Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1002: Phyrexia Design

Episode Date: January 20, 2023

In this podcast, I talk all about Phyrexia and the design of Phyrexia: All Will Be One.

I'm pulling up my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. So today we're talking all about Phyrexia, All Will Be One. So I'm going to talk all about the design of the set today. So, a little history on the Phyrexians to get us to where the set starts. So, in Antiquities, which is the second ever magic set, and the first magic set really with the story, we get introduced to the Phyrexians. They were not, I mean, Antiquities was the brother's board. They were not the main villain or anything,

but they were definitely, they played a role in it. And it was something that I really, Antiquities, before I came to Wizards, was my favorite magic set. I really liked the Phyrexians. So when Michael and I were making the Weatherlight Saga, we decided that the main villains would be the Phyrexians. And then at the end of the Weatherlight Saga, the Phyrexians get wiped out.

They're destroyed. But we knew we wanted them back, they're awesome villains. So in Mirrodin, we planted some seeds for their return. It was kind of subtle. If you ever read the book, like Memnarch, like the very first thing, like he sees some oil and he rubs it in his fingers and it disappears and we stop talking about it. But there are a lot of subtle things in Mirrodin that imply that there is something going on. So the Phyrexians are slowly taking over Mirrodin.

So we go back to Mirrodin, Scars of Mirrodin. Oh, I should note, in Future Sight, we teased this, in Future Sight, there is a colored mirror that has clearly been Phyrexianized, and that is hinting that Phyrexia is going to overtake Mirrodin. Anyway, a little tease we did in Future Sight. Anyway, we get to Scars of Mirrodin, and that is kind of the beginning

of the current storyline. The idea basically is Karn, unbeknownst to himself, carried some Phyrexian oil to Mirrodin when he made, Karn made Mirrodin. And that oil slowly seeps in as infecting everything. So when we come back in Scars of Mirrodin when he made, Cardin made Mirrodin. And that oil slowly seeps in as infecting everything.

So when we come back into Scarves of Mirrodin, it's the story of how Mirrodin turns into new Phyrexia. I've done numerous podcasts on Scarves of Mirrodin. But anyway, I was very excited. Like, I volunteered

to do Scarves of Mirrodin because I love the Phyrexians and I thought it'd be neat to do a Phyrexian story, a whole block about the Phyrexians. And at the end of that block, the Phyrexians win. The thought it'd be neat to do a Phyrexian story, a whole block about the Phyrexians. And at the end of that block, the Phyrexians win. The bad guys win. They take over Mirrodin.

They make new Phyrexia. And the core issue with the Phyrexians is they can't... In the past, they had used planar portals to go between planes. With the mending, the planar portal stopped working. And so the Phyrexians had a couple problems. The biggest of which is they can't planeswalk. They can't move between planes. And so they're kind of trapped on Mirrodin.

Or new Phraxia, I guess now. So anyway, but they're a threat. And all the people that have interacted with them, Karn probably being the biggest, understands the threat that is the Phraxians. Every time we see Karn, since Skars of Mirrodin, every time he's like, we need to deal with the Phraxians. Every time we see Karn, since Skarsgård and Mirrodin, every time he's like, we need to deal with the Phraxians. The Phraxians are

a problem. He brings it up every time you see him. He knows that's a major issue. And the Phraxians are a major issue for Elsbeth and Koth. There's a bunch of planeswalkers that look, the Phraxians are number one threat in the multiverse. So, we've been slowly

building to this storyline for quite a while. Anyway, so what happened was we're making the end of the Phyrexian storyline. We're sort of ramping up. They've been sort of lurking in the back and small things have been happening.

But now it's time for the storyline to come to the large conclusion, right? So part of it is Lacrosse was the codename for Phyrexia, all will be one. Basically what happens is there's a point in the story where the heroes travel to New Phyrexia to defeat the Phyrexians. It doesn't quite go how they expect. But anyways, when we decided to do the Phyrexians, one of the issues with the Phyrexians is the Phyrexians are a little polarizing. They're creepy. Some people love the Phyrexians.

