Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #553: Unstable Cards, Part 1

Episode Date: July 13, 2018

This podcast is part one of a six-part series on the design of each and every non-Contraption card in Unstable.

I'm pulling away driveway we all know what that means it's time for the drive to work okay so today we begin a series of podcasts all about unstable and the cards of unstable so what I'm going to do is I'm going to go through every single card unstable minus the contraptions and I'm going to talk about each one and tell stories and anyway it's gonna be a chock-full series so hope you guys enjoy it and I'm going to talk about each one and tell stories. And anyway, it's going to be a chock-full series. So I hope you guys enjoy it. And I'm going to go in alphabetical order.

So what is the first card in alphabetical order? Is Rumors of My Death, because it starts with a quotation mark. So this, so Rumors of My Death is an uncommon. It costs two and a black. It's an enchantment. For three and a black, you exile a permanent you control with a League of Dashly Doom watermark. Return a permanent card with a League of Dashly Doom watermark from your graveyard to the battlefield. So this is part of our uncommon watermark matters cycle. We decided to have a theme in the set of Watermarks Matters, and I wanted for Limited to

make five uncommons, one for each of the clans. Or the... What do we call them? We used to call them gangs in design. But each faction, I guess they're factions, each faction has an uncommon centered

in its color. And the idea is each faction obviously is in two colors. So we picked one of the colors for the League of Dastley Doom. We picked black. And then we went around accordingly. And the idea was it was supposed to be a build around

watermark matter cards that cares about the faction watermark. So the idea here is this allows you to trade one Dastley Doom character for another. So the idea is, ha ha, you thought you killed this one, but secretly he's not really dead and he rips off his mask. I'm actually this villain. So playing around in the space. And I don't know. This is one of those cars that we had a general flavor idea

when we made the car that you keep thinking they're dead, but they're not dead. And there's some trickiness going on. Because one of the things about villains is supervillains are hard to kill. They keep coming back. You think they're dead, but they're not. And so I know Kelly gave us a fun name with

Rumors of My Death. So that, that is Rumors of My Death. Okay, next we have Adorable Kitten. So Adorable Kitten is a host creature. It's a white 1-1 creature. And then when the creature enters the battlefield, roll a six-sided die. You gain life equal to the result. So originally what happened was, I had a cycle of enter the battlefield dice rolling cards and as a separate issue I had the host creatures that all had an

enter the battlefield effect. And at one point it just hit me, I'm like oh, why don't I just combine these? There's only so many enter the battlefield effects that make sense, and I like the idea of having some enter the battlefields that were dice rolling. So we married them together.

I actually think this was a kitten in playtest in design. It might not have been called adorable kitten, but it was something kitten. I think the idea of having a kitten came from that we had had one in playtest. One of the things that happened when we were making all the hosts and suture cards

is we tried to figure out kind of the funniest things. What's a good front half? What's a good back half? And so the idea of kitten, we had a kitten pretty early on, and it just was clear that kittens are kind of funny. And we liked the idea. The idea that this is the dice rolling card was kittens are so cute that when you see a kitten you go, oh, kittens are so cute. And you gain some life

because kittens are so cute. Okay, Aerial Toastmaster. So this is an uncommon. It's an artifact creature cyborg, Rigger. 3-2 for 3 white. So 3 and a white. It's a 3-2 flying creature. For 3 white, sacrifice another

artifact. Aerial Toastmaster assembles a contraption. And then it tells you to assemble a contraption. So basically, one of the things we were trying to do was we knew we wanted contraptions to be in all five colors. It was one of the big KSPs, the key selling points of the set.

