Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1279: Saviors of Kamigawa

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

This podcast is another in my quest to talk about every Magic expansion. This time I talk about the third set in the Champions of Kamigawa block, Saviors of Kamigawa.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so I have this ongoing series where I'm trying to talk about every magic set in existence. So recently I did a podcast on Betrayers of Kamagawa. So I'm now going to do the, that was the second set in the Champions of Kamagawa block. Now I'm going to do the third set today, Saviors of Kamagawa. So Saviors of Kamagawa comes out in June.

of 2005. It has 165 cards. So, 55 commons, 55 uncommons, 55 rairs. Mythic Rare, not a thing yet. And 55 is because the sheets are 110. So each card appears twice on the sheet. The design team was led by Brian Tinsman, who also led the design for Champions of Kamagawa.

So Brian led the first and third set in the block. I think I only did that once. I did that in Mirrodin. I did mirrored it in 5th on. But anyway, his team was himself, Brian Schneider, Brandon Bozzie, and Devin Lowe. Brandon was on the creative team. Brian and Devin were both head developer at one point.

And then the lead of the development team was Randy Bueller, and Brian Schneider, Worthwellport, Monge Johnson, and Justin Webb were on the development team. Some of those names you might recognize. Jeremy Crawford was the art director. Okay, so this was the third set in the block. Now, long-time listeners know that one of the reasons we stopped doing blocks was what we referred to as the third block problem,

which just became the second block problem when we cut down from three sets to two sets. The core thing is the way we used to do blocks is we would make the first set, and then the second and third set was sort of like try to expand on what the first two sets did. In the early days, you weren't a lot to add mechanics. So in the early days, like, the first step we introduced phasing and flanking. And then the third set could use facing and flanking, but they didn't get to do new named mechanics. Eventually, realize that we needed something.

You know, like the third set kind of, usually what happened was people were very excited for the first set. There was some excitement for the second set, but not as much as for the first set. And then by the third set, you're like, okay, can we move on already? So what started happening is the third set started having what we call the third set pivot, where we would do something radically different than the third set just to try to shake things up. So Brian's idea for this set, his sort of big twist, was what he called Wisdom was the name. That's what he dubbed the theme. So Wisdom stood for hand-size matters.

And we had done a bunch of cards where hand-sized matters. Mara was a real famous one where like, oh, the bigger your hand, the bigger the creature is. And so, Brian really got it in his head that it would be fun. We were, you know, doing Japanese mythology and, oh, the idea of wisdom

and caring about your hand. So he did a lot of things to care about your hand. Now, first and foremost, it did carry over some of the mechanics. Soul shift, splice into arcane, the arcane super type. There were flip cards.

although this set did do something new with flip cards this had some creatures that flipped into enchantments so it starts as a creature but when it flips when he rotate 180 degrees it becomes an enchantment that was something a little bit new but the new things in the set

this set actually introduced three new keywords which is sort of an evolution you start seeing us introduce mirrored it had done it if dawn introduced some new keywords scrii for example was introduced So we sort of said, okay, how do we solve this third set problem? Well, what of the third set just did some new stuff?

And it can have new mechanics and such. So Brian introduced three mechanics. First was sweep. So sweep allowed you to return some number of basic land. They would say, you know, sweep, return some number of islands or something. Usually it was whatever color you were. If it was a red card, return some number of mountains, basic mountains. And the idea was that the effect of the spell

got enhanced by more lands you returned. There weren't a lot of sweep cards. I think there were only four, I want to say. There weren't a lot of sweep cards. And the idea behind sweep was, oh, I care about the size of my hand. Oh, well, later in the game when maybe I don't need my mana as much, I can return some of my mana to my hand to help fill my hand up again to help with these wisdom cards.

it's it's sweep both sweep had a bunch of issues it wasn't on enough cards really to justify the keyword it wasn't the kind of thing people want to keyword like it didn't make a good keyword

it didn't play all that great and it didn't really need a name but it's the kind of keyword we make fun of these days just because it's kind of for example did we need a keyword this

also channel so channel is one of the two mechanic and two named mechanics that we brought back in Kamagawa Neon Dynasty. Channel basically says, you may pay mana and discard this card from your hand. We do that all the time. We don't normally name it.

