Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #607: Unique Creature Types

Episode Date: February 1, 2019

In this podcast, I examine the many creature types that are unique to the game of Magic.

I'm pulling up my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so today's topic was suggested by someone on my blog. So I'm going to talk about all the creature types in magic that are unique to magic. So let me clarify that a little bit. So I'm talking about the things that have creature types. So things like Leonin or Loxodon, which are kind of magic-created things, at least the names are magic-created, those aren't creature types, right? Leonin are still cat. Loxodon are still elephant. So I'm taking every creature type that I believe is unique to magic.

Be aware, I will give you the warning that I did the best I can. It's a long list. If I forgot somebody, I can. It's a long list. If I forgot somebody, I apologize. And there are a bunch of things on the list that are kind of fuzzy, in that some of them are kind of inspired by things, and so I'm trying to get ones that are uniquely ours. There's a couple I'll talk about that maybe owe themselves to other things, I'll mention that. But anyway, I'm going to go in alphabetical order, so these aren't in any order of importance, just alphabetical order. So we start with the Aetherborn. So Aetherborn are from Kaladesh.

So the Aetherborn came about because we were trying to figure out how black played into the world of Kaladesh. And that one of the things we wanted to do was we wanted to have each color sort of represent an aspect of the energy ecology, if you will. And so we decided that black were sort of the users, the ones who used up the energy. And the problem we were running into with black is that a lot of our normal races, like zombies, oh, it's a happy inventor world. Zombies, it didn't really fit. And even vampires in a traditional sense didn't fit.

So we came up with a brand new creature type and the idea was these creatures are byproducts of the energy creation process that take on sentient form and the interesting thing about them is they don't last very long. Their lifespans are short.

And because of that, they have a very sort of live in the moment, do what needs to get done sort of thing. I do admit in a vacuum, the Aetherborn have both some black and red elements to them. They filled the black in this set

because that's where we had that's where we had that's where we had the ability to, that's where we had open. And the idea that they sort of have just so much time means that they also have the ability to

suck energy off other things. So they have a little bit of a vampire feel. So we also felt that felt pretty black. The other thing we chose to do was make them non-gendered because they don't sort of... They're produced by the off-put of energy.

So they don't have to make each other, essentially. There's no reproduction, per se. Anyway, so the Aetherborn were pretty popular. A bunch of different factors. There was a very different take on black. It was an entire race that wasn't gendered. And they had an interesting sort of... How they worked is kind of cool.

So anyway, they were very popular. So will we see the Aetherborn again? I think we will if we have a place to put them. Right now they're pretty tied to Kaladesh because they're a creation of the energy. But if we found another world where they made sense, they were very, very popular with the players. Next, the Azra. So these are the purple skin creatures found on Battlebond, on Kyrim, which is the world of Battlebond. And I think when we made these, I don't know if

they were originally even made for Battlebond. I think they were creatures that had a kind of cool look about them. I know there's some influences from, I think, like Tieflings from Dungeon Dragons. But anyway, we were trying to have sort of a different race, a different look to them. Sort of a humanoid-ish look, but just a different sort of, I don't know,

visual sensibility to them. And we put them in Battlebond. I think the idea is if players liked them, we might find a home for them somewhere else. And while they weren't quite as popular as Aetherborn, that's more of... I mean, Aetherborn were a standard legal set and Battlebond was not.

So I think the Azura were probably popular enough that if we find a home for them, maybe we put them somewhere else. They're very distinctive looking creatures and they're kind of cool. Okay, next is the Beeble! So, the Beeble, interestingly, first showed up not in a card set, but on the cover of the Duelist magazine.

So what happened was, the Duelist, by the way, is a magazine Wizards used to put out dedicated to magic, and I was editor-in-chief for many years. So this came about, we asked artist Jeff Mirancola to draw a picture of Squee for the cover. Squee is the goblin from the Westlight Saga who is kind of humorous. He's comic relief. So we knew we wanted a funny cover. So he made him covered by these pink creatures that's swarming him. And they were adorable. So we asked

Jeff if he could include some of them in some of the pictures he was doing for Urza Saiga block. And so, anyway, they appeared for a while in a bunch of different sets. Usually in number they were swarming. And usually Beebles had some unblockability aspect to them traditionally. That's one of the defining mechanical traits of Beebles. And then it was decided by the creative team that they were like, whatever the line is that's too silly, that they crossed over and they were a little too silly.

