Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1270: Prophecy

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

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

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time with their drive to work. Okay, so I have been doing, I have a sort of an ongoing series where I'm trying to talk about every magic set ever made. And recently I've talked about Mercadian masks and Nemesis. So obviously I need to finish up with the last set in the Mercadian mask block, Prophecy. So let me first... So I'm often asked, what is the worst magic set of all time, design-wise? And normally the answer I give is Homelands. But Homelands, like was done by an outside group that had no previous experience.

So while Homelands is my pick for the worst, prophecy is the worst one that, like, we did internally. Like, of all the sets we did internally, I think prophecy is our worst. And so today, I'm going to tell the story of how prophecy came to be and why I consider prophecy to be the worst internally designed magic set. Okay, so the story of prophecy requires some setup. I need to explain sort of what was going on in R&D at the time. Okay, so prophecy comes up. out, I think, in early 2000.

So, right before invasion. Okay, so here's what's going on. Richard Garfield invents Magic, and he has a bunch of his playtefters start to make some of the early sets. Ice Age, Mirage, you know, and those same groups did fallen empires, did antiquities, you know, did alliances, did a lot of the early sets. stuff, visions, and such. So, Richard decides that, you know, he's going to go on to make other trading card games.

He's going to make Net Runner and the Vampire of the Eternal Struggle and Battle Attack. Anyway, there's lots of other games that Richards is going to go and make. So Richard's moving off of magic. And a lot of the other people at the time, Schaffilius, Jim Lynn, De Petty, a lot of the East Coast Playtethers that came out, worked at Wizards. Skeff became the brand manager for Magic. And Dave left, and Jim started getting more responsibility running R&D. And so, like, they were sort of, basically what happened was the people that were in

charge of magic were moving on to do other things. So they hired a new wave of designers, a new wave of R&D to sort of be in charge of magic. And they hired four people. So they hired me. They hired Bill Rose. They hired Mike Elliott and they hired William Jockish. And there was a year or two there where, like, probably from when we got hired 95 to about 2000, the four of us were doing most of the development.

We did eventually hire Henry Stern. So Henry's added to this group during this time. But it's not really till invasion. Invasion is where after the, after the Urza saga, we decided to start hiring people off the proctor. That's when we hire Randy Bueller and Mike Donay and Mike Turney and Matt Place and sort of the, we start getting a little more, what I would say, professional development. But during that five-year stretch, it was the five of us that were doing a lot of things.

Now, early on when they hired us, we weren't even hired as designers because there were a bunch of sets in the queue. Like one of the first sets we worked on First set I worked on was alliances Then was Mirage Then was visions All that had been done already And it's not till weather light We're like oh

Maybe we need to start making sets In fact we started on Tempice Before we started on Weatherlight Because Tempins was a large set And for those that know my story I pitch them to let me do tempest Because Richard said he'd work on it Anyway they let me do Tempice

But Weatherlight Tempest That era is the start of Wizards starting to make or like R&D internally making its own designs before that it was all done externally but while we were starting to do designs we didn't really go that much up in people and so there was a period in time there

where we were very stretched for example I did both unglued and Erza's destiny by myself I was the design team I mean I had people submitting designs to me but I mean both cases essentially I was doing the vast majority of the work Bill did Portal by himself, Henry would later do Portal Three Kingdoms by himself, that there was a lot of, we were just stretched then.

And what had happened was, so I, Mike and I really want, when we were hired, Mike and I and I and Bill to some extent, were all like, we're designers. And as time went on, we got more opportunity to do design. And the three, Mike, me, and Bill did a lot of design. but there were a lot of sets and so Prophecy William Jokish had said he would want

because he saw like everybody around him was leading sets right was doing design and so he saw me and Mike and Bill all doing design

and he's like I like to try to design a set so so also so when we got there Joel Mick was sort of the head designer and

And whatever I talk about transitioning between head designers, I always talk about an invasion. It's kind of being the place where Bill started as head designer when he became head designer. But reality is, he started in the middle of the previous block. Kind of like, Radhikos was my first full set, but I started in the middle of Mercadian masks. He started in the middle of, I'm sorry, I started in the middle of Champs Cowgawa. Bill started in the middle of Mercadian Mass. So Prophecy was actually a set that I believe Bill was in charge. of by the time

so Bill ended up being in charge of it so that's important to the story so what happens is William says hey I really like to design the set we are just crammed and so Bill says okay and let's William so William mostly I mean he had a little bit of help but William

I think the design team is listed as William oh it's listed as William mean Bill which tells me it was just William for the design Bill and I will jump in at one point. We'll get to that. So what happens is, so let me talk a little bit about William. I don't know how much I've talked about William Jockish. I talk a lot about Bill and Mike.