I think Brian was trying to have like hand as a focus, so he decided to name it. We brought it back in Kamagawa Neand Dynasty because our pickings were slim of what to bring back. And it wasn't that channel was an amazing mechanic. It just was something that we do and we could have the name and we could do it. And so we did bring it back.

The only thing about channel is you're sort of naming something we just naturally do that doesn't really need a name. But once again, you're channeling things, your inner wisdom, you know. And like I said, it plays into this hand as resource. Okay, and the final mechanic that he introduced was Epic, which was on a cycle of rairs.

Epic is one of those mechanics. I think I picked Epic when I did my first. top 20 worst mechanics I might have also picked sweet Epic was mechanic there were enchantments and when you play them it said you can't play any other

spells for the rest of the game but but I will do an effect every turn every epickeep I do in effect but the cost of that effect is you can't ever play spells again now the white one let you tutor to go get enchantments I think and then play them so like

that one at least is letting you sort of do a variety of different things. But anyway, the cool, the idea of I have a cool spell again every turn is neat. The idea that I can't ever cast spells again, eh, not so neat. So those were the brand new things. There also, by the way, was a Morrow cycle in the set that all had Morrow in their name. For those that somehow don't know this, I made a card all the way back in Mirage. It was a creature for two green-green whose stats, power and toughness were,

equal to a number of cards in your hand. And for a while, Maro was, it showed up in tournament play. So Brian made a cycle of Maros and it turns out that Maro means something in Japanese. But anyway, they ended up naming Maro was in the name of all five of these creatures.

The interesting thing about this, so early magic, in fact, Maro is a good example. We occasionally would do things. Morrow was named after me. There was a hole in the Mirage file. I had made this card before coming to Wizard. I pitch it in the meeting. Bill likes it, and he puts it in the file. And so Bill labeled it

with what he typed in when he wants to get me, like that I made the card. And he had learned way back when, if you would type in letters, once you got unique letters, it would fill it in. So he learned that for me, if he typed an M-A-R-O, M-A-R-O for Rosewater, it would self-autimate Mark Rosewater. So he just put Morrow on the card more for his shorthand of, oh, this is Mark's card. But Creator said, oh, this is Mark's card. But Creator said, oh, that sounds cool and they left it there and so that is what we call a vanity card it is named after one of the people

that made, that make magic there's a, at one period of time we stopped vandy cards got banned we don't do vanity cards anymore it just was had weird internal like it just if one person gets why doesn't everyone get it

anyway just caused weird internal things so we stopped doing it but the interesting thing is so Morrow is grandfathered in the sense that the Morrow creature type, you know, the Morrow is not creature type, but it's a kind of creature. It's a nature spirit. That still exists. We didn't erase things that had been vanity in their creation. Mons, for example, is named after Monson's Johnson, one of the people on the development team. But Mons is also character. So Mons still gets to show up because things that got introduced as vanity

still get to stay, but we don't introduce any more vanity things. So anyway, I in 2004, this came on 2005, had my twins, Adam and St. Sarah. So this set has what we call an accidental vanity card where everybody thinks it's a vanity card, but it's not. So all the Maro were named after words, the Japanese root words and stuff. So one of them is Adamaro, A-A-M-A-R-O, and the other is S-R-A-M-R-O. Everybody in the world thinks that they're named after my children. They're not. I mean, that was not, no one intentionally did that. The words were chosen to be the things that matched what they were trying to do.

No one believes me. Probably most of you don't believe me, but I swear, I both had nothing to do with it, nor did the people who name it try to do that. But it's one of my favorite accidental, you know, vanity cards in quotes. It's just not a vanity card. Everybody assumes it's a vandy card, but it's not. Okay. So basically, the set was trying to build on.

what had come before and was trying to sort of definitely give its own feel to it. So, I think the problem with the wisdom theme, I mean, obviously I made Morrow. I think from every once in a while having a card where you don't want to play cards is okay. And I think that as a singular theme and a singular deck can be fun,

as a major theme of the whole set of something that you're trying to play limited with, it's a little reductive of a theme in the sense that in order for it to work, you kind of have to not do things. It's a very passive mechanic. Now, there are ways in larger formats to build around it when you're drawing extra cards and stuff. And as I'll get to when I get to individual cards,

there are plenty of cards in the set that do see play. But I think the wisdom mechanic was not the strongest of mechanics. I mean, I get one of the things that Brian Tinsman, so for those that don't know Brian Tinsman, Brian worked at Wizards for many years, he and I have good friends. Brian really liked exploring the unexplored. And I think he was enamored by the idea that we hadn't done a lot with hand-size matters. So he just thought it was an area to explore.

