Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #554: Unstable Cards, Part 2

Episode Date: July 13, 2018

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

I'm pulling in my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to drive to work. Okay, so last time I started talking about cards from Unstable, but I was not done. So I'm going to continue. So I'm going through every non-contraction card in Unstable. So we're up to Clever Combo. It's an uncommon sorcery. It costs one and a green. Search your library for a host or a card with augment, reveal it, put it in your hand, and shuffle your library. So host and augment was something that we put in all five colors, but we focused as a white and green thing, as a crossbreed labs thing. So white and green have more host and suture creatures, and we put the helping cards in white and green. This is one of them.

So the idea here is, oh, well, how do I make sure you get a good combo? Well, I'll get a card to go get the piece of the combo that I don't have. So the idea here is, if you have one half of what you need, this goes and gets you the other half. Now, this art is one of the more confusing arts. The joke of this art I don't think played quite as well as we hoped. confusing arts. The joke of this art, I don't think, played quite as well as we hoped. It's the one card that actually has the bar that you see on host creatures, except this creature isn't a host creature. It's not even a creature. The joke is, it's the two creatures before

they're about to be connected, sort of getting ready to get connected, I guess. And that, I don't know, it's one of the jokes, I think there's a lot of awesome jokes that were very, very funny. This was one of the ones that didn't quite read as well that a lot of people were sort of confused by but that was the joke

we were going for. Clock of doom. I think I pronounced that right. Uncommon artifact costs four. Four in tap, move the crank counter

to your contraption deck's next sprocket and crank any number of that sprocket's contraptions. So the idea of this one was that we wanted you to be able to sort of advance your contraptions. We put in artifacts because we just wanted anybody to have access to it. And I think we decided that we ended up tying this to Baron Von Count, just because we thought it was funny to have him obsessed with clocks,

because he was doing the countdown. And for some reason, even in design, this had always been a clock of some kind, maybe because you were advancing something. But anyway, I think Creative was the one that came up with the idea of the Doom with all the O's spelled out. I thought it was pretty fun. Next, Clock Napper. It's a

rare creature, human spy, 2-2 for 3 blue blue. So 5 mana, 2 which is blue. When Clock Napper when Clock Napper when Clock Napper enters the battlefield choose beginning phase, pre-combat phase, combat phase, post-combat phase, or ending phase.

Steal that phase from target player during his or her turn. So this is another card that we originally tried in Black Border. And it's just one of those things that, like, can you write out what happens? You can. In the FAQ, I do. But it is just bending rules in Black Border that don't really want to be bent all that much. And so it's a perfect example of a Silver Border card

where like, yeah, we can explain what happens, but it's not something you'd want to have show up in a tournament. And, you know, it is definitely, it's a little wobbly in the rules. So we put it here in Silver Border. But anyway, I think it's a lot of fun and I like the idea. One of the fun things about Silver Border is to take concepts that people ask about and messing with turn order or stealing turn order. That's something that's come up numerous times. It's kind of hard to actually do. So we get to do it here in Silver Border, where wacky, crazy things can happen. Next, Cogmentor. So that's an uncommon artifact creature. Gnome Rigger, 1-1, flying. And for 4, you reassemble target contraption you control. And so one of the ideas we wanted is, we thought a lot

about the different things you could do with contraptions. And one of the ideas we wanted is, we thought a lot about the different things you could do with contraptions. And one of the ideas we came up with was that you could do, you could sort of change things around. Like Clock of Doom lets you advance it. So this one lets you sort of move, like, one of the ideas is, I did something, I put it into place, and then I realized, oh, it would be even better if it was another place. Or you can just use this to, like, keep moving moving it so it's closer so it goes off more often. But we put a lot of the messing with contraption in artifacts just because all the colors have contraption. So we gave a little bit of a way to mess with them in artifacts.