But we wanted different factions to sort of do different things. So one of the things I liked about the cyborg faction was that they would be more about, they would build it up. It's not, they wouldn't be the one that assembles the most things,

they wouldn't be stealing things, but what they would be doing is they're good at fine-tuning. Because the cyborgs are all about fine-tuning things. So the idea here is you can sacrifice an artifact. Now, note that all contraptions are artifacts. So you can always sacrifice a contraption to upgrade to a different contraption. Or, if you have other artifacts lying around and there's a bunch of ways to get artifacts in the set,

you can sacrifice one of those artifacts to get a contraption. If you like all your contraptions and don't want to give any up. You can sacrifice one of those artifacts to get a contraption, if you like all your contraptions and don't want to give any up. And then we made it fly just because we were trying to make sure White had enough flyers. I think this didn't always fly. Note that anything that makes contraptions is a rigger. Any creature that makes contraptions is a rigger,

because we had Steamflugger Boss, which helps all riggers. So we're like, okay, if you're going to put a contraption together, we'll make you a rigger so that Steamflugger Boss will affect you. So every creature that assembles a contraption, not the spells, but every creature is a rigger. And then one of the fun things about making the cyborgs is the whole flavor of the faction is that they just keep upgrading themselves with the silliest of things. And so this was kind of fun. I think when they came in to do world building, somebody had made a rocket backpack that was also a toaster. I think that's where this idea came from. But I thought it was fun.

Okay, next. Amateur Auteur. So it's a common. For one and a white, you get a 2-2 creature. And you sacrifice it to destroy target enchantment. So what happened was, this is one of our... This is the kid who's acting out in the play. And there's four of them.

I believe he is in Ravnica, in Theros, in Innistrad, and in Zendikar. So what happened here was his original name was a tutu by any name, making a little Shakespearean reference. The whole idea of this was originally it was just a 1W-22, and the joke was every world has a 1w2-2. That was the original joke, because we were trying to figure out a way to make vanilla creatures have some silver borderness to them, and so we came up with the idea of alternate versions of the card. Then, when we were making the set, it turned out that we needed enchantment removal,

and we really were tight and couldn't find a place to put enchantment removal. So we ended up putting it on this creature, deciding that it was a pretty simple creature, and that while originally it was cool that they all were vanilla, we had changed a few of them so they weren't all vanilla anymore. So Amateur Artur became the place we did to get our enchantment removal. The reason that it didn't keep its name of a tutu by any other name is when you have to say sacrifice Amateur Artur. And when you said sacrifice a tutu by any other name, it read like you sacrificed a tutu creature. Not this creature, which name is a tut2 by any other name. It read like you sacrificed a 2-2 creature, not this creature, which name is a 2-2 by any other name. So it was confusing in the template.

So that's why the name changed. I like the name, but it was confusing when you wrote it out. Okay, next, Angelic Rocket. So Angelic Rocket is a rare card. It costs eight mana. It's an artifact creature, an artifact host creature, angel. It's a 4-4. It costs 8 mana. It's an artifact creature. An artifact host creature, Angel. It's a 4-4. It is flying. In fact, I think it's the only host creature

that has an ability, I believe. And then when this creature enters the battlefield, you may destroy target permanent. So we decided we wanted to do something kind of splashy in artifacts. And the one nice thing about artifacts is artifacts can destroy something. So we had to make sure it cost enough mana

because we don't let... I think artifacts have to be at least seven mana to be able to destroy something just to make it not easy to throw in a deck in which that color has trouble destroying something. And I think we ended up making an angel because we were trying to come up with what would be a cool mechanical

thing to make. And a mechanical angel sounded pretty cool. And the front of the angel had the wings, so it looked neat. But anyway, that's how Angelic Rocket came to be. Next, animate library. This is a rare for four blue blues, so six mana total, two of which is blue. It's an enchantment.

Enchant your library. Originally, by the way, it was enchant library, and we realized that the goal of this wasn't really messing up your opponent by enchanting their library. And then, you know, destroying it or something. Enchanted Library is an artifact creature on the battlefield with power and toughness, each equal to the number of cards in it. It's still a library. If Enchanted Library would leave the battlefield, Exile, Animate Library, and Thet.

So this was the very last card stuck in the file. We were having a playtest. This is a card I've tried to get in actual magic and been told no. And so it was kind of in the back of my brain, and then I just forgot about it. And we were having a playtest, and I forget why it came up,

but in the middle of the playtest, of an unstable playtest, I remembered the existence of this card. I'm like, we have to put this in, we have to put this in. And then I'm like, okay, it clearly has to be a blue card. And I'm looking through the blue radar, trying to figure out what to kick out. And I went to Dave and I go, okay, Dave, Dave, Dave,

we need to put this in. Here's the card I would kick out. Here's the card I would put in. And Dave goes, okay, sounds good. And he stuck it in. Note that we didn't, you have to animate your own library, so you can't sort of destroy other people's libraries. And we put the rider that if this ever leaves play, the creature would leave play, instead just get rid of the enchantment.

