Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #410: Ravnica Cards, Part 2

Episode Date: February 17, 2017

This is the second 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 the drive to work. Okay, so last time I started talking about Ravnica, the cards of Ravnica. On the fourth ever episode, I talked about Ravnica and how it got designed, but I never did any extended stuff, and so now I'm talking all about the cards. So I was in C last we left off, so we're up to a Circu Dimir Lobotomist. Two blue-black, four mana total, one blue, one black. So I was in C last we left off. So we're up to a Circu Dimir Lobotomist. Two blue, black, four mana total. One blue, one black.

A legendary human wizard. He's a 2-3. Whenever you cast a blue spell, you exile the top card of target library. And whenever you cast a black spell, you exit card of target library. So that means if you cast a blue and black spell, you get a mill two cards.

Mill, of course, meaning put from top of the library into the graveyard. Of course, in this case, you're exiling them. You're not putting them into the graveyard. And the idea here is... Oh, and then opponent can't cast any non-lands with the same name as the card exiled. So normally in this card, you're trying to exile your opponent and not yourself. Because, once again, they're not going to the graveyard. They're getting exiled. And then you counter anything cast by an opponent, a non-land cast by an opponent.

I think at the time it said play. The reason it said non-land was you could play lands. Now we have cast, which you can only do in spells and can't do on land. So possibly modern technology would say they can't cast. Anyway, one of the legendary cycles, by the way, I talked about Argus yesterday. One of the legendary cycles, what we did was we did this technique where you care about one color and you care about another color, and the overlap of the colors gets cared twice. So, for example, Argus Koss gave attacking red creatures plus two plus O,

and attacking white creatures plus O plus two. Well, attacking red white creatures got plus two plus two. And in this case, every time I cast a spell, yes, a blue or a black spell exiles a single card, but a blue black spell exiles two cards. And so the idea we were playing around with, and there's a whole cycle that one of the Legendary Cycles does this, is sort of reward you for playing

both colors, but extra reward you for playing cards of both colors on the same card. Okay, next. Civic Wayfinder. 2G. Two and a green. So three mana, one of which is green.

It's an elf warrior druid. 2-2. When it enters the battlefield, search your library for a basic land card and put it in your hand. Then shuffle your library. I bring this up because it's always neat to me to see cards that have gone on to become like just classic staple cards. We do Civic Wayfinder all the time. And I'm pretty sure this is where he started. I think this is the first set that he existed in.

And I don't know, I'm always the historian in me when I look back and go, oh, like certain cards go on to just be classics, just we use them all the time. And it's always neat to kind of see them for the first time. And I'm always surprised things that are always super clean and simple, like Ravnica was, you know, 15 years into Magic. I mean, Ravnica was a good chunk into Magic, and we hadn't made that card yet. So I'm always amazed when we do simple cards.

Even now, we still make simple cards. I'm like, oh, how have we ever made that simple card? I'm always impressed when we do that. Next, Cleansing Beam. 4-hour instant. Radiance. Deal 2 damage to target creature, and everything that shares a color with it. So this is Radiance used offensively.

So the idea is, you do 2 damage to any creature, you do 2 damage to a creature, and then 2 damage to all creatures sharing a color with that creature. This is another example where the math can get a little complex. Because, you know, I can target... You have a lot of choices of sort of what you target and then the ramifications of what that means. But, and this was a neat spell. The funny thing is Radiance originally was supposed to mean, hey, your team is working together.

The funny thing is Radiance originally was supposed to mean, hey, your team is working together. And this is a good example of us doing something that fits the mechanic, but really doesn't fit the flavor of the team. Like, Radiance was about teamwork. It was about, you know, soldiers interconnecting and working together. And this spell really has none of that going on. That's not at all about teamwork. It's more about punish all those, punish your enemies that are all alike each other. So this is a good example of how we sort of started one place, it was one step removed, and then as we made more cards, it just got more and more removed. Like why this card is in Boros, like what flavor it has, is even more disconnected.

