Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1374: Getting the Banned Together, Part 5

Episode Date: August 21, 2026

This is part five of a new series, based on a talk I gave at MagicCon: Amsterdam, where I talk about the design of all the cards I had a major hand in that would later be banned or restricted.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's another drive to work. Okay, so today is part five in my getting the band together series. I am talking through every single card I had a major hand in that ever got banned or restricted. It is based on a talk I did at Magicon, Amsterdam. And there, I only had an hour, so I was speeding through it. So today, with these podcasts, let me have more.

more time so I can go in more depth. And the thing I need to start with is last time in part four, I wasn't sure where I left off in part three because there was a two-week gap because I went to Amsterdam and I went to San Diego for Comic-Con. And I guessed that I told the story that I did not tell. So I'm going to jump back real quickly and tell that story before continuing on with the current story. And that story is Gifts Ungiven.

In June of 2007, it was restricted in vintage. So gifts ungiven, for those that might not know it off the top of your head. It's three in a blue. It's an instant. You search your library for four differently named cards. Show them to your opponent. They pick two, which go into your hand, and the other two go to your discard pile. So the story behind this card actually goes all the way back to Tempest design, a completely different card.

A card called Intuition. So Intuition was a card I made in Tempest. And basically what it did was you went and got three cards out of your deck and showed it to your opponent and one went into your hand and two went to the discard pile. But when I wrote the card out,

I forgot to say that it had different cards. So the very first time I'm playing against Mike Elliott, he goes and gets three of the same card. And then obviously it doesn't matter what I pick. Those are all going to the graveyard, you know. so. It was a way to get two cards in your graveyard that you wanted and the third in your hand, but there's no, your opponent didn't pick anything. So I say to him, I go, Mike, that's not how the card works. Sorry, I go, it has to be a different named card. And Mike's like, well, Mike's like,

well, Mike, I wrote it wrong. I'm the designer. I'm telling you that's the intent. And then Mike goes, I like it. And I'm like, but Mike, that's the whole point is your opponent has actual decisions to make. If you get all the same card, there's no decision. And so he ended up going to R&D, and he convinced them not to change it, even though it was my card, and it didn't follow what I wanted. Very frustrating. So, many years later, or not many, a few years later, I decided just to remake the card. Like, okay, I didn't get the card I wanted.

I'll just make it again. And so instead of three cards, I made it four cards, just to change it up a little bit from intuition. And I was very clear this time, four differently named cards. So one of the things that's really interesting is that one of the fun things about this card, which is kind of what I want to do with intuition, is that you want to get cards that you both want in your hand or you want in your discard pile. Like, I thought that was an interesting decision.

So anyway, as often happens in design, if you don't get what you want, if you're patient, I like to say magic is a hungry monster, you get opportunities later. Interestingly enough, I don't think intuition ever got banned. at least I didn't say have a record of being banned but this card did so that's kind of interesting on some level that

gifts given I also by the way parody gifts given gifts ungiven in one of the holiday cards called gifts given which I don't get a parody a lot of things in holiday cards

okay so unless we left we were September 2011 banned in modern were two cards Cloudpost and write a flame so Cloudpost was a land enters a locust, first locust, enters a battlefield tap,

and you tap, and you add one manner for each locust. So this lamb is doing a couple things. I've talked in this series a bunch of times how much I like antiquities. Antiquities had a thing called Erzotron, Erza's mine, Erz's power plant, and Erz's power. That it combined, they each tap for one,

but when you get them all together, they tap for seven, right? That they go up in volume when you have all of them together. there. And also, I also liked the card plague rat. I like the idea that cards get more powerful as you have more of them. And so this was kind of a cross between plague rat and Erza's Tron and a little bit of Mishra's factory. But the idea is, here's a land

that taps for more, the more of this land that you have. And people often ask why don't we make more a locust? The answer is the locusts are kind of powerful. So we have to be careful how many locusts we make. Just, I mean, I mean, obviously, Cloudpost by itself got banned. I don't think another locust exists when it got banned. So, obviously, it's pretty powerful. Right of flame.

