Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1315: Evasion

Episode Date: February 20, 2026

In this podcast, I talk about a core element of every design: making sure your creatures can get through and help the game end.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time not their drive to work. Okay, guys, today we are talking evasion. So what is evasion? Why is it important? So evasion is the term that R&D uses to talk about anything that helps you get through to what we call board stall to get to your opponent. So one of the inherent things. So magic is built pretty cool. you know, there's a mana system that over time things get bigger and bigger, and so the game evolves. But one of the inherent problems as the game evolves, as the board, the battlefield evolves,

is you start what we get calling sort of boardlock. You start like, at some point, I have enough creatures and you have enough creatures that it starts becoming hard for one of us to attack each other. And the reason is one of the sort of core things of magic is it just turns out it's a little easier to be defensive than offensive. That, you know, because the opponent blocking gets to choose how they block, there's a lot of advantages to blocking.

And that one of the things that's really challenging is in order to attack, you have to have a worthwhile attack. And so there are, you know, sometimes my attack is good because my things are bigger than your things. And even if you block my things, my big things will destroy your small things. There are reasons that even with, you know, sort of a board stall that you can attack under certain circumstances. But in general, there often comes a point where strategically it just doesn't make a lot of sense to attack into your opponent's forces. But we want the game to end. So one of our truisms for game design is your game needs progress in a way that it will end.

That you want inertia. In fact, I did a podcast once called 10 Game Design. everything's needs. And one of the items was inertia. Your game has to end. That the natural state of your game has to push your game toward ending. And that is very important. So board stall really doesn't keep the game from ending. It slows the game down. So that's where evasion comes in. You want to make sure that there's going to keep being attacks. Okay, so let's go back to Alpha. Richard Garfield, creator of Magic the Gathering, did understand this. and from the very, very beginning,

invasion was baked in to the very beginning. So let's go back and talk about what was there since Alpha. So first and foremost, probably the most important evasionability is flying. I've often talked about flying, and this might be the best magic mechanic of all time, for a couple reasons. One is, it's just very intuitive.

If I have a creature that flies, and I say, can your non-flying creature, block my flying creature? You go, no, it's flying, it's up in the air, I'm not up in the air. I can't block it. So it's very, very intuitive, meaning when I teach someone how flying works, they almost instantaneously get it. The flavor is such a perfect match.

And in general, mostly what it does is it says there's a second sort of, I don't know, battlefield's the right word, but there's a second area of battle, right? There's the ground, but then there's the air. And the cool thing about the air is, if I flies and you have flyers, they can interact with each other. But it sort of lessens the number of creatures. Like one of the real challenges when you're looking at board stall is just the number of creatures.

It's like, oh, I have six creatures. He has seven creatures. Like, just trying to do the math and figure out all the possibilities is a lot. But by flying, some of the time I will flyer and you don't, and then that's just damage that's getting through. And some of the time, I will flyer and you will have a flyer. But if we each have one flyer, you know, the calculation, If I have a 3-3 and you have a 2-2, well, I can attack my 3-3, your 2-2, you know, without tricks, can't stop me.

And so, flying is proven me super important. Flying is in every set. Flying is on more, like, as a higher as-fan than most evergreen keywords do. It's primary in white and blue, secondary in black, tertiary, and red and green. meaning every color gets some amount of flying. Green gets the least. I mean, white blue get the most. Green gets the least.

Red is weird and that it tends to have like dragons and things and phoenixes. It has less of like little small flyers. But the idea is it's something that can show up everywhere. And the idea that a lot of the iconic creatures, angels, white's iconic flies, blue, sphinxes, often fly. Red, dragons almost always fly. And black is demon. Demons can fly. They don't always fly.

Green, hydras don't normally fly. The green's the one whose iconic doesn't fly. But the fact that white and blue and red mostly fly, and black sometimes flies. You know, just show that there's, you know, the idea of having a big giant creature that eventually can come out and help win the game and that be a flyer is very valuable.