Okay, next, Cloudstone Curio, artifact that costs three. Whenever a non-artifact permanent enters a battlefield under your control, you may return another permanent you control of the same type. So the idea is, whenever I play a land, I can return a land. Whenever I play a creature, I can return a creature.

When I play an enchantment, I can return an enchantment. This is, the reason I know this card went on to be a popular card is we put it into Kaladesh Inventions so it's something you could have opened in Kaladesh

a pretty version of it this card has lots of weird combo it was designed to be a combo enabler it was designed to like

okay how do I take advantage of the fact that I get to bounce my own stuff bounce being slang for return it to your hand

assuming you own it return it to your hand and Assuming you own it, return it to your hand. And, you know, this card was definitely, I know when we made this card, that is what I call an open-ended card where it does something quirky and I'm like, oh, maybe players will

find a way to do with it. When we made cards like this, it's not that we know what players are going to do with it. I mean, we have some idea of things they can do with it, but it's not that we know what players are going to do with it. I mean, we have some idea of things they can do with it. But it's not like we knew, oh, this is the deck that's going to use this. It's more like, here's an open-ended engine card that can do cool things. Okay, well, let the players figure out what to do with it. And sometimes they end up being really good, as Clash of Cure did.

And sometimes, eh, it never quite finds a really powerful deck. I mean, there always will be Johnnies and Jennys out there that'll just do weird things, but as far as really competitive things, sometimes it clicks, sometimes it doesn't. Okay, Compulsive Research. Two and a blue, three mana, one of which is blue, Sorcery. Target player draws three cards, and then discards two or one card. Or one land, sorry. So basically what happens is, target player draws three cards

and then you're supposed to discard two cards except if you discard a land, you can discard a land instead. We've made this card in various incarnations. I'm not sure whether this was the first incarnation, where you draw and then you have to discard unless you discard a specific kind of card.

We've done this with artifacts. We've done this, I think, with enchantments, where it's sort of like the deck is encouraging you to play a certain kind of card because that's how you gain card advantage. This card, for example, you spend three mana. You know, either I'm getting one card with some filtering going on,

meaning I'm improving my draw, or I'm drawing two cards, and it's all a matter of what I have available to me. Or I'm drawing two cards, and it's all a matter of what I have available to me. Land being something nice, because in the later game, lands are something you don't need anymore, and so you can sort of trade them in. So the idea of the spell is,

it has function early on to maybe get you to land, and later in the game, it allows you to trade extra land for a card. Note that this is targeted. So one of the... I wrote a whole article about this. I'm in the camp... I like drawing to be targeted in general because I think there's neat things you can do

when, you know, normally you want to draw but every once in a while there's a cool thing you can do with your opponent drawing. In this set, A, I was the head designer, but B, there was a milling theme. So we let blue have targeted draw because there's a legitimate reason why you might want to target your opponent in this environment. You might want to mill them out because that was something that was actual strategy for Dimir. And so we made all the card drunk spells here.

So like maybe what I want to do is target my opponent, hopefully catching them without a land in their hand. And if I do that, then I'm able to, you know, essentially mill them for three cards. So. Okay, next. Ba-ba-ba! Okay, Concerted Effort. So this is a white enchantment.

So two white, white, four mana, two witches, white. At the beginning of your upkeep, all your creatures gain blank if you control a creature with blank. And blank could be flying, fear, first strike, double strike, land walk, protection, trample, and vigilance. So let's walk through what exactly this card is doing and why it does it the way it does. So first off, we do this occasionally where things gain abilities. And if you notice, it's always triggered. That's a rules reason, and that static abilities that do this cause all sorts of

