Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1220: Top 20 Most Influential Designs, Part 1

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

This is part one of a three-part series going over a talk I gave at MagicCon: Chicago 2025.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work Okay, so I recently got back from Magicon Chicago 2025 and at magicons. I tend to give a talk and usually the talks are 60 minutes I have lots of slides and Mostly as a means for me to tell design stories secretly yet. That's what it's about. I have lots of slides and mostly it's a means for me to tell design stories secretly. That's what it's about. I pick a topic. I've learned that 20 is about the right

number of things to talk about. My big GDC talk 20 years, 20 lessons. 20 is about the right amount in an hour. It's about the right amount of things I can talk about. So I've done stuff like the top 20 best mechanics and worst mechanics. So this time I did the top 20 most influential designs. So let me define what I meant by that because I, as with most talks, I sort of clarify what it is I mean. So I'm looking for card designs, although in a few cases I did cycles rather than the single card. I mean, originally I just picked a card out of the cycles and I'm like, okay It's really the cycle. So a few of them are the whole cycle

Um, the idea is there were three things that had to be true for me to pick it Number one, it had to be something that was very popular when it came out something that really like people really got attracted to and liked to something that really like people really got attracted to and liked. Two, I'm sorry that's actually one is it had to be doing something innovative something we hadn't done before. Two is it had to be very popular and three it had to inspire R&D to do other stuff with it that really was sort of these are things that are foundational like we did something the response you know we did something new the response overwhelming. People really liked it and we did more. That's sort of the idea.

This is not a talk about the first time we did something. My example was I showed Taste of Paradise in the talk. And I'm like, who knows what this card is? It's a card from Alliances. Taste of Paradise is thought of as kind of the first kicker card, but it wasn't a popular card. It didn't stand out. We didn't make a kicker because of it.

We sort of made kicker and it happens that this was the precursor of it. So maybe one day I'll do a talk of the earliest versions of effects or something. That's a fine talk, but that's a different talk. And the other thing I always say on my talks is look, this is my opinion. I did talk to R&D. I did take take other people's opinions into this but in the end my opinion I ordered them There's there's clear bias showing here and the other thing which I didn't say in the talk But I will say here now is um The whole point of this is for me to have a fun talk and tell fun stories

So sometimes they pick things because I got a good story to tell so This is I mean this is a pretty good, these are 20 very good examples of what I'm talking about. Did I miss one or something? Maybe I'm not, I'm not saying this is, you know, this is, it was, it was for my talk and I thought it was, I do like this list. Did I miss anything? I'm sure I did. Okay. Number 20, Mindslaver from the set of Mirrodin. Oh, by the way, I also, for each of these things, I want to mention who the designer was, just cause, hey, I like giving credit where credit is due. Ironically, Mindslaver was by me. I made Mindslaver. So the story of Mindslaver is a very interesting one. It actually goes all the way back to Alpha. So in Alpha there's a card called Word of Command, which I think is a spell in D&D I

believe in Dungeon and Dragons. So the idea is it's a spell where you take over a fellow wizard and you cast one of their spells is the idea. So the flavor of this, I mean you have to clear what Richard intended. You cast a spell. Now you can go into your opponent's hand and use their mana to cast their spell. And the flavor and the idea was really cool that I'm take over my fellow planeswalker. The problem was a lot of the time what would happen is, you know, let's say for example, they have a source of plowshares and a planes open. So you, you were to command them and you look in their hand, you're going to see that to cast it, but in response to you casting it, they could just

swords one of your creatures, right? A lot of the problems was they get to respond to you casting the word of command. And oftentimes, if there's something you could do with the word of command, they will just do it first to keep you from messing with them. So the idea of the spell was a really cool concept, but the execution wasn't great. And so one of the things that was on my mind is I really wanted to make word of command 2.0. How do I take control? Like how do I cast a spell out of my opponent's hand. And I spent a lot of time sort of thinking about it. And in the end what I realized was that I needed to

capture them in such a way that I had full access to what they had, right? That I had untapped land. I had at least a spell that I could cast. And that's when I came up with the idea of, well what if I'm not just sort of taking over a single moment in time, what if I'm taking an entire turn? And I came up with a text which I liked a lot, gain control of target player.

