Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #411: Ravnica Cards, Part 3

Episode Date: February 17, 2017

This is the third 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 the last two podcasts, I've started talking... Oh, excuse me. I start with a sneeze. I have been talking all about Ragnica. So I got up to F. I'm still on F. So we will continue with Flickerform. So Flickerform is an enchantment, an aura, that costs one and a white. So two mana, one of which is white. You enchant creature and then if you spend two

white, white, so four mana total, two of which is white, you remove the enchanted creature plus any aura on it and then it gets returned at end of turn, what we call flickering. Flickering was, if you guys remember my Ursa's Destiny podcast, there was a card called Flicker, and we've made a lot of cards that do that ability.

Sometimes they go away and come back instantly. Sometimes they go away and come back at end of turn. This one is designed for end of turn. It does allow you to do shenanigans like I can enchant my opponent's creature and then spend man every turn to remove it as a blocker. Or I could put it on my own creature that has, you know, some enter the battlefield effect so I can re-trigger it. Or I could just put it on a good creature and then if they tried to destroy it, I could

pay mana to save it. There's a bunch of different ways to use this. The one thing that's unique about this is not only does it save itself, but it saves any auras that are on the creature. And so it is definitely, it was designed to be pro-aura. Normally flickers is bad for auras because it goes away and then the aura falls off and goes to the graveyard and then when it comes back it's now auraless. But this allows you to save the auras.

Next Flight of Fancy, three and a blue, so four mana total, one of which is blue. Another aura. When it enters the battlefield, you draw two cards, and Enchanted Creature has Flying. So I talked about this last time with Face Fetters and... What was the green one? What's the green one called? I forget.

Face Fetters and Fist of Ironwood? Is that right? Which was, it's a cycle of auras that all have an enter into the battlefield effect that then are auras. Most of them, the Face Fetters was kind of the exception, have a pretty small effect they grant you as an enchantment. But, as example here, drawing two cards is worth most of the mana. So when you can do that, you're able to get it. Okay, so and the neat thing about this was there's a lot of ways to

play around with auras, and so the fact that you can use this to draw cards, that if you can, you know, for example, just using Flickerform, if you Flickerform an enchanted creature that has Flight of Fantasy on it, when it comes back in, it re-triggers the auras into the battlefield effect, and so it allows you to draw cards. So like Flickerform and Flight of Fantasy on it, when it comes back in, it re-triggers the Aura's Enter the Battlefield effect. And so it allows you to draw cards. So like Flickerform and Flight of Fantasy together were a combo, for example. Next, Galactic Arc, another one in the cycle. This is the red one.

So it's two and a red for an Aura, Enchantment Aura. Enchanted creature has First Strike, and when it enters the battlefield, it does three damage to a creature or player. It does, what we refer to as a bolt. It does three damage. And so the idea here is, I can use this, I can kill something, and then my creature gets first strike, which is not meaningless, but normally you would not play an enchantment that gives your creature first strike.

That's usually not good enough to play. But we added these, enter the battlefield effect to try to give extra value to try to play the auras. So Galactic Arc is another good combo with Flicker form. Okay, next, Gather Courage. It's an instant for a single green mana. It's got Convoke, and target creature gets plus two, plus two until end of turn. So this is a good example of how you can use mechanic and use it in different ways. So this is a good example of how you can use mechanic and use it in different ways.

So part of what Convoke does is it's about reducing cost because you tap creatures. And a lot of times what it means is I get bigger things out quicker. This card does something a little bit different, which is as long as I have an untapped creature, or an untapped green creature, I can cast this without needing to have untapped mana. So in Magic, normally when you're tapped out, normally you can't cast spells. I mean, there's obviously some exceptions, historically speaking, but normally you can't cast spells. And so this is using Convoke more like a free spell than necessarily, you know, a lot of Convoke was more about, oh, it's an expensive spell, you're getting it cheaper. This is more about, oh, I can get it out without

necessarily needing any mana up, any land up, and that all I need is to have a green creature up. And so in this environment, if your opponent, you're playing a green mage, and they have a single green creature untapped, you have to assume that they might, and they have cards in their hand, you have to assume the possibility that they could have this card, that they could have Gather Courage. And it's a neat way to show how you can use a mechanic and do something a little bit different

with it, you know, and that how this sort of plays out shows that, you know, Convoke can do a bunch of different kinds of things. And this is like, I talked about Octothon Wyrm, Octothon Wyrm, hard to say that word. Well, that was the, you know, giant 914 plus 13 mana Convoke card. This is the opposite end of the spectrum. This is a one drop, a one cost. But it even shows that Convoke can matter at 13 mana. It can matter at one mana. So it's a very interesting mechanic.