It's a source for one red. You add RR to your manipole, and then you add additional R for every copy of right of flame in your discard pile. So there's a couple things going on in this card. First, one of my big tasks when I got to Wizards, and I talked a bit about this, is I did a lot of cleaning up of the color pie. early magic

like the colors were all there and their general philosophies are all there but a lot of things went in a lot of places it wasn't as consistent as possible

and it was undermining like strengths and weaknesses like a lot of what the color pie needs to do is focus and like push in certain directions so one of the things I did

early on was I thought there were some abilities that were just in the wrong place for example in alpha manner rituals are in black

darker ritual But when I sort of looked at the colors, I liked the idea that green was long-term man, and that made total sense. But, you know, short-term advantage wasn't really a black thing. It was a red thing. That red was the color all about, I get things now, now, now, and, you know, does it work out later? Who knows? I get it now. And so I shifted rituals from black over to red.

And so I started making things that sort of did that. Now, the other issue is rituals themselves are somewhat powerful. Obviously, this got banned, so it's an evidence. So what I did was I wanted to make something that allowed you access to mana. Because Dark Ritual was a little strong, the base card here, first of all, I believe, I said it's a sorcery, right? I believe it's a sorcery. Yes. Dark Ritual is an instant.

So this is a sorcery. And instead of three mana, it produces two mana. But the second one does produce three, and the third one produces four. And the fifth one. So it's like dark ritual in the sense that it gets you mana and actually everything passed the first one gets you three or more, but the first one only gets you two. Oh, so the way I worked this one, speaking of plague rats, in Alpha, not Alpha, in, well, sorry, in Alpha Richard made plague rats. In Tempest, I was very interested in trying to make a lightning bolt that was a plague rat, meant a lighting bolt that was more powerful as you had more of them.

And what I ended up doing, I made a card called Kindle. So the way Kindle works is it does two damage. It's one on an R, I think, instant. It does two damage, plus it does one damage for every Kindle in the discard pile. So the idea is the first Kindle does two, the second three, the third, four, the fourth, five. So the idea is it gets more powerful as you get more of them. That's how I... So I basically did...

This is basically a ritual kindle. I like the idea that the spell has the potential to be dark ritual, but, couldn't just out of the gate be dark ritual. Now, obviously, obviously, it was good enough that I got banned, so this card is still pretty good. I will say one of the challenges we have with rituals in general, and I'll get to another ritual at some point in this series, is getting mana, sort of cheating on mana, you know, getting head on mana is just so powerful. Like I said, so many, the three biggest things that I, cards to get on the band for

list for me is I help you avoid mana or, you know, I get you manor, make spells free. I draw you extra cards more so than I should, or I make engine cards that turn resources and other resources that are very powerful. Those are the three most common ways that I get cards on this list. Okay, and it gets us to March of 2012. Intangible Virtue was banned in Indistribe Block. So Intangible Virtue was an enchantment for one in a white, so two man total. And it said, creature tokens get plus one, plus one, and vigilance. Now, I have been a fan of creature tokens from the very beginning. So in Alpha, there was a card called the Wasp or the Hive, sorry, the Hive, which made Wasp tokens, 1-1 Flying Tokens.

That was the only thing in all of Alpha that made tokens, and it was highly desirable, especially by me. In fact, it was so desirable. So at the time, if you want to get cards going so early in Magics, you had to trade for them. You had to find someone who had it and trade for them. And nobody would trade the hive. So I remember the day I opened the hive, I was so excited. excited because I finally owned a hive. Anyway, I just always

like creature tokens. I'm not alone, but I've always liked creature tokens. I've made a lot of different things that made creature tokens. So anyway, I decided that it would be fun to make a card that cares about creature tokens. So the idea here is, oh, well, it's like White likes to do

boost your team things, but sometimes it gets specific. This specifically is, oh, it boosts your creature tokens. So the idea is encouraged you make a deck where you make lots of creature tokens, which White is good at doing. Like I said, this is mostly me combining two different things. White likes to do plus one plus one to either to your whole team or subset your team,

and White likes to make creature tokens, number one making creature tokens, especially small creature tokens. So this is kind of leaning into white space. The interesting thing is this card, the creative team did not like this card. And the reason for it is, from a creative standpoint, if I make a bear, meaning a grizzly, a card that's a two-two bear, or I make a token that's a two-two bear. There's no difference from that creatively.

