[Monday Musings] Champions of Kamigawa: Breakdown
Welcome back to TwistedSpoon Studio! Every other Monday, we discuss thoughts on game design, ranging from ideas and advice to analysis of published games. With Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty on the horizon, this week is going to be the latter.
We're going all the way back to 2004 to break down Champions of Kamigawa, the first entry into one of the worst-received Magic sets of all time. But was Kamigawa really so bad? And if it was, why is Wizards returning? We're going to analyze the set's themes and mechanics to see if we can answer that question.
Themes
Kamigawa is a top-down plane of Japanese folklore. In order to capture that flavor, Wizards focused on two main themes: Legendary and Spirits.
- Legendary: 1.33 per pack ASFAN
- 10 uncommon, 60 rare
Every creature at rare was Legendary, as well as a cycle of lands, a handful of artifacts, and two cycles at uncommon. On average, that's a Legendary card in every pack! So the theme was a hit, right?
Well, no. Players routinely missed it. Legends at rare are nothing out of the ordinary, and if you managed to open one of the rare non-Legendary cards, there was usually nothing in the pack to tell you that Legends matter. This block is the reason Mark Rosewater adopted the adage, "If your theme isn't at common, it's not your theme."
On the bright side, Wizards learned a lot from this. The next time that we saw this theme was Dominaria, 14 years later; While the ASFAN is roughly the same, there are 22 Legends at Uncommon and a mechanic at common that spells out "Legends Matter" in big, bold letters.
- Spirits: 4.09 per pack ASFAN
- 31 common, 18 uncommon, 21 rare
The original Kamigawa block focused on a war between mortals and the Kami. As a set with a two-sided conflict, half of the creatures in the set are Spirits. This one definitely came across loud and clear, so it was a hit, right?
Well, no. Many of the spirits that appeared in the set were based on specific stories and folk tales that Western audiences simply weren't familiar with. As a result, many of them came across as quirky rather than Japanese. Imagine Theros if you'd never heard of Hercules, or Eldraine if you didn't know who the Gingerbread Man was.
Again, Wizards learned valuable lessons. Amonkhet encountered similar issues-- most Magic players aren't that familiar with Egyptian mythology. To help give them something to latch onto, the team combined "Egyptian Mythology world" with "Nicol Bolas world" (and later, "Apocalypse world," but not the Vince Baker one).
- Samurai: 1.01 per pack ASFAN
- 7 common, 7 uncommon, 3 rare
In order to reinforce the theme of Japanese culture, Kamigawa block introduced Samurai and Ninjas to the Multiverse. Ninjas would come in Betrayers of Kamigawa-- MaRo wanted to save something cool for the second set. So samurai hit, right?
Well... yes! This was one of the few tropes that the Western audience actually grokked, and the Bushido mechanic played well. The samurai theme was one of the few successes of Kamigawa on release.
There are a handful of other nods to Japanese folklore (Kitsune, Orochi, Moonfolk, etc), but they mostly ran into a similar issue to the spirits. CHK dropped in 2004, and Naruto wouldn't reach American shores until 2005, so not many players knew about kitsune or orochi. With only 11 common humans in the set, players didn't have much to latch onto. (Oh no!)
Mechanics
Champions of Kamigawa introduced four new mechanics to the game: Splice onto Arcane, Soulshift, Bushido, and flip cards.
- Splice onto Arcane: 1.07 per pack ASFAN
- 9 common, 4 uncommon, 2 rare
- Arcane: 3.23 per pack ASFAN
- 27 common, 13 uncommon, 4 rare
Arcane is a subtype marking instants and sorceries associated with the Kami. It also interacts with the unnamed "spiritcraft" mechanic, which rewards players for casting Spirit and Arcane spells. Let's just say Arcane had issues.
There are three main problems with arcane. First, the spells that were chosen to be arcane felt arbitrary, much like Devoid in BFZ. Second, Splice onto Arcane was a parasitic mechanic that only worked with other cards from a block that players were already reticent to buy. The third and final nail in the coffin, though, was the fact that it played poorly-- repeatable effects tend to lead to repetitive gameplay.
