Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1069: Heroes of the Realm

Episode Date: September 15, 2023

A number of years ago, Wizards started a new employee appreciation program which resulted in us making not quite official Magic cards. In this podcast, I talk about how they got made and walk through the designs.

I'm not pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the Drive to Work at Home Edition. Okay, so today I'm going to talk about Heroes of the Realm. So, real quickly, let me first say, what is Heroes of the Realm? So, this was an award program started by Chris Cox, who was the former CEO of Wizards, now he's the CEO of Hasbro. And he wanted to do something that sort of acknowledged good work during the year and do something that felt very, you know, it felt like it would make, it would feel, I don't know, wizardy,

Wizards of the Coast-y. So the idea he came up with was what were called Heroes of the Realm cards. And the way it works is each year some number of teams, I think usually it's three, but it can vary from year to year. And the idea is those three teams get to produce a card.

So they get to make a card so all the people that win can together produce a card. And then get to make a card, so all the people that win can together produce a card. And then they make it, we print it. The back has a special Heroes of the Realm back. It doesn't have a normal magic back. So it's not an official magic card. Like, you can't, if you go to a vintage tournament,

you cannot play this card. And I don't think this was true at the very beginning, but now they put the individual name of each person on the card. So when I won a Heroes of the Realm card, it has my name on the card. So it's my... So there's a version for each person who won it. So my version is specifically my

version and only mine. And anyway, so I thought I would talk through the Heroes of the Realm and talk about the cards. Okay, so 2016 was the first year that about the cards. Okay, so 2016 was the first year that these were awarded. And there were three teams

that were awarded cards. One was awarded for Kaladesh and the Planeswalker decks. That card ended up being Chandra Gremlin Wrangler. One was for the Dungeon Dragons team. And for the Dungeon Dragons 5th edition. That was Dungeon Master. And one was for the Dgeon Dragons team and for the Dungeons 5th edition. That was Dungeon Master.

And one was for the Duel Master team and that was Nyra Hellkite Duelist. Okay, so let's walk through these cards. So, once again, these cards do not quite have the rigor of a normal card because no one is actually playing these cards, at least not in any sort of competitive

way. I think in Commander, the Commander team has said that the card is legal if and only if your name appears on the card. And so if the card was your card that you won, you're allowed to play it in Commander is what Commander team said. Anyway, okay. So Chandra, Gremlin, Wrangler, two red red. Planeswalker, Chandra, loyalty three, plus one. create a two two red goblin creature token, minus two, Chandra, Gremlin, Wrangler deals X damage to target creature or player where X is the number of Gremlins you control. Sure, I can set things on fire by myself, but teamwork can be more fun. This was actually a pretty straightforward design.

In fact, this is a printable card in the sense that there's nothing about it. Sometimes we push boundaries a little bit on these cards. This one doesn't. It's actually a pretty simple card. Okay, next up, Dungeon Mafter. Two white and blue. Planeswalker, Dungeon Mafter. And its loyalty is 1d4 plus 1. In Dungeon Dragons,

you roll multiple dice. A d4. It looks like a little pyramid. Okay, plus one. Target opponent creates a 1-1 black skeleton creature token. When this creature dies, each opponent gains two life. Plus one. Roll a d20. If you roll a 1, skip your next turn. If you roll a 12 or higher, draw a card.

And minus six, you get an adventuring party. Your party is a 3-3 red fighter with first strike, a 1-1 white cleric with lifelink, a 2-2 black rogue with hexproof, Okay, so obviously this one is doing a lot of top-down Dungeon Dragon jokes. I don't know if I know all of them. I know a few of them, so I will throw in. Dungeon Master is a character from... Well, the Dungeon Master is the player who runs the game. But there's a character called dungeon master that was on the cartoon that I think is in the art.

That's what I think the art is referencing is the dungeon master character from the cartoon way back when. Obviously, the car has a D4 and a D20 on it because you're rolling dice. The adventuring party. So a fighter, a cleric, a rogue, and a wizard are the, the original four creature types, I believe.

Note that fighter is not a magic creature type per se. Uh, we have, like, warrior, we have soldier.

