Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #594: Dimir

Episode Date: November 30, 2018

This is the first of ten guild podcasts. I'll be doing five now and five when Ravnica Allegiance comes out. In this one, I talk about how we first created Dimir and the three guild mechanics.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, well today is the start of a new series. I'm going to talk all about the guild. So each guild will get its own show. I'm going to do five of them while Gates of Ravnica is out. And then I'll do five when Ravnica Legions comes out. And I'm going to talk all about the guild, how we made it, and then walk through all its incarnations in the three different times we did it. That's what I'm planning to do. So I'm going to go in order, but in order of the ones that are on the set.

So the first one would be Dimir. So let's talk about Dimir. Okay, so when we first decided we were going to do the guilds, what we were very excited about was trying to find the overlap. Like what happens when you have the sensibility of blue combined with the sensibility of black. So let's talk about that a little bit. So blue is the color that is all about wanting perfection. Blue believes that you can become anything you want to be given the knowledge, the training, the skill,

the tools. Anybody has potential to become anything. It's just a matter of you having the proper elements to do that. And so blue very much is looking to always better itself. It's very pro-technology. It's super pro-knowledge. It's pro-education. It's pro-teaching. That blue is always on the quest to find the best self that it could be. Okay, black. Black, very much about itself, about making sure that it can do what it wants to do. Black wants the free, not the freedom, it's more red. Black wants the power to do. Black wants, um, black wants the free, not the freedom, it's more red. Black wants the power to do what it wants to do. Black wants to, you know, black is what, the thing that sets black apart from the other colors is black says, look, I'm willing to do what it takes to get what I want. That whatever, you know, whatever I need to do, black will step up or sometimes lower itself to do the things that it needs to do.

And that black is really willing to take on the responsibility and do what needs to get done. OK, so what happens when you take blue sort of self-perfection qualities and blacks willingness to do whatever? Now, also, the other thing that blue is very big on is blue is big on knowledge. And blue realizes that knowledge is power, that from knowledge comes the ability to do things. So blue understands the importance of knowledge. Blue also understands that a lot of times

the way you win a fight is by your opponent not quite understanding what the fight is. Blue is into trickery. Blue is into misleading people. Okay, now we get to Black. Black is willing to do whatever it takes. And Black definitely also shares Blue's... Black likes to surprise people where it can. Black wants to always have the upper hand. So when you sort of get Black's pragmatic sense with Blue's willingness to sort of use information, we realized pretty quickly you got kind of a, somebody who thrives

on the things that people don't talk about. So one of the things we knew when we were building Ravnica and making the guilds was we wanted every guild to have some responsibility. What do they add to the city as a whole? What do they add to Ravnica? And what we realized for Dimir, what was pretty cool was that what they do is they run

the things that people don't talk about. The black market. You know, information dealing. If you need someone killed, they're the ones to talk to. You know, that they kind of manage the things that are important, but aren't on the surface. They're kind of the hidden things. Oh, another big misconception about Dimir. There's a lot of jokes as if there are only nine guilds and no one knows that Dimir exists as a guild.

That is not at all the case. There's a guild pack. There's ten guilds. What Dimir has done, there's ten guilds. What Dimir has done, it's not that no one knows they exist, is that they think that the Dimir guild is kind of past its prime.

That it is sort of just a remnant, a shadow of its former self. And that people know of Dimir, they just don't think anything of Dimir. That the image that Dimir likes to portray is that it's kind of a run-down guild that, you know, barely hanging on. That they're

just sort of, you know, weak and easily forgettable. So it's not that Dimir doesn't exist. It's that they've created this image for it that it is just something you wouldn't think twice about. It's not one of the power players. So whatever. It's the easily forgettable guild.

Not that it's not a guild, just that it's easily forgettable. But, in reality, they're the ones handling all the things beneath the surface. If you need to get something that's not easy to get, they can get it. If you need to know something that's not that easy to know, they can find out.