Common iguana. So this is a common host creature. It's a lizard. One three for one in a red mana. So two mana, one of which is red. When this creature enters the battlefield, you may discard a card. If you do, draw a card. So one of the tricky things about making the host creature, this is the host creature, is we needed to come up with a lot of different abilities that we wanted to do. And one of the things was, so looting in blue is when you draw a card and discard a card, and red is when you discard a card and draw a card. We ended up putting card drawing in blue, so we ended up putting the, we call it rummaging,

but red's looting in here. So this was an idea of, here's something where red can sort of get some, not card advantage, because you're not going up in cards, but card utility, where you're sort of trading in not as useful cards, maybe lands you don't need, into things you can. And this is a perfect example, by the way, is the better the effect is, the worse the body is. So this is one in a red for a one three meaning look that body is pretty good one three for a one in a red is

you know you're already getting a decent body and then the idea that you're the rummaging is not bad if you get it going it can actually do good things for you but it's not as powerful as drawing a card or you know giving minus x minus X to another creature and stuff. Okay, Contraption Cannon.

So it's an uncommon artifact, costs four. Two and Sacrifice Contraption Cannon. It deals damage to target creature or player equal to the number of contraptions you control. So one of the things we definitely wanted to do with contraptions is give you different means and ways to make a contraption deck. So this is something quirky, which is it allows you to care that you have a lot of contraptions as a means to get removal and or help finish off the player. Because you can do damage either to a player or to a creature. But really what this card wants is it wants to have a lot of contraptions to be most efficient. So the idea is if you're drafting a contraption deck, regardless of how

you're building, and there's a lot of different ways to build in different colors, this can be a tool that just goes in a deck that wants a lot of contraptions. Crafty Octopus is a common host creature. Octopus Rigger. One, three, two, and a blue. When this creature enters the battlefield, this creature assembles a contraption. So one of the things we knew we wanted is, there's three main themes in the set, which is contraptions, host suture, host augment, and suture is what it used to be called, and dice rolling. So one of the things we definitely wanted to do is we like crisscrossing things.

So this is a good example where it's a host that cares about contraptions. So it sort of crosses the streams. So if you want to make a host and augment deck, you can have a little bit of contraptions in your deck. Or if you want to make a contraption deck, you can get a little bit of host and augment in your deck. So we like crossing the streams a little bit and this is definitely crossing the streams. This is one of my favorite cards in that I like that it has the little tentacles. This just kind of looks cool. In fact, if you take this card and then you put multi...

Is it multi-headed hydra? Multi-headed. It creates this fun thing where the multi-headed has like little loosey things, and it comes off the octopus, and it looks really cool. Okay, Cramped Bunker, rare enchantment. Four red, green. So, six mana, one of them are red, one is green. It's an enchantment.

Beginning of each opponent's upkeep, that player moves a permanent he or she controls to touch Cramped Bunker and no other permanent. If he or she can't destroy each permanent that player controls that isn't touching Cramped Bunker, then sacrifice it. So the idea here is you're playing this little game and you're trying to touch this thing because when you fail at this game, it's going to blow everything else up. So this card has an interesting origin.

Richard Garfield designed this card for Dominaria. And as soon as he gave it to me, I'm like, Richard, this is a really cool card, but no way in the world will they let me put this in flag porter and one of the funnest things about it I've

occasionally I'll take pictures and send it off to Richard is a lot of the fun of the card is people going three dimensional with it of finding ways to support their card

so it's touching it but if you just go flat there's only so many cards you can touch it but if you start using three dimensions you can actually get a lot more cards touching it.

And I've seen a lot of very, very creative uses. So this has been a fun card to watch people play with. Okay, Crowstorm, Uncommon Sorcery, two and a blue. Create a one-two blue bird creature token with flying named Stormcrow and Storm. So Storm is whenever you can. For each spell you previously cast a turn, make a copy of this spell. So this was designed by many members of the team, maybe all the members of the team.

I asked them to design cards, and at least three of the four members of the team, if not all four, designed this card. I remember designing this card. least three of the four members of the team, if not all four, designed this card. I remember designing this card. The only difference is I called it Crowstorm and somebody else called it Stormcrowstorm. And we argued which is the better name. I ended up winning that one. I think Crowstorm is a funnier name than Stormcrowstorm. Just because I like the inverse of the original name, which is Stormcrow. So Stormcrow, by the way, is a very popular creature. Not because it's good,

but because it's kind of become the Chuck Norris of magic. So if you know Chuck Norris jokes, where it talks about how Chuck Norris is the most awesome thing ever. You know, like one, a single tear from Chuck Norris would cure cancer. But too bad he's never cried. Stuff like that. Anyway, people have had a lot of fun

