Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #414: Ravnica Cards, Part 5

Episode Date: March 3, 2017

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

I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so the last four podcasts have been all about Ravnica. I'm up to S. I'm almost done. So today should be the final podcast on the cards of Ravnica block. Okay, so we're up to S. Shadows of a Doubt. So this is a hybrid card. So it's an instant. It costs two mana, both of which are blue or black. So it's blue or black, blue or black, two mana, both of which are hybrid. Players can't search libraries this turn. Draw a card.

So I talked before about how Dimir, when we were first trying to find the overlap between blue and black, one of the things that we found was blue and black are the two cards that interact most with libraries. They're the two colors of the mill. Both colors can tutor. Both colors can mess with your library in a couple different ways. But anyway, this was a new effect, but it was a library-based effect, and it was kind of a little bit sneaky. I mean, it's a cantrip. It's an instant.

So the idea is somebody does something. They cast a spell to go get something out of their library, and then as kind of a counterspell, you cast this. And you could tell that the fact that we had to go to a brand new effect to find overlap between blue and black.

Like, hybrid blue and black is tricky, because hybrid blue and black means there are spells that blue can cast and black can cast. And of all the colors, the colors that we have the most problem doing hybrid cards with is blue and black. Red and blue have a little bit of problem at lower rarities, but at higher rarities, there's a bunch of things that blue and red overlap.

But black and blue really, while there's a lot of synergy and philosophically they make a lot of sense as allies. There's the least amount of actual overlap of mechanics between those two colors than I think any color combination. And the fact that we had to make a brand new effect here is kind of testament to the, it's tricky. I mean, I know when we did Shadowmoor and we had to actually make a whole bunch of blue black spells, we really, really had to get creative to do it. Okay, next, Shambling Shell. So Shambling Shell costs one black-green, so three mana, one of which is generic, one black, one green. Plant Zombie. It's a 3-1 Plant Zombie. And you can sacrifice it to put a plus one, plus one counter

on target creature. And it's got dredge three. So the idea is it's a three one. I think when we made this we had not yet undone combat damage. So the idea here was I can get in a fight with something, put combat damage on the stack. I'm sorry, we got rid of damage on the stack in

Magic 2010. This is before Magic 2010. So what you could do is you could block, put your damage on the stack, so I could kill something that had a 3 toughness, then I could stack it to get a plus 1, plus 1 counter on something. Oftentimes, that plus 1, plus 1 counter might be enough to save something else in combat. And then

it's got Dredge, Dredge 3, so I can get it back. So the idea is I can get it, I can make it, I can play with it, I can do what I need to do. When it gets in trouble I can just sacrifice it, and then I can get it back to can make it, I can play with it, I can do what I need to do. When it gets in trouble, I can just sacrifice it. And then I can get it back to redo it all over again. And this definitely was one of the stronger dredge cards in Unlimited. There's some other cards that are stronger and constructed.

But this did a lot of good work, especially in Unlimited. Okay, next. Sins of the Past. Four black black, so a total of six mana, two of which is black, sorcery. Until end of turn, you can cast Instants of Sorcery from your graveyard for free. If a card goes to the graveyard, exile it, and then you exile card name. So the idea basically is, I play this card, cost six mana, I now can cast any Instant of Sorcery out of my graveyard without paying its mana cost.

I can just do it for free. Anything I cast out of my graveyard using this effect will get exiled, and this card exiles itself. So anyway, this is another... Black being king of the graveyard. Normally, the biggest way Black's king of the graveyard is getting creatures back. Traditionally, what it does is Black is king

of reanimation. It both has it both has the effect which put creatures into play and creatures put them back in your hand.

But most of the time when Black messes around in the graveyard that's what it's doing. But this is saying hey, Black is king in the graveyard not just with creatures

but with other stuff as well. And this is it doing it with spells. And the flavor here really is just you're kind of directly casting it out of the graveyard. This ability also sometimes is done in red in sets that have flashback. That granting things in the graveyard flashback

is something we've given to red. Casting them outright is black so there's a little bit of overlap between black and red here. And red we tend to only do that when we're doing flashback. Not just, red doesn't do it naturally. But, anyway. Next, Sisters of Stone Death.