problems. So instead of being static, instead of saying, you know, your creatures you control, if you control blah, then your creatures you control have blah. It happens at the beginning of the upkeep, or usually beginning of, early in the turn, so that each turn it triggers, because the staticness of it causes problems. The other thing we do with these cards is we actually have to name the things. We can't just say keyword abilities or whatever. That terminology causes problems. So what we say is we have to list them out. Looking here, I would say that what we did is we listed out things that we remotely feel white could do. And we were pretty liberal. We went all the way to tertiary

abilities in white. So for example, flying is primary in white, white and blue. Fear, tertiary in white. But at the time, white had done a little bit of fear. First strike's primary in white. Double strike's primary in white. Landwalk, eh, tertiary. Planes walk is rare, but we occasionally do it, so we gave it to you. And we gave you all landwalk.

Protection, white at the time did a lot of protection. Trample was tertiary, but every once in a while on a big white thing we'd give you trample. And Vigilance is primary in white. So basically this was everything that even when you squint could be white. And the idea was that white is the sharing color, and so

if one creature has something you can share with the rest of your creatures. We felt that that was a little bit of a broadening of white, but white is capable of doing that. Okay next, Conclave Equinox. So it costs four white white, six mana, two witches white. It's a human soldier that's a 3-3. It's got Convoke and Flying. So the reason I brought this one out is one of the things that's a testament to a good

mechanic is that you can make very simple cards. And this is a good example of, like, Convoke doesn't need a lot. This is a 3-3 Flyer. Like, 3-3 Flyer, which is almost vanilla, pretty close to vanilla. Just add Convoke and you have a very interesting card. Because a 3-3 Flyer, especially in Limited, can be very potent. And 6 mana, okay, that's a lot to cast for a 3-3 flyer, especially in limited, can be very potent. And 6 mana, okay, that's a lot to cast for a 3-3 flyer. But 4 mana is not so bad.

3 mana is really good, and 2 mana is amazing. It's not that hard to get some creatures out, and then all of a sudden, this thing just comes out a few turns before you normally be able to get it out. Even just one turn before you can normally get it out really can be pretty potent on something as powerful as a 3-3 flyer. Okay, next, Congregation at Dawn. Green, green, white. It's an instant. You go through your deck and find three creature cards. You reveal them to your opponent, and they put them on top of your library in any order. So this is what we call a tutor. So basically,

it's, notice in the cost, it's green, green, white. We don't do this all the time, but every once in a while when we have a spell where it's more one color than the other, because this is a creature tutor, that's more in green's domain. In fact, this ability probably could be done in mono green. I think the idea that we, the whiteness of it was kind of the delay of it. It's like, okay, you get creatures, but you have to sort of set up your draw. That's something that white has done more than green.

That was kind of the white of it. Although in retrospect, could green put cards on top of your library? Probably it could. It has. So this is one of those effects that like, eh, it's okay. We're pushing a little bit to try to get it into white. Okay, consult the Necrosages. One blue, it's okay. We're pushing a little bit to try to get it into white. Okay, consult the Necrosages. One blue, black sorcery.

Choose one. Target player draws two cards. Target player discards two cards. So this is Dimir. One of the things that, one of the trouble for Dimir is blue and black do not have a lot of synergistic abilities.

Their overlap is smaller than most of the colors, and just finding abilities that sort of connect together is tough. But one of the abilities that's just really tempting is that blue is the card drawing color, and black is the discard color. So there's this nice synergy between I draw and you discard. And so this card was definitely playing in that space. Now once again, they're both targeted.

I think they were targeted mostly because we wanted to parallel them and we wanted the draw to be targeted. So if you really needed to use it as a discard, I'm sorry, as a milling spell, you know, it's not the kind of, once again, card drawing is not something you tend to use till late in the game when your opponent's really, really close to dying. But it's useful, and we made all our drawing targeted.

