Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #409: Ravnica Cards, Part 1

Episode Date: February 10, 2017

This is the first part of a five-part series on the cards of original Ravnica.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so I think the fourth podcast I ever did, way back many years ago, was on Ravnica. One of the sets I led that obviously has become a very popular set, or became a very popular set. And I did a podcast on the creation of it, but back in the day, in the early days of the podcast, did a podcast on the creation of it, but back in the day, in the early days of the podcast, I didn't then talk about the cards. So I'm going to revisit. I want to do the Ravnica

block, and since I already talked about Ravnica, I'm going to jump in and talk about the cards. You can go listen to it. It's number four. Drive to Work number four. You can hear about it. And as I talk about the cards, I'm sure I'll fill you in on a little more of the stories about making the set. But I'm going to talk about the cards, I'm sure I'll fill you in on a little more of the stories about making the set.

But I'm going to talk about the cards for the next N number of podcasts. So I have a lot of cards to talk about. So let's jump in and get going. Okay, so the first one is Argus Kos. He is a three red and white. So five mana total. One of which is red, one of which is white. He's a legendary creature, human soldier.

He's a 3-3. And he is... Oh, sorry. The full name of the card was Argus Koss Wojek Veteran. That was his full name. And whenever he attacks, all your attacking creatures get plus two plus oh until end of turn. And all your attacking white creatures get plus zero plus two until end of turn. And the idea is um red white one of the things we did when we made the guild so remember what happened was

this was the first time um it came about because i was trying to um it was the second ever gold block we'd ever done the first being invasion Invasion had a theme of play all the colors, so I went the opposite direction. I said, okay, well how about play the least number of colors you can, but be multicolor. So we ended up playing out this two-color strategy. Brady Downer came up with the cool idea of doing guilds,

and then I ran with it. And so Argus Koth, the very first set of Ravnica only had four guilds in it. It had, let's see if I remember this, had Boros, had Dimir, had Selesnya, and now Golgari. So Boros is red-white, Dimir is blue-black, Selesnya is green-white, and Golgari is black-green. The idea of only doing four of the ten at the time was pretty radical and I had some resistance but I mean there's things that I had more resistance than that but it's definitely something people were a little bit taken aback the idea that

like there'd be gold cards in the set but not all the gold cards at the time was a radical idea Argus Kos by way, was the main character, the protagonist of the novel. This is back when we wrote novels for all our sets. And he was like a beat cop. The idea was that the Boros, a lot of the police slash army sat in the Boros.

That the Boros did a lot of that. They had the soldiers and so he was the equivalent to unrave of kind of like a beat cop. I mean, I guess he was a soldier technically, but anyway, and what we wanted to do was he was one of each, what we did was each guild had two legendary creatures, one of which was the leader of the guild and the other was some other person that meant something. In this case, it was the protagonist of the novel. But we really wanted

to have two different strategies. This is before, it's not before necessarily Commander existed, but it was before Commander was big. So we weren't really thinking about our commanders at the time. Although, what we were trying to do was give you commanders that represented the strategies that the guilds represented. And Argus Kost is a good example. Red-white was very much an aggro color combination. If you're playing red-white, you're going to play a lot of weenie creatures and attack. And Argus Kost really makes you want to do that. It says, okay, hey, I only work if you attack with me,

and I only work if you attack with me with other creatures. So this really was, it really plays into a weenie attack strategy sort of deck. Okay, next. Next. Octothon Worm. This is hard to pronounce. Octothon. O-U-T-O-C-H-T-H-O-N.

Worm. Worm as in big, giant dragon without wings, as opposed to a W-O-R-M. Anyway, 10 green, green, greens, a 13 mana, three of which is green, for a 914. And it had Convoke and Trample. So Convoke was the mechanic of Selesnya. Basically what you did is, a creature with Convoke was the mechanic of Selesnya. Basically what you did is, a creature with Convoke, you could tap creatures to get any color mana that they are. So you could tap a green creature to add green to your mana pool.