So I started putting them in unsets. So there were beevils in unhinged. There were one beevil in unstable. It's something I plan to keep alive in silver border just because I like the beevils. So the beevils have definitely, they carry on but they're not anymore in black border. Next, the brushwag from Mirage. Now, there's only one Brushwag, although I get asked for more Brushwags.

So the Brushwag, it's this weird-looking creature. It's this creature that looks like it was eaten by a ball of spikes or something, but I think it has spikes on it. Anyway, it's this creature. I think it's a unique creature. If there actually are tales of the brushwork in other mythologies, I apologize.

But anyway, it was this weird creature. It was at a time... Nowadays, we tend not to give every creature its own creature type. We're more likely to call it a beast or something. But it got its own creature type, and we've kept it maybe out of

people seem to get a kick out of the brushwag the brushwag is definitely one of those creatures that the card itself is not particularly strong there's only one of them but it definitely is something that has captured imaginations maybe because it's odd sounding

okay next the cammerid which is connected to the Hamarid, both of which are from fallen empires. So one of the themes of fallen empires is that each there were five civilizations, each that were suffering from sort of infighting and the merfolk had a problem with the homerids. And the homerids were kind of like,

I think, lobster people. And then the camerids are, I think they're babies. Camerids only show up in tokens. I think the only way to get a camerid is as a token type. And that's only because there's only one or two cards that use Camarid tokens. Homarids, I think we had a Homarid when we went back in Dominaria.

We had one Homarid just as a throwback. There's one very passionate Homarid fan who sent us a puzzle begging for the return of Homarids, and we threw him a bone in Dominaria. But anyway, some of these have been very popular. Camerids and homerids have not been particularly popular. I think we did one as a return to, like, a throwback to the small minority that seemed to have a love for the homerids.

But not one of the creature types that players were clamoring for more of. Next, Cephalid. So Cephalids were from Odyssey. So we decided in Odyssey, or we, I guess that's something I decided, but people went along with it, to try to not do our normal creature types, just to mix it up a little bit, do some different creature types. So instead of goblins, we did dwarves. Instead of elves we did centaurs and squirrels. Instead of merfolk we decided to make a new creature type.

But we ended up, because the story needed things under the sea, I'm not sure why we didn't use merfolk, but we ended up not using merfolk so we made cephalids. And cephalids were kind of like squid people, I think. Once again, when we decide to make a race and name them uniquely and give them a creature type versus when we make an animal race

that we just call the animal and the creature type, usually, if they pre-exist in mythology, like a minotaur, okay, that makes sense. We're playing into known mythological stuff. Why this, like, cephalids get their own name, you know, I don't know. I'm not sure. But anyway, the cephalids existed.

They were not particularly popular. Most of our underwater things were not particularly popular. I don't really know what... I don't know. I'm not sure quite what caused... I mean, it's something we tried. It was not particularly popular. We didn't... We haven't really done more cephalids. Okay, now we get to the Delphi. So let's talk about the Delphi, the Sultari, and the Thalacos.

Okay, so in Tempest, the story of Tempest is that Wrath, the plane of Tempest, is an artificial plane made by the Phyrexians as a means to invade Dominaria. The master plan is that they're going to offload all their enemy ships and everything onto Wrath, and then they, I'm not sure how they did it, but they overlaid Wrath onto Dominaria. So rather than travel through something, it just, the two planes merge. But in order for that to happen, they had to make an artificial plane.

They ended up filling it with creatures they plucked from other worlds. The core, the Vek, the core, the core of the Vek and the Dahl are the three races. Although, the Vek and the Dahl, I think, are mostly human. The core are not. We'll get to the core in a minute. But anyway, three races got trapped in between in this process. And were not fully unwrapped, but partly there. They were trapped in between in this process and were not fully on Wrath, but partly there. They were trapped in the Shadow Realm.

Yes, these were the creatures with shadow. So, Shadow was in black, blue, and white. The black creatures with shadow were the Delphi. The blue creatures with shadow were the Thalacos. And the white creatures were the Sultari. Each one of these got their own creature type. Sultari. Each one of these got their own creature type and the only place they show up is in Tempest block on Shadow Cards.

