On today’s Minute: Head Designer Mark Rosewater released his State of Design for 2017.
Yesterday, Head Designer Mark Rosewater published his 2017 State of Design article, in which he reflects upon the successes and failures of the last year in Magic design. Overall, Rosewater said, the design team did a good job with Kaladesh and Amonkhet—the mechanics were innovative, well-received, and fit the flavor of the planes extremely well. However, the design of both blocks suffered by including excessive complexity and by placing too much emphasis on the story when designing cards, leading to the overexposure of the Gatewatch.
Another failure Rosewater mentioned is that the artifact theme of Kaladesh caused more problems than they had anticipated—much like the previous artifact blocks, Urza’s Saga and Mirrodin. He claims that the problem isn’t inherent to artifacts themselves but is instead a design and development issue, though the fact that every artifact set to date has had unintended consequences would seem to indicate otherwise.
In other news, Ixalan previews continue this week, so follow us on Twitter @hotcblog for the latest new cards. And stay tuned for tomorrow’s Magic Story Podcast—the first look we’ll get the story of Ixalan.
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You can read Mark Rosewater’s 2017 State of Design article here.