I like it a lot. Next, Gaze of the Gorgon. So this is a hybrid spell. So it costs three generic mana and then either black or green mana because it's hybrid. It's an instant. You regenerate target creature, and then at end of turn, you destroy all creatures blocking or blocked by it. So if you remember, one of the things that's interesting when you go back and look at things

is you kind of... A little peek into history. For example, this regenerates. We don't regenerate anymore. We now just make things indestructible at end end of the turn. We don't actually use regenerate. For those that don't know regenerate, regenerate means that you tap the creature and remove all damage from it, essentially, meaning

instead of it being killed, it prevents damage effects and you basically, instead of going to the graveyard, you leave it in play, but you tap it and you remove it from combat if it's in combat. And we don't, Death Touch wasn't a thing yet. Death Touch doesn't show up until Future Sight teases that,

and then it basically shows up shortly after that. And so, this modern day, it's funny, this card in the modern day card would be target creature gains, target creature gains death touch and indestructible to end of turn. Is how this card would be modern day. But back then, and this is one of the reasons

why stuff like death touch was so important. Every time we did that effect we didn't quite do it the same. Like this has a trigger that at the end of turn destroys it. Other times it would be combat based. What we found was when we went back and looked at what we used to call the basilisk ability, it's called Death Touch, we did it in a lot of different ways.

And one of the good things about keywording something is you start sort of going, okay, here's how we're going to do it. And then all the cards that do similar things work in the same way. It's one of the values of having keywords. And notice in black and green, black and green both have regenerate, and black and green both have death touch-like ability. So this was trying to find a space between black and green.

Also, it's a neat combat. It's a neat combat trick. Black does not have tons of combat tricks. In fact, we like this combat trick so much, you're seeing this a lot in black. A lot of, I gain either Life Link or I gain Death Touch, and then you, now you gain Instructability to return. That's something, we're doing a lot more in black. Okay, next, Glare of Subdual.

Two green, white, it's an enchantment. You tap an untapped creature you control to tap target artifact or creature. So if you guys remember when I talked during Urza's Destiny, I talked about the card Opposition. This is a fixed opposition, is really what this card is. So what Opposition was is Opposition

said you could tap a creature you control to tap any permanent of your opponents, I believe. Maybe it spelled out the permanents at the time rather than just said permanent, but it allowed you to tap land, and that proved problematic. That a lot of the ways opposition got used is I get a bunch of creatures

and then I prevent you from having mana every turn. And that really just locked you out. And that's not particularly fun. So what we said is we liked the idea of using creatures as a means of control, but hey, wouldn't it be neat to put it in Selesnya, the creature-based guild? And then we're only going to tap artifacts or creatures.

Now, why is this green-white? The answer sort of is, white is the color that can tap things. So white clearly can tap creatures. It doesn't normally tap artifacts, but white in theory can tap artifacts. And then the sort of using the creatures as the resource is a little bit more green. This is definitely one of those things where sometimes what we do is we try to combine a green ability and a white ability to make a green white card. Sometimes we make an ability like well kind of in its whole in its entirety it kind of feels

green white. That this felt very Selesny into us. It's not always about can you just do it in monocolor. Sometimes it's about, ooh, does it have the feel we want? And, hey, if you want to play this, we want you to kind of be in green and white. So that's why this is a green-white card. Next, Glean Crawler. Okay, so Glean Crawler is also a hybrid card. is a, and also a hybrid card.

Three, and then this is black or green, black or green, black or green. So six mana, three generic, and three hybrid, black or green.

It's an insect whore, six, six. It has trample. And then it says at the beginning of the end step, at the beginning of the end step,

return creature cards in your graveyard to your hand that went to the went to the sorry at the end of turn you return creature cards to your hand if they went to the graveyard from the battlefield

this turn so with glean crawler in play things that die don't stay dead so if I can get a glean crawler out whenever you kill my things assuming you don't exile them. So if I can get a glean crawler out, then whenever you kill my things, assuming you don't exile them or put them back in my hand or my library, if they go to the graveyard, if they die, then they come back. And so it makes it really hard to deal. And one of the cool things is that both black and green can get things back from the graveyard.

