Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #557: Unstable Cards, Part 4

Episode Date: July 27, 2018

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

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so I've been talking all about Unstable, going through all the cards minus the contraptions. And we are up to a handy dandy clone machine. Okay, so this card is a rare artifact. Costs three. Two and a tap. You create a 2-2 colorless homunculus creature token. It must be represented by a unique hand and two fingers at all times, or it ceases to exist. So one of the things that I like doing,

like a lot of what undesigns are, is looking back at the past and finding other things that people kind of enjoyed. And one of the themes I've done a couple times in unsets is this idea of there are resources that you have to use that are not limitless. Like Shoe Tree was a card on Hinge where you have to use your shoes. Well, how many shoes are you going to have on you? And we also had a theme of participation by other people, involving other people in your game. So I was just trying to think of things you could do that you were limited.

And then it dawned on me that your hands are something you only have two hands, most people have two hands, I guess not everybody has two hands anyway, so the idea was what if you I was trying to think what to do with your hand and I really got entertained by the idea that you could make a little token out of it because a little hand, you can use two fingers and walk so it looks make a little token out of it because, you know, a little hand, you can make it like, you know, use two fingers and walk, so it looks like a little token. So the idea was,

what if we had a card that makes a token, but it has to be a unique hand and you have to sort of stay on the table and you have to be a little token. And the idea is, if the token ever, if it stops being a token, it goes away. So you must, you know, I was trying to do a little bit,

like I, there's certain things that I try to do in the unsets a little bit without doing too much. And one is some physical stuff, which is a little bit of physical constraints. Not a lot. The goal isn't to tie you in knots. But it is to go, okay, you want to use this card? Well, there's a requirement for this card that goes beyond just things that normal magic cards require. And this card's like, oh, well, you need hands. And one hand, okay,

it means you can't use that hand. Two hands means, wow, you're really, it's going to be troublesome to get around. And three hands, you're involving other people, not even just your hands. And so this really tickled my funny bone. We ended up using the art to sort of reinforce, because one of the things that we were trying to make sure was clear is

you're making a little token in your hand, get it? Your two fingers are the legs. And then we used the art to sort of demonstrate that, to sort of say, get it? That's what you're making? Literally, the clone you're making is kind of just like a walking hand. And anyway, the card played out really well. And I remember when we were trying to name the card,

we knew that we wanted to get the word handy into it. And so we ended up with handy dandy. So it's a clone machine. So we wanted to reinforce that you're making clones. Anyway, I'm real happy with how that card came out. Hangman, rare creature, human villain, 1-1 for a single black mana. As Hangman enters the battlefield, note a word with six to eight letters. One, target player who doesn't control Hangman guesses the noted word or an unguessed letter in that word.

He or she guesses wrong, put a plus one, plus one counter on Hangman. Any player may play this ability. When a player guesses the noted word or all its letters, sacrifice hangman. Okay, so this was one of those ones that we... Execution kind of mattered. So we knew, we loved the idea of it's a card called hangman

that literally is a hangman that makes you play hangman. That's where the card started. And so we decided, I mean, the idea essentially was you're playing the game Hangman. And the real question was, okay, well, clearly I'm going to have a word and my opponent's going to guess letters and try to spell the word. And if they can spell the word, obviously the little sub game ends. So the question really was, okay, what do we need to do here?

So first we said, okay, well, what if the creature, I mean, you needed some benefit. Every time they got it wrong, you needed some benefit. So the idea was you, the player who cast the card, are getting benefits up until they get the word. Clearly, when they got the word, they had solved it. So, well, what's happening? Well, we wanted it to be called Hangman. We wanted it to be called Hangman. And wanted to be called hangman and hangman is a person right it's a person who hangs people it's a person so um it needed to be a creature

uh so the idea was okay well you have to guess a letter you know every time they get the letter wrong what what happens and finally said oh well what if the creature gets bigger a plus one plus one counter seems like a clean reward. And the idea was okay, so the idea was okay we'll put a plus one plus one, every wrong letter we'll put a plus one plus one counter on the creature and then when the person solves it

it'll go away. So now the interesting question was well how do we make this happen? What do we need to do to make it happen? And what we realized was there was this weird dynamic. Early in the game, you, the person who had the hangman, kind of

wants the person to be guessing things because you want them to miss and you get plus one plus one counters. But later in the game, you don't want them guessing. They want to be guessing because they want to finish off the creature, get rid of the creature. So originally, I think we messed around with like when it enters, make a word, and then every upkeep you had to guess.