If you need to take care of a problem and permanently get rid of it, whether that is a thing or a person or whatever, they can do that too. So, Demir really thrives in sort of secrecy. So, when we're going to make Demir, one of the things we were trying to figure out is, okay, what exactly, how does Demir play? And one of the tricky things in general is black and blue are colors mechanically that don't overlap a lot. Like whenever we make hybrid spells, black and blue are the hardest spells to make hybrid out of

just because literally the amount of overlap they have is not particularly high. For example, they're the only guild right now or the only two-color pair that doesn't have a keyword that overlaps them. I will admit that red and blue and prowess are not looking good. But, you know, there is no black-blue overlap. I mean, there is, I guess, flying, but white and blue really are the flying colors.

I mean, black technically is flying, but it is not, you know, if you think of flying more being white and blues overlap, black and blue just doesn't really have anything. So one of the things that we were thinking about how black and blue plays is, well, white and blue is a very much a slow controlling deck. But black and blue also play a controlling deck, but their deck is much more about sort of card advantage. What I mean by that is black and blue is really good at sort of holding you off and while it's holding you off sort of slowly incrementing advantage over time but it does it slow and it does it you know you never the one of the cool things about black blue is if you don't

understand sort of the nuance of how magic works if you don't understand sort of the nuance of how magic works, if you don't really understand card advantage, you don't quite get how black-blue is beating you because they keep just doing little tiny things. They just have answers to your threats. But somehow they slowly are getting ahead of you. That whatever threat you have, they just have the answer for it. And the reason is,

is because of the card advantage, that they're just drawing more cards than you. And so they're more likely to have the answer for it. And the reason is, is because of the card advantage, that they're just drawing more cards than you. And so they're more likely to have the answer they need. So no matter what threat you throw their way, they always seem to have the answer. And their arsenal of answers, they can counter your spell. They can make you discard from your hand. They can destroy it in play. They can bounce it in play.

They can steal it. You know, there's all sorts of things that they can do. So black and blue have lots of resources to deal with things. A lot of threat answers. And that combined with the card advantage makes them sort of a deck that it's a control deck, but a control deck

that has a lot more aggressive qualities to it than say a traditional white-blue control deck. And the thing we liked about that, and the thing that played into the theme that we were doing, was black-blue tends to win, but in a way you don't quite understand how it wins. You know, that was always a quality that we played into in making Dimir. So one of the things that we also realized was black and blue, the one area of overlap mechanically we realized is they're the two colors that care most about the library.

So, for example, blue is the color that draws cards. I mean, black can also draw cards by paying life. Blue does a lot of filtering. There's a lot of scrying. There's a lot of sort of looking at the library. Blue has a little bit of tutoring in it so blue does a lot with information and a lot with sort of learning about the library

also blue can mill the library blue can mill the opponent's library which is put cards from their library directly into the battlefield actually it can mill its own library and the opponent's library depending on why you're doing that black likewise had a little bit of milling black had lobotomy which is to go into your opponent's library, depending on why you're doing that. Black, likewise, had a little bit of milling.

Black had lobotomy, which is to go into your opponent's library or extract and take out cards from it. Black has the ability to do some card drawing. Black's done a little bit of manipulation of the opponent's library so they can't get what they want. So anyway, we combine them. Also, black, obviously obviously is the number one Tudor in color.

You guys, demonic Tudor and stuff like that. So we said, okay, well, what if, we first started on, what if we made the library sort of the domain of Dimir, much like the graveyard was kind of the domain of Golgari. So when we were first working on it,

so Aaron Forsythe, who was on the original Ravnica team, came up with Transmute. So what Transmute is, is it's a mechanic that goes on in any card, really. And what it says is, if you pay the Transmute cost,

you could exchange this card for any card in your library. Not really exchange, I guess you discard this card and then you go get a card in your library, not really exchange, I guess you discard this card, and then you go get a card in your library that has the same converted mana cost. So if the card costs four, say three and a blue, you can go get any card in your library

that has a converted mana cost of four. And the idea being that, once again, that the strength of Dimir is utility. The strength of Dimir is it has what it needs when it needs it because it's planning ahead. It's smart. And it has, you know, the reason that black and blue are very dangerous

when you combine them is blue is very obsessed with understanding systems, with understanding how things work. You know, the reason that blue has counterspelling is it's the color that says, oh, if I'm going to fight against people casting magic, I want to understand magic. And I'm going to have magic that can work on that level.