So we didn't have to answer the questions of what happens when your library goes to your hand or your library goes to your library. I don't know, weird questions. And just to sort of, the goal of this wasn't to make it easy for your opponent to just destroy your library. So the idea is, essentially, it's animated. If it would be destroyed, instead, it just stops being a creature.

And we decided that one of the reasons they wouldn't do this in Black Border is there's a lot of counting that goes on, because you have to constantly count your library to know how big it is. Like, it is. Like, it makes total sense, and it's the flavor of the card, and, like, the bigger the library, the more powerful it is.

But it was just kind of a pain. Silver Border, we're allowed to do things, and people kind of say, okay, I'm signing up to do a little bit more crazy stuff than normal, so, okay, I'll count my library. That's actually not even on the crazy end of the spectrum of the set. That's on the tamer side. But anyway, that's why Animate Library is here. Okay, I'll count my library. That's actually not even on the crazy end of the spectrum of the set. That's on the tamer side.

But anyway, that's why animate library is here. Okay, next. Applied aeronautics. Oh, no. Applied aeronautics is a contraption. We're not doing contraptions just because there's not a lot to say about individual contraptions. Arms Depot is also a contraption. As luck would have it.

So as luck would have it, it is a rare enchantment. Costs one green. It has hexproof. Whenever you roll a die, put a number of luck counters on as luck would have it equal to the result. Then if there are a hundred or more luck counters on it, as luck would have it, you win the game. So we always

like having a win condition in unsets. I like tying the win condition to dice rolling, because that was one of the themes. And it seemed like fun of, okay, if you can just roll enough dice, you can win the game. And so we decided that we'd base it on your die rolls

just because it's something that you don't have complete control over, but, I mean, you can re-roll dice and stuff with other cards. So we ended up sticking in green. I think green has the up sticking it in green. I think green has the most dice rolling in it. Red and green have a lot of dice rolling in it.

I think we stuck it in green just because the idea of Lucky Charms and stuff felt green to us. We gave it hexproof because we didn't want people destroying it when you had like 99 counters on it. But anyway, I just thought it was fun to have well, I thought it was fun

to have an alternate win condition and I like the idea of something where there's a variable, like most win conditions you know when you're getting close. In this one you know when you're getting closer. But I like the idea that there's still this randomness built in. But in a deck that wants to do this, just roll a lot of dice and eventually you'll get there.

And the picture, by the way, if you've never noticed, is every lucky charm we can think of put together in the picture. So the picture's just every lucky charm you can imagine. So it's kind of a fun picture if you look at it. Okay, next, Baron Von Count. So this is a mythic, rare, legendary creature, human villain, 3-3, for one black and a red. Three mana total, human villain, 3-3, for one black and a red. Three mana total, one black, one red. Baron Von Count enters the battlefield

with a Doom Counter on five. Whenever you cast a spell with the indicated numeral in its mana box, mana cost, text box, power or toughness, move the Doom Counter one numeral to the left. When the Doom Counter moves from one, destroy target player and put that Doom counter on five.

Okay, so way back when, Aaron Forsythe and I made a card called Door to Nothingness in which you had to pay Wooburg Wooburg, and originally you destroyed target creature or player. That was the original text. And I had a big fight with Mark Gottlieb. He's like, we have a template for how you make players lose. It's target player loses the game. You can't destroy a player. The rules don't allow that. And I'm like, but it's cool and we can make the rules work. And you know, he and I got a big fight in the end.

I lost that fight. So I saved this and I knew when we were doing unstable that I wanted to destroy target player. I didn't know where or how. And then once we knew we were doing a supervillain faction, that seemed like the perfect place to do it. The other thing that we were trying to do was, I love the idea of a countdown. I messed around in Unstable on cards in which there's, the art has things to help you keep track of stuff.

