Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #558: Unstable Cards, Part 5

Episode Date: July 27, 2018

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

I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to drive to work. And in an old school, I'm driving Rachel to school today. Something I haven't done for a while. So anyway, this means it'll be a slightly longer podcast for those that are wondering what that means. Although I might avoid, I'm leaving early, so I might avoid the other traffic. So maybe it'll even out. We'll see. Okay, when last we left, we were talking about Unstable, and I was going through all the various cards in it. So let's, I think I'm up to M. Okay, so up to Midlife Upgrade. As an additional cost to cast Midlife Upgrade, sacrifice X contraptions. Assemble X plus one contraptions. So this is an Uncommon White card, Sorcery, in white. So basically this is part of the cyborgs, their contraption theme, where they're really good at

sort of adapting things and that the contraptions that the Order of the Widget build, it's not that they're bigger than other people, they're just more efficient because they can constantly fine-tune. And this is a perfect example where they get rid of some and they get to get more. So you can sort of pick the ones that aren't working or aren't as fine-tuned and upgrade them. So this is something where you get to upgrade. It also plays into the idea that the cyborgs themselves are all about upgrading. That one of the jokes about the Order of the Widget is they're constantly trying to self-improve

themselves by adding extra tools to their body and stuff. And definitely making fun of that on this card. Okay. Next, Modular Monstrosity. So it's a rare artifact creature. It's a

construct. It's a 3-3, costs 7. Whenever an opponent casts a spell, you have five seconds to choose a keyword. You haven't chosen for a card named Modular Monstrosity today that's been printed on a creature card. If you do, Modular Monstrosity gains that ability. Otherwise, Modular Monstrosity loses all keyword abilities. So one of the chances, so this card I designed, I liked a lot the idea of there's a little mini game, and the little mini game is I can give this thing whatever I want. And each turn though I have to give it something different, and if I ever falter, then I lose all the abilities that I have.

That was a little game. The problem we ran into was that this thing is pretty potent. So we did a couple things. First off, we limited it to existing keywords, partly to define what the parameter was. And then, because what we found in playtesting was, is there are a few really powerful choices you can make. So we wanted to limit how often you could do that. So first off, we made a time limit,

so you just have to remember, so you have to do it kind of quickly. And the second thing we did is we said, okay, we're not going to let you repeat for the whole day, that if you use this card for the whole day, you can't repeat things. You have to make a little list. And so the idea is, as you use it, you have to keep pushing to other spaces. Because what we found with the card is, the card is at its most fun when you're kind of stretched to come up with abilities.

That early on, the first choices you make tend to be a lot of similar choices. And so what we wanted to do is say, okay, probably the first few times you use it, it's a little stronger. But then you have to get more creative. And it's when you have to get more creative that I think the card's the most fun. When it's not obvious what you're trying to do. Now given most people are playing this casually, that's kind of how they play it. It's the spikes of the world. We have to sometimes design for the spikes of the world.

And that's the people who have thought ahead what are the most dangerous things and have it all planned out. So the reason we sort of built in the you can't use the same ones within the same day is just to sort of make that even the spiky crowd have to branch out a little bit and think about what they're going to do. But anyway, this card is one of my favorite cards in the set. It's the kind of thing that we can't really do

in Blackboard of Magic that I think is a lot of fun where the history of the game, the history... Like, I like cards and on sets I've had a few of these where, like, the card is stronger the more you know the history of magic. And I think those cards are kind of fun. Okay, next, Monkey.

Monkey hyphen. So this is an uncommon creature. It's a monkey. It's plus two, plus two, because it's an augment card. And whenever a non-token creature you control dies. So its trigger is, it triggers off any non-token creature dying. Which, it gives a death trigger to everything.

So this was another one where, when we were mapping out, one of the things about making Hosted Sutures is, there are only so many effects and only so many triggers that make sense. And part of it was trying to figure out what host, like, the way we did the Hosted Augment is, we did them mechanically. This was actually not top-down. This was bottom-up. We figured out what were good things to have,

and then we sat down and figured out what bodies made sense for these things. And we actually had what we called top-lining meetings, where we talk about sort of the creative stuff. And the top-lining meeting was all about sort of what was the funniest front half of the animals, what was the funniest back half of the animals what was the funniest back half the animals. And we knew we wanted a monkey. I think the idea, I think monkey was always an augment card,

and I think we pitched it as an augment. But anyway, this is definitely an example where carving out the space mechanically was something that really required a lot of time. Like host and augment, it took us a while to come to the idea of the hosts are all into the battlefield effects. Or all effects, basically, that start to enter the battlefield. And then that the augment adds on a condition by which it triggers. Once we knew that, it was a matter of figuring out what are the coolest trigger conditions.