And the idea meant that for one turn, instead of them playing their turn, I played their turn. And that seemed really cool. And the neat thing about it was their mana would untap, they draw a card and it started like everything would be refreshed and now you get to do something. They can't really mess with you.

I mean, maybe, maybe, you know, if you activate it before their, you know, your turn ends and cast an instant or something, but they're still gonna draw a card. You know, you still have a lot of access to things. And by taking control of their turn, it's not just even casting spells, you get to decide how they attack, like you just get a really, you get to sort of mess them up in a fun way. And I really, I really liked that idea. So anyway, what happens is, at the time I'm working on Tempest, Tempest was the first set I led, and it turns out there's a character in Tempest,

Volrath, the main villain of Tempest, who I liked the idea that he had a device, a helm, a helm of control that he could use to take control of other people and in the story he actually takes control of Gerard with it. So we are, I was very excited. Like this is like it fits in the story. It's it is this place, you know, out of the box, cool thing. So I go to the rules manager of the time, which was Tom Wiley, the very first rule manager. And I say, can I do this? And he goes, I think so. So we commissioned the art, we got everything all set up. It's all ready. It's in the story, everything's ready to go, and then Tom comes back and goes, yeah, I don't think I can get

it to work. So the last minute, the, is it Helm of Control, Helm of, there's a Helm with Volrath on it, that ends up stealing a creature, I mean something that is, magic magic's done, you know, we control magic with an alpha. So nothing new, not that a bad card, having an artifact that can steal creatures isn't horrible or anything, but it isn't, you know, it wasn't the exciting thing that Mind Slaver's supposed to be.

So anyway, Mind Slaver sort of goes in the drawer, the junk drawer of my head, where designs go when they don't quite make it. But anyway, flash forward a bunch of years, we're working on Mirrodin. And I'm leading Mirrodin. And Mirrodin, the idea was, starting with Invasion, we were starting doing theme blocks, right?

And so Invasion was the artifact block. And I really wanted to like do some really cool artifacts because we were doing an artifact block and it was an artifact set. And so I went back and I looked through the junk door and I remembered Mindslaver. So we had a new rules manager time, Paul Barkley was his name. So I go to Paul and I say, Paul, can I do this? Can I do mind slaver? And Paul goes, I think so.

Now I've learned like the one thing about, one of the key things is being a magic designer is be aware that you keep getting new rules managers and different rule managers will accept or not accept certain things. And maybe one rule manager can figure out how to do something that another rule manager couldn't do. And no slight against Tom, just time had gone by.

We had evolutions, we had done more things, you know. There just was more to work with. It's not a strike against Tom. But anyway, Paul Barkley came back and said, yes, yes we can do it. And so they figured out a way to make it work. And Mind Slaver was created. My only, my only looking back, I really like Mind Slaver.

I do wish there were two words added to Mind Slaver. I wish it said exile Mind Slaver because doing it once in a game is kind of fun. Doing it continually every turn, man, not so fun. So I wish I'd done that. Anyway, this incurred, when I talk about some inspirations, there's both sort of the direct inspiration and the indirect inspiration. The direct inspiration is just the idea of taking control of another player's turn. It is something, it's a very special something. We don't do it a lot, but it's a really cool effect. And we've used it in a couple different places. And then,

the probably the lesser sort of influence is just the idea of the value of sort of cool words, that the idea of game control of target player, even if you don't completely understand what that means. I mean, there's a reminder text to tell you what it means, but that sounds cool. Game control of target player, I don't even you what it means, but that sounds cool game control target player I don't even know what that does that sounds cool. And so a lot of idea of We realize the value is kind of the pithy Rule sex the other one example I gave him the talk was the end of the turn end of the turn I mean, yeah, yeah, there's like six lines of reminder text explaining what exactly that means, but it sounds really cool And so really this got us into the idea of the value of words six lines of reminder text explaining what exactly that means but it sounds really cool and so

really this got us into the idea of the value of words. Okay number 19 form of the dragon this is from scourge uh brian tinsman created a form of the dragon um so the idea was he wanted to he wanted a spell that said I turned myself into a dragon. That was his inspiration. And he's like, okay, well what does it mean? What does it mean if I'm a dragon? What does that mean? And so he said, okay, well he went and looked, what is the most typical dragon of magic?

