Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #611: Lorwyn Cards, Part 1

Episode Date: February 15, 2019

This podcast is the first in a four-part series about the card-by-card design stories of Lorwyn.

I'm pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to drive to work. Okay, so today, and for the next few podcasts, I'm going to be going through Lorwyn, doing a card-by-card podcast. We're going to talk about different cards from the set of Lorwyn. So we're going to start with a Johnny Goldmane. So two white-white. It's obviously a planeswalker. Now a legendary planeswalker. At the time it would have just said planeswalker. A Johnny.

So he has a loyalty of four. And he has three abilities. His first plus one ability is you gain two life. His minus one ability is put a plus one plus one counter on each creature you control. Those creatures gain vigilance until end of turn. And his minus six ability is create a plus one plus one counter on each creature you control. Those creatures gain vigilance until end of turn. And his minus six ability is create

a white avatar creature token. It has this creature's power and toughness are each equal to your life total. So, a couple things. So, we had originally planned to make the Planeswalkers, or make some of them in future sight,

and then they were going to show up for the first time, not in Future Sight, in Lorwyn. But we weren't happy with them, we ended up pushing them back, so they ended up premiering in Lorwyn. So we ended up making five Planeswalkers in Lorwyn, what is now known as the Lorwyn Five, which would be Ajani, Jace, Liliana, Chandra, and Garak. which would be Ajani, Jace, Liliana, Chandra, and Garrick. The interesting thing on Ajani was Ajani out of the gate was actually the least popular of the five. I think he slowly grew in popularity over time,

and now Ajani actually is pretty well liked. I think the... My best guess is that the other four were sort of all human, and Ajani was just a little different, and it was a little disconcerting at first. The thing we try to do with Planeswalkers in this set, since it's the first time you've ever seen them,

is make them very typically their color. And this was really, really early in Planeswalker design, so we weren't, later on we got a lot more focused on who is this character and what do they represent? And we want a suite of powers that really hits who they are. Where this particular, the first incarnation is a little bit more,

let's make a typical white Planeswalker. Now, one of the things about Ajani... Ajani is a healer. A lot of people don't know that about Ajani, uh, which is where the life game come from. Um, the thing we always liked about Ajani, and this was true from the very early parts of Ajani, is the idea that he wants to work with others, that he is at his best with lots of other, others around him. Um, now that slowly, uh, the current version of Aj Johnny that we sort of came to is that his abilities

help others and not himself. That he can't boost himself, he only helps others. And that his abilities are all about, you know, from a story standpoint, he is more powerful when working with others because his abilities work on others. His magic enhances others, not himself. And you can see that in his second ability. His third ability, the avatar-making ability, is, I mean, there's some synergy there from a design standpoint in that the first ability gives you life, and the last ability, the ultimate, allows you to make a creature based on your life total. So those are synergistic with each other. And if you make the avatar, you can, assuming you still have loyalty to keep him around,

you can then give yourself more life to make the avatar bigger. But the avatar is not particularly a Johnny. Like, the middle ability really is the more defining. I mean, life gain is fine. He's a healer. But the middle ability that's helping your creatures is a little more where a Johnny

actually ended up. So it's interesting to see the original version of it. Okay. Next. So let's talk about a Mowboy Changeling. So it's one and a blue for a Shapeshifter. It's one, one. So it's a Changeling.

Changeling means this card is every creature type. And you can tap target creature gains all creature types or tap target creature loses all creature types. So Lorwyn had a strong tribal theme to it. And so part of having a tribal theme is making it such that tribes, that there's some flexibility with tribes. And so as I explained when I talked all about Lorwyn the set, changeling was kind of our glue, our tribal

glue to make that stuff work. One of the things we like to do when we do that is having cards that sort of manipulate the things. So this is a good example where this card says I can make anything into a changeling or make anything not a changeling, essentially. I can control

whether something is or isn't affected by tribal things. Now, the interesting thing about this is notice that this creature affects anybody. I can affect me, I can affect you. These days, these kind of effects, A, we don't do them as much, and B, we tend

