Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1347: High Mana Value Spells, Part 1

Episode Date: June 5, 2026

This episode is part one of a two-part series where I talk about the designs of all the cards that have a mana value of 11 or higher.

I'm not pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work at home edition. Okay, so I have not done a card-by-card episode in a while. I like to do these at home so I can read because it's harder to read them when I'm driving. So what I'm going to do today, so once before I did a, I once did one, which was about mostly artifacts that cost zero. So today I'm going the opposite end.

So today is about cards that cost 11 or more. So these are some of the most expensive. In fact, there are 47 cards currently in the game that cost more than 10 minutes, so 11 or more manna value. We're going to talk about those today. We're going to go in chronological order, but I'm going to talk about making the big cards of magic. So there's only one that pre-exist me, actually. It came out in Ice Age. It was Polar Cracken, 8 blue, blue, blue.

So 11 man in total, 3 of which is blue. trample, cumulative upkeep, sacrifice a land, and the creature enters tapped. So real quickly, just remind people what cumulative upkeep is. So cumulative upkeep is, it's a cost, but the cost keeps going up every turn. So on the first turn, you pay it during your upkeep, so you'll pay Paul or Cracken, on the next turn, you'll have to sacrifice a land. Then turn after that, you'll sacrifice two lands, then three lands, then four lands.

And the idea is polar cracking takes 11 mana to play. So, you know, he's mostly eating the lands you have. So it's not really until the fifth turn because you'll eat one, then two, then three, then four, that's ten. And it has 11. Now, it's possible if you play a land every single turn, you do get a fifth turn out of it. Or if you play it after you already have more than 11 land. So polar cracking is interesting. When Alpha came out, there was a card in it called Force of N.

nature that was an 8-8 creature. And then they made Colossus of Sardia, which was a 9-9 creature. Now, what was the 10-10 creature? The 10-10 creature, this was the 11-11. The 10-10 was also a blue creature. It was a Leviathan.

So early on, somehow we were very afraid of making giant creatures that just could be giant creatures. Like, the funny thing is, I think now, for 11-manee, you can have an 11-11 trampler. I don't even know if they have to come and play tapped or have any cumulative upkeep or any upkeep of any kind. But back in the day, the idea of how to eat things.

So this was, we were playing this little game where we kept making things bigger. And so we had, like I said, 8, 8, 9, 9, and 10, 10. This was 11, 11, 11. I would later make a 12, 12 mirage, which did not have a man of value of 11 or higher. It had a man of value of 1 called Frexian Dreadnought. But that's off topic for this one. Anyway, so Polar Cracken, oh, the other thing about the funny thing about Polar Cracken was there was a card in it.

I forget what it ended up we can call it, but they wanted to call it polar bear. And then the creative team informed them that you couldn't call it polar bear because Dominaria didn't have poles, which doesn't make any sense. And then they're like, but there's Polar Cracken. If you can have a Polar Cracken, you have a Polar Bear.

But anyway, so Polar Cracken is our first. So this showed up, like I said, an Ice Age, which is back in 1994. So the second year of magic. The next creature that costs more than 11 doesn't happen until 1998, so it takes a little while. And this is a card I made. It's not even one card. It is two cards.

It is, of course, the BFM, the big furry monster. So this shows up in unglued. So it costs 15 black mana. I could say the word black 15 times, but you get it. And so it is the biggest, baddest, nastiest, scariest, scariest creature you'll ever be. see is this creature type. I believe that's all hyphenated now. And then, uh, in order to play BFM, so there's a left side of BFM and a right side of BFM, it's a 99, 99 creature. The funny thing, by the way, was I originally made it a hundred, a hundred creature and Bill made me change it.

At the time, uh, Bill was saying that he wanted, he wanted to sort of save the ability to one day do three digits, like, we should save that. I also now think maybe it just wouldn't fit. if it was 100-100, 99 takes a lot. Anyway, so the idea was I wasn't allowed... Oh, so sorry. So the way the card works is you have to have both of them in your hand to play it. So if you want to play BFM, you can't have the left side or the right, so you have to have both sides.