But it took too long. It just was taking too long. Like people weren't ever finishing off the word because it takes a number of turns to guess a 68-letter word. So what we ended up doing was, something that actually I really liked, was we made it an activated ability, and the idea was either player could use the activated ability, but built into it

was, early on, the controller wants to use it, because early on there's a much greater chance that the person is going to be missing letters and it getting bigger. And then, later on, once you've gotten to a certain size, you can play with Hingman like, I'm happy. I have a 4-4 creature or

5-5 creature. I'm just going to attack this creature. I don't need to be risking it going away. But at that same time, that's about the point where the opponent goes, oh, I can't give up on this. This creature's a problem. I better keep committing to it. So by making an activated ability that either player can use, you know, it was set up in such a way that the one player wanted it early and one player

wanted it late. And so I'm really happy with how it came out. One of the big things about it was we, the, there was a, the, we didn't word it, Like, you're playing a game of Hangman, and the way we had to word it wasn't quite clear. And then we had sort of an FAQ go, no, no, no, you're playing Hangman. The way Hangman works, that's how you're playing. It's clearly between the name and the art. In the art, you see the Hangman playing Hangman.

In fact, a funny behind-the-scenes thing is, originally, it was like H blank blank G blank blank blank, I think. Or maybe there was an M there, like H. And there was concern that maybe people would think that instead of being the word hangman, it was some other word. And so we changed around letters. But when we did that, we ended up making an A but it's weird because if they guessed A

both A's should have been revealed. So anyway, that is how the artist had turned in different letters originally. We changed it later in the process.

That is why if people are asking why there's one A revealed and not another A. Anyway. Okay, next. Hazmat suit used. So this is a common enchantment.

It's an aura for three and a black, so four mana total, one of which is black. Enchant creature. Enchant creature gets plus two, plus one in menace. And whenever a player's skin or fingernail touches enchanted creature, that player loses two life.

So one of the things that I definitely did was I looked at cards from Unglued and Unhinged that had been popular. And one of those cards was Vile Bile. So Vile Bile is a creature that if you touched it, you lost life. So basically what this is, is it turns any

creature into a Vile Bile. And I'm not sure how we ended up coming with the hazmat suit, but that was funny. That was in card concept, so that was pretty funny. And the idea, remember, is it's the creature you're enchanting that now becomes the vile

bile. It's not the enchantment that has that ability. It's the creature that's enchanted. And it has all the rules we made up for vile bile, the biggest of which is you lose life for touching it, not for it touching you. Because people were chasing people around the stores with vile bile. And I had to make a ruling that said, no, no, no. Vile bile touching you doesn't make you lose life.

You touching vile bile makes you lose life. To stop people from chasing people around the store. That's the kind of thing of being Silver Border Rules Manager. So you have to make rulings that do things like stop people from chasing people around the store. Okay. So you have to make rulings that do things like stop people from chasing people around the store. Okay, next is Hoisted Hireling. So this is a common creature. It's a zombie, a 2-1 zombie for two and a black, so three mana total, one of which is black. Hoisted Hireling has flying as long as it's being held above the battlefield.

So the idea to this card was, I liked the idea that there was some physicality to it. If you'll notice, we tend to put physicality, it tends to be a black thing, that black is more the color that tends to, if you go back and look at old unsets, I decided that I didn't want physical stuff everywhere, so it tends to show up mostly in black. A little artifact, mostly in black. So if you want to build a deck all about weird physical constraints, black is one that tends to do that. So this was a simple one.

This was just, in order for this creature to have flying, you have to be holding the air. And that sounds pretty simple, but once again, once your head is on the table, or once you are using your hands to make little tokens, it can become something that's complicated. The other thing that's fun about flying is that you don't need to be flying all the time. You only need to be flying when it's relevant. Basically, when you attack or when you block.

All other times, it doesn't matter. So, you actually don't have to hold the card the whole time, but you've got to remember to hold it at the right time. That's another thing, which is a. So you actually don't have to hold the card the whole time, but you've got to remember to hold it at the right times. That's another thing, which is a memory thing, is you don't have to be constantly holding it, but you've got to be holding it at the right moments. And sometimes just when you have a lot going on, remembering to do that sometimes can be an issue. Next, Hot Fix, Unstable Rare.

It's a sorcery for four white, blue, six mana, one white, one blue, six mana total, including one white and one blue. You have 10 seconds to look at and rearrange the cards in your library. At the end of those 10 seconds, if you're touching one or more of those cards, shuffle your library. So I mentioned last time that we had a mechanic called Stopwatch, where you had so many seconds to do certain actions.

This is another one of the Stopwatch cards. This one and Give Me Five. The reason we ended up not doing the stopwatch was there just weren't enough things that really ended up working. It was hard making, hey, here's a cool thing that's relevant that you have X amount of time to do that has gameplay ramifications. It just ended up being we couldn't come up with enough things we liked. So what we did is we took the two we liked

and kind of adapted them. Hot Fix was exactly the card it was. Because the way all the stopwatch cards worked is you had so much time to do a certain task. And like I said, I think Give Me Five, you had to do so many high fives in a certain amount of time.

Where Hot Fix was always, look, you can rearrange your library, do whatever you want. The thing we liked a lot about this card was that we're not telling you had to do so many high fives in a certain amount of time. Where Hotfix was always, look, you can rearrange your library, do whatever you want. The thing we liked a lot about this card was that we're not telling you what to do. We're not telling you how to do it. You just have ten seconds to do it. And so the question is, how do I want to use this ability? The one thing I will say after the fact is we were kind of super conservative on this cost. I think probably could have been a little less than six now having seen it in action.