I've talked less about William. So basically, William, I believe, like Richard, I think was a math teacher. And he was interested in design. And I think he wrote a letter to Wizards. I just wrote a letter saying, I'm interested in a job. And somehow, and I don't know how, that letter got to Richard. And I think Richard read it. And he kind of saw himself in Richard.

I mean, he saw William in himself that. And so they decided to hire William. Bill, for example, got hired because he had been one of the original playtefters. He was leading Mirage and Visions. I got hired because I started working for the duelist and I was doing a lot of freelance work for the company. Mike got hired because he had met Joel, I think, at a convention and had been making his own set and impressed Joel with it.

William definitely was sort of like the most, had the least amount of reps when he got hired. The other of us had done something at least they could look at and go, oh, well, they're doing this, you know. And what happened was when we got hired, like I've told this story too, I really wanted to be a designer, but they're like, but we're hiring developers. And I'm like, well, I will take the job as a developer and I will use my, once I'm inside the door, I will prove that I should be a designer. And eventually I did. I lit tempest.

So I and Mike really want to be designers. I think Bill and Bill. I mean, the three of us were really interested in designing. William actually was kind of the original four of us the one that was closest to what we think of as a developer slash play designer someone who was actually interested in balance and play balance

now in retrospect looking back I think that we I think William was by far the strongest of the four of us at doing that kind of thing but I think as we got eventual, like actual pro-tore players, they were even better. But William had a very analytical mind, which will become very important as we get into prophecy.

William was definitely, I think he really enjoyed sort of the math of the game, if you will. And so what happens is William says he wants to design a set, Bill says fine, and like I said, I believe William went off and made a set. Much like I had done Urz's destiny. I think this was just William. Now, remember, Mercadian masks, back in the day, the way blocks worked was the large set would happen in the fall. These are northern hemisphere seasons. What happened in the fall, it would have two keywords, usually named Mercadian masks, they weren't named.

And then the following two sets would not invent new things normally, but at least wouldn't invent new names. things and would expand upon what was going on. So the two-ish main mechanics from Mercantian Math, first is I will combine rebels and mercenaries into a singular mechanic, although they're slightly different. What rebels let you do is you could spend mana and tap it to fetch a rebel out of your deck that costs one more than the card that was fetching it. Mercenaries got you a card that cost less than the one fetching it. And so rebels let you go up, mercenaries let you go down. Surprise, surprise, rebels were the strong one. But what happened was rebels and mercenaries kind of got out of it, or not mercenaries, rebels kind of got out of control.

And so really all the third set did was make answers to rebels and mercenaries. There was like a car to let you shuffle a rebel into the library or shuffle a mercenary in. There was things, there was like, the rebels and mercenary were more anti the rebel and mercenary theme. I think there was one more actual mercenary, though mercenaries weren't the dangerous thing. I don't think there was a new rebel that actually fetched out creatures. And then the other big thing was spell shapers,

which were creatures that you could spend mana and discard a card to generate an effect. The way I like to think of it, it wasn't technically what happened, but is you were kind of turning the card into your hand into the spell that you could then cast. And we would end up with one cycle of spell shapers, but I don't think William put them in.

I think Bill and I would later put them in, a legend or a second. We'll get to that. So anyway, William goes off and makes a set. And so what William is fascinated with is the idea of the tension that comes about with sort of how many lane you have and what's tapped. And so William starts playing around in the space. So the mechanic, William makes a mechanic. It's not named. But he designs a mechanic called Ristic.

And it's into some of the names. It was their nickname for it. I don't think it was keyworded Ristick. So what Ristic was is it was something that you got that was cheaper than normal, but your opponent had the ability to stop it if they spent a certain amount of mana. And sometimes it was a spell. Sometimes it was a triggered ability. It could be different things.