And because this was a multicolor set, so for example, let's say I have a green-white creature, or I have Argus Coth in play. I could tap Argus Coth for red or for white in order to cast a Convoke creature. Convoke was originally designed by Richard Garfield for the Boros, for the red-white. He sort of came up with it as an idea of the military working together was his idea. But I really liked it better for Selesnya, which was the collective, you know. The red-white was very much an aggro strategy. Green-white was a build-me-up

creature strategy. The way green-white worked is, I didn't beat you fast, but what happened is, I would just eventually overwhelm you with creatures. I both had the most amount of creatures, I had a lot of token making, and it also got the largest creatures, as evidenced by this thing, which was a 9-14.

The reason it's a 9-14, I believe, is one of the things that entertains us to no end and entertains the players is finding power-toughness combinations you've never done before. And I know Eric Lauer, the head developer, has a record of all the power-toughness combinations in vanilla that we have and haven't done. He's always looking to do new vanilla combinations. But even so, I think this is the first 914. I'm not quite sure why 914, but it just wanted to be an odd combination of things.

The other reason is I think we wanted to make just a giant creature. I mean, normally a 13 mana creature is just almost impossible to get out. But this has Convoke. Normally, a 13-mana creature is just almost impossible to get out. But this has Convoke. And the idea is, oh, well, in the Selesnya strategy, where you have a lot of smaller creatures and token creatures, you can definitely get this thing out way, way, way before you have 13-mana.

And that's what makes this creature interesting is it allows you to say, okay, I have enough creatures in play now. With my mana, I can cast this giant 9-14 creature. And there's trample, too. So once this creature gets out, it's hard to deal with. It's 14 toughness, so it's really, really hard to kill without a kill spell. It's hard to block and kill. But anyway, I think this was... One of the things we do when we make mechanics is we like to make mechanics at every level.

And this is us making a rare... I want to make a rare Convoke card. Well how do we do that? Well what if we make something really big and splashy but you know you need a lot of creatures to cast it. Okay next, Bathe in Light. One and a white. It's a two mana, one which is white instant. It has Radiance. Choose a color, target creature and each creature sharing a color that gets protection from a chosen color. So radiance was the Boros mechanic. This one was

made by Mike Elliott. The idea of the mechanic, it had a very noble purpose, which was we were trying to play the idea of an army, that red-white was the army color, and that it's sort of like you want to attack with creatures, and you want a spell mechanic that kind of connects

them. And the idea being, oh, well my, you know, if, as long as I have a red-white creature, I can target stuff, and if I use it on my red-white creature, then all my red creatures and all my white creatures get a bonus. The problem with Radiance was a couple things.

One was, it wasn't as crisp and clear as some of the other mechanics of why exactly it's in this color combination. It's one of those things what I call a once removed thing. We're like, oh, well, white and red are about soldiers and soldiers are about working together and Radiance is kind of about working. It's a couple steps away from being connected. So it didn't feel super boros-y. And the other big problem we had with Radiance is it is hard to track. For example, and I chose Bathe in the Land on purpose, which is, okay, so I'm going to cast this spell.

Some number of creatures are going to gain protection from a color. Now, the colors that get the protection and what the protection is aren't the same thing. So it's like, okay, if I use this spell targeting a red-white creature and name black, then all my red, not even all my, all creatures with red or white gain protection from black. And there's a lot of confusion that can come up with that. There's a lot, I mean,

it became very mind-melting just to track all, like, let's say, for example, you know for a fact that your opponent has bathe and lay in their hand. You know it. You know it is in their hand.

And you have, you know, let's say two colors out. Let's say you're playing Golgari. You have black and green. They have red and white. Or actually, to make it more confusing, let's say you're playing Selesi. You have black and green. They have red and white. Or actually, to make it more confusing, let's say you're playing Selesnya and they're playing Boros.

So you're green and white and they're red and white. Okay, so now they have this card. Let's say you know they have the card in their hand. Or even you're playing it. You know you have it in your hand. Just figuring out the calculations of what could happen.

