etcetera and writing another article was the last thing on my mind. Then, a surprising eureka moment struck me. I wasn't expecting by it means. It just happened and I was stuck in an odd place. Do I study bacterial physiology/medical mycology or do I quickly zip out another article? What to do, what to do?
Before we begin, a little background. A while ago I wrote a little bit how I was trying to make my own set. I picked ideas that were difficult on purpose as a challenge and the opportunity to learn. A major problem I ran into were the enchantment creatures I was trying to develop/create for the set. They were green and white mostly. They were okay. They fit the color pie. The problem is they just didn't feel like anything. I could have gotten rid of the enchantment type and nobody would have been the wiser. I had to admit I was doing enchantment creatures for the sake of doing them. It is hard when you have to step back from your creations and admit they flavorless and forced.
The problem is enchantments are not intuitive cards. The card type does not have that Gestalt (a perceptual pattern or structure possessing qualities as a whole that cannot be described merely as a sum of its parts) like quality that other card types do. A dragon very much looks like a dragon. Equipment looks like a sword. A sorcery is a spell. Enchantments… umm… umm… As a game mechanic, it isn't hard to explain what enchantments do in the game of Magic. People get how they function. Enchantments do sound like a fantasy thingy so they kind of get it. I think we all get enchantments, but we also don't at the same time. Enchantments are the most popular answer for a card type that Magic could do without which was an actual question in the Great Designer Search. It isn't too difficult of an answer. Most enchantment text could be placed on a colored artifact or moved onto a creature. Enchantments then go poof, bye-bye, hasta la vista, baby.
Podcast + Email Rant + Story + Zendikar = Eureka
I finally gave up on enchantment creatures. It just wasn't working. Fast forward in time, I get an I-Touch (IPOD) for Christmas. I finally get around to subscribing to some podcasts and I suddenly have hours of NPR and Magic related material to listen to during my long commutes. I'm eventually listening to Mark Rosewater talk about the Urza's Saga block at work. He somewhere says something about enchantments being infusions of mana. Okay, I didn't ever think of them like that, but I guess? My mind instantly starts to critique and do what it naturally does. So what if they are infusions of mana. It still doesn't give the context or form. Still doesn't help my cause for making enchantment creatures.
Eventually, I run out of the Ride to Work podcasts and I flip over to the Dailymtg podcast for Gatecrash. The podcast was okay. I had a big gripe with the podcast though. The staff were constantly saying this card was "awesome" or "cool" during conversation. It was driving me up the wall. I got so irritated I sent out an email with some critique. Yeah, I probably sounded like an @#$#$$$, but I believe my point to be valid. My reasoning for my irritation was words like "cool" are not descriptive words. Non-descriptive words don't invoke my imagination. I liken it too what I think Alton Brown said from the Food Network tells contestants on the Next Foodnetwork Star. I'm paraphrasing of course. If you want to sell food, you have to tell a story. The audience can't smell or taste the food in front of their TV. They can only see it. As a host of a show, you need to tell explain the food, but it needs to be in a story like fashion. You just don't say the spaghetti has tomato sauce and noodles. That is explaining a recipe. You need to talk about food like you are explaining a story of how the tomatoes taste like those sweet fresh tomatoes that have that warmth for the sunshine. It makes you want to go in the house a pour some sugar on them while sitting under your maple tree. You swear you could almost taste the sunlight in that tomato. That's a story. Saying a tomato is "cool" is not a story. For any of you who ever do a podcast in the future, your audience can't see the cards you are talking about. I really wanted to put that last sentence in bold letters. As a host, you need to make up for my sensory deprivation.
Teenagers do the same thing a lot and I mean a lot. They talk a lot without actually saying anything. Wait until you get older. Wa ha ha. Undergrads do it too. The bar last night was totally awesome and then we found this cool item. It was sweet. Please for the love of god, pick different or better adjectives. There are a lot of reasons like lack of maturity, inexperience with conversation, lack of life experience and etc. I began to mull this over if this was simply due to lack of life experience. Maybe, they just didn't have stories to tell yet. Then, something clicked. What Mark said earlier loamed at the back of my mind. Something in my subconscious was rumbling. Infusions of mana + story. Hmm… Out of curiosity, I hopped online and began researching enchantments. The part that quickly stuck out to me was rituals. Infusions of mana + experience + rituals. Hmm… When I got a chance, I grazed the archive of enchantments to see if I was onto something. The cards that finally turned on the lightbulb were the quests from the Zendikar block. Eureka. Enchantments aren't a thing/object at all! They are an idea/concept!
I'll get back to the quests in a second. Let's look at an analogy for a second. What is a wedding? For many people, they have a different idea of what a wedding entails. A wedding has a different meaning to different people. If you looked up what a wedding is in the dictionary, there would be a simplistic definition, but a wedding is much more than that because it has a Gestalt quality to it. You can't just say a wedding has cake. It is an idea you can't fully grasp. So much of it has meaning while have none at the same time. The event itself has meaning as all rituals contain in an ethereal sense. We take ordinary things like cake, dancing, and food; throw them together to bring meaning to a concept. If anyone ever tells me they know exactly what a wedding means, I will think they are full of it. It is like imagining how big the sun is in size. You can't do it. Your mind is too feeble to understand something so gigantic. We aren't as smart as we would like to believe.