And that, it turned out that there's not an infinite number of trigger conditions. It really required us being a little more conscious about what we wanted to do but the way it turned out that I'm really happy with is any trigger condition in any effect they all go together they're all you know different things require you to you want to do different things with them and if you're building your decks around them there's different ones that will enable different kinds of decks but you know it's a very modular system where you can click them together and i enjoy that a lot okay more or less uh uncommon instant cost a single blue mana add up subtract one or one from a number or number word on target spell or on a permanent until end of

turn um so this is one of those things that sounds innocuous and seems like a lot of fun people like or number word on target spell or on a permanent until end of turn. So this is one of those things that sounds innocuous and seems like a lot of fun. People are like, ooh, why can't we do this in Black Border? Because it's broken. This might be one of the most broken cards in this set.

I've answered, there's like five cards that are probably responsible for most of the questions about the set. This is one of them. Just because it's like, well, what if I change this number? What if I do that?

What does that mean? What if a six-sided die becomes a seven-sided die? There's a lot of quirky questions that I get. So this one is something that we like fiddling with and something we used to do in Magic. Alpha had a lot more what I would call text splicing or text alteringing like slight of mine and magical hack so slight of mine was a card in alpha that changed any color word to another color

word that protection from red can be turned to protection from blue um and magical hack did the same with any um with any uh basic land word um and there's a lot of effects in magic that care about color, care about land types, even more so in early magic. And those changes were permanent. Once I change it forever, it's been changed.

And we kind of shied away from doing that. There's memory issues and things. So Unsets have kind of picked up the mantle of the permanent text altering. It's not something... I think we did one in Cypher. We haven't done one in a while. Even that, Return of Ravnuk was the last time we did it. And that was, we hadn't done one in a while by the time we did that one.

This one's a little more dangerous because changing numbers, like changing colors, look, if I protect, if I protect you from a color, well, it's not that much protection protection from blue protection from red. So, like, changing colors meant something, but really you were just shifting what it was affecting. Where changing numbers can just radically change power level of things. Numbers are kind of the dial we control things with. So, changing numbers is a pretty potent thing.

Okay, also this card has my favorite piece of flavor text that I wrote. So, the flavor text on this is, why was five afraid of six? Because six, seven, eight. And for those that don't get that, probably you don't have little kids, or weren't a little kid and remember this joke. There was a very famous little kid joke of,

why was six afraid of seven? Because seven, eight, nine. And so I love that idea. It's a classic joke with the numbers all switched because it's more or less. Anyway, of all the flavor texts I wrote for this set, this is the one that tickles me the most. Okay, next, Mother Kangaroo.

So it's a common host creature. It's a kangaroo. It's a 1-1 creature for four and a green. And when the creature enters the battlefield, rolls a 6-sided die, put that many plus one, plus one counters on the creature as a result. So basically it's anywhere from a 2-2 to a 7-7 creature. I think the reason that it is a 1-1 base is because it's an enter the... Because this is a host creature, it is an effect.

And so we normally we would say as it enters the battlefield but because it's a it's a host and has to be an effect it has to be when it enters the battlefield effect and if you do that the creature will die if it doesn't have any counters on it so I had to start from a 1-1

but the reason it costs 5 mana is it can be as big as a 7-7, which is really good for 4 and a green. This was the card I talked about on one of the previous podcasts that I was playing against Josh on game nights and I had to get rid of it. I think he had either a 6-6 or a 7-7 Mother Kangaroo. That's why I had to get rid of it because it was going to beat me very shortly.

7-7, mother kangaroo. That's why I had to get rid of it, because it was going to beat me very shortly. Kangaroo is another example where we were trying to figure out, for the host creatures, something that was kind of fun that you can then stick things on. And a kangaroo seemed like just a fun

back end, if you will. Okay, mountain! Mountain! All the basic lands look really cool. Real quickly, let me talk a little bit about what happened with the premium basic lands. So one of the things is, when the people were doing the premium math, they basically used the premium math that we use on all our sets for the different rarities. And lands have their own special premium rate.

