(Tetzin, Gnome Champion | Illustrated by Kekai Kotaki)

Welcome back to Mechanical Memories, the series where we explore Magic history through the lens of design. My first article was about Thalia, then Trinkets. Today we have another letter T topic today: Transforming cards!

There’s something inherently novel about transforming cards. Imagine you’re a new player and you open a random pack of Shadows Over Innistrad. You’re thumbing through your new cards, wondering what to do with Clues, Human typal, or… transform? What does that mean? Then you turn over the card and see it doesn’t have the classic back, but instead a whole other card. It takes what players assume are inherent rules of card design and breaks them in half. While not every execution has been equally beloved, these cards never fail to impress, offering unique ways to play the game while creating new stories on the cards. Let’s dive into the history behind these designs and see if we can learn something about how to build transforming decks in the process.

Early Transformations

Our journey about Magic’s transforming cards begins in a strange place: Not Magic! Indeed, these cards have their roots in another Wizards of the Coast game. In 1999, the manga Duel Masters was released in the magazine CoroCoro. This was in the wake of not only Magic’s boom in popularity, but also the release of the Pokémon TCG and Yu-Gi-Oh premiering in Shonen Jump. Similar to Yu-Gi-Oh, the series follows a group of characters playing high stakes card games. Duel Masters eventually received a TCG adaptation by Wizards of the Coast in hopes of breaking into the Japanese market. While Magic and Duel Masters shared similar structural elements, the latter worked to delineate itself from the competition through more experimental card designs. In 2010, Duel Masters' Psychic Shock block released with the first double-sided cards. These were meant to showcase powerful creatures awakening in more powerful forms. For example, here’s Chakra, Temporal Thunder Dragon. It’s already flashy, but just wait until it becomes Great Chakra, the Storm Awakened!

While this was being developed, Magic design was working on a new, gothic horror-themed world called Innistrad (Ever heard of it?). The set was meant to highlight various iconic monsters in a battle against humans. Design had been working on how to best embody these creatures. Zombies focused on creating a massive horde of creatures and Vampires drained opponents through aggro and lifegain. Where they’d hit a snag was the Werewolves. They’re Werewolves, so they have to change somehow! Originally, the cards would have you search up another card from your deck or outside the game. You’d have the Human version normally,, then that card would replace itself with the Werewolf version from your deck. The problem came in preparing the mechanic for draft. The printers couldn’t ensure the Human card and Werewolf card would appear together. That would mean players could end up with just the Human or just the Werewolf. But then, like a mad doctor creating Frankenstein's Monster, inspiration struck! What if they just used the double-faced cards from Duel Masters?

When the design was first showcased internally, some members were skeptical, some were cautiously excited, and some thought the idea was the worst thing to happen to Magic. Player sentiment mirrored this when they were first released, but slowly excitement grew. One of my favorite relics of Magic history is the PAX 2011 recap video in which Mark Rosewater excitedly speaks about Innistrad while massive, rotating double-faced cards are shown off to guests. His excitement is palpable, and you can’t help but get caught up in the hype!

The conclusion of the block in Avacyn Restored deviated by not including any double-faced cards, a choice which confused and angered players. We got to see plenty of cool designs, and then nothing? Players wanted to see what could be done with this new technology. You show us Elbrus, the Binding Blade and take that away? That's cruel! For years, we wouldn’t see any more double-faced cards, the worn-book back of cards taunting players with its unused space. Transforming cards would make their turn, but in a new form. It’s only fitting the mechanic that broke from tradition would do so again.

Igniting the Spark

Magic Origins released in 2015 and had quite the challenge: Telling the origin story of five different Planeswalkers. How exactly would you showcase these characters becoming Planeswalkers? The answer came from an obvious place, in hindsight. They took a literal approach. They would transform from legendary creatures into planeswalkers.

These cards used transforming similar to Werewolves, utilizing the mechanic as a storytelling device that traditional cards could not. Design was beginning to recognize that this wasn’t your normal mechanic. Instead, it allowed for the narrative of Magic to grow and be more effectively expressed in its gameplay. Many of these transforming planeswalkers, especially Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh and Liliana, Heretical Healer, have spawned character-centric decks. Mono-color Superfriends is an exciting way to brew, and it speaks to my inner Vorthos. Also, shout out to fellow Commander’s Herald writer DefiantCathar’s “Lie With a Burning Vengeance.” Liliana herself would be proud.

Magic would continue to experiment with these designs over the next few years. Shadows Over Innistrad saw the return of gothic horror goodness. Not only did we see Werewolves make comeback, but the Eldrazi got to join in on the fun. This was another huge storytelling win for design. Kessig Prowler is one of the cards I always point to when people ask why I love the block. The art does an amazing job of conveying the idea of cosmic horror bursting from this creature, its body becoming a mess of flesh and wrath. Flavorful and terrifying design!