And he said, the Shivan Dragon from Alpha. It's a five-five. It flies. It is fire breathing like how can I you know I want to turn into a shiv and dragon so first off he said okay well it's important that I'm a creature right I'm a dragon I'm no longer I'm not a planeswalker I'm a drag or maybe I'm a plane is right but whatever I'm not I'm not a person anymore I've turned into a dragon also he said okay I gotta fly, like dragons fly,

that's important, and I breathe fire. So he said, okay, how do I capture those three things? So for breathing fire, he said, well, what if every turn I just get to do direct damage? Much like a dragon, I now have a source of doing direct damage, I can breathe fire. So I do five damage every turn. And once he was thinking of the shipping dragon,

you're a five-five dragon, so every turn you can do five damage every turn and once they can even thinking of the shipping dragon you know you're a five five dragon so every turn you can do five damage and if you want to think about like you're attacking with the dragon or or doing fire breathing I think fire breathing because he hit whatever target he wants but you also can think of it as attacking okay then flying how do you capture flying you said well what if no one can attack you if they're not a flying creature now that was a little contentious at the time essentially that's like a mote effect which is white and not remotely red. But at the time when we talked through Color Pie, we were like, well, the collection of

the whole thing is really, really red. You're turning into a dragon. We said, it's a bend, but oh, okay. And then the third thing, which was kind of the most radical is the idea that your life total is five and that at the end of your life total is five and that end of turn is like an end of turn you always go back to five and the idea is I'm no longer you know I'm no longer I mean I'm a dragon and dragon has a toughness of five but like like a creature I heal back up at the end of turn you know so you damage me and I go down to

two well at the end of turn I go back to normal If it drags out she'd been dragging gets three damage on it. Well that damage dissipates in its back to his fight back And so the idea there was okay. I breathe fire. I fly and I I'm a creature So that spell was really I mean obviously, we've done some stuff with form of mostly we've done like form of the squirrel and form of the dinosaur and form of the approach of the second son but really that model that that's once again the minor thing the major thing is really this idea of all in top-down design and what I mean by that is if you look at the component pieces of the form of the dragon, you do direct damage, fliers can't attack you, and your life total goes to five. In a vacuum it doesn't make any sense. It feels like

three random abilities. It doesn't feel like there's no cohesiveness to it. But when you add the flavor on to it, you're turning into a dragon, all of a sudden those connected pieces make sense. And it really hammered home the power of how flavor can really take something and you can make something you normally would never make. You would never make that spell in a vacuum. It doesn't make any sense. But when you tie it together, there's a lot of flavor.

And then, you know, that is a well we've gone to again and again. This is the idea of the individual pieces are a little weird, but the totality is so that color that it's just, you know, I've told a similar story about a crow and horse, which the tro, it basically the Trojan horse. And at one point, instead of being a horse, they made it a lion. And the point was, it got so far away from the Trojan horse that people didn't understand it and it just felt like it didn't make any sense. Once you understand, oh, we're doing the Trojan horse. Ah, I got it.

Like it's very clever and fun. But if you don't quite make the connection, it just, it seems odd. Okay. That was number 19, uh, Form of the Dragon. Number 18, a Johnny's Pride mate from core 2011 this is I was designed by Matt place so a Johnny's pride mate so it's a creature that every time you gain life he gets plus one plus one counters so the way it came about is in core 20 2011 they decided they wanted to bring back the original five Lorwin

playing captures the Lorwin five and not just bring them back bring back the original five Lorwyn playing cards, the Lorwyn five, and not just bring them back, bring back exactly their Lorwyn cards with their Lorwyn art. And then to sort of play it up, they made a cycle of commons and a cycle of uncommons that represent those characters. All of them had the characters of the Planeswalker's name in it, and a lot of them had the Planeswalker on the card, not all of them, but a lot of them did in the art. So anyway, the uncommon for a Johnny was a Johnny's Pride mate. So when Matt was making the card, he looked at a Johnny,

the planeswalker, and he said, okay, what does a Johnny do? And Johnny's first ability was life gain. And the second ability was put in plus one plus one counters. A Johnny's always been, I mean, obviously he's my, I mean, he started as mono white, he's not sort of white green, but, and he always was about being protective and helping, you know, his abilities more help others than help himself.