So it is, it's expensive to use. You can do a lot of cool stuff and you can set a lot of things up and, you know, 10 seconds is a surprising amount of time to actually, you know, grab stuff from your deck and put it where you need it to be. But anyway, that is Hotfix. Humming.

So this is a common creature. It's an augment creature. I mean, it's an augment card. It's a bird. Plus two, plus three. It is flying. Whenever you attack with two or more creatures, this is trigger, and you can augment it for three and a white. So this is a really good card for those that have drafted this format. This is one of the better augments. It's also common. So it gives you evasion right away, and its trigger, the fact that it has evasion is really nice because what it means is, look, usually this can attack because it was flying.

You just need one other thing that can attack, and then you get to do this. Anyway, humming is pretty strong. I think the reason we ended up making this humming was, we were talking about different birds that we thought would be funny.

This thing had flying, so it needed to be something that flew. So we were looking at birds and trying to figure out what was the funny looking bird up front, that the front half of the bird is kind of funny. And we had a bunch of choices, but humming just, I don't know, humming just seemed pretty cool. Hydrodoodle.

So Hydrodoodle is a rare creature. Hydrohound, 0-0, xx green green, so it requires you pay x mana twice plus two green. As Hydro Doodle enters the battlefield, roll x six-sided dice. Hydro Doodle enters the battlefield with a number of plus one plus one counters equal to the total of those rolls. So the idea of this card was pretty straightforward and simple. It was an x spell that allowed you to roll X dice, and it was that big. And so the idea was, look,

depending on how much mana you spend into this, this thing has potential to be really big. And the more mana you have, the bigger it can be. And it's got a lot of high variance. One of the things to remember is, when we're costing things, we assume you roll 3.5, because that's the average of a six-sided die roll.

And so the idea essentially was, okay, well, how much should it cost to get three and a half, plus three and a half, plus three and a half? And it turned out that we could do it at XX green-green. So it was nice and clean. The art for this is funny, by the way. The art of this shows

it is a hydra that looks like a poodle, kind of like a poodle hydra. Originally, for Conspiracy, an artist had been given a hydra, and they ended up turning in a sketch that was really similar to this. And the Conspiracy team really liked it, but it didn't quite match the tone of conspiracy. A little bit too cutesy for conspiracy. Conspiracy has some light components but it's not quite as goofy as the unsets are. But anyway, when we made this,

I remembered that art because the creative team had put it up because it was very funny and I went and I asked the art because they had, the creative team had put it up because it was very funny. And I went and I asked the art director, I said, look, you remember this sketch? I think I can make, I think I have a card that will match that sketch.

Can we go back to that artist and say, we do want that. And can we make the hydra poodle or the hydra doodle. And anyway, so that's an example where I think the card existed separate from the sketch but once we realized what we had

and we knew the sketch existed it just became the perfect marriage of that's a really funny concept and it fits the fact that you're putting plus one

plus one counters on it made a hybrid make a lot of sense and so and we were kind of playing in the space of you know silly because we were on set. So anyway, it's all worked out.

Okay. Insight, insight. The first insight's I-N-C-I-T-E. And the second insight's I-N-S-I-G-H-T. So it's a rare sorcery, X blue blue. So you have to pay X generic mana and then two blue mana. Assemble X contraptions. So one of the things we wanted to do was we wanted to make an X spell for contraptions.

We put it at rare. And I think this is one of the ones, the big question we had had was, who is doing what where? Red likes to assemble contraptions, so we talked about red, but we ended up putting the die-rolling one in red, which you roll dice to see how many contraptions you do. So you have the potential to do a bunch, but you don't know. We ended up putting the X-File in blue, just because blue is an artifact-loving color,

and it felt like, okay, blue should have some affinity with contraptions since they're all artifacts. The name is a cute name in that one of the things that we tend to do is be careful about confusing homonyms, which are words that are,

that sound the same but are spelled differently. And so this one's kind of leaning into it, just having fun with homonyms. It's the kind of thing we don't normally do. We don't normally kind of do

this kind of wordplay that has potential to be confusing. It's the kind of thing we don't normally do. We don't normally kind of do this kind of wordplay that has potential to be confusing. But in the Unsets, we're willing to have a little more fun with it. Okay, next. Ineffable Blessing. It's a rare enchantment. It costs one and a green. So this is another of our rules

variant cards. There are six ones. I just have the main one, but there are six. So this one is, as ineffable blessing enters the battlefield, choose flavorful or bland. Flavorful, whenever a creature with flavor text enters the battlefield under your control, draw a card. Bland, whenever

a creature without flavor text enters the battlefield under your control, draw a card. So all of these are, choose two things that are different factors and then you get to draw a card based on those factors. It's how this card works. But they're all quirky. They're all the kind of things

