Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #527: Dissension, Part 2

Episode Date: April 13, 2018

This is part two of three, where I share many card-by-card design stories from Dissension.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to drive to work. Okay, so last time I started talking about dissension, the cards of dissension. And I got up through E. So, actually I didn't finish E. I'm still on E, I now realize. So I will continue on with Experiment Kraj. continue on with Experiment Kraj. So, he costs five mana, two generic,

two green, and a white. So, two green, green, white. He's a 4-6 legendary creature that is an Ooze Mutant, possibly the only legendary Ooze Mutant in the game. I think he's the only legendary Ooze Mutant in the game.

And he has all activated abilities of creatures with plus one, plus one counters. And then you can tap him to put a plus one, plus one counter on things. So I've talked before about how the Simic has this theme of caring about plus one, plus one counters. This is kind of like one of the

high profiles of that. And the cool thing about this is that he gets to combine interesting abilities together. Um, that blue and green, when you start combining together, you get a sort of, they're all about building interesting, interesting new creatures. Uh, and Experiment Crouch is sort of the perfect example of, I've made a creature that can evolve as it, you know, observes other things and stuff. And so the neat thing about Experimental Garage is he can put a counter on anything, and then once he does, he now gains the ability of the thing he puts the counter on.

And then you can mix and match and get neat abilities where, you know, creature A has a neat ability, and creature B has a neat ability, and he could gain each of them, and then somehow A and B together might do something that neither do separately. They combine in a way that do cool things. This is one of my favorite cards in the set. This is a really fun card. I do not play Commander, but if I did play Commander, this is one of the legendary creatures I might be tempted to play with.

This is definitely my style of Commander. Okay, next. Rise and Fall. This is another split card. So they are both sorceries. So Rise costs one blue and one black. It's a Dimir card. Return a creature on the battlefield and a creature from your graveyard to its owner's hand. So the idea here is we're combining two things. That blue sort of can boomerang things, bounce things back, and black can raise dead and get any creatures back. So this card sort of says, oh I take one card from the battlefield, one creature, and one creature from the graveyard and put both of them in my hand. One of the things, by the way, from a design

standpoint that I really like is it is fun when you can find parallels that are sort of where things overlap but they're slightly different. So the idea that like blue has an effect that takes creatures from one zone and puts them in your hand. And black has a different effect that takes a creature card from a zone and puts it in your hand. And the fact that

you can combine them just does some neat things that I think are pretty cool. So I like this card a lot. I think it's a cool card. Then we have Fall. Fall costs a black and a red. So it is a Rakdos card. And it says target player reveals two random cards and then discards all non-land cards

revealed. So this is kind of like a Hymn to Torok. So Hymn to Torok was a card in Fallen Empires, which was black, black, target player discards two cards at random, which was really powerful. One of the biggest problems, though, about Hymn to Torok was, at two mana, often your opponent will have land in their hand, and a lot of times the power of Hymn to Torok was that they would lose the land, and thus they would sort of, the reason they would lose is they would lose the things they needed to develop, and then, you know, and Hymn to Torok got banned. So this was us trying to redo Hymn to Torok.

Now it costs two different color mana rather than one color. Rather than black black, it's black red. It's a little harder to play. And it doesn't get rid of a land. So we sort of fix the thing that caused us the most issue, which is I get two random cards, but if I hit a land, then it doesn't go away. So this was here is that black really, that black does discard and red is sort of king of random effects. I do admit this is one of those cards where you probably could get away with this in mono black. It's nice that red has a little bit of a flavor of random to it.

black. It's nice that red has a little bit of a flavor of random to it. And we've been shifting away from doing random discard just because of the hidden land issue. So this card, like we like the fact that it cost two mana, the randomness element of red we thought was, you know, they added a little extra making sense. I do admit one of the things in general to be aware of when you make a multicolor card is, it is hard to make a card in which both colors get represented in a way where the card feels elegant and simple. Sometimes, as in with the Demir card with Rise, is you're doing two effects. And sometimes you can do that. And Rise does a good job of taking two effects that at least connects them so they feel as not two distinctly different things, but at least two joint effects.

