Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1268: Nemesis

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

This is another podcast in my ongoing quest to record a podcast about every expansion. This podcast is all about Nemesis, the second set in the Mercadian Masques block.

I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for their drive to work. Okay, so today, I am talking all about the set Nemesis. So one of my goals with this podcast is to have a podcast on every magic expansion. And I've covered a lot of them, but I've not covered all of them. I recently did a podcast on Mercadian masks. So it only appropriate to do the second set in the Riccateus mask blocks, which is Nemesis.

Okay, so a little, start with some factoids, code name Euripides. It's 143 cards, 55 common, 44 uncommon, 44 rare. I'm sorry, 53 commons, 44 in commons, 44 rare. So, this is before we had Mythic Rare, so there's no Mythic Rare on these. And, oh, I think 55 is correct. So, anyway, it's 143 total. The expansion symbol is the axe of Krovax. Krovax plays a major role in this set, which we will get into in a second.

And so his axe is the symbol. So the set was designed. The design team was led by Mike Elliott, included Bill Rose and myself. And the development team was led by Mike. So Mike led both the design and the development. and Charlie Cotino, Paul Peterson, and Tawin Woodruff were the development team. Which says to me, by the way, looking at this, is I believe we're at a point in time we're getting very tight on R&D because Charlie and Paul and Tainwin, none of which were full-time

magic people. They all occasionally worked on magic. But the core magic team was Mike Elliott, Bill Rose, William Jockish, Henry Stern, and myself. And what's going on in this time period, like, I think I'm working on unglued and Henry's working on, I think, Portal Three Kingdoms. We just get really, really overloaded with things. And so the fact that this development team is made up of people that were sort of who did lots of different things, but you know, did some work on magic. It's telling me that we were

a bit overloaded. The art director for the set, or art directors, were Dana Knudson and Ron Spears. So the set came out February 14th, 2000. So it came out on Valentine's Day. I don't know how many magic sets came out on Valentine's Day. This one did. Okay, so the basic story is when last we left in Exodus, the Weatherlight managed to get away. Krovax kills Miri and leaves,

but the ship gets away. And so Volrath, unbeknownst to most of the people, on Wrath, hides away aboard the ship. We learned that. In Mercadian Masks, we learned that. Because Stark gets killed, it turns out. It was done by Vowrath pretending to be Takara, which is Stark's daughter.

So Stark is killed by his own daughter, although it's not really his daughter. It's Vowrath. And so Nemesis, so the one thing about Mercadian Mask BlackFet was quirky is Mercadian Mask takes place on Mercadia. Nemesis takes place on wrath and prophecy takes place

I believe on Dominaria so there's like it's a block which the whole block doesn't take place in the same world not a lot of blocks do that and sort of jumping around this is the continuation

of the wrath story and mostly what the story is about is who is going to take who Volerath was what was called the Evancar who is going to become the new Evancar

and the two people were fighting for it is Erte who stayed behind because he had opened the portal to get the weather light out, ends up getting corrupted. And there's a fight between Ertai and Volrath, not Volrath, and Krovax, for who becomes the new Evincar. Being that it's Krovax's axe as the expansion symbol, Krovax does win that. So Krovax becomes a new Evancar. So the interesting thing real behind the scenes here, since why not? It's a behind-the-scenes podcast. When Michael Ryan and I wrote the Weatherlight Saga

originally, Krovax was meant to be a member of the team. We made him a nobleman. We didn't make him a vampire at first because we thought that, we thought the crew just wouldn't welcome a vampire in. And the idea, original plan was during the Stronghold story, but what actually did happen happened in our version story, he ends up fighting Selenia, who is an angel that was part of this curse that, it's a long story. But anyway, by killing Selenia, it completes the curse, and that's what dooms him to vampirism.