And so we were playing around in sort of space, once again, trying to overlap for hybrid. Usually black is the one that just reanimates things, although green is creatures that naturally come out of the graveyard. Though black-green, Golgari in general, has this idea of recycling. That it really sees life and

death as just one big circle. And that the graveyard is just a means to recycle things. So this felt very Golgari to us. This is why we made it a hybrid card. The reason it's hybrid and not multicolor is we could cleanly do the ability in both colors we felt, so we made it

hybrid. Also, we did a vertical cycle of hybrid, so we were trying to find something splashy we could do. This is the rare, the Golgari rare hybrid. Okay, next, G the Golgari rare hybrid. Okay, next, Glimpse the Unthinkable. Blue and black, so two mana, one blue, one black. Sorcery.

Target player takes the top ten cards of their library and puts it into their graveyard. They mill for ten. This was, I believe, either the number one or number two top-rated card. This was a highly, highly rated card. And what we found is that milling is one of these effects where there's a huge discrepancy. Things that repeatedly mill can win you the game, but things that one-shot mill without combinations can't. And this is the kind of card where we've discovered is players

really like mill effects, especially less experienced players, because it's exciting. You know, if I mill you and I get your dragon, I've gotten your dragon, your dragon is dead. And I think more experienced players sort of understand from a pure game theory standpoint, you know, that dragon could have just been in the bottom of the library. The fact that you're removing 10 cards, on some level, removing the top 10 from the bottom 10 doesn't mean a lot of difference. Unless there's some shenanigans on top of the library, which happens a little bit. Usually it doesn't matter too much. So, like, the idea that you've milled their important thing, you know, statistically speaking, isn't quite as important.

But, viscerally really it is important when i mill you and you know the next card is going to be your powerful card and i mill it i feel good you don't get that card and i got rid of it so this is one of those cards that like strategically isn't quite as valuable as people think but it's a lot of fun and it's splashy and it's popular um it's one of the reasons we do a lot of mill effects in general is that um a lot of players really like mill effects you know and that milling isn't always, you know, I mean, they're limited where milling matters. And everyone's in a blue moon,

there's construction where it matters. But milling is more of a fun effect that we make because there's a lot of players that like the effect. Okay, Golgari Germination, one black green enchantment. Non-token creatures you control, oh, when a non-token creature, when a non-token creature you control

dies, you put a 1-1 green sapling token into play. So the green sapling tokens are all the simple 1-1 tokens. A lot of what we played around with in the set in green in general was a lot of token making because Golgari likes it because they want to sort of recycle things and they like to sacrifice things. And Selesnya likes it because they're trying to grow recycle things and they like to sacrifice things. And Selesnya likes it because they're trying to grow in numbers and overwhelm you. So this was obviously black-green, so this was made more directly for Gugari. Notice one of the tricks we do whenever we have things die into tokens, we usually do

one of two tricks. Either we say non-token, or we say non-whatever the token is. So this card could have been non-tokens, or could have been non-sapperlings. We want non-tokens. Nowadays, I think we're more likely to say non-sapperlings than non-tokens, just because sapperlings have some flavor meaning, where tokens, I mean, it has meaning within the game, but it has less flavor meaning. Okay, next. Golgari Grave Troll.

Four and a green. It's a troll skeleton. It's a 0-0, but it enters the battlefield with a plus one plus one counter on it for each creature in your graveyard. And then one, remove a plus one plus one counter from it to regenerate it. Dredge six. Okay, so Dredge. So we spent a lot of time trying to find the Gagari

mechanic, and I'm not exaggerating. I think we looked at like 40 mechanics. We tried out a whole bunch of mechanics. It was the last thing we found, and in fact, what we turned over from design, so the way Dredge works is Dredge 6 means if I want to, I can draw this card instead of, you know, whenever I'm going to draw a card, I can instead invoke dredge. Instead of drawing a random card from the top of my library, I can draw my dredge card. But if I do that, I then have to mill, take the top end cards of my library, six in this case, and put it into my graveyard. So let's say I want to get the troll. Okay, well, in order to get the troll, I can choose to draw it, and then if I choose to draw it instead of the card I would normally draw,