But oftentimes, you're trying to do something straightforward and simple. And when you want to do that, it is tricky sometimes to get both colors in. So this is a good example where we wanted to be in two colors. Red has a flavor of know of being random and so we're pushing a little bit but I think in a place that felt good I mean I

I feel the card feels very Rakdos-y I mean in general one of the often complaints we get is we try to make multicolor cards that can't be done

in monocolor and I would argue that this card at black black we would not do even with the fix from land I don't think we would do it in black, black. So the card, like, the second color allows us to do it.

So this is one of those things where, you know, without the red, we couldn't quite get the effect we want, which was a two-mana cost card. So the red does do value. There is a reason it's here. We couldn't do it without it. It's a little subtler. It's not quite as obvious as some of the other multicolor cards. But, you know, you do have to... the other multicolor cards, but you do have to... When making multicolor cards, there are some adjustments you have to make,

and I think Fall is a good example of that. Okay, next. Fertile Imagination. Two green-green sorcery, so four mana, two which is green. Choose a card type. Target opponent reveals their hand, and then you put two 1-1 green sapling tokens onto the

battlefield for each card of the chosen type. So one of the things that's interesting here is that you know, green is we green has always been a big token maker. One of the things we've done more recently

is we've finally come to the conclusion that white is a little bit better at making small tokens. Not that green can't do it, but that white is primary making 1-1s. And that green, in general, tends to make slightly bigger tokens. So, but this one, it's funny, like, if I had to do this card today, I might make 2-2 tokens.

Rather than 2-1-1 tokens, I might just make a 2-2 token to make them a little beefier. But there was a theme in Ravnica block, green, mono green. We made sure that each color had certain things that it did. So when you mix and match colors that there would be some constant themes. And green was really big at token making in Ravnica block. It was the color that it generated a lot of creatures and then when it

combined with white for example it went wide. It combined with black it sacrificed them. It combined with red it had a lot more aggro effects. Combined with blue it sometimes could adapt them. And so green making tokens did a lot of you know work in the set and gave green a lot of sort of singular color identity. Now, the interesting thing about this one is I like sometimes when you're doing something in which the scope of what's going on, on some level, is random. I mean, you don't inherently know. I mean, because it's information that you can glean,

you can look at someone's hand, it is not as if the information has to be random. There's ways for you to find out. And there are ways for you to make educated guesses based on what you know about the deck. So this is one of the things I like where it's random, but it's what I call sort of semi-random, you know, where you, the player, feel like there are means by which you can make it not so random. A, you can look at their hand, and B, you can use tactical information from what they're doing to try to get a sense of what their deck is and what's most likely to be in their deck. Now, once again, this is... We do a lot of things where we experiment with trying different things. This is not something

we do a lot of. We don't do a lot of guess the card types in the hand. But anyway, I like it. Flaring Flamekin. So two and a red for a 2-2 elemental warrior. As long as it's enchanted it gets plus two, plus two, trample

and fire breathing. Fire breathing means you can spend a red mana and give it plus one, plus two until end of turn. So I talk about how there are a lot of, like, one of the things about building Ravnica block is each of the guilds had a very strong identity. And then layered on top of it, we have some other themes.

So one of the themes that floats through the set, through the whole block actually, is auras. We have a bunch of auras that sort of enter the battlefield and do their own effects, and we have a bunch of things that matter in different ways. So this is us sort of mattering at a low level. You know, there's a bunch of auras in the environment for Limited. So this card just says, hey, you really want to enchant me.

You know, normally I am a 2-2 creature, which is nothing special. Two-R, 2-2 is nothing special. But I become a 4-4 trampler with fire breathing if you enchant me. And if you enchant me, on top of that, the enchantment will do something. So this is one of those cards that sort of really encourages you to play with something else, being auras, and then gives you a strong incentive to do that. This is the kind of thing that if you draft early on, this card is less attractive to somebody who's not going down this path,

so you might be able to pick up a couple of these. I think it's uncommon. It looks like a build-around-me draft card. I'm not 100% sure of the rare. I didn't write that down, but it seems like it's, if I had to guess, if I was guessing man, I think it's uncommon.