By percentage, they show up as premiums. And so what happened was they used the math for what we normally do for a normal set. The mistake made was normally in most sets, there'll be four of each basic land, not one of each basic land. And that was a miscalculation. That's why they ended up being a little rarer than we intended. They were at the same rarity of a normal land in a normal set. Normally, there's four times as many basic lands of any one. Like for mountain, there would be four times the mountains in a large set.

So that was a mistake made. Okay, next. Multi-headed. It's a common creature. It that was a mistake made. Okay, next, Multi-Headed. It's a common creature. It's a Hydra. Plus four, plus four, because it's got Augment. At the beginning of each end step,

if you roll to die this turn, Augment for Gene G. So the idea of this card is, first off, by the way, one of the things people forget sometimes is that Augments also usually make the creature bigger. Other than Squirrel that shrinks power, everything else makes it bigger. One of the reasons to play Multicolor Hydra, if for no other reason, is it's plus four, plus four. It turns your creature into a pretty big creature.

Your host creature, you know, like take Mother Kangaroo. You know, Mother Kangaroo, for example. Let's say even if you roll and get a one, so it's just a 2-2 creature. If you put Multihead Hydra on it, it's a 6-6 creature. And that's if you rolled a one on your die. So you can get really big. And there's a

lot of die rolling that goes on in this deck, especially if you care about die rolling. So this card actually can be pretty potent in a deck that's dedicated to it, but even in a deck where you don't have that many dice to roll, just the plus in a deck that's dedicated to it. But even in a deck where you don't have that many dice to roll, just the plus four plus four is often worth it. Okay, Ninja. So Ninja is another augment card.

So it's an uncommon creature. Ninja, plus one plus oh, because it's augment. You may activate Ninja's augment ability any time you can cast an instant. And whenever the creature deals combat damage to a player is the trigger. Augment for two and a block. So, if you guys remember our the little

I showed online, the one Dan made, the original card we made to demonstrate what was going on. Ninja was on that. I think Ninja worked, I think Ninja did not change. I believe Ninja was always played. I think Ninja worked I think Ninja did not change. I believe Ninja was always played as an instant. So you could surprise people. The idea what we liked a lot was

the Ninja trigger was when it deals damage. So it's a combat damage trigger and you can surprise people with it because it's a Ninja. So I like it. It's Mother Kangaroo. But wait, it's Ninja Kangaroo. That's another fun part about Augment is I love how

the names all click together. But anyway, and so we didn't have a lot of Augment that had special abilities to them. Ninja's one of the ones that we did. Zombie I'll get to later, and that one as well. But it just, the play value of

this thing is trying to do damage and you get a sneak and damage once, we thought was pretty cool. So anyway, I like Ninja. And Ninja is one of the ones we wanted to do early on and never changed. Novellamental. So this is a common creature. Elemental, 2-1.

It's cost 1 and a blue. It's got flying and it can only block creatures with flying. It's got high flying. So Novellamental is an interesting story. Originally, the plan was we were going to have a bunch of different variant cards. And Novellamental, we decided, would be the variant that had a flavor text variant.

So the joke here is, it's a vanilla creature, or almost vanilla, it's a high flyer. But it's got a lot of room for flavor text. And then it has four different variants, and over the course it tells a story about a special locket that turns its wearer into a special kind of creature. And the idea originally was that it was the only one that was going to have different flavor texts.

All the others were going to have art variants or rules variants, name variants, but this was going to be the one that had flavor text variants. And then when we did the art variants, we ended up giving them other flavor text. So this is one of the things like, oh, we made a mistake. I wish I could have fixed this.