But in our version of the story, the crew doesn't reject him, he doesn't leave, he stays with it. And because he's already part of the crew, the crew sort of accepts him. And we wanted to have characters on the crew that were all the magic colors. And so he was our black colored, you know, character. Like, Miri was green, anyway. And then Mary got killed, and Krovax left, and Ertai. got abandoned so crew became very red and white for a while um but anyway uh so in the set well we'll get to correct in a second um as far as let's talk mechanics um so back in the day when we

used to do a large set um traditionally what we did in the early days is we take two mechanics mirage had flanking and phasing tempest had uh buyback and echo not echo buyback and shadow um erza saga had Cycling and Echo. We would just have two mechanics. They'd be named mechanics. They'd be introduced in the first set, and they would run through all three sets. But that's it.

The only new mechanics that we introduced were the two mechanics in a large set. So we had definitely had sets that had mechanics... We had definitely introduced mechanics in small sets, but we never named them. They always sort of went unnamed. This is the first time that I can remember where a mechanic in the small set

got a name, which is ironic, by the way, since as for those that listen to my Mercadian Mask podcast, know that one of the problems we have in McCainian Mask is we didn't name the mechanics in Mercantian Mask. And a lot of players were like, why aren't their new mechanics? But there was a named new mechanic in Nemesis. Fading. So the way fading works is fading went on permanence. A permanent with fading would be fading in a number. And what that meant is you entered with that many fade counters. And then each upkeep, you would remove a fade count. counter, and then when you were unable to remove a fade counter, it would go away. So let's say I had a creature that had fading four.

I would play at turn one. It gets four fading counters. Can't attack because some had sickness. Turn two, you would remove a counter, and then you would do that for four more turns. And then at the end of the, so you remove the fourth counter of the third, the second, the first. And then, on the turn that you went to remove a counter of which there was no counters, it would go away. The reason we did it that way at the time was, if you put fading on creatures, it told you how many times you could attack with the creature. So a fading for a creature meant, you know, I can't attack the first turn because I have so many seconds.

But then I can attack the second, third, fourth, and fifth turn because I'm removing the fourth, third, second, and first counter. Then on the fifth turn, I'm going to remove a counter and there's no counters that goes away. away. So the thought process was, okay, fading sort of tells you how many uses you get out of it. The problem is that people really thought when you took off the last counter, that's when it went away, which wasn't actually the answer. So later in time spiral block, I talked about this, we would make a mechanic called vanishing. And vanishing was exactly fading, except it went away when the last counter got removed. It worked the way you thought it worked. And that was just I understand how we ended up where we ended up,

but it just was non-intuitive. It's a good example how when you ever make a mechanic, you have to sort of understand what players will think it does, and that it doesn't matter what it actually does. If everybody sort of intuitively gets it wrong, then that's kind of on you, the designer.

And that's why you play test things that, you know, I wish we had caught that earlier, but we didn't. But anyway, so fading was the one new mechanic. The set did bring back all the, all the unnamed mechanics from Mercating Mass. There were rebels in it. In fact, the most famous rebel, we'll get to when I talked through the cards.

There were mercenaries. I believe they're mercenaries. I'm pretty sure they're mercenaries. There was spell shapers. So real quickly, rebels were the creature where you could spend some manna to go get a creature, usually one bigger than it. Mercenaries were creatures that you can spend mana

to go get a creature smaller than it from the library. Spell shapers were creatures that had a manna activation and included discarding a card within a generated effect. The way I like to think of spell shapers is they turn a card in your hand into a spell. It's not technically what they do, but it's how it feels. And then we had a lot of alternate casting costs. It's a theme we played around with Mercadian masks.

The idea that spells that I could play for free if other costs were met. And as we'll talk about it in a second when we get to the cards, we definitely played around with a bunch of different. and things. Anyway, Nemesis, Nemesis has some very powerful cards as they'll get to, so their nemesis, I think, definitely was thought of as

as impact, like, Mercadian Mass was thought of as being kind of weak. It wasn't, I mean, there were powerful cards McKinian Mass as evidenced by the fact that we put things like Dark Ritchell in it, but it was weaker significantly than Earth's a saga. So it's, but Nemesis, I think, was a bit stronger overall than the Mercantius. In fact, I think Nemesis was the strongest of the, in the sets in the Mercantian Mass block.