It's like, okay, they could target a red or white creature and all their red orwhite creatures, all their white creatures, and all your white creatures gain protection from whatever they say protection from. Green, probably. Or I could target a red creature, and this red creature is getting protection from green.

The ramifications of trying to understand what happens and then... It's gotten really complicated, and this is a good example of a card where it's like you could know that there was a Bathe in Light. You could somehow know your opponent has Bathe in Light, and that still doesn't mean you can go through all the ramifications of what exactly it means.

So, I mean, I think Radiance had the problem of it wasn't a perfect fit for Boros. It was a little extrapolated why it was in Boros, and it just was a very complicated, hard to figure out what it was going to do mechanic. Okay, next. Bell Tower Sphinx. Four and a blue for a Creature Sphinx. Two, five, flyer. Whenever the Bell Tower Sphinx was dealt damage,

for each damage dealt to it, the person who controlled that source would mill a card. I think that's how it worked. Or maybe it was targeted? Maybe it was targeted. So I guess for each damage that Bell Tower Sphinx, the controller of Bell Tower Sphinx gets to mill any player he wants.

So I guess you could mill your own library if there's reasons. And there were reasons with Golgari why you might want to do that. With Dredge. We'll get to Dredge. But anyway, this was definitely us playing around. We don't do this a lot, but every once in a while we do triggers based on damage to the creature. And the idea is, hey, I have a creature. You know what? You kind of don't want to damage my creature because damaging my creature will do bad things. And this is a 2-5 flyer, it's hard to deal with, so the idea is that, you know, if you're going to chump this thing, because it's hard to have 5 power flying, that, you know, I'm going to be able to mill you, and it also allows you to combo it, that if I can somehow

do damage to it of myself, I can also do milling tricks. Milling, by the way, I always try to define my terms. Milling means to put a card from a library into its owner's graveyard. So if I mill you for two, you take the top two cards of your library and put them in your graveyard. One of the strategies of Demir was we definitely wanted to have a milling. One of the strategies was milling. It wasn't the main strategy, but we realized that Dimir, which is blue and black, one of the

overlaps between blue and black is the two colors that care most about the library. They also have to be the two colors that do milling. I mean, blue does more milling than black, but they're the two milling colors. And the idea of one of the tricks about Dimir was we wanted Dimir to kind of beat you in ways that felt tricky.

And kind of, you know, Dimir ended up being, it's kind of the sneaky underhanded guild. That you never quite know what they're up to. So a lot of how we built Dimir was making it such that you weren't always sure what it was up to. And that having mill as a strategy meant, okay, some of the time it was going to mill you out. But you didn't always know when it was going to mill you out. And so, like, let's say somehow early on you get Belltown Sphinx out. Should I be worried?

You know? And the other neat thing was there are reasons why you might want stuff in your own graveyard. So let's say, for example, you're playing Dimir, or you're just playing this blue card along with either a green or black card that has Dredge, for example. There's some combinations that you can combine with milling yourself and doing dredge, as an example.

Okay, next, Birds of Paradise. It costs one green mana. It's a creature. It's a bird. 1-1, flying, and you tap to add one of any mana color to your mana pool. So, for those who don't know, Birds of Paradise goes all the way back to the very early magic. Richard Garfield made it because someone had turned in a piece of artwork for Tropical Island.

It had a bird featured prominently in the art. It kept drawing people's eyes to it. And so they ended up commissioning a new piece of art for Tropical Island. And then just Richard made a new card, which ended up being Birds of Paradise. A very iconic card. It got cut from a core set. It was in the core set for many, many years and then we cut it from the core set.

We decided that we didn't want both Land of War Elves and Birds of Paradise that having two one drops that produce a mana was just a little bit much. So we got rid of Birds of Paradise and then, oh boy, people were unhappy we got rid of Birds of Paradise. And then, oh boy, people were unhappy we got rid of Birds of Paradise. So we decided we would bring it back.