So, like, when we did party, we used warrior in place of fighter when we were kind of doing adventure party. But anyway,

because fighter was the actual thing, they used actual fighter. Once again, these cards are not printed to be necessarily played, so the idea of making up creature types or whatever is not a big deal.

Finally, Nyra Hellkite Duelist. White, blue, black, red, green. Legendary creature, Dragon. 6-6. Flash, Flying, Trample, Haste. When Nyra Hellkite Duelist enters the battlefield, the next time you lose the game this turn, instead draw three cards, and your life total becomes five.

So this one was making Duel Masters the team that won for them, and this is sort of riffing off of a Duel Masters thing. Duel Masters plays out a little differently, that you have cards in front of you, and so when you take damage,

instead you lose one of those cards, and then you draw it, essentially. And so, you take damage, instead you lose one of those cards and then you draw it, essentially. And so, anyway, the way you win is a little bit different. They're making a nod to that. Okay. Next, in 2017, there were three awards. One was to the strike team, which is a team that deals with quick, fast-moving projects. Normally it takes a long time to make something,

but there's a special team that when we need to do something a little bit quicker, they do it. Consumer Insights, these are the people that sort of get all the data and figure out what people enjoy and what people like. And then the Magic Online team. There's a nod to Magic Online. Okay, so the Watsi Strike team got Diabolical Salvation. The Consumer Insights team got

Inzerva, Master of Insights. And Magic Online got M'Odo, the Gnarled Oracle. So let's look at those. Okay, Diabolical Salvation. Two. Red, red, red, red. So six mana total, four of which is red. Instant. Split second.

Create four 4-4 red devil creature tokens with haste, and when this creature dies, create a colorless treasure artifact token with tap sacrifice artifact at one man of any color, sacrifice the devil tokens at the beginning of the next end step. To succeed, the wizard made a deal with devils. And so, I think the idea

they're making fun of is, you know, when you're trying to do something fast, you know, it's got split second because they're working so fast to get things done. And they're sort of joking around that sometimes if you have to do something, when you have a really fast schedule, you have to sort of

circumvent a lot of processes. And so they're joking around about, you know, you gotta deal with the devil to get things done. And so that's the joke there. This card, I mean, there wasn't room to spell it what split second does. Split second means they can only respond to it with other split second things. It's interrupt-y-ish. I think the card, yeah, everything about this card is doable.

A lot of cards are completely playable. Some of them dip their toe in things that aren't. But usually they're playable cards. Okay, Inzerva, Master of Insights, one, and then in a two-brit hybrid mantle, so one in two-or-blue and one in two-or-red. Legendary Planeswalk in Zerza.

Oh, I should mention, by the way, they can make whatever card you want. Some people make Planeswalker cards, Legendary Creatures, so whatever you want to make is fair game. Okay, so Loyalty of Four, plus two, draw two cards and discard a card fair game. Okay, so loyalty of four, plus two, draw two cards and discard a card, minus two, look at the top of your cards in each player's library, then put any number of them on the bottom of that library, and the rest on top in order, scry two,

and minus four, you get an emblem with your opponent's play with their hands revealed, and whenever an opponent draws a card, this emblem deals one damage to them. So the thing they're playing around with this one is the idea that this is the team that gets information, that learns about things, and so it's like, you're drawing cards and discarding, so you're getting information. You're looking at the top card of players' libraries to get information.

You're seeing their hands revealed to get information. So the card really is playing in the idea of you're just getting lots of information. Next, Maodo, the Gnarled Oracle. Black, blue, green. Legendary creature, zombie elf wizard, 0-3. It's got eminence. X, discard a card.

Target player reveals cards from the top of their library until they reveal a creature card with converted mana cost, X or less. Put that card on the battlefield under your control. Then that player shuffles the rest into their library. Activate this build only if Maodo, the Gnarled Oracle, is on the battlefield or in the command zone. Those with vision always have a path. So the name, before Magic Online was Magic Online,

it was referred to, the codename was Mo'Odo for, I don't remember exactly what it stood for, but it's the nickname for Magic Online. So Mo'Odo is making reference to that. Eminence is obviously a commander mechanic, so I think they decided to make a commander card. Um, I think there are, once again, there, there's some themes of sort of, uh, getting what you need and, and, you know, getting the job done and you have vision, you have to start figuring out what your plan is.