He was right, it was an unexplored area. And like I said, there are some cool things. about it. It's not like you can't do things with it. And I think in a constructed standpoint, like, it's a fine theme to focus a constructed deck around. That is fine.

It's just a little bit much of a theme. Don't do things is not a strong set theme. And as evidenced by the new mechanics, like I said, I think both sweep and epic were on my list of top 20 worst mechanics of all time. So if you have three new mechanics and two of the three make my list 30 years in of the worst mechanics a whole time not not so this this set

struggled a bit um champions of kamagawa block as a whole for those that know their history did not perform well um we have a lot of metrics that we look at uh it i believe organized play was down sales were down um to this day i believe champs kamagawa has the lowest marks for creative, for a world that we've done. Now, as I mentioned in the Betrayors of Kamagawa post, kind of what happened is Kamagawa really was

not seen as a very positive thing by most people. But then, with time, a couple of things happened. One is, I think at the time, Japanese mythology was not that well understood. And so a lot of people, it just felt like it's weird stuff that I don't understand. The rise of Japanese pop culture is really a dominant force in pop culture, really did more disorder-in-form people.

And so I think the average person just became much more aware of Japanese mythology than they had been originally, so that was part of it. And the second thing is what I had dubbed at the time a mistake in Champions, which is making all the rarest legendary creatures, which carried out for the whole block, by the way. It turns out that, oh, well, legendary creature took on a whole new meaning later in life as the commander format became popular and a lot of early magic sets we did not have a lot of legendary creatures

like it wasn't uncommon to have three or four in the whole set all of a sudden having a set just dripping and not just with like obviously the ones we normally do are playing into story but this set just had a lot of weird quirky like this set kind of leaned into the quirky definitely influence of Brian and so there's a lot of quirky designs on legendary creatures that are actually very fun to build around. So, James Kamagalbuck ended up being a boon

for the commander format. And I think a lot of that is why it's sort of... Like, the reason we did Nian Dynasty as Kamagawa, the story for that set goes, we were going to make a brand new world based of Japanese pop culture. And I, because my blog was so insistent that we go back to Kamagawa,

said, you know, we don't have to decide that yet. let's just make the set and see where it goes. And then I and some other people worked very hard to make sure it was a Kamagawa. And we made this whole modern-vers tradition thing to help bring back, you know, half the set what was old Kamagawa. But anyway, at the time,

Champions was not, like I said, it was a bit powered down from Erza's Saga block that proceeded because Urza Saga was broken. The theme was not quite understood at the time. And stuff like Saviors did not do a lot to sort of, like, it was a third set. People were kind of tired of the set because of the third set problem in general.

And I just don't think this twist was the kind of twist that really reinvigorated anything. It was looking in different space. I agree there. It was definitely new to them we hadn't done much of. But I'm in 2020 hindsight. To be fair to Brian, hey, you figure out areas we haven't done

that you think might be fun and you try them. You know, I, Maro was a fun card. know, as a fan of Morrow, I just don't think that theme works in small doses. Okay, so now I'm going to get to some cards that got designed. These are some of the most played cards, mostly in Commander. Okay, so first is Miko Koro, Center of the Sea. It's a legendary land. You can tap to add C, add Cullis, or for two in tap, each player draws a card.

So I assume this gets played in decks where you're trying to play nice with everybody and don't kill me because I'm the nice guy helping everybody get cards. The set had so legendary was the theme

of Champs to Kawagawa Block. So not only were their legendary creatures but there were legendary enchantments, there were legendary lands, there were legendary artifacts, so there was a lot of legendary stuff. The set was really dripping with a legendary. Okay.

Oh, I would say, by the way, just real quick, we do not tend to like to put legendary on lands. We do it occasionally. And usually if the land is some built-in way to help you if there's duplication. Like, for example, I think there was some in this set that a channel, right? Well, if I can't play the land because I have a legendary land, the same legendary land in play, well, I can use this channel ability, for example. Okay, next, freed from the realm.