to only affect your own stuff. Now, it's like, oh, I can enhance my own stuff, but we tend to do less of my stuff. Now it's like, oh, I can enhance my own stuff, but we, we tend to do less of my stuff, keep your stuff from working. Um, you know, we, we more of what we tend to do is enable you to help make your stuff work. Um, but we've really toned down the, I stopped my opponent's stuff from working. Um, we do a little bit of it. Um, but we tend to do it more one shot these days rather than, uh, some of the assists on the board and constantly does that. Cause one of the things that's not fun is, oh, there's all these

neat tribal synergies and you get this out and the opponent goes, oh, I can't do any of my tribal synergies. The idea of things that are shut down inherently is the fun

part of the set. It's something we have to be very careful about. And this card is the kind of card that we... Oh, one second. Sorry.

I don't think we'd make in this form today. I don't think it would affect... Probably it would just grant creature you control all creature types and wouldn't take away. I don't think we'd take away the opponents and you taking away yours. I mean, I don't think there's a lot of play in that.

So I don't know if we would do that. Okay, next. Ashling the Pilgrim. Aisling the Pilgrim. So Aisling the Pilgrim is one and a red. It's a legendary creature, an elemental shaman. It's a 1-1 creature. For a one and red, put a plus one, plus one counter on Aisling the Pilgrim. If this is the third time the ability has resolved this turn,

remove all plus one counters from Aisling the Pilgrim, and it deals that much damage to each creature and each player. So the idea, so we had a bunch of elementals in the set. Elementals, I think, were based in red, but they actually showed up in all five colors. And one of the themes that we ran through the elementals is this three times thing, where if you use an ability three times in one turn activated ability it would generate an additional ability. So the idea essentially is

each of the small abilities does something but if you do three in a turn bigger thing. Now this one is interesting. Ashling and what Ashling does is if you do it three times it kind of undoes

but well the idea is you can build up over time Ashling does is, if you do it three times, it kind of undoes, uh, it kind of, but, well, the idea is you can build up over time, and then when you want to, by being able to do it three times in a turn, you then get to turn all the counters into damage. Um, so it kind of undoes it to a certain extent, but you also can build it up over many turns. Um, one of the cool things is the creature can get bigger and bigger, and, you know, you can attack with it as a big creature, One of the cool things is that the creature can get bigger and bigger, and you can attack with it as a big creature, but then once you have six mana—three colors and three red—generic and three red—you can then sort of convert all the counters into damage and use that as a means to kill a big creature or maybe finish off your opponent.

Oh, yeah, each—oh, sorry. It deals that much damage to each creature and each player. So it's like an earthquake that hits everything. Hits players and hits creatures. So the idea, essentially, I guess, is you build up Ashling, and then when Ashling is potent enough and you have enough mana, you can just sort of explode. And this is a legendary creature.

I know there's some decks built around this creature, so it's definitely kind of fun. Okay. Okay. Next. Okay. Next is Battle of Wand Oak. Two and a green for a

Treefolk Warrior. Whenever a force enters the battlefield under your control, Battle of Wand Oak gets plus two, plus two on the end of turn. Whenever you cast a treefolk warrior whenever a forest enters the battlefield under your control, battle 1 oak is plus 2 plus 2 until end of turn whenever you cast a treefolk spell, battle oak is plus 2 plus 2 until end of turn so one of the things that we played around treefolk was one of our creatures in this set, one of the things we played around

with is the idea of treefolk caring about forests they were base green anyway and the idea of trees and trees, like, of course, of course, a tree folk would like the forest. It's made up of trees. And so note that this is pre-landfall.

Landfall wouldn't come to Zendikar. So here's us messing around in landfall space prior to landfall existing. And so the idea we wanted is, we liked the idea of a treefolk that could come down relatively early and then keep getting buffs. The problem is most treefolk are a little more expensive, so we liked the idea of forest trigger it and treefolk trigger it, so that you can sort of trigger it every turn by playing land, and you can also trigger it when you start playing other land.

But we thought the synergy there was kind of cool and was a neat flavor. The other thing that we did with this card is one of the things we were doing in Lorwyn was we had a little bit of a theme of pushing, caring about basic lands to enable people who wanted to do some mono-color stuff to do some mono-color stuff. So, for example, this card works pretty well in a mono-green treefolk deck.