Um, probably there's one or two other, uh, magic online jokes here that I'm not getting. Okay. Next up, uh, for 2018, uh, there were four awards. Probably there's one or two other magic online jokes here that I'm not getting. Okay, next up. For 2018, there were four awards. One for the Influencer Projects Team. That's people that work with magic and D&D influencers. And that made the card Charis and the Beholder. Awarded to the Transformers Trading Card Game Team.

So that's Optimus Prime Inspiring Leader. Because we made a Transformer trading card game. Game Support and Customer System. So people do customer service and game support. That's Soul, Advocate Eternal. And then the Magic the Gathering Arena team got one. It's called the Legend of Arena. So there are four

this time. Let's take a look at those. Optimus Prime, Inspiring Leader. Three red, white. Legend, Artifact, Creature, Autobot. Four, five. One, 3 red, white, Legendary Artifact Creature Autobot, 4, 5, 1, turn target permanent you control to its other face, 1, until end of turn, Optimus Prime, Inspiring Leader, becomes a contract

with base power, toughness, 6, 6, and creatures you control gain trample. So, Optimus Prime, we did in the game, the cards are double-faced. So obviously, Optimus Prime is the leader of the Transformers, so they're referencing that character.

And it's meant to work well with double-faced cards because the original Transformer gets the double-faced cards, and when we made Transformers in Magic, they were double-faced cards. So it works well with Transformer cards. But it's more open-ended, so it works well with any permanent that has double faces to it. And they want it turning into

because Optimus Prime turns into a truck. So they want it sort of turning, him turning into, having two versions. Because the way the Heroes of the Realm work, the back has to be Heroes of the Realm, so it couldn't be a double-faced card. I think that's off-limits, being a double-faced card. Okay, next.

Soul Advocate Eternal. Green, white, blue, black. Legendary creature. Dragon angel. 4-4. Legendary partner. You can have two commanders if this is one of them. The other one is promoted to legendary.

Flying Vigilance. Teamwork. Whenever you attack or block with both Soul Advocate Eternal and its partner, support four, investigate four times. Heroes endure, legends prevail. So this is game support. This one definitely is playing in space that we would not do. I don't think we would do legendary partner in an actual printed card.

It's a little bit strong. This is the kind of thing where we're making these cards. We let the power level of these cards be on the strong side because it's more for being fun to read and everything. And yes, I guess if the individual people who wore the cards play them at Commander Games, okay, they're on the powerful side. But this one is definitely, and you can see, it's playing with a bunch of mechanics.

Nothing's off. You can make whatever you want. You can reference whatever magic mechanics you want. This has Legendary Partner. It references support, investigate, so it does a bunch of different things. But really, it's just playing this idea that it's trying to help you and give you lots of support.

Next, the Legend of Arena. One blue, red, white. So it's four mana, blue, red, white, with one generic. And it's a legendary enchantment saga. It's the first... Here's the realm saga.

The Legend of Arena can be your commander. So this can be a commander. Chapters one and two, create a 2-1 red human wizard creature token. Spells you cast this turn cost one less to cast for each wizard you control, making reference to Wizards of the Coast. In chapter three,

search your library for a Planeswalker card, put it on the battlefield, then shuffle your library. It enters with an additional loyalty counter on it for each wizard you control. So this is just, this is the arena card playing into sort of, playing up, you'll notice

there's a bunch of wizard jokes that run through this, because these are for Wizards of the Coast, so this is one that, the idea, get wizards, and then your wizards get you a Planeswalker where you get a boost for loyalty, and you can do, this card lets you do, once again, this card's a little bit pushed, and then it lets you do some crazy things with Planeswalk where you get a boost for loyalty. And you can do... This card lets you do... Once again, this card's a little bit pushed and it lets you do some crazy things with Planeswalkers because it is not hard to generate a deck

that has a lot of wizards in it. But it's pretty cool. And then... Where's Karis? Hold on a second. Oh, Karis and the Beholder. One green, green, white, white legendary creature, dragon, eye, wizard.