Like, Toggle Night tells you whether it goes on or off, and the falling apart tells you when legs and feet have fallen off. Bingo tells you when you've made the bingo. Balloon Gun Game tells you when you've blown up your balloon. I wanted to do a little of that in this set, and I liked the idea of a countdown. And then, once we thought of a supervillain, oh, countdowns made sense for supervillains.

Destroying target player, making a big machine that would destroy something, that all sort of came together. So for a long time, by the way, Baron Von Count's name was Major Monologue. I think we referenced that in Flavortech somewhere else. Oh, no, no, I referenced it in my short story. But his original name, Baron Von Count's original name was Major Monologue.

And that is before this card existed. He actually, when they came to do world building, somebody drew him and they really, really liked him and decided he'd be a character. But once we went on this card and there was a counting aspect to it, they changed his name to Baron Von Count, which is

a fun name. And this card also, by the way, plays around with the idea of looking for numerals, but meaning actual written, not words that are numbers, but actual, you know, numerals are the actual, like, numbers in numeric form. And it's kind of fun to just care about, like, I love making cards in unsets that make you care about things you just never care about. Who cares whether there's a numeral one on a card or a numeral two on a card? So I just thought that was kind of fun. So anyway, this was sort of a lot of different pieces coming together. Oh, the other thing you'll notice that there are four legendary creatures in

the villains faction, and the reason is I try to set up each faction so they work differently. And so we decided that the supervillains was run by a cabal of supervillains. Because that just seems like a supervillain thing to do. And so there's four supervillains, one of which is Baron Bunkow. Okay, next, Beast in Show. So this is a common four green green for a six four trample creature so this is another example of the alt art cards uh so we had how many five common five common alt art cards is that right yeah we had five oh no no sorry we had five cards at common

oh we had more than five there well one got confusing. Originally, there was five alt art cards, and we ended up changing blue, so instead of being alternate art, it was alternate flavor text, because originally the idea was that was the only card that had different flavor text, but then we ended up putting different flavor text on other cards. So there's kind of a cycle of alt art, except the blue one doesn't have it, so

it's other four colors. This is the green one. So the one we play around in this is the idea of taking famous magic creatures and putting them in like a dog show, essentially a beast show. So best in show is an expression, so beast in show without funny. And the

idea is we just went and found what we thought were four very magic specific creatures. Oh, we were playing the other thing we were playing around with is the idea that we have a beast creature type that has this wide range of what it is. So the reason we liked the different art was,

yeah, it's a beast, but wow, a beast could be so many different things. We're kind of making fun of how often we use beasts and use it for just different things. We then came up with the idea of doing the dog show with the beasts, and then we... I know Kelly went and picked out

what he thought were four pretty cool, classic magic-specific beasts and then had fun sort of giving it to artists to dollop. So Mike Burns was the artist and he had a lot of fun. I think we just told him, here's the source material, here's the creatures that we're pulling from. And then he was the one that said, oh, I'll put this one in a bow.

And he had a lot of fun turning them into sort of like a dog show sort of participants. That was pretty fun. Okay, next, Better Than One. It's a rare sorcery for a green and a white. It costs two. A person outside the game becomes your teammate. And then choose any number of cards in your hand. Sorry, cards in your hand on top of your library or on the battlefield under your control. Those cards become the teammate's

hand library and permanents respectively. Note, by the way, we don't specifically call out contraptions, but we have ruled that when we say library, we also mean the contraption deck. So you do get to divvy up contraptions. So this card was actually made by Alexis Jansen during the very first Great Designer Search. One of the challenges in the first Great Designer Search was to make gold silver-bordered cards. It was called Silver and Gold was the challenge. And so they had to make gold cards that were un-cards. And she made this card, and I thought it was an awesome card. So much so that when we made this set, I went back and I looked at that whole challenge and this was the card that I think I pulled out of that and put it in. It's a lot of fun. If you never saw in the pre-release, there's a match where I got pulled in, um, and I was a part of a two-headed giant, and then we played a, um,

