Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1008: Die Rolling

Episode Date: February 10, 2023

In this podcast, I look at the history of die-rolling cards.

I'm not pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to drive to work at Home Edition. Okay, guys. Today, I'm going to talk all about die rolling. Dice. So I'm going to talk sort of about where dice came from and how dice have gotten used in Magic the Gathering. So die rolling, I don't know the true history of die rolling, but I know when they have done like ancient, you know, digging up ancient civilizations, they found dice. It's going way, way back. It has been something that has been part of gaming for a long time. Like Backgammon, for example, is a pretty ancient game.

It has die rolling, a key component of it. So anyway, so the first die rolling that ever happened were in Unglued. So one of the challenges with making unsets, especially Unglued, was I wasn't allowed to make anything that we would normally make. And so one of the things that that led me to is the idea of, and this is something that all the Unsets have kind of done, is high variance, right? Magic, because it's a tournament game and that we want to sort of make sure that people can play competitively, we're kind of careful about how much variance we put in.

And what I mean by that is, like, in any one individual card, how strong it can be. What is the weakest it can be to the strongest it can be in the moment? Not necessarily synergistically, but like, how powerful is the card? And rolling dice is definitely one of those things where, well,

if you think of a six-sided die, which is sort of the traditional die, well, there's a lot of variance between rolling a one and rolling a six. And so, and, it required another, you know, it required something you might not necessarily have with you in a game although a lot of players use dice

to keep track of things so it's actually decently common for people to have dice with them but anyway the first unset was trying to do unglued was trying to do weird things and I was trying to sort of raise the variance a little bit and so magic had, most of the the variance a little bit. And so magic had...

Most of the variance in early magic had been with coin flipping. So early magic, if you wanted to sort of not know the outcome, you know, Richard Garfield would flip a coin. And so coin flipping had kind of been the randomness. I mean, obviously, card drawing is random. There's randomness in magic. But as far as sort of overt randomness, things that have, like, iconically random, rather than sort of hiding random in stuff like card

draws, was coin flipping. So when we got to Unglue, and I'm like, okay, I was intrigued by using dice, and I thought that was cool. So the interesting question was, well, what could you do with dice? Where were dice interesting? And so there are a couple things I tried. First up, I did sort of the chart, right? So stuff like Goblin Tutor or Strategy Schmattergy or Urza's Science Fair or Jack in the Box, where, okay, what's going to happen? There are six different outcomes.

You roll the die and you see what's going to happen. Now, some of them, like strategy, schmattergy, if you roll a six, you roll two more times. So, even how big of the effect or how many effects was something that could vary. Now, the interesting thing here is

this type of die rolling was less popular, only because it was very hard to plan around. Like, for example, we'll take strategy and schmattergy. Well, you could destroy artifacts, or destroy all lands, or deal three damage to each creature and player, or every player discards their hand and draws. Like, when those would be valuable for you,

like, there might be times in which, oh, destroying all lands would be great for me, but I don't know that I'm going to destroy all lands, and I might destroy all artifacts or do damage to everything. Like, the idea that I would have a time in my gameplay where all of those would be good for me was problematic. And so what we found

was a lot of the die rolling that was sort of out of your control and you couldn't plan for it ended up not being super fun. Other stuff, though, we did is we did stuff like Free Range Chicken or Gross Bert, where there's some variance to it, right? Where basically Free Range Chicken talks about how big you get, and Gross Bert is how big you get.

Like, you're rolling a die, and the die is something that will determine the size of the effect. And those were a lot more fun. In fact, one of my favorite Elvish impersonator, you roll two dice, and one was the power, and one was the toughness. And there's 36 possibilities. That was a lot of fun. And I think what we found is that kind of stuff ended up being some of the most fun in the die rolling.

We also used die rolling as a sign where it allowed something would happen, but you didn't know when that thing would happen. For example, chicken egg, well, you don't know when it's going to hatch. Every turn you roll it, and at some point it hatches into, you know, a giant 4-4 chicken.