I could just counter your spell. Because, hey, if you're making magical spells, what's the most important thing I can do? Be able to stop your magical spells. And black definitely has this attitude of whatever the cost is, I'll pay the cost. What do I need access to? I'll do what I need to do to get access to it. Okay, well combine those two together and it's a very potent combination.

And so we wanted demure to have that feel. And so the transmuted that I thought was pretty cool was it sort of said, hey, whatever answer black or blue needs, what Dimir needs, you know, it's going to go get that answer. And so as you play, it's going to sort of trade in cards to get the answer it needs. So it can, it can figure out a situation. It can play smart. Like one of the things about Dimir is, not that any psychographic can't play any guild, but each one leans towards a certain psychographic, and Dimir leans towards Spike. Dimir is very much about, you know, can I test myself?

Will knowledge make me the better player? You know, can I play the same deck and just play it better than other people? And then a lot of playing Dimir correctly is there's a lot of choices. Transmute definitely played into this, which is, you know, whenever I can choose to change this for something else, I have to know the correct thing to change it for. And I have to build my deck in a way that I have good answers for my Transmute cards so that I have the ability to turn what I need, you know, turn what I have into what I need. So transmute went over, I'd say, okay.

It's sort of middle of the pack. It wasn't disliked, wasn't loved. The biggest problem we had, sort of looking back, is R&D is soured a little bit on tutoring mechanics. And the main reason is that one of the things that makes Magic such a fun game is the fact that it always plays out differently. You know, the fact that you shuffle your deck is important. And what we find with tutor mechanics is that if you too often have the ability to go get what you need, it's just the games start playing out the same.

And that is not particularly fun. And so it's not that we don't have tutors. We still have tutors. A little bit of tutoring is fine, but we don't want tutors at the volume where there's enough of them that you're making a whole mechanic out of them. So when we went back and returned to Ravnica, or I think Dimir was in Gatecrash. When we went back,

we needed to find a different way, a different way to play with Dimir. So the other thing that, um, we sort of realized is the first time we were making Ravnica, um, we sort of, like, the original Ravnica, obviously, Ravnica, um, Guiltback Ascension was 4-3-3. Um, the first set was able, like like Dimir was in the first set so you weren't able to draft a Dimir deck

the problem was once you started drafting the second or third set there were so many different things you were drafting you started having to draft three color things and couldn't draft two color things so when we went to return to drafting we decided instead of doing 4-3-3 we'd make both sets large do 5-5

and then obviously Dragon's Maze came back with all 10 but we liked the idea that every set could be drafted We'd make both sets large, do 5-5, and then obviously Dragon's Maze came back with all 10. But we liked the idea that every set could be drafted, but recognize the fact that every set not only could be drafted by itself, but it could be drafted with the sets that are in the set within. So, for example, in Gatecrash, Dimir had Simic, so you could drop black, blue, green,

and it had, what was the other one? It had Orzhov, so you could do blue, black, white. And so the idea was, one of the things when we make Ravnica sets, and we kind of did,

we learned this as we designed the original Ravnica sets, and we kind of did, we learned this as we designed the original Ravnica, is how synergistic you need to be between them. Now, we did, original Ravnica, what we did in original Ravnica is we made the monocolor stuff very overlappy. So, for example, in original Ravnica, Dimir was there and so was, what was the other, it was blue, not blue-white, not blue-black, and, oh, I'm sorry, there was no other blue. That's a bad, black overlap. So Dimir and Golgari were in original Ravnica, so black overlapped. So we made sure that black played well both in Demir and in Golgari. The one thing we didn't do quite as much is

we did a little bit less of making all the mechanics overlap. Now, there was some overlapping, but we wanted to be more conscious. In Return to Ravnica, we were more conscious about making sure there was overlap. So Demir wasn't a tricky place because making the library matter, especially when you won't do tutoring, it's kind of hard to do that.