It's 120 is its power. Flying. When Charizard and the Beholder enters the battlefield and at the beginning of your upkeep create a one-on-one white human creature token and make a charisma deck. Roll a d20. Actually, make a charisma check. Roll a d20.

If the result plus the number of creatures you control is greater than 11, put a plus or minus counter on each creature you control. If the result is a natural 20 for each non-legendary creature you control, create a token that's a copy of that creature. And so this is the influencer team. And I think, once again,

they're just sort of playing around with the idea that the more people, the more eyeballs you get, right? The more eyes you get, uh, the better. And you're crushing your charisma. I, I, are you a good, uh, influencer? So they're just making a lot of nods to the power of, of influencing. Okay. Next up, uh, 2019, uh, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

There are seven made. Uh, so it's a lot in 2019. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. There are seven made. So, a lot in 2019. So, Booster Fun, the people that made the Booster Fun treatments, specifically it was for Eldraine, I believe, made a card called Collectigal. Secret Lair, the team that does Secret Lair, got a card called Keeper of the Secret Lair.

The War of the Spark team made a card called War of the Spark. The Throne of Eldraine team made a card called Champions of Arch Spark. The Throne of Eldraine team made a card called Champions of Archery. The Modern Horizons team made a card called Mintasha Honored One. The Cinematics crew, the people that make the trailers, got the Cinematic Phoenix. And the Operations crew, the people that sort of behind the scenes make everything happen, got Fabled Path of Zero Point. Okay, so there's a whole bunch of these.

Okay, Collectigal. whole bunch of these. Okay. Collectigal. Two and a white. Creature, bird. It's an adventure, and it has the frame from Throne of Eldraine. So only the best is the adventure. One and a white. Oh, the bird is a 1-1 bird. Only the best. One and a white. Sorcery, adventure. Return target. Boost your

fun card from your graveyard to your hand. And then flying. Protection from common. Whenever Collectigal attacks, reveal the fund card from your graveyard to your hand. And then flying protection from common. Whenever collected attacks, reveal a top card of your library. If it's a booster fund card, you may put it into your hand. Okay, this is purely in acorn territory. We could not do this in Black Border.

You can't reference booster fund because all cards are their English version of cards, so treatment is something that acorn cards, uncards can care about. But normal cards cannot. And protection from common is another thing. So this card just leaned in. It really wanted to play nicely with booster fun.

But that's an attribute that we could only make on an acorn card. Same with protection from common. Okay. Next, Keeper of the Secret Lair. This is for the Secret Lair team. One and a blue, 2-1. Legendary creature, Merfolk Rogue. Flash. You may cast Secret Lair spells as though they had Flash.

Secret Lair spells cost you one less to cast. Once again, this is another team that is playing in Acorn Silver Border space, where Silver Lair cards exist in non-Silver Lair form. So you're referencing a quality of a card, which isn't something we can normally do,

but obviously it's a team for Secret Lair, so they had fun, they made a little more folk, and it basically encourages you to play with lots of Secret Lair cards. Okay, next up, War of the Spark. Threemina Black, Enchantment Saga. As the saga enters, and after your draw step, add a lore counter, sacrifice after three.

Chapter one, each player may put a planeswalker or zombie card from War of the Spark from their hand or graveyard onto the battlefield. Because it's the gathering of the Eternals and the planeswalkers for the giant war. Chapter two, sacrifice any number of creatures and or planeswalkers. Each opponent sacrifices that many creatures

and or planeswalkers. A lot of people die in War of the Spark. And chapter three, exile up to one target Bolas, proliferate three times. But Bolas loses at the end, so it's making reference to that. I mentioned this card the other time when I went through cards that reference, that are named after magic cards. And this is the overlap between Heroes of the Realm and magic cards. I don't know.

I think if a name is on a Heroes of the Realm and Magic cards. I don't know. I think if a name is on a Heroes of the Realm card, I'm not 100% sure whether that eliminates it as a name for a non-card. Possibly it does, so I'm not sure. Okay, next. Champions of Archery, which is the Throne of Eldrian card. Three and a red.