It's kind of the theme of a Johnny. But anyway, Matt was like, I like life gain. I like counters, both of the cool things. Is there a way to interconnect them, to join them together? And then that's when he realized that he could do what we call input output is one of the abilities is the input one ability to the output. And obviously he could eat wherever you get a plus or counter game some life or whenever you gain some life, get a plus or plus one counter. He decided the second one was just a more a cooler thing. Like he knew we know from just watching magic, lifegain is very popular

with players, especially less experienced players, and plus and plus encounters is very popular with players. So you're taking two things we knew players really liked and put them together. And it ended up being like a really good package. It ended up being something that players really liked. In fact, on Arena, I'm not sure this is still true, but for a long time, it was the most, um, how would they call it, when people get the card, the most, um, I'm blanking on the word, but the most redeemed, the most redeemed card, the card that people wanted to get the most. Um, and it is something that we've, it's a well we've gone to. We've made a lot of creatures that have that ability. We've made enchantments that granted and auras.

And it's just really a go-to thing that we've used in a lot of different places. And one of the things that I mentioned in the talk is one of the signs that is very influential is when it's vocabulary for R and D. We talked about making a pride mate. Does this one be a pride mate? Like that is how impactful it is. That it's like like it's a tool in our tool belt, you know,

that we can make a pride mate. So the idea that when we use the name to represent the concept, that really means it's very impactful that it's both that we know players like it and that we know we should be making this is something that that you know is a good resource for us. a good resource for us. Okay, that was number 18. Number 17, Ganti Lord of luxury from Kaladesh. So Ian Duke was the designer of this card. Ian Duke co-led the development for Kaladesh. This is back in the design development phase. Sean Main and I co-designed it and then Ian along with Eric Lauer co-developed it. So what happened was is they had the characters. So often the way it works is the story is fleshed out early on. It's not written yet. They usually don't write the story until after the set is put to bed because they want to be able to reference things in the set and it's easier just for a lot of reasons is done later but we know the

characters that are going to be in the story the outline of the story is done the story isn't written yet but the outline is done so we know roughly who the characters are so they came to Ian and Eric and said okay here's the list of characters well one of the characters was Gandhi and Gandhi had his core he was an aetherborn. So obviously he had a legendary creature, Aetherborn. And he was kind of, he was a criminal. He was sort of a kingpin.

And they wanted, they liked the idea that he was stealing from others, you know, he stole from others. And so Ian was influenced by a card. Well, there was a card in Theros, and there also was a card in, Gild, not Gild Pact, Gate Crash, Gate Crash. And both of them stole stuff from your opponent and let you cast them. And he was very intrigued by this, the idea that like, I'm a thief and what am I

stealing from? I'm stealing from my opponent So the idea of Gandhi is when you attack and you deal damage You look at I think the top four cards your opponent's library And then you get a pick one and exile it and then you're able to cast that card and so and once again We refer to that now as the Gandhi effect effect. Stealing and casting cards from your opponent is what we call the Ganti effect. Ganti was super flavorful, people really liked the character.

And it's a well we go to. And so that one, the Ganti, the first Ganti steals from the library. We've learned there's a lot of places you can steal from. You can steal from their library, their hand, their battlefield, their graveyard, the stack. Pretty much any zone you can steal from. We don't steal from library a lot. Well, that's right, we do from top of library, like Ganti does.