You can only play them together. But if you do, it is by far, by far, by far of a largest creature in magic. And because I wasn't allowed to have trample in unglued, because the idea was unglued was more for the casual crowd and trample was too hard, I'm not sure why. It can only be blacked by three or more creatures, so it's like super menace. In fact, it's funny,

menace first shows up on goblin war drums in Fallen Empire. This is not shortly after that. So you can see us messing around in menace space without technically being menace. The other thing about this, the flavor text is pretty fun. It was big, really, really big. No bigger than that. Keep going.

More, no more. talking crackens and dreadnots for jewelry. It was big. Arna Kynarwood, Sky Knight. So one of the things I did to show how big it was is we took the two biggest creatures, one of which was polar cracking they just talked about. The other was Frickson Dreadnought,

which I also talked about. So the 11-11 and 1212, it's wearing it as earrings to show you the scale of it. Because polar cracking, you can just see a piece of the polar kraken and there's a tiny little polar bear. I was speaking of it, which is a polar bear in polar dragon. Anyway.

So Big Friday night just to show how big it was. The other thing that's really funny is I made sure that when I called it BFM, I was making nods to things, and I made sure that it actually had a parenthetical so you understood what BFM stood for, which of course was big furry monster. By the way, BFM was the highest rated card, or cards, I guess there's two of them, in Unglued, and it would inspire me to make split cards. I originally made split cards for unglued two. The idea was if people like a card so big

that it has to be on two cards, maybe they like a card so small that two of them fit on one card. And so BFM was also, BFM was also the inspiration for Meld. Ken Nagel was a huge fan of BFM and he kept trying to find different ways to recreate it. Eventually he realized that if we did double-face cards, he could flip them over and have them snap together,

that you could have a left and a right side. So BFM did a lot, inspired a lot of things. Okay, let's move on. So the next big card happens in Plain Shift. It is Draco. It costs 16. So this is now the highest cost we'd ever done at 16. So 11, then 15, now 16.

So it is an artifact creature. It's a dragon, 9-9-Dragon. It has domain. The spell costs two less to cast for each basic land type amongst lands you control. It is flying. And then also domain, at the beginning of your upkeep, sacrifice this creature unless you pay 10. This cost to do two for each basic land type

among land you control. So the idea is if you have all five basic land types, this creature costs six to cast for a nine-nine-flying creature and has no upkeep. But for everything less than that, it starts to be more expensive and more to upkeep. I should stress the actual printed card and plaintiff didn't say domain on it.

We would later go back and in Oracle put domain. domain's an ability word. Domain first showed up in invasion. In fact, inspired by Barry Reich, the very first person that Richard ever played magic with, made a set called Spectral Chaos. Richard had all his designers make set. So the East Coast Playtesters made Ice Age,

the Bridge Club made Mirage, and Barry made Spectral Chaos. Spectral Chaos, pieces of it got absorbed into invasion, which included the Barry mechanic, which was Domain. The reason, by the way, that Draco is called Draco, I believe, is in order to fit on the card, he couldn't have a really long name. So we needed to come up with a pretty short name. Draco, I believe, is, I think it's Latin for Dragon or something akin there.

But anyway, that is Draco. Okay, next up is Hypnox. So this is in Torment. So Hypnox is eight black, black, black. So 11 total, three of which is black. It's a nightmare whore, 8-8. It is flying. When this creature enters, if you cast it from your hand,

exile all cards from target opponent's hand. When this creature leaves the battlefield, return the exile cards to their owner's hand. So the nightmare was a mechanic created by Richard Garfield, actually, in Odyssey, and we ended up pushing it off to torment because we decided we wanted to put it on black creatures and torment, for those who don't remember,

the gimmick of torment is it had more black cards in any other color. In fact, red and blue were normal, black had more, white and green head less. And then judgment, the very next set, we reversed it, so there's more white and green cards and less black cards. Anyway, so the nightmare mechanic,

Richard designed it in Odyssey. I chose to push it back to torment because I wanted to put it in black. So the nightmare mechanic shows up, I believe black in torment. It shows up in red and blue, I think, in judgment. And there, in red and blue, you are using it on your own.

stuff where black nightmares used it on your opponent stuff. Interestingly, this would eventually become a white thing with like oblivion ring type effects. And the idea being is while this creature is in play, it's getting rid of something, but if you get rid of the creature, you get it back. And so you can destroy a creature. So Hypnox was us trying to do the big splashy version of this. This was a rare. Mythic Rare has worked a thing yet. And the idea was, well, what's the largest thing that it could do? Well, what if it took your whole hand? Now, the irony of this, a little flaw of this, looking back, is it costs 11.