Four black, black, green, green. So, eight mana total. Four generic, two black, two green. Legendary Gorgon, it's a 7-5. So, for green, you can activate it. Tiger creature blocks card name, this turn of Fable. So for green, you can activate it. Target creature blocks card name this turn of Fable. So you can make things block it. Black and green, exile a creature blocking or blocked by card name.

And two and a black, put a creature exiled by card name onto the battlefield under your control. So there's a bunch of things going on. First off, remember, Death Touch didn't exist yet. This is pre-Death Touch. So we made a Basilisk. We wanted to do, Death Touch didn't exist yet. This is pre-Death Touch. So we made a Basilisk. We wanted to do something Death Touch-y. So the middle ability that requires both color mana basically says, okay, anything that gets in a fight

with this thing, you can destroy. I mean, technically you can exile, but you can get rid of it. And then the cool thing is the green part of it makes things fight your thing. Aha, you have to block me. And the black one says, okay, now that you've exiled it, you can your thing. Aha, you have to block me. And the black one says, okay, now that you've exiled it, you can sort of reanimate it, if you will. So the idea with this card is, it's, now, the Sisters of Stone Death, I think, were the leaders of Golgari? I'm not sure whether they were the leaders of Golgari or

whether they were just, like, First Lieutenant of Golgari or something. sure whether they were leaders of Golgari or whether they were just first lieutenant of Golgari or something I think they were the leaders, I think but anyway, the idea is we've made a Gorgon, or a Medusa, a Gorgon that's a fancy term, Medusa was a Gorgon so in magic the creature type is Gorgon so the idea here is we wanted a creature that was essentially a Gorgon and we wanted to here is we wanted a creature that was essentially a Gorgon

and we wanted to make sure that it turned things to stone and so we did that and then we did a few other abilities that allow you to make use of that. One of which is to force the combat and one of which is to make use of it once you turn them to stone. That they become your stone

puppets, essentially. But anyway, it's funny looking at things, like nowadays when we make a Gorgon, like it just has death touch for starters. That's just something that we now have a tool in our toolbox that is easily used.

So it's interesting to see what we did when that wasn't quite as available to us. Okay, next. Spectral Searchlight. It's an artifact that costs three. You tap it, you choose a player, and you put one mana of any color into that player's mana pool.

So the idea is interesting. This card was originally made to be a card for multiplayer play. That essentially what you're doing is I'm helping somebody else cast a spell because I can put mana not just in my own mana pool, but into other people's mana pools. The problem at the time was we tend to make cards for multiplayer in normal non-commander products that at least you could understand why they can be played in two-player.

And so the reason this was made, the reason this was a two-player card was because of Mana Burn. So for those that are unaware, in Magic 2010 we got rid of Mana Burn. What Mana Burn is, it's an ability that tells you... It goes back to the early days of Magic. The idea was

whenever your turn ends, if you have any... Or not turn, sorry. Whenever a phase ends, if you have any, or not turn, sorry, whenever a phase ends, if you have unspent mana in your mana pool, it would clear and then it would do damage to you. And it was really, really confusing. The funny thing is,

the story is that I fought to keep mana burn. During 6th edition, Bill was going to take mana burn out. And the reason basically is that mana burn is something you haveth edition, Bill was going to take mana burn out. And the reason basically is that mana burn is something you have to learn early in the game that just does not come up very often. I mean, the story I often tell is when we were considering getting rid of it, I asked my design team to stop, to play as if there was no mana burn. And after a month, I came back and asked them how it went, and nobody had a game in which mana burn mattered,

which was a big telling sign that maybe this was a problem. But anyway, if you ever use mana flare or any sort of spell that allowed you to get multiple mana into play, sometimes I got more mana that I

could spend than that would burn me. There was some flavor to it. It wasn't that I disliked mana burn. It just kind of wasn't carrying its weight. One of the things about Magic is we keep coming up with new ideas that we think are good enough that we want to add to the game in general. We want to go evergreen,

if you will. And there's only so many things you can teach new players. As we add things to the game, we have to find things to take out of the game. And Mana Burn was one of those things that, it added flavor. I'm not saying in a vacuum, there wasn't, you know, one of my favorite magic puzzles of all time made use of Manaburn. There was an elegance to it in the right circumstance, but it just became one of those things where it really, you had to learn it early. It didn't make a lot of sense.