we played a, uh, Scheherazade sub game in which we, I, I got sucked into, um, and so it was, anyway, if you never watched the Unstable pre-pre-release, there's a lot of, a lot of fun times, that was one of the, the coolest, um, coolest. Okay, next. Big boa constrictor. So it's a common host creature. It's a snake. Three and a black for a one, two. When this creature enters the battlefield, roll a six out of die. Target opponent loses life equal to the result. So this is kind of the opposite of adorable kitten. So instead of adorable kitten, it's big boa constrictor. So like I said, there's a cycle of host creatures that you roll a die as an enter the battlefield effect. White lets you gain life. This makes the opponent lose life. Obviously that's slightly better. So

white, you gaining life is W for a 1-1. Your opponent losing life is 3 and a black for a 1-2. So clearly, once again, your opponent losing something is far stronger than you gaining something. But this is a pretty strong card, and one of the reasons this card is a, the reason we had to make it a one, two is, it's a really good card to augment. Because already, every time the triggering condition happens, your opponent's losing one to six life. And if you can pick a triggering condition that happens a lot, this card alone can just win you the game.

So that is why it's a 1-2 for 4-mana, because it's just really, really strong to augment onto. Next, Blurry Beetle is a common artifact creature, Cyborg Beetle, Beeple, for 1-1 for blue. It's got Blurry. This creature can be blocked only if defending player was wearing glasses as it was cast. And then whenever Blurry Beeble deals combat damage to a player, you draw a card. Okay, so this originally had Beard Walk, which was if your opponent had a beard, they can't block it. And then we had a playtest with Elaine.

Elaine Chase. Or maybe Elaine even, I'm not sure if she played or she just looked at the file. Maybe she played. Anyway, she made a comment that she thought it was a bad idea to do a beard walk because none of the women, for example, could have beards. And I said, oh, but no, no, it's not a problem. It's a bad thing to have a beard. You know, beard walk if you don't want to have a beard.

So obviously women can't be affected. And Elaine said, no, no, no, you're missing the point. It's just you're doing something that they can't be involved in. So like here's a thing that you can't have. And she made a really strong point. I had not thought of that. I mean, I thought of it to make sure there wasn't a negative, but it was just not inclusive. She made a really strong point. I had not thought of that. I mean, I thought of it to make sure there wasn't a negative,

but it was just not inclusive. And that's something that's really important for us. So we came up with the idea that instead of a beard, it's glasses. And then the idea, we decided to go the reverse, that instead of being penalized for having glasses, you got penalized for not having glasses, which would be fun because it encouraged people when they played this format to wear glasses if they could. And we've ruled that you can wear sunglasses and stuff.

I think, by the way, the ruling here, which I messed up a little in the pre-pre-release, is you have to be wearing glasses at the time it's being cast. You can't say, oh, wait a minute, I'm putting my glasses on. I did that in the pre-pre-release. Many people called me out on it. The reason I did it in the pre-pre-release, by the way, was I was going for shock value.

I wanted Maria to not know that I had the glasses so that when she did, I'd go, ha-ha, I have glasses. Which maybe was the right call just because the reaction I got of her was great. But technically, that's not how it works. You have to have the glasses on. So if you're going to bring your glasses,

wear your glasses. If you're playing a blue player and you think they might have this card, you've got to start with your glasses on. So that was an error by me. Okay, next. Border Guardian. So Border Guardian is unstable.

I'm sorry, he's unstable. They're all unstable. It's an uncommon artifact creature. It's a knight, a 1-1 knight for four. It costs four. It's an artifact creature. Whenever you cast a silver border spell,

put a plus one, plus one counter on Border Guardian. Whenever you cast a silver-bordered spell, put a plus one, plus one counter on Border Guardian. Whenever you cast a black-bordered spell, it can't be blocked this turn. And whenever you cast a white-bordered spell, it gains double strike until end of turn. Now this was designed with the following in mind. It knows that you're going to be playing the... Well, in Limited, look, everybody's playing Silver Border. Unstable is drafted by itself.

So basically, this is... It gets a plus one, plus one counter whenever you play a card. That's fine. A fine card. Playable in Limited. Now, the Black Border cards are obviously... All other Magic cards mostly are Black Border. That keeps you from being blocked.

obviously all other magic cards mostly are black border. That keeps you from being blocked. It is possible in unstable to pull cards in from outside the game with like spike. So it is possible to get a black border card. It's even possible to get a white border card. It used to be whenever we reprinted

something in a core set beyond alpha and beta we would put it in white border to show that it was a reprint. That their first printing would be in black border and later printings were in white border. I think with 8th edition we stopped doing that. We just changed everything to black border.