I'm not sure how many cards are in the opponent's hand when you play it for 11. Now, there are ways to sneak this thing out faster than that. Reanimation is probably the best way. That is where this ability becomes a little more interesting, because if you can sneak it out faster, you'll actually catch them the cards in their hand. But anyway, that is Hypnox, our 8-8. Okay, next up is Dark Steel Colossus, which was from Dark Steel.

Dark Steel was the second set in the Mirren Block. So one of the things... So basically, I was working... We were working on Dark Steel. And Bill Rose said to me, he and I were having a conversation about trying to find new mechanics for Dark Steel. And he said, I said to him,

I wanted to do something cool with artifacts. I want to do something new. And Bill goes, well, Is there anything players want their artifacts to do? And I joked and I said, yeah, not be destroyed. And then I thought for a second, I go, wait a minute. And so I came back with indestructible. We ended up tying indestructible to, within Miriden,

there's this material called Dark Steel, which is what this card is named after and what the set is named after. Dark Steel is this super dense material that basically is indestructible. So once we had, indestructible. Once again, I was trying to find the largest, scariest version of it. So I thought it would be cool. What if I just made a giant creature? And so we ended up deciding to make it an 11-manna 11-11. So it has trample. So Darkseal Colossus cost 11, artifact creature, Gallum. It's got trample. It's got indestructible. And then a dark-sale

colossus we put into a graveyard from anywhere, reveal Dark-Shill Colossus and shuffle it into its owner's library. That's an ability you'll see show up on a couple of these cards. That is we don't want reanimation to be problematic. So sometimes when we make giant creatures, we make it so it doesn't go to the graveyard. So you, like, honestly have to cast it rather than cheating it into play. I think we learned from stuff like Hypnox, I think. Anyway, this ended up being a really popular card. It's just big and splashy.

And if you're doing things to get out a big, splashy creature, this is pretty cool. And the illustration by Carl Critchlow is real cool. and people really liked it. So anyway, that is Dark Steel Colossus. Okay, next up is Blink Moth Infusion. So finally, we get to the first spell that's not a creature. So Blink Moth Infusion is 12 blue-blue-blue,

so 14 total mana, instant. It has affinity for artifacts. The spell costs one less to cast for each artifact you control. And it says, untap all artifacts. So one of the things you'll find in today's thing, as we're talking about expensive cards, is one of the reasons we have expensive cards

is, well, they're not really that cost. Like, affinity for artifacts make spells cheaper. It's a cost reduction mechanic. So, in order to make it reasonable, we have to cost it kind of high. So, we don't normally make all that many 14-manna

instance. You know, it's just not the kind of thing we do. But really, this card in many ways is, I mean, if you're obviously this card untapped artifacts so you're not even going to want to cast this card if you don't have artifacts

and if you have artifacts you know the more that you have so this kind of card makes you want to play a lot of artifact mana and just have a lot of artifacts in general especially things that tap but if you have a deck that's all artifacts or mostly artifacts it's nice the spell really sort of fits in

it's not easy to put instance and sorceries in an all artifact deck usually they don't do enough for you but this one really needs the art So it sort of justifies it. Okay, next up is also from... Oh, so sorry, I didn't mention that Blink Moth Infusion was from Fifth Dawn.

And this next card is also from Fifth Dawn and also is Affinity for Artifacts. So Micahinthens Gallum is 11. Artifact Creature Gallum, 4-5. Affinity for Artifacts, spells, spells wellness, each artifact you control. Artifact creatures spells you cast have affinity for artifacts. So not only does it have affinity for artifacts,

it gives all your artifact creatures are fitting for artifacts. And so this is a pretty powerful spell, which is why we costed it so much. Because it really, one of the things about the mirrored and block was it had an artifact matter theme, and we were really encouraging you to make decks

that were all artifacts, or mostly artifacts. We even gave you lands that were artifacts, so you could do it. And this is definitely one of those things that you wanted a lot of artifacts because it got cheaper and it made other things cheaper, and so it was pretty cool. Okay, next up, we get to Unhinged.