So anyway, it's something, it's an effect that we've gone to a lot. As I said, we refer to it as the Ganti effect. So it definitely is something that, like one of the things that we have to be careful is it's fun to mess with your opponent, but you gotta be careful not to mess with them too much. And so it is definitely a fact that we have to be careful with. Cause for example, there's a card called Bribery

that you go into the opponent's library and just take their best creature. And what we learned there is the idea of I can go get whatever I want and I take the best thing is very punishing. That's why this is like top of library. You get to take something, but you don't have total control of what you take. And that's kind of important that it's not that you're just absolutely taking the absolute best thing.

You don't want to punish them for like, you know, how dare you play this thing. But it's something where you sort of have some some unpredictability what you're getting with support anyway guys that is number 17 gatti number 16 ball lightning from the dark so ball lightning was the creation of yesper mereforce so yes for mereforce those of might be unaware of the name he was magic's first art director um He worked with Chris Rush, who did a lot of graphic design. They made the Magic card back, the Magic logo, the frames, the mana symbols. And Jesper was one of the, not only was he an art director, the first art director,

he also was an artist. So he did Word of Command, he did Bad Moon. He did a bunch of cards in Alpha, so he's also an artist. And in fact, he was the lead designer of The Dark, and I believe that's the only time that an art director has been the lead designer of a set. His idea behind The Dark was he was very into mood and tone. And the idea is, oh, there's five cards of magic,

but each color has a dark side. Let's tap into the dark side of each color, that was the idea is, oh, there's five colors of magic, but each color has a dark side. Let's tap into the dark side of each color. That was the idea. That is why it's the dark. It's the dark side of each color. But anyway, so one of the ideas that he was very enamored by is, when magic began, there were direct damage spells. You know, Alpha had Fireball and Lightning Bolt and Disintegrate. And there were creatures, you know, Shivan dragon and hill giant and such And he noticed that there were occasionally creatures like orcish or a flam or something or or or his artillery. Sorry There were creatures that get tapped through direct damage, but he was intrigued by

Was there really a creature that was direct damage not something that was that could sort of do direct damage But itself was direct damage. He was that was, that could sort of do direct damage, but itself was direct damage. He was intrigued by that idea. So when he came up with this, imagine I have a creature that at the end of the turn, I sack it, meaning it's a creature for only one turn. So it's like direct damage in that it does one amount of damage, but it's a creature and has to interact with creature things. So he said, okay, first off, I gotta give it haste

because it has to attack the turn I play it. I gotta give it trample because I want to, I want it to get through for damage. And he made it a six one. The idea was it doesn't need much toughness it's gonna die anyway. And you want high power because it's got trample. And like the idea is you wanna get through

for as much as you can. And if they block with a creature, the cool thing about, about ball lightning is it'll destroy the creature, you know? So the idea is my opponent has to figure out how much damage they want to take and sort of what do they want to throw in the way. And 6-1 and also he made a cause red, red, red. So it's pretty aggressive.

It comes up pretty early. You know, it's not, once again, it's a cross between the creature and direct damage. It doesn't last. It doesn't stick around. And so there's interesting balance there. But the idea is it still acts like creature and has to do damage the way a creature would do damage. Um, anyway, ball lightning was definitely definitional in sort of what it was with R and D refers to making ball lightnings. Um,

in the slideshow, I literally went through every ball lightning we'd ever made. There's a whole bunch of them. Um, I mean, and once again, we've played around the variants. There's ball lightnings that you can do something and keep it around. There's ones that you can change the size. I mean, there's a lot of different things you can do. But anyway, it definitely is a staple of something we do to this day.

And the other interesting thing from a sort of historical standpoint is, so Haste shows up in alpha On nether shadow and instill energy haste as a keyword doesn't exist till sixth edition But it's written out so that the nether shadow when it comes out of the graveyard can attack and still energy sort of grants your creature haste Then in legends there was concordant crossroads that grants all your creatures haste.