- Soulshift: 0.80 per pack ASFAN
- 6 common, 5 uncommon, 1 rare
Arcane was the spirit mechanic for spells; Soulshift was the spirit mechanic for creatures. Several spirits in the set had abilities that let you sacrifice them for an effect, and Kamigawa block would later introduce Channel as a Spirit mechanic. Soulshift gave players a way to [recur those effects for value.]
Now replace the bracketed text with, "create repetitive gameplay," and you'll know why this mechanic isn't going to return any time soon. Because Soulshift went on Spirits, every spirit that you played could recur chains of smaller spirits, essentially letting players loop through every spirit that had died, very, very slowly. You might think that Wizards learned their lesson about this sort of mechanic, but... well, we'll see if I do a Coldsnap analysis someday.
- Bushido: 1.04 per pack ASFAN
- 7 common, 8 uncommon, 3 rare
Astute readers will note that the numbers for Bushido and the numbers for Samurai are exactly the same. That's because every samurai had bushido, and every card with bushido was a samurai. There's not much to say about bushido other than that it's fine.
There are few mechanics to compare Bushido to; it's the reverse of Flanking (whenever a creature without flanking blocks this creature, it gets -1/-1 until end of turn), but flanking only ever appeared on a grand total of 10 creature cards across multiple sets, and half of them were callbacks from Timespiral block. It's the sort of thing that gunks up the board when there are too many in a set, so it can't be printed at high volumes. Other than the name, though, there's not much holding it back from being reprinted.
- Flip Cards: 0.27 per pack ASFAN
- 5 uncommon, 5 rare
On the flip side (pun intended), these represent several firsts for Magic. These days, we're accustomed to weird frames-- Vehicles, Aftermath, Adventure, and the like-- but back in the day, it simply wasn't something Wizards liked to mess with. And DFCs can trace their origins to these flip cards. Flip cards may have been bad when they came out, but they've done a lot of good for Magic.
Notable Cards
In spite of the original Kamigawa block's notoriously poor power level, this set alone has touched nearly every constructed format. Some notable cards include:
- Sensei's Divining Top
- Lava Spike
- Gifts Ungiven
- Ghostly Prison
- Azusa, Lost but Seeking
- Glimpse of Nature
- Heartbeat of Spring
- Desperate Ritual
- Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
- Kodama's reach
- Sakura-tribe Elder
- Through the Breach
Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty
After everything we've discussed so far, one thing is clear: Kamigawa was not well liked. In spite of this, we're returning to the plane later this very month, 18 years after its original release. Many Magic players ask: why?
The answer is simple: anime.
No, seriously. Magic is sold across the globe, but its primary market has always been the United States. Back in 2004, the most exposure that the average American had to Eastern culture was a handful of Bruce Lee movies and some extremely racist Orientalist literature. Among Magic players, maybe they played the vaguely-Asia-inspired Oriental Adventures module for DnD, but lets be honest, that's not a great look.
Fast forward two decades, and anime is a mainstream pass-time. My boss has two kids who are both grown adults, and even he asks me if I watch Attack on Titan. Works like Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke, Shonen Jump's Naruto, and Gainax's Gurren Lagann have exposed the general Western audience to more Japanese culture than any other medium.
An I'm here for it. WotC has proven time and again that they've learned their lessons from Kamigawa, and from plenty of other sets along the way. I'm confident that this new jaunt into Japanese culture is going to be a hit. How about you? What are your thoughts on Kamigawa, new and old? What do you hope to see in the upcoming set?
That's all for this week. Tune in on february 14th for a breakdown of Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty as we explore the new and improved Kamigawa! Until then, swing by on Friday to see FUR's plot take shape, or on Wednesday for a top-down exploration of cyberpunk design space. For more set analysis, check out this article on Innistrad: Crimson Vow. Last but never least, check out last Friday's announcement to find out how you can play test Festival of Urbestia and win prizes!
See you soon!
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