making fun of Storm Crow, so I wanted to do some sort of Storm Crow reference in this product. So why is Crow Storm here and not in a Black Border set? So that's an interesting question, because it's one of the few cards here that could be done in a Black Border set, in the sense that it is, the mechanics are possible. We don't do a lot of Storm in standard legal sets but we do do storm occasionally supplemental products and making a one-two flying creature um is something that i mean we can do um the reason it's here is that if we made it

in black border we would make a super super weak version it. And the reason for that is we've been burned by Storm so many times that one of the rules is Storm cards that are a win condition, meaning somebody can win with this card and making infinite one-twos can win, we have to be super cautious with. And so if we had printed this card in real magic, it would have been heavily, heavily nerfed. And I knew the kind of what players want is not a nerfed version of Stormcrow. They wanted something, Crowstorm, it's something they could

put in their cubes. Like one of the things that we knew in making this product is I want to make a lot of fun cards that cubes can put in them. And so there are a lot of stuff in the set very much with cube in mind as a format. We also did a lot of stuff for commander. But anyway, we put a lot of stuff in the set that said, hey, if you're willing to have silver border cards in your format, here's some fun things you can do. And this card, what I said was, I think this would be a very popular cube card,

but if we did it in normal black border, it would be so weak that cubes would never play it. So I go, let's make the fun version go all out. Make the version that people want to play with. And so we made the powerful version of it, which we just wouldn't have done in Black Border. So that's why it's in Silver Border.

Because I felt that I could make a cube card that would be what the cube players wanted and not a watered-down version. Okay. Curious Killbot, aka, this actually has four names, but I only have Curious written down here. So this is one of our alternate cards, alternate version cards. So there's four versions of Curious Killbot. Oh, so Curious Killbot, by the way, is a common artifact creature. Killbot 2142. And so Curious Killbot also is known as...

Because of the collector number, they all start with C or D. There's like Despondent Killbot and... I'm trying to remember the names. There's four of them. One is happy. One is sad, one is angry. The joke is they all have different names that are emotions, yet it's the same picture. We don't change the picture.

And the picture shows basically a little tiny kill bot that has no emotion, really. If you'll notice, by the way, the reminder text on the main one was were, beep, click, click, click. Those words show up in different order on the different versions. There's four different versions. And the only difference of the versions is the name,

and the reminder text is in different order. Not reminder text, flavor text. The reason we did this is there's a card called Mario Kill that makes use of the kill bots. And in order to play Mario Kill, you wanted to have more of them. So originally we were thinking of just saying you could have as many kill bots in your deck as you wanted,

but then we came up with a more fun way of doing variants and just having four variants, so that way you can play up to 12 of them in your deck if you want to play. Because you can play four curious kill bots and four despondent killbots and four... I forget all the names of the killbots. But you can play

four of each name. And that was the idea behind it. Okay. Next. Defective detective. It's a common creature. Human spy. 2-1 for two and a blue. So three mana, one blue. Detective defective can't be blocked.

When detective defective enters the battlefield, a person outside the game looks at target opponent's hand and chooses a card from it. That player reveals that card. Okay, we finally get to the outside assistant cards. Okay, so... Hold a second, I gotta take a drink because I'm... I'm, uh...

I need a drink. When you keep talking for 30 minutes, you need to make sure you take liquids. Okay, so the idea of Outside Assistance is I was looking for ways to add variants to the set. You could roll dice. You know, contraptions happen every third turn. You know, host and suture, depending on what you draw, you combine them in different ways. So I was looking for different kinds of variants. And one of the things that dawned me is one of the great sources of variants is other

people. So I love the idea of having cards that just involve other people. And so what we did is, I think there are seven outside assistant cards. There's a cycle of five at common. There is... What's it called? Friend Slaver, or Friend... Sorry, not Friend Slaver.

That was a name we didn't end up using. It's called Kind Slaver. And Kind Slaver is like a Mind Slaver. You go get a pair. I'll talk to that when I get there. And then there's the card I already talked about, Better Than One, which pulls somebody into a two-headed giant game.

So once again, the game that Wedge and I played is Two-Headed Giant. If you haven't seen that from the pre-release, go watch it. It's really funny. Okay, anyway, this is the blue one. So the idea here is the creature can't be blocked.