Some really get, you know, get the heebie-jeebies from the Phyrexians. So we wanted to do the Phyrexian storyline in a way in which they didn't take up too much of any one set. Meaning, if you're not a Phyrexian lover, don't worry. They're here, but they're not. But we knew we needed one set for the Phyrexian lovers, right? We wanted one set that was like wall-to-wall Phyrexian. And that was going to be La Crosse, which is the penultimate chapter of this Phyrexian storyline. I knew I had to do the set.

Like I said, I did Scarce of Mirrodin. I've been very involved with the Frextons. I enjoy the Frextons. I think the Frextons also are an amazing villain. They're the best villain I think we've ever made that are made to make magic cards out of. Right? Like, Nicole Bolas is a cool villain, but he's like one guy. You know, like, you know, one dragon. It's trickier. I mean, obviously, when we had Bolas do something, we had to make an army for him. Like, we had to make other cards to represent things.

The Phyrexians are this invading force that overtake things, and everywhere they go, they change what's there into them. So, like, every world you apply the Phyrexians to, the Phyrexians are a little bit different. Anyway, we've done a lot to them. So like every world you apply the Phyrexians to the Phyrexians are a little bit different. Anyway, we've done a lot with them. And so the first big question was, okay, we're back in new Phyrexia. What will the audience expect? So we went and we listed all the different

things that are tied to Phyrexians. There's a lot of things. Scars of Myrden did a bunch of stuff. There's a little bit before that. Mostly Scars of Mirrodin is what put a lot of stuff on the map, that block. Anyway, when the dust settled, we decided there were three things that we thought the players would most associate with the Phyrexians. One is poison.

Infect is the number one way, but poison in general. Two was proliferate. And three was Phyrexian mana. All three of those showed up in Scar's block. All three of those were, well, proliferate and Phyrexian mana were very popular. Poison was also popular, but polarizing. I mean, infect was the number one mechanic, I think. Infect or proliferate was the number one mechanic. They were very close.

Anyway, we knew if we were going to do the Phyrexians, we knew that those were the three touch points. So let's start with poison. We originally had infect in the set. The first version of the file had infect, had proliferate, and had Phyrexian mana. I think we knew that Phyrexian mana was a problem child

from a development standpoint, from a play design standpoint. So what we did was, in our first version, we only put it in activations. The idea being that when it proliferates and a mana costs, it lets you sort of just get it out quicker. It lets you skirt color

pie. But if you put it in activations, well, it doesn't let you get it out quicker. It lets you skirt color pie. But if you put it in activations, well, it doesn't let you get it out quicker and you've had to play the color to play the card. So it addressed a lot of the issues we had. So the idea was, let's just try it only in activations. That was our plan. So that was our very first playtest. We played it and basically the feedback was, wow, this feels a lot like Scars of Meredith. played it, and basically the feedback was, wow, this feels a lot like Scars of Mirrodin. Now, since we made original Scars of Mirrodin, we had made Amonkhet,

which was another set with minus one, minus one counters, and one of the notes we got from set design and play design is minus one, minus one counter environments are really hard to do. They're hard to balance, and just the general gameplay, like plus one plus one counters tend to advance you. They help sort of build you up. And that's kind of exciting. Minus one minus one is about tearing you down. You don't tend to put them on your creatures. You put them on your opponent's creatures. And just it weakens things. And it kind of magic is better

when things get stronger over time than things get weaker over time. Anyway, and as a general rule, we try to have one main counter type in a premier set as to not be confusing. When you see a creature with counters on it, hey, you know that thing does because, oh, they're plus one, plus one.

Oh, or in this set, they're minus one, minus one. thing does because, oh, they're plus one, plus one. Oh, or in this set, they're minus one, minus one. So Ari Nee, the winner of the third-grade designer search, she was on the vision design team. And Ari was like, do we need minus one, minus one counters? Ari really was pushing, instead of, in fact, she said, what if we did poisonous? So poisonous was a mechanic on two future shifter cards

in future sight. Basically it meant when I deal damage, in addition to my damage, I deal N counters, poison counters, where N's whatever poisonous N. So we, one of the things I realized is I knew minus one, minus one counters was an issue.