Each one is its own race. In theory, we could visit any of the races. One day we could visit a plane like, oh, it's Fidelthia here. The Core, which were one of the races that were on the world, not trapped, not in shadow. Um, the core, uh, we ended up when we went to Zendikar, jump ahead here. The core is when we went to Zendikar, um, we said, you know, hey, remember the core and we introduced them on Tempest? What if this was their home world? And we ended up introducing the core or reintroducing core, as being native to Zendikar. Maybe one day we do that with the Dauphi

or the Sultari or the Thalacos. If we do that, some of their look is based on the fact that they're trapped in the Shadow Plane, you know, or the Shadow Realm, so they might not look exactly like they do in those, because some aspect of their look is based on the shadow part of it. But anyway, I don't get a lot of requests for more Delphi, Sultari,

or Thalacos. It's a long time ago, and I mean, I think people have asked about the return of shadow more so than asked about the return of these races. Because the races, well, they each have a distinctive look. Tempest was the first time we brought in artists to sort of build our world,

like the first world building, if you will, was for Wrath, for Tempest. But I don't know, I mean, well, they had a distinctive look. I don't get a lot of requests for it. Okay, next, Eldrazi. So they first show up, well, they first get mentioned in Worldwake and first show up in Rise of the Eldrazi so they first show up well they first get mentioned in Worldwake and first show up in Rise of the Eldrazi so what happened was we were going to go to

Zendikar and the plan was we were going to stay there for two sets and then the third set was going to be a large set somewhere else with brand new mechanics and the creative team at the time didn't have the staffing to make two worlds so they said well what if we come up with an event that's so dramatic that it changes the world in a big enough way

that it justifies us changing the mechanics? So the idea they came up with was this ancient race that was trapped, that had been trapped inside the plane and that a lot of the reaction of the plane was based on these things being trapped inside it. And then in the last set, they would be released, and that, oh, I'm sorry, um, I said Zendikar, it's not Zendikar,

it is, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Rado Dazi is Zendikar, it is Zendikar, sorry. Um, I was correct. Um, the idea that they would eventually get released, and then, um, you know, the whole set would be about them, and it would not focus on the mechanics of Zendikar. Um, so the idea was, the Odrazi, there were three titans, three legendary creatures, which were Emrakrul, Kozilek, and,

um, Ulamog. Um, and then they had a lot of offspring that ended up using the creature type as well. Um, the Odrazi, the, the, the Titans were very popular. The, the smaller creatures, a little less so. Um, obviously when we went to battle for Zendikar, we went back to Zendikar. We sort of picked up the war between the, the denizens of Zendikar, the Zendikari, and the, um, Eldrazi. Um, so the gate crash, uh, so Jace and Chandra and company, uh, they ended up, uh, killing Ulamog and Kozilek, uh, and then Emrakul got trapped in the moon on Innistrad. Um, so, I don't know what's going on right now.

The Eldrazi are, for the time being, they're gone. I mean, two of them are dead. One of them is at least trapped, but trapped at their own hands. I don't know what that means. But anyway, it definitely was something that the Eldrazi become one of the major magic villains. And it's interesting for us in that it's, you know, both the Eldrazi and the Phyrexians are sort of magic made. The Phyrexians are sort of a creature type, so I don't talk about them today. Maybe they should have, but they don't. But anyway, that is the Eldrazi.

Next, Kabuk. So these showed up in Invasion. So we normally make beasts on all sorts of different worlds, and traditionally we make the beasts, we just call them beasts. Like, there are a lot of different kinds of beasts that have different names, but not all of them have creature type. A lot of them are just grouped together as beast or something, or whore. We have a couple big categories we'll group things in.

But for some reason, we named them, and we gave them a creature type. And that made, I don't know, for some reason people became very endeared with them. I mean, there were a couple, Flametongue Kabu and Kabu Titan were both powerful Kabus that showed up in tournaments, especially Flametongue. So it didn't hurt that we had a couple

high-profile ones that got played a lot. We went back to Dominaria and made sure to have Kabu. As far as I know, Kabu only appear on Dominaria. That's the only place I know of them ever appearing. But we went back to Dominaria and they were still there, so

at least for Return to Dominaria we should see Kabu. Some of our made-up creatures have shown up on Otherworlds, like Kabu could go to Otherworlds and hey, just like there's elves there, there's Kabu there. There's not much... Nothing that ties Kabu together, other than they're bigger. They're bigger creatures. You know, they tend to be creatures that most often show up as you know, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5. I mean, there's a few that Kabu tied that might start small