that we don't normally let you make decisions about. So for example, this card cares about flavor text. Normally in Magic and Blackboard or Magic, you're not allowed to care about flavor text because we might reprint a card and the reprint won't have the same flavor text or might even, one version might have flavor text

one might not have flavor text. Even the whether you have flavor text or not isn't consistent. So Blackboard or because if you have the same English name of a card if your name translated it's the same English name, all versions of that card have to be the same mechanically. So anything that might vary between them

the artist, whether it has flavor text, just different qualities like that, whether it has a watermark, those are things that Black Border can't carry about because the cards have to be treated the same, but they might not be the same. Silver Border is all about, well, look at the card you have. It doesn't say

that all cards have to be, it literally cares about the card you're playing. Does the card you're playing have flavor text? Well, that's what matters. Not, does this card exist with flavor text? Don't care. Does the card you're playing. Does the card you're playing have flavor text? Well, that's what matters. Not, does this card exist with flavor text? Don't care. Does the card you're playing have flavor text? And so anyway, this was just us playing. The other thing we're playing around with is this thing that we do where we give you two choices.

I'm not sure if Fate Reforged was the first one to do that, but it's something we do on occasion where we give you the choice of two things and they're flavorful choices, and then based on which choice you do, something happens. Okay, next, Infinity Elemental. So this is a mythic rare creature.

It's an elemental. It is Infinity V. So its power is infinity. Infinite power. And it costs four red, red, red. So it's seven mana, three of which is red. And this card, it's a vanilla card, but it does have a reminder text which says, this creature has, in all caps

INFINITE POWER so this was I don't remember who turned this card in someone on my team turned it in and I fell in love with it right away I think originally it was a it was an infinity 4 I think it was what it turned in

and so what happened was I very innocuously it was a it was an infinity four I think it was when it turned in. And so what happened was I very innocuously I mean I was a lot of times it's fun on my Twitter to tease people about stuff. And so I just made this

crypto comment which was oh today I put a vanilla creature into a mythic rare slot. Which was true. Now remember at this time the audience wasn't even aware we were doing a Third Uncensored. So I knew that I was doing something that

yeah, look, there's something weird about this card. It's Mythic Rare because it's something we don't normally do. Like, for example, Phage, although at the time it was a Rare. Probably Mythic Rare if Mythic Rare existed at the time that Legions had come out. Because that's a really different card. It hits you when you die. And so this card, A, has that quality to it. You just die when it hits you. But also, there's a lot of shenanigans you can do with power.

And so having infinite power lets you do a lot of weird, crazy things. So this was not a normal card. But technically, because we were messing around with power, it was a vanilla creature. It had no other ability other than, it's a creature that had power and toughness, and it had no abilities. The fact that it was special was baked into its power, but that was something that without knowing, so anyway, it caused a lot of hubbub, more than I expected it to cause, to be honest, and they kept asking me about it. The problem was that unstable wasn't even a known quantity.

And I didn't want them to know that. And at some point, it had been long enough that, like, wouldn't the set have come out? Because, like, three years went by for me mentioning casually it happened. And the players were just locked onto it. And they kept asking about it. So I was really vague about it because I didn't want to sort of... I kind of implied without outright

saying because I didn't want to lie, but I kind of let people read into it that maybe we had moved it. Maybe, you know, it had moved from one set to another set, although it had never moved. But anyway, once we announced Unstable, I told everybody, okay, this is the car, this is the set that has the vanilla thing.

Oh, so by the way, during development, the card actually got changed at one point to getting Haste. Because the thought was the card might play better with Haste. But after seeing all the, like, all the rigmarole online, I went back to, at this point, Ben was the lead developer, Ben Hayes. And I said, Ben, Ben, we've got to make this back into a vanilla. And so Ben said, okay. He had seen the stuff, obviously. And so he goes, okay. We ended up making an Infinite 5.

I think when we lost Hayes, it gained a toughness. And when the card came out, the audience, I mean, at least part of the audience, really, really when the card came out, it, uh, uh, the audience, I mean, at least part of the audience really, really liked the card. It, it, uh, um, people were kind of nervous about the, the mythic, the mythic, uh, vanilla, mythic rare vanilla. And what I said to them, uh, once they knew it was an unset, I go, guys, it's an unset. We're goofing around here. So, um, it is not your, you know, it is not your traditional, creature. Okay, next. Inhumaniac is an uncommon creature. A Brainiac.

A 1-1 with 1 and a black. So Brainiac, by the way, are the creatures... They're the underlings of the League of Deathly Doom. At one point, early, early in the design, they were like clown minions. Because one of the Cabal had kind of a Joker-ish sort of feel to him. And then, instead of being clowns, they ended up becoming... What did they become?

They went through a bunch of different phases of different things. And they ended up being Brainiacs. That was what they ended up being. Anyway, so here's what the card does. At the beginning of your upkeep, roll a six-sided die. On a three or four, put a plus-plus encounter on Inhumaniac. On a five or higher, put two plus-plus encounters on it.