Creatively, they're both the same thing. That the creative doesn't create tokens any different than anything else. They're creatures like anything else. The problem is I now made a card that said, okay, I give special credence to this thing that creatively we make no difference about. So the art isn't, it's pretty vague because it's like, well, we can't, like,

There's no such thing in the creative as a token creature. Like, token creatures are just a means mechanically for us to represent something. But in the creative, they're the same thing. There's literally no creative difference between a creature and the equivalent creature as a token. So anyway, that was very challenging for them. Okay, next up, in June of 2012, Ban in Commander, Grizzlebrand, 4. Black, black, black, so eight total, four of which is black, 7-7, flying, Life Link, pay seven life, draw seven cards.

So this was during, this is Avicen Restored. This is the third set in the Indistrade Block, original Indistrade Block. So the original plan, actually the original original plan was we were going to do, so Magic for many years did large, small, small. using Northern Hemisphere's large set in the fall, a small set in the winter, small set in the spring. Magic to do that for many years. Then, when we did Shadowmore, because we had to fit a fourth set in,

I came up the idea of doing two mini blocks, so it's large, small, large, small. But then for the first time, we did a large small in the spring, a large set in the spring. And it's sold better than a small set did, surprise, surprise. And sort of lights went off, and then Bill Rose, who's, I think,

head designer at this point, or at least he was, what we're talking about? He's talking about this. Oh, no, no, no. I'm head designer by this point. Bill's VP of R&D. So Bill really wants to start doing more with larger sets

in the blocks. The blocks aren't always just large, small, small. And Bill comes up the idea of what if the third set was large and had new creative to it. And so,

the original idea, I had pitched some Innestrade, and Bill was always a little bit nervous by Indistrade. I'm not sure why. So originally, we had a whole contest to create a brand new world. Brian Tinsman won it. It was a world kind of based on kind of a puzzle world, it's hard to explain. Anyway, Indusrod was going to go third. So it's going to be large, that small set with different mechanics, then go to a brand new plane, which is Indusrod for a large set with brand new mechanics. And then people convinced Bill that Indistrade had a lot of promise to it and maybe it would be neat to do the Gothic horror plan around Halloween. And so Bill came to me and said, oh, do you think you could do a large and a small set?

I'm like, yeah, I can do a large and a small set. So that ended up becoming an estradi and dark ascension. The third set was then scheduled to be somewhere else, maybe Brian's World somewhere else. And the creative team came and said, look, we can make one world a year. But what we can do is we can... because this has happened once before in Zendikar. So original Zendikar, same thing. Bill came in, said,

we're going to go to different worlds in the third block. Creative team comes in and goes, we can't do that, but we'll make an event so humongous that it'll explain why the mechanics are all different. That was Rise of the Odrasi. So in Indusrad, the same thing. Like, look, we're not going to go to a new world.

We don't have the creative team in the time wasn't nearly what it is today. We'll just make a giant event. And so the giant event ended up being that the world was in darkness, and part of it was the angel that was protecting everybody had been trapped in the thing called the Hell Tomb. She had been using that to capture, like, demons and things.

And then she accidentally gets trapped in it. And so Liliana needs to get Grizzlebrand, one of her demons, and he's trapped in that Hell Vault. So when she frees the Hell Vault, she, not on purpose, I guess, but releases Aveson. And the release of Aveson changes everything. And the third set is sort of Avesant

like coming and writing the world and sort of sending the monsters kind of scurrying is the idea. So it's like, you know, monster world, monster world, monster is on the run, sort of was the idea. So, and unlike Riza-O-Drazi, I think we had a little bit more overlap.