I take the top six cards in my library and put it in my graveyard. The idea is eventually you can mill yourself out, so you have to be careful how many times you use it. But as an example of this card, this card gets more powerful the more creatures you have in your graveyard. So you having to mill is not really a downside. I mean, it can eventually become a downside, but most of the time it's a pure upside. In fact, having large dredge numbers usually is really good for you. In design, before we handed over development, we didn't have the

milling component. For us is dredge card said, if you want to draw this, you can draw it instead of drawing a card, but we just costed it weaker. So it's like, oh, it's a weaker card, but, you know, it has utility base. Like, you know, imagine, I don't remember exactly what it was, but, you know, a 3-3 for, I don't know, four or five mana, maybe five mana. And the idea is, okay, five mana for 3-3 isn't particularly good, but you really need a 3-3 mana, a 3-3 creature late in the game, and, you know, you have the mana to cast it. Like, okay, well, maybe rather than draw a random card, I'll draw the 3-3 mana, a 3-3 creature late in the game, and you have the mana to cast it. Like, okay, well, maybe rather than draw a random card, I'll draw the 3-3 creature I know I can use.

This card actually ended up being very good. I think the Dredge 6 was a big part of it. Dredge is a very popular, in older formats that can play the Dredge cards, is very popular. It really is an out-of-the-box deck, because a lot of dredging isn't even about drawing cards. It's about sort of getting things in your graveyard, manipulating your graveyard and stuff. And so I know it's a popular deck and mechanic.

It's a bit powerful. I've said that I think I put dredge at, I think I put it at 9 on the Storm Scale. But anyway, this was a really popular card. It was a strong card. And it did some neat things. The other cool thing about this card that I like from a design standpoint is when you bring it back, it has different meaning because it cares about the state of the graveyard.

So let's say I get this out early and it's not particularly big and it dies. Maybe later when I get it out in the mid to late game, it can be pretty big because by that point, I have a lot more creatures. Okay, next, Golgari Guildmage. All the guildmages cost two hybrid mana. So this is black or green, black or green, because it's Golgari.

It's a 2-2. This is an elf shaman. So one of the things we did, by the way, is all of them have races that match the guild they're in. And the classes, I think some of them are wizard and some of them are shaman and some of them are druids, depending on what guild they're in. We have a bunch of different classes that are magic users, and so I think we mixed up the magic users a bit. Okay, so for four and a black and sac a creature, return a creature card

from graveyard to hand. So I can spend five mana, one which is black, sac a creature, and then take a creature to my graveyard and put it back in my hand. And then for four and a green,

I can put a plus one, plus one counter and target a creature. So this allows me to sort of recycle my things or build my things up. Both things that the Golgari like to do.

I was really happy with how the guild mages came out. They all were pretty good. They were really good and limited. A few of them were good and constructed. And they really sort of gave you options and choices for things that did what the guild wanted to do. But they were general enough that even if you were playing them

with one of the two colors, like let's say this card was in a green deck. They didn't have black. The green ability, you know, GG for a 2-2. For 4G, put a plus-plus-plus counter. In Limited, yeah, you probably play that anyway. I mean, it's better if you're playing black and green. But we designed them such that, hey, you'd still consider playing them

if you were just playing one of the two colors. Okay, Golgari Rotworm. Three black, green. For a zombie worm, five, four. A black, sack a creature, target player loses one life. So one of the things we wanted in Golgari was a bunch of sack outlets.

Like I said, where Celestia builds up and eventually overwhelms you, black kind of uses its creatures as resources and sacrifice is a big part of it. Plus, it has a lot of ways to get back creatures. So one of the things that Golgari likes to do

is sacrifice creatures, get things in the graveyard, and then bring things back. One of the ways to do that I just showed you was with Golgari, Guildmage. The other thing about this card

is it was a good finisher. That it's sort of like, I need to get you low, and then if I get you low enough, I can start plinking you by just throwing my random creatures at you. And so, with this card in play, it's kind of like, I need to get you low, and then if I get you low enough, I can start plinking you by just throwing my random creatures at you. And so, with this card in play, it's kind of like, okay, you know, once I get you to the point where your life is lower than my number of creatures, you know, I can take you out.

And so, you know, you have to be very careful when playing, when this creature is in play. Next, Greater Moss Dog. It's three and a green. It's a 3-3 creature, plant hound for 3-3, dredge three. So I think the very first dredge card we ever made was this card, although once again, remember, dredge and design didn't have the milling part of it. Brian Schneider, who was the head developer of R of ravnica added added that in his he his and his development team added that which i i thought was cool and slaviful ironically i think it ended up making the car the mechanic a bit stronger maybe too strong but it was cool synergy

i did like that and it was flavorful for the kokari um but anyway the the 3-3 i think was the first dredge card we ever made. I think it cost 5. I think it was 4G33. It might have been 5G33. Okay, next. Grozov. 6 blue, blue, blue. So 9 mana, 3 of which is blue. Leviathan, 9-9. Defender. When it enters the battlefield, you can search your library for any number of cards with a converted mana cost of 9. For 4 mana, this loses the Fender to

Underturn, and it has Transmute 1 blue blue. Remember, Transmute always costs 3 mana. This is the mono blue card. It's always 1 generic, 2 colored. So the mono card is 1 blue blue. Anyway, this was a goofy card.