But the idea essentially is, I will get this thing unless you pay mana. and then he had a bunch of effects that cared about either your lands being tapped that you got sort of rewarded you got punished if your lands were untapped and rewarded if your lands were tapped and there was a bunch of spells that require you to sack man yeah sack lands sorry sack lands to do something and so there's this very tight intricate puzzle of there's a lot of things that are sort of my land is

so many different things. Do I want to use the land to save for wristic spells? Do I want to tap it to get rewards for having tap land? Do I want to sacrifice it as a cost for things that want me to sacrifice my land? And William made this really intricate web of... Like, it was a very, very, very, very spiky set. It was very much a set where you, like, you had to make minute decisions about how exactly you're using your manner for the turn.

which was really fascinating to William. So, my earliest memory of prophecy was Bill talked to me when he goes, okay, I need you to look at William's at. And he goes, just look at the set and then come talk to me. So I get the set. I mean, William did working on it. I hadn't seen it. So I go in, I look at it, I'd read it all.

And I remember going to see Bill. we were meeting in a room like a little conference room and my job is just I'm like what? I said, oh my goodness

I know that I think William made the most unfun set ever and the inherent problem is that William really made a set that was so narrow in appeal

I'm not saying there aren't players that don't appreciate what William had done there are but two big problems. One, it's a small minority, and the second is, for those not in that minority, for the people that don't enjoy that nuance of, it was, it just played into, it just did things the players didn't want to do, the most players. For example, sacrificing lands, that isn't a fun thing. Basically, if you say, like, when you give, one of the things we've learned over time is when you give players the ability to do things, they will do them.

say sack lands for an effect they'll sack the lands but the problem is then they don't have the lands and that one of the big things about about magic is what you don't want to do is encourage play patterns that then force players into unfun situations you know regular listeners will say to me let's say all the time like put the fun you you want to have the fun and it's kind of you can't avoid the fun in order to do what the set's asking you to do you you must stumble through the fun and this was kind of the opposite where if you did with the set ass, it was just

it was making you stumble through the unfun and like Ristick, for example, one of my comments about Ristick was so one of the things that one of the most polarizing aspects of magic is counter magic counter spells.

Ristic was like what if we made spells that just had a counter spell built in? It's like, okay, I can cast a spell, and I give my opponent a free counter spell to counter it. I mean, they have to have the man it to do it, but it's like, you know, I mean,

and William's idea of Riftick was, oh, well, I have to work around that, and if man is up that I can't do, like, or I want to push it and make them want to use the manness. Like, it was, it just wasn't fun. It wasn't fun. And I'm not sure of the prophecy

was Bill's very first that he was in charge of, maybe he was in charge of Nemesis, but Bill was like, this was early in Bill's, you know, being head designer and so he goes okay we got a we got a we got a we got a work on this um and so what we ended up doing is i think bill and i made three main cycles this is the three of the i remember we went through and we did a lot to try to clean stuff up and we did a lot of tweaking and just the problem was that the core things that william was doing were it was hard to

salvage them and they just weren't fun things ristic is not a fun thing sacrificing land is not a fun thing. Can't about whether you're tapped, maybe, but just the way it was executed because it was balanced against other things. So I remember that we went in and we said, okay, the problem with this end is super, super spiky. We need some stuff for Timmy and Johnny.

We needed some stuff that was splashy. So we added three cycles that I remember. I mean, we did more than that, but there are three big cycles we had. So one was we added the avatars. So the avatars were eight mana creatures that cost six and two-colored mana. And then there was a condition. And the condition leaned into what that color wants to be doing.

And it said, okay, if this condition is true, this cost six less. And so the idea was it was an eight-manna creature that was pretty impressive. But me, eight-man is a lot of mana. But under the right conditions, you could cash it for two mana. We then made a cycle of the winds. I think the wins, what's the wins cost? The wins cost nine mana. So they were giant spells, but they did big, splashy effects.

Like, just, the idea was, okay, you've got to get there. But if you got there, holy, moly, this is an amazing giant effect. And then we made the cycle of legendary spell shit. The other thing, one of the other notes is, there's nothing more kidding masks really in the set, I think when William turned it over. Now, given the third set tended to drift the most, There was, like, very, very, like, we had to feel like it was the same block. So, Bill and I made this cycle of, we made a cycle of legendary creatures.