And the mistake we made on this card is I would have liked this to have some art the thing I would have done in retrospect is had the book changed because it's a flying book the one in the art is Jane Eyre which I know Kelly was super happy to come up with

I think I want to come up with three other books that make sense to be a flying book just so there is an art variant between them since it's kind of weird now that this is the blue variant, but it does something the other ones do, and they have art variants. So of just things that kind of, the way

the dust settled, I was a little unhappy with. That's the card. But I do like, this card was called novellamental the entire time. When we first came up with the idea of having flavor text, we liked the idea that it's a little million novella, which is a little tiny story. And so novellamental was

the name we gave it. One of the things that happened is we named things in design. And then when we got to naming, Kelly and I worked through what names we think really work and are good names. Because in unsets, in more sets than most, we're building around names a lot of the time. So we talked about where do we think we can, like, where's the best name and where do we think we can improve? And then on sometimes also, Kelly said, this name's

good, let's go out and see if we can get a better name. And in some of those, sometimes we did and sometimes we didn't. So there were a few ones where we're like, oh, this is great, we're not going to beat it, there's no reason even wasting people's time. And there were some like, this is good, but maybe we can make it better. And on some of those, we found it better and we changed it. Some of those were like, you know what? This is the best name and we kept it. Novellamental was one of the ones I think we looked at other

names, but in the end, we just liked Novellamental. That's what it was, it was Playtest name. And it just seemed like a clean answer. Also, it required it being an elemental to be novellamental, and so I think we ended up feeling that that made a lot of sense. Okay, Numbing Jellyfish. So, it's a common host creature, a jellyfish, obviously. Two, three, three and a blue, so four mana total, one of which is blue. When this creature enters the battlefield, roll a six-sided die, and then you mill the top X cards of target player's library. Mill, of course, meaning put that

many cards from their library into their graveyard. So one of the fun things about this card is this is part of the host cycle, the ETB with a die-rolling effect. This is a neat card to build around because milling cards, milling X cards, can be really potent.

And I've actually drafted, I think, two different decks where I was playing a slow controlling deck and I had a number of jellyfish and then a bunch of augment. And the idea is I'm going to stall and I'm going to mill you out. I'm going to jellyfish you to death. And one of my decks did a really good job of doing that. And the other deck, I didn't quite get enough augment cards because Maria cut me off from Magic the Othering.

But anyway, it is definitely a fun card. Okay. Next. Your Jellyfish, by the way, is the one that if you stick it with Multi-Headed Hydra I said Octopus before. It's Numbing Jellyfish, by the way, is the one that if you stick it with multi-headed hydra I said octopus before, it's numbing jellyfish If you stick multi-headed hydra on numbing jellyfish

all the tentacles look really cool Oddly uneven, rare, sorcery, three white whites So five total, two of which is white Choose one, destroy each creature with an odd number of words in its name It has a little reminder text, hyphenated words are one word. That's just true. Or destroy each creature with an even number of words in its name. So one of the things we wanted to do is,

I like to have a lot of utility in the unsets, so I wanted to have a wrath effect. But I clearly wanted to do a wrath effect that we couldn't do in Black Border. So one of the things that we're not allowed to mess with is names. Now, in Black Border, you can refer to a name, cards named blah, that you can do. But what you can't do is care about qualities of the name. For example, this card cares about whether there's an odd

or even number of words in the title. We can't do that. And the reason we can't do that is that the way the rules work for Blackboarder is cards are equal to the equivalent of its English name. And so what that would mean is you would have cards that have an odd number of words in it because they're in another language, but because from a rule standpoint, it has to match the English, it would need to be what the English was.

So it's really kind of weird to say, well, I know the card in front of you literally has an odd number of words in its name, but the English version has an even number, so this is an even number. And that's just kind of disconcerting. So we don't do that. So unsets definitely make fun of what letters are in names, how many words are in the name, all sorts of stuff like that. And so this was a neat way to do a wrath effect.

That was something we just couldn't do in Black Border. Okay, next, Old Buzz Bark. So this is a mythic rare. It's a legendary creature, a goblin warrior, 3-3, X, red, green. So it costs X mana, X generic mana, and then a red and a green. When Old Buzzbark enters the battlefield, roll X six-sided dice onto the battlefield from a height of at least X inches.

For each die, put a plus one plus one counter equal to the result. On each creature you control, the die is touching. For each die Old Buzzbark deals damage to equal to the result to each creature an opponent controls do damage so basically what you do is you roll dice and the dice are going to land

on the creatures and if it's your creature you get that many plus one plus one counters if it's the opponent's creature it does that much damage and the idea is X determines the number of dice you roll and the height by which you drop the dice so as people have pointed out,

if X is large enough, and they figured this out online, you could destroy all humanity. So I don't say this a lot. It's a Civil War Rules Manager. But do try to think of the fate of the planet when picking X. Not a lot of cards you get to say that for.