On a one, remove all plus-plus encounters from Inhumaniac. So the idea was, this is something that grows with time, but can shrink again. Now it doesn't die. The thing like we had done in Unglued is something like, there was a card like this called, what was it called?

It was an Imp. It was, what was the card called? It was an Imp. And the Imp basically went up and down, but it could go down low enough that it could die. So the imp was kind of like this card, and then it went up and down. But it went up well.

The way the imp worked was it went up. Every upkeep, it went up in every... Is that right? Yeah, every upkeep, it went up. I think when you played it, and every upkeep, it went up. And the end of turn, it went down. So the idea was it got to go up and down but it could shrink and die.

So this thing can never die. So the idea is the downside is you could lose your growth but you still get to start over again. The creature doesn't go away. So all the Brainiacs have a dice rolling theme because they tie into the big idea. So the big idea was always a supervillain that had a dice theme that tied into his minions.

And who his minions were changed with time. But he was supposed to be the chaotic one. That he was unpredictable. So anyway, we ended up tying him to the brain. Actually, he was kind of... He ended up being kind of this smart genius character that was kind of unpredictable because he was so crazy smart, but he was kind of like a mad genius sort of feel.

Although a lot of the leagues that we do are mad geniuses. But anyway, this card is a fun card. This card, by the way, if you're ever drafting, and it's another card you want to draft, this card can be really potent. It can grow really big. card you want to draft, this card can be really potent. It can grow really big. And especially if you have any of the squirrels, any of the cards that make dice run go a little bit higher, because it needs to roll one to lose it. So if you have Scheming Squirrel or Squirrel Power out,

he can't even shrink again. So he's a really good card in your squirrel deck, by the way, even though he's not a squirrel. The other thing that we did on this card was, originally, it was on a six. It got two counters. But as I mentioned before, the template, because we had Scheming Squirrel and Squirrel Power that made things, you could roll a seven or an eight on a six-sided die.

We didn't want to say if you roll a six because we didn't want to exclude you for seven or eight. But six or up, red weird. So this is another card where we changed it around. I think we recosted the card. We had to change a few things. But the idea essentially was that one, you lose

the counters. Two, nothing happens. Three or four, you get a counter. Five or six, you get two counters. But anyway, that is that. Okay, moving on. Next, Island. I already talked about full art lands. Islands are That is that. Okay, moving on. Next. Island. I already talked about full art lands.

Islands are pretty. It that gets left hanging. So this is a common creature, an elemental whore. 5-4 for five and a red. So six mana, one of which is red. When it that gets left hanging enters the battlefield, ask a person outside the game to high-five you. If he or she won't, it that gets left hanging

gains haste into another turn. So one of the things we thought was funny was having an outside assistance card where the idea was they're trying to not help you.

So what you're trying to do is find somebody that won't help you. We thought that was kind of a cool thing. And just to make matters a little more fun, we made it a high-five

since elsewhere in the game on Give Me Five, there are times when you do want people to high five you. So we thought it would be kind of fun where you have to find someone that won't do it and it can be a little bit tricky because

whether or not you want to be high fived or not can vary in the game. So usually you'll see people running around all the time because when people get five or give me five, you're seeing people run around the store, usually if you're playing the store. You're seeing people everywhere high-fiving. So you sort of get in your brain like, oh, you want to high-five people. High-five people is good.

And this card comes up and says, ooh, no, you don't want to do that. So anyway, this is a card that's kind of fun because you've got to kind of predict either who will naturally say no or someone who understands what you're asking and will know to say no. Okay, next, Jack Knight. It's a rare artifact creature.

It's a Cyborg Knight. 1-1 for one and a white. So two mana, one of which is white. Whenever another artifact enters the battlefield under your control, put a plus or minus counter on Jack Knight. If that artifact is a contraption, he gains lifelink to end a turn. So this is one of those cards where

we were trying to play into the artifact thing. The Cyborgs cared about artifacts. One of the things about the artifact faction is not only do they care about contraptions in their own way, but they also have this theme of artifact matters. Now, contraptions are artifacts, so you can both care about contraptions and care about artifacts. So this is a good example of a card that wants you to play a lot of artifacts, but also kind of wants you to play in contraptions. So this card basically

you can play it in a contraption deck you can play it in an artifact matters deck like one of the themes about cyborgs is there's an art max matters theme that runs through the cyborgs the order of the widget and so this card sort of crosses that stream and once once again, remember,

when I'm making a card, I have to have a silver border quality to it. I can't just care about artifacts. Normal magic can care about artifacts. So caring about contraptions allowed me to make a card that's somewhat normal, but has a little tiny element

that makes it a silver border card. Okay, next, Joyride Rigger. So Joyride Rigger is a common creature, a Goblin Rigger, 3-3 for three and a green. So four mana total, one of which is green. When Joyride Rigger enters the battlefield, it assembles a contraption. So we wanted to have a bunch of

creatures that did contraptions. All of them are riggers, obviously, so they play nicely with Steamflug or Boss. And this is just a straightforward one. We liked the idea of that goblins, there were a little bit more riggers than goblins just because we knew of the Steamflugger Boss. So this is one of our goblin riggers

that belonged to the goblin explosion eaters. You later learn that the Steamflugger Boss is from that. The Explosionators have the Steamfluggers. So how he got into our universe, we'll never know. Okay, next, Just Desserts. One of my favorite cards in the set. So it's a common instant.