It really sort of, it wasn't a rule that was carrying its weight. And that's something that you always have to look at when it wasn't a rule that was carrying its weight. And that's something you always have to look at when you have rules is is this carrying enough weight? Is it worth making people learn how to do it? And in the end we said no, we didn't think it was. We got some backlash

when we got rid of Mana Burn. I still people write in from time to time asking us to bring Mana Burn back. We might make a spell one day that's essentially like, well, you know, with this enchantment in play, there's Mana Burn. But I'm pretty sure Mana Burn itself is not coming back. People sort of grumbled a little bit when it went away, and then sort of everyone mostly forgot about it.

So it's a sign that it's, you know, not a thing. But anyway, the reason I bring up Mana Burn was it used to be that if I could give this to my opponent and Mana Burn existed, I could creatively often do damage to my opponent by giving them Mana at a time I thought they couldn't use it. You know, in combat or different things. Now, the funny thing is you didn't know they couldn't use it because they had a card in their hand. So sometimes you'd use it and they would go, oh, I need that, and they would use it. So it's still, the main function of it, though, was to be able to give mana to other people. That still exists, but the mana burn part sort of went away.

So it doesn't make a lot of sense anymore as a two-player card. It makes sense as a multiplayer card. Okay, moving on. Stink Weed Imp. Two and a black for a 1-2 imp. It has Flying, and whenever it does combat damage, you destroy target creature.

And it has Dredge 5. Excuse me. So, this was another Dredge card. It's a 1-2. Once again, this is a creature that in modern day probably would be just have death touch.

The idea here is it's a 1-2. Well, not quite death touch, but it's a 1-2 and it says, hey, if you somehow can't block me, I get to kill something. But it's only a 1-2. So it doesn't take a lot for you to be able to deal with it, but you need a flyer. And so if you somehow don't have a flyer, if this can get through...

So, I mean, I guess this is not quite Death Touch. Although, this was trying to play in Death Touch space. Probably if we made... I gotta look at this again. It's kind of like, you know, deal with this thing. It's going to kill creatures, or else, you know... But the thing about it is, which made this card a little potent, was

that even if you managed to kill it, I had a dredge so you could bring it back. And so usually if you could somehow deal with their flyers and this could get through unaided, it could just decimate their side. So it turned out to be something that, in the right circumstances, could be powerful. Okay, next. Sunforger. It's an artifact that costs three. It's an equipment. Equipped creature gets plus four, plus six. For red and white, you can unattach it.

And then you could go into your deck and get any red or white instant. With a converted mana cost of four or less. And then you get to cast it for free. So the idea essentially was that it was a sword that you could use as a weapon. Plus four, plus six, pretty potent. But, is that right? Plus four, plus six for three? Oh, it costs three to equip. That's why I wrote down plus four, plus six.

The idea is it was a big sword. You could do a lot of damage with it. But you could sort of use it to cast spells out of your graveyard. I'm sorry, out of your deck. Small red and white spells. Usually small red and white spells were control-ish spells. Sometimes combat tricks. But anyway, this was the red white. I said we had artifacts that connected to each of the guilds.

So this was the red white artifact. And the idea is kind of cool is red-white is the soldier guild. This is a sword. Look, it just can be used regularly as a sword. But hey, if you're in red and white, then you can start using it to not only use it as a sword, but to sort of get spells with it,

to make it do magical spells. And it was definitely a popular card. Sadik, Lord of Secrets. Three blue-blue, black-black, vampire, 5-5, flying. Any combat damage it dealt to the player... Oh, no, sorry. Any combat damage it dealt at all. Oh, any combat damage it dealt turned into plus one, plus one counters. So anytime it deals damage, I think to the player, anytime it deals damage to the player,

instead of the player being damaged, it instead gets plus one, plus one counters on it. And then it also mills them for that many cards. So the idea behind this card is it starts with a five, five. So let's say I hit you. You don't block me and I hit you. Then what happens is I mill you for five and I get five plus one plus one counters. So the idea is as I do damage to you, I get bigger and bigger,

but I'm not killing you with damage. I'm milling you out. And the reason I think we built it this way, I think early on it both milled you and did damage. And what happened was you just killed them with damage long before you milled them out. And so we changed it to make it this thing where it milled, but we liked the idea of the milling effect getting stronger and stronger.