But anyway, there's a little bit of that theme that floats through. That's the only card that I wrote down, but I think there was one other card that when enchanted gained an ability. And like I said, there were definitely things

elsewhere in the block that sort of cared about auras in different ways. Okay, Ghost Quarter. So Ghost Quarter is a land, taps for colorless mana, and you can tap and sack it to destroy target land. And then its controller looks through the library for basic land and puts it onto the battlefield. Okay, so this card is part of my quest. What I call the quest to make the better strip mine.

So in Antiquities, which is the second expansion, they made a card called Strip Mine, which was a land attack for Cullis that you could sack it to destroy a land. Destroy the land. That card was crazy good. It eventually got restricted, I guess, in the format it was in. And now it is banned in formats

that don't have a restricted list. And it is a very, very powerful card. The ability to destroy land is powerful. Like, we don't... We are hesitant now to make Stone Rain, which is land destruction at 3 mana. And this is land destruction at zero mana.

I mean, it's usually your land slot. I get that. But it's just super, super efficient. And one of the things I talked about Hymn to Torak earlier in the card we redid. There's a point in time where, like, one of the opening moves would be your opponent goes first. And then you go, you know, Dark Ritual, Dark R you go, you know, dark ritual, dark ritual, him, him, strip mine. Or, like, you empty their hand and destroy the one land they have in play, and then, like, they have no game. So, anyway, I had this quest to make a better strip mine.

The strip mine was broken. So, in Tempest, I made Wasteland. So Wasteland was a strip mine, but only destroyed a non-basic land. And, of course, in formats where mostly people play non-basic lands, I just managed to make a second strip mine.

Okay, so then I tried again in, was it McKinney Mass? I think I made Dust Bowl. And Dust Bowl, it costs mana, you're at a sack of land. But for some reason I made it repeatable, which was dumb. Anyway, I tried a bunch of different times to make a strip mine that wasn't problematic. And really what I wanted was,

I liked the idea that it answered utility lands without hurting mana. So the question was, okay, is there a way to sort of deal with utility lands but not undercut the ability for the person to make mana? And that's what led me to Ghost Quarter. So the idea here is I destroy the land, but I give my opponent the ability

to replace it with any basic land. So A, I've got to be careful because I'm giving them color fixing. If they really, really need a land they don't have yet, a basic land, they can go get it. And they don't go down in mana. So really what I'm doing is I'm getting rid of excess elements of a card. So I don't want to use it if they're color screwed because I help them. And I don't want to, it doesn't allow is screwed because I help them. And I don't want to... It doesn't allow me to sort of make them go down in mana.

I mean, I can make them go down in mana in that if the dual land produces more than one mana, I can make them go down in mana. But I can't sort of... The land's going to get replaced by a land. This was finally, I think... I mean, it took me a while to get there. My final strip mine fix that was correct and works.

And this is the card we've actually reprinted. Um, it does a decent job of being an answer without having a lot of the byproducts we didn't like about strip buy. So anyway, um, ghost quarter. Okay, next card. Gob Hobbard Rats. So Gob Hobbard Rats is black and red two mana, one black, one red

for a 2-2 rat when it's hellbent, meaning when you have no cards in your hand it gets plus one, plus oh and for a black mana it can regenerate So it's a 2-2 creature that when your hand is empty becomes a 3-2 creature that you can regenerate In general, one of the things we want to do with

Rakdos is we want to do with Rakdos is we want Rakdos to be pretty reckless and aggressive. We want you to sort of spill out your hand and we want you to sort of be very in the face of your opponent. And Rakdos was built to be... I mean, there are ways for Black Red to be very defensive and very controlling, but that's not what we were trying to do with Rakdos. We wanted Rakdos. The flavor of

black and red we felt was a little more of the willingness to do whatever it takes and sort of the recklessness of red and the willingness to do what it takes from black. That's sort of Rakdos. So we liked the idea of Hellbent was, look, just get all your cards out and then things will happen that

are good for you. And this is a good example of a card that, okay, a two drop two two, it's not amazing or anything, but it does encourage you that if you can get your hand empty, all of a sudden it becomes a pretty good threat. A three two that, you know, for a single black mana isn't going to die, it's hard to deal with. Okay, next, govern the guild list. Five blue for sorcery. Gain control of target monocolored creature.