And so flying has existed from the very beginning. There's only one set where we didn't have. flying. A little trivia question. What is the one magic set that didn't have flying? And the answer is Portal Three Kingdoms. So what happened was Portal Three Kingdoms was the third of the Portal series. Portal was sort of a simplified version of magic meant to teach people magic. And we were trying to get into the Asian market, especially China. And so we decided to make an entry-level product portal that was geared to a very famous story in Asia. the Three Kingdoms.

And so we made Portal Three Kingdoms. The challenge there, though, was there wasn't a lot of things in the Three Kingdoms, the story of the Three Kingdoms that flew. There were some dragons. There are a few things. But most things didn't fly. And so the problem was, you know, Henry Stern, who led the set, knew he needed evasion. So what he came up with was the thing called horsemanship.

So horsemanship is essentially a renamed flying. It's flying exactly as you know flying, but it is renamed to call horsemanship. The idea of being up on horses, if you're not on a horse, it's hard to stop somebody up on a horse, is the idea. And Henry really was just trying to recreate flying. The weird thing about those cards is because that's the only set with horsemanship

borrowing a few minor exceptions. It's essentially unblockable because no one else has horsemanship. Okay. Oh, flying also, by the way, to show how, like, core flying is that flying is the only event keyword to have another keyword solely about being able to block it, which is reach.

Obviously, Alpha had giant spider, which inherently had reach. It wasn't actually a keyword until FutureSight. One of the future shifted cards showed off reach. And we made reach solely to make it easier to write the flying reminder text on a card. So we can now, I can only be blacked my creatures with flying and reach. Okay. Oh, the one other time that we did pseudo-flying was in the tempest. We did an ability called Shadow.

And Shadow is a lot like flying, except, oh, when we do flying, we have a subcategory of flying that we call high flying. And what high flying means is, I'm a flyer, but because I'm so high in the air, I can only block other flyers. I can't block non-flyers. And it's a downside we put on flyers. So shadow is kind of like high flying. So the way shadow works is creatures with shadow can only block and only be blocked by other creatures with shadow. So it's a lot like, it's similar to the way that horsemanship function. And a creature that has shadow is mostly unblockable outside the limited environment where the creatures had shadow.

In Tempest Limited, shadow, you know, there's a second sort of area much like flying or a third, I guess, because flying didn't exist. But outside of that when people use it now, most people don't have shadow, so essentially it's unblockable. The one big difference and why I compare it to high flying is shadow creatures can't block normal creatures. Flying creatures normally can. If I have a one-one flyer that's getting through, but you're about a win by attacking with a six-six, well, I can trump block my one-one flyer. I can't do that with high flyers. I can't do that with shadow. So that's a little bit different. Why have we not done more horse and ships than shadows? We actually did talk about that. one of the things that has come up in universes beyond is a lot of universes beyond properties

don't necessarily have a lot of flying. And the reason is, you know, when we make a magic set, we make sure there's enough flyers because we need it, we need it functionally for magic. But most IPs, that's not a big, you know, they're not thinking about magic gameplay. So a lot of things, you know, especially things that are centered, some of our properties that you know, more centered and people acting it out or something. There's just less flying that tends to go on.

So one of the challenges we have in universes beyond is just dealing with evasion in the sense that there's just a lack of flying. And you'll notice in something like, you know, the Lord of the Rings, like, oh, there's this bird that was referenced once in one, you know, like we're really digging deep to find things that can fly.

So we did talk about whether or not we wanted to make sort of a U.B-friendly ability. I forget what we called it, but the idea was it would be an ability that says, I can only be blocked by people with this ability or reach or flying. I think it was how we looked at it.