So this is an aura, 2U, Enchant Creature, Enchantmentora. So it has two activations. For blue mana, you can tap enchanted creature, or for blue mana, you can untap enchanted creature. So this is a fun design. This is something that we like to do a lot of, which is... So, oras were introduced in Alpha, and they were pretty popular. they're out of the gate. There's a high...

The variance between how much beginners like Ores and how good Ores are, meaning how much they're played by more experienced players who more understand the power level is very high. They're super fun. They're not so good. They come with inherent card disadvantage. And so

we've forever been trying to ways to make Ores a little bit better. We get that they're players that really like Ores, but man, they're hard to play. So this aura was doing double-dood, which is interesting. This aura can function as removal or pseudo-removal. If I put this on my opponent's creature, especially a big creature that's more about attacking, well, once a turn I can tap it down to keep it from attacking me.

Or I could put it on my own creature. If my creature has a tapability, or even if I'm attacking with a large creature, but I want to sort of get its pseudo-vigilance, I can spend man to untap it. So we like doing this idea where the aura has different functions. functionality depending on how you use it. And the clever part of this design is the two abilities feel connected. Spend blue man to tap the creature, spend blue man

untapped the creature. You're not really going to do the same thing on the same kind of creature most of the time. But it is interesting that the parallelism feels really good. The two abilities feel like they go together, even though, interestingly, they really have very different uses.

But anyway, this card is nice in that has this double function, that one of the things you can do, if you're playing a deck where you need it for, like, combo potential, I'm going to un-tap a piece of mine. Early on, I can use it as removal if I need to, if I get in trouble. So it's kind of neat that it's a combo piece that has a secondary function that can be removal. So I think that's why it's so played. Next, commie of the crescent moon, legendary creature, spirit, one, three. At the beginning of each player's turn, that player draws a card. Um, a couple things. So, one is, for those who don't know the story, basically the emperor of the world condo is his name.

Rob's, I forget what it's called, this, like, spirit baby from the spirit realm. The spirit realm freaks out, as they should. And then there's a war between the spirit realm and the physical realm. So the spirit realm was filled with kami, which is Japanese, I think, for spirit. And so we had a long spirit theme, soul shift, and, you know, there's a lot of caring about spirits. in different mechanical ways. The one thing is we made them, the spirits look very weird,

and it's kind of fun, and it looks cool, and I think with time, people have really grown to appreciate them, but early on, they were just like, who are these weird creatures? But they represent, so the spirits can be spirits

of all sorts of different things, and so, like this one is the spirit of the moon, for example. The other interesting thing is, in Alpha, there's a card called Howling Mine. Howling Mine was an artifact that every turn let Plater have drawn an extra card. This basically is a legendary creature that functions as a howling mind.

As you can see with Mikko Koro, a lot of the friendly, this set lent lent itself well to a lot of the friendly play. Part of which is it wanted to get cards in hand because of the wisdom theme, but just drawing cards, there's a limitation on how much we can do that. So there is a bunch of everybody draws sort of stuff that's universal. And that definitely I guess they call it a group hug deck. It is something in which in Commander where you're trying to sort of be everybody's friend and be the person they don't want to kill because

you're just helping everybody. Cards like this are really good. Okay, next. Sikasha. Sikasha the imposter. So two blue blue for a legendary creature, human rogue, 3-1. When it enters, it can become the copy of any creature on the

battlefield, but it also has a text, two blue-blue, blue, return this to hand at end of turn. So the idea is that in Alpha, there's a card called the Suven Doppelganger. The Suman Dopplganger, basically, when you play it, you could copy anything, but it keeps the ability that it can copy new things. This is basically of a Suven Doppelganger. It makes you bounce it back to your hand. The one value to that is not only can you reset it,

but you can use it as protection. Oh, they're trying to destroy it? Oh, well, if I have four man available, I can bounce it in my hand. So not only does it allow you to reset things, but it allows you to protect it. And so that, like I said, the nice thing about Stephen doppelganger doesn't cost anything to copy something new, or this one you have to bounce it and recast it. So this one's a little bit more expensive to re, to change what it is. But the fact that it can protect itself is extra added value.