But it's not till the ball lightning, which is the dark right after legend, in which there's a creature that just has haste, meaning I want to play with it and attack at the turn I attack. And it's the first time it shows up in red. And we've made over 400 minor red hastee creatures it's a key identity of red now but ball lighting was the first time it happened the first like monorad creature with haste doesn't happen until ball lighting so that is why ball lightning is number 16

number 15 fact or fiction this is invasion remember I talked earlier about how in the third age of mad design we started doing blocks that had themes. So invasion was multicolor. Odyssey was graveyard, onslaught was typal, you know, mirrored in with artifacts. Chips Kamigawa was top-down. But anyway, Invasion was monocolor. And in Invasion, so the three designers for Invasion were myself, Bill Rose, and Mike Elliott. And the three of us came up with a mechanic that we didn't name. It was an unnamed mechanic called Divi. There were six cards in Invasion.

And the way Divi worked is somebody was forced to, out of some zone, some number of cards, make two piles. And then the other player had to choose the two piles and then something happened with them. Now, to continue the story, let's go back a little bit in time. So a few years earlier, Urza's Saga block, here come on, Urza's Saga.

And for those who don't know your history it went badly. It's probably the most broken block we've ever released. I mean Alpha also is very powerful but I don't I don't cut that against Alpha was the first you know it's very hard to have your power level correct when you've never made anything before. But anyway Urza Saga was quite broken so much so that for the only time this year in October marks my 30 years working on magic in my 30 years is the only time this happened The the president of the time was Peter accidents one of the founders of Wizards and he was the first CEO He called us in his office and he chewed us out and he said if you ever make a set is broken as Urza Saga I'm firing all of you

And by the way, the next set that came out was Mercadion masks the next block And by the way, the next set that came out was Mercadion masks, the next block. So anyway, we had a big discussion afterwards. And I remember Bill was saying, okay, we need to find people that are better at sort of breaking things. And I said, well, I have an idea for you. So at the time, I was working on the Pro Tour. First eight years of Pro Tour, I was a regular on the Pro Tour. I used to run the feature matches and I would run commentary on the final day

And I did a lot of like I helped a lot with the production on the final day Also, one of my jobs was I was the liaison with the players Meaning if there was a delicate situation that someone had to talk with the players about it got to be me I was the one that did that but what it meant was I got to know the players really well And so I said to people I think there's players off the Pro Tour that would be very good at being developers. They're very good at sort of cracking things. And so one of the early people that I recommended was Randy Bueller.

Randy had won the very first Pro Tour Chicago. And it was a clearly really smart player. I'd spent a lot of time talking with Randy. And the funny story about Randy is it took a while to actually get Randy. I think he got, I got his resume into something and then somehow it got in the in the discard pile and I had to go no no no really Bill you gotta look at his resume and I set up a lunch so that Bill and Randy could have lunch together. It went well we hired

Randy. So Randy's first big thing was he was the lead developer of Invasion from the deep end. And I remember when he was looking at the Divvy cards, one of them really stood out, which was Factor Fiction. And the thing he really liked about Factor Fiction was that it was this very spiky card and that the better a player you were, the better the card was

that the card became stronger in the hands of a stronger player. And Randy said that we need more stuff like that. It's really fun to have something that's sort of a skill like the power has some skill testing to it. So originally, I think the card cost five mana four and a blue and he dropped it to three and a blue. He's like, I want to be aggressive with this card I think this is very fun magic and Randy was correct it is very fun magic and so that's what fiction came out is really

popular and just the whole idea of dividing and then you get to pick the pile and you get the cards sort of directly I mean there's a lot of fun to the diddy but specifically sort of the factor fiction Divi dividing two cards and I'm going to draw the one pile. And we've messed around with it, whether they're both open or one secret and one's not. I mean, there's, we've tried a lot of variants of it, but it's something we've done on spells, on creatures. We particularly like it on Sphinx's. It's just something we use in a lot of places and just really hammering home like what makes a good spike card and the idea that a card that like

Rewards skill that the power level of the card reward skill is something we've definitely taken with us Okay, I've normally I would be at work because I'm a hitting my 30-minute mark here, but I'm not a work of traffic today So I get to do one more I'm not a rofler of traffic today. So I get to do one more Mishra's factory from antiquity. So this was created by Dave Petty or David Petty one of the East Coast play tefters I talked to them all the time. They're the people that made Antiquities and Ice Age and alliances and fawn empires A very very they were on the original plate afters a really a really good design team So they were making antiquities which was the second ever matching expansion. So let's talk land