We carried a few things over. It still was mostly new mechanics. And ironically, the mechanics that would go on to define industry draw black double face cards. We made a conscious choice not to carry over and there was a number one complaint

about Avesant for stores where's all the double face card? But anyway, sorry. So Gristlebrand is the demon. So Avicent and Grisselbrand were the two main characters of the store other than Lilliana. And so we needed

to make cool things. So Gristle Brand, we liked the idea of making a demon that was kind of a necropotent. So necroponans came out originally in Ice Age, black, black.

You skipped your draw phase. You could pay. a certain amount of life to set offside cards, but you've got to end a turn. So it's the idea of what, that I no longer got to draw for free, but I now had a means for a slightly delayed system

that I could turn life into cards. Very powerful card. One of the most powerful cards we've ever made in magic. So anyway, we decided to make a necropotence on a stick. But the idea we liked was you didn't get the fine tuneness of this.

Like, here's what he can do for you. You can pay seven life. You can get. get seven cards. And because you have to discard, if you have more than seven, it's like, you don't kind of want to do that willy-nilly. You kind of want to do it when you need it. So the idea is you get crystal brand out, maybe you get a handful of cards, and then you spend those cards for a while before you would get a new hand of cards. We also gave him flying, because he's a demon and he had wings, and we gave him LifeLink on the idea that, oh, every time

he hits you, you get seven more life, now you can spend those draw cards again if you wish. The original plan when we made him, we made him a 7-7 so that his, when he did damage with Life Link, you gained seven life. Obviously, it's pay seven life, draw seven cards. Originally, we did make him at four black, black, black, so seven mana. Turns out he was really good, and for balanced reasons, they couldn't put him at seven mana.

So, in fact, they put him at eight mana, four, and four black. I got a bunch of complaints about this because so much of the card, you know, maybe we should have, instead of being a seven, seven, make him a seven eight or something. I don't know. Maybe we should have knocked one of the other sevens to an eight. So it's not like all sevens and one eight.

But anyway, I actually, in my GDC talk, when I talk about the importance of feel, I use this card as how everything about it seems to be going in the same direction. One card is just a little bit different and that little part just sticks out to it like, what's going on? The other good note, I guess, is we don't play balance is more important than sort of aesthetic purity, I guess. And so if the card needs to cost eight, it costs eight. But anyway, that is Griselbrand. Next, in January of 2013, Band and Modern, Seathing Song. an instance for two in a red that adds five red mana.

So we'd made a card, the fixed version of Dark Ritual we ended up making was one in a red produced three. So two mana make three, only one of which was red. So one RR, make RRR, three reds. So one in a red, make three reds. So this one was two in a red. We went back and forth. In the end, we're like, well, I guess if you make three with two, you can make five with

three. obviously this got banned so it's quite good yeah rituals are very funny in that in a lot of places they're okay they're not too dangerous but in certain situations for example they were very very powerful

with Storm for example they combo in ways that makes them pretty powerful and so we just kind of got to be very careful okay next January 2013 banned and pauper three cards empty the Warren's three in a red sorcery create two

1-1-goblins. So speaking of Storm, Storm is a mechanic that Brian Tinsman made in Scourge, I think. And the way it works is this card gets copied for every spell that's been cast as turn. So empty the warrants for 3-an-hour

makes two, it's a sorcery, makes two 1-1-Goblins. But you copy the spell for every other time they've been cast in a turn. Grape shot is one in a red sorcery deal one damage to any target storm. So let me talk about those two cards. The third card is not Storm, so I'll get to a second.

So Brian made Storm in, I think it's in Scourge. And it was quite powerful. I mean, a lot of the cards with it ended up getting banned or restricted in different formats. What it proved was it's just not that hard to play a bunch of spells, especially in larger formats. And then you just get so, you know, like, most of what ended up happening is these cards end up being win conditions.

We're like, oh, well, if I make enough goblins or I do enough damage, you know, I'm just going to win the game, and that you can get to pretty... So, here's the funniest part of the story is we knew storm was a problem. I mean, I named the storm scale after it. Like, I know the storm's a problem. It's the problem mechanic. When we were in time spiral, we were bringing back mechanics. And this is the hubris of R&D.