Okay, so the first card, interestingly enough, there is no cost in this card that costs more than four, yet it belongs in today's category. Why is that? So the card is who, what, when, where, and why. It is a split card. So I was originally doing split cards in Unglue 2. Unglue 2 did not happen. It got put on hiatus. So instead, I pushed it off to invasion.

And we did split cards in invasion. They went over really well. So in Unhinged, I wanted to do a nod towards split cards, but I decided to do... At first I was going to do a split-split card, meaning a split card of two split cards. But then I realized I could do all five colors. So not only is there a split card to split cards, but one of the split cards has a split card. So who is X and W instant? Target against X life.

What is two in a red instant, destroyed target artifact? When is two in a blue instant counter-target creature spell? Where is three in a black instant destroy target land? Why is one in the green instant destroy target enchantment? So the idea essentially is it just does lots of different things. You can get rid of artifacts and counter-creatures, destroy land, get rid of enchantments, gain life. This, in fact, by the way, has become one of the most popular cube cards, because it's just very versatile. So why is it in today's thing?

So, who has a manor value of one? What of three? When three? Where, four? Why two? So the way split cards work is the manna value of the split card in all zones other than the stack is all of them added together. So let's see. So it's one and three is four, seven, eleven, thirteen.

This has a manor value of 13. And that is why it is here. Okay. Next up is Gleimax. Gleimax has the highest mana value of any. card we've ever made. It costs $1 million. One million.

So it's a legendary artifact. You choose all targets for all spells and abilities. And its flavor taxes, help us. R&D under mental domination of alien brain and jar. Only chance. Glemax, blatant disregard for flavor text. Send help. So Glemax, there's a long-running,

what I don't want to call it, urban legend. That R&D is run by an alien brain. in a jar. It started on the internet and just became a running joke. So I thought it'd be fun to make Glemax, and I thought the idea was, what if I made Gleanax, the most expensive card you've ever played? And I made it a million. We'll find out why in a second. And then, I just wanted to do something super powerful. Well, it controls everybody. That's the idea.

So it just lets you choose all targets and abilities. Once you get it in play, it is very hard to get rid of it. Not an impossible. There are non-targeted artifact construction spells, but there's not a lot of them. So anyway, that is Glemax. Also is Mox Lotus. Mox Lotus costs 15. Tap, add infinite mana.

Yes, it's a little generic mana symbol with an infinite sign in it. And then for 100, add one mana of any color. So this is how you cast Glemax. I was trying to make something. The idea was something that was, how do you make a mox and a lotus combined? And so I'm just trying to make something that was the most splashy thing possible. Originally, by the way, it tapped for infinite manna of any color, but then I realized, A, I wanted to make the infinite mana symbol,

and B, I thought it was fun that you could, since you had infinite mana, you could turn it into one man of any color. And so I decided, why not make the largest activation we've ever made? A hundred, because it doesn't matter. You have infinite mana. So, oh, the card also originally said you do not lose life due to manaburn, because manor burn existed, but there's no manor burn, so that rule got to go away.

So unhinged as three cards. There are some other sets. In fact, there's a set coming up that's going to beat that. But still, for now, three cards that cost 11 or more. Also, say, we're up to 1998, and we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. We've gotten up to 11 cards that cost. So, as you'll see, it speeds up a little bit as time goes on. We start making more expensive cards.

So next happens in Saviors of Kamagawa, called Ename as 1. 8 black, black, green, green. So 12 men a total, 2 of which is black, 2 which is green. It's an 8-8 legendary creature of spirit. When Anami as 1 enters, if you cast it from your hand, you may search your library for a spirit permanent card, put it on the battlefield, then shuffle. When an Anami as 1 dies, you may exile it.