And we brought it back in Ravnica. So when this was in Ravnica, it was, I mean, it's hard to tell sometimes, remember the history of things, but this was extra exciting because Birds of Paradise had fallen out of standard. And so us putting it here brought it back.

It had a very pretty picture, a different picture than the alpha picture. But I think usually when we make birds, now this is where we reprint birds and products. This is the picture we tend to use these days. It's just a very pretty picture. Okay, Blood Funnel, one black enchantment. Non-creature spells cost two less to cast,

and whenever you cast a non-creature spell, you have to sac a creature or you counter the spell. So essentially what it means is my creature spells cost two less, but my non-creature spells now have an additive cost, which is I have to sac a creature. So it's easier to get creatures out, but it makes it harder to play non-creatures. But the cool thing about this is... Oh, I'm sorry. I said that backwards.

Non-creature spells cost you two less. But whenever you cast them, you have to sacrifice a creature. I read that incorrectly. So the idea is non-creature spells, it does two things. It makes them cost two less, but forces you to sac a creature. So essentially, all my non-creature spells are cheaper, but there's a sacrifice that goes along with it. Now, the good news is, there are some spells that you can do that help mitigate this.

There are spells that make multiple tokens and things like that. But anyway, it's a build around me card. I think it was made for Golgari. Usually what we try to do, by the way, in MonoColor cards is make cards that have functions in more than one deck. I think this was themed as Golgari, but that it was... Maybe Dimir could do some cool things,

or maybe if you're playing black with... Black and green can do token making. So, I mean, in a Golgari deck, you have the token making of green and the sacrifices of black, so you can combine them. But this is definitely made as a build around the card, so you see what cool things you can do with it. Blood Bound March. Two black, green.

So four mana, one of which black, one which green. It's an enchantment. Whenever a player casts a creature spell, each player returns all creatures with the same name to the battlefield. So the idea is that whenever I cast a creature, all creatures that are named that thing return from the graveyard to play,

to the battlefield. And the idea is, probably in my deck, I can take better advantage of it than you. This is back in the day when effects like this just would affect everybody. We eventually got to the point where we, these kind of it than you. Oh, this is back in the day when effects like this just would affect everybody. We eventually got to the point where more often now we would just affect you and not everybody. So it's something you have to be cautious of

because if my opponent is playing with powerful creatures and one of them died, but they have another one, it could bring things back. So you have to be careful when you cast it. But Golgari, this was our black-green guild, was very much revolving around the graveyard. We realized that black and green were the two colors that cared most for the graveyard, and so a neat overlap for black and green was really playing into the sort of cycling of life concept that, you know, the Golgaris vary into like the full cycle

of life, but not just things being born, but things dying in the internal cycle, the web, and, you know, it really sort of combines this fascination for life and death, which combines green and black. Next, Bloodletter Quill. It's an artifact that costs three. So two and tap, you put a blood counter on the artifact, on Bloodletter Quill, and then you get to draw a card. Then you lose one life for each counter, each blood counter on it.

And then for a blue and a black, you can remove a blood counter. So the idea is I can tap two and a tap, I get to draw a card and I pay a life. Now the next time I want to use this, if I don't remove a counter, it'll cost me two life. So without the extra rider on it, it's first card costs you one life, second card costs you two life, third card costs you three life. But it's a little cheaper than normal. Normally like it's four and four, you know, four to cast, four and tap to draw a card.

That's like a Jame de Tome. So this is a little bit cheaper to get you cards. But the idea is one of the things we wanted to do is we wanted to make artifacts that were associated with the different guilds. But one of the things that was important was, we wanted to make sure...we tend not to make too many artifacts, not with colored costs. Artifacts are supposed to go in any deck. They have generic costs and you put them in any deck.

So when we make artifacts that are tied thematically to colors, what we try to do is make something where it's playable without it, but it's better with it. And this is a good example. This is a Dimir artifact. Look, you can just play it, draw a card, pay a life. Draw a card, pay two life. Draw a card, pay three life. You can do that and in the right deck maybe it's even viable. But the cards are a lot more effective if you're playing Dimir. Because if you have the mana, essentially what it does is it says, okay, first card costs two, and then from then on it's two blue-black.