We're like, oh, well, we know storm is a problem. But we know that now. Now we know it. We're aware of that. So now we can make storm crowds, so we know storm's a problem. But we know storm is a problem. So now we can make, you know, and it turns out the lesson we learned, well, one, that we were being a little, we didn't truly understand the power of storm. I think what we've since learned is that storm is okay, as long as the thing you're getting isn't itself a win condition.

Meaning if I make infinite creatures, can I win the game with that? Yes. If I do infinite damage, can I win the game with that? Yes. So we have to be careful with those kinds of things where I just make this giant. amount, get all these copies and get this thing. And then, man, it's really hard to deal with me having infinite whatever. And when I say infinite, it just can be a large number.

But, so anyway, storm, that's why I made the storm scale is we brought Storm back thinking we could tame the fire and we got burned again. And so that's, it's a mechanic that sort of says to me that we and R&D have to kind of have more, more, what's the word, respect? for broken mechanics of the past and not, you know, I know this belief's like, well, you know, we didn't know as much then, but we're smarter now, and a lot of times

we get ourselves in trouble. So that was a particular case. The other card would call it invigorate. Vigorate's two in a green. It's an instant. Target creature goes plus four, plus four. And if you have a force in play, you can give your opponent three life and have this be free.

So back in recating mass, I talked about this in a previous podcast with Gush. So what we did is I liked, inspired by the pitch cards from antiquities, not antiquities, from alliances. I really like what we call alternate casting costs, meaning things, instead of paying mana, you can do this thing. So we made a bunch of them in regaining masks. White-tapped white creatures, blue-bounced islands, black, removed creatures from graveyard, red destroyed. sacked mountains, and green gave the opponent life.

So, the reason this card, there's a card called Glistening Elf, which is a one-one infect. For one green man, it's a one-one infect creature. So in fact, basically, if you do 10 damage to them with an infect creature, they get 10 poison, and you win the game. Like 10 poison, you win the game. So even in something like a commander, where you have 40 life, it doesn't matter, 10 poison still wins the game. and so one of the things that you would do is if you got a glistening elf early and you had one or two invigorates in your hand you know you could you could get most of the way there you could just poison them because let's say I attack I turn one play I a glistening elf turn two I play it and I attack with it and then I give it plus four plus four bam you have five poison you're halfway to dead and in turn two I could do that again now luckily you're

it's plus four plus four plus four so if I have two in my hand I can only get you to nine I guess turn one unless I have some means to do haste or something but anyway it it turns out that free spells or not free free spells technically or something different alternate casting costs spells spells in which you don't have to pay the mana are quite potent there's a number of things on my band restricted list where I oh I find a way for you to cast spells without having to pay mana and invigorate is one such thing it was very good next we get to May of 13, banned in modern, second sunrise. One white-white instant. Each player returns all artifacts, creatures, enchantments, and lands put into the graveyard this turn.

So white does two different things. I mean, does a lot of things, but just two things for this card. One is white is protective in nature. You know, white does damage prevention and redirection, and it does stuff to protect you. And white also is secondary. getting things out of the graveyard. Black's number one, but white is number two. So the idea is, well, what if the way I protect you is I allow you to take everything that died

or everything that went to the graveyard of this turn and bring it back? By everything, I mean all the permanent types at the time. Planeswalkers did not exist at the time of this card. I don't think it did. Anyway, so you get back artifacts and creatures and chattements and lands. We said all players, but it turned to... out that if you sort of build your deck around this, meaning I'm going to sack all my resources to do something, and then I can get all my resources back. So essentially, I got the value of sacrificing all my resources without actually sacrificing all my resources. It could be pretty

powerful. I should stress, as I said to this in the previous podcast, my expertise is how I designed these cards, not why they were banned. So it's possible when I explain my good guess here is there was a combo. There was some combo that was just really good with this. Maybe there's multiple combos. Maybe there was one. I don't know. But this does seem like a kind of card that combos to do pretty scary stuff. Okay, next up, May of 2013, banned and restricted in modern legacy invention. So it means banned and modern legacy, restricted and vintage. Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise.