This is one of them. There is a number large enough where... And by the way, because of things like Mach's Lotus, you can reduce the mana to do it. So be responsible, kids. Be responsible. Okay, so Old Buzzbark is the... The Goblins don't really have a leader. They're a little more...

They sort of all vote on things. They're sort of weirdly, what's the word? I mean, like kind of democratic in the purest sense of it. They don't even have representatives. They just vote on everything. I'm sure that's considered democratic.

But Old Buzz Bark is kind of the hero they all look up to because he is one of the most destructive goblins of all the goblin explosion airs. Like, he's really destructive. Like, really, really destructive. And in the goblin world,

that is something to look up to. So Old Buzz Bark is, from their way of thinking, somebody they look up to. Okay, Old Guard. Common artifact creature. Cyborg soldier. 2-1. One and a white.

So for white and tap, tap target creature without reminder text. And then the reminder text for that is, reminder text is still any italicized text in parentheses that explains rules you don't know. That is making fun of, we explained reminder text in a previous in Unhinged, I believe, and so this is making a throw to that. So this card, we're not allowed to care about whether or not you have reminder text in Black Border. That's another thing we can't care about, and the reason being that there are cards in which one version of the card might have reminder text and one might not. For example, if we reprint you in a basic set, in a core set,

you're more likely to have reminder text, even if you have a normal, you know. We will put reminder text on basic abilities in the core set. So it is possible that in a normal set you wouldn't have a reminder text, and in a core set you would. So under the rule of cards must all work the same, in Black Border we can't care about whether or not you have reminder text. So this seemed like

a cool place to do. And the kind of fun thing here is that it's another way to divvy up cards in a weird way. One of the things

I really love about Uncards is that I can make you care about things you just never care about. And like, oh, does this creature have reminder text? Like, you have to go look.

You know, it's not like you, it's not something you normally sort of think about when you divide up your cards. I think it's kind of cool. And I've seen interesting sideboarded games where somebody's running a bunch of these because it's common, and their opponent like sideboards out cards. Is it without reminder text?

Yeah, sides out cards. Or sorry, sides in cards with reminder text. Sides out cards without reminder text. So it's more impervious to this. The other thing that's interesting, by the way, is that when you augment things, I think most of the augment cards don't have reminder text. Not reminder text. Oh, I'm sorry. I said that backwards.

Augment does have reminder text because Augment has reminder text, whereas hosts don't have reminder text. So by augmenting things up, you protect them from old guard. Oh, another thing that I forgot to point out, or maybe I did point out, I just forgot that I did. Notice that all the cyborgs in colors are still artifact. They're artifact creatures because they've changed enough of themselves to be artifact, to be cyborgs that they're artifacts. So for example, this is not just a white card. It's a white artifact creature. This also helps

you because there's an artifact matters theme. So the fact that all the order of the widget are artifacts helps you play in the artifact theme. Okay, next. Old-fashioned vampire. So, creature, uncommon creature, it's a vampire, although spelled V-A-M-P-Y-R-E. Vampyr. Although it counts as a vampire for vampire tribal. 3-3, 3-black-black,

flying, old-fashioned vampire gets plus 2, plus 2, and has death touch as long as it's dark outdoors so the idea here is i played around in unhinge with a card that cared about what time of day it is so this card is playing in similar space the idea is a vampire and it's like oh well vampires are better off when it's dark outside it's dark outside um and so once again it's fun sort of caring about qualities you don't normally care about.

And so this card is like, oh, are you playing during the day? Eh, not quite as good. Playing at night? Oh, he's quite good. And there's some fun tournaments where usually you're playing at night and it's daylight out and then it gets dark. So your creature starts as not as good and then it gets dark. I had someone tell me a story of how they had this in their deck and they were,

like the whole game was about can I get to sundown before I die? Because once I get to sundown, this creature will be able to defeat them because they had like a small blocker that was a flyer and it got bigger to get by that. And so it was a game all about

will I make it to sundown, which I thought was an awesome un-game. Okay, next is Ordinary Pony. It's a common host creature. It's a horse, 2-3, costs 2 and a white, so 3 mana total, 1 of which is white. When this creature enters the battlefield, you may exile target non-horse creature you control that wasn't put onto the battlefield with this ability this turn, then return it to the battlefield under you may exile target non-horse creature you control that wasn't put onto the battlefield with this ability this turn, then return it to the battlefield under its owner's control.