Also, another nice reason to make drawing targeted is for multiplayer play. It allows you a little more politics of, hey, do something nice for me, and I'll give you some cards. The reason it's a sorcery is we tend to do discard at sorcery speed. And at the time, we tended to do most card drawing at sorcery speed. We've since relaxed that restriction a little bit. There was a period of time where blue was doing everything on the end of the opponent's turn, because too many of his effects were instants, and we tried to pull back a little bit. And so at the time, card drawing mostly was done in Sorcerer's Speed and Discards are almost always done in Discards.

There's only a handful of exceptions to that rule. But anyway, this is a nice, clean, simple spell that, you know, it's modal, but the two modes

have a parallel. Now, note when you have modal cards, there's a couple different ways to do modes. One is, I can care about how the mode works.

Like, I get to destroy something, but I get to choose what gets destroyed. Or I get to do effects and the effects sort of parallel each other. In this case, there is a sort of a mirroring going on that the two effects have sort of an aesthetic connection to each other, but it's a mirroring effect. Me drawing and you discarding are sort of the essence of it, even though I can make you draw and me discard. The reason that also by targeted

discard mattered is because this is in mono-black, Ulgari cares about the graveyard, and there's some times you might want to make yourself discard. Okay, next, copy enchantment. Two blue for an enchantment, so it is three mana, one of which is blue. It enters as a copy of any enchantment. Two blue for an enchantment, so it is three mana, one of which is blue. It enters

as a copy of any enchantment on the battlefield. So, Magic had, I'm sorry, Alpha, the first Magic set, had Clone and had the Suman Doppelganger, which was a Clone copied creatures, and Suman Doppelganger copied them, but could keep

changing what it copied. And then it had Copy Artifact, which was an enchantment that came into play and copied an artifact into play. But at the time, we hadn't yet done a copy enchantment. We had copied the other permanents. Have we copied a land? I'm not sure whether we've copied a land yet. Eventually, we'll get to copy a land. But that would come, I think, later.

But anyway, we had not made a copy enchantment. This was one of those... Sometimes when you make a set, you're just, like, filling in gaps of things that magic has never done. And it was literally a spell we'd never done. So I made it. Crown of Convergence.

It's an artifact that costs two. You play with the top card of your library revealed. Creatures you control that share a color with... I'm sorry. If the top card reveals a creature, creatures that share a color with, I'm sorry, if the top card reveals a creature, creatures that share a color with it, oh no, no, it doesn't need to be a creature. If the card is colored, creatures that share a color with it get plus one plus one. And then for green and a white, you could put the top card on the bottom of your library. So once again, this is one of the cycles

of guild artifacts that the idea is, look, this artifact is usable without the Selesnian activated ability. It's like, okay, every turn I play with the card face up and it makes my things bigger. Note the way it works is that it makes, it enhances each creature. So if you have a multicolored card, it enhances the multicolored stuff. Like if I have a green white card, well it enhances the multicolored stuff. Like, if I have a green-white card, well, it makes all white creatures plus one, plus one. It makes all green creatures

plus one, plus one. So it'll enhance white and green creatures with plus two, plus two. But anyway, the nice thing about this card is, the green-white part of it is, it says, you know what, some of the time I'm going to get land, or something at the time of my library that isn't helping me, and having the right mana, being able to play Celestia means that you can sort of help

enable it to get it there. Once again, this is in Celestia because Celestia has an overrun sort of flavor to it. It has a lot of token creatures and stuff and so this plays really nice in that space. Next Dark Confidant, one and a black for a human wizard, two one. At the beginning of your upkeep, reveal the top card of your library. You put it in your hand and lose life equal to its converted mana cost. So this card, nicknamed Bob, because Bob Marr Jr., who won one of the Invitationals, this was his Invitational card. Bob Marr's gone on to be a Hall of Famer. He won, he's famous for winning a Pro Tour. And where was that? It was Chicago. Playing Brian Davis in an amazing match.

If you've never watched the Bob Marr-Brian Davis match, I think it's PT Chicago, one of the Chicago's. And it was, the joke is that Bob won going 0-5. That every game he should have lost, but somehow in three of the five he finds a way to win, even though he really, really should have lost. But anyway, Bob won the Invitational. I think it was at one of the E3s we did in Los Angeles, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, E3. For three years, we did the Invitational down in Los Angeles.