Oh, the other thing was we were messing around with proliferate. So proliferate was very popular. We did in Scars and Mirrodin and interacted with minus one, minus one counters and a little bit of charge counters. Then we brought it back in War of the Spark. And War of the Spark was much more about plus one, plus one counters and loyalty counters because of Planeswalker's set. And I really liked how proliferate just works really differently when you have different counters you care about.

So we came up with this idea of doing oil counters. And so oil counters are kind of a blank slate. I mean, they're markers more than anything else. But you could do a lot of things with them. You could replicate stuff like vanishing where you put counters Markers, more than anything else. But you could do a lot of things with them. You could replicate stuff like vanishing, where you put counters on it, and as it ticked down, then they go away. You could do limited uses, where they get some number of uses,

and then, you know, as you use them, you get your uses. You could do build-up. You could do threshold. There's a lot of cool things you could do with them. And so he said, okay, well, what if... The issue basically with all three of poison and proliferate and Phyrexian mana, the three Ps, were each one of them had their own problem to solve. Phyrexian mana we tried to solve originally by putting only an activation cost. Proliferate we tried to solve by bringing a new counter type so it would just interact differently.

And poison, the idea we had was we would do poisonous rather than infect because we're not using monster or muscle counters. And then we added something we called corrupted. So corrupted was an ability word that said, if your opponent has three poison counters, I get a benefit. So I guess I should dive into the issues with poison. So in Scar's Block, poison, while it was a lot of fun, was very siloed.

Meaning either you chose to go the poison route and you can poison out your opponent, or you chose to do damage, you can do damage. It was hard to mix and match poison and not poison. Because when you poison somebody with an effect thing, you weren't doing any damage to them. So if I have infect creatures, I'm advancing on the poison route to kill you,

but I'm not advancing on the damage route to kill you. So the two big changes we tried, one was using poisonous rather than infect. And so that way, if I hit you with my creature, while I'm doing poison to you, I'm also doing damage to you. The second thing is corrupted said, okay, let's get off this dynamic of it's all or nothing with poison. What if poison could mean something?

And so what corrupted does is it says, okay, I'm going to poison you, but I'm not necessarily trying to poison you to death. That poison can mean something. So I guess we did two things. The biggest thing we did is corrupted. The other thing we did is we did a little bit of scaling with poison, meaning things that cared about how much poison your opponent had.

I think in Vision we had more scaling than ended up in the set. The set is a little bit of scaling. But the idea essentially is, I'm going to poison you. My opponent doesn't know whether I'm trying to poison you out or just trying to poison you enough. And the other cool thing about Corrupted is, let's say I make a deck where the goal is to corrupt you. I'm not trying to poison you to death. Hey, maybe I get lucky and just get a bunch of my creatures, you know, my poison creatures,

and maybe sometimes I beat you with poison. Even if that's not my plan, it can happen from time to time, and that's fun. You know, alternate win conditions are very fun. So we put Corrupted in, and we put in Proliferate

and Fragility of Mana. Okay. Now, we added a few things on top of those. First up, we were playing with oil counters, and we liked the idea of, well, if we're going to have oiled counters enter enough, maybe we make a mechanic called oiled. So what oiled was is oiled N. What oiled N meant was when you enter the battlefield, you enter with N, not poison, you enter with N oil counters, sorry, you enter with N oil counters.

Sorry. You enter with N oil counters. And then we had a rider that said, if you're proliferate and you have no oil counters on you, if you're oiled, you get an oil counter. Just to remove some tension

about not using your last oil counter. Oh, I didn't mention this. The one rule we set up with oil counters is, in Vision, we gave them a whole bunch of different ways. There was like eight ways to use it. Like, you can use't mention this. The one rule we set up with oil counters is, in Vision, we gave them a whole bunch of different ways. I think there was like eight ways to use it. Like, you can use it like this.