One of the things we had done in this set with tribal, I explained this in the podcast, but real quickly, is we tried to make sure that all our tribes that we supported appeared in more than one color. There are eight tribes that we supported. All of them appeared in at least two colors. Treefolk, I think, was in three colors, and Elementals was in five colors. So we definitely sort of made it such that there was a bunch of things you could do with the creatures and

give you a lot of different choices of how you want to build the deck. Because one of the things that we like to do in a tribal thing is allow you to build the decks in different ways and one of the biggest ways to do that is to um you know is to give you options of how to build the deck by giving you color choices and that like for example tree folk i think we're in green black and white i think um so you can make them on a green deck, for example, using cards like this. Or you can make green-black, or green-white, or green-black-white. Black-white was kind of hard, because so many Treefolk historically have been in green.

Okay, next. Boggart Harbinger. Two and a black. Creature, Goblin Shaman. When Boggart Harbinger enters the battlefield, you may search your library for a Goblin card, reveal it, then shuffle your library and put that card on top of it. So the Harbinger cycle, this was a cycle. I think whether we made eight or five. I think we made five Harbingers. I don't think there were Harbingers for all eight tribes. I think there were Harbingers, I think for five of the tribes. I think we rotated this through color.

I think they're Harbinger's, I think, for five of the tribes. I think we rotated this through color. Could be wrong, that's my memory. Anyway, one of the things that we wanted to do is, look, there's a tribal theme. One of the concerns in general for Limited is making sure that you have enough of the theme to make it work. So the idea here is we put in a little bit of tutoring. Because we didn't want the card advantage, we put it on top of your library. So that essentially is, it's not that I'm drawing the card, but I'm choosing what my next draw is. We tend not to do as much tutoring these

days. The main reason is there's a certain amount of replication of, that things happen the same way time and time again if you always can tutor for things. And so one of the things we want to be very careful about is making sure that there's enough variety in how games play out. So more likely now, if we were going to do this cycle in a current set, we were more likely to look at top N cards of your library and then get the correct type, but let it go to your hand.

So the idea is there would be some card advantage, but in order, for example, let's say we let you look at the top five or six cards. In order for you to find your tribe, we've got to be playing a pretty heavy concentration of your tribe. So the weird thing about tutoring is it allows you sometimes to play actually less of the tribe, where uh, look at top of library forces you to play more of it.

So, that, that, my friends, is good. Okay. Um, Bogart Shenanigans, two in a red. Tribal Enchantment goblin whenever another goblin you control is put into a graveyard from the battlefield you may have Boggart Shenanigans deal one damage to target player or planeswalker

I'm reading you the oracle text by the way it did not reference planeswalker originally it would have just said player and then planeswalker planeswalker showed up for the first time in this set, but at the time there was a Planeswalker redirection rule, it didn't specify

Planeswalker. Anyway, so a couple things. One is this is a tribal enchantment goblin, so that's something we had done in this set where we were trying to make cards that weren't creature cards be of creature types so that we could care about them. And the idea being that if you had this tribal enchantment out, this goblin enchantment out, and you counted your goblins, well, guess what? It's a goblin. Or if you were regrowing a goblin, well, guess what? It's a goblin. And the idea was that it allowed you to interact with non-creatures. was that it allowed you to interact with non-creatures.

The problem, and I've explained this in other places, but the problem with Tribal in the big picture was it didn't matter enough, and it's kind of something either you commit to or you don't commit to. Like, okay, here's an enchantment that interacts with goblins. Okay, well, it's a goblin enchantment. Well, we make other enchantments that interact with goblins, and we make other enchantments that are with goblins, and we make other enchantments that are flavored

very much to be goblin-y. Every single, like, once we go down the path of caring, it makes us sort of care all the time and put a lot of words on cards. And what we found is, there's just not a lot of effects that care. I mean, the only thing that matters is

enchantments, permanents are aided a little bit because you can count in play. If you're talking about, like, instants and sorceries, they can only be referenced when you cast them, if they're in your hand or if they're in your graveyard. And there's just a limited number of effects that care about those particular things.