Enchantments versus Artifacts
Don't worry about the wedding thing. It will make more sense later. I just wanted to plant that seed before we continue. Let's go back to the quests from Zendikar and look at Quest for Renewal for a moment. Compare it with Acorn Catapult. How do these to card types differ? Let's start with artifacts. You play an artifact to do something. If you want to dig a hole in the ground, you go and get a shovel. The key here is you do something to do something (Wow, I'm very descriptive). Anyway, as I have defined enchantments, an enchantment cares about what you are going to do. Good examples would be cards like Astral Slide and Beastmaster Ascension. They care about what you will do. If you think about it, it cares about the ritual you will perform. If you don't attack with a creature, it will fail to trigger or perform an action. The big thing is enchantments care about an action, event or idea.
When comparing auras and equipment, equipment is static. It does one thing and won't change or do anything else. Loxodon Warhammer will always trample and gain life. Auras that I believe are good examples that fall under my definition are cards like Ethereal Armor or Empyrial Armor. They care about how many enchantments or cards are in your hand. They change. They react to what you are doing. Other auras that don't fall under my criteria are victims of filling a necessary mechanic in the game. I merely think of them as vanilla enchantment or auras. Also, I do think some auras and enchantments are poor under my umbrella of thought. What can I say? The game is still evolving.
Color Pie Test
This is all good and all, but will it pass the color pie test. If I can't logically fit my definition of enchantment into the color pie, my thoughts on the card type doesn't matter. To clarify, under my definition, are rituals, ideas, concepts, emotions or symbols infused with mana. It is a broad definition, but I think that is necessary to enable flexibility of developing future cards. Anyway, let's begin.
Blue
Blue doesn't understand why anyone would do something for the sake of doing it. There should be an objective. If a blue mage read a book, he/she/it would know all the details of the book, but would be lost on the deeper meaning. It doesn't understand why people would want to do the hockey pokey or other spontaneous acts. It can make enchantments by careful and precise choreography that previous mages have discovered over the years. However, they can only create. They don't understand them adequately to hold sway over them. Blue mages would much rather make artifacts. They have a purpose. If a blue mage wants to tear down a castle wall, they build a catapult. Blue only likes enchantments when the have a clear and concise outcome or can control something.
Black
The dark mages love to make enchantments especially since it usually involves torturing someone. Rituals are fun for them as they combine blood, entrails, and puppy dog tales in a vat or black mana. Black mages understand the power of symbols. They do this out of greed and for power. The color has learned pain and despair can be harnessed as powerful weapons. Due to their lack of empathy, they fail to hold full sway over these ideals. They are blinded by their own sense of power to realize enchantments are a double-edged sword.
Red
Many enchantments are born out of emotions and their lust for war. Emotions are chaotic and red themselves fail to understand these notions that drive their bloodlust. Red mages merely follow the flow of their desires and passion. Their failure to stop and think about the minutia of what they created hampers their ability to fully manipulate enchantments. Red prefers objects of concrete and physical form; things they can touch and blow up during times of celebrations or war. If red only focus their thoughts, they could be one of the most powerful mages to employ enchantments.
Green
Druids and shamans of green fully understand enchantments and equally seek to harness the knowledge they contain. They understand the journey or the act of hunting itself is equally as important as the final outcome of the destination or the kill. Argothian Enchantress doesn't care if you are successful at resolving an enchantment spell. She only cares that you tried. Many don't understand their pagan ways. They don't understand a dance in the forest can be as powerful as any spell. A good enchantress knows how to follow her instincts. A good shaman can take meaningless events and infuse them with mana to create enchantments.
White
White mages fully realize the power symbols and rituals can produce. Other colors don't understand that the symbols themselves have no power; it is the belief in them that gives these symbols their power. Avacyn, Angel of Hope followers understood this all to well. Many believe this is what gives angels or deities their power (Clash of the Titans, this isn't a new concept by any means). White uses rituals and symbols for a purpose. It is something that sets them apart from green. Green would much rather follow their instincts and see what happens out of meaningless events. Anyway, a powerful prayer or symbol infused with pure white mana is something to be beholden.
I realize that some of this needs to be fleshed out a little more, but I do believe my thoughts on enchantments can definitely fit the already existing areas of the color pie. However, there is one more test. The eye exam (MiB).
Art Concepts
I won't spend too much time on art concepts as it is definitely not my area of expertise. The important part is that it can be done. Symbols aren't too hard to concept. The key here is that the artwork for enchantments be more than just an object. The art should tell a story. Enchantments with art like this already exist. Séance is a good example of showing an event happening. Omniscience hints at a story. Growing Ranks and Underworld Connections are other pieces of art that fit into my approval for enchantment art. Auras are a different story. There are many I approve and I am not alone. I remember one of the people in the art department at Wizards complaining about auras being a pet peeve of theirs. Most auras have pictures of dudes getting bigger or whatever. This results putting a picture of a dude on top of a dude. I think this is an easy trap we have let ourselves fall into. I really don't think we need to be that blatant with the artwork. Shall I say, are we taking a too literal interpretation? Maybe, we should look for some deeper meaning.
The Secret of Life
I think this is a much better direction for enchantments in general, gives the card type more flavor and good target to hit for enchantment creatures. I don't pretend to have all the answers, but I do think this is the good direction to begin or for change to reiterate that point. Well, I would be happy to hear any feedback as I am sure this will probably get some strong reactions from some players.
If you are interested in an interesting exercise, I suggest going back and looking at past enchantments to see if they fit into my concepts for enchantments. Surprisingly, many do fall right into it. Many don't. My feeling on it is that we kind of knew what enchantments were supposed to be, but not all the time.
Later,
Derrick Heard
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