Costs one and a red. So two mana total, one of which is red. Just Desserts deals pie damage, pie as in the numeral, pie, or the number pie, to target creature. And then the reminder text says, pie is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. And then there's reminder text within reminder text that says, it's a smidgen more than three.

So at one point, by the way, the reminder text spelled out pie as many spaces as it could, so it filled up the whole card. But it ended up, the joke didn't quite read as well, so we ended up doing the reminder text spelled out pie as many spaces as it could so it filled up the whole card but it ended up, the joke didn't quite read as well so we ended up doing that reminder text. So I forget who my team made Jeff's Desserts. It's an awesome, awesome card. Me, I don't know who made it. It was me or someone on my team.

I really don't remember who made this card. I remember falling in love with it once we made it. And one of the cool things about it is it does damage to just a creature. So the fact that it's sent... One of the cool things we're always looking for in Silver Border is cards that function cleanly, but clearly are Silver Border cards. And this card just has a lot going for it.

For all intents and purposes, it's a card that does 3 damage to a creature. That's a good limited card. It's the kind of thing you want. The fact that it does.14 damage over the three really doesn't matter. In fact, it's such a small amount that it's not even until you get to four cards that you get to half a damage.

And it does into players, so players don't have to worry about the incremental damage. And for creatures, even like the biggest increment is in unstable, we had creatures with half power and toughnesses. So if you're playing with unstable cards and a creature card has a halfness for a toughness, if you cast all four in one turn, it matters. Other than that, for all intents and purposes, it just does three. But the flavor was just such

a cool thing. So this card was originally called Clown Attack. As you will see, there was a little bit of a clown theme early on. Not a lot of clowns, but a little bit. And this was the only card that ended up staying a clown in the art. So it's a little clown jester. And, yeah, in fact, it's time to put the die in diameter. Flaky the Irrational. That's the name of the, that's the name of the goblin, uh, clown.

Um, but anyway, this card was definitely one that I really, one of my favorite things is I like finding ways to make jokes that transcend. Like the idea that pi is a number, but we wouldn't use pi in Black Border, but pi is a double meaning. And the idea that you throw pi's at people. Like all the pieces came together just to make a really, like, just a fun card that's functional, but fun. I really like Jeff's Desserts. So, by the way, my plan originally, the way I wanted to announce the existence of Unstable, we ended up announcing it during Announcement Day,

but the way I wanted to do it originally was on Pi Day, which is March 14th, to just post this on my Twitter and Tumblr and my social media saying, Happy Pi Day! And not say anything about it. Just post the card. And then people go,

Hey, I've never seen this card before. Hey, what's that expansion? Oh my goodness, they're doing a third unset! That's how I wanted to do it. I thought it would be cool. Not even say anything about it. Just sort of put it out there and let the public realize and let them talk for a day. And then like,

on the Ides of March, we would tell them that, yes, we're doing unstable. But anyway, I got voted down, so that's not how we revealed it. Okay, next. Kindly Cognition. Uncommon artifact creature. Cyborg artificer. 1-3 for 1 and a blue. Spells that you cast refer to artifacts or contraptions So this is another card, another cyborg, playing into the Artifact Matters theme.

I like doing the creatures that say, hey, playing this theme, your spells get one cheaper. It just really encourages the theme and makes it easier to make it work. Obviously, this card mentions both artifacts and contraptions for the same reason that Jackknight did, was that way I get to make a Silver Border card. I can't just care about artifacts. The one thing this does do, by the way, that we actually can't do

in Black Border, by the way, is cards that refer to artifacts, that is something that we can't actually do in Black Border. And what this means is any card in its rules text uses the word artifact is what it's meaning. That Black Border can't do that. I know you would think it could,

but it's the kind of thing that I try to do in Black Border. You can't really look at rules text and say, oh, is this concept referenced? It's not something that Black Portal lets you do. So it turned out that this card, I think the reason we put contraptions, oh, I know why. Because there are a lot of cards that make contraptions

that themselves aren't artifacts. And we wanted you to enable contraptions. So the reason we referenced contraptions, the reason we referenced it on this card is not because we need it for Silver Borderness, like we did in Jackknight, actually. The reason it's here is I wanted you to make an artifact deck that had Contraptions, and they wanted to help you with the cards that got the Contraptions,

most of which aren't artifacts. So, right, that's helping you play stuff like your Joyride Raider and stuff. Next, Kindslaver. It's a rare legendary artifact that costs five. So five and tap sacrifice Kindslaver. A person outside the game controls target player during the player's next turn. Neither player may advise that person