So it just didn't show up all that much. Okay, another thing this card is doing is trying to say essentially what this card is, is there's a card there's a card, what is it called? Goblin Bombardment. Goblin Bombardment? From, I think it was Tippets, I think. Anyways, it's an enchantment that says whenever a creature dies

you get to do one damage to any target. And that card was very powerful. And so this card was sort of like, okay, let's do Goblin Bombardment, but just for Goblins. And Goblin Bombardment costs one and a red. This costs two and a red. So obviously, Goblin Bombardment was a bit strong. So it's like, okay, well, we know

Goblin Bombardment is strong. Let's remake it and make it just Goblins. You know, it'd be a little bit more expensive. But because it's focused just Goblins, it doesn't just go in any deck. It has to go in a dedicated Goblin deck. So allow us to make it without making it too much more expensive. Okay, next.

Bridget, Hero of Kinsbale. Two white, white. Legendary creature. Kithkin Archer. First Reich. That's a 2-3 creature. First Reich. Cap. Bridget legendary creature, Kithkin Archer. First strike, that's a 2-3 creature, first strike, tap. Bridget, hero of Kithbane, deals two damage,

each attacking and blocking creature target player controls. So I assume, I don't have the art in front of me, my guess is this is an Archer. So this is, Bridget has the ability we call Range Strike, which is the idea that it does damage to things that are attacking or blocking. Back in the day, we used to do this as an activated ability.

So the idea, usually it went on an archer or somebody with a ranged weapon. And the idea essentially is that it can interact with things in combat. We still do these effects on instants. Usually not a... Sometimes a common. But we tend to do it as a one-shot surprise thing, not as a sitting on the board.

The problem is when it sits on the board, it really shuts down. It really, really... Like this card in particular. Okay, so for no mana, anything can be... Two damage can go to any attacking or blocking creature. Which means pretty much it's going to kill something that I get in combat.

So, you know, if you attack with a 1-1, I need to block with a 4-4 before I'm safe from this card. And so this thing was really board complex and very, I mean, given it, I'm pretty sure this is a rare, it's legendary. really board complex and very, I mean, given it, I'm pretty sure this is a rare, it's legendary. But, you know, it really was, we tend to move away from this. I mean, I guess if ever we're going to do it on a legendary creature, a rare is where we would do it nowadays. So that is this. But anyway, it is, it's interesting when I look back at designs. Like, I like the flavor of this.

Obviously, it has First Strike. It has Rain Strike. I, I, I will, I bet my bow that this thing is, is, is an Archer. Oh, it says Archer. It's an Archer. I know it's an Archer. It says Archer in its,

in its type line. I mean, the mechanically, it's flavored like an Archer. I like that part of it. But, it's just the kind of card we don't do as much anymore.

That's a lot of my themes today, is how design has changed. Okay, Brine Stoutarm. Two red-white. It's a legendary creature, a giant warrior. He's a 4-4. He's got lifelink, and red and tap, sacrifice another creature. Brine Stoutarm deals damage equal to the sacrifice creature's power to target a player or planeswalker. Once again, it just said player originally.

So the idea essentially is it's a 4-4 life linker and it can throw things to deal damage with them to players. One of the things we like to do, I think the first one we ever did was Fling. Fling Tempest?

Fling is a spell where Tempest? Fling is a spell where you sacrifice a creature and then do damage equal to its power to target a player. So this is flinging things, basically. So the thing we like about Fling is the flavor of, I throw something, and then because its power kind of is

indicative of its mass, like it talks about how much damage it does. Well, if I throw a little thing at you, it's not going to do that much damage. I throw a giant thing at you, it's going to do a lot of damage. It's heavy. And this card, a lot of times when we make gold cards, the idea is, can we make something that

sort of takes the two abilities and combines them in a fun way. So one of the neat things about this is, it's a giant. Giants are basically in red and white. I think there might have been a few green giants, but the... Basically, we wanted to put a fling on a giant

