Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #431: Guildpact, Part 2

Episode Date: April 28, 2017

This is second part of a three-part series on the design of Guildpact.

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 all about the design of Guild Pact. And I got up through I think G, so I'm far from done. So we'll continue on. Okay Gelectrode. One blue red, so three mana, one of which is blue, one of which is red.

It's a zero one weird. Tap to deal one damage to target creature or player. And whenever you cast an instant or sorcery, you untap Gelectrode. So one of the themes of Izzet, I talked last time about Izzet was instant sorcery based deck. Has sort of

a tempo sort of a tempo-y deck. So one of the things we definitely tried to do was sort of make instant sorcery matter type stuff, make spell matter things. And so here's a good example. Essentially what this does is it does one damage for every instant or sorcery you cast, because you can always untap this.

You can always do damage before you cast instant sorcery and then untap it. And so essentially it allows you to get one extra damage in. The nice thing about it is, you know, it's a little more useful than merely an enchantment that just did one damage every time you cast it because it can do damage every turn regardless of it. So it sort of, it has a function, and then on top of that function it helps your Instants and Sorceries.

Okay, next, Gore Clan Bloodscale. That's three and a red, so four mana, one of which is red, for a 2-1 Viashino Warrior. It's got First Strike, and then for three and a green, so four mana total, one of which is green, it gets plus two, plus two until end of turn, which you can only use once per turn. This is what we know as the Rootwalla ability. So one of the things we did, and this is throughout the whole Ravnica block, this wasn't just in Guildpact, was

there's a bunch of different ways to care about multicolor, to make multicolor relevant. The most obvious way is multicolor cards. There's cards that require both colors to play. We have some hybrid cards that require one or more of the colors to play. And this is what we call an off-color activation. So the idea here is it's a red card. It's a 2-1 first striker. So, I mean, it has some value without the green, but it really is maximized. I mean, the fact that it's a first striking creature really makes the root wall ability

matter quite a bit. Because if I have the mana and I attack with the 2-1 first striker, I present as a possible 4-3 first striker, which makes it much more intimidating to block. And so, we like to use off-color activation as a... like, we like to shake

up how to make colors matter. I mean, realistically speaking, this particular card is probably not going to play, unless you have red and green. You know, a 4-mana 2-1 first striker is not particularly strong. I mean, realistically speaking, this particular card, probably not going to play unless you have red and green. You know, a four mana, two, one first striker is not particularly strong. So, but it just shakes things up a little bit and makes them a little bit different, you know. And so that, you know, we usually use off-color activations to some extent.

It depends in a block how much it matters that there's multiple colors. In a multi-color block where, you know where you have two or more colors that matter, you'll see a lot more of off-color activations. Obviously you saw that in this block because Ravnica was all about two-color pairs. Okay, next. Gore Clan Savage. So it's a green card. Three green greens.

So five total. Two which is green. For a 3-3 Centaur Berserker. And it's got Bloodthirst 3. Oh, sorry. 2-3. I can't read green, for a 3-3 Centaur Berserker. And it's got Bloodthirst 3. Oh, sorry, 2-3. I can't read. It's a 2-3 Berserker with Bloodthirst 3. So I talked about Bloodthirst last time. So Bloodthirst says if you do damage, you enter the battlefield with so many counters.

So if you, when Bloodthirst Gouger, sorry, did I forget a thing? Oh, Savage. It's a Savage. When the Gorklan Savage enters the battlefield, if you've done damage to your opponent, instead of a 2-3, it is a 5-6. So one of the things that's cool about this is whenever we make a mechanic, we want to have some variance in how swinging the effect is. Most of our Bloodthirst, you'll notice, is Bloodthirst 1, which is okay. It matters, and plus 1 plus 1 is nothing to sneeze at.

But the difference here is this has a much higher variance, meaning you're really never going to play this creature unless you've dealt damage. Because 5 mana for a 2-3 is not particularly interesting. 5 mana for a two three is not particularly interesting. Five mana for a five six is. So one of the things that we like to do is we like to have some variance on sort of the swinginess of a mechanic. What we want to do is some, like for example, what we did with Bloodthirst is we made cards that, you know, it's okay if you Bloodthirst, but it's not that big a deal if you do it.