So the idea is essentially anything that can deal with flying can deal with this, but, or I'm sorry, reach and flying can deal with this. So it's not unblockable to anything else other than just this type of thing. But we ended up deciding we didn't need it. Maybe one day we will need it, but we did walk.

through and talk about do we want to have this special evasion with a new word that's more that to solve the problem of the flying issue in some universes beyond properties we haven't we haven't pulled that we didn't talk about it we sort of having our back pocket if we need it we haven't needed it yet okay the other evasive abilities in alpha so first strike so first strike the idea of first strike obviously is when I deal damage to my opponent I deal damage before they deal damage. So this is an interesting thing. Flying when I say it's evasive, literally part of it is you can't block me if. First strike is not that. First strike, anybody can block a first right creature. The issue with First Reich is, can you survive blocking a first strike creature? So for example,

if I have a 3-1 first-riker, that means unless you have a creature with power of sight, with toughness, four or greater, you're essentially going to chump block my creature. My creature will kill your creature without you killing my creature. And the reason that is valuable and the reason we think of that as evasion is if I have a board state, let's say, for example, I have a 3-1 first riker and you have no creatures with power, toughness sight, no creatures with toughness for a greater. If I attack, there's no threat for attacking on my part that I, I mean, once again, barring tricks, but I feel free to attack.

You can't stop me. And because you know your creature is going to die, you're more likely to let me. it through, especially early on when you have more life. So First Strike is a good thing where it allows me to attack, I mean, and the whole point of evasion is I want to get through board stall. Future, not future, First Strike can help get through board stall because if you can't block and kill it, then you're less inclined to want to block it. And that is pretty valuable.

First Strike did eventually beget double strike. So Double Strike came about effects. Double Strike is the one evergreen keyword, not invented by Richard Garfield or a member of R&D. Or I guess I should say, not invented by someone who was or was eventually a member of R&D. The person who designed, at first, a double show, I don't even know their name. When we did the first, you designed the card for what Mr. Bady Cakes, ended up calling Forgot and Ancient.

The playtest name was Mr. Bady Cakes. When we were getting submissions for that card, somebody sent in a submission. mission for double strike. Now, green makes no sense for that ability. Green doesn't have first strike. Double strikes in the same colors white and red that have first strike. But we liked it so much. The next opportunity we had to use it, we did. And we've used it ever since. So double strike is like first strike. It's similar in the way that you can't deal with my creature. But double strike gets to deal with damage twice. Once during first strike, once during normal strike. And so it also is even more threatening because you let it through. It does a lot of.

of damage. But both First Strike and Double Strike are good examples of sort of threats that keep your opponent from blocking it so that you can get through. Neither First Strike or Double Strike will usually without help, they won't be the decisive blow.

If your opponent has creatures, they will block eventually. So normally, but the reason you might win with First Strike or Double Strike is I get rid of the things blocking me, then there's nothing blocking me, now I can hit you. Okay, the next Oh, the one other thing, speaking of strike, there is another strike variant,

or two other strike variants. I did a thing called last strike in the unsets. Last strike is the opposite of first strike. That means, instead of me doing my damage before my opponent does my damage, it does it after my opponent does the damage. And then, because triple strike exists in the unsets, I was able to make triple strike,

which is you do damage first, main, and last, is the idea. A lot of people ask us, why do we don't do last strike in normal magic? And the answer is the way that damage is written, the way the combat is written, does not take to account last strike. It would be a major rewriting of the rules. And so the question is, is it worth it? And the answer is no. Last strike actually is pretty weak. I don't think we'd use last strike a lot. I've used it a little bit in unsets, but it is surprisingly weak. A creature with Last Strike really can barely form to attack. You have to be pretty big to even, you know, and even then, you can be double-blocked and stuff.

Triple Strike is pretty cool, but even then, we wouldn't use Triple Strike that much. So, so Last Strike does exist. It is something we occasionally do on, you know, Silver Border slash Acorn cards. Okay, the next thing that Richard Garfield did evasive-wise was protection. Oh, not protection. Sorry, I jumped ahead. trample. We'll get to protection in a second. Trample. So flying first dragon trample and protection somewhat, but the first three are all still evergreen abilities.