because it's fun. A giant throws things. But that's red. That's a red ability. What's the cool white thing we can do? Well, Lifelink, which is a base white ability, is cool because it does damage. And Lifelink just cares about damage base white ability, is cool because it does damage. And Lifelink just cares about damage dealt by the creature. So when this creature deals damage by throwing a creature,

you also gain life off that. So there's synergy there, and that's kind of cool. Okay. Cairn Wanderer. Four and a black for a shapeshifter. Four, four shapeshifter. So five mana total, four generic, one black. It's got Changeling. And as long as a creature card with flying is in the graveyard, Cairn Wanderer is flying. The same is true for fear,

first strike, double strike, death touch, haste, land walk, lifelink, protection, reach, trample, shroud, and vigilance. Okay, a couple things. First off, why do we make a list? Why do we list these things here? And the reason is that we can't, the rules can't, there's no way to just say keyword abilities. The game does not do well with that. And so in order to make it work, you literally have to list what abilities you are. So one of the things about these cards, which is interesting, is they show you the keywords

of the time. So for example, we gave this, every evergreen keyword we had, we put on this thing. And so you can see, oh, you know, instead of menace right now, there's fear, because at the time, there was fear. Fear was, can't be blocked by black or artifact creatures. I'm sorry, can only be blocked by black or artifact creatures. I'm sorry, can only be blocked by fear and artifact creatures. Then we became intimidate. Intimidate can only be blocked by creatures of the same color

and artifact creatures, kind of a fixed fear. And then eventually it went to menace, which is just must be blocked by two or more creatures. You see protections here. You see shroud is here instead of hexproof. So you see a bunch of sort of different things that at the time, this is what they were. The idea that we like this a lot is

that this is a creature, the flavor was, this was a creature that had the creatures of the dead. And it looked at all graveyards because the idea is if any flying creature is dead, it's not getting flying. I like making these kind of cards. One of the things that is fun is the changelings were already shapeshifters, and this is a very shapeshifter-like ability, so it's kind of fun that we could...

Like, one of the things I was doing when making changelings is trying to find things that want to be shapeshifters because already they're shapeshifters. And that was kind of cool because, I mean, I'm piggybacking on the fact that they're shapeshifters already. And I just like the idea.

We hadn't done that card before. I've made a lot of these kind of cards. I'm big on look somewhere and then has the ability of the places it's looking. So this time it was at the graveyard. You'll see others on the handiwork in one of the simicards. You'll get this ability of things that...

There's lots of other... This ability you can use in different ways, where you kind of look and copy things. Normally the copying things isn't in black, but because we were looking at graveyard, we were able to put it in black. This ability usually... Copying abilities usually isn't in black, but because we were looking at graveyard, we were able to put it in black. This ability usually, copying abilities usually isn't a black thing, but the

flavor of doing dead things felt super black, so we put it here. Catawalling Boggart, three and a red. So it's a goblin shaman, two, two. Goblins you control and elementals you control have menace. At the time this was written out, menace wasn't a keyword yet.

So there was a card what was the card? It was Goblin Wardrums was in Fallen Empires I think. That's the first time Menace appeared. Obviously it wasn't called Menace yet. But we liked the ability and one of the reasons that we eventually became keyworded is that we

kept making cards like this that just had the ability. One of the things we always like about Menace is that it... The problem we had with Intimidate and Fear was if you had a certain deck combination, you just couldn't block the creature. It was just unblockable. Oh, I can only be blocked by blackened artifact creatures?

I don't have black creatures. I'm not playing black. And maybe I have one artifact creature in my deck. So, wow, I'm going to have a hard, hard time blocking a creature. Intimidate was a little bit better. It widened a little bit. But in the end, it had the same basic problems as fear. Menace is nice because Menace...