You can use it like these. And the idea wasn't necessarily that the set design would use all of them. It was just, look, this is very flexible. There's a lot of ways to use oil counters. And the one rule we had was they had to work well with proliferate, meaning more counters were better than less. So, for example, let's say I want to have a card that after three turns goes away. I could put three on it

then go two, then one. When the last one comes off it goes away, like vanishing. Or I could put one, two, three and when it gets to a certain threshold it goes away. Well, we have proliferate so we do the first and not the second, right? We would count down so every time you proliferate it, you give it an extra turn.

Or if I have a number of uses, proliferating gets another use. If I'm trying to reach a threshold, it speeds me to the threshold, but positive thresholds. So anyway, we put oiled in just as a way to sort of shorthand some

stuff and make it a little bit easier to just have cards that enter with oil counters. The other thing we did is we added a mechanic called Relentless. So Relentless was a flashback variant. So the way Relentless worked is it went on Instants and Sorceries, more Sorceries than Instants,

if I remember correctly, just because we flashback. The thing you always want to be careful about is you don't want the flashback to be relevant mid-combat because you don't want the opponent to not be paying attention about your graveyard or in this case exile and then all of a sudden they're blown out for something that they should have known but didn't see. Anyway, the way that Relentless worked was when you cast a card for Relentless, you would exile it.

And then on any turn that you cast a card of Relentless, you would exile it. And then, on any turn that you played a mana, you were allowed to cast this card from exile for its Relentless cost. The Relentless cost always used Phyrexian mana for the colored mana. And then, once it resolved, it would go to your graveyard. So the idea is, you could use it once. So it's like flashback, you could use once. But it had the additional limitation is you had to play a land.

Which in later turns meant that I couldn't necessarily do it each turn, and it meant when I drew a land late turn, it meant something rather than just being a dead draw. Which we liked. The final thing that we did in

vision design is we wanted to make a mechanic for the rebels. So, real quickly, the Phyrexians win the war in Skarsgård and turn it into Phyrexia. But there are some holdouts. There are some Mirrans that haven't yet been corrupted or completed. And so they're holding out. and we wanted to represent them. I think we ended up in draft of the red-white archetype. I think we actually brought back the rebel creature type. I think it's on four cards.

And we decided we wanted to make a mechanic to represent the rebels holding out. And one of the things we thought would be cool is what if we took something that was a Phyrexian thing that they kind of took and made their own. The idea that they're fighting against the Phyrexians. So we looked at the long list of things that were Phyrexian that we didn't do. A lot of the stuff that's Phyrexian we didn't do, but the one that stood out to us was living weapon. So in Mirrodin Besiege, which was the war between out to us was Living Weapon. So in Mirrodin Besiege, which was the war

between the Mirrans and the Phraxians, each side had a mechanic. The mechanic for the Phraxians was called Living Weapon. And Living Weapon were artifacts, equipment, artifact equipment,

that entered the battlefield and made a 0-0 germ token which they equipped to. Now, all of the Living Weapons had granted at least0 germ token, which they're equipped to. Now, all of the living weapons had granted at least a toughness. Most of them granted power. And the idea being that the thing was kind of alive, that sort of your equipment was a living creature, sort of. And then if it died, well, then you just got the equipment.

So we liked that idea. The idea we ended up coming with, I think we called it take up arms in vision design was a living weapon but instead of a zero zero black germ

it was a two two red rebel and what we found was making the counter already a power and toughness really freed up like when we made

a living weapon because it lived or died like it was a zero zero the equipment had to survive make it live everything was about power and toughness granting and it just made them a lot more similar when we made a living weapon, because it lived or died, like it was a 0-0, the equipment had to survive, make it live, everything was about

power toughness granting, and it just made them a lot more similar. But when we made the 2-2s, it was okay that some of them could grant, like some of them functionally are bigger than 2-2

because they grant some power toughness. We didn't have to do that, and we could make some smaller stuff. Anyway, it allowed, it worked out pretty well.