Up to the point mid cards are, wow, you really want a Bloodthirst if you're going to play it. We tend to be careful how often we do the swingy stuff, but you want a little bit of swingy stuff. Usually it's aimed more for limited than constructed. But this is the kind of card that really sort of encourages and will make you do things. Like if I had this in my hand and I have five mana, I might be attacking with my 2-2 into your 3-3. Because, wow, if somehow you, you know, if I can bluff my way and you're thinking I have a giant growth and you'll let my 2-2 through, that really matters, you know. Plus three plus three is a pretty big deal for mattering, and so it definitely encourages

you to take more risky moves. And the fact that certain cards like this exist, which encourage you to take risky moves, really changes the dynamic of figuring out what people are up to. Okay, next, the Ghost Council of Orzova. So this is the legendary creature from Orzov. It is white, white, black, black. It's a spirit, legendary creature spirit. Four, four.

Okay, so when it enters a battlefield, you drain one from the opponent. So you do one damage to them, you gain one life. And then, for one, and if you sack the creature, you get to exile it and return it. I'm sorry, for one and sacrificing a creature, you get to exile the Ghost Council and then return it at the end step. So the idea essentially is, it's a 4-4, drains you for one as an ECB and as an enter the battlefield effect. And so it's hard to kill because as long as I have another creature, if you try to kill this, I just blink it away.

And one of the cool things about blinking it away is not only do I save it, but I have an enter the battlefield effect. I get to drain you for one. Sometimes, in fact, if your opponent's low enough on life, sometimes you're sacrificing creatures to blink this because you want to drain it, you know, an additional time. Sometimes you're blinking not to save the creature, but just to do more damage to the opponent.

And this is, so for those who don't know the flavor, so the Orzhov is run by a council of ghosts, the Ghost Council. They are very, I talked yesterday about how if you get in debt to the Orzhov, um, you know, the debt lasts past death. So they have a lot of ghosts sort of under their, in debt to them. Um, but anyway, they are, there are tough groups to deal with because how do you deal with a council of dead, of dead ghosts?

Because it's kind of tough to kill a ghost. So they definitely have, you know, they are hard to sway. They're hard to influence, because it's hard to threaten them. They're already dead. Okay, next, ghost sway. So it's an instant for two and a white, so three mana, one of which is white. You remove all creatures, exile all creatures, and return them to owner's control at the beginning of the end step. So this is what we call flickering, or blinking. And you're flickering all creatures, not just your creatures, not just your opponent creatures, all creatures.

And the idea is that I can flicker them away if I have some haste creatures or something, or I can flicker things away, maybe attack with haste creatures. Maybe I've entered the battlefield effects, and, you know, more so than you do. There's a bunch of different ways to use this. It also returns owner's control because it's a way to reset if people steal things. It's a way to reset that. But I, like I said, for those that listen to me regularly,

I'm a big fan of flicker effects. This one's a little harder to use in that it's a little less pinpoint. You have to sort of say, oh, is it more beneficial for me that everything goes away than it is for my opponent? But, you know,

this set definitely has a lot of things that sort of take advantage of that. I just talked about the ghost console, right? The ghost console, you know, this set definitely has a lot of things that sort of take advantage of that. I just talked about the Ghost Console, right? The Ghost Console, you know, I mean, one of the things is Orzhov tends to have more enter the battlefield effects in the nature of how it plays. You know, it's definitely more about kind of making preventative decisions. And it has a lot of, you know, for example, it has a bunch of enter the battlefield, like, drain effects. So, you know, you can kind of get out your creatures, and then by flickering, you know, by flickering them all, I could, you know, I could do a lot of damage to you sometimes, especially with Orzhov. Okay, next, Giant Solifuge.

So, two, it's a red or green hybrid card. So, two hybrid hybrid, hybrid being red or green. You get a 4-1 insect with Trample, Haste, and Shroud. So Shroud, for those who might not remember, is the precursor to Hexproof. Shroud says, nobody can target me. Hexproof says, nobody

else can target me. Shroud, when we first made this mechanic, we made it Shroud, which is nobody can target me, which was not completely upside, because obviously you couldn't target. You couldn't Giant Growth or something. And at the time, what we found was a lot of people were playing Shroud

as if it were hexproof. That's what they thought Shroud did, because that was intuitive to them. Like, why would you put something on your creature that kept you from helping your creature? So we ended up changing Shroud to hexproof, but this is during the period where Shroud was a keyword. So what's going on here is, it's funny, the idea is that Trample is primary green, secondary red.