but can get bigger. But anyway, that's the Kabu. Kabu are pretty popular. Okay, next, the Kithkin. So the Kithkin first showed up in Legends on like Amru Kithkin, which was a singular card. I think the Kithkin were kind of,

fantasy has, it's a trope in fantasy to have like kind of little creatures. D&D has halflings. In Tolkien, there's a trope in fantasy to have like kind of little creatures. D&D has halflings. In Tolkien there's the hobbit. The hobbits. So this was kind of our take on that, on

sort of the tiny creature. When we went to Lorwyn, we decided not to have humans. So to sort of fill in that gap we decided that we kind of really do Kithkin. And so we really fleshed them out, gave them a more distinctive look than they had in Legends. They ended up looking a little bit creepy. A lot of the ones I mentioned today, a lot of sort of Magic's unique creature types, have become

very popular with the players. Kithkin, not so much. They're fans obviously of anything, but a lot of people were creeped out by the Kithkin. They had these beady little eyes. And while they were the slightly happier version on Lorwyn when you got to Xandakar, not Xandakar, to Shadowmoor, they got even creepier. So anyway, Kipkin was something that we had done, but it was not I don't know, it was not super popular. I mean, we might see them again. I mean, they're definitely part of magic, but

of the creatures I'm talking about today, they weren't quite as popular as some of the others. Okay, the Lurgoyf. So Lurgoyf is from Ice Age. So Ice Age had this Scandinavian, Nordic sort of flavor to it. And they were trying to get creatures that sort of flavor to it. And they were trying to get creatures that sort of had that feel. To the best of my knowledge, Lurgoyf wasn't based on anything.

I mean, it was trying to get a certain sensibility, but it wasn't based on a particular creature, to the best of my knowledge. And anyway, Lurgoyf became popular for a couple... A, the creature wasn't bad. And back in the day, Valurgoif saw some play.

Valurgoif are creatures that are power and toughness. Well, original Valurgoif was, its power is equal to the number of creature cards in your graveyard, and its toughness in all graveyards. And your toughness is that number plus one. And Valurgoif had this fun flavor text, which was Akhan's Run. It's the Lurgoyf last words of Safi Eriksdottir.

That flavor text was so beloved, especially by me, that it inspired numerous cards. We made a card called Safi Eriksdottir. We made a card called Akhan's Run. Safi was in Time Spiral. Akhan's Run was in Unhinged. Not a lot of pieces of flavor text that inspired multiple cards.

Also, it inspired us to make more Lurgoys. In fact, in Odyssey, we had a cycle of Lurgoys where every color got one. So all of them were... I think I made them Star Star. I don't like Star Star plus one.

Star Star. And then they had an extra ability that was in color for them. The interesting thing was, I was in charge of naming and flavor text for Odyssey, which meant I was in charge of creature types. The way it works is the person who does the names and flavor text also does the creature types.

Creative has call on the creature types, except where mechanically it's relevant in design. Works with creative. Like if a car does oh no, it needs to be a goblin to work, we mark it and then they make it a goblin. But if it can be anything, it doesn't matter what it is. The creative has, you know, the creative is figuring out the card concept and goes, oh, well, based on this card concept, oh, this must be this. So we had this cycle of Lurgoyf in

Odyssey. I was trying to figure out whether or not to use the creature type Lurgoyf the reason to do it was these were Lurgoyfs they were Lurgoyfs mechanically speaking and I think creatively speaking we were making them look not exactly, but in the ballpark I think we gave them a little bit different look in Odyssey. But anyway, the problem is Lurgoyf is spelled L-H-U-R-G-O-Y-F. Very few people can pronounce it correctly.

In fact, there's some people listening to this podcast going, oh, oh, it's Lurgoyf. And I, one of the rules when you do names in flavor text and creature types is you want things to be pronounceable. You want people to read them. Because I knew people had such trouble pronouncing it, I was like, oh, maybe I'm not supposed to use this. It was on a site called Rares. In the end, I ended up calling them Lurgoys. We did also in Future Sight on the Future Shifter card,

we made Tarmogoyf, which is another Lurgoyf riff. The idea on the Future Shifter cards was we wanted to hint at the future. We were going to do Planeswalkers as a new card type, and we were going to introduce it as a future Shifter card. So I love the idea of a creature whose reminder text just, like, happened to mention new card types that didn't exist yet. And so I came up with the idea of a Lurgoyf that, instead of carrying how many creatures

were in your graveyard, carried how many card types was in your graveyard. Sorry. It's a little yawning on my part. And then later, we ended up not doing Planeswalkers, but we were doing them in Tempest.