It is an adventure. So it's a Legendary Creatures Human Archer 1-4. Join the group Two and a red. It's, it's, uh, um, it is a, uh, adventure. So it's a legendary creature, human archer, one, four. Join the group, two and a red, sorcery adventure. You may put a legendary creature card from your hand into the command zone. It's also your commander. Reach. Commanders you control get plus X plus O, where X is the number of commanders you control. Uh, this is another card that I believe dips its toe.

Uh, we've not made a lot of commander-only acorn cards. Uh, but I don't dips its toe. We've not made a lot of Commander-only Acorn cards, but I don't believe this card... I mean, it's legal in Commander if you are the person whose name is on it, so I guess it's legal there for that purpose. But I don't think we make a Commander product. This is a little on the dangerous side for just adding Commanders.

Okay, next is Mintasha, Honored One, which is for the Modern Horizons team. So two green-green, legendary snow creature elk, three, three. As an additional cost to cast a spell, you may open a sealed magic booster pack and put the cards on the bottom of your booster pile in a random order. Spells you cast have booster cascade. It's like cascade, but use your booster pile rather than your library. Wow.

This year is very acorny. This is another thing that we do in Unsets, which is booster tutoring, where you get to open up a booster and make use of it. This one is messing around because Cascade was something that we did in Modern Horizons. It's a fun thing. But you're cascading.

Instead of cascading normally, you're cascading into your booster part. So this is kind of cool. This is a pretty neat card. The Cinematic Phoenix. This is the people that make the trailers, the cinematics. Three black-red, Legendary Creatures Phoenix 4-4, Flying Haste, Protection from

Red, 1 and Tap, return target Legendary Creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield. Tap six untapped creatures you control, return the Cinematic Phoenix from your graveyard to the battlefield. If you tap six Legendary Creatures this way, you win the game so this is, everything here we can do, none of this is acorn

it's a little on the strong side I believe, the fact that you can five mana for a 4-4 flying haystack from red, and then one in tap can get back legendary creatures, seems very powerful but yeah all this is completely doable and I think the idea is

the... I'm not sure quite why they went with the phoenix. Maybe, like, their projects keep coming back, and they keep having to redo things. I'm not 100% sure the flavor of that. Okay, finally, for the operations clue, we have the fabled Path of Zero Point. A legendary land

mountain. White, blue, black, red, green tap. Creatures in control gain land walk until end of turn. Who built such a wonder? It took many hands. I'm sure this is making a reference that I do not get. The operations team sort of just makes everything run and function at Wizards.

And so I think they were trying to make something very simple in that, you know, hey, who makes these things that happen? And there's, I don't know. So, it's just sort of making reference to that. Okay, next up. The next year, 2020, there's three cards.

The European crew, for promotion of Magic and D&D across Europe, made Eurychus. Then there's Mountain Mover. I'm not sure who that was awarded to. Then Secret Lair is, to the Secret Lair Crew. They made a card called Secret Lair. Um, Urocus is four green green for a

legendary creature, Treefolk Wizard, 6-6. When Urocus enters the battlefield, create a number of 1-1 blue human wizard creature tokens equal to the number of differently named lands you control. Uh, four green blue, draw a card for each wizard you control. These get plus one, plus one until end of turn for each card in your hand. Uh, so obviously the idea of, blue, draw a card for each wizard you control. These get plus one, plus one until end of turn for each card in your hand.

So obviously the idea of the European team has lots of different countries it's playing, so a lot of different lands. The blue humans represent Wizards of the Coast people. So it's trying to just get the flavor of, we have a lot of Wizards people doing this, but also they work in a lot of different places. So you want a lot of Wizards, you want a lot of lands.

Mountain Mover. I don't know. Is this maybe the moving team? We are moving soon. Maybe this is the moving team. I'm not sure. I don't know who this is for. Mountain Mover, two in a red. Artifact vehicle. I think it's our first

Heroes of the Realm vehicle. 5-3 Flying Haste. Whenever Mountain Movers enters the battlefield or attacks, put a Mountain card from outside the game underneath it. When Mountain Mover leaves the battlefield, put all cards underneath it onto the battlefield. So it's slowly moving mountains. This is somebody who's doing a big task that, you know,

and this is definitely one of those cards that is more about capturing the flavor they wanted. I mean, yes, it's a cheap artifact. Crew 3. The fact you get mountains is more to play into the Yoko Monmover, I think. Okay, then we have Secret Lair, which is a legendary land,

and it's a lair. Tap add colors. Tap save the secret word. Add one man of any color. Scry one. You gain one life. So Mark Hagen, who is in charge of Secret Lair, supposedly

knows the secret word. But I don't know if anybody else knows the secret word. But Mark, he claims that he knows the secret word. Obviously, this is to make reference of the Secret Lair program. This is the first team, I think, to get a second award on a different year. Anyway, they thought it'd be fun to make a Lair.