Nicol Bolas, the Ravager would appear as a one-of double-faced card in Core Set 2019, giving players another flavorful Superfriends option. The next major iteration in transforming design came in the original Ixalan block. These cards, primarily artifacts and enchantments, could transform into lands when conditions were met. While prior designs represented the literal transformation of an object or creature into something else, these were a transformation of purpose. Search for Azcanta becoming Azcanta, the Sunken City is the endpoint of the journey depicted on the card’s front side. The actions you take in transforming the card are the events of the story the card tells. This mirrors Sagas, where the card tells the events of a story over the course of its effect.

We would see double-sided cards return again in Midnight Hunt and Crimson Vow. These were… interesting. The Daybound / Nightbound mechanic failed to deliver on its promise of simplifying Werewolves, instead adding a troublesome tracking element to staples like Graveyard Trespasser and Brutal Cathar. We did see a mechanic that I feel is underappreciated: Disturb! It’s like flashback for permanents! This touched on the storytelling present in earlier iterations of transforming cards. Showing the before and after(life) for a creature provided a simple storytelling device that meshed with Innistrad’s historic focus on the graveyard.

March of Transformers

We’d see transform return in full force during March of the Machine, but I want to touch on two outliers first. Modal double-faced cards premiered in Zendikar Rising. While similar to transforming cards, I won’t touch on them here so I can save that article for when I run out of ideas because they aren’t directly related. Second is Transformers. Despite their name, design, and branding, these cards do not transform. They “convert,” which is mechanically identical to transforming. The short version of this is that the term convert allows Hasbro to copyright the name Transformers. Yeah, I don’t understand it either. I’m an English major, not a lawyer.

March of the Machine went back to the well of transformative storytelling in two major ways. Phyrexians were depicted as transforming into their body horror forms through Incubator tokens, as well as a series of creatures that became Phyrexians through activated abilities. In a similar way to Shadows Over Innistrad’s transforming Eldrazi, these depicted the mutation of body and mind that Phyrexia is known for. One of my favorites is Seraph of New Capenna, a beautiful angel who becomes the Seraph of New Phyrexia! The mirrored name and artwork create a chilling depiction of Phyrexian mutation. Rona, Herald of Invasion is another slam dunk. Her ability to act as a menial servant of Phyrexia or embrace compleation to become a horrific being is an awesome end to a character I’ve loved (and feared) for a long time. We also got a brand new cycle of Praetors that transformed into Sagas. These transform into the embodiment of their respective ideology, a chilling way to portray compleation.

We also saw battles enter the game with a focus on transforming. Now, plenty of folks were rightfully confused by the flavor of these cards. The way I see it is that casting a battle represents beginning to engage with a conflict. Defeating that battle reveals the turning point of that conflict. For example, the Invasion of Fiora was a brutal conflict until Marchesa, Resolute Monarch turned the tides. However, it seems many players aren’t interested in transforming these battles. Invasion of Ikoria is the most popular battle card, appearing in a whopping 31,556 decks, though it’s mostly used as a redundant Finale of Devastation. Same thing with Invasion of Zendikar, the second most popular battle, serving as another Explosive Vegetation. While battles struggled to grip players flavorfully, they have a solid gameplay function in how they provide grease-the-wheels type effects that can transform into a bonus if you can transform them.

And now, we’ve returned to Ixalan in search of treasure once again. Transforming cards are back, this time with crafting cards and immortal gods. In The Lost Caverns of Ixalan Commander, we received Tetzin, Gnome Champion. This is a Jeskai transforming-artifacts matter commander, which is the type of design that I never thought I needed and always have. Once again, I’ve brewed up a deck in honor of transforming cards with Tetzin at the helm, though I’ve included my fair share of tricks.

You’ve Been Gnome’d

Tetzin’s front side lets you mill cards and recur artifacts whenever a double-sided artifact enters the battlefield under your control. While we’re running most of the good transforming artifacts already, why not include some Incubator cards? cEDH players like Jake FitzSimons have been experimenting with Chrome Host Seedshark in this deck, and it's easy to see why. March of the Machine’s Elesh Norn also creates tons of Incubators at once. Doctor Who’s Auton Soldier allows us to copy another one of our double-sided creatures and draw cards off the myriad copies. Fun stuff!

If we have so many Phyrexians, why not compleat our other cards with Encroaching Mycosynth and Liquimetal Torque? We can find these cards with a suite of tutors and circumvent other prohibitive transform cards with Tetzin’s other side: The Golden-Gear Colossus. Enduring Angel can put your life total out of range for aggro decks easily if you cheat its transform cost, especially if Hauken’s Insight is letting you play cards for free. It’s a fun way to use transform cards that might otherwise be a bit slow.

While it's easy to look at these cards as gimmicky, they represent an interesting step forward in Magic design. Rather than viewing the game as something static that can only be tinkered with, design is able to flourish when they stop seeing what is normal as what is allowed. These cards are an invitation to make the familiar into something strange, and the strange into something familiar. I’m excited to see where the future of transforming cards will take us. With double-sided cards confirmed for Modern Horizons 3, I’m sure there’s plenty of unique storytelling opportunities for Magic design to explore.

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