So it's a little unblockable creature and it gets a piece of information, but not of information that you control. So the idea is you get somebody and what you want is somebody who's going to help you. Show me the best card. Show me what I want to see. But one of the fun things is you don't get a control with the person you ask does. And so there's a lot of interesting dynamics that happen when you get other people in. Sometimes

they don't do exactly what you want, or sometimes they'll mislead you, or sometimes they do what you want, but you are still questioning them and not sure. Anyway, there's a lot of fun dynamics that have come out from that. And I... It's funny, when we

originally made it, the set obviously went through a long process of getting made, seven years. There were numerous times I had people sort of come up to me and said, okay, come on, you got to pull these cards. No one's going to, like, talk to other people. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, this is fun. And they're like, well, what if there's no people? I can call someone up on the phone. And the idea is that there's two different kinds of fun

you can have with these kind of cards. One is getting an absolute stranger involved that doesn't know the game, because that's kind of fun. What are they going to do? And the other is getting someone who completely knows the game and then the dynamic of, are they going to help you or not help you? So, you know, both of those are a lot of fun. And this card, I think what we looked for was

things that an opponent could, or sorry, things that an outside player could easily do that, you know, didn't take a lot of time and would, you know, the range of helping you, it wasn't like, no matter what, you get to learn a card in their hand. It might be the worst card in their hand, but you get to learn something. So the variance of them helping or not helping you, at least on the five common cards, is pretty small. Gets a little bit bigger on Kind Slaver and better than one. Okay, next.

Oh, Delighted Killbot. The Killbots are listed separately. Oh, okay. Delighted Killbot, Despondent Killbot, and where's the last one? Okay, somewhere else there's one more. So there's Delighted Killbot, Despondent Killbot. I'll run to the other Killbot.

So Delighted Killbot's the happy one. Despondent Killbot's the sad one. There's a mad one around here somewhere. And there's Curious Killbot. Once again, they're identical. They're all 2-1 creatures. If there's another way, by the way, for us to get simple cards. One of the challenges we have on Silver Border sets is how to get simple cards into the set

that still make sense as a Silver Border. And the schtick with this card of ultimate versions that you can play up to 12 was a little different, you know, with different names. It's not something we normally would do. So it was a nice way to get a simple card, basically a vanilla card, into the set. Okay. Dirty Rat. So this is a host creature. Rat 1- card, into the set. Okay. Dirty Rat. So this is a host creature.

Rat, one, one. One and a B. So two mana, one, which is black. When this creature enters the battlefield, target opponent discards the card. So we have a long history of rats that enter the battlefield that make the opponent discard a card. And we just wanted to have, this is a good host card. Discarding a card is a pretty valuable ability,

so it's the kind of thing you want to do. Notice it's a one and a black for a one-one, which is nothing particularly special, but that's, like, the better the ability is, the weaker the body is. So the fact the body is nothing special means it's a decently strong ability. This is definitely something that if you can,

you know, augment, can become very potent. Okay, next. Do-it-yourself Seraph. So this is a mythic rare artifact creature, a cyborg angel, 4-4, 4 white-white, so 6 mana, 2 inches white, has flying. Whenever do-it-yourself Seraph attacks, you may search your library for an artifact card, exile,

then shuffle your library. Do-it-yourself Seraph as the text box of each card. Exile the do-it-yourself serif in addition to its own. So the cool thing about this card was, we knew we wanted, or I knew we wanted, once we knew the cyborgs were going to exist, I wanted to have some cool cyborgs. Some stuff that you didn't normally see cyborg.

And so we made a cyborg beeble, and we made a bunch of different cyborg stuff. One of the things we decided we wanted, since it was in white and blue, is we wanted a cyborg. And so we made a cyborg beeble and we made a bunch of different cyborg stuff. One of the things we decided we wanted, since it was in white and blue, is we wanted a cyborg angel. So I think cyborg angel was in the set really early on, once the cyborgs were a thing. And we went through a lot

of different versions of what exactly the cyborg angel did. Eventually we liked the idea that kind of it got to build itself over time because the the schtick of the cyborgs is that they're self-building and so we came up with the idea that you could go get abilities off of artifacts. I think originally it got artifacts out of the graveyard and then that just was kind of slow so we ended up thinking okay this is a mythic rare, go get it out of a library.