The card just looks so much better in black border. They kind of washed it out in white border. But anyway, the idea for this is if you want to build around this, you want to go get some white border cards and some black border cards. Because these abilities all together can get synergistically really strong.

Like, oh, I can build it up with silver border cards, I can make it unblockable with black border cards, and then I can get double strike with white border cards. So if you sort of mix and match. And the border guardian, I think it was called border guard in playtest, and then I think there's a card

called Border Guard, and so they had to change it to Border Guardian, so then Border Guard... I mean, Border Guard was a really cool name for it, but we had to use Border Guard I believe is what happened. But anyway, that is Border Guard. Okay, next. Box of Free Range Goblins. So it's

a sorcery. It's a common sorcery. Four red red. Roll a six-sided die. Create a number of one one red goblin creature tokens equal to the result. So one of the things that we were trying to do was give flavor to the dice rolling. So we decided that the goblins, the goblin faction, were all about dice. Because they love randomness. They also like contraptions. They liked randomness.

So the goblins were the ones that rolled the most dice and assembled the most contraptions. They have the least amount of control. Like other colors can re-roll dice or influence the outcome of dice. Red does none of that.

So the way it works is red rolls the most dice, and green has the most cares-about-dice-being-rolled cards. So red was the color that we're just... Red both assembled, I think, the most contraptions and rolled the most dice. Because they were just... Red just liked doing stuff, and it was kind of random. A lot of red stuff is you don't know the outcome of what your contraption is. You don't know what dice you're going to roll.

So it's kind of played in the chaos of Red. But Red likes to do it. And this card is actually pretty cool. So one of the things whenever we try to cost cards, the way you do it is you assume that each die roll is three and a half, because that's the average of a die roll on a six-sided die, because you get between one and six. And the idea is, you assume you get three and a half,

and so this was, what would three and a half goblin tokens be worth? And I think because it's silver border, I think we rounded down most of the time, just because it's silver border and it's we rounded down most of the time just because we caused the silver border and it's not going to cause problems in tournaments. We usually juice it just a little time, but not too much, but just a little juicing.

And anyway, this card was in the file pretty early. But dice rolling was one of the themes of the themes that ended up in the finished product. I think dice rolling was the first theme that was in the set um we had done dice rolling and unglued uh we got a lot of data back and two of the most unpopular cards well there were a few unpopular cards that were die rolling cards so i made the call on state i'm sorry unhinged not to

die rolling um but when i went back and i looked at the data i decided that it wasn't that people disliked dice rolling as a whole. There were certain executions of dice rolling they didn't like. And what they didn't like with dice rolling is who knows what's going to happen with the card because you couldn't plan around it. But you know what the card is going to do and there's variance in how strong it is. Those cards they seem to like. So I brought die rolling back and anyway, uh, anyway. It returns. Okay, next. Bumbling Pangolin. So this is a common beast, uh, 2-2 creature. It's 3 and a red. So when

this creature enters the battlefield, you may destroy target artifact. Um, so Pangolin is one of those things when we have these meetings to figure out what's cool things. Uh, I think Kelly was the one. Kelly Diggs was the one that really wanted a Pangolin. So for all youangolin fans, enough with the mail about all the pangolins. I don't get a lot of mail about pangolins. But anyway, for the pangolin fans, we made you a

pangolin. The reason this destroyed an artifact was because of the set had an artifact theme to it. All the contraptions were artifact and because it was mad scientist kind of world, there was just more artifacts than normal. So because we had more artifacts, we just wanted to up the amount of artifact destruction to deal with it, so we decided that we'd make a host that destroyed artifacts so that you can destroy multiple

artifacts if you needed to. We didn't do that with enchantments because there weren't that many enchantments to destroy, so there's singular enchantment removal, but there's not repeatable enchantment removal, where there is repeatable artifact removal. Because between contraptions and the other artifacts, usually your opponent is something you can destroy. Okay, next.