until the end of the turn. So clearly this card is taking a card called Mindslaver, which was a card I originally made for Tempest that the rules team at the time couldn't do later got done in Mirrodin when we were able to do it and so I like the idea when we're doing outside assistance it seemed really fun to do a Mind Slaver

but instead of you playing your opponent's turn somebody else is playing your opponent's turn and it turned out to be a really, really interesting card because what happens is when you do that and you pull somebody over, you're really trying to find someone that's going to help you. But that's just not always the case. It is fascinating watching people do friend slavery,

how often they try to, like, cut the difference. Like, well, I'll help the person that cast it, but I want to completely hose the person I'm taking over. So I'll find some middle ground, which is very interesting. taking over. So I'll find some middle ground, which is very interesting. Another fun thing to do is call somebody over

that doesn't really know the game that well and then watch them kind of stumble through doing something. I've also seen some fun stories with that. So this card, by the way,

for a while was called Friend Slaver. And then, I don't know, it was decided that the name sounded wrong. And then we came up with the idea of Kind Sla then, I don't know, it was decided that the name sounded wrong. And then we came up with the idea of Kineslaver, which, you know, obviously it sounds like Mindslaver. But anyway, that is Kineslaver.

Okay, now we move on to the next one, which is Lobe Lobber. So this is an uncommon artifact. It's an enchantment. I'm sorry, not an enchantment. It's an equipment. So this is an uncommon artifact. It's an enchantment. I'm sorry, not an enchantment. It's an equipment. So it's an artifact equipment, and it costs two to equip. So equip creature has tap.

This creature deals one damage to target player. Roll a six-sided die on a five or higher, untap it. So the idea here is essentially it's something they can do one turn, but one-third of the time you get to do extra damage. And how much extra damage you get to do, it's possible you can do damage and then untap it

and then roll a five or six and untap it and then do that again. And it's possible that you can actually get rid of bigger things sometimes. So the idea here was we were trying to make an equipment that we could use dice with. And I liked the idea. I think we started with the idea here was we just wanted, we were trying to make an equipment that we could use dice with, and I liked the idea. I think we started with the idea of something that when you use it, you roll a die, and sometimes it untaps, and we ended up, damage ended up being the thing

that worked best. This is another card that originally was six or greater, and we moved to make it five, so we can say five or more rather than six or more. Okay, next. Mad Science Fair Project. So it's a common artifact. Costs three. Oh, Lobe Lobber is not Sorry. Lobe Lobber costs two to cast. It also costs two to equip, but it costs two to cast. I think I confused that.

Sorry. Unimanned Science Fair Project. So it's an uncommon artifact that costs three. Tap, roll six out of die. On a three or lower, target player adds C to his or her mana pool. Otherwise, the player adds one mana of their choice. So for a while, what this did was, if you rolled four through six, you got any color. If you rolled one through three, or sorry, if you rolled four through six, you chose the color.

And if you rolled one through three, your opponent chose the color, but what we found was, it really just made the opponent do a lot of work to figure out, like, every time that would happen, like, okay, let me figure out what is the least likely color that would help you, and it just took them a while to figure that out, and we're like, okay, the real thing here is whether or not you get the colored or not, and so we changed it, so it's just colorless if you don't roll correctly because it was just causing a lot of um a lot of stress to the system um the one interesting thing for people who are drafting the set uh mad science fair project is really good in a dice matters deck especially one that is green um because green is the color that cares about what you roll um so if you're playing a dice rolling, if you're building a dice rolling deck,

especially in green, where you care about the die rolls, this is a really nice incremental way to just get a lot of die rolls into your game. Because you're always getting mana off it. Oftentimes you're getting the color you need, but even when you don't, it still rolls the die and that can help you make your things

bigger or whatever. Okay, next, Magic Word. So this is a common enchantment. It's an aura, costs two and a blue. It's an enchant creature. As Magic Word enters the battlefield, choose a word, and then whisper the word

and tap target creature. So this is a good example of taking a basic effect and unifying it. So basically, blue needed to have a lockdown card. And the way it normally works in blue is you cast it, sometimes it taps a creature, sometimes it doesn't, and then the creature doesn't untap. But what I wanted to do is something that's a little more fun.