I'm just saying, we did them in Lorwyn. And then we also introduced Tribal in Lorwyn. So we learned about that early enough that we were able to put both Planeswalkers, but we were doing them in Tempest. I'm just saying, we did them in Lorwyn. And then we also introduced tribal in Lorwyn. So we learned about that early enough to be able to put both planeswalkers and tribal in the reminder text of Town of Goys. But anyway, Lord of Goys are relatively popular.

We still have that problem of just that it's impossible for people to know how to say. But anyway, there definitely is Lord of Goys is definitely sort of one of those creature types that the players have become beholden to and really... I think if I asked

you to name unique creature types in Magic, a lot of people would not name this extensive list that I'm going through today, but I think Lord of the Goif is one of the ones people remember just because it's very distinctive and different. Okay. Masticore. Masticore is in Urza's Legacy. So what happened was there was a card in Antiquities

called Mishra's War Machine, and it was a 5-5 bander, and you had to discard a card every turn as upkeep. And it turns out that that upkeep was just a bit too much for that card. And a lot of people said, oh, the card would be good if not for that horrible upkeep. And it was sort of said, no card would be good with that upkeep. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You make a good enough card. I mean, there are cards that you might actually discard a card every turn to want. So I took the mantle to say, I'm going to make a cards that you might actually discard a card every turn to want. So I took it up, I took the mantle to say,

I'm going to make a card that you want to discard a card every turn. Or you're willing, not want to, but you're willing to do it. It's good enough cards that you're willing to do. So I made Master Core. It was a creature that I'll keep a discarding card. And it allowed you to, you can do damage to other creatures. You can regenerate it. It just was very useful.

But obviously it had this drawback of, you know, slowly eating up your hand. But mission accomplished. It was quite good. So when we had originally made the card, it was an artifact creature. I think it got concepted as a manticore, an artifact manticore.

A manticore is a Greek mythological creature that I think the front half is like the lion and the back half is like an eagle, somethinganticore. Manticore is a Greek mythological creature that I think the front half is like the lion and the back half is like an eagle. Something like that. The Greeks loved mixing and matching animals. So anyway, in the art, we showed the creature because it had

a mechanic of eating things, because you're discarding cards to it. It was shown eating this metal rod. And so when we were naming it, we came up with this cute idea of taking manticore and instead of doing mant, do mast, like mast as in the Latin root to chew, like masticate. And so the idea of instead of a manticore, it's a masticore.

It was just kind of a cutesy name. It's a riff on manticore, it's masticore. But it entertained us so that we ended up making it its own creature types. Instead of being a manticore called masticore, it was just called masticore. It was a creature type masticore. And that card was so iconic

that we ended up making at least one other Masticore. But that's another of those creature types we kind of made that, once again, inspired by Greek mythology, but just a step away to make it sort of ours, because in our version they're metal-eating creatures. Okay, next, the Metathran. So the Metathran come from Urza's saga block. So in the Weatherlight saga, Urza was behind all the plans. And Urza's saga block was about going back in time to learn about Urza's major plans to stop the Phyrexian.

And one of them involved genetics. And he had made this race of people called the Metathran. They were blue, and it was an artificially created race, a genetically created race by Urza. And

there wasn't, they didn't have much, you'll notice, by the way, the creatures that tend to be more popular with players traditionally have a mechanical definition to them. Not 100%, but the ones that seem to be, popular with players traditionally have a mechanical definition to them. Not 100%, but the ones that seem to be, you know, Lord of the Goys has a very distinctive flavor to it, you know. The Eldrazi have a very distinctive flavor.

The ones that tend to be more mechanically distinctive, more often people, like, they go, oh, I like the mechanic, I like the creature, ooh, bring that back. So anyway, the Metathrand were this artificially created creature race. I don't know too much about them. They didn't have a lot of mechanical identity. Players didn't care that much about them,

so it's the kind of thing that, I think they're just on Dominaria, but on a return to Dominaria, I don't know whether we made any in Dominaria the set, but we could have. Maybe when we go back to Dominaria, we'll make more. Org! So Org showed up in Odyssey, I believe.