Buzzing Whack-A-Doodle. As Buzzing Whack-A-Doodle enters the battlefield, you and your opponent each secretly choose Whack or Doodle. Then these choices are revealed. If the choices match, Buzzing Whack-A-Doodle has that ability. Then these choices are revealed. If the choices match, buzzing whack a doodle has that ability. Otherwise, it has buzz. So whack is tap, target player loses two life. Doodle is tap, you gain three life. Buzz is two and tap, draw a card. So one of the things we were coming up with is we liked having little mini games to play in Silver Border. And so the idea of this game was there's three

options and the way you figure it out is my opponent and I are each going to make a choice and then if we match we get the weakest of the possibilities. If we... oh I'm sorry, I said it. If we match we get whatever it is we match and we don't match, then we get the strongest of the possibilities. And the way we worked it was, there's three abilities. One is clearly the weakest, one is clearly the medium, and one is clearly the strongest. And the strongest is the one you get by not matching. So the idea that's interesting here, the sort of game we're playing is, each one has a functionality, and it's conditional.

When I say one's the weakest you know tap lose two life in a vacuum is the weakest but maybe if your opponent's low on life that's something you would want so one of the cool things about this card is you have to gauge the state look at your opponent figure out what you think they want and then each person is trying to sort of anticipate what the other person is going to do and then we made the strongest one the one they don't match because the person playing the card most of the time wants to not match. Where the person who is the opponent usually

wants to match. They want you not to be drawing the cards. And so there's a fun little game here. I've seen some really you can get pretty second and third level. Like, I know he'll think I'll know that because he thinks I know that,

then I'll do this. Oh, but he knows that I would do that, so I'll do this. And then people kind of, you know, one-up each other, so it's kind of fun. And I remember naming this card. We came up with the idea that we would name each of the three things,

and then Kelly found a way to turn it all into a singular name. I think this thing... I don't remember the original name of this thing. That's a silly name, but I'm blanking on it. Okay, we'll move on. By no means. It's a rare enchantment. It's two and a white.

And it's one white, remove a counter from a permit you control, create a one-1 Cullus Gnome Artifact creature token, or one, sacrifice an artifact, choose any kind of counter printed on a card that a printed card refers to, and then put that counter on that card.

We also ruled that you can put loyalty counters on Planeswalkers, even though they don't specifically say loyalty, they imply loyalty, so we let you do loyalty counters. So a couple things about this card. So this card was made relatively late. I like cards, I like counters, and I like, there's a card we made called Giant Fan in

Unglued that I made that lets you move counters from one card to another. And there's a card called Tetravis that lets you change between plus one, plus one counters and flying token creatures, so the creatures can get bigger or can pop off and become little creatures. I think I was inspired by those two cards to make this card. And the idea was that I can turn any

artifact into any counter or I can turn any counter into a gnome token. And so the idea is I can kind of go back and forth and this is a super Johnny card because there's a lot of weird shenanigans and things you can do with it. Once it was decided

that I would make a gnome token, I really, really wanted by gnome means as a name of a card. I think we named this in design and I asked Kelly not to change it. And then the flavor text is there's no race like gnome. And that's another,

I wanted that flavor text on a card and originally it didn't get put on a card. And then I kept bugging Kelly about it and saying, come on, come on. And he finally gave in. He said, okay. I just think it's a great pun. I think I actually wrote it for a different card

and that card ended up not having space for flavor text, I believe is what happened. So I kept looking for a place. This had gnomes on it, so. Anyway. I like that flavor text. Next, Capital Offense. Target, oh, it's a common instant, two black, black. Target creature

gets minus X, minus X, no end of turn, where X is the number of times a capital letter appears in its rules text. Ignore reminder text and flavor text. Note that there's no capital letters on this card on purpose. This card was actually designed to be capital punishment,

which is a perfect name. And then Conspiracy 2 made a card called capital punishment. And I was like, no! So we ended up looking around. We found capital offense, which is another term.