So each turn, you just got to keep improving on your angel. The other interesting thing was the technology. There's a different card that steals text boxes. I'll get to soon, I think. What's, yeah, we'll get to it. Hopefully we'll get to it. Anyway, it's a card coming up. And when we realized that that card was going to steal text boxes,

we changed this card and said, why don't you just gain the text box? Like, once we had the technology of just literally grafting on new text boxes, we're like, okay, might as well use that here. So this benefited from the other card. And this is definitely one of those cards I get a lot of questions about because a lot of weirder things can happen. There's a lot of artifacts that weren't meant to coexist in the same card.

So this card does a lot of crazy stuff. But that's what it's meant to do. Okay. Next is Dr. Julius Jumblemorph. So he's a mythic rare, legendary creature. 4-4, 2 green and a white. So 4 mana, 1 green, 1 white. So Dr. Julius Jebelmorf is every creature type.

Every creature that isn't... I'm sorry, he's every creature type... Oh, the reminder check says that even if he's not in the battlefield. So he's every creature type. Whenever a host enters the battlefield under your control, you may search your library and or graveyard for a card with augment and combine it with that host. And then if you search your library, shuffle it.

So the idea here is he is the host enabler. So he's the leader of the Crossbreed Labs. And this is another example where when the people came out to do the world building, we had a week or two of world building, they made this creature that this is like part dinosaur, part chicken, part... Anyway, they made this really cool looking creature. Like, okay, we're using this.

And we decided this was the leader. This was the leader of the Crossbreed Labs. And so Dr. Julius Jumblomorph was born. And we separately knew that we wanted Green-White. We wanted that we wanted Green-White, we wanted the leader of Green-White to also be a host enabler.

And so the idea here essentially is whenever you cast a host creature, it just automatically gets augmented. And so one of the problems in general we find with host and augment is just getting the things you want when you want them becomes tricky. So this says, okay, you know,

if you play this card, it then lets you set up all your hosts to go get the augment you want them becomes tricky. So this says okay, you know, if you play this card, it then lets you set up all your hosts to go get the augment you want. And the reason it's every creature type is that it is, the art had so many different creatures on it that we thought it would be funny to play the fact that

he himself is just so many different creatures. The reason this doesn't have changeling, because the Changeling ability is his ability, is he just wasn't a Changeling. Like, Changeling means something. And while mechanically he has the Changeling ability, we felt it was just kind of weird, so we wrote it out that, like,

he himself was not a Changeling. So it was just weird. You know, that's why he doesn't have Changeling. I mean, he does essentially have Changelinging but he doesn't technically have chain fling. Okay next is Druid of the Sacred Beaker. So this is an uncommon creature. A deer bird ape druid.

It's a lot of creature types. 2-2 for 2 and a green. So 3 mana. And he has the ability to tap add green to your mana pool for each crossbreed lab's water mark among permanents you control. So I said before, with rumors of my death, we made a cycle of uncommon build-around

faction watermark matters cards. So this is the one for green. So this is the one that basically you want to get a lot of creatures out with the watermark so that this enables you to cast more creatures. So if you want to make a crossbreed lab deck, this is really good at helping you sort of cast your expensive spells. But you need a really dedicated crossbreed lab to do that. Also, you'll notice that because of the crossbreed labs, we really had fun.

And so what we did is the artist went crazy drawing weird hybrids, and then we fit them all into the creature type line when we could, other than Dr. Jumbalmorph, where there were too many, and we just gave them all. But anyway, I like playing around with creature types in general, and this one was kind of a fun thing to do. Okay. Next. types in general, and this one was kind of a fun thing to do. Okay. Next is Eager Beaver.

So this is a common host creature. It's a beaver. 3-2 for 2 and a green. So for 3 mana, 1 of which is green. When this creature enters the battlefield, it's being untapped, target permanent. So you can tell this is a slightly weaker host ability because two and a green for 3-2 is just a decent body.

And the idea is you'd probably play this in most green decks anyway. So it's something in which, and it is not that it's necessarily a bad effect. It is just a situational effect. There's times when this effect is really potent, and I've definitely had some games where I've set up a beaver combo that really was pretty good.