If you do, return target spirit permanent card from your graveyard to the battlefield. So the idea was it was interconnecting with the spirits. So when it enters, you get a tutor for a spirit. When it dies, you reanimate a spirit. So that was the idea. We made it expensive just because there are a lot of spirits that's expensive. This card really is a three-for-one in the sense that you get three different cards for this one card.

And so that's pretty powerful. And I don't have much more same. It nominees one. Okay, next. Auto-Factan worm. This is from Ravica City of Guilds. It costs 10 green, green, green-green, green. white, white. So 15 total

mana. This is as much as B-F-M on one card, not two. So it's a creature, a worm, W-U-R-M. It is Convoke. Your creatures can help cast a spell. Each creature you tap while casting the spell pays for one or one manna of that creature's color. Trample.

So this is a 9-14 creature. We put Convoke into... In fact, Convoke was made by Richard Garfield originally for Boros, the red-white guild. I moved it to Green White. That Green White had this whole... Red White had an army, and they did work together,

but I felt that Green White's theme was more about the number of people. It's about volume of people and things, and that Selesnia's strength comes from the fact that there's so many people. And Convoke just felt a little more apropos there. Convoke went on to be a very popular mechanic. This card, we just wanted to have a card that is really expensive, meaning you almost couldn't cast this for its mana. You had to have some creatures.

But it did make something pretty big. And in fact, there's a kill spell in Rabniko that I think kills every creature except Autofaxon word. So, anyway, I thought that was pretty cool. Okay, next up, we get Emeracle, the Ant, torn from Rizzo the Odrazi. So I said unhinged before

had three cards of 15 more. Well, Riza of Odrazi had four cards. So we're going to talk about them. Okay, so Emerald and Toram cost 15 generic mana. Oh, I also should mention that this is a colorless card. It is not an artifact. It's just a legendary creature, Eldrazi, 15-15 for 15 mana. The spell can't be countered.

When you cast the spell, take an extra turn after this one. Flying protection for spells that are one or more colors. Annihilator 6. Annihilator says when you attack, your opponent has to sacrifice six permanence. When Emeracle is put into the graveyard from anywhere, its owner shuffles the graveyard into the library. Oh, once again, that's a rider to keep you from reanimating it. We really

wanted you to cast it from your hand. That's why it's a castrider. That's why it doesn't go to your graveyard easily. It has the largest annihilator, I believe. Protection from colored spells, which is really interesting. But anyway, this was a very popular card. It's one of the three

Eldrazi creature. What I call them? The Eldrazi... I'm not sure what it calls the Eldrazi. The big thing. Okay, so next up, it that betrays 12 generic mana. It's an 11-11 creature Eldrazi, annihilator 2. When this creature attacks, the fighting player sacrifices to permanence of their choice.

Whenever an opponent's sacrifice is a non-token permanent, put that card to the battlefield under your control. So not only does it have an annihilator, but every time you annihilate things, you gain control of it. That's why it's so expensive. It's interesting. It's a 12-manor for an 11-11. That aesthetic is is slightly off to me. But, again, this is another. So one of the things about the Odrazi is we really wanted them to these giant,

these giant, colorless, inscrutable creatures. And this one kind of plays really cool with Annihilator. Okay, next up, Pathraiser of Ulamog. Once again, from Rise of the Odrazi. It's an 11-Mana, 9-9, creature of Adrazi. Annihilator 3. This creature can't be plucked except by three or more creatures. We actually go back and reuse the BFM text.

So this is only 9-9, that quite as big as BFM, although BFM costs more. But once again, it's a giant creature as color as an annihilator. So you can see a lot of... The reason this set has so many giant creatures is that was the theme of the set. It was what we call bad recluse or magic. So the final one is Ullabog. So Emmer Kuh and Ullabog were both cost 11 or more.

The third one did not. I'm not sure why. I think it cost 10. Anyway, Ulamag, the Infinite Geyer, 11 mana. 10, 10, a legendary creature, Eldrazi. When you cast this spell, destroy target permanent. It's indestructible, annihilator four. And then when Ulamag is put in the grave room from anywhere,

shovel the library, so the anti-reanimation text. We really wanted the Eldrazi to be big and exciting and really make you go, ooh, what's going on? And so I think it did a pretty good job of that. Okay, next up, world spine worm from return to Ravnikah. Eight green, green, green to 11 total, three watches green. It's a 15-15 worm, the creature. It is that trample.