So when Richard Garfield made alpha he made 15 lands there were five basic lands and ten dual lands So in alpha all lands did is they tap for mana? That's all they did. There's nothing else they did They just tap for mana. So in Arabian nightsights, which Richard also made, he started messing around a little bit with like, what if lands did other things? So all the lands in Arabian Nights did something beyond mana. Half of them produce mana, half of them don't produce mana. We later decided that we really like one of the rules that we have a land now is they either have to produce mana or go get you lands that will produce mana So they like we really want land and mana connected together thematic. We think that's important

We make rare exceptions to that but that that's a pretty important rule and then So he introduced the idea of lands could do other things so we come to antiquities. So there's six lands and antiquities. There's the Erzatron and Mishra's workshop. So those four, mostly what they do is just they provide more mana, right? The Erzatron provides extra mana. It lands a tap for more than one. All of them actually tap for more than one under the right conditions. The Erzatron got to turn on. But Mishra's workshop, and Mishra's workshop, urge of trying to get it turned on. But Misha's Workshop, and Misha's Workshop, you only get to use it for artifacts,

but it's an artifact themed set. Then they made Strip Mine, which I don't know what they were thinking. I'm not sure why. Stone Rain, you know the problem with Stone Rain? It cost mana, that was the problem with Stone Rain. Anyway, Strip Mine, not an accident. Or not that, anyway, we should've made Strip Mine.

The final car was Mishra's Factory. So David's inspiration for Mishra's Factory is a card in Alpha called Jade Statue. So Jade Statue is an artifact that you can spend man to turn it into a creature. So David was very enamored by the idea of something that isn't always a creature, but that could become a creature.

And he said, wouldn't that be cool on the land? Like wouldn't that be neat for a land that could do that? And he also came up with the idea that the land could help itself, so like, if you had two Mishra's factories, one of them you can animate, the other one could pump the first one. And that dynamic was super fun.

Anyway, Mishra's factory was such a staple card. There was a period in time where people really didn't play creatures, but everybody played Mishra's Factory was such a staple card. There's a period in time where people really didn't play creatures, but everybody played Mishra's Factory. Mishra's Factory didn't die to a wrath of God, but it still could attack. So the idea of creature lands, the very first set I did was Tempest. I put in a card called Stalking Stones. The difference I did there was it permanently became a creature, rather than you have to keep activating it. But the idea of creature, of lands that become creatures

is just a time tested staple. I mean, once again, one of the fun, I mean, I can't do this on the podcast. In the slideshow, I would just run through it. I'd quickly run through all the examples of all the different creature lands we've done over the end. There's a lot. It's a lot of slides. Yet my talk, usually the way I build in keynote and I like having a lot of visuals just so the screen's constantly moving and you're seeing as I'm talking about things. And the more time I have to practice, the more slides I get. So my GDC talk back in 2016, which I spent a lot, a lot of time on, had like a thousand slides.

This one, which I spent about a month on, had 850 slides. But a lot of that was me just clicking through, like look at all the different things that have done whatever it is we were talking about. So anyway, Mishra's Factory definitely sort of gave us a resource. It really sort of, it was, I think it was the most popular of the early, I do something other than just mana lands. Not some, I mean, obviously the Library of Alexander, there were other ones that definitely saw some play. But I think Misha's Factory was, it really sort of the idea also of,

I have my land for mana, but that I also have, I also have other things that I can do with it and then maybe I have one that's colorless and it has such utility that I in fact will play it and anyway Misha's Factory was very informative and it did a lot of stuff and so that is why Misha's Factory is number 14. Okay guys I'm now at work and I got through a third of the list so that's a good time. So anyway obviously I will be doing two more of these to finish up the whole thing so anyway I hope you're enjoying it but as I'm now at work we all know what that means means the end of my

drive to work. So instead of talking magic it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you all next time bye bye