Haste is primary red. It's tertiary green, but we don't do it very often in green. And Shroud was a green thing. So I think what was going on here was Trample was the thing that red and green share. Haste was something more red. Shroud was something more green. But the idea was that green had access to Haste. Shroud's a little quirky.

Shroud on a mono-red card is a little quirky. We don't really do Shroud nor Hexbrook Trishula on a red card. So that's the one little bleedy thing here. We do do Haste on green cards, so less so. But the idea is we just want to make a hybrid card that was kind of aggressive and this thing really wants to attack. And the fact that it tramples and it's haste so it can attack right away and shroud so your opponent can't really kill it without creatures. Anyway, Giant Solitude.

This is obviously Gruul. Gruul likes attacking. Glint-Eye Nephilim. So this is the non-white Nephilim. So blue, black, red, green. So it's one of every color except white. It's a 2-2 Nephilim. Whenever it deals combat damage to a player, you draw cards equal to the damage it deals, and for one and discard a card, you can give it plus one, plus one until end of turn. So remember, the cutesy thing there is

if I know I'm going to hit you, I essentially can loot, because by discarding the card to give it plus one, plus one, I know that I will get that card back if I do combat damage. It's also, the synergy is kind of cute because it draws you cards, and the cards also let you sort of not only do more damage, but also protect it. Because if I attack with it and you could block it, but you know I have cards in my hand and mana to back it up, wow, it's like, it's hard to want to block.

And the other thing that's kind of cool about it is that because you're getting have cards in my hand and mana to back it up, wow, it's like, it's hard to want to block. And the other thing that's kind of cool about it is that because you're getting extra cards, those cards have utility beyond just being cards. Let's say you draw lands or something you don't particularly need. You also can use them to, you know, coordinate with the creature. This is actually a pretty fun design of the Nephilim. This might be my favorite of the Nephilim designs. It's actually a pretty cool design.

The Nephilim, as I explained before, in the last podcast, we tried to do something a little different. We had never really done four color cards. Specifically, we were told to make them not guild-related. They weren't a particular success. Actually, that's me being a bit kind. In our studies, in our research, market research,

the player feedback was really unkind of a Nephilim. They didn't like the Nephilim. And I think the problem is four-color cards are really hard to concept. That's why I kind of like the idea of two guilds joining up, just because it's a concept. Four-color starts to get to the point where it's more about what it's not than what it is. And that is just hard to design.

People might ask, why have we made so few four-color cards? Or why don't we make a set built around four-color, you know, make some sort of clans of four-color? There's just not a lot of design in four-color. It's really, really hard to do well. And, like, I happen to like this design. hard to do well. And like, I happen to like this design. Um, but one of the complaints we had about the, um, Nephilim was that we probably could do this design with less than four colors. And the reality is there's no design we can make that has, I mean, it's very, very hard to make a design that has to be those four colors. Um, a lot of time when we tried the Nephilim was to make

them just kind of different enough, make them unique so that they, you know, um, just didn't feel, they felt like you'd never seen this before. So you go, okay, I guess it's four color. That was kind of our goal with them. Okay, Goblin, Flektomancer, blue, red, red. So three mana, one blue, two red, a 2-2 Goblin Wizard. And you can sac Goblin Flektomancer to change the target of an instant or sorcery. So one of the cutesy things here is blue and red overlap on... Blue and red don't overlap a lot of common, which is always a problem. But at higher rarities, they both have redirection. So redirection says, hey, you thought this was going to be the target for your spell, but no, ha ha, no it's not, this is.