So, we were saying, okay, what can we do that's a little bit different with Demir? Is there a different aspect we can play up with? So, one of the things that we had played up the first time was we had done milling. So, one of the things that we realized overlapped between black and blue was that they are the two colors that mill. And that mill had a lot of that sensibility we liked about how you didn't quite know how you lost. And that what we found was black and blue having milling was this neat kind of plan

B for black-blue. That like it wasn't necessarily how they planned on winning, but it's one of the tools in their what we found was black and blue having milling was this neat kind of plan B for black-blue. It wasn't necessarily how they planned on winning, but it's one of the tools in their arsenal, which is if we're kind of stalling you out and then I realize I just get you low enough on cards, maybe I just mill you out. Maybe that's the way I beat you. It was another sort of interesting tool

for black-blue to win in a way that's a little sort of hard to fight against just because it's sort of a sideways strategy. So when we came back, the first thing we thought about when we came back is maybe we want to make milling the strategy for Demir. So the first thing we did in Gatecrash was, I don't remember the name of the mechanic, but we made a mechanic.

And the way it worked was, is it was, I'll call it forget. Forget N. And what that meant was, is it was, I'll call it forget. Forget N. And what that meant was, N was a number. You would, the person you milled would mill their library until they got that many lands. So, for example, if I forget three, or forget two, let's say. Forget two is, I mill until I reveal two lands. Now, maybe that means I mill two cards. Maybe it's land, land, stop. Maybe I mill eight cards before I get it, you know. And the thing we liked about it was

it had some uncertainty to it. But in the big picture, look, the opponent, like in limited, for example, is going to have 17 lands roughly. So we kind of knew, you know, like by using lands, we knew the increment of how much it was going to take in big picture, but there was fun swings in the small picture that you might not know. It created a little bit of tension. One of the things I've also learned in general is that when you don't specifically know the outcome, there's more of an emotional sort of ride on it. Like if I know I'm going to mill two, I'm like, okay, okay, he's going to mill me two.

But I mill something, and it could be two, but it could be eight. I'm like, okay, okay, he's going to mill me two. But I mill something, and it could be two, but it could be eight. I'm like, okay, I hope it's two, I hope it's two. Like, you worry about it, and there's a little bit of, like, drama when you play it out, and it's just kind of fun. But the problem we ran into was that we really were trying to make sure

that the guilds were overlapping with the guilds on each side of them. So in Gatecrash, like I said, we had Orzhov and we had Simic, and we were trying to make Dimir play with both those. And the mechanics we were playing around with, really, it was hard to make milling overlap because there's just not enough things, you know, the mechanics, like me milling you out just didn't have a lot of synergy with Golgari doing what he was doing, you know, the mechanics like me milling you out just didn't have a lot of synergy with Golgari doing what he was doing, you know

and we tried, I mean there was a little bit of overlap I mean Golgari likes you milling yourself, because Golgari tends to be active in the graveyard so we tried doing that, maybe you wouldn't mill yourself, and then we tried with Orzhov, it was really hard to line up with Orzhov and in the end, what we decided was

we would use this mechanic in the set. It does show up on some individual cards, but it wouldn't be the named keyword mechanic. It just would be a ride or something we did on a little bit smaller scale. When you do a keyword, you have to, you have a certain, you usually have to do at least like eight cards when you do a keyword in a guild. Usually about eight to 12 cards is about what we do in a guild. Sometimes we'll do a little bit more, but try not to do too much less than that. So anyway, we needed to come up with something else because that just wasn't working. So the thing we ended up sort of centering on was one of the things we play into is black and blue. One of their overlaps is they have a lot of evasion. Not the same evasion, making it hard to

make hybrid cards, but there's a lot, you know, blue, for example, has flying and it has unblockable and it had an island walk. And blocked had, at the time, this is pre-Menace, it had I think it was after fear.