So we added in instead of damage, we took off the damage part. Because originally, when I do combat damage to you, equal to damage I mill you. But I was killing you with damage before I was doing that. So then we took off the combat damage, when combat damage, you're not doing damage, but it felt bad. So we then instead said, okay, well, your combat damage turns into plus one, plus one counters. Then it felt like it did something. And it got bigger and sort of made the mill effect start to snowball, which we thought was cool. Sadek, by the way, was the leader of the Dimir.

He's a vampire. And one of the things I talked before about how we took our Iconics and we divvied them up by guild. What we decided is that the vampires made a lot of sense in Dimir. They're sneaky. They're subtle. I mean, obviously, vampires on Innistrad are black-red, but

we liked them here on Ravnica being more black-blue. One of the things we haven't done a lot with, which I really would love to do one time, is I feel like psionic vampires is a cool place to play in blue. The idea that they... I mean, we saw in Kaladesh

there's a... Yeheni is a vampire that steals energy. So that's starting getting into that mind space. But I love the idea of taking vampires that, you know, drain you, but drain different things from you rather than just blood. I like playing around with that space. That seems cool.

Okay, next. Terrarian. It's an artifact that costs one. Enters the battlefield tap. Two tap and sac. You add two mana of any color to your mana pool, and when it goes to the graveyard from play, you get to draw a card. I think this is an Erika Lauer special. One of the things

we're always looking for is trying to find ways to help you adjust your mana, but usually we only want to do a little bit of it, and so this is an artifact meant to help you fix your mana. The trick always is trying to balance how much mana you're getting, and this one's a little bit cheaper, so

it requires you to sort of funnel mana through it, so a little bit cheaper so it requires you to sort of funnel mana through it. So essentially what it does is it allows you to sort of convert mana into color but then when you use it it gets you your card back. So the idea is it's kind of a little filter mechanic but you don't lose any card advantage from using it. But the fact that you don't get the card until you sacrifice it definitely encourages you using it sooner rather than later. Just because you want to sort of filter and get your card advantage when you can.

Okay, next. Three Dreams. It's a sorcery that costs four and a white, so five mana total, one of which is white. And you could go into your library and get up to three auras and put them in your hand. So one of the things is what we call tutoring, which is going to your library and getting a card and putting it in your hand. Every color gets to tutor things that are appropriate for itself. And we allow white. White interacts a lot with auras and interacts with equipment.

So we usually let white tutor for auras and tutor for equipment. This time it's tutoring for auras. Like I said, this set had an aura theme, so we made an aura tutor. And that's one of the things I find very funny looking back through this is sometimes we put a theme in and we make it pretty strong, but for the test of time, like if you play limited, you know, there's a very strong aura theme and auras matter. But if you kind of look back at Ravnica through the lens of history, I don't think

many people even remember there was an aura theme. So it's kind of fun looking back on, oh yeah, it was there, there's this, there's this, you know. There were a lot of pieces to it, but just it's funny that how what defines a set is more by the markers of what people remember over time. And so certain aspects, like the guilds

obviously people still remember, but the aura theme, eh, it's something that sort of doesn't really come to people's minds. Tulsamere Wolfblood. Four green, white, so six mana, four generic, one green, one white. It's a legendary elf warrior. It's 3-4. Other green creatures you control get plus one, plus one. Other white creatures you control get plus one, plus one. And you can tap to make a legendary 2-2 green and white token named Vo-Ha. Vo-Ha is Tulsamir's wolf, the wolf

that he rides. So I think this is, I think this is, no, this wasn't a leader. This is one of the Selesnians. The Selesnians are led by a collective, not one single, they're a legend creature that usually is more than one thing. But this is one of the champions of the Selesnians. Oh, this is the cycle that rewards you for playing both colors.