And he turned in a card, some jokey card like green, give your opponent nine poison or something that we were not going to make. So what happened was I worked with him. There was a pro tour, I think in Seattle. There was a pro tour, I think, in Seattle. There was a team event in Seattle. And so what happened was he and I would talk between rounds, and he gave me the idea for what he wanted. So what he said is, I want a cheap black card that is tournament viable.

And so I came back with him with the idea of this small black creature that drew you cards but lost you life. And the idea was it was a risky card because it had the potential to kill you. But it was drawing you an extra card every turn, which was pretty powerful. Bob liked the card a lot. The one suggestion Bob made was could it be optional whether you drew the card or not? But I said no. A, because we couldn't get it as cheap as he needed if it was optional.

And B, that's just not the flavor of black. Black is like, you in? You're in. Might you die? Yep, you might die. But the card is really, really good. And I mean, I'm not going to say no one's ever died off at Dark Confidant, but a lot more people have won games from it than have actually died. Okay, Dark Heart of the Wood. Black, green, enchantment.

Use Sack of Forest to gain free life. Not much time before people realized this, but this was a reprint from the Dark. So Dark Heart of the Wood is the first ever enemy gold card, and I think the first non-creature gold card. Because Legends, which was a step before, had introduced multi-colored cards, but they were all creatures.

They were all legendary creatures. So there was only, I believe, three multicolored cards in the dark. Two of which were creatures and one of which was this card. The creatures, I think what happened was there was red, black, and green. So there was a red-green card, a a red black card, and a black green card. And so the red black and black red card, I think, were creatures. The black green card was an enchantment. I just felt like this could be something interesting in Golgari. And I liked the card. I was a big fan of the card. And so I just saw an opportunity to kind

of bring back a card. And it was something that some people remember. A lot of people wouldn't even realize it's something we had printed before. But the flavor felt like it matched. Anyway, I was excited to bring it back. Dimir Doppelganger, one blue black. It's a shapeshifter. That's 0-2.

For one blue black activation. So three mana, one blue, one black. Three mana activation, exile target creature card from the graveyard, and then card name becomes a copy of that creature and gains its ability. So I talked about it with Suvin Doppelganger a second ago. That was a creature that every turn you come in play, you copy something, and every turn it can change what it copies. Dimir Doppelganger was similar in that it comes into play and that you need to exile a creature card. I think it could be from any graveyard, by the way, so you could copy your opponent's stuff.

So you copy dead things. And the idea was you could upgrade. You weren't forced to upgrade, but you always had the option later on of upgrading if you wanted to. And so the neat thing about this was you could kill your opponent's creatures and then become them. Dimir Guildmage. I said there was a cycle of guildmages. So this one was two hybrid mana. Blue or black. Blue or black. It was a human wizard, obviously. 2-2.

So for three and a blue, target player draws a card, casts a sorcery. For three and a black, target player discards the card, casts a sorcery. So we so liked draw and discard. You will see it used a bunch of times. Dimir already had some issues with what it could and couldn't do. And so it was just it was so elegant that you will see it used a bunch of times. Dimir already had some issues with

what it could and couldn't do and so it was just it was so elegant that you will see we use it multiple times. Disembowel XB instant. Destroy target creature with converted mana cost X. I think this card ended up being common. I am not a fan of common cards that have X in them. One of the things that we do is we have game support, and people call in game support and talk about, you know, ask questions and stuff, and they keep a record of questions they ask, and

whenever we put an X spell in common, we get a lot of people calling in about hey, how does this work? Because variable costs, I mean, I'm not against X spells, I like X spells, they should be in the game, I just believe that really common isn't where they should be. It just causes more confusion than it's worth it. Next, Dogpile. Three and a black instant. Deal damage to target creature or player. Oh, did I put black? Dogpile's red. This is three and a red.