Lair's a subtype, a land subtype. So they thought it'd be fun to make a Lair. So it just does something simple. There a land subtype. So they thought it'd be fun to make a lair. So it just does something simple. There are not a lot of lairs in the game. So having to show lairs is actually pretty powerful. We have to be very careful when we make lairs. Okay. Then for 2021, uh, the last four that are out, uh, the Arena Mobile team got an award. Andrius Roaming Explorer.

Uh, Return to Office Effort post-pemic got RTO, Dread Scavenger. Universes Beyond got Bioed, Universe Sun. And Human Resources got Earthstuff Friend to All. So let's talk about those. Okay. RTO, Dread Scavenger. So RTO. Oh, Return to Office.

RTO is Return to Office. So this is the team. There was a lot of energy. Obviously, the act of getting the team first set up at home and then getting everybody back to office, especially with the pandemic still going on, was a huge undertaking. is still going on, was a huge undertaking. So the card, anyway. RTO, Dread Scavenger, one black, green, blue. So four total, but one of black, red, green, and blue. 3-3, Legendary Artifact Creature, Robot. Robot was a creature type we Infinity introduced.

Flying Death Touch. Whenever RTO deals combat damage to a player, you make... Oh, sorry. The Transformers had robots before. Infinity was the first to actually make robots, but we convinced the Transformers to add robots. So I think Transformers showed up first with robots, by the way.

Okay, sorry. Flying Death Touch. When RTO deals combat damage to a player, you may exchange control of two other target artifacts. When you do, create a token that's a copy of target artifact you don't control, except it's a 1-1 green squirrel creature in addition to its other colors and types. This has a very un-feel to it.

There's robots and squirrels and all sorts of fun stuff. I think this card, actually, everything on here is a doable thing. It is a little powerful, and I think it was made to be like a commander. A lot of these, because people know that they can play it,

sometimes, because commanders are very popular, they'll make ones that can be a commander, that they can be fun to like a commander. A lot of these, because people know that they can play it, sometimes they'll, because commanders are very popular, they'll make ones that can be a commander, that they can be fun to be a commander. And I think they were just sort of having fun with like, all the stuff you have to do to make things happen, and so just the manipulation of things and changing things around, and I think they're trying to

capture the, there's a lot of maneuvering you have to do to do things like return to office. So I believe that's... And I think they wanted to make a fun card. And it has squirrels. And I think it even has a dog in the art. So anyway, a fun card.

Okay, next. Andrius Roaming Explorer. So this is the Arena mobile team. So five and a green. Legendary artifact creature wizard, 4-3. Reach. As long as Andrius is attacking, tap creatures you control with base power artifact creature wizard, 4-3. Reach. As long as Andreas is attacking, tap creatures you control with base power and toughness, 4-3.

Have base power and toughness, 16-9. So obviously it squares for three creatures. Because 16 is square of four and nine is square of three. Tap, add white, blue, black, red, green mana. Sorry, add white, blue, black, red, green mana. Sorry, add white, blue, black, red, green. Creature spells you spend this mana to cast have their base power and toughness become 4-3. And it itself is a 4-3.

So the idea is it's a 4-3, it attacks as a 69, and it allows you to make everything into a 69 because it makes things into 4-3, or spells that you spend that mana to cast. Also, because it references white, blue, black, red, and green mana, it's a five-color identity commander.

Yeah, I think a lot of these are people... You'll see more and more. Let me go through and see. So there's been Planeswalkers, there's been Legendary Creatures, there's been an Instant, there's been a couple Sagas, there's been a Vehicle,, there's been legendary creatures. There's been an instant. There's been a couple sagas. There's been a vehicle.