And so, I... We use it in both colors. I'm not sure why this is double red. I mean, it's a goblin, maybe. I'm not sure. But anyway, the cutesy idea of this is, it's a tutu creature and a goblin that can matter. And it always sort of puts this threat on your opponent, because there's no mana on it. So, like, my opponent always kind of knows whatever they do could be redirected. Now, I will say as a designer looking at this card, I don't like the lack of mana on it. I like, for things like this, I want to have a little bit of, like,

I'm, for example, one of the nice strategies of dealing with this card is if it requires a little bit of mana to use, I can sort of force your hand and try to make you react with other things. Or, you know, or I can sort of wait until you sort of go all in because you need to cast something and then I can do my thing.

The idea of never having downtime, I don't find particularly, I don't think it's as good as gameplay. Okay. Next, Godless Shrine. It's a land. It's a plains and a swamp. And when it enters the battlefield,

you either pay two life or it enters the battlefield tapped. And you tap to add white or black. So I just wanted to bring up, this was a cycle that ran through the whole block. This was what people call the Shocklands. I think I told the story before, but it's a good story.

So when I first made the Shocklands, I realized that we hadn't made a lot of lands that had land types, so I did that. And the idea behind them is a very simple one. We had made the Enter the Plate Tap Lands in Invasion, and they ended up being kind of the weak side, even though there's a giant fight, because we thought at the time they were too good, and Randy Buehler convinced us they weren't too good. In the end, they were far from too good. And then there were the pain lands, which you tapped at... You paid one life every time you tapped, or did one damage to you every time you tapped it.

And I liked the idea of lands that you could choose whether they were tap lands or pain lands. But to simplify things, rather than make them true pain lands, I was like, well, I'll just make you pay a payment for them up front. So either they enter the battlefield tapped at no cost to you, or there's some pain, and you pay the pain up front. Pay two life. That's what we decided. I really liked these cards, and I remember when I first turned them over that the development, especially, were sort of like they thought they were inelegant. And I was like, no, no, no.

Conceptually, like, you know, do you want tap lens or paint lens? I thought conceptually they were pretty cool. Sometimes, one of the interesting things is we often look at amount of text to figure out whether something's complex or not. Like, you know, the more text you have, the more complex you are. And on some level, there is a little bit of a,

oh, look, four lines of text, that must be complex. I'm a big believer in what I call grokkability, which is, how easy is it to chunk what's going on? Is there a shortcut? Is there somewhere

for my brain to go, I got it. And this was, tap lands were something we did as a multicolor lands, as dual lands, and so was pain lands. And so,

the idea of, hey, it's A or B, and A and B both kind of make sense. I've seen them before so that I can, oh, I make a decision which one I want, allowed this to be a lot more easy to chunk, if you will, to sort of think as, it allows you to take what might be considered longer

but make it a much more shorter mental thing. And I think that was good. Okay, next, Goroa Guildmage. Hybrid-hybrid. So all the cycle of ten guildmages were all hybrid-hybrid. So this is red or green. So red or green, red or green. It's a 2-2 human shaman.

They're all 2-2. Some are shamans, some are wizards. And they all had two activations, one in one color and one in the other. So this one has three in a red. So four mana, one of which is red. And Sack of Land. The card name deals two damage to target creature or player. I'm sorry, to target player.

Two damage to target player, or three a green target creature gets plus two plus two. So the idea is either I can Sack of Land to do two damage to a player or make a creature plus two plus two. So they both cost four. They both do something that revolves around two. So it's like a two mana, two two, that has two effects that both do things

that revolve around two. And then their activations are two squared or two doubled, four. So it has a nice, clean aesthetic feel to it. I talk all the time about this.

The thing I love about things being aesthetic is it makes the card feel, just feel better, even if people don't understand why it feels better, that just having clean aesthetics does that. And so I'm always looking for places to get the clean aesthetics. Okay, next, Gruul Nodderog. Four green green beasts.

It's a 4-4 beast. For red, you gain menace until end of turn. Note that this actually spells it out. Menace was not yet a thing. So you can only be blocked by two or more creatures. Before menace was menace, way back when it was goblin war drum. So it started as being a red thing. So this is a green creature with an off-color red activation.

Before I tried to put the red with the green activation. So the idea is I'm a pretty big creature. Oh, well, my red activation makes me harder to block. You can't just block with one thing. So it makes it harder to chomp. Gruul Scrapper, three and a green for a 3-2 Human Berserker. If it enters the battlefield, if you paid red, it gains haste. So we had a cycle of creatures.