Deal damage to target creature or player equal to the number of attacking creatures you control. Deal damage to target creature or player equal to the number of attacking creatures you control. So this is a red card meant for the Boros deck, although the cool thing about it is there's other decks it can make sense in, but obviously it was intended for the Boros deck. So the idea essentially was, it helps me remove creatures, but I need to be aggressively attacking in order to do that. If my opponent has a big scary thing, well I gotta attack with my whole team maybe if I want to get rid of it. And so it's both an aggro card that helps give removal, but a lot of times the issue is a lot of times red removal makes you not be aggressive.

Because if red is strong enough removal, you tend to play a more controlling game and you attack less. You sort of destroy, destroy, destroy, destroy, and then when you're able to, then you come in. But this card says, no, no, no, I'll help you destroy things, but you need to be aggressive to do it. Next, Doubling Season for Green Enchantment. If an effect would make one or more tokens, you double that, and if it would make one or more counters, you double that.

So this card, I've talked about this card a lot. I mean, basically I made this card for me. I mean, basically I made this card for me. I love doubling things, and there was a plus one, plus one counter theme that was going on in Selesnya, and there was a token theme. I'm sorry, the plus one, plus one counter theme was going on in Green. I guess Green had both a plus one, and plus counter theme and a token theme. Both were going on in the set. And so I just like the idea

of green being the color of, when I say proliferation, I don't necessarily mean the proliferate mechanic, although green can do that. And the idea of growth, and green's just the one, and so like, okay,

you know, when you are making things bigger or making more of them, you're just doing more of that. And I really made the card because, I mean, I felt it would play nicely, and I felt it fit the set, and I knew that it would just work well. But I don't think I was prepared for how much the audience took to this card. I mean, I knew I loved the card, and it's something I made

because it's the kind of thing that just tickles me to no end. But it went on to be a real fan favorite. And it really was... It's interesting. I mean, I don't make a lot of cards. I call them personal cards. One of the cool things about being a magic designer is I go, you know what?

I've always wanted Thing X. Now I'm going to make Thing X. Now I have Thing X. Thing X exists. That's one of the cool perks of being a game designer, a magic designer, is that if you really, really want to see something, you know, sometimes you can do that. So next, Dowsing Shaman.

Oh, the reason we haven't reprinted Doubling Season is because it doubles all counters, it doubles loyalty counters on Planeswalkers, and that's proven to be a little too much. So we've made other variants of Doubling Season, but that's why Doubling Season itself. I tried to bring it back in Zendikar because it worked really well in Zendikar, but the loyalty thing just made it problematic because this card predates Planeswalkers of this thing. Dousing Shaman.

Four and a green for a Centaur Shaman, 3-4. For true green and tap, return target enchantment card in the graveyard to your hand. Yeah, another example. I talked about how there was an enchantment theme in the set, mostly an aura theme. But we made this card broad enough so that, yeah, yeah, you can get your auras back,

but you can also get other things back. There's a card that I loved in a set called Antiquities called Our Giving Archaeologist that allowed you to get back an artifact. It activated to get back an artifact. And I loved that card. And this card, in a lot of ways, was a nod to that card. It's a little bit bigger than that card, but the effect, which is really what the card's about, was a nod. Also, there's

a card called Skull of Orm from Legends that got back enchantments. And anyway, I, this was definitely me designing something, the reminiscent of cards I loved in the past, This was definitely me designing something reminiscent of cards I loved in the past, but that had, you know, in a slightly different form. Drooling Grudeon. Three black, black, green. So it's six mana, two black, one green. It's a beast, four, three.

