Magic: The Gathering head designer Mark Rosewater has revealed the prototype for Duskmourn’s room enchantments, and it’s one of the most ambitious concepts for an MTG mechanic we’ve ever seen.
Upcoming MTG set Duskmourn has a new enchantment type, room cards, to represent different areas of the demon-possessed mansion. But according to Rosewater, this mechanic started out life very differently. The latest Making Magic article reveals that rooms once introduced a new deck, an exploration mechanic, and demanded the use of a Meeple.
The first iteration of room cards involved a separate Mansion deck (similar to Attractions from Unfinity). There was an ability called ‘Explore the Mansion’ which would have players draw from the deck and create their own version of the house with semi-random combinations of rooms.
To reduce the number of enchantments affecting the battlefield at once, and create a desired feeling of movement, Wizards then added the concept of a Meeple, which would travel between rooms, activating different abilities as it explored. Already, we’re fast approaching board game territory.
The designers then came up with the idea of putting multiple rooms on each card, and even played around with letting players create a house by placing rooms in strange positions, like laying dominoes.
This whole idea feels a lot like one of our favorite horror board games, Betrayal at House on the Hill (review here), and I’m torn on whether it would’ve been fantastic or terrible. Ultimately, while it’s a fun idea, rooms ended up looking nothing like this at all – instead, they’re a new type of split card.
Rosewater writes that designing a mechanic around movement was tricky, and extra decks cause problems for competitive play, so the rooms mechanic became less ambitious over time.
On his Blogatog blog, he explains: “exploratory design tends to start with the most flavorful version to see where it takes us. A lot of design is finding the core of something fun and iterating on the best version of it.”
For more Magic: The Gathering content, take a look at our MTG release schedule guide or our list of the best MTG Arena decks.
Source: Wargamer