Trample says basically, if I do damage to the creature, any excess damage I would do beyond their toughness, I get it due to the player, to their controller. So trample is a nice way to help larger things get through. The interesting thing about trample is it's evasion in the sense that it helps get damage through. but it's interesting and that really it's meant for larger creatures with higher power and the idea is

that it helps get some through like if I want to get a giant creature to be a finisher this is where Trample came from Richard wanted to make some big creatures because one of the fun things about magic is to make, you know, when you get up to high amounts of mana you want to make big creatures

but the problem is if I just make big creatures and there's enough board stall that I can't even attack with them that's not much fun so Richard made stuff I mean A they're big big creatures do undo board stall in the sense that if I'm big enough that you have to block with enough creatures to stop my creature I'm going to eradicate most of your board like, you know, if I have an 8-8 and you have to block with three creatures

stop my 8-8, I've done a lot to clean up your board and make it easier for me to get through. But trample is nice because if Richard put trample on big creatures, even if you chumped with the big creatures, the big creatures still did some damage. One of the big problems with big creatures can be, well, my one-one can keep you from hitting me, And if I, over time, have built them enough small things in the early game, when I get to the late game, I have a little bit of fodder that I can sacrifice.

Well, if you get at your giant thing and I can just keep throwing my little things in front of it, it really lessens the value of the big things. So, Richard came up with Trample, and Trample with Sor said, well, I'm big, and I really need you to block me with bigger things, not with little tiny things. You're not really stopping me too much. You know, if I have a 6-6-6-st-tramp, you're black with a 1-1. okay you're stopping one point but I'm still getting through for five and so um now tramples the trample is stuck around trample does have it's not as easy to understand that the concept of trample

is not hard it's not like you don't understand oh i trample over people understand the general concept um there's just a lot of interaction with trample that can be a little bit confusing for example um most people don't understand how death touch works with trample i'll get a death touch in a sec but um like What happens when I have other abilities? It can be confusing. How does it work with protection? There's a lot of... Trample's understood...

Like, the base case is understood of Trample. But as soon as you get a little more complex, it can be a little trickier. Okay, which gets us into protection. So protection is sort of deciduous now. So protection has four abilities. One of the abilities, which matters for today, is I cannot be blocked by creatures

of the color that I have protection from or of the quality I've protected from. Could be a color, could be protection from creatures or protection from a certain manacost or whatever. And so, if I have protection from something and your creature has that quality, you can't block me.

So protection is another means to get through. Let's say I'm going up against, I'm a white deck and going up against a red deck. Oh, if I get a creature protection from red, that can get through. The reason projection is deciduous and not Evergreen right now

is it really is four different abilities stapled together. I think it's debt, I think is the acronym. Basically the idea is you can't be damaged, you can't be enchanted or equipped, or if a counter is put on you of that color.

We don't a lot of countries that color. You can't be blocked and you can't be targeted. That's what debt, D, B, D.E.D. So it's just a lot to remember. do it, and it's flavorful, but there's a lot going on, and it's hard to deal sometimes with protection creatures, so we use it sparingly. Okay,

there was one other evasion creature built into Alpha, but we do not do anymore, but let's walk through that, which is land walk. And when I say landwalk, there actually, I believe in Alpha, there is Forest Walk, and Island Walk, and Swap Walk.

There later would be Mountain Walk and Plains Walk. I don't think Alpha has either of those. So the idea of land walk is I am so well-agrined. I understand forests or islands or swamps or whatever so well that if my opponent has them, I can sneak through them and they can't stop me. So if I have swamp walk, as long as my opponent has a swamp, I'm unblockable. And then once again, this is Richard trying to find other ways to get creatures through.