I think Nemesis was the strongest power level-wise. Okay, so now we're going to dive in and talk about some of the famous cards from the set. And I will share some stories. So we're going to start with Ascendant Evancar. So Ascended Evincar is Crovax. Crowbacks becomes the Evincar. So I believe this is the first time that we made a legendary creature that, you know, is the same character as a previous legendary.

We made Krovax as a card. And so we were doing a second Krovax. We specifically did not call him Krovax in the name because the way, so the legendary rule, Legends was first introduced in the set Legends, legendary creatures. Well, the legendary, sorry. In legends, it introduced creatures that were creature-type legend

and then non-creatures that were legendary, were super legendary lands and such. We would later turn creatures We would make it legendary across the board So the way Legendary Creatures worked when they were introduced was you could only have one in your deck They were restricted in your deck

That's how you kept from having more than one in play You couldn't have more than one And there also was a rule that If you played one and there was another one in play Then the one in play would go away Or sorry, originally The way it worked was If you had one in play, let's say you would bob

and you had Bob in play. Or I don't know what Bob's where. Bob's a play the blocker. If you had a legendary creature named Joanne in play, if your opponent had Joanne in their hand, they could not cast Joanne. The fact that Joanne was in play locked in the other version of Joanne from being played.

And so we then changed the rules to say that if you play Joanne, and there was a Joanne in play. You, the person who played the second Joanne, decided which Joanne got to stay. So if your opponent had Joanne, you would get rid of your opponent, Joanne. But if you had two Joanne,

you could figure out which one you want for whatever reason. That rule would then change where each player was allowed to have a copy of Joanne in play. And then you would decide between your own creatures you played a second Joanne. But you could play a second one, just one of them would go away. Anyway, all this was

probably the time we made the set, it was probably still the original Legends rule. But anyway, we technically the way the rules worked that the other card of Krovax didn't go away, but we thought that might not be obvious. So he didn't name him Krovax. He clearly is Krovax, although it's a pumped-up Krovax. But anyway, so Ascendant Evancar,

four Black Black, he has flying. He's a legendary creature vampire. He has flying. He's a 3-3. Other black creatures get plus 1 plus 1. Other non-black creatures get minus 1, minus 1. So a couple of things here. One is note that this affects all black creatures and all non-black creatures,

not just yours and your opponents. This is during the time early magic we tended to make global effects to affect everybody. For example, in Alpha, Goblin King gave all Goblins plus 1 plus 1. Not just your goblins, he affected any goblins. and then eventually what we learned over time was it really sort of fought the players were like well why would my cards help my opponent's cards and it just made a lot of tracking

so we ended up changing things so now if my card hasn't effect it boosts my creatures or if it has a negative effect it tends to put the negative effects on the opponent's creatures the interesting thing about this card is I made this card and we were trying to capture the sense of he leads the

He leads the forces of wrath, but he fights against the, like, El-Odomri was the leader of the elves. And in the story, he gassed together the elves, and they're trying to stop this. They're not very successful. But I like the idea that as the Avonkar, he helped, and most of Volweth forces were black. So he helped his own forces and hurt the other forces. Interesting, Ascendant Evincar was my inspiration when I made the original praetors. So when we made the praetors in new phrexia, the idea that I have two abilities,

one ability that helps me and one ability that's negative that hurts you was inspired. As Senator Evacar was my inspiration for the praetor. So this is, on some level, the earliest praetor. And the first creature that, you know, the first second version of a creature. Okay, next up.

Root Water Thief. Okay, so to tell the story of Root Water Thief, so I started the Magic Invitational as a way, and I've done podcasts on this. This is my short version story. If you went a long version, I had podcasts on Magic Invitational. Basically, we were looking for an event

for promotional purposes. We had a small budget. I came up the idea of doing the All-Star game. It was originally going to be held, I think, in San Diego on Coronado. and they ended up becoming a vacancy in Hong Kong. The first Grand Prix ever was going to be in Hong Kong. It fell through. So they asked if we could run our event there

because it was like a high profile event. We said yes. So what happens is that event is won by Ulurade. So because I have a very, I have a budget. I don't have a, you know, I have to meet the budget. I needed to have a cool prize. And the cool prize ended up being the winner got to make a card.