Look, there's an... I mean, maybe I can't block if I have one creature. But look, my deck's going to have more creatures. I'm going to have ways to interact. Now I have to decide whether I want to attack. I don't want to leave back two creatures for you. It just makes more interesting, dynamic decisions. So Catawalla and

Boggart does something interesting. You notice it says, goblins you control and elementals you control have menace. I don't know why it doesn't say goblins and elementals you control, but maybe there's some reason for that. I may have seen the reason. So one of the things we tried to do in this set, because we had

eight different creature types we were supporting, obviously we had changelings. The other thing we did is we did what we called crossover cards, where the idea was, oh, well, the flavor is the goblins and the elementals get along. So this card says, hey, you can have a deck of both goblins and elementals, because sometimes it's hard to have just one, or sometimes you just want to mix things up a little bit. Maybe early on I get a good goblin and I get a good elemental. Oh, if I take this card,

now I can maybe play a deck where I can branch between goblins and elementals. Or maybe I can play a goblin deck and splash a few elementals, or play an elemental deck and splash a few goblins. It just allowed you, once again, to mix and match sort of what you could do. once again to mix and match sort of what you could do. Okay, Shonda Nalar. Three red red. Loyalty six. So she has three abilities.

She's a legendary planeswalker, Shonda, obviously. Her plus one ability, Shonda Nalar deals one damage to target player or planeswalker. Once again, this card when printed wasn't legendary. It only dealt damage to players. Anyway, I'm not going to keep repeating myself, but I'm reading the up-to-date text, obviously. Second ability is minus X.

Chandelard does X damage to target creature. And then minus 8 is their ultimate. Chandelard deals 10 damage to target player or planeswalker, and each creature that player or planeswalker controls. So once again, Chandra was made very much as a base Red Planeswalker. The good thing here is Shonda's shtick basically is she's a pyromancer, she deals a lot of damage. There's a few other things we had her do,

but Ajani, as I said, his middle ability was pretty Ajani. This is Shonda up and down. We knew she was a pyromancer and so pyromancy, one of the nice things about pyromancy is it works really well with direct damage and red is all about direct damage so this card basically said

okay, the plus one is just hitting players for a small amount the middle, I mean this is obviously the introduction of Planeswalkers but it's also the introduction of a minus X loyalty ability. So the idea is that you can spend as much loyalty as you want. She starts with 6 loyalty, so you have the ability right off the bat to sort of

do a bunch of damage, but you have to decide whether you want to get to her ultimate or not. If you start using her middle ability, it becomes trickier to get to the ultimate. And the ultimate is pretty explosive, and, you know, is game-changing of an ultimate. So you kind of got to figure out, are you using

her more as a means to sort of get rid of things in the short term or building towards something in the long term? Okay. Changeling Hero. Okay, so Changeling Hero is four and a white. It's a shape-shifting creature. Four, four. It's got Changeling, is four and a white. It's a shapeshifting creature, four, four. It's got Changeling, which means the card's any type.

And it's got Champion, a creature. When this enters the battlefield, sacrifice it unless you exile another creature you control. When this leaves the battlefield, that card returns to the battlefield, and it's got Lifelink. So it's a four, four Lifelinker. So it's five mana for a four, four Lifelinker.

Most Champion cards champion a particular creature type. But on changeling creatures, we let it champion anything, because changelings are everything. That's the idea. So if changeling goes on a goblin, well, then it champions the goblin. As I explained in my podcast on Lorwyn, champion was our idea of trying to do evolution. I don't think it was the greatest execution of evolution, but I don't know, it was definitely

I mean, it played decently. I don't think it had the it didn't convey its flavor as well as we wanted, and so it's kind of a miss for me. It was not as popular with the players as I would hope. But part of that, I think, is the flavor of the creature turning into that creature. I don't know. Yeah, it ended up... Our inspiration and where it ended up were very different.

Like, it did not have the flavor that we had started with, and I think that had some impact on how people perceived it. Cloud Goat Ranger. Three white white for a giant warrior. It's 3-3. When Cloud Goat Ranger enters the battlefield, create three 1-1 white Kithkin soldier tokens. Tap three untapped Kithkin you control.