Like I got where he got there from the flavor standpoint. The reason we ended up retiring Landwalk is it's very much. very hit or miss. Meaning, if I'm, if my opponent's playing, you know, I have a forest walk, and my opponent is playing green and has some forests, there's not really much answer, I mean, other than destroying the creature, there's no creature answer to it. You just can't block. And blowing up your own forest is this not practical. This is not a real answer to dealing with forest walk. So the reality is if I have forestwalk and you have forests, wow, I'm unblockable. But if I have forest walking, you don't, you don't have forests, I'm a bad.

creature, right? And so it really was a feaster fan problem where we want our evasion to be a little more consistent. So anyway, that, so in Alpha, flying first strike trample protection landwalk. Those were the abilities that were in Alpha. So an ability that happened, so there was one ability, sorry, there are some more abilities in Alpha that were not named at the time, that were not keywords, but were evasion abilities. So one was fear on a card called fear, and fear was an aura at the time, and it said, enchanted creature can only be blocked by black or artifact creatures. And the idea was, I, fear was weird because I'm making things fearful. I'm fearsome or whatever. And so only black creatures that are used to scary things, or artifact creatures that

mostly are emotionless and aren't scared, can block me. We would later turn fear into a keyword called fear, which is, once again, a little weird because it's representing something that makes people afraid. And fear had a similar problem to landwalk in that it was like, if my opponent is playing block, well, they can block me. If they're not, they mostly can't. The artifact thing was nice. Any that can play artifact creatures.

So that was the one thing that at least, allowed some answers. But a lot of times you didn't have artifact creatures, and so we ended up changing fear to a ability called intimidate. So intimidate was you can only be blocked by creatures that share a color with me or artifact creatures. So kind of fear but adjusted. It was weird if I put fear on a red creature,

well, you can't be black by black creatures. But now, intimidate on a red creatures means I can only be blacked by red creatures or artifacts creatures. Intimidate basically had the same problem that feared it. It was a little broader, but still had the same basic problem. So eventually, it got replaced by menace. Menace first showed up, I believe, in Fallen Empires on Goblin Wardrums was the name. And basically, this wasn't a, it granted you really to all your creatures, I think.

But the idea of menace is, I must be blocked by two or more creatures. And the reason menace has proven to be a really good evasive keyword is, It is something your opponent can do. Now, if you only have one creature, you can't block my creature. Great. In early games, it allows things to get through. Or if you attack and only leave one creature behind, my menace creature can get through. But it's something in which my opponent has, they can interact with it.

If I have land walk or fear, and they're just not having the right color, there's nothing they can do about it. But if I have menace, they can go, oh, well, I will not block with these two creatures and leave them back. And now I can answer menace. And menace is nice because menace makes things harder to block. And as you put menace on bigger things, once again, the key to any kind of evasion is kind of chopping up the battlefield to say, well, not everything can block this.

And so when I'm doing my math on figuring things out, I'm like, well, only this can block that. Or, you know, it sort of lessens what can happen. And menace is proven to be really good in that regard. Probably menace, of all the current keywords, the keyword that I think is the best, sort of not alpha keywords that we added to the game. I think menace is up there. And there's other stuff like Haste is really good,

although Haste did exist in Alpha just, it was written out and not named. Okay. There is a few keyword abilities that have an invasive quality to them, but not ones that were in alpha, but we added later. So I talked about how in future site

we added in Reach for the first time. Well, there was another ability we added. Death Touch. Now, once again, death touch was based on an ability that kind of showed up in Alpha. Alpha had, yeah, oh, I guess I didn't go through all the Alpha abilities. Alpha did have a couple other abilities. Let me run through that for I get you that touch. Alpha did have two, the basilisk and the cockatrice. So it had a ability that says, if you block me and you're not a wall, you get destroyed. So that discouraged you from attacking. It had a dwarven warriors had what we nicknamed Tunneling. and that allows you to make a creature with power two or less unblockable.

So that's a good ability where it's making evasion, but it doesn't have invasion, but can grant evasion, but only the small thing. So it helps you get through, but it's more contained. The other thing that shows up in Alpha, I believe in Alpha, is Can't Be Blocked. That's another ability. We did talk about keywording Can't Be Blocked during FutureSight. The problem is unblockable, which is what you would call it.

in order to write a keyword, it has to wrap an exact set of words. And the problem was we do unblockable a lot of different ways and it just didn't work well. So we changed unblockable that can't be blocked so people would stop confusing it as a keyword. Unblockable really sounded like a keyword when it technically wasn't.