I convinced R&D to let this happen and the way it worked is they turned into card before the thing began and then I would work with them to get the card into shape I mean the card had to go through design development and everything but I would work with him

trying to get the card in shape Ula turned into a card called World of Bums which was an Enchant World that didn't do anything Enchant Worlds had gone away since then anyway I kept asking Ula for another card he never got me one so Ula at least for the first year

there was no prize made then on the second which was in Rio Darwin Castle wins and as soon as he wins he gives me his card he's all excited I guess in the early days you gave him the card after he won eventually we would have everybody turned the card in before so we could show off what the cards were

so the audience can see them but I think that's when we started being online but anyway Darwin wins he's so excited when he wins he has a card and it ends up being a card be called avalanche rider um so when i made avalanche rider it was for urs's legacy i believe it just

so happened due to circumstances i did the art descriptions for um urs's legacy so i asked my art director at the time if i could reference darwin castle in the card could darwin castle be the avalance rider and they're like sure just got to give a picture for us to send the artist so we did once that happened once you do something like that once it just became a thing, the expectation that the player would be on the card, which would be important in a second. So anyway, the third invitational,

which is what matters for this card, for Water Thief, is in Barcelona. In fact, Laura and I, one of the, Laura showed up in Rio right after the event end. We went on a tour of Rio. That's where I asked Laura to marry me.

So we were engaged. I don't think we were married yet. I think we were engaged when Barcelona happened. But anyway, Laura came with me to Barcelona. And then in Barcelona, the winner of Barcelona was Mike Long. Controversial figure, Mike Long. Mike, by the way,

well, while there's lots of things to say negatively about Mike, I will say Mike was a very, very good player. He was an amazing deck builder, and he technically was a very strong player. Anyway, Mike Long wins the third imitational. And Mike has a card he wants. He wants... So here's the card he makes.

Rue Water Thief, one in a blue, for a blue activation against flying to underturn. It's a Murfolk. It's a 1-1-Murfoke. And then... I think it's a 1-1-Murfoke. I'd write that down. I believe it's the 1-1-Mor-Foke. And then if Root-Water Thief

deals combat damage to a player, you could go through their library, take a card out of their library, in exile, then shuffled the library. So it was kind of like, what was it? There was a card in, what was the card?

There was a card in, um, Ice Age that let you go, like, take cards out of the sideboard. Um, anyway, um, it was,

it was a very, uh, it was a powerful card. It saw some play. Uh, The interesting thing is it's very good against combo decks because you can go

and the other thing that I think Mike liked about it is it really was a skill testing card meaning you had to know what to take out of the you had to be able to look at the deck very quickly

understand what the deck was trying to do understand what mattered most of the deck and go after the thing that mattered most and so it was a very skill testing card the interesting thing about the card was Mike wanted to be a murfoke

I'm sorry Mike wanted the card to be a murfoke but we were on wrath, and the Murphoke on wrath do not look human. And so what we ended up deciding was that Mike ended up being not the Murfolk, but the victim of the Murfolk. There's a guy rowing a rowboat and about to become a victim of the Rootwater Thief. And the person in the rowboat was Mike Long. So if you never know who's in the robot, that's Mike Long.

Next up is Tanglewire, which is an artifact. that costs three generic mana. It has fading four. And the way it works is at the beginning of each player's upkeep, they have to tap a number of artifacts, creatures, or lands equal to the number of fade counters on the card. So the first turn, they have to tap, you know, your opponent taps four things, so they go first, because they're the first one that has an upkeep. And then, I kind of remember whether you tap four before you remove the counter. But anyway, it sort of locks down things and laxon is less things as time goes on. It's kind of annoying card.

It's powerful, but annoying. Next is sapling burst. So sapling burst was four in a green for... It's an enchantment. It had fade... I think fading six. Fading six or fading seven? Fading seven.