I think we had two. I think we had a cycle going each direction, I think. At least we had one direction. The idea being, this is a green card, so basically it's a 3-2 creature for four mana. But if you spend some red mana, so instead of paying three to green, you essentially pay two red-green,

it now is a 3-2 haste creature. So one of the ways we try to give you... It's sort of a different way to approach having a second color. It's like, oh, well, if you use it in casting it, we'll give you that thing. And note that it gave it a red ability if you paid the extra red. Okay, next, Gruul Signet. It's an artifact for two.

One and tap add, in this case, red-green because it's Gruul. So you add CD, or what would we say now, MN. So the idea is that these were a means to help fix your mana. I'm not the biggest fan of filtering. I find filtering confuses people. But essentially the idea here is by tapping a land and this, so by tapping two things, I produce two colors of mana. Okay, next.

Gruul Turf. Land. So this is the other land in the land cycle. It enters the battlefield, tap. When it enters the battlefield, you can return the land you control to its owner's hand, and then this taps for red-green. So this is a little more dangerous than land destruction, but it allows you to

sort of consolidate and say, oh, well, I'm going to turn one land into a new land that taps for two. So you don't go down in the amount of mana. You just make yourself a little bit more vulnerable. And because it's on the same card, it's a little bit, you know, sometimes you have to tap it for one and then the other mana floats. And I think mana burn still existed at the time, so occasionally that would cause mana burn. Not a problem anymore. Okay, Gruul Warplough. It's an artifact that costs four. Creatures you control have trample and one red green. It becomes a 4-4 until end of turn. So there's another cycle we did, an artifact cycle, where each artifact did something that you could play as an artifact. In this case, for four mana, it gives all your creatures trample. But if you're playing the right colors, in this case gruel, you can do something

additional using colored mana. In this case, turn into a four four. So since all your creatures have trample, essentially it's a four four trample. So really what this is, is if you're playing gruel, it's a four mana artifact that for three mana, one red and a green, you can turn into a 4-4 trampler, which is pretty good. We wanted this to feel like it's an artifact in that it has a function outside it, but really, if you're not playing Gruul, this is not worth putting in your deck.

That this really is a Gruul, sorry, an artifact meant for Gruul. Hatchling plans one U enchantment. Whenever the card is put into the graveyard, draw 3 cards. So this is one of those challenging cards. It's like, okay, I have a card for you. If you can get, you know, for 2 mana, if you can get this enchantment into your graveyard, you get 3 cards. Well, 2 mana for 3 cards is really good, but the hoop of getting this enchantment into your graveyard is a little trickier.

So you have to figure out how to do that. Hypervolt Graft, 2 and a red, enchantment. It's an aura, enchant creature. Enchant the creature has tap. This creature deals one damage to target creature or player. And for one and a blue, you can turn the creature to owner's hand. So the idea, it's an aura, so it plays a little bit in the aura theme

of the set, and it's an isn't aura. So for red, I can put it on my creature and it turns it into, we call it a Tim, or a prodigal sorcerer. It can tap to do damage. And just in case something happens to the creature, because obviously your opponent might want to kill a creature that can do damage to things, that you can bounce not the creature, but the enchantment itself.

It also allows you, when you have mana late game, is I can put it on a creature, tap to do damage, bounce it, play it again. Now, given it costs me five mana to do that, because I need to have two red, I need one and a blue to bounce it, and two and a red to play it again, but late in the game, if I have five mana,

and I don't need to do anything else with it, for five mana, I can do, and an untapped creature, I can do another point of damage. Okay, next, Ink Treader Nephilim is another Nephilim. This is the non-black Nephilim. So it's red, green, white, blue. So four mana, one of each color, not black. It's a 3-3 Nephilim.

Whenever a player casts an instant or sorcery targeting only the Ink Treader Nephilim, copy the spell for each other creatures it can target. Each gets target... Each... Oh, each creature...