And some of the things like jumbo imp, where you roll the die to add counters and roll the die to subtract counters. So if you ever rolled lower, you know, the creature can go away right away if you just roll low on the wrong roll. You know, and Poltergeist is something that, you know, whenever something dies, you roll a die to put a thing on it. So it generally gets bigger. Oh, but every once in a while, if you roll a one, it dies. So we had a little bit of that where, like, there was variance, but there was some outcome that could be pretty bad for you.

And then there were definitely stuff like Ricochet, where you spell a target and you randomize what player it hits. And in Spark Fiend, we had you playing craps, basically. Spark backwards is craps. So there was a lot of different things we played around with. And there were some things that also like Chicken A La King

said every time you roll a six, you put a plus on the counter on all your chickens, right? That it said, oh, whenever certain things are rolled, something happens. But rather than being the list of like, something's going to happen, but I don't know what, it's like, oh, whenever certain things are rolled, something happens. But rather than being the list of like, something's going to happen, but I don't know what, it's like, well, when a certain thing gets rolled. And then Clam I Am

sort of said, whenever you roll a three, you can re-roll it. So it did a little bit of die manipulation. So we did this at Unglued, and there were a lot of fun things, like Elevation Personators is one of my favorite cards from Unglued. But we got back some of the feedback on that. We do market research.

And some of the cards, like Strategy, Somatology, really got a lot of hatred. And I think the thing the problem was a bunch of our die rolling kind of punished you. What happened was you would roll a die and sometimes bad things would

happen, or sometimes I just had no control, and things that didn't matter would happen, or maybe effects that weren't good for me. The die rolling often had a lot of negatives. So there was some, some of the cards got some negatives on them. So what happened was I didn't put die rolling into Unhinged. I decided, like, oh, there's a bunch of negative to it. And so I decided not to put it. Interestingly, unhinged seems to be where all my bad decisions happen in unsets, or not all, but many of them. I think I took them out. And what I think I failed to understand was I wasn't differentiating.

I was sort of saying, oh, a lot of die rolling got negative comments, rather than which die rolls got negative comments. Why do they get negative comments? And I think the thing when I went back and looked back at it, what I realized was, if you roll a die, like something like Chicken a la King that says, hey, whenever you roll a six, you get a bonus. That was exciting. Yeah, sometimes you didn't roll a six, but it was exciting that I did get a bonus when I did roll a six. Yeah, sometimes you didn't roll a six, but it was exciting that I did get a bonus when I did roll a six. You know, even something like Elvish Impersonators

where there was a wide range of what could happen, you know, but it definitely was exciting. But I think too many of the cards either had die rolling out of your control or the potential for a bad thing to happen. Jumbo Wim could die. Poultry Guys could die. Crazy Cow could blow up. Freeumbo Wim could die. Poultry Guys could die. Crazy Cow could blow up.

Free Range Chicken could die. Jack and the Mox could die. Like, there were so many things where, like, just die rolling could lead to bad things. And what I realized was, where die rolling kind of stood out, where it was fun, was I didn't quite know what was going to happen,

but in general, something good happened. I was, you know, that die rolling didn't have to necessarily have negative consequences happen, but in general, something good happened. I was, you know, the die rolling didn't have to necessarily have negative consequences. The die rolling, like, the negative consequences should be, well, I could have rolled higher and I didn't. Like, Elvish Impersonator, the downside

was I just got a 1-1. I still got a creature, and a 1-1's not a 6-6, but that's not nearly as bad as, like, well, my creature will go away at some point, and I don't know when that is. So when Unstable came around, I said, okay, I want to revisit this. I want to do die rolling in a way that I think will be fun. So the number one rule I made was, or I made a couple of rules.

Rule number one was, you knew what you were getting. When you rolled the die it was clear what the effect was going to be. Maybe you didn't know the scale of the effect. Maybe you didn't know exactly what was going to happen. But you knew what you were getting. And even the worst roll was beneficial for you. So, for example, I did a

cycle of host creatures that were enter the battlefield, roll a die, you got something. Adorable kitten got you a life. Adorable Kitten got you a life. Numbing Jummy Stick, um, milled the opponent. Um, Boa Constrictor, target opponent, lost life. Um, Feisty Stegosaurus did damage. And, um, Mother Kangaroo got plus one, plus one counters. So the idea was, and it couldn't go wrong for you. I mean, yeah, I could roll one and only get one life or mill one card. I mean, rolling

the downside was I didn't do as well as I could have, not that it was harming me in any way. You know, if I roll Adorable Kitten and get one life, okay, I got one life. It's not amazing. And yes, I could have done better, but I'm still going up in life. The other thing we started

to do in Unstable is, like, one of the fun things I had found in Unglued was we managed to use dyes to do a bunch of different things. And while some of them, I think, were things we ended up not wanting to do, I did think there was a lot of flexibility on it. And so one of the things I was interested in was sort of experimenting with what we could do.