And then it has forecast, an ability we haven't talked about yet. So forecast is an ability that works while it's in your hand. And you can reveal, and forecast means if you pay a certain amount of mana. So in this case, you pay one and a blue, you reveal this card from your hand, and target creature becomes the color or colors of your choice until end of turn. I

now realize the color or colors of your choice. Does this, okay, the card must say it can become colorless or colored color of your choice. I think this card must make things colorless. Because the whole point of this card is it can steal... Oh, no, no, no, it's mono-color. Yes, it doesn't need to be colorless.

Okay, so this card can turn you into one or more colors. So the idea is it combos... So the idea was... So Forecast was inspired by the card Infernal Spawn of Evil from Unglued. So Infernal Spawn of Evil was an evil creature that in your hand you could reveal it. I think you had to spend a black mana. You could reveal it from your hand, show it to your opponent,

and say, it's coming. And the idea was it's so scary that your opponent, knowing it's coming, because it's Infernal Spawn of Evil, made them lose a life. That it was so scary that they would literally be weaker from the scare of knowing it's coming. So when we were making Azorius, we were trying to find something that was a little more controlling. The tricky part about it was at the time we made Dissension, white-blue I think actually was pretty strong in standard. And so one of the things was we were sort of asked not to make too strong of a traditional control deck because of that.

And so we were messing around with doing things a little bit different. We liked White having controlling aspects. We wanted Azorius to have some controlling aspects. And in Limited it could be more controlling. But in Constructed we wanted to be a little bit different. So the cards we pushed ended up being more of a flying deck, even though in Unlimited there are ways to play Control, but we were careful what we pushed for Constructed. So one of the neat things about Forecast was it allowed you to sort of have cards in your hand, give them value while they're in your hand,

although obviously you're telling your opponent you have them. And then forecast cards, there's a couple different ways we designed them. The way we liked best was like this card, where the forecast effect and the effect of the card were synergistic with each other. This card, for example, can make something monocolored so that you then can gain control of it. Notice that this was a sorcery that it didn't check.

It's not like an enchantment that would keep checking if it was monocolored. So if I make it monocolored for the turn and steal it, then it stays stolen even if it is no longer, after the turn ends and it becomes not monocolored. The neat thing about this card, though, is there are a few other ways that color mattered and so you have the ability for example I talked earlier about the enchantment that gave a creature plus one plus one for every color that it was. Well if you were playing that card and you had

this card in your hand you could make the creature enchanted five colors all five colors then we get plus five plus five. Or if your opponent had protection from something you could turn your card to a color that didn't have protection or whatever. There's a bunch of different things that matter for color in this block. So this card sort of lets you mess with color and then it have a larger ability that you could do something with that color.

Okay, next. Grand Arbiter Augustine IV. So it costs two white, blue. So four mana, one of which is white, one of which is blue, two generic. It's a legendary creature, human advisor. Your white spells cost one less to cast. Or cost one less, I guess is what it said.

Your blue spells cost one less. And your spells your opponent plays cost one more. So this is part of a cycle. I talked last time about how there were tight cycles and loose cycles. So this is a looser cycle, though not completely loose. Not as loose as some cycles get. So there's a cycle of legendary creatures that care

about colors, and the idea of the design was it likes colors of the two cards of the, it likes cards of the two colors that you are, that it is, but it likes multicolored cards even better. So what this card does is it says

white spells cost one less, blue spells cost one less. It doesn't say white or blue cards cost one less because if I have a card that costs two generic, one white, one blue, such as Grand Augustine, although this is legendary so you can't play the second one,

and I had this card in play, if it said blue or white creatures cost one less, it would cost three mana. But because blue or white creatures cost one less, it would cost three mana. But because it says white creatures cost, white cards cost one less, white spells cost one less, and blue spells cost one less, this card would cost white and blue.