Now, again, you also could take the pain now, and then later when you have the mana, remove the count and shift it all in one turn. But anyway, if you're playing Dimir Callers, it just makes it more effective. And so it's a way to have an artifact that had some flavor for blue-black, but be something that other people might be able to play with. Okay, Boris Garrison. So it's a land, enters the battlefield tapped. When it enters the battlefield, you return a land you control to its owner's hand and then tap to add R and W, a red and white.

So the idea is these lands are common. They made you bounce another land you played. So put another land you had back in its owner's hand, usually your hand because usually you owned them. And then it tapped for two mana. So the idea was they were lands that helped fix your colors, but in order to give you something that could tap for two colors, you had to put a land back,

so that you weren't going up in mana per land. There are some combos in the set where, like, because this taps for two mana, if you can somehow untap lands or something you get more mana out of it than than you know a traditional land um but we were one of the things we were trying to do in this set was we knew you were going to play uh two color so we were trying to give you some help um looking back in retrospect we really didn't give good enough mana help this cycle for example is not particularly strong. So you'll see in modern

day, you know, when we do multicolor stuff in modern day, we are better about giving you support to play things. Okay. Boros Guildmage. Okay. So it costs a hybrid. So it's red or white,

red or white. So it costs two mana, either of which can be paid with red or white mana. So it has a hybrid cost. It's a creature. It's a human wizard. And it's a 2-2. By the way, this is a cycle. They're a 10-card cycle.

There's four in this set, three in the next set, and three in the next set. So this had the guild mages for the four guilds in this set. The guild pack had the three for the three in that set. So, um, Guild Pack had the three, you know, this had the Guild Mages for the four guilds in this set, then Guild Pack had the three for the three in that set, and then Descension had three for the next set. We will eventually get to Guild Pack and Descension. As I normally do this, I'm going to do

a couple, you know, I'll do a series on Ravnica, take a break, do some other stuff, and I'll come back, and the next one I'll do will be, um, Guild Pack. Uh, anyway, the Guild Mages, so one of some other stuff, and I'll come back. The next one I'll do will be Guild Back. Anyway, the Guild Mages. So one of the things was when I first started making this at, I came up with the idea of hybrid mana. I was trying to figure out how to care about

two colors in a way that didn't always lock you into two colors. And I came across this idea. And it was definitely something, I find it to be a really cool idea. I remember when I came up with it, I was really excited, you know, because normally when you do traditional multicolor, it's and. This spell requires red and white, but this was a way to do red or white, and I was really excited, and I remember running around going, look at this, look at this, and nobody seemed to care uh because it was one of those things that like you have to

sort of see in context um and I think I had a better understanding what I wanted to do with it but when I was just showing it around it just seemed novelty for novelty's sake I don't think people quite grasp what we could do with it so the story of hybrid is I put it in the set, I actually put a lot in the set and our first play test, this is before we got the guilds by the way, the first play test, we, I had all 10 colors in it and so there were, you had 10 different combinations to play and then you had hybrid and it just was overwhelming. I mean, it was overwhelming R&D. And, you know, so when it overwhelms former

pro players, you know that, you know, you probably have made it a little too hard. So, I ended up pulling out hybrid and to try to simplify things. And later, we realized that we needed something,

and so we ended up putting Hybrid back in. So Hybrid was in and out a couple times during the course of the set. So the Guildmages, this was inspired by a series of cards called Guildmages in Mirage. And the way the Guildmages worked in Mirage was they were mono-colored cards, and you could tap the two colors on either side of them. They're two ally colors. So

let's say I was a green card. I could tap, I had an activation that required red mana, and an activation that required white mana. And then each one did a red thing and a white thing. So the idea I would like to hear was, okay, well what if it's a red-white card, it has a red activation and a white activation? Sorry about the yawning. Okay, so its red activation is one and a red, two mana, one is just red. Tiger creature gains haste until end of turn.