And it matters in some corner cases. So it can't be blockeders there. The other thing that showed up, I guess not an alpha, but early on is like tapers. Like, I think Barrage had the first taper. Was a decoy. The idea is a creature that you can tap to tap creatures. That's another common thing we do now.

Normally it requires mana, and the idea is you have to spend some resources to tap things. Sometimes we do it when the creature attacks. It can tap something. Sometimes we do creatures that when I attack, target creature can't block or activating target creature can't block. what we call panic sort of in red. So once again, that wasn't an alpha

that it showed up shortly in the first couple of years of magic it showed up. So there are a lot of abilities like that, things in which it's not a keyword baked onto the creature, but there's things that creatures can do that help either let themselves or something else be hard to block. Okay, which brings us to Death Touch. So in FutureSight, we decided, we wanted to take a bunch of abilities we were doing a lot of

and consolidate them. So, Reach shows up there. Shroud, which would later become hex-proof, shows up there, lifelink shows up there, and Death Touch. So Death Touch is a lot like First Strike in that it just makes your opponent reevaluate whether you want to block it.

If I have a creature with Death Touch, it means you know for sure anything blocking it will die. So if I attack with a one-woman death touch, for example, you can block it, but if you don't have something small, like maybe if you have a 1-1, you're more than willing to block my 1-1. But if you're a smallest creature is a 3-3 or 4-4, do you really want to trade that with my 1-1? Maybe you don't. And it's only doing one damage, so maybe you let that through.

So death touch is kind of the pseudo-evation in that. It encourages your opponent at times to not block, which you can get damage through. The other thing that's also sort of sideways evasion, indestructible. So indestructible says, I'm not going to die in combat. meaning if I attack with an indestructible creature and sometimes the indestructible might be indestructible activated indestructible or a spell made it indestructible we do put it restrictible on creatures but not

not very often as a basic ability but the idea is if I can't die you know can't block me and not have your creature die you're discouraged from blocking me so death touch and indestructible both have that sort of encourages evasion it's not like I said there's sort of straight invasion, I explain why you can't block me.

Something about the creature says you can't block me in less, or you can't block me. There's conditions by which you can't block me. Sort of supportive invasion is the idea of, well, you can block me, but I can make situations where you don't want to block me. And that also counts for evasion because, you know, really what we're trying to do is we want a mix of things to help get you through. A few other things we owe, another ability that we use a lot these days. didn't start an alpha, is really we nicknamed Daunt.

What Daunt says is, I can't be blocked by creatures with power two or less. It's sort of a simpler version of Trample. One of the things about trample is, I'm a big creature, eh, it's not really efficient to block me with small creatures. Daunt is kind of something similar,

just a little easier to understand, which is, well, small things can't block me. So if you have a bunch of 112s, and I have a creature with Daunt, hey, I can attack. So it is a means by which I could get. get through. Some other...

Oh, we also have done what we nicknamed Nimble. Nimble's the opposite of daunt. Nimble just says, I can't be plucked by big things. And normally we put that on little creatures, the idea that I'm nimble and I get by and the big, you know, the big things aren't fast enough to deal with me. So we do that from time to time. We've had a few keywords that have been invasive keywords.

I talked about Shed already. So let's talk a little bit about a skull. So Skulk showed up in shadows of Innestrade. I made Skulk, and I actually originally made Skulk to think maybe Skulk would be a cool evergreen ability. I actually made it thinking it might be evergreen. The idea of Skulk is I can't be black by anything that's bigger than me. And the idea that's kind of cool is that oftentimes when you have an evasive ability, if you, when you put things on it and make it bigger, you know, it's a little more dangerous because it's able to get

through. And the idea of a skulk was, well, if you make the skull growth bigger, more things can deal with it. More things can block it. Like, for example, we had a carticone visible man in original Indistrade, and it was unblockable and it was, I think it was, can't be targeted, I think it had hex-proof. So the point is, if you could stick on an aura on it, or an equipment on it, and make it really big, it definitely sort of, your opponent can't destroy it because that's hex-proof.