It costs two less. Because it rewards you for being white and rewards you for being blue, and so it double rewards you for being white-blue. So this whole cycle were cards in which it rewarded you for being the first color, rewarded you for being the second color, but doubly rewarded you for being both colors. And like I said, the reason I say it's loose is it had a goal that all the colors did.

They were all legendary. All two color legendary cards and they were creatures. But how it did that was different from card to card. A tight cycle like the Eidolons I talked about last time, they were all two twos, they all cost four mana, you know, they all had a sac effect, they came back with the same condition, they're a lot closer together. All this said is you have to be legendary and help each color but combined better. That was the only rules for it. So there's a lot of different ways the cards did this. Last time I talked about a card where when you sacked it, if it was red,

it did damage. If it was black, you drew a card. But if it was red and black, you did damage and drew a card. So that's an example of another one in this cycle. Okay, next. Guardian of the Guild Pact. Three and a white for a 2-3 spirit has protection

from mono-color. So I talked last time about how one of the themes of dissension in general is messing around with themes of mono color and multi color. This is a good example. The set has some themes built in. So this idea here is we have a different card with protection from multi color. This is a card protection from monocolor. Okay next, hide and seek, another split card. They are both instants. So hide is red white, red and white, mana cost, it's Boros. Put target artifact or enchantment on

the bottom of its owner's library. So essentially what it does is it is a naturalize, but rather than put it in the graveyard, it puts it far away. This can matter. There's different ways that this can matter. The idea essentially here was white destroys enchantments and red destroys artifacts.

A little wishy-washy since white can destroy enchantments. But it's efficient. It's another case where by sort of dipping into two colors, you get to do something slightly cheaper than you could do it at one color. Seek is white and black. Two mana, one white, one black. Obviously, it's Orzhov.

And it's search opponent's library and remove a card from it and gain life equal to that card's converted mana cost. So it allows you to go through your opponent's deck, remove a troublesome card, and then on top of that you get to gain some life. The remove the card from your opponent is black, the gain life is white. But the fact that one of the tricks we do is when you have two effects is you make both effects care about something. So the black card cares about what the card is,

and the white then is life gain, but dependent upon what the card is. So the idea here is, I could use this to go get your best card, remove it, or if I really need life gain, I could go get an expensive spell just to get a large life gain swing. You know, the card gives you the flexibility how you want to use it. Okay, next, hit and run. So this is another split card, an instant on both sides. The first one I hit is one black red, so it is a Rakdos card. Target player sacrifices an artifact or creature, and then deals damage equal to that creature's CMC. So you don't control what they sacrifice, and you don't control whether they sacrifice an artifact or a creature, but you force them to sacrifice one of the two,

and then you do damage to them equal to the converted mana cost. Run is three red-green, so five mana total, three generic, one red, one green, and obviously it is a rule card. Attacking creature you control gets plus one plus oh for each other

attacking creature. Excuse me. Gives it height to myself. So this card basically says if you attack with a lot of creatures, they can get really big. So the idea is let's say I attack with four creatures. Well, for each creature,

there are three other creatures attacking. So I would get plus three plus zero. Essentially what this card does is it is plus N minus one plus zero, where N is the number of attacking creatures. So it's actually, it's plus one plus O for each other attacking creature.

And then there's a locked number of creatures, so all the creatures will always get the same number. It's not quite as confusing as it sounds. If I attack with four creatures, they all get plus three, plus oh. And so this encourages... Gruul likes to attack with a group.

Not quite as much as Selesnya does, but they do. And so this card sort of gives you some flexibility. I do want to point that the name Hit and Run

was actually the initial name of the first split card, the red-green split card in original Evasion. What did it end up being called? It did damage and it made a token. Assaulted Battery. It's called Assaulted Battery. So it did direct damage and then it made a creature. That was originally called Hit and Run, which I thought was a good name. It got changed.

But anyway, we finally got to use Hit and Run. Okay, next is... Indrik Stomphowler. Four and a green for four, four beasts. And when it enters the battlefield, destroy target, artifact, or enchantment. I think we've reprinted this a bunch. This is just a four, four beasts. And when it enters the battlefield, destroy target artifact or enchantment. I think we've reprinted this a bunch. This is just a nice, good green. It's like a big, beefy green creature that has a nice little enter the battlefield effect of naturalizing.