So just as black is the color that does physical stuff, blue is the color that tends to do verbal stuff. Now, we didn't want to do a lot of verbal stuff, but we wanted to do a little bit. And so the idea here was, I liked the idea that you had to say something. Essentially, essentially, essentially, the creature is tapped. But the idea is, rather than,

rather than, it requires you to be proactive about it. And there's other things. We don't have a lot, other Uncards are a little more interactive with verbal stuff. This one is more for fun. We didn't put a lot of verbal stuff in it, so the verbal interaction stuff is limited. Although if you mix it with older Unsets, there's more going on there. But anyway, originally we were going to try to come up with a word and whenever

it's some silly word you tap the creature but then I came to the conclusion that it would just be more fun if I let the player pick the word and that was by far the right choice that the customization aspect was just a lot of fun that you know you get to pick a word and not only is the customization fun was just a lot of fun, that, you know, you get to pick a word. And not only is the customization fun,

but it allows you to sort of create moments because you and the person you're playing with have a relationship, and there's things that mean something. And so a lot of times what I've found is the words you'll pick will mean something to you and the person you're playing with. And so it's a good example of how we could take something that could have been pretty straightforward and just giving a little bit of flexibility to it just makes it more rich and makes more stories out of it

and just makes it a more fun card. Then instead of telling you what you say, you get to choose what you say. And what I found is people just have a surprising amount of fun with the choice of the word and saying the word. Okay, next, Mary O'Kill. So Mary O'Kill is a rare legendary creature, human villain, 5-5. Sorry, 5-5. And then she has 5 and black or red hybrid.

So the idea is she's 6 mana and then either black or red, but not both as hybrid. So her ability is 1 and a hybrid black or red symbol. So two mana total, one of which is black or red. Switch a kill bot or Mario kill in your hand with one on the battlefield. And then it says if a creature is tapped,

the switch creature is tapped. The same is true for untapping, attacking, blocking, enchanted, whatever, enchanted, equipped, and targeted. Any targets on the creature stay on the creature. So the idea essentially is, it's the same creature. What you're doing is going, ha ha, you thought it was

this, it was that. And we were playing around with superhero, supervillain tropes, because these are the supervillains. And supervillains and supervillains there's a couple famous ones specifically but there's a lot of supervillains that you think you have the supervillain, haha it's just a robot, it's not really

the villain, and we were playing around with that trope which was pretty funny so the idea was we made the killbots and then Mario Kill, you never know when you see a killbot whether it's secretly Mario Kill and if you look at the art, the idea is she hides and looks kind of like a Killbot. And

what else? There's a lot of shenanigans that go on. You actually can swap her with other Killbots. It doesn't have to be Killbot you control, although you're giving control of Mario Kill to somebody else, else. Not always the strongest thing to do. The name was on purpose. That's all I

can say. For those that appreciate the name. The joke is understood. And anyway, that is Mario Kills. So she's one of the, she's legendary. She's one of the Cabal, those four Cabal members. So Grisilda and Marioill and the Big Idea.

And who am I forgetting? One more. Oh, we'll get there. Oh, Baron Von Count. Okay, Masterful Ninja. It's a rare creature. It's a troll ninja. And it's a 1-1, 2-and-a-black.

So it's got haste and you can reveal Mashable Ninja from your hand and if you do, it's also on the battlefield as well as being in your hand. So I talked about how I got inspired by other cards. So this card was inspired by a card called Yet Another Aether Vortex, which

allows you to have cards that are both on top of your library and on the battlefield. So this allows you to have a creature that's top of your library and on the battlefield. So this allows you to have a creature that's both in your hand and on the battlefield. Being in two zones at once is not something Black Border actually lets you do, but we let you do in Silver Border because it's fun. So you can

do it in Silver Border. And this card is a lot of fun. It is definitely something you're going to surprise people with. In the pre-release, I is, uh, it is definitely something you're going to surprise people with. Um, if you ever want, uh, in the pre, pre-release, I was playing, was I playing? I was playing Graham, I think. Uh, and I went into a sub game, uh, and this card is really, really good. But, uh, um, the countdown is at one, I think it's called.

Um, and the idea of that card is you play a sub game, um, and, uh, we'll get to it. I think it's alphabetized in this list as the rather than countdown. But anyway, we were playing this game and you start at one life in the sub game and I had this card in my hand and it has haste and it has one power. So just out of the blue,

you know what I'm saying, it's like, you didn't know this creature existed, but bam, you're dead! You know, it was very funny. Graham did not see it coming. Merman! So this is a common host creature. Human fish. 3-3. Because if you look at this thing, it's a human fish because it's

part fish and part human. When this creature enters the battlefield, you may draw a card. So this was called Card Shark in design. We ended up putting the shark on a different card. But as I always say, what the card does is mash against it.

So essentially this is a cantrip creature in a vacuum. You know, it's a 3-3 creature, you get to draw a card. But the reason it costs 5 mana is it's really good to hook up. Every time you do whatever the trigger condition is, you get to draw a card. Pretty good ability. And there's some combos in this that combine really well with this card.

You can do some pretty nutty things. Like half squirrel, half man. Every time you play a non-token creature, you get to draw a card. So that is pretty potent. Okay, how we doing here? Okay, well, I just got to work. How we doing on the thing?

Oh, we had a longer commute today. I had some traffic. Like I said before, I'm hitting local school traffic on the way in. So a little extra content for you guys. Anyway, I'm chugging along. Hope you guys are enjoying these Unstable podcasts. It's really fun to talk Unstable.

This is the set where I was super involved from the very, very first day to the very, very last day, which was almost seven years. So I worked on this project a long time, so lots of stories. 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. See you guys next time.