Because obviously a green creature is bigger, or a white creature is bigger, but a green and white creature gets plus two, plus two. So note that the legendary wolf because it's green and white really is a 4-4. That whenever you get Vo-Ha out, as long as Pulsamere's in play, it's a 4-4 wolf. But anyway,

I should note, by the way, I mentioned this cycle, how there was a cycle that cared about both colors. The way it worked is one of the cycles was the legendary that was the leader of the guild and that one didn't care about color it just did whatever top down match the leader of the guild and then the one that was the secondary that what that was a lieutenant or whatever that wasn't the

leader that is the one that had the the color the color carrying mechanic that we spread through which is how we know that tulsa mirror is not the leader of the Lesbians, but one of their champions. Okay, next. Vidalcan Entrancer. Three and a blue. Vidalcan Wizard. One, four.

Blue and tap. Put the top two cards of target player's library into their graveyards. Or mill them, if you will. So the idea is we wanted to mirror to have an opportunity to mill people out. We didn't want to make it... Like I said, we explored the idea of should it be something more important. And obviously in Return of Ravnica, we really, even more seriously, we almost made the mechanic of the guild a milling mechanic.

But in original Ravnica, I think we always knew it was just a supporting theme. We liked the idea that blue-black was tricky. And one of the ways it was tricky was that it had an alternate route to victory. That one of the things that Dimir could do is it could beat you sometimes in ways you weren't prepared for. And the idea that every once in a while it could just mill you out. You know, sometimes it damaged you to death, but sometimes it would mill you. Really made it hard to fight against Dimir. Because you weren't always quite sure what was going on.

And this was one of the best cards. I think this is a common card, and it is something that's repeatable. One of the things about milling somebody out is, if you're going to mill them out with one-shots, you really need a lot of cards to make that work. But if you're going to mill them out with just a singular creature, with one card, if it's repeatable, then this card alone could do the work. The other thing to remember that's interesting about milling in general is milling is more potent in limited than it is in constructed. The biggest reason why is limited have 40 card decks and constructed have 60 card decks. And so one of the reasons also that we like doing

milling in limited is it's a lot faster in limited. Because one of the things that happens is there's the aggressive milling deck where I'm just trying to mill you out as fast as I can. And then there's the more slowish controlling milling deck where it's like, well, I mill you a little bit and then I run you out of cards. I keep you from being able to beat me and I run you out of cards. In limited, we want the first one more than the second one. I mean, obviously, you run out of cards quicker than you do in Constructed because your deck's two-thirds the size.

But still, that just makes games take longer if I have to wait until you can't draw a card. And so we like giving mill strategies, when we do them, repeatable means of way to make sure that you get them out. And so this is a good example of what we did in this set. And this card was pretty potent. When you got that out, when you were playing Dimir, you learned to get afraid of the Vidalcan Entrancer.

The other thing that was interesting, by the way, because it's mono-blue, you could be playing a deck that didn't have black, didn't have to be Dimir. For example, there was a blue-red deck that we built that you could draft. I mean, the only guild that blue was in... Blue and red each were only in one guild. Blue was in Dimir and red was in Boros because of the nature of having four guilds with five colors.

If you have four guilds, it means you only have eight combination colors. So with ten colors, each color does not get to be twice. During the course of the block, every color gets to show up four times. So the way it worked is blue and red only showed up once here, while black, green, and white showed up twice. And then, what was it? Blue showed up, red showed up twice in Guild Pack because it had Izzet, red, blue, and it had Gruul, which is red, green.

And then blue showed up twice in Descension, which had Azorius, which is white, blue, and it had Simic, which is red-green. And then blue showed up twice in Descension, which had Azorius, which is white-blue, and it had Simic, which is blue-green. So the idea is every color had a set it showed up twice in. To offset that, we made some draft strategies for blue and red to play together. And there was a deck I know that got played where there was enough stuff in blue

and some stuff to recurse and use your spells that there was a deck I know that got played where there was enough stuff in blue and some stuff to recurse and use your spells that there was a blue-red mill deck. And this card actually was very important in that deck. It wasn't a major deck, but it was something that I know people enjoyed doing. Okay, next. Vigamortis, which is an awesome name. Two black-black sorcery. You reanimate a creature, and if green is spent,

it gets a plus one plus one counter. Okay, so the way this works is there's a cycle of spells that were mono-collared. There were two cycles of spells that were mono-collared, and if you spent mana of its guild color,