Anyway, it had some version of fear. It had some unblockable and now it would have menace. You know, it had some version of fear. Anyway, it had someone black about it, and now it would have menace. You know, it also was flying. It had swamp walking. It had a bunch of different evasions at a time. And so, you know, one of the things that we realized is the idea of black sneaking in and, like, obviously there were spies in Dimir.

They were getting information. There were assassins in Dimir that could kill things and so one of the things we ended up doing a lot in original Dimir is making a bunch of saboteurs. Saboteurs being R&D slaying for creatures that when they deal combat damage to an opponent do something. So we liked the idea of maybe what if we did like sort of make your own saboteur? And so the idea was we'd have spells. When you cast the spell, you then exile it and sort of connect it to a creature. And then whenever that creature deals combat damage to a player, that effect goes off again. And the idea being that I get to do it once for free because I get to cast it. And if I'm kind of smart about the first time, I can sort of get it on a creature when you're not necessarily expecting to block

or maybe when I know I have an invasive creature. And so a lot of times, I can get in two times to do the ability. And then if I'm lucky, maybe even get in more. So it's called Cypher. So Cypher, I liked a lot conceptually. I was really proud when I came up with it because it's a pretty cool-sounding idea and ability. What ended up happening was it was just a lot narrower than we expected.

So the problem was that it only happened when you did combat damage. So it had to be something that mattered post the combat. And just that limited the number of things you could do. Things that would affect creatures in combat, nope, too late to do that. So the number of things that black or blue could do that was like, oh, well,

at the time that this would most likely happen, it means something to you. Like, affecting creatures other than maybe a plus one, plus one counter that's more permanent just didn't matter. So, okay, you can draw cards. They discard cards. You know, we found some things, but we were running out of space. And we, like one of the signs that the mechanic is not very deep is

we were stretching in the very first time we did the mechanic. There's a couple cards, like we had one card where you were changing color words. We hadn't done that in ages. We're just like, what can blue do that we haven't done yet? You know, so we were, like, digging way, way deep in the bag. And that was a good sign that we had sort of stretched it. Now, maybe, I guess, once as a mechanic, you know, but there's no way we could go back to it. There's no way, you know, it is, it really got used up.

There's no way we could go back to it. There's no way, you know, it is, it really got used up. Once again, the mechanic, it wasn't that it was hated or anything, but it wasn't beloved. And it did okay. So one of the challenges coming back was, like, one of the things that we were willing to do was we were willing to bring back mechanics, both guild mechanics and non-guild mechanics. But Dimir definitely had two mechanics, neither of which we really to bring back mechanics, both guild mechanics and non-guild mechanics. But Dimir definitely had two mechanics, neither of which we really would bring back. Transmute, because we don't do tuning mechanics anymore,

and Cypher, because the design space is not deep enough to make more cards. So we needed to do something different. So the idea that we really played around with a lot in vision design was the idea that we really played around with a lot in vision design was the idea of... We called it disguise. So we realized there's a mechanic called ninjutsu, which was in Betrayers of Kamigawa.

It went on ninjas. You see, ninjas are sneaky. And so the way it works is, if you attack with an unblocked creature, you can pay the ninjutsu cost in your hand and then exchange those creatures. The flavor, by the way, is not that the ninja was dressed up like an elephant, which people made a lot of fun of that.

It's the ninja's using magic and it looks and feels and all your senses believe it's an elephant. It was just dark ninja magic and it's really a ninja. It was using magic. It was just dark ninja magic and it was really a ninja. It was using magic. But anyway, ninjutsu wasn't black and blue.

Oh, here's a fun mechanic that maybe we could revamp and it's in the right colors and it's sneaky. One of the things we had done early on is we wrote down for every guild every mechanic that currently existed that could be done in that guild.

And Ninjutsu was definitely a slam dunk for Dimir. It felt very Dimir. Now, the problem was Ninjutsu was a name that didn't really make sense in Dimir. A little too Kamigawa in its name.

But we liked the idea and then we thought maybe we could tweak a little bit. Since we had to give it a new name anyway, we could tweak it some. So the idea of disguise was that you exchange, you straight up exchange. What that meant was the creature in play became the creature in your hand, and the creature in play went back to your hand. And the creature in play, whatever was true of the creature you had, was it enchanted?