Cloud Goat Ranger gets plus two plus O and gains flying until end of turn. So the idea is, I talked about a moment ago, a card that crossed over to Goblins and Elementals. This is a card that crossed over to Kitkin and Giants. Now, one of the interesting things about this card is it's Kitkin interaction gets built in, meaning if I'm playing a Giant deck, I can just play this card.

in, meaning if I'm playing a giant deck, I can just play this card. Now, the three Kithkins I make, I need to save to power up my Cloudguard Ranger to make him fly. But if I'm playing him with other Kithkin, or if I'm playing a Kithkin deck, I might throw this in my Kithkin deck that allows me to use whatever Kithkin I want to make him fly. So this was neat in that it was a card that you could put in your giant deck, or you could put it in whatever Kithkin I want to make him fly. So this was neat in that it was a card that you could put in your Giant deck, or you could put it in your Kithkin deck, or might encourage you to play Giants and Kithkin. Okay.

Okay, next. Kulfenor's Plans. Two Black Black. Enchantment. When Kulfenor's Plans enter the battlefield, exile the top 7 cards of your library face down. You may look at and play cards exiled with Kofunor's Plans. Skip your draw step. You can't guess more than one spell each turn.

So the idea here is we're playing around in this space, something that black does, where we give you access to something, but then give you restriction that later could harm you. And so the idea here is, essentially what this card is saying is, I'm going to let you draw seven cards, but that's it.

You don't get to draw any more cards, and to keep you from sort of spilling them out all at once, to avoid this being an instant combo win card, you have to dole them out over time. So for four mana, I get to draw seven cards, but I'm taking on two big negatives, which is I don't get more cards, and I only get to cast one spell a turn.

You know, can I make a deck? This is a Johnny card. A little bit of spike to it. The idea is that for Johnny and Jenny it's like, okay, what do I do? how do I build a deck that makes use of this? the reason it's a little bit of a spike card is there is a point in time

where you're close enough to winning that getting the extra cards will help you win and close the game but kind of know when to do that is tricky because if you do this card prematurely it will lose the game. But kind of know when to do that is tricky. Because if you do this card prematurely, it will lose the game for you. But if you do it at the right time,

it can be the thing that wins the game for you. And so... Anyway, it's definitely one of those cards that I enjoy in that it definitely makes you think a lot about how you want to use it. Those are fun cards. Okay, Consuming Bonfire. Three red red, so five mana total, two which is

red. Tribal Sorcery, Elemental. Choose one. Consuming Bonfire deals four damage to target non-Elemental creature. Or Consuming Bonfire deals seven damage to target Treefolk creature. So this is a good example of, I love when we can take spells and make something that is only makeable in the set we're making. And this is a perfect example. There are not a lot of sets

that you can reprint this card. I mean, it's got tribal, which means we probably wouldn't print it now anyway. But, forgetting that part, it has to be in a set that cares about elementals and treefolk. And ideally, it wants to be in a set that's kind of tribal that cares about elementals and treefolk. Although it doesn't have to be tribal, I guess.

One of the things we tend to do in tribal sets that we like is making cards care about what creatures are in their restrictions, like sort of their targeting restrictions. And then it just makes things a little different. Like the idea here is, it's a direct damage spell that kills creatures. The cutesiness of it is, well, how do you, you can't use a fire to kill a creature made of flame.

You know, the flamekins, the elementals here were flamekins. The flamekins are made of flame. So you can't, you know, you can't burn a creature made of fire. So the non-elemental... Once again, it made elemental creatures matter. This is one of Red's kill spells, and so

playing elementals means that one of your things is you have some invulnerability against one of Red's main spells. Then, the other ability, the tree folk one, is mostly what I would call trinket text. I mean, it's not completely trinket text in that they're treefolks and it matters.

But it was done for flavor. I guess it's not completely trinket text. It's a little more than trinket text, but it was done for flavor. The idea is, well, if you can't burn elementals, wouldn't treefolk burn really well? You know, they're made of wood, right?

And so the idea was, okay, you know, we'll do extra damage to treefolk to imply that, oh, well, hitting treefolk with fire is even more potent than normal. So the idea is like, oh, well, you don't want to use this on elementals. Oh, you do want to use this on treefolk. And we take a card, like I said. Every set's going to have cards.

I mean, basically this card in the vacuum is do four damage to a creature. Boring. I mean, magic needs cards like that. But I mean, it's nothing special about that. And all of a sudden, it's like just these little nuanced things about, oh, well, it's fire, and fire can hurt an elemental, and really can hurt a Treefolk. Just gives the card a lot of flavor.