So we were making TV commercials at the time, and we had this TV commercial, probably my favorite magic TV commercial, where they're in the lab. R&D has a lab, and we're doing testing. And so they're trying to test the Org, the creature they're testing, and they go,

bring in the goblin and someone from the control room goes, oh, the goblin called in sick, and they go, okay, well go get Bob from accounting and so this Bob, the accountant from accounting comes in and he sees this giant org and screams and then there's a fight, Bob does not win anyway, we had done the org in a commercial,

and so we decided that we needed to have an org in the card set. So in the, I think in the starter set originally, but we ended up putting one in Odyssey, I believe. Anyway, we made an org. We decided that it wasn't quite a goblin, it wasn't quite an ogre, it wasn't quite an orc, so we gave it its own creature type. We made org, we made trained org. There have been a lot of orgs, but that was to sort of make

a nod to the commercial. Visidrix, which was the other commercial at the time, wasn't its own creature type. So I think we made more of them, but it didn't have its own creature type. Pentavite and Tetravite. So these are another only-existence counters. Pentavite goes to Pentavis from Antiquities, and Tetravis goes to Tetravis from Time Spiral.

Tetravis is a riff off Pentavis. The idea is it's a creature that comes with Pulse of Encounters. The counters can come off off and the counters fly, the little one-one flyers. So the idea is they can join on the creature, make the creature bigger or separate it out. So the idea essentially was, and I think pentagons fly, so you could break it apart into five one-one flyers or bring

together and have some number that they can log together and make a bigger creature. And then in Time Spiral we did it again, but we did it with four rather than five. So, anyway, those countries only exist for those. Feldegryph. So Feldegryph was in Alliances. It's a flying purple hippo.

It's a couple in-jokes made this card. So Alliances was made by the, we call the East Coast Placetectors. So Jim Lynn, Scaf Elias, Dave Petty, Chris Page. So what happened was, I think this joke goes all the way back to Alpha, but it might have been a little later. But they were talking about how if magic was going to keep making things, that someday they're going to run

out of creature types, and then Richard was going to be forced things, then someday they're going to run out of creature types, and then Richard was going to be forced to make a flying purple hippo. And so somehow that became a joke about when are we going to have to make the flying purple hippo. So when they were making Antiquities, Antiquities was the last set made by the East Coast Playtesters. I don't know if they knew at the time it was going to be the last set, but after that we started going in-house with our designs. But anyway, they decided it was time to make the flying purple hippo, because the joke was, when are we going to be the last set, but after that we started going in-house with our designs. But anyway, they decided it was time

to make the Flying Purple Hippo because the joke was, when are we going to make the Flying Purple Hippo? Ha ha! We will make the Flying Purple Hippo. Feldegraff is an anagram of Garfield PhD. So one of the things in the early days, whenever Richard would do interviews,

the PR people, wizards, always demanded that he get referred to as Richard Garfield, PhD. So whenever he interviewed for a magazine or whatever, they always would say, okay, remember, it's Richard Garfield, PhD. I think the PR people were like, oh, we want to reinforce that this game was made by a math professor and Richard's smart, I guess. I'm not sure why they wanted a PhD. Maybe it sounded better.

Richard was always a little embarrassed by it because, like, not that he managed putting it someplace where it made sense, but sort of in certain every interview, Richard was not a fan of. So anyway, I think they were making fun of that. And so, like, this was already a joke that one day Richard would make the

flying purple hippo. So they decided to put his name in it. So that's how Felderiff came about. There's only two Felderiffs. There's the original Felderiff and there's a questing Felderiff. So why haven't there been more

flying purple hippos? The answer is that I think the creative team also felt this fell on the other side of a line. That it just was a little bit too silly. When I say the line, I don't quite get the line. Squirrels, for example, are on the other side. I don't quite get what... Like, something... Anyway. The line seems at times

inconsistent to me personally. But I don't... But not my area of expertise. So anyway, Felderdorf's are considered a little too silly, so I don't think we do them in Black Border anymore. Maybe when I have the perfect design, it's something I could consider doing in Silver Border

but not something we do in Black Border anymore next is Sapperling so Sapperling first showed up in Fawn Empires just like the merfolk fought with the homerids

the elves fought with the Sapperling so the Sapperlings were originally grown I think as a foodids, the elves fought with the sapperlings. So the sapperlings were originally grown, I think, as a food source for the elves, but they took on sentience. And so sapperlings are sentient plant creatures. So plant creatures that can function. And there's a little rebellion of the sapperlings. So what happened was there was the phthalids, and the

phthalids had the offshoot that were the sapperlings, I think. So the phthalids were these fungus creatures made by the elves, and their offspring were the sapperlings. Anyway, sapperlings became a thing that magic does from time to time, which represents little green creature plant.