I think you had to sacrifice two cards rather than one card. But, again, big effects. So really what William and I, I mean, what Bill and I did is we went into prophecy and just made big splash effects, the avatars, the winds, the spellshapers, just so the idea is, if you want something splashy and big and fun, it was there. So, that, so the set ended up being okay. I think Bill and I added enough sort of splashy things that there's plenty in the set that I, I mean, there's stuff people remember from the set. I'm going to go through some of the cards. But it was definitely, the memory of prophecy was that we, I mean, I do like the idea of let different people have a vision

and let them do what they're going to do. And sometimes you get really amazing things. Sometimes you let someone loose and you let someone make a set who's never made a magic set and they just do cool things you've never seen before and while William did things we've never seen before that's one of the big things with prophecy is I think often for example when you're designing

one of the normal problems that happen I think with designers is the idea that you get too narrow into your own sort of game space meaning you know what you like about magic and just you just turn that up to 11. It's like, this is a set that I, as a player, would absolutely love. And the problem is, A, not every player is you. And B, some people, they don't represent

a mass majority of the players. And C, the set has to be for everybody. So even if your set has a certain vantage point, there's still needing stuff for other people there. Kind of what Bill and I did is just added some other stuff into the set. Okay. Okay, so I'm going to start talking through some of the cards, and I'm going to use the cards to sort of talk about some of the challenges.

So, Ristic Study, which is probably the most famous card from this set, I don't say that in a good way, but it's played a lot. So it's an enchantment for two in the blue, and it says whenever an opponent plays a spell, unless they pay one, you get to draw a card. And I know, I mean, I think the idea here is, oh, well, I'm going to do this interesting taxing. And what I'm going to do is my opponent's spells cost one more, but they have the option of not paying that one, but that I get to draw a card. But the net result of it is having every spell you tax be taxed by one is what just happens is you, the player,

which is starting to draw lots of cards. And in a way that's not, it's kind of, it's unfund tension. I mean, you want some amount of attention, but the reality is if I play this for my three manna most of those are going to happen I'm just going to draw a lot of cards because my permit's like

well I really need to cast a spell so I guess I guess draw a card I mean in multiplayer play you know commanders where it's 6070s play

sometimes people pay it if you don't if you're not going to anything else with the manna anyway you'll pay it so it's not like it never gets paid it comes up but I'm not sure

it's a particularly fun game you know if you it is it's used a lot because it's efficient unless you draw a lot of cards and drawing a lot of cards is good but it's the kind of card when it comes down and people that sort of go

they sort of go eh okay next spore frog so spore frog is green a one one and you sacrifice it to fog which is prevent all combat prevent all combat damage to that turn so the reason this card came about

I think I actually made spore frog believe it or not was that I'm trying to think we had made a bunch of spells over the years where they were one manna, one-one's for one-colored mana that you could sack to do in effect

I made Mog Fanatic that's a one-one for red that you can sack to do one damage in Tempest and I think we were we had made enough of them that the players recognize them as a cycle And so this was made to be the green one, so that green had a one-one you could sack. It turns out that free fog, I mean, in general, you might notice we don't do a lot of fog effects anymore. Fog effects really have proved to be, they just tend to gum up the board. It's sort of like one of the ways you're able to break through, like one of the inherent issues with magic is that defenses are a little bit stronger than offenses when it comes to creatures.

that a lot of what we need to do is we want to make it advantageous to attack. And one of the reasons it's advantageous to attack is, okay, I have better forces my opponent. You know, they're going to have to make trades that aren't beneficial to them, that I can sort of attack because I have superior forces. And fog really shuts that down in a way. And like, it's kind of important that the game can do that. So we've been really pulling back on fogs. But anyway, the reason this card is played so much is free fog is good.