Okay, so, when it was time for Vision Design to hand off, we handed off Poisonous, Polyphoric, Phyrexian Mana in Mana Cost and on Relentless mechanic, Oil Counters with the Oiled mechanic, Corrupted, the ability to work Corrupted, and the Take Up Arms. So let's talk about what happened in set design. First off, Poisonous. So they liked how Poisonous, but pretty

much, so the way that the set worked was I handed off the set to Eric Lauer, who was in charge of the set for a couple months, and then he handed the set over to Adam Prozac. And Adam did the vast majority of set design. Led it.

Anyway, so what happened was Eric and Adam liked the general gist of how we were doing poison. You know, the combination of it's poisonous, there's corrupted. So, you know, when you try to poison people, you're still doing damage. Your opponent doesn't quite know whether you're trying to poison them out or just corrupt them. So it definitely had some suspense of what's going on. And once you start to poison them a little bit, sometimes things just go your way. So anyway, all that was playing out. So they generally liked what was going on.

They made a couple changes. First up was we made Poisonous in Future Sight. We didn't quite know. I just, so what happened in Future Sight real quickly was I wanted to hint that Poison was coming back. So what happened was

Poison had first showed up in Legends and then every once in a while it would be in the set. When I got there I made a bunch of Poison had first showed up in Legends and then every once in a while it would be in the set. When I got there I made a bunch of Poison cards. Originally Tempest was supposed to be a Poison set. Its codename Bogavadi is like

this Indian mythical land of Poison snakes. The codename was hinting it was a Poison set, which we don't do anymore, but we did back then. But anyway, we decided at the time we not being me but rnd as a whole i decided that we were going to stop doing poison so poison went away i spent a lot of time trying to get poison back i tried to get poison back in um unglued to the set that didn't get made um i tried different ways to get it back finally Finally, we were doing Phyrexian...

I'm sorry, we were doing Scars of Mirrodin. And I'm like, okay, if ever there was a mechanic that made sense for the Phyrexians, it was Poison. And I convinced them to let me do Poison. Oh, but before that happened, in Future Sight, I was trying

to tease that Poison was going to come back. I'd finally... I don't know, the Poison haters had finally left. I finally had gotten some traction. So in Future Sight, I decided to make a Poison mechanic just to sort of hint at Poison's return. So I made Poisonous. It was on two cards. One's a Sliver. The Sliver was important because it was a Pro Tour that got won by the Poison Sliver.

So the Poison Sliver, I mean, for only two cards, one of them, you know, won a protor. So not necessarily a nothing card. But anyway, I just made poisonous as a way to sort of say, how could we do poison? When they decided they wanted to do basically poisonousisonous, Poisonous has two problems. They're, well, they're problems. Number one is the way we did it in Future Sight, because we were just making a mechanic. We weren't fleshing it out, you know what I'm saying?

We were just hinting a mechanic. So mechanics got a little less attention than we, like, if we were doing a mechanic where it's our major mechanic, like, a lot more time went to it than Future Sight, where, like, here's 15 new mechanics that were on one or two cards. We spent some time on them, but not as much as we would

if we were fleshing them out more. Anyway, so we had made it triggered. And nowadays, we just don't make things triggered. For example, Life Link and Death Touch, I think, once upon a time are triggered, but they aren't triggered anymore. It just makes endless clicks in digital.

And it's, I mean, the number one reason is the digital thing. It doesn't change how the cards play in 99.9% situations. So the change is pretty minimal from a mechanical standpoint. But it has huge, huge impacts for how it plays on digital. Why we changed LifeLink, it's why we changed DeathTouch, it's why we changed Poisonous. Now, if that were the only issue, maybe we would just overriding Poisonous and use Poisonous. But there was a second issue, which was

it turns out when I made the word Poison poisonous, I think I came up with the word, and it just stuck. It sounded fine. It turns out that poisonous means that if you eat me, I will poison you. Oh, that animal is poisonous. That doesn't mean that animal will poison you by biting you. That means that animal will poison you for eating it. So poisonous means it is poisonous to eat. Venomous, I think, means that it has, it will poison you.