Okay, next, Secura Tribe, Sky. green creature snake shaman scout one one tap put a land from your hand onto the battlefield um as i said because there's stuff like sweep that puts lands into your hand one of the themes of getting your hand bigger is getting things back and land it is true that land there's a point in the game where you don't need land as much as you need it early in the game that you return something that's what sweeps trying to play around with um but i think brian was saying well if i want to return land to your hand let me give you some tools to get it back out um And this has proven to be a popular way, in commander, the ability to ramp is pretty important,

meaning to get manned out faster than normal. And so this is a good card to help you ramp. It is one of the snake... So one of the things we did is each color had a sort of an animal creature type that comes from mythology. I guess redhead goblins. But the white-haired foxes, the blue had the moonfolk that were sort of a rabbit-ish. the black-hid rats, red-haired goblins, and green-head snakes. A lot of the snakes, by the way, had this theme where it would, when it hit them,

it would lock something down. When it hit a creature, it would lock it down for a turn. But not all of them did. Okay, next up. Riki, the history of Kamagawa. Two in a green, legendary creature, human shaman, one, two. Whenever you play a legendary creature, oh, sorry, legendary spell, draw a card. So one of the things we like to do It's a common What is the set about?

Okay, sets about Thing X Well, let's have a card that says When you do Thing X, draw a card And so this one, like I said, Legendary is a big theme of the block It's why all the rare creatures are legendary, why there's unlegendary creatures, which at the time was

not what we did very often. There's legendary artifacts and enchantments and lands, and anyway, lots and lots of legendary things. And it is, so anyway, and the other thing is because in Commander, so the legendary drawback is if you already have one copy of that permanent in play, you can't play it. Or you can play it, I guess, technically, and then one of them has to get sacrificed. So, but anyway, in a Commander format where you don't have duplicates,

or it's very hard to have duplicates I mean you can copy things the legendary restriction is a lot less so playing a deck full of legends where that might be more problematic in a 60 card format where you're doubling up it is not so in the commander format okay

next Aburu Palace in the Clouds a legendary land tap to add blue or one return card name to owner's hand So, one of the interesting things, this is legendary land. The reason is the legendary land is one of the things we try to do, although we've loosened a little with time, is we try not to assert basic land.

What it means is, oh, if I'm a land and you can tap and add blue, we wanted you to sort of have some secondary cost to that. So in this set, we do that with legendary. Like, well, okay, but it's not better than a basic land, only because it's restrictive of how often you could use it. The other thing about this is the reason you can return it to your hand, once again, placed into the wisdom theme that we want.

It allows you... I mean, and there's some interesting things that can do, but the most reason it's there is to allow you to allow you to have more cards in your hand when you need it. It also has some fun, like, interacts with... Well, it will later interact with

landfall, for example, that I can play it, trigger landfall. Oh, no, I can't replay it because it's, anyway, I guess that doesn't work. I mean, I guess if you, if you already have it in play, you can bouch it your hand, so you can play it to trigger landfall, I guess is the, what I meant to say. Okay, next, pithing needle, one, artifact, name a card. As long as this card's lung pithing needles on the battlefield, players cannot play activated abilities of the named card.

So pithing needle's interesting. Pithing needle got added in development and I don't remember what it was trying to solve but there was Erza Saga had been the set before this and Erzosauga was calling all sorts of problems it was Baroquean as we say and so one of the things that we try to do

in the next set or next block often is provide answers for the trouble cards of the block before so I forget what Pithing Needle was shutting off and probably more than one thing But pithing needle was made as a, uh-oh, there's a problem card, okay, here's a tool, you can shut down this problem card, and because pithing needle exists as an answer, maybe it restricts a little bit how often people are playing that. We learn in general the answer cards are dangerous in the sense that, or not dangerous, if the answer card is too narrow, then if people stop playing it, then they stop playing the answer card. It goes back and forth. Pithing needle is interesting in that. usually has some functionality. It's stronger in some decks against some decks and others,

but even if what you're expecting the pithing needle doesn't come to pass, you can pithing needle other things. But anyway, pithing needle has been, a lot of these cards I've been talking about today are kind of big players than commander. Pithing needle actually sees a lot of play in constructed formats because it's a very powerful answer to some very powerful cards. Okay, next, Mishiko Kanda, truth seeker three in a white is a four man a total one of which is light

legendary creature's human advisor she's a two two whenever the opponent damages you with a permanent they have to sacrifice that permanent so the idea is anything can damage you but then it goes away

it's interesting the first card that did this actually was black it was in Erza's legacy what's the name of it we made a holiday card that made fun of it