Okay, foil. So foil was part of a cycle, so it's two blue-blue-blue instant. It counters target spell, but you could cast it for free if you discard an island and another card. So another theme that was in Mercadian mass, it is carried out here, was the idea of alternate casting costs. So the original ones, the pitch spells were in alliances. You could, like, force a will, you have to pitch another blue card and pay one life. So the idea here is, well, what if you had to discard two cards rather than one card? And then, playing into Williams' theme of carrying both lands as a resource,

we made one of those cards the basic land of that color to make sure that you're playing it. And then once we did that, the other card could be any, it didn't need to be of the color anymore. So this one doesn't require you to discard blue. You just got to discard an island and a card. But if you have islands, you're not actually playing blue is the idea. So this is a cycle, all of which you discarded the basic land and a card. Foyer was the best one. I will get to another one in a second.

But those were pretty good. Avatar of Woe, 6 Black Black, 6.5, it's an avatar. And it has fear, meaning it can only be blacked by blacker artifact creatures. And it has tap, destroyed target creature. It can't be regenerated. And if in all graveyards, there are 10. or more creatures, you can cast this for black blacks. It costs six less. Now, Avatar Woe was the strongest of the avatars. I think all the avatars, or many of the

avatars, were pretty well received. Avatar Woe was the most powerful one. But the idea here is if things are dead, if a lot of things have died, which Black is good at doing, you can get a two-manna six-five that taps to kill things. That's very exciting. That was kind of the goal of the avatars. Okay, Citadel of Pain, it's an enchantment that costs two in a red. At the end of each turn, sorry, the end of each player's turn, that player, this enchantment does X damage to them, where X is the number of untapped lands.

So this is playing with the theme I said earlier, where you really wanted to use all your mana, that you get punished. So that's, and this is where some of the tension I'm talking about. If you don't use all your mana, Citadel Vane can punish you. But if you use all your mana, then you don't have the manna available for a ristic. That's the kind of tension that William was creating

was the idea that, oh, well, you could leave your mana up for Ristic, but if you do, then other things can punish you. That was the kind of... And like I said, I'm not particularly fun. It's like, oh, if I leave mana up, then I can counter-spell you, but if I do, then I take damage. So... But anyway, Citadel in pain, it's interesting in that.

It just really says, hey, I want you actually doing things. It tends to go in red decks. I mean, it's a red card. Because it goes in agrodex because it's like, okay, well, I'm going to tap all my stuff every turn because that's just the nature of what I'm doing. Okay, next is Plague Wind. So seven black, black, so nine mana, it's a sorcery, destroy all creatures you don't control. They can't be regenerated.

For some reason, both Avatar Woe and Plague Wind, a lot of our destruction effects in black of the time, were Barry effects, what we used to call them, meaning that you couldn't regenerate from them. I don't know why we hoised regenerating so much. I think Richard did it in Alpha. Oh, this is what Black does. And eventually, like, okay, black doesn't need to constantly hose regenerate.

Why even have regeneration? If every time you kill something, you hose regeneration. So we did eventually stop doing that. So Plague, Winn, is an example of the Wins. It's a nine-man-th spell. But it is splashy. It's wrath of God, except not for your creatures. And so that is pretty cool.

Like, just right? everybody else's creatures. And Plague Win, the two black cards, Avatar of Woe and Plague Win, I think were the two most popular of the of the avatars in the Wins. And they both can go in the same deck.

Not always, but they can go to the same deck. Okay, next is a Lexi's cloak. So Lexi's cloak costs one in a blue. It's an enchant creature. And it grants, it's got Flash. Well, I mean, Flash didn't exist yet, but it has Flash written out. And it grants the ancient creature shroud, which did not exist yet, so it was written out.

So the idea is, it's kind of protective spell, which is, if you're going to target my spell to destroy it, I can flash in the spell. Now, once the spell's on it, it can't be the target of any spells by me or anybody else. But the idea was it was a way to save things. This is, I mean, this is not the first card to have flash, but this is one of the earlier orras to have flash. and the idea that the concept is it's kind of a spell that then lingers on and that's something we've been playing around a little bit

remember by the way you'll notice a lot of enchantments in the set. One of the other things that William definitely played around with is just having more enchantments. The set has a little more enchantments in it so there was a little... It wasn't enchantment matters but

William was fascinated by enchantments so there was a lot of enchantments in here. Okay. Next is overburden. It's one in a blue. It is an enchantment. Hold on a second. It is an enchantment. What does it do? Oh, it's an enchantment that says whenever a creature enters the battlefield, its controller has to bounce one of their lands. So the idea is it sort of stops you from ramping up. And if you play the more than one creature in a turn, you start going down in how much man that you have.