For two black and green, so for four mana total, one black, one green, sacrifice a creature. Target creature gets plus two, plus two on end of turn, and another gets minus two, minus two at the end of turn. So this was another parallel thing we found that we thought was kind of cool, is that green gets plus N, plus N effects, and black gets minus N, minus N effects. So one of the funs we've had is sort of combining them in a way, so the idea is the flavor in some level is you're stealing the strength from one creature

to give to another creature. And the overall feel of that, the sort of stealing strength, feels a little bit more black. And that minor black actually will occasionally do the minus N minus N to a creature to plus N plus N itself. So this card felt a little more black than green, so we made more black in its

mana cost to do that. Dryads Caress more black than green, so we made more black in its mana cost to do that. Dryads Caress. Four green green, instant. Gain a number of life equal to the number of creatures on the battlefield. And if you use white to cast it, then you untap all the creatures you control. So this was a cycle of cards. Once again, when I say cycle, I'm talking about a cycle within the guilds.

And so in guild sets, cycles are a little quirky. Most guild cycles, what they are, are 10-card cycles, of which in this block, four were in the first set, three were in the second set, three were in the third set, because it matched the number of guilds. So this one was a spell cycle where it's a mono-color card, but if you used the secondary color to cast it, it gave you a bonus to the spell.

So the idea is it's a life-gaining spell, and that might be fine just by itself. And you can play this in a mono-green deck that doesn't have any white. But if you happen to have white in it, it also allows you to be defensive with it. Not only can you gain life to help you defensively,

but I can now get creatures to block with. Okay. Dusk Mantle. House of Shadows. So this is a land. You tap to add a colorless mana, or blue block and tap, target player mills one card. Takes the top card of the library and puts it in their graveyard. So one of the things we did is we did a cycle of lands.

Originally these were the rare lands, and then we ended up putting the shock lands in. I think, did these get moved down to uncommon? I'm not sure whether these got moved down to uncommon. The idea is they're flavorful lands, they tap for a colorless, and they all tap for one mana in each of the colors, and they do an effect that's in color for that guild. Milling, for example, is one of the strategies of Ymir. We said target player again because there's a reason you might want to mill your own stuff.

Black, for example, has dredge cards that maybe you want to mill. Okay. Or you might want to mill to help your dredge cards that maybe you want to mill. Okay. Or you might want to mill to help your dredge cards. Next, Elves of Deep Shadow. It costs a single green. It's an elf druid that's a 1-1. Tap to add black.

So this was kind of like a land of war elf, except instead of paying green mana, you are paying, instead of getting green mana, you're getting black mana. This was another card from the dark. The dark has a, this set might have more reprints from the dark than any other set. Any other not in my core set.

Anyway, we had this card from long ago that was a green card that tapped for black. We had a guild that was all about green and black, so we reprinted it. Okay, next. Eye of the Storm. Five blue blue enchantment. Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery, exile it. Then cast a copy of each card exiled. Spells are then, the spells are free. They don't cost any mana.

So the idea is, let's say I cast, let's say I'm playing blue red. Blue red was a spell-oriented deck. One of the things we did is, because blue and red did not have a second guild, we built some themes into blue-red so you could draft blue-red as a color combination. And one of the things we really played around with was enabling you to be able to play spells.

Now this I'm pretty sure is a rare, so not that this would show up in limited all that much. But it was sort of playing in a similar theme as we gave to blue and red. And then, when Izzet showed up in the next set, it was playing the same themes that we were goofing with blue and red so that when you're drafting them together they work together. So the idea here is let's say I cast a direct damage spell. Well then I do my direct damage spell. Next I cast a card draw. And so I do the drop damage spell again, and now I do the card drawing. Well, then next, I get a bounce spell.

Well, now I do the damage and draw the cards and do the bounce. And so the idea is each time you did it, you added to the chain of events that were going to happen. So this card really, really wanted you to have a lot of enchantments. And it's a very fun card. Phase fetters, three and a white for an enchantment. It's an aura. Enchant permanent. when it enters the battlefield you gain four life

and then the card if it's a creature can attack or block and it can't use activated abilities so the idea is it allows you to use this card

to shut off things it doesn't stop like triggered abilities or static abilities but it does stop all activated abilities. So it stops creatures. You know, it's like an arrest for creatures.