Anyway, so poisonous didn't quite mean what it was supposed to mean. The word was a little bit wrong. And they needed to change it anyway. And there was just two cards. So they decided to change it anyway and there was just two cards so they decided to change it and that's why it became toxic and not poisonous. I know there's some fans who are like, oh, why

are these different? And I get it. I mean, I think if the word wasn't wrong we would have entertained the idea of using it and just eroding the old ones to work differently. But the fact that the word was wrong and we needed to make a change, and there was only two cards.

I mean, one of the things we always want to look at is what impact are we having on the past? How many cards are there? And it just didn't impact a lot of cards. Yes, one of the cards is kind of famous, but anyway, it still was a small number card. So they changed it to Toxic. The second thing they did was when I handed over the file to Eric, Eric felt Oiled was a little too vague. Like they just entering with counters and the proliferate thing wasn't enough. So I think what Eric did was I think he took off the proliferate thing and then he added that oiled counters, he basically

turned into vanishing. Oiled four meant you come with four counters and every turn you take one off and then you go away. And I think when it got to Adam, Adam's like, well, I want to use, I'm not going to do that much, it is a little bit of vanishing in the set, but not a lot. And he's like, I don't think I need a whole keyword for that. So, oils went away. So, a lot of what oils represent, there's a lot of cards that enter

the battlefield with oil counters. It's just written now. It's not written as oils anymore. So, a lot of what we were trying to do with oils exists. As far as the proliferate rider, I think the decision was that a little bit of tension is fine. Hey, if you use the last oil counter, or whatever counter, though,

we did make the conscious choice. There aren't plus one, plus one counters, or minus one, minus one counters. We use oil sometimes in the place of plus one, plus one counters. There's some cards that get plus one, plus one for every oil counter on them. So some of the designs in a normal set we would have done plus one plus one we do with oil but anyway we oil as a keyword

went away but a lot of the what we were doing with it stayed oh sorry the plus right thing so they decided the tension was fine and they decided that we didn't need anything to help you if you're empty or something. You know, just be careful of how you use your counters. A little

bit of tension just makes an interesting play decision. So they decided to keep that. Next, let's get on to Phyrexian Mana. So one of the things that we had decided very early on, when we were mapping out the arc was in

um in Kamigawa Nian Dynasty we were going to have the Phraxians figure out how to Phraxianize the Planeswalker that was one of their weaknesses a lot of the storylines were Phraxians slowly figuring out ways to address their weaknesses

one of which is they were unable to Frexenize the Planeswalker. Or at least, I guess it killed their spark. But anyway, through experimentation and stuff from Kamigawa, they crack and figure out how to do that. And so that was the first sign that, uh-oh, pay attention. The Frexians are figuring out how to

get out of their prison. And that was the Frexenization of Tamio. And then, the Frexians show up again in Nuka Pena. Then in Dominaria, we see a Johnny get completed. And then the plan was in the final set, we have five more planeswalkers. There'll be 10 planeswalkers in the set,

five normal planeswalkers, and five completed planeswalkers. And then we knew we'd have five more planeswalkers. There'd be ten planeswalkers in the set, five normal planeswalkers, and five completed planeswalkers. And then we knew we'd have fun with, oh, which one's getting completed, stuff like that. Anyway, way back in Neon Dynasty, I had to figure out how to make the planeswalkers, like, what does it

mean to be a Phyrexian planeswalker? We knew we were going to have Tamio, then a Johnny, then five more in Phyrexian Planeswalker? We knew we were going to have Tamiyo, then a Johnny, then five more in Phyrexian. So I tried a bunch of different things. It was a project of mine. The leading contender that I came up with was

something called Phyrexian Loyalty. And the idea was that a Phyrexian Planeswalker could use life in place of loyalty on their loyalty abilities. Turned out to be hard to balance, so they ended up going a different route.