Another not particularly fun card. I mean, the cards I'm talking about do get played because they're powerful. That was probably one of the other issues is not only did William make a lot of unfun things, but he made powerful unfun things, meaning they're the kind of things that you do feel inclined to play

because they're very potent. But they are, they just create situations that are like, is that fun? Okay, if I play creatures, I don't get any land. like, I mean, it really, really shuts down a lot of strategies that use creatures. And, like I said, I don't know, this...

You can see my ongoing theme here. Next is abolished. So this is the white member of the alternate casting costs. It's one white, destroyed target, artifact or enchantment, so it's like a disenchant. But you could discard a planes and another card to play it. So it's kind of a free disenchant. So that seems to play.

Next is Entangler. Two white white is an enchant creature. Oh, enchanted creature can block as many creatures as you want. That is an ability that we stopped doing for two reasons. One is

people don't tend to block with a lot of creatures and blocking, multiple blocking. We didn't find it to be... It mostly shut things down. It's effects like this. Just shut up the board. And once again, We're always trying to encourage aggressiveness on the board to make the game end. The other thing is digital came to us, and it's really hard to program.

So, like, it shut down. In general, it kept attacking from happening, and it was bad for digital. So we really don't do digital blocking anymore. Infernal Genesis, 4B, Enchantment. So each turn, the player of the enchantment, puts the top card of the library into their hand, and then they make that many one-one black minion tokens equal to the mana value of the card. So it's kind of also a black card drawer in black,

which is a little off for black. Ristic Tudor. So this is a sorcery for two in a black. It lets you go get any card out of your deck, Demonic Tudor essentially, although Demonic Tudor was a little too cheap, for two in a black, but if your opponent pays two, they stop it.

So once again, in Alpha was Demotic Tudor. It was one in a black go get anything that proved too well. I think we're ready to realize that it's supposed to be like three in the black. So this is one cheaper than that, but your opponent can stop you if they have two manas. So you kind of have to wait until they can't stop you. And the final one I'll talk about today is Noxious Field, one black, black, enchant land.

It gives enchanted land, tap, deal one damage to each creature and each player. So like I said, there's a decent amount of cards from prophecy that do see some play. I don't know how much these cards that I've listed make games more fun. some of these cards are fine I think some of them are splashing fine I think some of them are something like Ristic Study I don't know if that is adding net fun to the game

but anyway you know the interesting thing I mean prophecy was definitely us was us sort of trying something different I think in the end it was not like I said

it is my list of the worst internally made magic set. We knew better than that. And it creates a lot of unfun play pattern. So anyway, that's my. So just to finish up, the Mercadian Mass Block, this is the third set. I don't think the Mercadian Mass Block as a whole

was a high point for us. I think the Rebel Mechanic ended up being, like, kind of the big takeaway from Erz de Saga was we needed to get more professional developers, which we did, starting with invasion. Mercadian masks, we lowered the overall power level, but I still think Mercadian masks suffer from a lot of developmental issues. The rebel mechanic was just too good.

I do like spell shapers. I do think alternate casting costs is interesting. I think we aired in some... We made a bunch that were probably too good. But anyway, Mercadian Mass was an okay block. It proved we needed better development, which we then got from the next block. It was probably a little weaker in some way.

I don't know. I look back and I'm like, you know, there's blocks we did that really shined and were the pinnacle of what magic could be. I don't think Mercadian Mass Block was that. But anyway, I hope you've enjoyed these three podcasts walking through the Mercadian Mass Block. I will continue in the future doing more of these podcasts. My goal is to fill in and talk about every magic set. And so I started from the very beginning a bunch of sets I've already talked about. So I'm sort of walking through and saying, oh, what if I talked about?

So I don't know what comes next. I haven't done my research yet. But whatever comes next, I will do that in a little bit. So anyway, I hope you enjoy these walkthroughs on the series. They're interesting for me to tell, and I get to think back to the past, so it's reminiscent for me. But anyway, guys, I'm at work, so we all know what that means. It means at 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.