Little, like, sentient plant creatures. If you've ever seen the tokens we've made for Sapperlings, they always kind of look different. The only sort of through line to them is they're 1-1 creatures and they're sentient plant creatures. Other than that, we've also made a conscious decision not to make it a creature type on cards. During Odyssey, I actually made a card that made a,

it was like a Flash 1-1 Sapperling, and we ended up it was called Sapperise, I believe, and we ended up making it a token. We made it an instant to make tokens rather than a creature itself. For some reason, we decided that it was a token-only creature type. And we've continued with that. Sapperling once again showed up again in Dominaria. Green has had a lot of 1-1 tokens over the years. For some reason, saplings become a common go-to.

A, because it's something uniquely ours and B, because some of the other choices like squirrels are not something we do. Elves is another common one, but it depends on the world whether there's elves and stuff. Okay, next. The Slith. So the Slith come from Mirrodin.

So the Slith... So in... I think it was Legends. There was a card called Whirling Dervish. Which was a green creature that every time you hit the opponent, you did combat damage to the opponent, it got a plus one, plus one counter, and had protection from black. And back hit the opponent, you did combat damage to the opponent, you got a plus one, plus one counter,

and had protection from black. And back in the day, most of black's removal, almost all of black's removal early on was pinpoint removal. So black had a really hard time dealing with rolling dervish. So if you're going up against a mono black deck,

and early magic had some very strong mono black decks, rolling dervish was a very good card to sideboard in, or if the metagame was, metagame had enough black in it, maybe you could play it standard. I played a lot of Whirling Dervishes in my day. So anyway, we were in Mirrodin.

We had a plus-and-plus-one-counter theme. I liked the idea of doing the Whirling Dervishes, but the actual Whirling Dervishes had some flavor to it, and some flavor didn't make sense for Mirrodin. So we made a brand new creature type called the Slith. So the Slith were cycled, and the Slith have the mechanical property of

when they deal creature combat damage to a player, they get a plus one, plus one counter. So they go bigger with time. We have since done the Slith mechanic on other things, like the vampires in Innistrad, a bunch of them had the slith mechanic,

or you could say the dervish mechanic. I think we now call it the slith mechanic, just because we've done it on more than one creature, and not enough people remember rolling dervish. I don't know why we call it the slith mechanic, not the dervish mechanic. I don't know. But we do. But anyway, that's the slith, and

the sliss, when we went back to Mirrodin, Scars of Mirrodin, I believe there were more Sliss there. Right now, the Sliss only appear on Mirrodin. Some of these races, if we ever found the right place and they mechanically fit,

I think we're willing to put magic original races on more than one world. And a few of them, actually, we're about to get to one or two that have. But it's just a matter of finding the right place to do them. Okay, Sliver. So Slivers first showed up in Tempest. In fact, they first showed up, Mike Elliott had made his own magic set called Astral Ways.

And when he got hired by Wizards, they bought the set. And so I put him on Tempest, and he brought Slivers to the table when we were all looking at cool things we could do. Slivers were awesome. So we put Slivers in the set. Slivers were inspired by Plague Rat, but the idea was

Plague Rat, where it could grant more things than just plus one plus one. So like like I'm in play, everybody gets flying or something is the idea. In Mike's version, there's a creature that fell from the heavens and split into many, many pieces

of its livers. In Tempest, we ended up making these hive mind creatures that are little tiny shape characters that can change their shape. And the idea is, the way they function is, they go out in the world, they find other creatures, they mimic them,

they learn how to grow parts that mimic these other creatures, and then they bring back to the hive mind the knowledge that they've learned. So the idea, a winged sliver has learned how to grow wings, and thus it can fly. So when it goes back to the hive mind, all

of the slivers can now grow wings and all of them can fly. But they need to be in close proximity to them. The hive mind only the duration of how far away it can work is not super far. So as long as the hive mind as long as the wing sliver is near the hive mind, then they can all fly

because they know how to make wings. That's the flavor. When we went the slivers are near the hive mind, then they all fly because they know how to make wings. That's the flavor. When we went, the slivers are very, very popular. We brought them back numerous times. I did a whole podcast on slivers, by the way, if you want to know all the nuts and balsams slivers. When we brought them back one time in the core set, we put them on chandelier.