And so this is a nice, this is just a nice standard, a nice solid card. And one of the things that's interesting when you design sets is you want to make sure that you're making nice, clean, elegant cards as well as maybe making some cards that are more unique to where you're making them some of the cards I'm talking about, really, this is the only set they're going to be in and then some cards like this card, look, if it wasn't here it might be somewhere else but it's a nice, clean, simple card, does good work probably what was going on here, real quickly,

is one of the things that happens sometimes when you're making cards is you have so many creature slots and so many non-creature slots. And what happens sometimes is due to just how things fall out, you have effects that you need to get to, but you run out of non-creature slots to put them in.

And one of the solutions to that is to make creatures that have entered the battlefield effects. So, for example, I can imagine that we needed a naturalized effect, that's something green normally has a common, and we ran out of common effects where it made sense to put it. One of the reasons is this is a multicolor set, and in multicolor sets, we don't often do modal effects as one choice within the modal.

I mean, we sometimes do, but we sometimes avoid that if we're trying to be clean. Usually, if the two modes represent the two colors, that's fine, but if the two modes both represent one color, we don't do that as much. We do it some, I'm not saying we never do it, but we don't do it as much.

And anyway, that is my guess of how this ended up here, but it's a nice, clean card. Okay, next. Asperia the Inscrutable. One white, white, blue, blue. So five mana. Two white, two blue, and a generic.

It's a 3-6. And it's a legendary sphinx. Legendary creature of sphinx. So it is flying. Of course, it's a sphinx. Whenever you do combat damage to a player, you get to name a card, they reveal your hand, and if the card you name is in their hand, you get to go through your library, find a flying

creature, and put it in your hand. So basically, you get a tutor for a flyer every time you sort of figure out the riddle of what's in their hand. Now, the cool thing about this is they have to show you their hand when you hit them. So, first time, you're making an educated guess, and Sphinxes are smart, and I like the idea that part of making an Azorius card more powerful is you having some idea what's going on. So, the first time, you're making an educated guess. You know what they're playing.

Maybe you can read them or something, and like I said, there could be other means by which you saw their hand. But then, once I hit them, now I know what's in their hand. And now my opponent has this game of get stuff out of their hand that I know is there. Because next time I hit you with her, if I know it's in your hand, I'm going to go get a flyer.

And I still got to cast the flyer. But still, tooting for a flyer is pretty potent. And Aspira, I believe, was the leader. There's two legends for each. There was the leader of the guild, and there was the champion of the guild. So, for example, Augustine was the champion, I believe, and the Finks, what's their name, Aspira. Aspira was the leader of the guild.

One of the fun things when we went back and returned to Ravnica is some of the leaders stayed the leaders. You know, Niv-Mizzet's still there, Raptors are still there, but some of them change over and they're not the same. And I think that's kind of cool

that there's some changeover between different things. Okay, next. Leaf Drake Roost. Three green, blue. So five mana, three generic, one green, one blue. It's an aura, enchantment aura. Enchant land.

Enchant land has green, blue tap. Create a 2-2 green and blue drake creature token with flying. So the idea is it's a little enchantment that sort of turns your land into sort of a drake hatching zone. It's a leaf drake roost. It's a roost where all the little baby drakes are born. And so this is a cool card.

Like I said, we mess around a lot with auras in this block, and so this is an enchant land. We don't do lots of enchant lands. It's kind of a fun enchant land. in this block, and so this is an Enchant Land. We don't do lots of Enchant Lands. It's kind of a fun Enchant Land. Enchant Lands are particularly potent because it's not as easy to get rid of a land. I mean, obviously we had

Ghost Quarter, and that exists in the set, but in general, we don't make it so easy to get rid of a land. So an Enchant Land usually sticks around a lot longer. Loaming Shaman. Two and a green for a 3-2 Centaur Shaman. When it enters the battlefield a 3-2 Centaur Shaman. When it enters the battlefield, target player shuffles any number of target cards from their graveyard into their library.