then you got a bonus effect. So what this card did, and usually what it did was it tried to feel flavorfully like a... This spell wanted to feel like it was a Golgari spell because it was connected with black and green. So it did something that Mino Black could do, but something that just had synergy with green. And Reanimation is something that black and green can do or could do. We don't support it anymore. So the idea here is that I get to...oh, I'm sorry, this is not reanimation. I'm sorry. Reanimation is a black thing. I'm thinking of regeneration. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Reanimate. Reanimate is a black thing. But black-green definitely

was...Gulgari was the ones that used things out of the graveyard and reanimated things. So although green couldn't necessarily do this... Sorry, I read that as reanimation for a second. So yeah, reanimation... Not regeneration, but reanimation's very much a black thing. And so what this says is I get to reanimate something, and then I get to make it bigger if it happens to be... If I happen to use green.

So essentially, if I cast this as a one black, black, green spell, then I also get the plus one, plus one counter. So like I said, there are two cycles of these, one going each, I think one common, one uncommon, one going each direction. Sorry for that confusion. Sometimes I, my brain, I read one thing and my brain says something else. Okay, that gets us to Vindictive Mob.

So Vindictive Mob is a human berserker, 5-5 human berserker. It costs four black black, so six mana, two of which is black. When it enters the battlefield, you sacrifice a creature, and then it can't be blocked by sapperlings. So let's walk through. This card has a few interesting qualities to it. So one is it's a 5-5 creature, and it is an ETB Sacker creature. So we do this a bunch in black, where the idea is it's a little cheaper than normal,

but I have to sacrifice a creature to get it. So 5-black- black for a five five, especially if you're limited, I guess it's not a horribly great construction card. But basically we want you to sac a creature, but then it needed a little bit of a rider on it. So we have something we call trinket text. So a trinket text is something that doesn't matter very much,

but it's flavorful. And the idea is every once in a while it matters. A trinket text is not a hundred percent, you know, it doesn't mean it never matters, but it means most of the time it doesn't matter. And there are degrees by which we make trinket text matter. One end of the spectrum is it's purely ha-ha, you know, sort of flavor, which we really don't expect to happen much. And then to the other end of the spectrum is it's flavorful, but wow, it really is something you need to think about in the environment. This is kind of in the middle. I think the reason we added this was this card was just getting chumped all the time by tokens, because it doesn't have trample, and we wanted you, we didn't really want you to trample like this.

And so we gave it Trinketax to sort of help a little bit because we were finding when this went up against a green deck that can make tokens that the fact that it can make so many tokens, I could just keep throwing them at the 5-5 that it didn't really do much.

And so we, like originally it had some much more meaningless Trinket decks. We ended up turning into Trinket decks that had some actual sort of meaning to it. And what that means is... Now the funny thing is usually in Casual Constructed the fact of saplings showing up is much

less likely. But in Limited where the main token type made is saplings, it becomes pretty... much more relevant. Okay, Vine Lasher Kutsu. One and a green. It's a plant. It's a 1-1 plant.

Whenever a land enters your battlefield under your control, put a plus one plus one counter on it. Okay. This is a fun card. It's a cool card. Probably what this card is most famous for of control, put a plus one plus one counter on it. Okay. This is a fun card. It's a cool card. Probably what this card is most famous for is being, I think, the first landfall card before we had landfall.

So Ravnica came out, so after Ravnica, let's see. It was Ravnica, then it was Time Spiral, then Lorwyn, then Shards of Alara, then Zendikar. So four years later we would end up making Landfall. I think the thing we were trying to do here was we were trying to figure out some way to just make a cool card. The flavor of the Kutu was, for those who don't know what Kutu is

Kutu is a plant that I think is native to the southeast of the United States. And it's this vine that is really, it's almost weed-like and it grows really fast and it entangles some things and it's really hard to free. And so it's a really kind of a menace plant that it really tangles things up and causes problems. So the idea was that this spell is kind of representing that.

That it's representing this sort of, this plant that's kind of growing out of control and causing problems. And so we were trying to sort of figure out, I'm not sure which came first I assume the mechanics came before the flavors my guess but anyway, we liked the idea of something that rewarded you for playing land

I mean obviously, we would later realize that this was worthy of a whole mechanics one of the things that's interesting by the way is one of the challenges of making a game that's you know, this year will turn 24 years old is that you've just made a lot of cards.