And its white activation was one and a white. Tiger creature gains first strike until end of turn. So those are both combat-oriented abilities. The guild mages always sort of played into whatever the theme of the of the um guild was and so these were both combat oriented abilities and the idea behind the guild mages was the reason we put them in hybrid mana was i could play it if i have two mana i could play it with you know just say this is boros if i have two red i can play it i have two white i can play it, or if I have a red and white I can play it. Now if I play it with only two red, then I won't have access to the white activation, and if I play it with two white, I won't have access to

the red activation until I get that mana, but I can still play it. We made them pretty efficient. We made them 2-2 for two mana. I mean, colored mana, but anyway, these were meant to be sort of really sort of showing the identity of... Like, one of the things we did a lot of in this block was 10 card cycles to really show off, okay, there's guilds, you know, the guilds are similar, but each one has their own thing.

And so one of the ways to show how things are different is making cycles in which elements of them are similar, but then you get to see the differences between them. How is the Boros guild mage different than the Dimir guild mage, from the Selesnya guild mage, from the Golgari guild mage? We've really got to show up sort of what each guild represented by having this close contrast where the cards are somewhat similar to each other, but not exact. Okay, Bor Boris Recruit. So it's a hybrid man again. One hybrid man.

It's a red or white. It's a Goblin Soldier, 1-1, with First Strike. So one of the things that Hybrid let us do... So we ended up doing three hybrid cards per guild. We did a common and uncommon and a rare. We call it Vertical Cycle. The uncommon was the Guild Mage. And the common and the and a rare. We call it vertical cycle. The uncommon was the guild mage, and the common and the rare were something that went along.

So one of the things that we realized, and we obviously did it here in Boros, is one of the cool things that you can do with hybrid that you can't do with multicolor is make a one drop. Because in traditional multicolor, in order to be red and white, I need at least two mana, one of which is red,

one of which is white. But with hybrid, I was allowed to make a one drop. So we thought it would be fun to make a one drop. Red is the sort of aggro color. One drops are very good in red. Being hybrid lets you play

a one drop regardless of whether you got red or white mana in your deck. So pretty much you could play it turn one no matter what you drew if you if you drew it um and then we granted an ability that uh one of the things hybrid do is we have to find overlaps in the colors so what could red do that white can do and it turns out that red can have a one drop one one first striker and white can have a one drop one one first striker um the other thing about the set is you'll see as

we go through it is but actually with an enchantment theme in it. I don't think a lot of people... It's interesting how, up until Theros, whenever we try to do a set that has some enchantment themes, people remember other things about the set. Like, we made Urza's Saga, and people remember all the broken stuff, but people kind of forget that it was an enchantment set.

Ravnica has a similar thing going on, where there's a pretty strong enchantment theme running through the set, as we'll see. But I don't think a lot of people think of Ravnica as even, thing going on where there's a pretty strong enchantment theme running through the set, as we'll see. But I don't think a lot of people think of Ravnica in any way as having an enchantment theme, even though it did. It's one of those things where... I mean, one of the problems in general, I guess, doing enchantment themes is they're very easy to gloss over, even when they're there. And you'll see, there's a decent number of cards in the set. Okay, next, Boros Swiftblade.

It's red and a white for a human soldier. That's a 1-2, and it has Double Strike. So we made a common, the Recruit. Oh, I skipped. Okay, I'll go back to that. And then we made the Swiftblade. I think it was uncommon. But Double Strike's another ability that overlaps between red and white. And there's a lot of auras and things like Argus Cost that can boost your creature.

So Double Strike is pretty good. Double Strike just says, hey, I'm... Basically, I double. When you boost me, you double me. Your damage is doubled. And so that's super effective. So I skipped over the Boros Signet. So it's an artifact that costs two.

