Here it is, our totally perfect, good for the next 100 years, would never change a thing card back:
Well, that's maybe overstating it a little. These are just sample proofs from the factory. The texture is from a UV printing technique that gives a nice tactile feature to the cards. While we may make changes between now and final production it is great to have something close to what will be manufactured in hand.
We hope that WAR becomes a smash hit, that we're going to be making new cards, finding new racers and building a worldwide community for decades to come. Of course we've got a long way to go before we're there. One challenge is trying to identify those things that when we decide now will be something we can't change in the future. Like the Bond movie, Diamonds are forever (also this trailer has some sweet cars) and so are pieces of paper to play games with.
This surfaces in lots of gameplay. Digital games are able to make adjustments to cards after the fact, physical pieces of cardboard are not so easy to change. We don't want to drop the ban hammer every other day for competitive play. No promises, if we screw something up we'll admit it and rectify, but we're going to do our best. While gameplay mechanics will continue coming up, one thing where one big decision now is a forever choice is the card back.
There's been a ton of back and forth on what the card back should be. We think where we ended up is going to be awesome.
Magic famously made a couple of mistakes in designing the card back. Credit to them, they don't pretend otherwise. Probably my favorite is that they planned on having every release be Magic: (FILL IN THE BLANK), rather than Magic: The Gathering. What seems obvious now wasn't if you were the first one doing it, but in a competitive game it doesn't make sense to have non-uniform card backs.
The culmination of this learning experience for Wizards of the Coast was this potential Arabian Knights card back. I think the card design is pretty sweet, but it's hard to imagine playing with this and the traditional card back. We're working with friend of WAR, Bryce "The Sandman" Wong to build something timeless that will stand the test of time.
Thanks for reading, less than 5 months to our launch on Kickstarter.