Each copy can target a different creature. So the idea is, if I giant growth... If I giant growth my ink treasure Nephilim, I get a giant growth my whole team. The downside is, I think if my opponent does bad things to it, it does bad things to it it does bad things

to my whole team I'm not sure why we just didn't make an upside for you why we made a potential upside maybe it's worded that it is upside for you

and I just I copied it down wrong maybe but anyway this is the non-black the idea by the way is black is selfish and this thing shares

like it's the sharing thing and black you know the non-black one is the one that shares it that's the flavor for it's the sharing thing, and black, you know, but non-black one is the one that shares it. That's the flavor for it. Invoke the Firemind. X, blue, blue, red.

It's a sorcery. Choose one. Draw X cards or deal X damage to target creature or player. So this is an X spell, and it does the two things that red and blue love doing most. Blue loves drawing cards. Red likes dealing damage. And so this is just super flexible. You can choose.

And the neat thing about it is sometimes I really need the cards and sometimes I really need to answer a threat or maybe I'm just going to kill you because I can hit the player. So this is a super versatile card and this definitely saw some play in Izzet decks, I know. Anyway, it's pretty cool.

Invoke the Firemind, by the way. Nizzet is the Firemind. Nizzet, who the Izzet decks, I know. Anyway, it's pretty cool. Invoke the Firemind, by the way. Nizzet is the Firemind. Nizzet, who the Izzet is named after. The Izzet is part of Niv-Mizzet. I'm pretty sure he is the Firemind. If you're invoking the Firemind, you're invoking Niv-Mizzet, I believe. Izzet, Cron Arc. Three blue, red. So five mana, one blue,

one red. Two to human wizard. When it enters the battlefield, you can get instant resources or sorcery from your graveyard and put it into your hand. Way back in Odyssey, we had Scrivener and Archivist, I think. One was blue, one was red. One got back an instant when it entered the battlefield.

One got back a sorcery. The blue one got the instant. I think Scrivener was the blue one. Anarchist, or Archivist. Anarchist, Archivist was the red one. And this card kind of just mashes them into one card. It says, hey, hey, hey, I'm blue and red, so I can go get an instant or go get a sorcery.

It is true, by the way, that we do let blue now go get instants and sorceries. When we divvy them up, we let blue get instants and red get sorceries. But this is a card that in modern day could just be mono blue. Okay, is it Guildmage? Remember, Guildmages are HH22. So this is the is it one. So it day could just be mono blue. Okay, is it guild mage? Remember, guild mages are HH 2-2.

So this is the is it one. So it's blue or red and blue or red. 2-2, it's a human wizard. For two and a blue, you can copy target instant with a converted mana cost of two or less. And for two and a red, you can copy target sorcery spell instant two, sorry, sorcery spell converted mana cost two or less. So the idea here is that blue that when blue and red get together, blue likes to care about instants, red cares about sorceries,

and this was a copy effect. We don't normally do copying all that much at Uncommon, but we limit it to small things. So it just can't copy anything. It can only copy things that are two or less. So it's really copying smaller effects, but sometimes smaller effects can be quite effective. So if you do two mana to do three damage or something

and you copy it, that can be very effective. This was another card that saw a decent amount of play. Note once again, I think we tried to match where we could the two activation costs so that they parallel each other. This was two and a colored mana, two and a blue or two and a red. Okay, next, Killer Instinct. So Killer Instinct is an enchantment that costs four red green.

So it's six mana, one of which is red, one of which is green. At the beginning of your upkeep, reveal the top card of your library. If it's a creature card, put on your battlefield with haste and stack at the end of the end step. So the idea was, essentially

was this was a very gruel card, and the idea is I get to temporarily get a creature. So each turn I look, and I don't always hit a creature. Obviously 40% of the time I'm going to hit land. In gruel, I'm mostly playing creatures, so most of the time, you know, about 50% to 60%

I'm probably hitting creatures. And then that creature gets to attack right away. It's got haste. But it goes way at the end of the turn. So if it hasn't entered the battlefield effect, you get that. If it has a combat, you know, it's a saboteur. If you hit your opponent, you get that. So there's a lot you can do.

You're not paying the mana cost, so you definitely get pony it's that um so there's a lot you can do you're not paying the mana cost so you definitely get access to things that could be a lot more dangerous um and guru likes building up to bigger things so sometimes you'll have bigger things in your deck um so anyway i i definitely thought this was pretty cool it was a neat sort of card that um you know really did a good job of making you want to play creatures and building your deck, and making you want to play big creatures, because this thing really can shine if you can just happen to hit a big creature or two. Okay, next we have the Ley Lines. So the Ley Lines was a full cycle.