I mean, the idea of you know it's a nine drop that gets you nine drops I know some people built some fun decks with this it never was really a competitive card but it was a goofy fun card

and Magic gets to have goofy fun cards we like cards that make you go ooh what can I do with this you know I can I can get a whole bunch of nine drops what do I do

what do I do with a whole bunch of nine drops and so anyway I think this was a fun card I kind of like I can get a whole bunch of 9-drops. What do I do with a whole bunch of 9-drops? And so anyway, I think this is a fun card. I kind of like... One of the things you want is you want to mix up your design so there's a lot of different kinds of cards for a lot of different kinds of players. And this is a good card where there's a certain style of player that gets really excited by this card and others would yawn.

But the other neat thing about it is we gave it transmute because sometimes you'll be in a position where it's not quite what you need yet because it's a nine drop. So it's the kind of card, well, I could build a deck to use it, but hey, you know, oh, I'm sorry. The reason this says transmute is because you have to play nine drops in your deck to make this work, you have nine drops. And so this allows you to exchange for things that have nine drop. And one of the tricks about it is there are ways to have nine drops that secretly aren't really nine drops. From Ravnica, for example, there's Convoke. There were probably one or two nine mana Convoke creatures. But there's other things that

quote unquote cost something, but often have alternative costs or have cost reductions. And so there are things that cost nine that really don't. And so you also can use this to exchange for something that costs nine that you can sneak out a little easier if you don't yet have nine mana. Okay, Guardian of the V2 Ghazi. Six, green, white. It's an

elemental four, seven. It's got Convoke and Vigilance. I just like pointing out there's a lot of neat things with Convoke, just like we had a flyer talking about last time. This is another kind of neat creature. Four, seven, Vigilance. I just like pointing out there's a lot of neat things with Convoke, just like we had a flyer talking about last time. This is another kind of neat creature, 4-7 Vigilance, you know, and it's the kind of thing where using Convoke, it just allows us to sort of build up faster. And that one of the strategies we built into the Selesnya was they don't beat you fast.

They really have to build up. And so a lot of their beginning to medium game is just building things up. And they spend whole turns doing things like just getting this creature up fast. But the nice thing about getting a 4-7 Vigilance out is it both can protect you and it can start nibbling away at your opponent.

Okay, next, Halcyon Glaze, one blue blue enchantment. Whenever you cast a creature spell, it becomes a 4-4 flyer, illusion flyer, until end of turn. So the idea is, it's a 4-4 flyer that only turns on when you cast a creature spell. And so, it's just playing in different space. I don't know, I'm pretty sure I made this card. It was there to fill a void. I know we tried to build some stuff

that went nicely in blue-red, since blue and red each only had one guild to draft, so we gave you some tools to be able to draft the blue-red deck. I know blue-red had a lot more, had some spell-oriented stuff. I'm not quite sure. I don't know.

I like the spell because it's neat, and I like spells that make you sort of go, okay, well, what kind of deck does this one play? And it's neat in that if you're playing a heavy creature deck, for all intents and purposes, one blue blue for four four five is pretty good. And so if you're playing a deck in which you're planning to play a lot of creatures,

this is just a good savings. Helldozer. Three black, black, black. So six mana, three generic, three black. Zombie giant, 5-4. For black, black, black tap destroy target land. And if the non-basic land

you can untap card name. So it has interesting flavor text. So flavor text says sometimes you go to hell, and sometimes hell comes to you. I have two pieces of flavor text that I wrote for this set. Helldozer is one of them.

And I wrote it really tongue-in-cheek. I wasn't... Mac Avada was doing the flavor text at the time, and I think he said something about having trouble with the flavor text for this card or something. And so I wrote him a doing the flavor text at the time, and I think he said something about having trouble with the flavor text for this card or something. And so I wrote him a piece of flavor text, not super seriously, kind of tongue-in-cheek.