Oh, no mercy. We made Snow Mercy, was the holiday card. No Mercy is kind of this in black form. But anyway, I think Michiko Kanda, she might be the empress. I mean, Kondo, or Kanda, sorry, not Kondo. Kanda is the emperor. Kondo raised Gerard. Kanda is the emperor, and my guess is this is his wife, wife or daughter, but I think he's his wife.

Okay. Okay, and once again, another good example of a legendary card that really you can build around and do fun things with, or I don't know, fun, but do things with. Okay, next, oh, naginata. This is an equipment, one and an artifact. So you can only attach it to creatures with power three or greater. It gives the creature plus three plus O and trample, equip two. So this is us messing around a little bit with the idea of it's more powerful, but it's more restrictive of what you can put. it on. And so the idea is really what we want to do is make big creatures bigger, not make little

creatures into big creatures. That's why the restrictions there. And this has definitely seen a bunch of play. The final card to talk about is twin cast. I believe I was responsible for this card. Blue Blue, it's basically Fork from Alpha. Fork was one of my favorite cards. And I always thought like blue should have access to fork. So I made a blue fork. Interestingly, I'm not sure whether I was supposed to make it at the time. I don't know whether it violated the restricted lists. But anyway, we did, it exists

and it exists now, and we can, I mean, it exists and we can reprint it. I'm just, I love coughing things, for those that somehow don't know that. And I like copying things in all forms. But copying spells, as you cast them, super fun. And it felt like red has it.

Not that red shouldn't have it, but I think blue should have it, too. So I made a fork in blue. we joked for a while that it was we can call it spoon so it's fork and spoon um anyway uh i'm almost to work here so let's let's wrap this up uh i saviors of kamagawa is not in 2020 hindsight not what i would call one of our strongest sets um in fact if i if one day i don't know if i If one day I did the 20 weakest sets or most problematic sets, it would make that list. Like I said, the fact that two of its mechanics were on my 20 worst mechanics list is not ideal. I do think it was trying something different.

I applaud that. Sometimes you try something different. It doesn't work out. But it ended up being not, I mean, like I said, there's plenty of cards people play from it. I think Kamagawa block in general, especially because of the legendary creatures, has gone on. to have a secondary usage that I think in the time wasn't quite appreciated.

So I think with a modern light, maybe I could be kinder to Kamagawa than I'm being here. I think Kamagawa has gone on to have a lot more legs than we expect when we first made it. While the wisdom theme maybe didn't pay off in great...

I mean, there are individual decks to do some of those things. So in constructed, it made a little more sense than the limited. And there are plenty of one-of-cards that people really do enjoy. there are a lot of gems hidden in Chams Kamagawa block. So maybe with hindsight, it ended up being a little bit better than its first reaction was.

Because his first reaction was not great. I mean, third sets, it was a third set that had a twist that didn't end up panning out quite the way we wanted in a block that people were kind of tired of when the first step came out. But like I said, sometimes time can heal. And I think Kamagawa Block definitely with just a different vantage point and other things that, like, there's things that made it shine that didn't shine in the moment

but shine after the fact. So anyway, Savior of Kamagawa. It's definitely one of our more interesting attempts to do something different. But that, my friends, I guess, like I said,

I'm just driving up to work. That is all I have to say for Chamis of Kamagawa. Not Champs of Kamagawa. That's all I have to say about Saviors of Kamagawa. But anyway, I will, by the way, recommend with any of these talks when I walk through things, if you've never really seen the set, go online, pick your favorite database, and take a look at it.

There's a lot of fun stuff in old sets that you might not realize. And one of the things that's really fun about looking at old things is you might discover things that you go, hey, that would go to my deck right now. And so whenever I talk about sets, it can't hurt with my giving you some context to go back and look at it. It can't hurt to take a look. But anyway, guys, now that I'm done, we're talking about the saves of Kamagawa, it is time for me, well, this is 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 next time. Bye-bye.