So I'm reading you the Oracle text. That is, we had a change. This is the card that broke Unstable. This and Half Squirrel. So Half Squirrel, Half Pony allowed you to sort of infinitely blink things because Squirrel cares about when something comes into play and Pony's effect is that it blinks something, so you can just pick something

that has an enter the battlefield effect, any host creature, and then basically infinitely cycle it. If it was harder to do, we would have probably left it alone, but because this is a common and Squirrel's an uncommon, it just was a little bit too easy to do in Limited, and we didn't want all limited games coming down to an infinite combo to combo people out. So we had a rat in this card. So the card basically now

will flicker each unique creature once a turn. So you can flicker multiple times a turn with this card. You just can't flicker the same thing. You have to flicker different things. And by flicker I mean exile and then bring back at end of turn. Or is end of turn immediately? Oh, sorry.

It gets returned immediately. And the reason that we made this card was that because all the host creatures had enter the battlefield effects, this allowed you to trigger other host creatures, which I thought was a pretty cool ability. And in fact, it is a pretty cool ability. And there's just a lot of

synergy in the set with enter the battlefield effects. For various reasons, there's a lot of enter the battlefield effects. So it just, it plays well with it. Also, there are things in which you can interact with counters. There's a lot of

ways to interact with cool things. This is another card I think that always, it might not have been Ordinary Pony, it might have been something else Pony, card I think that always might not have been an ordinary pony. It might have been something else pony. But I believe this card was always a pony. We put non-horse because we didn't want it to blink itself because that causes shenanigans.

But anyway. It's funny that when we made this card, horse wasn't a big deal. We finally made a horse tribal card. Now people are all excited about horses. Next, Over My Dead Bodies. This is a rare enchantment. Four block block. Creature cards and graveyards can attack and block as though they were on the battlefield.

They can block or be blocked only by creature cards and graveyards. There are zombies in addition to the other types, and they have undeath touch, which is defined as if they would deal damage to a creature card, exile that creature instead. Basically, undeath touch which is defined as if they would deal damage to a creature card exile that creature instead basically undeath touch is death touch for cards in the graveyard meaning if i kill you you're forever gone and the graveyard that means you get exiled so this card was uh the design name for this card was zombie prom um and the earlier version of zombie prom uh was kind of like uh ether vortexortex, yet another Aether Vortex, where cards coexisted in both the graveyard and in play. And then that, we decided to only have one card

that carried over two zones and ended up making that Masterful Ninja. So we ended up doing something a little bit different, which is the idea of that your graveyard became its own zone. And so the idea essentially is, I'm now fighting, I have my living zone, and I have my dead zone. And so the idea essentially is, I'm now fighting, I have my living zone, and I have my dead zone. And the dead creatures get to

fight in the dead zone. The one reason I gave them undeath touch is just to prevent forever stalling. The idea essentially is anytime something that's dead damages another thing, that other thing's going to go away. So it keeps, it's sort of built in to make sure the graveyards don't get too cluttered.

But anyway, it is, and the reason they become zombies is for flavor. Although there are things that care about zombies, so there's some zombie tribal stuff you can actually do with it. But anyway, Zombie Prom is, it's one of those names I asked if we could keep, and then we sort of looked and ended up getting a better name, but I did like the name Zombie Prom is one of those names I asked if we could keep, and then we sort of looked and ended up getting a better name. But I did like the name Zombie Prom. Okay, Overt Operative. So it's an uncommon creature. It's a human ninja rigger.

It's a 2-3 creature for 3 and a black, so 4 mana total. It's got Menace. And whenever Overt Operative deals combat damage to a player it assembles a contraption so one of the things we definitely like doing with black's contraptions is black's contraptions are more about messing with the opponent

I kill the creature I get a contraption I deal damage to my opponent I get a contraption it's a little bit more some of the other colors are more just make contraptions black is kind of like I'm being sneaky and doing black sneaky things, and while I'm doing that, I'm kind of making my contraptions. So black has a little bit more of function you're trying to do to make it work, and it plays a little more into the theme.