So the idea here is this card allows you to do one of two things. Either if you have things in your graveyard that you want to get back into your library, it lets you do that. Or if your opponent has things in their graveyard that are problematic being in their graveyard, this is an answer to that. This allows you to shuffle sort of problematic graveyard cards into the library. So either it's something to help you or something to hurt your opponent if they're playing graveyard strategies.

And this card is kind of neat because if you combine it with block and put it in a Golgari deck, that's clearly going to be messing around with the graveyard, then it can be helping you. But if you're playing some other combination and your opponent in a Golgari deck that's clearly going to be messing around with the graveyard, then it can be helping you. But, if you're playing some other combination, and your opponent's playing Golgari, or there's a few other things you can play that have some graveyard elements

to them, then you can answer them. Okay, Lizolda. Oh, whoops. I think I gave away Lizolda. I thought I talked about Lizolda yesterday, but I did not. So, Lizolda is Lizolda the Blood Witch, one black-red for a 3-1 legendary creature. She's a human cleric.

Two, sac a creature. Deal two damage to a creature or player if it's red. And if it's black, you draw a card. So, this is another one of that cycle. Sorry, I thought I talked about this yesterday, but I did not. So, this is another of the champion cycle.

I believe the leaders didn't do this. The champions. So, this is Lizolda's the champion. Obviously, Rakdos is the leader of the Rakdos. We'll get him eventually. And the idea is if I sac a creature,

you know, if I'm playing a black-red deck, I sac a black creature, I get to draw a card. I sac a red creature, I get to deal damage. I sac a black-red creature,

I get to both do damage and draw a card. And so this is one of those cards that rewards you for each of the colors, rewards you more for having them together. Okay, next, Macabre Waltz. One and a black for a sorcery.

Return up to two target creature cards from a graveyard to your hand, then discard a card. So this is another card that's trying to do some enabling for, in general, Rakdos... Well, this card works in a couple ways. If you're playing this, Golgari, for example, gets things in your graveyard.

You might want to get it in your graveyard. If you're playing with Rakdos, it allows you to sort of get some stuff back while not keeping your hand too large because you're trying to get to Hellbent. The interesting thing about this card is this is one of the more disturbing pieces of art. It's this couple covered in blood

dancing this really macabre waltz, if you will. And it's one of the more disturbing arts we've ever made. I just remember one of the things I thought was so funny is that it is something that people always respond to because it is a really weird piece of art but it is definitely one of the more disturbing

and so often people talk about just if you've never ever seen the art and you like disturbing art you can look it up it is definitely

one of the odder pieces of magic art there is another we reprinted Macabre Waltz in a recent set I think in Shadow

not Shadowmore sorry Shadows of in Shadows of Innistrad or Eldritch Moon. We reprinted it. And then we had Liliana dancing with a zombie. It was kind of fun. Okay, next. Mage Wright Stone. It's an artifact that costs two generic mana. One in tap.

Untap target creature with a tap in its activation cost so this is a card that basically let you re-tap tappers I think I made this card and one of the big challenges of this card was my goal of the card was you can untap things that tap well how exactly do you say you

untap things that tap in the end we had a reference that we referenced the tap symbol, where we say, well, anything that has a tap symbol in its activation, you can untap. So it wasn't quite as clean as originally designed, but we did find a way to sort of let you untap tappers. I thought that was kind of cool.

Minister of Impediments. So this costs three mana, two generic and a hybrid. The hybrid is white-blue. So it's two and a white or blue. It is a 1-1 human advisor. Notice there are a lot of advisors in the Azorius. They're big on legislation. And then you can tap to tap target creature.

So one of the cool things about a hybrid is trying to find overlap between things. Finding common hybrid cards are tough. The idea here is white can tap creatures and blue can tap creatures. Traditionally, blue taps or untaps them. Normally, white is the one that taps them on a creature. But the fact that blue can tap or tap something on a creature. Normally, blue also untaps. But because in hybrid, we allow ourselves to sort of find the overlap

between them. Normally, a mono-blue card, we'd probably say tap or untap, but since we're doing the hybrid thing, and blue can tap creatures, this does the overlap. It's kind of cool. Next, Momir Vig. Simic Visionary. So, three green-blue, so five

mana, three generic, one green, one blue. It's a 2-2 legendary creature, elf wizard. And this is the champion for the cynic. I just talked about Experiment Courage. I think it's the leader. I think it's the leader. The ooze mutant. That's hard to say.