What they ended up doing is putting Phyrexian mana in the mana cost, and then the completed mechanic says, hey, if you use your Phyrexian mana, if you pay life rather than mana, not only do you lose the life, but you also start with less loyalty. And that was a way to allow Phyrexian mana and mana costs by giving

an additional sort of cost to it. So not only are you paying life, but you're also kind of paying loyalty, essentially. We locked that down. That didn't get locked down while Phyrexia was in Vision Design. So Set Design ended up doing that. But once we sort of figured out that's how Tamiya worked, then that's how Ajani worked, and that's how the Planeswalkers worked in Phyrexia.

So Adam and his team and the Play Design team spent a lot of time working on both the five normal Planeswalkers and the five Phyrexian Planeswalkers. But anyway, I bring it up because we had said no Phyrexian mana in mana costs. This is one way where they found to do it. So there is five Planeswalkers that are Phyrexian mana in their mana costs.

So there are cards in the set with Phyrexian mana in the mana cost. Relentless, I think what happened was Adam had decided there was just a little bit too much going on. As is normally the case in Vision, we want to give them a little more than they need to give the set design team

some flexibility, right? If you give them exactly what they need and something doesn't work out, then they have to make something. But if you overshoot a little bit and give them a little bit more than they need, they can sort of pull back when they want to pull back. And it just gives them more flexibility in building the set. So it turns out the set didn't need relentlessentless. There was plenty going

on. And Adam was also a little bit nervous about having too much Phyrexian mana. So with the dust settled, there are five Planeswalkers that have Phyrexian mana and their mana cost, and I think there are three cards that have Phyrexian mana and their activation cost. So

kind of what we were doing in Vision, he got rid of Relentless and he pulled it down a little bit. So there's a little bit in the set. If you like Phyrexian Mana, it's there. You know, there's eight cards with Phyrexian Mana. So it's not nothing, but it is not, it definitely is more of a seasoning,

a little bit of a flavoring rather than a large thing. Proliferate basically stayed the same. I mean, as they adjusted, like the big thing I guess is we gave them a lot of options to what to do with oil counters. We gave them, like I said, I think it was eight options.

They ended up choosing five. There is limited use, meaning I get so many oil counters and every oil counter lets me do something or every number of oil counters

let me do something there's thresholds where I get enough oil counters something happens there's countdown where I get oil counters to begin with

they go away and then when they're gone I go away the card goes away there was some cards that care about how many things you have that have oil

counters on them. There's a little bit of like oil counter matters. I think I might be missing one. Anyway, so they found out the ways that they thought oil played best. They made a nice economy with oil. They made a nice economy with poison. Oh, Take Up Arms basically

stayed the same. They did change the name. So it went from take up arms to for merited with an exclamation point. Not a lot of mechanics with exclamation points. So I think that's what else? Let's see.

I do know, so talking with Adam, Adam said that poison was tricky. So here's what we did. Let me sort of cut a little deeper on some of this. So one of the things we did with poison is we decided to put poison into three colors. And we did this in vision design, and they didn't change it in set design. They stayed with it. So what we did was we put it into white, green, and black.

The idea was white was about going wide. So white only has toxic one. Poisonous one in vision design. So white only has toxic one. Plus one of the counters we made for the set are called might counters.

Might counters are 1-1 creature tokens,1 creature tokens, white creature tokens, that can't block, that have toxic 1. And so the idea about them is you want to build up a whole bunch of might, and then I can try to attack you in a, you know,

I want to attack you with a large enough group that some of them get through and they poison you. Then we decided for green, green was going to be the big toxic number. It had larger creatures that did more poison. So it has, I think the largest one is toxic six. But it has, you know, it has, whereas white is all toxic one, green, I mean, green has some toxic one, I believe,

but it has, you know, between toxic one and toxic six. I don't know if there's a toxic five. But anyway, there is various Toxics. So green is a little more like, I get out a few big creatures and hit you to kill you, not necessarily lots of little ones. And then black kind of split the difference. I think black has some Toxic 2s,

but it's all Toxic 1 and 2s. But black does have some way to grant you some poison counters. Also, Corrupted is in the set. Not Cor counters. Also, Corrupted is in the set. Not Corrupted. Corrupted is in the set. Proliferate is in the set. So Proliferate, originally, we had in blue, black, and green, I believe, originally.