So, for example, go to jail was a nice top-down thing, because go to jail is making a monopoly of reference, but the idea that I have to roll doubles to get out, you know, it's the means to tell me when somebody gets out. And so the fact that it might not happen for a while is fine. I tend to put it on my opponent, so my opponent having to, you know, get lucky to break out was fine the fact that it didn't happen most of the time because it was a negative consequence I put on my opponent.

You know, there's a card, Socketed Sprocketer. So blue 1-1, tap, uninstall all results from Socketed Sprocketer, then roll a six-sided die. So the idea was you could replace the roll so that I could put a roll in here and then I could use that roll to...

Oh, sorry. So tap Uninstall All Results from Socketed Sprocketer, then roll a six-sided die, install the results on Socketed Sprocketer. You may uninstall a result from Socketed Sprocketer to use it as a die roll you rolled, and then uninstall a six from Socketed Sprocketer to draw a card.

So the idea essentially was I could roll dice. Obviously 6s can help me get out of it. But I could also use those as a replacement for other die rolls. And that was kind of cool. Now I did have a little bit like, there is a little bit of push or luck stuff that's going on.

Or not, I guess, push or luck. The Inhumani there is a little bit of push-your-luck stuff that's going on. Or, not, I guess, push-your-luck. Like, Inhumaniac is a 1B, 1, 1. At the beginning of your upkeep, roll a six-sided die. On a three or four, put a pulse of Mekana on Inhumaniac. On a five or higher, put two pulse of Mekana on Inhumaniac, but on one, you remove it. So, it doesn't destroy the creature. It doesn't kill it. Some of the other ones were like,

oh, it died. So, like, if you roll a one, it goes back to being a 1, 1, but the idea is you have this opportunity that it can grow and get really big, and there's this desire to go back, but it's not... I think the thing we tried is when you lost something, it wasn't a permanent thing. It didn't go away forever.

And, like, the big idea 4-red-red, 4-4, 2-hybrid-black-red, hybrid-black-red, tap, roll 6, set a die, create a number of 1-1 red Brainiac creature tokens two hybrid black red, hybrid black red, tap, roll six side of die, create a number of one one red Brainiac creature tokens equal to the result, and then tap three untapped Brainiacs you control. The next time

you roll six side of die, instead roll two six side of die and use the total of those results. So the idea that we can manipulate die, let you roll extra dies, you know, obviously a lot of things that care about what the dies were. And there's stuff like Paniac, two and a red, zero, three, beginning of your upkeep, roll six, set a die.

Paniac gets plus X plus O to end of turn, where X is the result. So the idea there is we did more of the variance type stuff. The variance type stuff was pretty fun. And it definitely was neat to see, like, well, I get, like, Steam Floggers, four red, red, instant, roll six, set a die, assemble a contraption equal to the result.

So I can do 1 contraption, I can do 6. There's a chance that, like, giant things could happen. Hydrodrudle was XX green green. Hydrohound 00. As Hydrodrude enters the battlefield, roll X 6-sided dice. Hydrodrude enters the battlefield with a number of possible counters equal to the total of those results. So, like, oh, I can roll a whole bunch of dice. So we definitely played around

like willing test subject, two and a green, two, two, reach, whenever you roll a four higher on a die, put a possible counter on it, and then for six you can roll a die. So the idea is things that sort of remind you. And then we got creative. We did some wacky things like

old buzzbark, XRedGreen33, Legendary Creature, Goblin Warrior. When OldBuzzBark enters the battlefield, roll X six-sided dice on the battlefield from a height of at least X inches. For each die put on a number of possible counters equal to that result on creatures you control, the die is touching. For each die deals damage to it if it's

a creature you don't touch. You know, opponent controls the die is touching. So the idea is I'm rolling the dice and it's boosting my creatures and hurting my opponent's creatures, and the fact that I'm actually throwing a whole bunch of them from up high. Definitely, we had a lot of fun with that. And then, one of the other cool things we did, we did this on the contraptions, is we had a bunch of cards where you rolled two dice, and you care about the differential between the dice.