We've made, I don't know, somewhere between 16,000 to 17,000 cards, I think. Unique cards. And so it's very, very hard now to make a mechanic that sometime in some spell we hadn't made. And I know when we finally made Landfall a bunch of people said, hey, isn't that Vine Lasher Kutum?

I'm like, yeah, that's a good card. It was a good mechanic. So we fleshed it out. We made it more. But anyway, this definitely also was a fun card in that, much like Landfall, in that it just kind of grows over time. So you can get it out early,

and then by the time, you know, you can sort of sit back with it, and then just over time it grows and becomes a pretty big threat. Okay, next, Vitugazi, the city tree. It's a land. You tap for Kallus, and then for two green and white, you tap and you can create a one-run sapling. So one of the things that is interesting is we made a cycle of lands

I talked about this once before and the cycle of lands tap for colors and it was I think cd tap one color then the other color tap actually now we say mn and you did something that was relevant for the guild

originally I think this was rare and I think we toyed with him being legendary. But the problem was that legendary lands, especially before we changed the legendary role, back during Ravnikov, the way it worked was if I played a legendary card and you had one, I destroyed yours. And there was a lot of not so fun gameplay, especially with lands, where I'm sort of, you know, we're playing lands to deal with each other's lands, and I'm cutting you off with mana

because I happen to have the one land you got, and there was cases with legendary lands where people who weren't even playing colors of a legendary land would sideboard it in as a means to stop the opponent from getting the Legendary Land. So anyway, we made a decision a while back to really sort of shy away from Legendary Lands. So this card, you know, probably, I mean, it represents a specific tree. So it probably would be Legendary at the time if we were supporting Legendary Lands.

I think the way it worked is we would do legendary lands every once in a blue moon for really, really pure flavor reasons, like Ibougan. But at the time, anything we thought was actually getting used for man and stuff, we sort of shied away from it being legendary. So that is why the Vitu Ghazi is not a legendary land,

people are wondering. The thing we liked the most about this land was we were trying to just play in the space of what Selesnya wanted and the idea that Selesnya could just keep getting more members. Once again, one of the routes to victory

remember is we were making Ravnica so we had four guilds. Selesnya was overrunning. Boros was sort of beating you to the punch. It was being fast and efficient. Dimir was being sneaky and defeating you in a way you didn't know. And Black Rean was sort of constantly recycling things

and slowly wearing you down through its endless. So one of the things you'll notice is we wanted to make sure there were different speeds. Boros was a fast deck. You know, Selesnya was a little more mid-range and Dimir and Golgari were a little on the slower side. So there was a full range of sort of

the different speeds. We tried to mix that up. So in Limited for example, there are different things you can do. We also made Blue-Red into a tempo deck. That was the fifth deck. It's the fifth thing we sort of built for drafting purposes. Okay, next. a tempo deck. That was the fifth deck. It's the fifth thing we sort of built for drafting purposes. Okay, next. Warp World.

Five, red, red, red. Sorcery. So eight mana, three of which is red. Players shuffle all permanents into their libraries, and they reveal that many cards off the top of the... Oh, sorry.

Shuffle all your permanents into your library. So then shuffle them in and shuffle, obviously. Then you reveal that many off the top of your library, and all shuffle them in and shuffle, obviously. Then you reveal that mini off the top of your library and all permanents get put into play. And I think all spells go on the bottom of the library, I believe. And then we made auras go last so that auras actually work. If you get an aura, the creature's already out to put the aura on or the permanents are already out.

So Warp World was definitely, I was trying to do something a little sillier. One of Red's flavors is chaos, and it creates chaos. And the idea here is, what I'm doing is, I'm making you swap your permanents for different permanents. Often that means you'll go down in permanents, because you're going to draw some spells, and so usually, let's say I have 15 permanents and I shuffle, I get back 10, 11 maybe. I'm usually missing a few. Depends how many spells you have. But anyway, this proved to be a really, really popular multiplayer card, partly because

it does things late game. Like, one of Red's problems is a lot of the things Red does philosophically is that it's trying to beat you fast, and it's trying to beat you fast. And it's willing to give up long-term advantage for speed. The problem is in most multiplayer formats, because there's lots of people playing, the games just take longer.