Oh, no, no, sorry. Sorry. We had it in... We had it originally in blue, red, and green is what we had it originally. It turns out that color-wise, why red is not great for just kind of building up things, building up

counters is not super red. So red does care about oil counters, manipulates oil counters, counts oil counters, but we only put a little bit of proliferating in red. We ended up putting more in black. So I think blue, black, and green are of proliferating in red. We ended up putting more in black. So I think blue, black, and green are the proliferate colors in the set.

So the cool thing about Poison is, and then Corrupted, we ended up putting in white and black primarily. I think it shows up a little in some other colors, but it's mostly white and black. And so the idea is you can mix and match these in different ways so for example white and green is more about getting poisonous creatures and attacking

with them but because green is a little bit proliferating green where if you go something like blue green it's a lot more about getting some poison with green but then just doing a lot of proliferating so So that's a more slowly controlling deck. White-black has poisonous creatures, but it has corrupted.

So it's less about defeating you with poison and more about poisoning you just enough that it's getting bonuses that will then let it help you defeat you with damage. And so there was a nice suite. When I talked with, I interviewed before I read my articles, I always will interview the set design lead just to get a sense, just, you know, make sure I understand everything that happened.

And so Adam and I interviewed Adam. And he said he thought Corrupted was kind of the glue that really made poison work. That, I mean, it helped that toxic does damage additional to poison. But the idea that I'm trying to poison my opponent, but my opponent isn't quite clear what I'm up to. You know, because if they're trying to just corrupt me, okay, maybe I can, you know, like, am I supposed to stop? There's a lot of interesting questions. Like, normally, for example, when someone's going to poison you out, you can ignore the first couple of poisons. I don't have to worry about the first couple of poisons. Like, they got to get to ten, whatever. I'm going to ignore you.

But with corrupt, it's like, oh, maybe they're not even trying to get me to ten. Maybe it's the first three that matter. So it makes poison relevant right away. It changes the dynamic of what to care about. And it allows decks that sort of mix poison and damage in ways that Scars of Mirrodin really couldn't do. And so it really made a dynamic play environment. So I think it's a lot of fun. play environment. So I think it's a lot of fun.

The other thing that really turned out great was using oil counters in place of the plus one plus one or minus one minus one. It just makes a very different feel. And I think that one of the cool things about oil is they are less defined, meaning that there's a lot of stuff we can do with them. The fact that you can make an oil deck that carries by oil counters, and it really can vary on what you're doing.

Like, different colors use oil differently, so, like, there really is a neat dynamic to oil counters that adds something. And it does a cool thing in that proliferate. You want proliferate to have a couple options of what it's doing. Obviously, there is a poison proliferate deck where you're using proliferate to poison out your opponent. Like I said, the green-blue control deck.

But it also can interact with oil in fun ways where it's not at all about poisoning my opponent. It's more about playing around with oil and doing neat things. And one of the things whenever you're making a set is when all the component pieces blend together, but each have their own independent gameplay, you can get a lot of really fun things going on and I think the mix between Poison and Corrupted and Oil do a lot of neat things

and really make for a dynamic system also for Mirrodin it worked out really well I think it did a really good job of creating the sense of, you know, having the rebels. And it gave Red, White, and Identity and Limited and stuff. So that's really cool. Anyway, guys.

So, sorry. I have some extra time today. It's a little traffic. But luckily, there was lots to talk about. Because Rexia, all will be one, is awesome. Okay, guys. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my sort of talk through the design. But I am now at work. so we all know what that means

means this is the end of my drive to work so instead of talking magic it's time for me to make it magic I'll see you guys next time bye bye