That was a different way to care about dice. And what it means is normally when you roll a die, you get one through six, or you roll two dice, you know, one through 12. And then there's a certain percentage of how often it happens. But rolling two dice and subtracting allows you to have a different connection of variance.

Like what happens, you're more likely, for example, to get ones and twos. And you can get a five, which is the best you can do, but it happens a lot lower than getting a lower number, so that allowed us to do die rolling where it skews toward the low end. Okay, then

in Unsanctioned, Unsanctioned only had one die rolling card, but it was a lord, it was a commander for die rolling. So Pippa, Duchess of Dice, two and a green, two, two, legendaryess of Dice, two and a green. Two, two, legendary creature, human noble. Two and a green, roll a six-sided die. It becomes a green die creature token with power and toughness equal to its result.

Or two and a blue, tap, re-roll, and you die. When it came to following her orders, it was do and die. So the idea there is that she can make dies into token creatures, and you roll it to see how big it is, kind of a riff on Elvish and Person Editors. But you also could re-roll dice. And not could you just re-roll the die you're rolling for die rolls, you could re-roll

dice creatures. So if I roll and made a 1-1, ooh, I could re-roll that to make my die creature now maybe a 6-6 if I roll a 6. Okay. What happened next was a little unexpected. I thought that die rolling was going to be an un-thing, a silver-bordered acorn thing.

But then we made a dungeon dragon set. In fact, we made Adventures in the Forgotten Realm. And so basically what happened there was Oh, actually, sorry. I skipped a part of the story. So in Unstable,

we made a card called Sword of Dungeons and Dragons. It was a riff on the Sword of Blink and Blink that we made. And Dungeon Dragons was made by Wizard of the Coast, so we thought it was a fun riff to a sister game, if you will. So we went to the Dungeon Dragon team

to see if we could make the card. They said yes. Now, originally we had you roll three six-sided dice. In Dungeon Dragons, that's how you do your stats. But they said, you know, the D20 is so iconic, do you mind doing a D20? So we did. So that was the first time we ever did a D20

was on Sword of Dungeon Dragons. It was very apropos. So when we got to Dungeon Dragons, we'd already made that card. So we already had a Dungeon Dragons-themed card that used a D20. And it felt like, oh, like, we got to Dungeon Dragons, we'd already made that card. So we, we already had a Dungeon Dragons themed card that used a D20. And it felt like, oh, like, we really should do, you know, um, like, we should, we should, um, make use of, uh, the D20s in a way that would do cool things. So most of the ways I think that the D20s were, in fact, all the ways I think the D20s were done in Adventures of the Garden Realm was there was a die chart. So die charts are something from Dungeon Dragon.

So it was nice because it was making reference to Dungeon Dragon. And then it sort of said, for example, I'll do Aberrant Mind Sorcerer. Four and a blue for a 3-4 Human Elf Shaman. Psionic Spells. When Aberrant Mind Sorcerer enters the battlefield, choose to target an instant or sorcery card in your graveyard, then roll a d20. 1 through 9, you may put that card on top of your library. 10 through 20, return that card to your hand.

So, a couple things. So, it gave us some sense of variance. So, one of the things they did, for starters, is the reason they did 1 through 9 and 10 through 20 is, we didn't want to do 1 through 10, 11 through 20 because that's just 50-50, which is a die,

which is slipping a coin. Why not just slip a coin? There was a lot of talk since these were blackboarded and standard legal. We were careful not to make things that were too strong. Most of the time, the way it worked is you had two rolls. One was the base effect

and one was an upgrade from the base effect, but not too much of an upgrade that was problematic. There were a couple cards made where there was a die 20 result. For example, Genie Windseer, three and a blue for a 3-3, creature Jyn, flying.