So whenever you play a green spell, you can tutor for a creature, reveal it, and put it as the top card of your library. Whenever you play a blue spell, reveal the top card of your library. If it's a creature, put it in your hand. So you can see where this is going. If I play a green spell, I get to sort of tutor, you know, I get a natural tutor, or worldly tutor, for a creature. To play a blue card, I sometimes

get a draw if it's a creature on top. Well, to play a green-blue creature, I get a go-getter creature, put it on top, I know it's a creature, and I get to draw it. So essentially, when you play a green-blue spell, you get to tutor for a creature to put in your hand. But, if it's either green or

blue, you get half of that, and sometimes it'll pay off and do cool things. But anyway, the interesting thing about Mold Mirror Vague, actually, the most interesting thing is not any of the things I just said. So one of the things we did for a while online, on Magic Online, I don't think we do this, is we

made we made Vanguard. So Vanguard was a format. I did a whole podcast on Vanguard where it changes your starting hand size and life total and then grants you an ability. So the ability that we put on the Vanguard for Momir Vig was

you could spend X and then you randomly got a creature from the history of magic that had the converted mana cost of X. And that card was so popular that it inspired an entire format where people just played the Momervig card of Magic Online.

And the idea was, I just, my special ability in this format is I can pay X mana and get a random creature of that mana cost. And that Momervig was I even once played somebody who made a live Momervig that when I was spell slinging

at a Pro Tour or at a World Championship and they played with me. And I actually lost it by getting phage, by the way, for crazy stories. Okay, let me, I have two more. I just got to work, but let me finish this page. And then we will have one more. Actually, let me, I have two more. I just got to work, but let me finish this page, and then we will have one more.

Actually, should I? Where am I at? One, two, one, two, three, four. Yeah, I'll do two more. I got plenty left. So, Novagin Sages, four blue blue for a zero zero human advisor mutant. Graph four.

So when it comes into play, it gets 4 plus 1 plus 1 counters. Whenever another creature comes into play, I can move a plus 1 counter from it to that. 1. Remove 2 plus 1 counters from creature you control. Draw a card. So the idea is this spread apart counters, but also it then lets you trade in counters for cards. 2 counters can become a card.

So this was a little bit different. It didn't grant abilities from the counters. The counters had value that you could use. And then you think about this as it didn't matter where the counters were and it didn't matter where the counters came from. So this card allowed you to sort of take other graph cards and turn some of the counters into resource. One of the reasons this is interesting is, let's say I have a creature that's dying in combat. I believe this is during the era where you had damage on the stack. So you could sort of put damage on the stack

then sacrifice the creature. Can't do that now, but at the time you could do that. Or the other thing you could do if you were chump blocking a giant creature or something, you could chump block with something that had one or two counters and then use the counters off of it before it died. Next, Novagin, Heart of Progress.

It's a land. Tap for colorless or for green and blue and tap. Put a plus one plus one counter on each creature that entered the battlefield this turn. So there was a cycle of lands in the whole block that tap for colorless and then for some amount of mana, including the two colors that mattered for the guild, allowed you to do something. This was fun because it granted plus mattered for the guild, allowed you to do something. This was fun because it granted

a plus one, plus one counters. It needed to do it to things that came into play. It worked with graft creatures because they were coming into play. Obviously, it could work with things that were grafted onto because they'd come into play.

It worked with, like, earlier I talked about how you make a lot of tokens. It worked with tokens. So it did a lot of cool things. So it was a fun spell. Anyway, I've been up through N. So we'll have at least one more podcast.

One or two. We'll see how much I get through. But anyway, I hope you guys are enjoying these. They're fun to do. But anyway, I'm now at work. 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 guys next time. Bye-bye.