One and tap to add, in this case, red-white. So they're artifacts that all super effective. So I skipped over the Boros Signet. So it's an artifact that costs two. One and tap to add, in this case, red-white. So they're artifacts that all cost two. You tap for one. And then what it did is it essentially allowed you to get two-colored mana, one of each of the two colors of the guild. These were uncommon, I believe. As you can see, sort of, I think our rare, which I'll get to, were good. That mana fixing was good, and iconically good. But the common and the uncommon mana fixing were not particularly strong

and really made it hard, didn't allow people to play the cards as easy as they needed to. Okay, next. Brain Spoil. Three black black sorcery. Destroy target creature that isn't enchanted and it can't be regenerated. It then had transmute for one black black. So real quick, let's talk about transmute. Transmute was a demurability. So a transmute, we decided that blue and black were, the library was where they connected, just like the graveyard is where Golgari connected. And so we made the mechanic a tutoring mechanic.

Something we don't really do anymore because we find tutoring to be... it makes gameplay play out a little too similarly. But anyway, the way Transmute works is all the Transmute cards have a Transmute ability that costs 3 mana. If it's a mono-colored card, it costs one and then two colored mana. So in this case, black, one black black. If it was a gold card, it would cost one blue black. So it always costs one generic and two colored,

either two of the same if it's monocolored or one of each if it's two color. And then you were allowed to take this card and I think you discarded it and then you replaced it with a card from your library that it had the same converted mana cost. So, for example, this card costs five, three black black. So it had a converted mana cost of five.

So you could turn this into any card in your deck that had a converted mana cost of five. And what we did was we made it something that was at times conditional. So what this card was, it was a kill spell. Now, notice it had a rider on it. The rider was it doesn't kill enchanted things so one of the things going on is i i think this was the common commons main black kill spell was hey in limited especially being enchanted has some bonuses one of the bonuses is hey one of black's main kill spells doesn't work against you that one of the ways to protect yourself against

black was to actually put an aura on yourself, which is not something you normally do if you're worried about black destroying your creature. But in this case, it actually helped you. And then we put Transmute on it because sometimes maybe you know, it does, I have a problem card, my opponent's enchanted it, I can't kill it with this, maybe I can go get something

different to deal with it. Okay, next, Bramble Elemental. Three green greens, so five mana, two which is green. It's an Elemental, and when whenever a oh, I didn't write the stats down. I think it's a 4-4. Whenever

an Aura is attached to it, it makes two 1-1 Saprolings. So one of the things you'll see in the set is there's a bunch of cards that just encourage you to enchant things. So when I say it had an enchantment theme, I guess what I meant was it had an aura theme. So it cared about, I mean, it cared about auras, and some of the ways it cared about auras is caring about enchantments. So there's some cards that care about enchantments, but there's a lot more that cares about auras and about things being enchanted.

So this creature, for example, if you enchanted it, as just a free bonus, you got two 1-1 creatures, two 1-1 saplings. So the main creature token in green are 1-1 green sapling tokens. As you will see, they're a pretty major part of what's going on in mono green. One of the things we try to do is give themes to the mono colors that were usable by both its guilds. Blue and red actually only had one guild in the set, although we did allow do some stuff so you could drop blue and red together.

But green, white, and black. Green overlapped in Selesnya and Golgari. White overlapped in Boros and Selesnya. And black overlapped in Dimir and Golgari. This case is a mono green card. Okay, it overlaps in... Green overlaps in both Selesnya and Golgari. So one of the things we did is gave green a lot of... Mono green, a lot of token making,

because Selesnya wants to build up its numbers, and Golgari likes to sacrifice things. So the different guilds would use them differently, but they were useful in both guilds. Okay, next. Carrion Howler. Three and a black, so four mana, one of which is black.