But because of that, black definitely has a little more potency. Like this is a creature that can many times, you know, this card can, assuming you're able to get through, it could make lots and lots of contraptions, which is something that the other callers don't tend to do. But there's a little bit of a challenge. You have to hit them with the creature. So it's not a gimme, but it's something that you can definitely play around with. Okay.

Paniac. So Paniac is a common creature. Okay. Painiac. So Painiac is a common creature. It's a Brainiac. Zero, three. Costs two and a red, so three mana total. At the beginning of your upkeep, roll a six-sided die, and it gets plus X plus O until end of turn.

So the idea is every turn this thing has some amount of shift to it, but you never know until you roll it sort of how big it's going to be. Now, it's always a three-toughness creature. So no matter what it is, whether it's a one-three through a six-three, it's always a three-toughness. So your opponent knows how to deal with it, but it just sort of changes sizes. This is another of the Brainiacs.

Remember, Brainiacs all are part of the Big Idea's henchmen, and they all roll dice because the Big Idea has a dice-rolling theme. So if you want to make the Big Idea deck, it cares about Brainiacs. All the Brainiacs roll dice. And all the Brainiacs end up having Aniac in their name, like Paniac and Inhumaniac. Is there a third? It might be the only two Brainiacs. At one point, there was a third Brainiac. I don't remember if there's a third? It might be the only two brainiacs.

At one point, there was a third brainiac. I don't remember if there's a third. There might be a third brainiac. I'm blanking right now. Next, Party Crasher. It's an uncommon creature. Goblin Berserker, 3-3, costs four and a red. So five total, one of which is red.

It's got haste. And you can attack with Party Crasher once each combat during each opponent's turn. So this is one of the FAQ questions where I have the most spelled out. Like, what does it mean you can attack on your opponent's turn? This is something we joke about doing in Black Boiler all the time. If you go look at my FAQ, you can already see why this is a Silver Border card. The fun part about it is it is just so antithetical.

Like when your opponent goes, I attack, and you go, okay, now that you've declassified your attackers, I'm declaring my attacker. There's a lot of this. It's just a weird, quirky card. One of the things that's fun for me about uncards is making something that just takes you someplace and sort of looks in

weird rule space that is fun and functional, but weird. And this card is definitely one of those cards where, like, your opponent has to kind of... Because the way it works is they declare their attackers before you declare your attackers, so they know this can attack, so they have to be careful about what they attack with,

because if they attack with all their creatures, then they leave themselves open, assuming they have no vigilance creatures, they have no blockers, and then you can attack with a party crasher. Note, by the way, party crasher can attack normally. Party crasher doesn't have to attack on your opponent's turn. I think it's cool, so it would do that, but it doesn't have to do that.

Okay. Next, Phoebe, Head of Sneak. So it's a mythic rare, legendary creature, human spy. She's a 2-3, and she gots one blue-black. So three mana total, one blue, one black. So Phoebe had a sneak, can't be blocked by creatures with flavor text, and two blue-black, Phoebe permanently steals target creature's text box. And the reminder text says, that creature loses all rules text, flavor text, and watermarks. This creature gains them. So Phoebe basically literally steals text boxes.

Early on, we were trying to steal abilities and stuff, and it just didn't seem wacky enough. And so we came up with the idea of just outright steals the whole text box. Now, that requires us defining what it means and what you do without a text box. Remember I said there's like five cards that result in most of my rules questions? Phoebe's another one of those cards that results in lots of rules questions. Just because it allows you to take two text boxes that were never, ever, ever supposed to coexist and make them coexist. So there's a lot of, what happens when these two things coexist? So there's a lot of weird, quirky things that happen.

of weird, quirky things that happen. So Phoebe is the leader of the spies. So there's two characters in the spies. One is kind of like the shadowy leader, and one is like the super agent.

So X is the super agent. X is the James Bond, if you will, of the spies. Where Phoebe is more like the M, to use, I guess, my James Bond analogies. I think we originally planned her to be a little bit more secretive. Like, you don't quite know who she is because it's a spy organization, and the top spy is kind of like a secret. But I think in the world building, they came up with Phoebe, and they thought she looked pretty cool.