It had fading seven. And what you did is you could remove a counter from it to make a creature. And the creature, it was XX, or X was the number of fading counters on the creature. So the idea was, I could remove a counter to make a certain number of creatures, but the more counters I take off, meaning the more creatures I make,

the quicker, they shrink faster and go away faster. Once you take off the last counter, well, essentially when there's zero counters, they become zero to zero creatures. It also makes them go away when it goes away, although the zero-ness of it probably kills them anyway. Yeah, that card was, that was an interesting card. One of the things about fading that was really interesting was that you had this dynamic where the fading number of counters would change and you had cards that cared about that. And so there was a lot of neat designs with fading.

Like sapling burst being a really good example, which is, okay, I can make a 6-6, although the 6-6 will be a 5-5 before I can attack with it. Or I can make two 5-5s that would both become 4s before I can attack with them. And so it really had some interest of, like, what do I want to do? And the more creatures I make, the fact that the creatures go away. But there was some strategy sometimes where you would have sack effects where I would take a whole bunch of counters off, make a whole bunch of small creatures so I could sack them, for example. But anyway, next up, parallax wave.

You can tell fading was definitely a... While fading had some non-intuitiveness, it was very powerful. We made a lot of powerful effects. Okay, parallax wave. Two white-white for an enchantment. So four mana, two, which is white. Fade five. And the way it worked is you can remove a counter to exile a, I think it was a permanent or a creature.

What do you exile? You exile, you exile a creature. You exile a creature until it went away. So the idea was, I remove a counter, I exile a creature. Well, that creature's gone for four turns. But if I exile a second creature, well, those two creatures are gone for three turns. Or I could exile three creatures for two turns. So the more things I exile, the less time it's gone.

So again, like I said, I think there was some fun dynamics there. The biggest problem with fading slash fading slash vanishing is a lot of people saw it as a downside mechanic. I get a powerful thing. Now given we gave you more they normally got, but you got it for less time. I do think from a design standpoint, there's a lot of cool things you can do with it. Okay, next up, blinding angel. So blinding angel costs three white-white, so five man a total, two inches white. It's a two-four flying angel.

Whenever it deals combat damage to an opponent, they lose their next combat phase. So the idea is if I could get through with blinding angel, I can keep you from being able to attack. Again, maybe the theme of this set is powerful but not particularly fun cards. That's not a particularly fun card. Okay, next up, Massacre. Okay, so we talked about how there were some alternate casting cost of. So Massacre costs two black blacks to sorcery. All creatures get minus two, minus two.

Eh, not so exciting. But if you have a swamp and your opponent has a planes, this is free. And so the idea was it was a color hoser, and the reason it was a color hoser is it's only free if your opponent is playing that color, defined by them having that basic land. type. I understand that these days you can not have the basic land type. And then a similar card was submerged four in a blue instant. That allowed you to put a creature on top of its owner's library. And if you had an island and your opponent had a forest, it was free. These

ended up being very powerful. Once again, they're more sideboard cards because your opponent needs to be playing the correct colors. But when your opponent is playing the correct colors, they're very, very powerful. The ability to do this, they're very powerful. The ability to do this, they're more sideboard cards. things for free. Like once again, you're saving on Massacre four mana and on submerged five mana. So that's a lot. You know, there's a big, big difference between I can do this for four or five or I can do this for free. So anyway, as is the case. And one of the reasons we don't do a lot of alternate casting cost stuff is it's just really hard to balance. Getting to do things for free, even if we cost you things, it's just very strong. Okay, next up, Blastoderm. So,

Blasterderm was a two green-green-green five-five beasts. It had Shroud. Shroud's the precursor to hex-proof, meaning that nobody can target it. Shroud came out originally in FutureSight. Not that right, not in future site. Shroud came about in... Oh, sorry.

Shroud did come up on a future site. It was written out at the time. It wasn't... I must have been looking at the Oracle text. It didn't actually have Shroud the text. It had the written-out version of Shrude. Sharad did not exist until a future site. But anyway, the idea that nothing could target this.