When this creature dies, create three five-five green-worn creature tokens with trample. When world-spied worm is put into a graveyard from anywhere or shuffled to this library. So it's got the anti-reanimation text. And it's a 15-15 that dies into three-five-fives. So that is pretty awesome. I think we had done this on some smaller cards. This was just the biggest version we wanted of that. Okay, next up is

Enter the Infinite, our first sorcery of the day. So 8, blue, blue, blue, blue. So it's 12 mana total, four of which is blue. This is from Gate Crash. It's a sorcery. It says draw cards equal to the number of cards in your library. Then put a card from your hand on top of your library. You have no maximum hand size until your next turn.

So basically, this draws the library. then it puts a card back so you don't die on the next turn. Although the funny thing is, the idea really is, okay, you have one turn, you won't die. Like you do this, probably that's all for your turn because it costs so much mana. On your next turn, you'll draw your last card. And then kind of, you've got to figure out how not to die.

Either win that turn or find a way to get cards back into your library. And then the flavor taxes, don't just have an idea, have all of them. So as you can see today, a lot of the real expensive spells is us just trying to push it. I had done a card in Infinity where you drew your library, basically, and this was us trying to do that in Blackboarder. So it's pretty cool, and it's the fact that you put one card back, so you have a turn then to cash your spell, because you almost like you aren't doing anything in this turn. That's pretty cool. Okay, next up, temporal trespass.

This is from Fate Reforged. Eight blue, blue, blue. So 11 man a total, three witches blue. It's another sorcery. It's got Delve. Each card you exile from your graveyard while casting the spell pays for one. Take an extra turn after this one, exile temporal turnpast. So this is a time walk variant.

Gets you a turn. So Delve came about as interesting. When I was making FutureSight, one of the things we did in FutureSight is we had a future shifted sheet where we made things from the future. And so one of the ways we did it was we made a whole bunch of mechanics that didn't yet exist that maybe one day would. So Delve was... I actually made three different cars with Delve in FutureSight.

And I was very excited by Dev. I thought it was pretty cool. So it's one of the things I was looking for a place to put it. And then when we got... What is their name? Black, white, blue. A black, blue, green. Blank on their name. The wedge in Concertarque here.

What is their name? I'm blinking their name. But anyway, they care about the graveyard, and they were a clan that cared about the graveyard. Keep one of say Sultari, but that's not it. That's one of them. That's from the, from shadow. Anyway, we decided to do dredge in that faction,

and so Dredge shows up in the first set, and then it also shows up in Fate Reforged. One of the things we did in Fate Reforged is the flavor of the whole block was, we go back to Tarkir, which is Sarkin's home, and Sarkin loves dragons, but all the dragons have been killed off. So Sarkin goes back in time, which is St. Rforge, and he saves Ugin, because Ugin had been killed by Boles. And saving Ugin saves the dragon. So when we come back, it's an alternate timeline in Dragers of Tarkir, where dragons reign supreme.

And so the idea was, because St.R.R.ge was the past. We took some of the mechanics from Kahn's Tarker and put it there, and some from Dragansar Kier. So he introduced some of the dragon Tarkir mechanics. but Delge was originally introduced in concert tar gear, and we also did in Fate Reforged. It turns out Delve is kind of broken, and so a lot of the cards with Delve got banned and restricted, so a little tricky.

Okay, the final one of today, or maybe I should wrap up for today, how are we doing on things? I think I'm going to wrap up today. I realize the next thing I've talked about is two different cards. So we're going to do that in the next one. So anyway, guys, I got through roughly half of them nuts. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to do a second podcast talking about giant spells.

And by giant spells, I don't mean giants. I don't think any of these are giants, but huge, big spells. But anyway, guys, I hope you enjoyed. Like I said, I hadn't done a card by card in a while, so it's fun to do these. I hope you guys enjoyed it today. But I can see my desk. 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.