And Matt liked it, and he put it in. And this ended up being the second most popular flavor text in Ravnica, in our God Book study. So anyway, I got a kick out of that. Ooh, what was the most popular flavor text? I'll tell you. Hex, four black black sorcery. So six mana, two wishes black.

Destroy six target creatures. And what that means is not up to six, six. You have to destroy exactly six. So if your opponent only has four creatures in play, maybe you've got to destroy two of yours if you want to use it. If there's not even six creatures in play, you can't cast it. It needs six targets. And the flavor text was, when killing five just isn't enough.

And I wrote this because I thought it was really neat that Hex would have only six words in this flavor text, because it's all about six. So anyway, I ended up writing that. Matt used that, too. That was the number one. So this is a feat I will never repeat ever again in my life. I wrote two pieces of flavor text for this and in the God Book Study, the number one and number two piece of flavor text for my flavor

text. So I, uh, not a feat that's easily replicated. Um, and both of them were definitely, I was, I wasn't one of the writers. I just, both of them, I got inspired just to say, hey Matt, and I was trying to make Matt laugh. I think Hex was a more serious attempt at flavor text than Helldozer. I think Helldozer, I was really just trying to go over the top. But anyway, I don't know, I guess I'm, I mean, I don't do a lot of flavor text writing these days, but I'm proud that, you know, when I go back and look, when I try my hand at it, my writer self still got some of it. Okay, next, Hour of Reckoning, 4 www.

So 4 white, white, white, 7 mana, 4 generic, 3 white, sorcery, convoke, destroy all non-token creatures. And I think this was... Oh, no, no, no. Okay, so this was... Oh, no, no, no. Okay, so this was just another Convoke card. The cutesy thing about this thing was, if you have a lot of token creatures,

if you're playing Selesnya and you built up a token army, this allows you to use all those creatures that you've made to cheaply wipe the board. Note, by the way, it's four white mana, and most of the tokens are green. They're sapling. So we did do that to make sure that you had to play some white mana.

But it allows you to sort of build up a token army and then wipe out everything else and then be able to attack the token army. Hunted dragon, three red red dragons, 6-6, flying in haste. And when it enters the battlefield, the opponent gets three 2-2 white knights with white knight tokens with first strike.

So this was a cycle Richard Garfield made. Richard was on the design team. We call it the hunted cycle. And the idea was you got a creature, but then as sort of the downside, you know, you got a very efficient creature for your cost, and as a downside, your opponent then got some creatures that you gave them. So for example, you get six power of dragon, they get six power of knights.

This one was a little harsher because they couldn't block your dragon. In retrospect, I wonder if this was supposed to, like, have reach or something so the knights could interact with the dragon. But anyway, the hunted cards were popular. They were... I don't think any of the hunted cards were really tournament viable,

but you saw them in Limited, and they definitely were fun. People liked them. It was very flavorful. I pulled this one out as a sample, and that, in some ways, was the most flavorful to me. It's like, I get a dragon, but you get some knights. And so there was a, what was it?

Hunted dragon, hunted whore, hunted Lamassu, hunted phantasm, and hunted troll. The phantasm was white, the Lamassu was red, the whore was black, the dragon was red, the troll was green. Last ghast, one black instant. Target creature gets minus three, minus three until end of turn. This card for a

while was called Black Bolt was the name of it, which is funny, by the way, if you happen to know Marvel, Black Bolt's a character from Marvel. King of the Humans. But anyway, originally it cost way, if you happen to know Marvel, Black Bolt's a character from Marvel. King of the Humans. But anyway, originally it cost black, a single black. We called it Black Bolt. The idea was, you know, it was Black's

version of Lightning Bolt. It couldn't make the person, it couldn't hit the player, but it could essentially kill a three-power creature. Development decided that was a little too good and changed it to one bleed, so. Life from Valome. So this costs one greed, it's a Sorcery. Return up to three lands from your graveyard to your hand.

Turn up from three land cards from your graveyard to your hand, and then dredge three. So this was another tournament-powered dredge card. It really does a lot to, one of the things is you need a lot of resources in Golgari, and cards, there's ways to make use of cards and it doesn't matter what the cards are. So what this card does is it's a really good way of sort of drawing more cards. Now I get there are lands, but there's ways to make use of cards regardless of what the cards are.

And because this dredges and puts cards in the graveyard, it helps fill up and increase your chance of getting the land you need to get back. And so it is it is definitely a very powerful card because it allows you to gain card advantage in the strictest sense of the word of going up in cards. Lightning Helix costs red white so two mana one red one white instant deal three damage to target creature or player and gain three life. So the fun thing about this card is that apparently when red and white get together, they get to do what mono black does. So this is a drain.