It's a creature. It's a zombie wolf, a 2-2 zombie wolf. You could pay one life. You give it plus two, minus one until end of turn. So the idea was it was a 2-2 creature, and you could give it plus two, minus one. So since it's 2-2, without any sort of enhancements, you could make it into a 2-2 creature, and you could give it plus two minus one. So since it's 2-2, without any sort of enhancements, you could make it into a 4-1 creature if you paid one life. But if you somehow enhance it, and like I said, there's an aura theme going through the set,

if you make it a little tougher, then you could activate it more than once. So if you could boost up its toughness, you could activate this multiple times. So if you could boost up its toughness, you could activate this multiple times. Okay, Centaur Safeguard. So two green or either hybrid. Two and a hybrid, green or white. So two generic mana plus one green or white mana. It's a 3-1 Centaur Warrior.

And then when it dies, you gain three life. It didn't say dies by the time. That's now modern terminology. Back then it would say if it put into the graveyard, I think from play. That's how say dies by the time. That's now modern terminology. Back then it would say if it's put into the graveyard I think from play is how we used to say it. And the idea is both green and white

are the life-gaining colors and they both also are creature-based so it's like, oh, I play a somewhat decent creature so a three mana, three one

that when it dies I gain life. And this was the common white-green hybrid card. Char. So Char costs 2 and a red. It's an instant. You deal 4 damage to target creature or player and deal 2 to you. So old-timers recognize this card as Psionic Blast. In Alpha, this was a blue card, believe it or not, representing Psionics. Richard messed around a little bit with, like, oh, you was a blue card, believe it or not, representing psionics.

Richard messed around a little bit with like, oh, you know, blue is the color of the mind, so psionics should be blue. And so he made a top-down psionic blast card, meaning you're using psionic mental powers to cause damage to your opponent. But the idea is using it hurts you, so... We decided to put in the color that it really belonged in,

which was red. And so psyanogloss became Char. Okay, Court of Calling. X, green, green, green. So three green mana. It's an instant. It has Convoke and that you can

go through your library, get a creature card with a converted mana cost of X or less and put it in your hand, I believe. In your hand? I, and put it in your hand, I believe. In your hand? I think you put it in your hand. And then you could shuffle. Or is Krota calling him play?

Ooh, X, G, G, G. I'm guessing it is into play? I didn't write that down. I'm guessing it's into play. I'm guessing it goes into play. So the idea is that I can go get a creature. I have to pay X for the converted mana cost and then additional three green mana. Oh, but it has Convoke.

So it allows me to go get the creature out of my deck. And the more creatures I have in play, the more mana I can spend. So one of the neat things about this is traditionally your X spell is capped by your mana. But with this spell it's capped not by your mana, but by your mana plus your creatures. And so this spell, it's capped not by your mana, but by your mana plus your creatures.

And so this allows you to go get a decently big creature if you have a lot of creatures in play. Chorus of the Conclave. Four green, green, white, white. It's a legendary creature dryad, 3-8, forest walk. You can pay one extra. Oh, for every creature, you're allowed to pay one more for it. And if you do, it comes in with a plus one, plus one counter. So all creatures have an optional, they cost one more, and if you do that, then you get a plus one, plus one counter on your creature. This was the leader of Selesnya, and so one of the things we liked about it was

Selesnya is about overrunning you, so this makes your creatures bigger. It allows you to spend extra mana to make your creatures bigger. The idea, by the way, of the Celestinia is they're the one group where their leaders are normally more than one person because they're a collective, that even their leaders aren't singular people, that they're multiple people. And so the conclave, the course of the conclave was not a singular leader. They have a bunch of people that represent their leader.

And that's just trying to make things feel a little different. Also, it's Forest Walk, an ability we phase Landwalk out, but this is Forest Walk, probably just to have a little extra flavor. But anyway, that is our that we finally meet the Selesnya, the leader of Selesnya. Anyway, I've just pulled up to Rachel's school.

So that is going to be the end for today. Anyway, this is going to go on, this series is going to go on for a little while because I have a lot of cards to talk about. And I only got to page three and I know I have lots of pages. So anyway, I hope you guys stick with it. A lot of more fun things to talk about Ravnica.

But as I'm now here at the school, we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to make magic. So I'll see you next time with more Ravnica. Bye-bye, guys.