So I had a 5-5, you couldn't target it. And I only had it for three turns. I could attack for three turns. But at the time, four-manor-four-five was at the time considered pretty aggressive. We've come very far on our creatures. We've really pushed creatures. Early magic kind of misunderstood how aggressive creatures could be. But at the end of time, four-man-a-five, even though.

you only got for three turns was considered worth to. In fact, um, the card saw a decent amount of play. Next, accumulated knowledge. So accumulated knowledge was, so in, uh, original tempest, uh, I made a card called Kindle. Uh, so the idea of Kindle was, I was trying to make a, uh, sort of a, a direct damage spell that was like a plague rat. In fact, I think I called it plague, plague bolt originally. And the idea I wanted was it was a direct damage spell that cared about you having other direct damage spell, the same spell.

So the way Kindle worked, it costs one in a red, and then it did two damage, plus it did an additional one damage for every Kindle cart in your graveyard. And so the idea is it did two, then three, then four, then five. You can only have four in your deck. So anyway, I really liked Kindle. So this was me

trying another Kindle. So ancestral accumulated knowledge costs one in a blue. You got to draw a card, but you got to draw a card for each accumulated knowledge. So it's one in a blue. You draw a card, then you draw a card, then you draw, is that right, accumulating knowledge? Yeah, you draw a card, then you draw two cards, then you draw three cards, then you draw four cards. And so, accumulating a knowledge ended up being very powerful. I mean, doing direct damage, you know, getting one more power on your direct damage spells, okay, not bad, but getting to draw extra cards is super powerful.

So, accumulating knowledge became, I mean, a staple. It's still played today. It's just super powerful. If you can play, I mean, I guess, I guess it's not big in a commander. You kind of want to have four of them, having only one of them, not so amazing. But it was a really powerful card, and it allowed us to, anyway, I would make more, I would, make more Kindle spells and Odyssey, the Odyssey set that would come

years later, I would do a bunch more. Okay, the final card of today, because I'm at work and almost out of time, is Lynn Civi Defiant Hero. One W-W, so one white, white, three-man and two white, one-three, it's a legendary creature that's a rebel legend.

Well, it was a rebel. At the time, instead of being a legendary creature, it was a legend, so it was a rebel legend. So it had X and Tap You could search your library for a rebel With a manna value of X And put it into your hand Oh no, put it on the battlefield, sorry

Put it on the battle, that's what rebels did And then for three mana You could take a rebel that's in your graveyard And put it on the bottom of your library Meaning if something died It allowed you to get it back So Lynn City could go get it again Lynn City was quite powerful

In fact, Lynn Civy, and there's a card called Days were the two cards that were banned from the set. Days, by the way, it's an instant that counters target spell unless an opponent pays one. But it was free if you bounced an island, which is not that hard to do in a blue day. So Days in Lynn Civi both ended up getting banned. In fact, like I talked about this to remember,

Arcadian Mask podcast. But when we did, we did a pro tour that was Mercadian Mass Block. And most, there's only two viable decks, but one of which was the rebel deck in which Lin City was key. Getting you to Lin City out was really, if you can get your Lincivi out, that, the match sort of hinged upon Lin City. And once again, this is back in the day of the legend rule where you could lock people out. So if you were playing a mirror match in which you got Lin-Civie, and your opponent couldn't get Lin-Civie because you had Lin-Civie out. That was quite powerful.

So the general sense of Nemesis is Mercadian mass block, the whole block was kind of an eh. I think invasion had been much more exciting for people. But Nemesis had a lot of powerful cards as evidenced by my walking through the card. So, I mean, there are people that like that, you know, I think fading, people like fading in that there were some very, very powerful fading cards.

I don't think it was super intuitive. of, I think they were a bit on the spiky side, but we have a lot of spikes to play the game. So from a tournament level, the set was actually well received just because there were a lot of powerful cards. The story was a little... I mean, the set really bounces around

doing a bunch of things. But anyway, that, my friends, is Nemesis. So I will, of course, have a podcast on Prophecy, which is the third set in the block. But anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed my talk about Nemesis, but I'm now at work.

So I don't know what that means that means instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.