But it's situational, and it's the kind of thing where, you know, you kind of need to set it up a little more than some of the other combos. So we just gave you a better body. So I said, look, you might as well play this. It's a good body, and occasionally you'll be able to augment it

in ways that'll be beneficial to you. Okay, Earl of Squirrel. Rare. Rare creature. Squirrel Advisor. It's 4-4 for 4 green greens, so 6 mana, 2 which is green. It has Squirrel Link. So basically, think Life Link,

except where you get life, instead you get 1-1 Squirrel. Creature Tokens you control are Squirrels in addition to their other creature types, and other squirrels you control get plus one, plus one. So this is one of those cards that we could almost do in Black Border, just it's a squirrel lord, and they won't let me put squirrels in Black Border. Now given, I turned this into squirrel link, which is a more entertaining way to write it. We could write out this ability

on it. Like, Black Border magic other than the fact that the creative team doesn't really want us to make squirrels in Black Border magic, we can make a card that every time it does damage to you, for each damage it does, you get a 1-1 token or whatever size token. Black Border can do that.

So a lot of the components of this card, Black Border can do. In fact, other than it caring about squirrels, Black Border can do all of this. Black Border doesn't care about squirrels. I did the squirrel thing because it was funny. On a real magic card, we'd write it out, but Black Border can't do that. So I knew I wanted to do a squirrel lord.

One of the big arguments about this card is whether to make it legendary or not. The reason I didn't was this thing pumps squirrels. You want to have as many of them on the battlefield as possible. So one of the hard decisions we always make is people who want to play a squirrel deck would love a Commander, that's a squirrel. But people who just want to make squirrel decks that don't care about commander want to be able to play multiple of these because it's good to have multiples in play.

So we ended up making it not legendary. It's one of the things that I've gotten the most comments on. I kind of knew that going in, though. And anyway, this is a fun card. This is one of the cards. We have a couple cards that have promo art done for promotional promo cards, and this is one of the cards. We have a couple cards that have promo art done for promo cards, and this is one of them.

I think the art that's on the actual card on the set is really cute. The other one is kind of like a profile, like someone was taking your picture, and that card, that art was originally done by Matt Cavada as a gift for Mark Purvis, one of the brand managers that worked on the set. He was on the development team. And the counsel of Mark's that got this product made, he was one of them. Mark loves squirrels. And so as a gift, I think Mark's wife had Matt make that card.

And then when we needed a promo card, they came and asked Mark's permission to use it because it's a really great piece of art. Little story there. So, this is a fun card made to let you play Squirrels. And Squirrels are the one theme, or one of the few themes, that have actually run through all the unsets. Every single unset has had Squirrel cards. And so, I've been slowly letting you build this massive squirrel deck. This is a big piece of it.

The reason I had the tokens turned was I liked the idea that because there's only so many creatures that are squirrels, that you could play other token cards in your squirrel deck, and then this would sort of connect them all and make it relevant why you'd have some other cards in your squirrel deck. So it lets you play Sapperlings or other green token-y things in your Squirrel deck. Or the Squirrel deck also gives you black-green, so your black tokens as well. Oh, Enraged Killbot.

That's the other killbot. That's the Angry Killbot. So it is Curious, Delighted, Despondent, and Enraged. Those are the four killbots. Okay, Entirely Normal Armchair. Uncommon. It does not have a mana cost. Delighted Despondent Enraged Those are the four kill bots. Okay. Entirely normal armchair. Uncommon. It does not have a mana cost.

It's an artifact. During your turn if entirely normal armchair is in your hand you may hide it on the battlefield. Zero. Return entirely normal armchair to its owner's hand.

Only an opponent may activate this ability and only if he or she sees entirely normal armchair. And two, sacrifice entirely normal armchair to destroy a target attacking creature.