Was it equipped? Did it have encounters on it? All that was true. It didn't... All you were doing is sort of morphing the creature that you had, but all the qualities it had stuck to it. It still was the creature

as far as the game was concerned. The problem we ended up having was that it was a little bit complex. Nowadays we make sets, we make what I'd say three and a half mechanics per large set, which means we tend to make

three or four. In order to do Ravnica in the way we did Ravnica it required five, or it was pushing things a little bit. So we definitely knew we wanted simpler mechanics

for our guild mechanics. And Disguise ended up being not so simple. Um, there are some other issues with it, but I mean, the complexity was probably enough to sink it. Um, so anyway, they wanted to come up with something new. Uh, and this was in, this was in set design. Um, uh, we hand, Vision handed off disguise. Um, so what happened was, so Eric Lauer led the set design. Um, so Eric was looking at what the

other mechanics around it were doing, because obviously in this set, Dimir had a play nice with Golgari, and Dimir had a play nice with Izzet. So Golgari had mechanical undergrowth. It counted the number of creature cards in your graveyard, and then did different things with that number. Izzet had Jumpstart. Jumpstart was a flashback-like mechanic. They're instants and sorceries that if you discarded a card, you could cast them out of your graveyard. So what Eric realized was that both the mechanics cared about the graveyard.

They had cards that were active in the graveyard. And Eric realized, much as we had talked about early on, that, yeah, Dimir is about information. Dimir very much wants to be sneaky and wants to learn things. And, you know, the library is kind of the heart of where they overlap. So Eric came up with an interesting idea, which is, so what if we basically take Scry, but instead of going to the bottom of your library,

what if we went to the graveyard? He called it Surveil. And the idea was, it did all the stuff that Scry does as far as setting yourself up, maximizing your draw, making sure you're more likely to get what you need, which is a Demir's thing. But also, it helped set up the guilds that were around it. So by discarding cards, you could discard a creature, now your undergrowth number is larger. Or you could discard a card with jumpstart. Now the jumpstart card is sitting in your graveyard and you can cast it out of the graveyard. It allowed you to sort of have access and

it played with the other guilds in a way that was synergistic. Now, a lot of the same things, we still wanted saboteurs, we still wanted milling. There were a lot of other things that played in that space. But the one thing that surveil did is it really allowed Dimir to set itself up to get what it needs. Let's use milling as a good example. Milling is one of these strategies

that sometimes is the way you're going to win and sometimes is not at all. You know, it's like, like I talk about being very plan B. Well, sometimes like, okay, this is a route to victory. Every time I get a milling effect, I'm that much closer to winning the game. And other times, it's like, oh, I'm not, like, I'm going to win some other way. A million cards a dead draw to me, I don't want that. And one of the dangers of cards like that is the last thing you want is to draw that card, we don't need it. So one of the nice things Surveil does, it allows you to sort of play things that are a little bit more situational

and then have some control about when and how you draw it. So, like, if I have a few million cards in my deck, you know, with Surveil, if I really don't need them, I cannot draw them. But if I need them and they're important, I can draw them. So, Surveil does a very good job of getting that quality that we always want to get to Dimir, of Dimir sort of having the tools it needs in the moment it needs them. So Surveil does a very good job of getting that quality that we always want to get to Demir, of Demir sort of having the tools it needs in the moment it needs them. That's the stock and trade of Demir, is that it has what it needs when it needs it. And it has a lot of tools in its arsenal to sort of fight. And the other thing that this all sort of plays together is that

Demir, because it has so many unique different tools, but that are situational, you never quite know what Dimir is up to. That it's hard to defend against Dimir because you don't quite know... Like, Dimir has a couple different ways it might beat you, and so it sort of has a lot of incremental ways to get advantage, and that it's hard to fight against Dimir.