Ah, we get to delve. Okay, so real quickly, dig through time is six blue-blue, look at seven cards, put two in your hand, from the bottom of library, Treasure Cruise is seven blue, draw three cards. But both of the mechanic Del. So what Delve says is, you may reduce the spell by one for each card in your graveyard that you exile. So essentially, instead of spending mana, see, once again, I found a way for you to instead of spending mana to use another resource.

In this case, cards in discard file. So I first made Delve. So in FutureSight, there was a future shifted sheet that showed mechanics. from the future, or cards from the future. But I like the idea that I was showing you a bunch of mechanics you had never seen before. So I made up a whole bunch of mechanics. I think I made up all the mechanics on the future shifted sheet,

or almost all of them. But anyway, I made delve. I liked the idea. I liked cost reduction. I liked the idea that graveyard is resources interesting because you don't start with cards in your graveyard, so you can't abuse it right away. It takes you a little bit of time.

But it turns out. it's not that hard to get cards in your graveyard. We have a lot of way to mill them in or do other things. And so, anyway, I introduced Delve actually of all the cards in FutureSight. I put it on three cards. Most of the mechanics I was showing off were on one card. There was a couple on two. I think Delve was the only one on three.

And so it was definitely, I thought it showed some promise. I thought it was a pretty cool card. I put it on black and blue cards in future. site. So, anyway, I made it. So one of the things with the future shifted sheet is, whenever we make a set, you always kind of go back and go, oh, because the premise of the future shifted sheet was, these are cards being previewed from the future.

So we always, it's fun to go and find when you can sort of, quote, unquote, premiere the card from the future shifted sheet. And we look for it all the time of opportunities to, where can we do something that we did there for the first time? So anyway, we were making Kanzatark here in one of the five clans was the sultai. And they were obsessed with the graveyard. And they were black and blue and green.

So we liked the idea they were graveyard-centric. They were black, blue, and green. Delve been black and blue, and green was probably the best for third color. So I said, let's try it here. And so we did. It worked very well. One real lesson we learned is that, especially in older formats, it's just not that hard to get cards in your graveyard. And so the idea that you can, you know, when you drop the spell, so for example, dig through time can go down to blue blue and Treasure Cruise can go down to single blue.

Like Treasure Cruise, like we were aware that if you had, if you could remove seven cards from your graveyard, it's, and stuff for recall, it's draw three cards for single blue mana. We love to do draw through cards or single blue mana with hoop. We do a lot of those. And a bunch of them are banned and restricted. But anyway, so that, I mean, I think the big thing with Delve was we were excited to find a home for it. We finally found a home for it. And the answer kind of was, oh, this mechanic's pretty broken. And I think we, I think the effects we had made on the original cards in FutureSight were a little less.

We had like a kill spell and a counter spell I mean counter spell is very reactive so that's not as much a problem I mean a kill spell matters but we make kill spells that cost you know one manna so that it is none of those quite were quite as problematic as this I think card drawing really

ended up being the thing that pushed Delve over the end and there's no mistake because the two cards that get banned were the two Delve card drawers both which I made so anyway that is how Delve how Delve how I got multiple cards banned it once.

Okay, guys, I am now at work. So we are chugging along. Today, so my plan on this series is that because I had to tell the fast version of the stories, I really wanted to tell the slow version of the stories. And as people like me telling old stories about old cards, I figure if this series goes on for a while,

no one's going to complain. These are also pretty classic cards. If you get banned restricted, some people were playing you. So anyway, this series is going to go on for a lot. a bit. Like I said, when I ended today, where did I end today? I ended today in 2013. So we got a few more years to go. So anyway, I hope you guys are enjoying this series. I'm going to keep doing it until I get through all the cards. But I'm now at work. So we all know that means instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So I will see you all next time. Bye-bye.