And it's hard, they can't block it. And so it is really hard to deal with. And so we're very more conscious of thinking about, we want invasion to happen, but we don't want to make it too easy for you to get giant things your opponent can't interact with. The problem with Skulk, the reason Skulk did not become Evergreen,

was it required a little bit more math. It requires what we call, you have to compare, right? That when I attack, okay, how big your thing? How big are my things? Like, it requires you, it's not something that just tells you what, like, I'm flying or not flying. Is it flying? Is it flying?

This is not flying? And that the skull creature also can change depending on if its power changes. So it ended up being just a little bit more math. Not that it's a bad mechanic. I do think we'll use Skulk again. It just didn't make sense as an Evergreen. It was a little much as an evergreen. I do think we'll see Skulk,

but like I said, it's a little more complex than we wanted for evergreen. Another ability that we've used from time to time. I'm not a fan of this one, but we do use it. is what nickname is burrowing, which is I can't be blocked by flyers. We've occasionally put that on creatures that themselves don't have flying,

especially green creatures, which is not my fan. Green doesn't have flying. Stop giving it pseudo-flying. We do use it on a rare occasion. I'm not, more, hey, it can't be blocked by flyers. We do have a name for that. It's called flying. So if I want you to knock people like a flyers,

I can put flying on it. Every once in a while, there's some flavor where you really want to be not by flyers if you don't technically fly. I mean, it's a same thing. something available to us. Mostly, the sort of the point of today is,

it is really, really important that creature stall, board stall is a real honest problem, one of the, what I'll call a structural problem of magic. Like, if you don't deal with it, the game naturally does it.

So you, as the designer of an expansion, have to make sure that you have answers for that. Now, luckily, we understand that problem. Built into evasion is a lot of answers. You don't have to add anything to your set, beyond what evasion, you know, beyond what is evergreen. We have a lot of evergreen things to help you in that regard. That doesn't mean we don't add things and there are

other abilities added from time to time. And like I said, there's a lot of smaller things. The idea that I think that can tap things or things that can't block or things that grant flying, you know, things that grant temporary evasion, or even things that grant temporarily pseudo evasion, like, I'm unblockable to the end of turn or I've death such at the end of turns. It's sort of like, oh, well, you know, especially like death touch and a turn. It's like, well, do I want to kill this thing? It doesn't even have death touch long term. It's just a one-time thing.

Do I want to trade? Sometimes you'll trade with a death touch so it doesn't keep happening. But it's a one-time thing, it becomes trickier. But anyway, like I said, evasive is a super important part of the game. We have to have a lot of answers for us. I'm sure I miss one or two. I named most of the ongoing ones that we use. I'm sure I miss one or two of individual cases of stuff we've done.

But like I said, it is, oh, one I forgot before I'll end up. I forgot the gingerbroot ability. The gingerbread ability is we wanted to represent something being very fast. And the way gingerbread works is I can only be black by creatures with haste. Which is also interesting because haste normally doesn't have a function beyond the first turn. So it lets haste to have an extra little value. We don't use that ability a lot. But it's a fun.

If I want to represent speed, it was a fun. And we've used it on a couple of things. times, mostly in Eldrain. Anyway, that is my talk on aviation. A very, very important part of the game, something we've spent a lot of times, something Richard Garfields realized in the beginning he needed, something we've evolved over

time, and we've a pretty good suite of evasive abilities. It's something we definitely use every set. And if you are at home building your own set, you do need to think about your evasive suite. It is important, and you've got to make sure, like I said, every color has things you can do to help

get through. You need to use those tools, they're there for a reason. But anyway, that is it, guys. That is my talk on invasion. But I'm not at work, so we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you all next time.

Bye-bye.