When Jyn enters the battlefield, roll a d20. 1-9, scry 1. 10-19, scry 2. 20, scry 1. 10 through 19, scry 2. 20, scry 3. Or another card that was very popular was Treasure Chest. 3, Artifact. 4, Sacrifice Treasure Chest, roll a d20.

1, Trapped, you lose 3 life. So that's one in which there's a negative 1 below thing. 2 to 9, create 5 treasure tokens. 10 to 19, you gain 3 life and draw 3 cards. 20, search a library for a card. If it's an artifact card, you may put it onto the battlefield. Otherwise, put that card into your hand and shuffle. So, like, treasure checks really was

maximizing. That's a great example of okay, there's a low roll where a bad thing can happen. There's a high roll where an amazing thing can happen. But most of the time, you're in the middle and, you know, the 2 through 9 effect is not as good as the 10 through 19 effect, but, you know, it, it gave you some sense of excitement, um, and so all the ones that were in, um, Adventure of the Forgotten Realm were, um, had the die chart. Okay, so then what happened was, meanwhile, we're making Unfinity. Now, Unfinity actually started

before Adventure of the Forgotten Realm started. We'd started earlier, and die rolling was a really big part of what we were doing in Unstable. But then we saw and noticed that they were putting die rolling in normal magic! And so this is one of the things that led us to sort of consider the idea of having some cards that just were Eternal Eagle. Like, for example, I think almost all our die-rolling cards, the only thing unique about them were they were die-rolling cards. And so, you know,

so most of the die-rolling cards, for example, are now, you know, they're eternal legal cards. So one of the things that we definitely did is we further sort of experimented with what we could do with die-rolling. So, for example, clowning around one and a white sorcery. Create two one,

one white clown artifact creature tokens, then roll six at a die. If the result is equal to or less than the number of robots you control, create a one, one white clown token. So, in a vacuum, for two mana, make two one, ones. White normally does that. But you have a one out of three chance in a vacuum of getting a third clown. Now, the cool thing about this is that you could play other clowns. So, if you put this in a clown deck, the chance of getting a third clown is very high, because you get to count the other clowns.

In fact, if you have four clowns and play this card, you're guaranteed to have a third one, because you have six clowns. So, no matter what you roll, you'll get the third clown token. And there's stuff like Circuits Axe. A Circuit Axe, two in a red, sorcery. Roll three six-sided dice.

For each different result, create a one-one white clown robot artifact creature token. So there, it's like, okay, roll and die, but now we're trying to do something different. I'm trying to roll unique dice. So that's a different kind of thing that I haven't done before. So interestingly, I said that we didn't do the die rolling when you don't know the outcome

six-sided die actually did that but all the effects basically kill a creature now some of the effects might not kill all creatures so sometimes you're rolling to see if the creature dies but unlike what went on in Unglued where the effects were radically different six-sided die so it's two and a B instant

shoot at a creature roll six-sided die one does base toughness one until end of turn. 2, put 2 minus 1 minus the counters on it. 3, 6 out of die, deals 3 damage to it, and you gain 3 life. 4, it gets minus 4, minus 4 out of turn. 5, destroy it. 6, exile it.

So the idea is, either I'm going to kill it or I'm not. There's not a, like, if I want to kill the creature, now maybe if I'm trying to maximize what I can kill, you know, I could choose which, some creatures will die to more of the effects than others, but it's still the same thing. The other thing we did, we did this on a bunch of cards,

like Boing, one and a blue. Return target creature to its owner's hand, then roll six at a die. If the result is three or less, scry a number of cards equal to the result. So the cool thing here is one of the outcomes is scry one, one outcome is scry two, one is scry three, and three of them don to the result. So the cool thing here is one of the outcomes is scry 1, one outcome is scry 2, one is scry 3, and three of them are don't scry.

But the idea, by tying it to the die roll, we could differentiate. Like, dissatisfied customer is 2 and a black, 2, 1, vampire gas, flying haste. When dissatisfied customer enters the battlefield, roll 6 out of die. If the result is 3 or less, you lose that much life. So lose 1, lose 2, lose 3, don't lose anything.

Now, boying is positive because crying is good, and dissed out a customer is negative because losing life is bad. But it definitely had the sense and non-human cannibal did the same thing. Two in the red, four, three, artifact, creature, clown, robot. When non-human cannibal dies, roll six, set, die.