So we ended up made her a little less a little less mysterious I mean she still has some mystery to her I guess and go with the FAQ I'm not going to answer

all the questions here but what happens if you don't have a rules text box just things you can and can't do what happens if you have more than one text box and what if they contradict and all that stuff gets answered in the FAQ.

But anyway, I like Phoebe. Planes. So another full art land. I keep trying to give different tidbits on the full art land. I'm not sure there's another tidbit to give. We did, by the way, mess around with non-full art land.

We came up with a bunch of other interesting ideas. I might use them in the future. But when we realized we hadn't sort of pushed full art land to the full, it felt like we should finish doing full art land before we mess around with something else. We had one more thing to do with full art land. Or maybe we have more than one. I don't know. Maybe we'll figure out something else to do with it. But there are some other neat ideas.

So we didn't just look at full art land. We actually explored a number of other options. Rhino! So Rhino is an uncommon creature. It's an augment, so it's a Rhino and it's plus 1, plus 4. Whenever this creature blocks, an augment, 3 and a white. So the idea for this creature was, one of the things we like to do was mechanically make sure the creatures reinforce the play pattern you needed to make the card work. So for example, this creature needs to block. Okay, well let's make it a pretty tough creature so we can give it a bunch of toughness boost. So the idea is this creature gets plus one, plus four.

So even if you have a one, one creature, you now have a two, five creature. So now you have something that can block. And then if you augment it correctly, you might get some fun things about when you block. I think this is another one where we made a list of what are awesome creatures, where the front

half is awesome, and what are awesome creatures where the back half are awesome, and for Rhino, we're like, oh, the front half. You gotta have the horn. And so we ended up, and this was tricky because it's an augment card, so like, oh, the front half. You gotta have the horn. And so we ended up, and this was tricky because it's an augment card, so it has to be the front half, but it has to convey toughness.

It has to convey, it's something that would be, there's a reason that toughness would go up. And so we spent a little time thinking about this one, and in the end we realized that, oh, a rhino's pretty tough, and it's got the horn, so you want it in front, but it's pretty tough, so it makes sense that it's boosting your toughness. Okay, next. Riveting Rigor.

So this is a common artifact creature. It's a Cyborg Rigor. And it's 2-2, and it costs 2 and a white. When Riveting Rigor enters the battlefield, you may sacrifice another artifact. If you do, put 2 plus a simple counter on Riveting Rigor enters the battlefield, you may sacrifice another artifact. If you do, put two plus and plus counters on Riveting Rigor. Riveting Rigor. Riveting Rigor. Sorry. And it assembles a contraption.

So this is, there's a white card I already talked about that did this in, that did this in white. So there's a white card and a blue card that do the basic same thing. You stack an artifact, they get two plus and plus counters, and you then get to assemble a contraption. So they're there to sort of encourage you to make contraptions with the widgets and then they can get better and such. And we liked how they

played so much. I think it was, we originally had it in white and then we ended up putting it in blue as well just because it played really well. And so Riveting Rigger, by the way, is a play on Rosie the Riveter, which was a character in, not character, but it was an advertisement for World War II. And this is a nod to that. So the name is trying to help, the flavor text and the art and the name are all sort of playing toward that joke.

What we learned is not a lot of people know Rosie the Riveter because it's a pretty dated sort of reference. But anyway, if you're wondering why we don't make more World War II poster references, that is why. Okay, next, Robo. So Robo is an uncommon artifact creature. It's a construct, and it grants plus one, plus one. At the beginning of

each end step, if an artifact enters the battlefield under your control, and you get an augment, too. So we did rule that augments, augmented things for purposes of enter the battlefield, do count.

In Blackboard, it probably wouldn't work that way. I just, the thing that's unique about this flavor is normally when I'm adapting something and changing it, the thing is just changing, but here the flavor is I'm literally getting this other creature and attaching it. So when you say like, I have Rhino, like I'm kind of the Rhino's entering the battlefield

because the Rhino part wasn't there before. and so it felt a little bit different from normal. If this, if we did this in Black Border, we wouldn't do this silly flavoring to it, and so it probably would not work this way, but because of the flavor, we did rule that it's coming, entering the battlefield, so that means that Robo does trigger itself for those that care. Robo does trigger itself for those that care. Anyway, I'm now at Rachel's school because I'm dropping her off. So that 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.