And that one of the challenges of making magic is that we want to... We're remaking the same game again and again. And we're tweaking it. There's flux to the game. But there's always going to be a direct damage spell that kills creatures. Like, many direct damage spells that kill creatures.

When we can make something that just has extra flavor and feels more organic and just makes you smile when you read it for the first time, that's good design. You know, that is something that is something you want to, you know, you want to duplicate. Okay, Cribswap. So Cribswap is a tribal instant shapeshifter. It costs two and a white. So three mana total, two generic, one white.

It's got Changeling. The ability has Changeling. And exile target creature. Its controller creates a 1-1 color shapeshifter creature token with Changeling. Okay, so it does a couple things. One is it gets rid of a creature and replaces it

with a 1-1. That's the kind of card we make. Over the years, one of the interesting things is the big debate of who is supposed to shrink things and make them generic 1-1s. For a long time, white was the color that did that.

And we've slowly moved the ability over to blue. We tend not to do it on instants in blue because we don't like it as a combat trick to kill things. Blue is more likely to do it either as a sorcery or as an enchantment. And the idea that blue is a transformational color

that turns things into other things. And so originally it was in white just because the idea of white makes you powerless and that felt right for white but the flavor of you transforming things into other things is super powerful and very flavorful, and so we decided to do that in blue.

So Crypt Swap, one of the things that we were playing around with in this set is making the kill spells feel a little less threatening. And the idea here is you're sort of just being swapped with something else. Oh, the cool thing about this card is by making the thing it changes into a changeling, it allows some interesting interactions. If you want to, you can use this on your opponent

just to get rid of their big creature and give them a small creature. But it also allows you to use it on your own creatures when you have tribal interactions that are important. Let's say I need to do a certain amount of damage and I need one more. Or let's say I need to do a certain amount of damage and I need one more, or let's say I'm I need to sacrifice something, or you know,

I need to have a certain creature type, you can use this on your own creature to essentially turn it into the creature type you need so that you can make use of that. And while most of this was used as a removal spell, the fact that it doubled as a

you know, it was a card in white that helped you deal with tribal interactions. That was kind of a clever way to do that. And it was definitely fun. One other thing we did is, it's a tribal card that's changeling, which means that any card that interacts with anything can interact with this card. Now, given it's a spell, there's less tribal things that interact with spells. But where you could, you know, you could regrow it, you know, if you could get a certain creature type back and stuff like that. Okay, next.

Cryptic Command. So, one blue, blue, blue. So, four mana total. One generic, three blue. It's an instant. It says choose two. Counter target spell. Return target permit to its owner's hand.

Tap all creatures your opponent controls. Draw a card. So the commands were the brainchild of Aaron Forsythe. Aaron was the lead designer of Lorwyn. Aaron has always been a big fan of spells that, modal spells, spells that give you a choice of what you want to do. And we had done a bunch of

charms at the time where it's like, here's three things, pick one. So Aaron's innovation is what if we make a rare version and instead of three, choose one, it's four, choose two. The commands were pretty popular. None was as popular as Cryptid Command.

Cryptid Command, I mean, it's just a very powerful card and very useful card. I mean, this card shows up in almost every format that can play the card. It is so useful in the flexibility. And the commands really show the power flexibility one of the things I found in general when I deal with designers that are a little less experienced is people tend to under evaluate the power of flexibility that flexibility is there's a lot of power to it because it really gives you ability and it means to control the ability to be flexible really just makes

things much more useful, and so one of the reasons that I think the commands ended up being particularly strong, especially this one, is I think we a little bit underestimated how powerful having the choices were. I mean, not that the card isn't powerful nonetheless, but I think we underestimated it a little bit. I mean, not that the card isn't powerful nonetheless, but I think we underestimated it a little bit. I mean, I think we thought the card was a little less powerful than it was and it ended up being.

So, anyway. I thought that was cool. Are we doing a time? Okay, well, I am now at work. So, I don't know how many podcasts this will be, but I will keep walking through the sets as long as there's fun stuff to talk about. Anyway, 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.