Okay, so in Unhinged we had a card called Cheaty Face. And if you legally drew Cheaty Face into your hand, you were allowed to sneak him

onto the battlefield. A lot of people just play him like you can sneak him from anywhere, which isn't technically how he works. But anyway,

that was a lot of fun. People loved it. So I decided to sort of refine it a little bit. So the little game that we come up with is, you have to hide this on your turn, and on your opponent's turn, they have the chance to bounce it if they see it. And by

see it, it also means if they saw you hide it, if they know where it is. They don't have to physically see it. They have to sort of, like, know its location as in the FAQ. So meaning if you hide it or if they know where it is, they don't have to physically see it. They have to sort of like know its location as in the FAQ. So meaning if you hide it or something, they see you hide it or something, they go, it's hidden under there. But anyway, there's a little game to be played here where you're trying to sneak it out. And this has been a lot of fun.

It's a lot of fun trying to sneak things out. There's a lot of clever ways to do it. I've seen, I got on the pre-release of Flakens Maria from Magic the Amateuring, and she got me because my head was on the table doing other things. I just wasn't focused on what she was up to.

And she managed to kill my saucer, which allowed me to take my head off the table. Anyway, that is, oh, for a long time, the name of this card, when we were trying to name this card, we were trying to give it a name that was an anagram for chair.

So, I forget. We had a bunch of anagrams, but it was C-H-A-I-R and spelled out like torture device or something, but it was the letters to chair, but it didn't quite fit. So we ended up going with entirely normal armchair, which is a funny name.

Okay. So every thingamajig, we finally get to a card. So there are six cards in the set. I mean, we've talked about variant cards already. We've talked about art variants. We've talked about name variants. Well, here we get to the rules variants.

So there's six cards in the set, three at uncommon and three at rare, that have six different versions of them, meaning that they do six uniquely different things. So one of them is Every Thingamajig. So let's walk through the six different abilities of Every Thingamajig. So first off, it's a rare artifact that costs five. Okay, so ability number one. So these are on six unique different cards. Oh, and by the way, the thing about Thingamajig is... Oh, this only has the first Thingamajig.

Okay, the thing about Thingamajig, by the way, is that all of the abilities of Thingamajig are on artifacts previously existing in Magic. So one of them is on a black-bordered artifact, and one of them is from a silver-bordered artifact. And there are six of them. It just dawned on me that I realized that I don't think I have the other. I think that what I've written here is the first one. So I'll walk through the first one. But this is a card that has six unique different versions.

And we label them A through A, B, C, D, E, and F. So this one, so two and tap, move a counter from one permanent onto another. If the second permanent refers to any kind of counter, the moved counter becomes one of those counters. Otherwise, it becomes a plus one, plus

one counter. So this is the activated ability of Giant Clock from Unstable. One of of Giant Clock from Unstable. One of my favorite cards in Unstable. And the other ability is three in tap, put a possible counter on target creature. Four in tap, proliferate? Is that right?

There should be two abilities. Okay, I'm a little confused here. This lists three things. It should be three things. So the second ability is from... What was that called? What is it called? It's a normal... I know the uncards by name better

than I know the non-uncards, partly because there's less uncards. And I worked on all the unsets, and I didn't... I wasn't the lead of every Blackboard set. A bunch of them. I think this might have been on a set and I didn't. I wasn't the lead of every Blackboard set. A bunch of them. I think this might have been on a set.

I actually did. Anyway, each of them does one, each of them does one, one silver border or one not silver border artifact ability and they're meant

to be synergistic. So for example, this puts a plus one, plus one counter on things, and the other one moves counters and then turns them into whatever they are. So the idea is you can put plus one counters on things, and then if you want, you can move it with it.

So the idea is the two abilities are synergistic. So, usually both abilities are useful, and they're also synergistic. So they're things in which they were artifacts that we thought were fun, and then they played well together. logistic. So they're things in which they were artifacts that we thought were fun, and that they played well together.

I'm now realizing that I don't my list of cards doesn't list all the alternate versions, so I will point out when there are alternate versions. I did not memorize all the alternate versions. I remember the way we did this when we were making the card was, we made a list of every artifact ability we thought would be cool and made a list of every silver border artifact we thought would be cool.

There were less silver border artifacts we had to choose from, so we started by picking out our six favorite silver border artifacts, and then we picked abilities from the black border list, things we had liked that we thought were synergistic with them. So that's how we made them. We first picked the silver border artifacts and then picked the black board artifacts based on their synergy and stuff that we thought was fun with that.