We drain life in black all the time. And black always does damage and then gains life. But the fun part here is we're taking the damage dealing of red and we're taking the life gain of white, each things that are super iconic in their color, and by sticking them together, we get something that you see in another mono color in black.

So it's kind of funny if I say I want to drain life, what color is it in? It's either a mono black or it's in red white. And there's a few examples of that, but that's one of the most famous examples of an ability that sort of shows up in monocolors in one place, but in a different multicolor combination somewhere else. Okay,

Loxodon Gatekeeper. Two white-white. It's an Elfin Soldier. Two-three Elfin Soldier. And all the opponent's creatures and lands enter tapped. So there's a famous card from Legends called Kismet, which did exactly this as an enchantment. Locks out on Gatekeepers just kind of bringing Kismet back, but making it a little more useful by putting it directly onto a creature. White is the rule-setting color, so white often gets to set rules. In the early days, we did a lot of the rule-setting on enchantments.

We've definitely started doing more so on white just because for tournament reasons, it helps make it easier to play sitting on a creature rather than on an enchantment. Loxodon Hierarch. Two green and white for an Elephant Cleric. It's 4-4. When it enters the battlefield, you gain 4 life. And then for a green and white mana

and sacrifice this creature, you can regenerate each creature you control. So the idea is, it's a 4-4, it's pretty powerful. I gain 4 life, that's good. And then it can save all my creatures if something happens to destroy all my creatures. Like, say, the Destroy All Creatures spell I just talked about a short time ago. Although this can be used in combination with that, where I destroy all my opponent's creatures, all non-token creatures, and then I regenerate all my

non-token creatures. This card was very powerful. It saw tournament play. Four mana for a 4-4 that has good upside abilities is definitely worth playing. Next, Lurking and Formant. This is a hybrid card, so one and blue or black. It's a human rogue, one two. For two and tap, you can look at the top card of target player's library, and you may put that into the graveyard. So the card does a bunch of different things. One is, it's in demeter color, so you can use it to mill your opponent. Also, you can use it as a means by which to remove things you don't want them to have.

So I can look at the top of the library, and let's say it's late game and it's a land, I could leave it there, but if it's a spell that would be very valuable to them, you know, I can mill it away. So this doubles as a mill card and also as a way to sort of adjust what your opponent's going to do. You can, though, turn it on yourself.

There's a bunch of different ways in Monoblock and Golgari to mess around with the graveyard. So maybe what you want to do with this card is mill your own stuff. Ironically, blue in Innistrad also has a mill your own stuff strategy.

So if you're mixing cards, this card actually interacts with some cool stuff in blue in Innistrad, although that is many years away from when this set came out. Okay, Mind Leech Mass. Five blue, black, black.

It's a 6-6 whore. It's got trample. And whenever you deal combat damage to an opponent, you get to cast a non-creature card out of their hand for free. So what happens is every time I deal damage to them, I deal combat damage, I'm allowed to look at their hand

and then cast a non-creature spell out of it. And so, and this has trample, and it's big, right? It's 6-6. So it's kind of hard to stop this, and if I do just one point of trample damage, I get to cast a spell out of your hand.

Now, one of the big ways of dealing with this is just don't keep non-creature spells in your hand. Try to cast them if you know this thing's coming out against you. But anyway, like I said, one of the things we like about Blue-Black is a lot of sort of... Blue-Black very has a lot of violating, I mess with you, I'm taking

your stuff and using your stuff, and I'm... It has a nice sort of demure feel to it. Okay, Molten Sentry. So this card, if you listened to my, either read my article or listened to my online, my speech I gave at GDC last year, I use this card as an example.

But just in case you didn't, it costs three and a red. It's an elemental, star, star. When it enters the battlefield, you flip a coin, and it comes into play as one of two things. Either it's a 5-2 creature with haste, or it's a 2-5 creature with defender. And the idea being, oh, each of these can be very valuable. Sometimes a 5-2 haste can be valuable.

Sometimes a 2-5 defender can be valuable. Here's the problem. This is what I talk about in my speech. Spikes like having choices in which there's interesting choices to have. Spike enjoys the idea that I can sort of look at something and go, oh, well A's an interesting choice,

B's an interesting choice, when do I want to use A? When do I want to use B? Timmies and Tannies of the world like exciting things to happen. They tend to like coins, I mean not all of them, but there's a subset that really enjoy coin flipping because it's like, what's going to happen? What's going to happen? I don't know. And the problem is what Spike wants out of his modal cards is two interesting modal choices so he can, he or she can use, or they can use their skill to figure out what the right mode is.