So in Wooburg order, it was Ley Line of the Meek, which was white, Ley Line of Singularity was blue, Ley Line of the Void, which was black, Ley Line of Lightning, which was red, and Ley Line of Life Force, which was white, Ley Line of Singularity was blue, Ley Line of the Void, which was black, Ley Line of Lightning, which was red, and Ley Line of Lifeforce, which was green. So all of them said, if you have this card in your opening hand, you can begin the game with it on the battlefield. So the idea was that if you drew it, you just for free got it on the battlefield. And now that meant we had to be careful in the effects we did, because these effects were too powerful, it would just warp the game. So we tended to make things that were interesting but in a smaller way.

So White said creature tokens get plus one plus one, which by the way the creative team hates. The creative team hates whenever we reference creature tokens, because creatively speaking, there literally is no difference between a bear and a creature token bear. So the fact that this matters, there's a lot of hand-waving, like, oh, what does it mean? Blue, all non-land permanents are legendary. So this sort of limits, you know, it sort of makes it harder for the opponent to play multiples of things. Or actually, you as well, but you built your deck knowing you had this. Black is whenever a card would go to the graveyard,

instead it exiles itself. So it's really good as an anti-graveyard sideboard card. In fact, the black one was the one that I think saw the most play in tournaments as a sideboard card. Red says whenever you cast a spell, you can pay one. And if you do, you've got to do one to target player. So this gives you sort of a win condition, something rewarding for playing spells. And when I say spell in this case, I mean any spell. Creatures are spells. The only thing that's not a spell is land.

Land is not a spell. But this counts any non-land you're casting. They're all spells. By the way, should we have a word that means instant or sorcery that doesn't mean spells? Yeah.

Sometimes we mean spells that vernacularly mean, oh, non-permanence, and sometimes we use it to mean non-land, and that is problematic. It's not a great thing. Once again,

for those that know my, if I had to do it over, I would make instant a supertype, thus they would be sorceries, because there would be, instant would make instant a super type, thus they would be sorceries, because there would be instant would just be a super type, it wouldn't be all spell, you know, non-permanence would be sorcery, so you just refer to them as

sorceries. Okay, and green's ley line is creature spells can't be countered. That was another one that I think saw some tournament play in sideboards, I believe, if I remember correctly. So the idea behind the ley lines was...

I don't know who did this. This is Elliot's set, so there's a decent chance it was Elliot by Kelly. I think the idea... We messed around in Tempest with things that started in your hand. Well, the thing we tried in Tempest with things that started in your hand. Well, the thing we tried

in Tempest was cards that you could purposely choose to put in your opening hand. And that sort of messed up the randomness. Even though the creatures were less optimal than what you would get normally, the fact that you guaranteed you had them and you could curve out

really made you always play the same thing, which is boring. So we ended up not doing a Tempest. They were both broken and unfun. But then I think we played around the idea of things having relevance in your opening hand. I'm not sure if the ley lines were the first one in this space. They might have been. But anyway, the ley lines are quite popular,

so much so that we brought, we redid ley lines in, was it a core set? I think it was a core set. Except the black one, which was so good from before, we reprinted it. Ley Line in the Void. And people got mad. It's funny because the people who wanted it in standard were happy because we returned it to standard. But the people who just liked it and like, you know,

I play, let's say Commander or whatever, I already have the card. You just didn't give me another card. You know, and so one of the weird things about reprinting things is some audiences are very happy you reprinted them because for them, it's allowing them access to play it. And others, well, the problem is if you reprint it, then

you know, like you're sort of losing an opportunity to give them something new. But the ley lines were pretty popular. Like I said, we redid them once, and I'm sure we'll... The tricky thing about designing them is finding effects that are interesting, that you want to build around, that aren't, like, aren't too problematic. I know we tried a whole bunch of different ley lines,

and a lot of times it's like, oh, like I think the white ley line was originally creatures of plus one play, it was a crusade, and it just was too good. Because what happened was you would play, you know, four ley lines, white ley line, ley line of the, what is it, of the meek. And so what would happen is,

you know, you'd get one or two in your opening hand, and then, you know, I play a one-one-one drop. Imagine I get two in play. Then, like, on turn one, I play a one-one. It hits you for three. And then turn two, I play two more one-ones and hit you for nine. You know, that's pretty daunting. Okay, next card, Living Inferno.