We changed how they look. We gave them a more humanoid look. Um, that was very controversial and a lot of people did not like that. Um, so when we, next time they came back, they were back to their original

sort of appendage claw-like form that they originally showed up with in Tempest. Um, next, the Surakar.

So the Surakar show up only in Zendikar. They're this blue-black reptilian race. It's another one of those ones where I don't know why they got their own creature type. Maybe because they were enough not like a real Earth-world animal to name them after that. But anyway, they're this race.

They just show up. There's not a lot of them, but they show up in Zendikar. I don't really know what people think of them. There's not enough of them, and they don't have a strong mechanical identity, I think. So anyway, they're unique. Next we have the

Vidalcan. So the Vidalcan are when we decided for a while to get rid of the merfolk, because we didn't want merfolk, they didn't want merfolk they were sea creatures and magic was a

thing that fought on the land and I don't know the creator team for a while didn't want merfolk we took them away we later brought them back because players say we like merfolk we're the merfolk so we just brought the merfolk back and while they were gone we were trying to come up with a blue race

that sort of felt like a blue race. And so the Vidalcan, the idea of the Vidalcan was they were this race that treasured information above all else, and they brokered information. That if you wanted to learn something from the Vidalcan,

you had to give them information that they previously didn't have. And they were information brokers. That's how they functioned. But the secret of the Vidalcan was that they don't know their own origin. And the reason they, one of the reasons they so quest for information is

they want to learn more about themselves. For example, they can breathe underwater, but no one knows why. So anyway, you might notice that Jace has some qualities of the Vidalcan he's not a Vidalcan but the idea of a person who really seeks information

but he himself does not know his own origin I think a lot of that came out of the stuff we were doing with Vidalcan it's my belief but anyway, I always thought it was a cool race they have four arms, usually, which is one of the visual unique things about them.

So the final race that we make that have their own creature type is the Viachino. Which, why they're not lizards, I don't know. It is definitely... I think if we made the Viachino nowadays, they're very clearly kind of lizard people. I think we'd make them lizards.

But back in the day, we gave them their own creature type. Stuff like Minotaur makes sense because there's a whole mythological thing built around it why they're not bull creature type or something, or cow creature type. But anyway, the Viacino first show up, I think they first show up in the Mirage block when they first show up.

Basically, they're from... Are they from Keld? I think they're show up in the Mirage block when they first show up. Basically, they're from... Are they from Keld? I think they're from Keld. And they're from Dominaria. And they're these lizard people. And they're the kind of things that when we're in Dominaria, they show up. I think there were some in Dominaria.

But anyway, it's just this race of lizard people. There's nothing super distinctive about them. But they've been part of Magic for a long time, so definitely there's some popularity to them. I think if we had them to do it over again, they wouldn't be creature type, they'd be lizard. Anyway, okay, so that is my extensive run-through through

all the creature types that I believe were unique to magic. If I missed one or two, I apologize. There were definitely some where we were riffing off something, and if we were close enough, I assumed that that's close enough. There were a bunch of stuff like Zubaira. It's based on a Japanese thing. Anyway, so I made a list. I stand by my list. It's possible I missed one or two that really should have been on my list, so if I missed something, I apologize. Hope you guys enjoyed today's podcast.

Trying to do something a little bit different. Once again, thanks for the shout-out on Blogatog for the idea. And I'm now at work. So we all know that. I always mess up, man. Beginning when I mess up, I just restart it. By the end, I got it. This is a good podcast. I'm back.

Okay. Try it one more time. I'm parked, so we all know what that means. This is the end of my drive to work. So instead of making magic, it's time for me. No, I see I messed it up again. Take three. Yeah, this podcast says,

Mark tries to do the ending many, many times. Okay, I'm parked at work. We all know what that means, right? Right? That means instead of talking about magic, it's time to be making magic. Instead of, I messed up. Aye, aye, aye.

Okay, we all know what happens. I'm not talking magic. I'm making magic. I gotta go. You guys know my ending. I'm not gonna make you go through this anymore. But anyway, thanks for coming today. I'm not talking magic. I'm making magic. I gotta go. You guys know my ending. I'm not gonna make you go through this anymore. But anyway,

thanks for coming today. I hope you guys enjoyed this. I thought it was a fun topic. And I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.