If the result is four or less, non-human cannibal deals that much damage to you. So each one of these, we did effects that it could change a little bit what the effect was. So the effects could scale, but it was scaling that wasn't quite as strong as one through six.

It had like, in each one of these, it scaled either one through three or one through four. Another thing we definitely did is, well, we repeated some stuff. We definitely did some scalable stuff. We did some, when you roll certain die scalable stuff. We did some when you roll certain die roll things. We had some fun messing around things that would

change how you roll dies, or if you rolled six, something would happen. Center of Attention, for example, we were definitely playing around with, this is us, you roll five dice and you're trying to get as many of the same number because it changes it. You know, Attempted Murder cares about whether it's even or odd, for example.

So there, you're rolling a bunch of dice, but one effect is odd and one effect is even, so it could vary what the effect is. And then we did, so Common Stellar Pop was me doing the thing in a careful way where we had a dog for the first time ever, a planeswalker dog, and we wanted to... I wanted to convey that it's a dog,

like not a dog person or anything, like a dog. So I love the idea of using dice for randomness in the sense that you don't know what this dog is going to do. Like, maybe you want the dog to do one thing, but it's going to do another thing, because the dog is not listening to you. But the thing that I tried very carefully with this one is, we wanted to make

the effects generally useful no matter what you're doing. So, for example, Comet Stellar Pop, 2 Red White, Legendary Planeswalker Comet, 0 Roll 6 out of die, 1 or 2, plus 2 loyalty, then create 2 six out of die, one or two, plus two loyalty, then create two one-one green squirrel creature tokens. They gain haste on their turn. Three,

minus one loyalty, then return a card with mana value two or less from your graveyard to your hand. Four or five, comet-style property deals damage equal to its number of loyalty counters on him to a creature or player, then lose two loyalty. And six, plus one loyalty, you may activate a common stellar loyalty ability

two more times. So once again, this is kind of like the re-roll thing, where I can get multiple effects. But the idea essentially is making tokens, getting back cards, doing damage to things, generally useful. Most of the time when you get those effects,

you're going to be able to do something good with them. And even then, they're designed such a way that they're not going to harm you. They're never a negative effect. The biggest negative is, wow, I really want to do damage to something, and instead I got squirrels or something. I just didn't get the effect that I

wanted. The other thing that was fun was using the die rolls as a way to sort of convey chaos in a way that's flavorfully fun. So, Captain Rex Nebula, one red-white, 2-2, legendary creature, human pilot

employee. At the beginning of combat on your turn, target non-land permanent you control becomes a vehicle artifact until end of turn. Its base power and toughness are each equal to the mana value. It is crew 2 and crash land. Whenever this vehicle deals damage, roll six-sided die. If the result is equal to this vehicle's mana value, it deals

that much damage to any target, then sacrifice this vehicle. So this is messing up a bunch of stuff we're talking about. How much damage it does has to do with the die roll, but the die roll is implying that it has a crash to it. And also, you know, you don't know

whether or not it will destroy it, right? So there's a little bit of drama there. But the fact that Captain Rex Nebula is choosing what he turns, you know, the idea that you could crash land is part of the risk of the card, but you're not losing the card itself. You're not losing Captain Rex Nebula.

And then Minoxin, Midway Manager, two black red, legendary creature, vampire employee, three three. Whenever you roll three or higher, Minoxin, Midway Manager, gains black, red. Legendary Creature, Vampire Employee, 3, 3. Whenever you roll a 3 or higher, Minoxidil Midway Manager gains First Strike to end of turn. If the roll is 4 or higher, it gains Menace to end of turn. If the roll is 5 or higher, it gains Lifelink to end of turn. So that's something where we cared about your die rolling, but they all stack together. So if I roll a 6, I get all of these things.

She gets First Strike and Menace and Lifelink. Um, Celebrate 8000 is another one where we were caring about sort of, you can have different rolls but all of them are good and you roll two dice

and so it costs five. A clown robot, artifact creature, clown robot, three, three. Beginning of combat in your turn, roll two six-sided dice.

For each result of one, celebrate 8000 gets plus one plus one until end of turn. For each other result, it gains, it indicated ability until end of turn. If you roll every turn, I don't know what I'm getting. It's a good thing. I'm happy to get it.