Okay, the next card is extremely slow zombie. So it is a common zombie, 3-3 for one and a black, and it has last strike. So last strike is like First Strike, except everybody like, First Strike means

you go first, Last Strike means you go last. Last Strike is something, I think actually Mark Gottlieb, ironically enough, made for Future Sight as a designer, and then decided not to put in Future Sight as a rules manager. So he both created it and killed it.

And so, we've talked about having Last Strike and Last Strike lets you have Triple Strike, which we'll get to. But it just it's been decided it's not worth the amount of change to the rules it would need. It's just there's not enough stuff we would do

with it that it's worth it. So it got relegated to Silver Border. So I decided I was going to do Last Strike and Triple Strike. This card had a cute gimmick to it which was, this is one of the art gimmicks, and so the art gimmick was it's a zombie that's just super slow. So it's so

slow. You see the seasons. So there's I think he ends, I forget which one he ends on. Does he end at Christmas? Does he end at winter? So anyway, he goes through summer, spring, fall, winter. And then you see him, he slowly advances. If you put them together, he is as a, but he's slowly.

And the flavor text, slowly over the course of four seasons, spells out brains. over the course of four seasons spells out brains. And he seemed like the perfect like the whole gimmick was how slow he was and Last Strike was like you know, he's like the whole joke of Last Strike

is how slow he is. And so I it just seemed like the perfect fit. I think he was by the way, he was the first creature that had the multiple art that we ended up putting another ability on, because at first, they

were all vanilla creatures, and I think we had the shtick of him being slow, and then like, oh, how do we not put last strike on him, as we did, and then it allows us to change some of the other creatures to have abilities as well. I think none of them actually, are any of them still vanilla? I think some of them are French vanilla, like Beast of Show

is Trample. Okay. So next we get to Feisty Stegosaurus. So Feisty Stegosaurus is a common host creature. It's a dinosaur. 2-1 for 4 and a red.

We knew at this point the dinosaurs were going to happen in Ixalan. This was coming out after Ixalan. When this creature enters the battlefield, roll a six-sided die. The creature deals damage equal to the opponent. Yes, to the opponent. So notice that we have

Hold on. Let me read this again. When the creature enters the battlefield, roll a six-sided die. The creature deals damage equal to the result to target creature. Oh, right. The black, the creature deals damage equal to the result to, oh, to target creature oh right, the black one, sorry the snake makes the opponent lose d6 life this one does d6 damage to a creature

so one of the interesting things here, so this is obviously a weak body it's 5 mana for 2-1, so obviously this is a really strong ability the quirky thing about this ability is you have to choose the creature before you know how much damage you're going to do. So the idea here is you could pick a small creature. For example, if you pick out one toughness creature, you automatically know you will destroy it.

If you pick a two or three, odds are you'll destroy it. Or sometimes when you're in a pinch and like, well, I'm going to lose the game unless they kill this thing, you can actually aim big. I actually had one game where I had to kill five Troutman's Creature, and I hit it and I did it, and it helped me win the game. So go, go, feisty Stegosaurus. This was another one where we had the meeting

of what are fronts and frontbacks. The idea that we liked having a dinosaur with the, you know, Stegosaurus has the little triangles. I thought that was fun. Okay, guys. How are we doing today? So, another little bit of traffic.

But I'm now at work. The reason, by the way, my podcast has been just a little bit longer for those that have noticed is I now leave when the elementary school, so my kids no longer

go to the elementary school, but it's on my way. When I drive out of my development, I have to go by the elementary school. And I now leave. They changed their opening hours from last year because they changed around all the schools. Basically, my kids at the other schools are going to school a little later.

But anyway, it means that I have to drive right as the school is starting. So I hit the traffic. So that little extra traffic, the reason that this podcast has been a little extra long is I'm hitting that traffic. Sometimes I leave at a slightly different time. Like on Wednesdays, the school starts later. So anyway,

but that is for those wondering why my podcasts have gotten a smidgen longer. That is why, because my commute has gotten a little bit longer. But more traffic for me is more podcast content for you.

So anyway, I will continue on next time with this. I love talking unstable. So I hope you're enjoying all the unstable talk. So anyway, I will continue on next time with this. I love talking unstable, so I hope you're enjoying all the unstable talk. But anyway, I'm now parked, so we all know what that means. It means this is 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.