So a coin flip card doesn't make them happy because it takes the choice out of their control meanwhile, Timmy and Tammy, okay coin flip sounds fun, but what they want is some big vector some big, you know, like, okay I can get some amazing thing or maybe not an amazing thing, oh I want the amazing thing

that the more variance, the more excitement there is to the coin flip and so having two things that are both like, ah, it's probably worth it, you know, is not quite as exciting. So what we did is we made a card in which one part of it was kind of optimized for Spike, and one card was optimized for Timmy and Tammy,

but what happened in the end was it had elements that made Spike not like it, and elements that made Timmy and Tammy not like it. And so the card never really hit perfect, never hit specifically well with any one person because it didn't, it sort of split its focus. And by splitting its focus, it ended up being for no one rather than somebody.

Okay, Mortipede. Mortipede costs three and a black. It's an insect, four, one insect. And then two and a green activation. All creatures able to must block it um so we did a cycle creatures where it was a mono colored creature that had an activation um in its guild affiliation um and i think what we did is we did one one way around and another another way around like one at common and one uncommon i, I think. So the idea is if this is a mono black that splashes into green,

there's two, obviously each guild has two colors. So at common there was one of the colors with activation of the second color, and then at uncommon it was the second color as the main color with an activation of the first color. And one of the things we tried to do is try to create a body that felt, you know, black over the years since then, it started to get a little more toughness, but 5-1 was a very, or 4-1 was a very black thing.

And then use the green ability and what we call the lure ability, everybody must block me. The fact that this has a one toughness means that it lets you get through one turn, because one of the neat things about a lure is everybody else I attack with can get through if I have Allure. But this creature is going to die, and with 4 power, it's probably going to take a few things out with it when it dies, because your opponent has to block with everything. Okay, now you do 4 damage to all your creatures that can block.

Okay, next, Muddle the Mixture, Blue-Blue Instant, Counter-Target Instant or Sor sorcery, transmute one UU. So basically, when Magic first premiered in Alpha, we had a counter-spell, which is blue-blue counter-target spell. This is trying to be a limited counter-spell. It's actually blue-blue, but it only counters an instant or sorcery, because obviously we moved to cancel

one blue-blue from counter-spell. Counter-spell is too strong. So this sort of says, hey, you like counter-spell? Well, you can play counter spell. We can give you transmute on it. It's a transmutable counter spell. But we restrict you, so it's not countering everything. It's countering a subset. And the fact that it's transmute is,

if you get against a deck that really feels like it's not that useful, you know, I'm playing against a very aggro weenie deck, and I'm like, oh, this isn't helping me. You can transmute away to get something else. Okay, the final card for today. Necroplasm. One black, black ooze. It's a 1-1.

At the beginning of your upkeep, put a plus one, plus one counter on it. At the beginning of your end step, destroy all creatures whose converted mana costs are equal to the number of plus one, plus one counters on it. And it has dredge two.

So the idea is, I play this. At the end of the first turn, nothing happens because I have no plus one, plus one counters on it. Second turn, I put a plus one counter on it. Now it's aredge 2. So the idea is, I play this. At the end of the first turn, nothing happens, because I have no plus and plus encounters on it. Second turn, I put a plus encounter on it. Now it's a 2-2. End of turn, I destroy all 1-1s. And so the thing about this card is,

it only gets to be so big because it is a 3-drop. So once it has 3 plus 1 plus encounters on it, it's going to destroy itself. So the idea is, basically what happens is, I play it. On the second turn, it destroys one drop creature. Third turn, it destroys two drop creatures. Fourth turn, it destroys three drop creatures, which includes itself. And it goes to the graveyard.

It's got dredge, so anytime you want to sort of repeat that ability, you can dredge it back and then you can do that again. But one of the cool things about this design-wise I like is that it has a limited sort of resource to it. Now, if you want to be tricky, remember before I talked about the spell where you could regenerate a creature? You can regenerate this. It's a destruction effect. So if you regenerate through it, you can then

keep it around and use it to get bigger things. But anyway, I like this design. It's a cute little design. But anyway, I'm now driving up to Rachel's school. So we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic.

I'll see you next time with more Ravnica. Ciao, ciao, guys.