And it also allows you to sort of deal with planeswalkers, deal with artifacts that activate, deal with enchantments that activate. It gives you a bunch of options. So Phase Fighter is actually part of a cycle. There's a cycle of creature enchantments that have an enter the battlefield effect when you play them and usually the enter the battlefield effect is better

than the aura effect this is actually an exception to that the life gain while nice is not as good as the ability this is obviously our pacifism you know, a rest variant this went on to be a tournament card this is a really strong card and so of the cycle is a really strong card.

And so of the cycle, this was the strong card. But anyway, it was a very effective card. Farseek, one and a green for a sorcery. Tutor for a plains, island, swamp, and mountain. Put on the battlefield, tapped, and then shuffle. So the idea is this is like a rampant growth, except it is a rampant growth only for basic lands that aren't forests. This allowed us to make the card at the power level we wanted to make it at,

and had this nice flavor of trying to do a neat thing where it's helping. It's like green, but specifically helping other cards. Now, there's a great trivia question. You guys ever want to ask a fun magic trivia question? You can ask people and say, what magic card references four of the five basic land types? There are a bunch of cards that reference all five. There's even, I think, one or two that reference three.

There's a bunch that reference two. There's lots I think one or two that reference 3 there's a bunch that reference 2 there's lots that reference 1 but I think this is the only one that references 4 I could be wrong but this is anyway I believe this is the one that references 4 okay Firemane Angel 3 red white white so 6 mana 1 red 2 white

it's an angel 4 3 it's got flying and first strike. And the beginning of upkeep, if it's in your graveyard, you gain a life. And then for six red, red, white, white, so ten mana total, two red, two white, return it from the graveyard to the battlefield. You can only use this during the upkeep. So the idea was an angel, it's a 4-3 flying first strike angel. So the idea is 4-3, the flying was the white part, and the first strike was the red part. Well, and I did not take it back.

I guess both colors can fly, and both colors can do first strike. So I guess they were both overlaps rather than being specific colors. And then it has the ability to gain life. It's in the graveyard, which is a white thing. It has the ability to come back out of the graveyard, which is more reminiscent of a phoenix than anything else, although white obviously has a little bit of coming out of the graveyard, usually on smaller creatures, though. Fists of Ironwood, one and a green, gem and aura, enter the battlefield to put two 1-1 sapling tokens. You get two 1-1 sapling tokens you get two 1-1 sapling tokens

and an enchanted creature has trample this is in the same cycle as face fetters it's like enchanted creature gets trample not too exciting but also getting two 1-1 creatures pretty good so essentially I get two 1-1 creatures for two mana which is not bad

and then as a bonus something gets trample okay my last card of the day is flame kin zealot bad, and then as a bonus, something gets trampled. Okay. My last card of the day is Flamekin Zealot. So Flamekin Zealot costs one red, red, white, so it's a Boros card, so four mana, two red, one white.

It's an Elemental Berserker, 2-2. When it enters the battlefield, creatures you control get plus one, plus one and haste until end of turn. So once again, very much an enabler. We're trying to give you abilities that really are much more useful if you attack. So plus one plus one really encourages you to attack. Haste really encourages you to attack.

Nothing else to do with it. And anyway, another example of us trying to find a lot of fun different ways to sort of encourage you to attack in different means. You'll notice in this set we were very laser focused on figuring out what the style was and really hit that hard. We went back to Ravnica and returned to Ravnica. We broadened out things a little more, made a few more options of how to play certain guilds. But in Ravnica we were a little more straightforward. Not that there's zero other things to do in Boros, but wow, Boros really pushes

you toward wanting to attack. But anyway, I am now driving up to my daughter's school. So we all know what that means. It means this is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time with more

Ravnica. Bye-bye.