So Living Inferno is an elemental. 8-5 elemental. So it costs 6 red red. So it costs 8 mana. It is a big creature. So 8 mana, 2 which is red. Tap card name deals damage equal to its power divided among any number of creatures.

Oh, I see. So what it does is you tap it. It's an 8-5. So what it does is, you tap it, it's an A5, so you would take 8 damage, you can distribute your 8 damage however you want to any number of creatures, but and the catch is, each creature you do damage to then damages it back. So really what it lets you do most

of the time is it lets you well, if you're careful with it, you can kill some smaller things, or if you want, you can kill some smaller things. Or if you want, you can kill a whole bunch of things knowing that you're going to sacrifice it to kill them. Because if the things you kill have five or more power to them, then they're going to kill it.

Now, this is one of the cool cards that you can make bigger. Because normally if you have an 8-5, why would you want to make an 8-5 bigger? Isn't that big enough? But it turns out if you can enhance this a little bit, it just lets you start killing more things without it dying. That's why it doesn't say divide 8. It says divide equal to power.

So it allows you to manipulate its power to do fun stuff with it. Okay, next, Mimeofacture. Mimeofacture. This is a sorcery that costs 3 and a blue. So 4 mana total, 1 of which is blue. It has replicate, 3 and a blue. Like I said yesterday, I think all the Replicate costs were the mana cost, I believe. So you choose a permanent in opponent controls.

You search their library for a copy of it and put it onto the battlefield under your control. Then you shuffle their library. So the idea essentially is I'm stealing something. So long ago I made a card, what was it called, that stole something out of your opponent's library. I'm blanking on the name. And that was a little too good. So this card, what it does essentially is kind of makes a copy of stuff,

but you have to have it out for it to have a copy. So it just can't go steal things by itself. What it can do is if you get something out, assuming you have more than one in your deck, it can go copy it. So it's kind of a limited clone. You know, like normally a clone just can copy whatever's on the battlefield. So this can only copy things that my opponent has on the battlefield. And, oh, I take that back.

If it's on the battlefield that I have it, but my opponent has it in their deck. Is that right? No, an opponent controls. You can only do something that an opponent controls. Okay. But anyway, it's kind of like a clone but more limited than a clone because a clone obviously you can choose any target and even this isn't limited to just opponent stuff it's limited to opponent stuff that they have a copy of in their deck so if you pick something they have none of the copy you don't get anything um the cool thing is this is a replicate

card which means for every four mana you spend you get to do it again. So if you have four mana you do it once, you have eight mana you do it twice, you have 12 mana you do it three times. Expensive, you know, you're usually not going to cast it more than a couple times except for late late game but it's a neat effect and it's kind of something I think the way it's worded the way it is, is my guess is it started as a clone token, a Roboclate clone token,

and what we found was clone was a little too strong that you can just copy anything. So we just kept... This is the kind of card I can tell that we... I wasn't on the design team, but I can tell the kind of design that, you know, you start from kind of the cleanest place, and then, like, oh, it's a little too powerful. So you start putting restrictions on it.

So like, oh, you know, replicate clones a little too good. Okay, okay, well, what if I only target my opponent's stuff? Okay, still a little good. Okay, what if I go through the library? So the other reason, by the way, I think they went through the library, not only to limit it a little bit, but also it just made it cleaner.

The problem with this thing is you're making tokens of clones and you're making multiples so the cards capable of multiples so if I'm going to copy different things that I go with this cut in this token represents that thing and this token that's that thing so by going at the cards it also lets you have like a clear sort of indicator to tell you what it is that you got. And I think that that is a valuable thing to have. Okay, guys. Well, I'm now pulling up to Rachel's school.

And I'm not done. I only have to M. So it means, obviously, I'll have one or two podcasts. But anyway, we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic and guilt tax, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time.