That's also why I think a lot of the better players really enjoy playing Dimir, in that Dimir, you know, Dimir piloted by a really good player becomes very hard to fight against. Because, you know, if you're playing against Boros, for example, look, Boros' strategy is very upfront and straight. It's going to attack you with lots of creatures until it beats you, you know. And you sort of know what it's up to and what you're trying to stop. But Dimir, not so easy.

And that's one of the fun things. One of the things I like a lot about the guilds in general is, and one of the reasons I think they've been so successful, is that it is neat to sort of subdivide up and say, hey, the color pie to me is obviously the heart of the game. And so one of the geniuses of the guilds is like, okay, let's just take the color pie and go next level with it, which is instead

of the five basic colors, now we have the ten combinations. And each combination has a really unique feel to it. Now, I should stress by the way, that the way we played out the guilds is not the only way you can play the colors. There are other

ways to do black and blue that are different. And that this Dimir for example definitely tends to be a little bit more blues tools to reach black's ends.

That Dimir is a little bit more about power than it is about perfecting itself, for example. But you can imagine having a black-blue tribe, for example, the reverse, where they're all about perfection, but they'll do whatever it takes to be the perfect version of themselves. You know what I'm saying?

That's not really where Demir is going. But you could go that way. But there are different ways that you can play up the color combinations the thing I think we did with Ravnica was we kind of hit the lowest hanging fruit

you know it was the first time we did it so we had access to whatever we wanted now when we do more color combinations we're more conscious like one of the things is

and this wasn't blue-black, but like, when we went to Ixalan and we had a white-black vampires and we had blue-green merfolk, we made very, very sure

that what they were were not, for example, the appropriate guilds. That the vampires of Ixalan were not just Orijab or the merfolk

were not just Simic. That was important. But anyway, I hope, so the goal of these podcasts is to, I mean, if you care about black and blue with colors, I've previously done podcasts about all the two color pairs.

And that podcast is much more about what is blue and what is black and what does blue like about black and what does black like about blue and what do they agree on and what do they disagree on. And if you really are into that about black and blue, I've recorded that podcast. You can go

listen to it. And those exist for all 10 color pairs. This podcast was more specifically about the history, about Demir, about how we made Demir, about what Demir means, how we did the mechanics and stuff. So for those, I didn't really explain that up front. For those that were wondering why this wasn't me just recreating my blue-black podcast, and that was more about blue and black as a whole. I talked a little bit about Dimir in that, but this one was more specifically about the history of Dimir.

And like I said, I will get to all the other guilds. So I'm almost to work. How are we doing? Not too bad. Not too much traffic today. So to wrap up, one of the things that is fun about making Dimir is that it has access to a wide variety of different answers and that there's a lot of unique things that Dimir gets to do.

The biggest downside to Dimir is blue and black, while there is some elements of synergy to them, they overlap the least. You know, they are definitely, it is tricky to make hybrid cards, for example. We tend to make hybrid cards in sets like Ravnaga. Hybrid cards are always tricky with black-blue.

You know, it is definitely, I mean, I have fun making Dimir cards. But I will admit that, like, Dimir is a bit of a challenge. Like, for example, Dimir and Golgari, for some reason, are the two guilds that we tend to have the most trouble making mechanics for. You know, I talked about how we made Disguise. And, I mean, we went through a lot of different things when we were trying to sort of make Dimir.

Dimir really is one of the trickiest guilds to build for and it's fun and I like their identity and I do think they have a really cool feel about them. But just the nature of what they are and the tools at their disposal and how they combine it is tricky. I mean there's a few staples. One of the things about having designed a lot of multicolor cards is there's a few staples like one of the things about having designed a lot of multicolored cards is there's a few basic things we've learned we know kind of where

black and blue shine and we know where there's similar overlaps or sometimes it's neat to do parallels or reflections blue draws cards, black discards cards, stuff like that anyway, it is Dimir is definitely one of the trickier

guilds to build. But it's fun, I like Dimir, and I think this time we made a very cool version of Dimir. So hopefully you guys are, I mean,

by the time this comes out, you guys should be playing. So anyway, that is all I have to say about Dimir. And I'm now at work. So we all know what that means.

I mean, 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.