And there's been a couple legendary lands. It's interesting, the final year, or the last year, all four of these are legendary creatures. Okay, next we get to Biod in verse Sun. So Biod Inverse Sun. So, Biod is Universes Beyond. So, it says Legendary Universe Walker Biod 4

plus 2. Mill 3 cards and return any number of cards from different universes. Mill this way from your graveyard to your hand. Minus X. Choose a universe you haven't chosen this game. You may cast a spell from that universe with mana value extra or less from your hand without paying its cost. Biot Inverse Sun can be your

commander, uh, and, uh, your deck can include Universes Beyond cards of any color identity. Uh, so obviously, uh, this is again playing in Acorn territory. Um, so the idea here is it's, it's referencing the quality of, um,

Universes Beyond. Uh, and there of Universes Beyond. And there are Universes Beyond things that are skinned. So those cards matter whether it's a Universe Beyond one or not, which is something that Unsets can do, but normal magic does not do. Also stuff like Legendary Universe Walker, where

it's a Planeswalker, but you're changing from Planeswalker to Universe. That's the kind of thing we would never do on an actual Magic card. Maybe on sets, maybe. But we wouldn't do normally. But once again, this is more about the fun of reading it and everything. This is playing Universes Beyond. And so it really is...

What this deck wants you to do is play as many different Universe Beyond cards as possible. So not only does it reward you for playing Universes Beyond, but it rewards you for playing different Universes Beyond. And so you want to have a whole... The idea is this deck is just... It's all the Universes Beyonds that you can have. Okay, the final card is Ursta, Friend to All. So Ursta, Friend to All, I believe,

is the human resources team, the people that oversee employment and employ happiness and all sorts of things. Ursta, friend to all, white, blue, black, red, green. Legendary Planeswalker, Ursta. Loyalty, five. Plus one, create a

1-1 human wizard creature token that's all colors. Plus three, choose a card named from among Enlightened Tutor, Mystical Tutor, Booster Tutor, Imperial Recruiter, and Worldly Tutor. Create a copy of the card with the chosen name. You may cast a copy without paying its mana cost. You get an emblem with the beginning of your

upkeep. If you control 20 or more wizards, you win the game. Earth's their friend to all. Can be your commander. So we see our reoccurring theme here about caring about wizards because it's Wizards of the Coast. That's the easiest way to reference wizards. I like the idea that it's referencing a lot of famous tutors. You know, hey, one of the reasons that human resources,

they help you get the thing you need. That's the idea there. Also, the first ability makes a human wizard, but it can be all color, so you can care about different color things. And then the emblem mostly is an alt win condition. Oh, and Earth's Defend All can be your commander. So one of the things you'll notice is how, like, the last year,

there are two legendary creatures and two legendary planeswalkers, but both legendary planeswalkers have on it the ability to be your commander. So of the 24 cards, let's see. One, two, 3. I'm sorry. I'm kind of just wrong. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. 14 of the 24.

So over half can be your commander. 11, 12, 13, 14. 14 of the 24. So over half can be your commander. After Legendary Creature, the next most popular thing is doing planeswalkers. There's one, two, three, four, five planeswalkers. There's two adventure cards.

There's two saga cards. There's two saga cards. Um, it's interesting to note out how there's, there are things missing. I don't think there's a, there's no sorcery yet. Uh, the only artifact is the vehicle. Uh, the enchantments are all the sagas. So anyway, there's, there's some space. Um, I, I in fact have seen this year's cards. They're not public yet, so I can't talk about them.

Um, but there's more fun stuff coming. So anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this sort of jaunt through the Heroes of the Realm. It's a weird sort of... I mean, it's not behind the scenes because we show the cards publicly every year, so it is a public thing. But it's a little fun talking about sort of the making of it. And I have been

on numerous teams. I haven't done a lot of design work myself, but I've definitely made some notes. I think the War of the Sparks is the card that I had the most contribution to. But anyway, guys, I hope you enjoyed the jaunt through the heroes of the realm. It's a little bit of a different kind of a magic card.

But anyway, guys, I'm at my desk, so we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. Hope you guys enjoyed today's podcast, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.