And there are things that combo better than other things together. You know, like if you roll Snake Eyes, which is two ones, like, oh, it becomes a 5-5 Double Striker. That's pretty good. So it's a lot of fun that you don't quite know what you're getting, but once again, we learned the lesson of no matter what you get, it's still something of value to you. And I think that was a lot of fun.

Okay, anyway, so we did that in Infinity. Then, along came Battle for Baldur's Gate. So we were back in Infinity. Then along came Battle for Baldur's Gate. So we were back in D&D. We did a second D&D set. So they returned all of the die charts, obviously. But they did do one other cycle.

They did actually start embracing a little bit the fun of scalability. Now, D20s is a lot crazier because you're going 1 to 20, not 1 to 6. So, for example, Ancient Gold Dragon, 5 white white, flying, Elder Dragon, 710. When an Ancient Gold Dragon deals combat damage to a player, roll a D20,

you create a number of 1-1 Blue Fairy Dragon creature tokens with flying equal to the result. So the idea is, it's really, these were, it was a mythic rare cycle, and they had very, you know, like I said, it's pretty high variance, but it was very exciting.

Now, given you had a hit with the creature, so, like, your opponent could try to stop you or chump or whatever, but when you hit, you definitely did a lot of exciting things. You made tokens, you drew cards. Oh, and Ancient Brass Dragon allowed you to put any number of target creatures whose mana value adds up to X.

Red lets you make treasure tokens. And what did green do? Green got plus one, plus one counters. So you got to do a lot of something. And like, rolling a 20 would be super, super excited. So I'm almost here. I can see my desk here. I think the future of dice is

something that is exciting. I think there's a lot of fun to die rolling, and while I don't think we're going to do die rolling in products that are geared toward high-end competitive play, I do think it's something that, for products that are more for casual play, you'll see us doing more of it. I think there's something that for products that are more for casual play,

you will see us doing more of it. I think there's something really fun about dice, and what we found that as we sort of figure out how right to do dice, how to do dice the right way, that there's a lot of fans that become big fans of dice. In fact, one of the number one request I get on my blog is people saying what's the card called? Croc's Other Thumb. Whenever you roll a die, you may roll an additional die. People ask all the time, could we please make Croc's Thumb

eternal legal? So where's Croc's Thumb? Croc's Thumb is... Where's Croc's Thumb? Croc's Other Thumb is... Where's Crux of the Thumb? Crux of the Thumb is... Hold on a second. I'm going to be from my computer. I can just look it up.

So Crux of the Thumb is two legendary artifacts. If you roll a die, instead roll two of those dice, ignore one of those results. And so that is... People really, really want that to be... So hopefully one day we're able to do that and either make Crux of the's Thumb Eternal Eagle or make a card like Crook's Thumb Eternal Eagle.

But I think die rolling definitely has gone through a lot. We've made a lot of cards with it. There's enough cards that you can, I mean, given you're using a lot of Silver Border and Acorn, or Silver Border cards, at least for non-Infinity sets. So if you want to make a die rolling deck,

I guess you have access to both the D&D sets and to most of the die-rollings from Infinity. So I guess we're getting close to a Commander Legal deck that's fully blown out. I guess maybe you can probably do it. You're shy a little bit, and you're in a lot of colors. If you're willing to use the die-rolling cards from the ones from previous unsets,

you definitely can do it. But anyway, I think die rolling, there's a lot of fun in die rolling. There's a lot of cool, like from a design standpoint, there's a lot of neat things we can do with it. I know each time we've done it, we experiment more and more with what we can do. So I'm excited to see what

all will come up with. So I do not think we've seen the last of die rolling. I think there's a lot of fun from it. I do predict someday in a non-D&D set, I think we will see die rolling. I think it is something that we will eventually maybe it's a supplemental

set and maybe not a standard legal set. Although, who knows? We did do die rolling in standard legal sets, so I guess that's not necessarily off the table. But anyway, guys, today that was my look through the history of die rolling cards. Hope you guys enjoyed it. But now I'm at my desk, so although that means this is the end of my drive to work, instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time.

Bye-bye.