Through politics and through the interconnection of having to kill multiple people, the games last longer. And so Red's whole strategy of, like, I'm going to burn out, but take you out before I go, doesn't really work that well in a multiplayer strategy. Especially because some, like, some multiplayer formats, like Commander, you start with 40 life.

Like, it's built in to last a little longer, which really plays against what Red does. So we've really spent a lot of time thinking about how can we do things that help give Red more sort of late game, but in a way that really plays into Red. And Warp World wasn't actually made for that, once again. When Ravnica came out, Commander wasn't a big thing yet. But it's really been kind of one of the beacons for Red of saying, hey, here's a good example of a card in Red, flavorful for Red,

that's very popular in Commander, and popular in multiplayer plays, because it just does something for red late game that's not just, you know, it's playing in a different kind of space for red. And so that has definitely been an inspiration for us. Now, Ken then went on to make, what was it,

Chaos Warp, where he was trying to do a single sort of pointed thing, but he allowed it to hit enchantments and it fizzled a lot, meaning it didn't actually turn into anything often, so it ended up just kind of being a kill spell on red that wasn't really what we wanted. It sort of violated

a lot of red's philosophies. Red's not supposed to be able to kill your enchantment and most of the time, it doesn't even get punished for it. But I do like Warp World, so it definitely has inspired a lot of things. Sorry, just a little water. Okay, my final card. I'm almost to Rachel's skull.

My final card today is a very simple card. It's called Watchwolf. It's green, white, and it's a 3-3. So my funny story about this is that we were, we wanted to make a nice simple, so one of the things about green and white is green and white are the creature colors. Traditionally speaking, white gets the best cheap creatures, and green has the best creature curve, meaning you get more

power toughness for your buck than other colors. And so we were trying to find an overlap between, not overlap, but a gold card to do in green and white. And we came upon the idea that possibly that green-white is the color combination

that would allow you to get a 3-3 for only two mana. So we made a vanilla 3-3 and then we were trying to figure out what to do with it. And I remember I think when I made this card

I think I originally called it Watchdog was the name. And then I was informed by somebody that there were no dogs in Selesnya. Selesnya didn't have dogs. And I said, okay, well, what do they have? And they're like, well, they have wolves.

And I'm like, could they be trained to watch things? And they're like, maybe. And so we changed it to WatchWolf. And so WatchWolf was the playtest name. And I think it just tickled people. And when Matt Cavada did the name for Ravnica, I think Matt just liked the name, and so he kept it. But WatchWolf was just me trying to sort of...

It's funny how when you're naming things, sometimes you're seriously trying to name things and sometimes you're just trying to get a cute sounding thing. So Watchdog became Watchwolf and then, poof, it became a card. And it ended up being, you know, as vanilla creatures go,

a pretty potent vanilla creature. Anyway, I've gotten all the way through W and not a lot of Ys and Zs in the set, so I have completed my pass. So five podcasts, not too shabby. So the plan, by the way, is not immediately, but the next time I do an overview, I will be doing Guild Pack,

which I will talk about it and then talk about cards from it, and then I will be doing, a little time later, doing Descension. So I'm doing original Ravnica block. That's my next one I'm exploring. Anyway, I hope you guys I really, really enjoy Ravnica. I mean, when I look back at sort of sets I've made,

Ravnica stands out as one of my sort of pinnacle sets. It's funny when you look back, there's a lot of little things I've changed, and there's a lot of sort of technologies we've learned since then, where I'm like, oh, wow, it would have been nice to have Death Touch in the set. But it is neat, and I'm very proud, and, you know, it's funny how in the day, like, the guild concept, the idea of having, you know, just four two-color combinations in the set

was kind of radical, and now it's just kind of passe. What else would you do? Of course, how else would you do that? But anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed my jaunt through Ravnica and all the different cards. Once again, there is a Ravnica podcast, number four, Drive to Work number four, if you want to hear the whole story of how it got made.

I talked a little bit about it when I talked about the cards. But anyway, guys, I hope you enjoyed it. It was fun walking through Ravnica. I'll be back in that super long with Guild Pact. But anyway, I'm now at Rachel's school, so we all know what that means. It means 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. Bye-bye.