Not quite as good as capital punishment, but not bad. But this card was designed to be Capital Punishment. And I like the idea of making cards, once again, that care about qualities that other cards don't care about. And so the idea of caring about capital letters

just seemed really cool. And I like the idea, the reason I did minus X minus X is I like the idea that there's just some cards escape their strap and some don't. And it kind of depends on how big the creature is and just how many sentences there are on it and like vanilla creatures have no problem, they have no words

that you can use but you know and if you have a keyword ability where it's one capital, because the first one's capitalized but the later ones aren't so anyway, I thought that was that was kind of fun Chipper chopper so it's an

it's a common artifact creature cyborg rigger telling you it's making contraptions one one so three and a blue so it's four mana

one which is blue it's flying when chipper chopper enters the battlefield you may sacrifice another artifact if you do put two plus one

plus one counters on chipper chopper and it assembles a contraption. That's why it's a rigger. So the idea here is, White does this thing that says, okay, when I enter the battlefield, you can upgrade me if you sacrifice an artifact,

and then you get to make a contraption. So, A, if you already have a contraption, you can just change a contraption for a different contraption. And also, this creature goes from being a one,1 to a 3-3. So you really want to sacrifice an artifact. And the idea is, it's not in that you're sacrificing an artifact as much as you're trading an artifact for a contraption. So you're not even going

down in artifacts. So this allows you, if you have a little gnome or something token you want, you can sacrifice. Or, you can always sacrifice a contraption and make another contraption. But this, once again, plays into the cyborg theme of it sort of fine-tunes its contraptions.

That it's not that it makes the biggest contraptions, but it makes the most efficient contraptions. Because it's very careful, and it can definitely mess and move around things and sort of get the... It has the most efficient one, because it's sort of going through your deck, trying to get the best versions of what you want. Chittering Doom! It's an uncommon enchantment. Three and a green.

Whenever you roll a four or higher on a die, create a one one green squirrel token. So as I said, red was all about rolling lots of dice and green was caring about dice being rolled. So one of the ways, green cares about dice being rolled in a bunch of different ways. For example, as luck would have it, just wants, you know, the higher the number, the better, but any number gets you closer to, like, rolling is good, higher rolling is better. On this card, it wants specifically higher rolls. One of the things we did in general, by the way, is we made it so higher rolls are better, that whenever something cares, there's not cards in which one is better than six,

just because we wanted you to always want the same thing as far as what you're hoping for. So the general strategy in dice rolling is higher is better. So we're trying to encourage you to want to roll higher dice. This is an example where if you roll four higher, so if you roll basically above

on the higher three numbers, you get a squirrel. And so this one is once again, the idea was we wanted every color to have its own strategy using the different themes. So in the dice theme, if you have green in your deck, you want to roll a lot of dice. Now that means red-green pair well together, because red wants to roll a lot of dice. But if you put green with blue, then you get to re-roll your dice. If you put green with black, then your dice rolls are a little bit higher. So, you know, you can manipulate things and put stuff

with it. White didn't really have a dice rolling theme. Black re-rolls dice. Black makes the die rolls higher. Red rolls a lot of dice. Green cares about dice being rolled. So, you can mix and match those to have different dice carrying things. So, the final card today before I stop for today is Chivalrous Chevrolet, or Chevalier, sorry, Chivalrous Chevalier. It's a common artifact creature, Cyborg Knight. It's a 3-3-4-W. When Chivalrous Chevalier enters the battlefield, return a creature you control to its owner's hand unless you compliment an opponent. So the idea here is we wanted to make a white card that lets you bounce your own stuff because there's a lot of synergy. So in a normal magic set, this would just

say, you know, when this enters the battlefield, you may return a creature card to your hand. But since this is on set, we wanted to add a little extra flavor in. We added in this component of complimenting the opponent. We had done that once before in a card called Misdemeanor. We had a compliment

opponent every upkeep, and that's kind of a fun card. And the thing that's kind of fun about this is you can choose whether you want it or not so it also lets you insult your opponent if you don't want to get the thing back so um not that i'm advocating insulting your opponent i just knew that people could have fun of saying something go haha it's not a compliment so um but anyway so i i got up to see. There are 174 non-contraption cards in this set. So I'm chugging along. So we'll have a bunch of podcasts. But anyway, hope you guys are enjoying it.

It's fun talking about unstable. But anyway, I'm now parked. So we all know what that means. This is the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time.