Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #612: Lorwyn Cards, Part 2

Episode Date: February 15, 2019

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

We're pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so last time I started talking about cards from Lorwyn. And we're going to continue because I did not finish. So we're up to Doran the Siege Tower. So Doran costs one black green. So three mana total, one of each color. Each of three colors, white, black, and green. It's a legendary treefolk shaman. It's a 0-5 creature. Each creature assigns combat damage equal to its toughness

rather than its power. So this was the first time I think we ever did the damage equal to toughness thing. It has been popular enough that it has been a theme we've done time and again. There's been an interesting debate about what color exactly is supposed to be the do damage equal to toughness. I think we mostly do it in green now, but I think we let white do it a little bit. But anyway, we wanted to make this legendary tree folk, and we wanted to have a cool power. And so what someone was trying to think of is,

how can I make a tree folk that you want to play other treefolk with but you're not forced to play treefolk with it just, you know, it's something like it would work well with treefolk and I think Dorian was a really good a great design that sort of because treefolk in general tend to have higher toughness and power just for flavor

so like it made sense that you want to play Treefolk with him, but it didn't require you to play Treefolk with him. So, like, he's an interesting legend. And I know that he's become a very popular commander. So it's something... I think when I went through... Somebody had asked me to name

the best card from each block, I think. And I think when I went through this block, I picked Doran, although I wasn't sure whether Garruk representing the Planeswalkers, because it was the first set that had Planeswalkers, and I think Garruk's the best Planeswalker design between the two of them, which was better. I think I picked

Doran, but in retrospect, maybe I should have picked Garruk. But anyway, those are my two leading candidates. Dread. Dread is a elemental incarnation, a creature, that costs three black, black, black. So six mana total. Three which is generic, three which is black.

It's a 6-6 creature. When a creature deals damage to you, destroy it. And when Dread is put into a graveyard from anywhere, shuffle it into its owner's library. Okay, so this was part of a cycle, the elemental incarnation cycle. They were all named after emotions, I believe. And the idea was, they were creatures that were these big creatures.

I think they all cost six men. I think they were all three MMM, meaning colored, colored, colored. And what we did is we tended to staple onto them just really sort of good enchantment effects. So this creature has no mercy on it. So it's a 6-6 fear creature. So for those of you who don't remember fear, fear may only be blocked by blackened artifact creatures.

Fear is the precursor to intimidate, which is the precursor to menace. Basically, I'm scary. What does that mean? I'm hard to block because I'm scary. And like I said, this was part of a cycle. It was a rare cycle. But anyway, that's Shred.

Okay, next. Drowner of Secrets. So two and a blue. It's a merfolk wizard. One, three merfolk wizard. Tap and untap merfolk you control. Target player puts the top card of their library into their graveyard. So basically this was a merfolk milling card. So one of the things we tried to do with different tribes is use them differently so they had a different kind of function to how they played.

You know, not just have different colors care about different tribes, but have the different tribes have their own identity. So one of the identities we came up with the merfolk is that you tended to have, you could tap them to do things. And the idea that merfolk were in white and blue, so we were trying to make something that had some sort of control-ish strategies to it. So this thing is kind of like, I put my creatures out,

I can sort of use them defensively, and then at the end of your turn, I could tap them to mill you. So I could sort of get control, maintain control, and this could be a win condition where, you know, instead of using my creatures to attack you en masse, I'm using them to be defensive, and then I mill you out with them. And I thought that was kind of cool. Oh man, one of the things we're always looking for in our sets is players. There's a subset of players that really enjoy milling. Milling being putting cards into the graveyard from the library.

And we like to find cards that you can, usually we put them in uncommon, that does repeatable milling. And the idea is, if you get this early, you can draft usually we put them in uncommon, that does repeatable milling. And the idea is, if you get this early, you can draft around it. In this set, oh, well, if you want to get a couple of these, let's say you manage to get two of them, you know, if you put it into your elf deck, not elf deck, your merfolk deck, one of the strategies of the deck is that it can become a mill deck. And so, mill is popular enough that we like to weave it into not every limited environment, but a lot of limited environments.

You know, there's usually an uncommon, repeatable uncommon, that if you manage to get it, it gives you the means to mill them out. And that is from this set. Okay, next, Epic Proportions. So Epic Proportions is an enchantment. It's a flash enchantment. So it's an aura, enchantment aura. It costs four green greens, so six mana total, two of which is green. It's got

flash, and it's an enchant creature. Enchant creature goes plus five, plus five, and trample. So one of the things that we like to play around with is the idea of auras, especially in green, that have flash, that boost power and toughness. It's a neat way to do a sort of variant on giant growth, but that has a long-lasting effect.

So the idea here is this is kind of like a big giant growth, but not only does your creature get plus five, plus five, it keeps plus five, plus five. You know, it's a permanent thing. And it's a way for us to just do a variant. One of the ways we like to do a variance on giant growth is to put them on flash auras so that it has sort of a permanence to it. That you can use

it, I mean, this is a bigger one, so six mana definitely is a little harder to surprise somebody with. But it gives you the opportunity to sort of surprise somebody, use it kind of like a giant growth, and then it gives you the opportunity to have a longer sort of play with it.

So it's the way to do sort of a permanent giant growth versus a temporary giant growth. Okay. Next. Fairy Trickery. One blue blue, tribal instant fairy, counter target non-fairy spell. If that spell is countered this way exile instead of putting it into its owner's graveyard so a bunch of things going on

with this card one of the ways that we can make tribes matter is not just by making things that help the tribe but making cards that will be key to the environment especially in limited that don't that the tribe is immune to so the neat thing about this is,

this is probably the main, this is the cancel, if you will, of the set, and it doesn't work against fairies. So one of the strengths of playing fairies is, oh, you're less vulnerable to countermagic because one of the main counter spells doesn't work against you. And it's a neat way to add some flavor, because the flavor we'll put into it is, oh, this is a fairy casting a counterspell

and other fairies aren't vulnerable to it because it's fairy magic. And so it's a way to make a card that is flavorful. Obviously, we have tribal in the set, so we're able to make it literally a fairy spell. So, you know, the flavor is pretty cool. The reason I think this exiles, so this does, the reason that it exiles is

there was a bunch of graveyard shenanigans going on. Some of the other tribes sort of played around a little bit in the graveyard, and we like having an answer to that, or more than one answer to that. And sometimes when we want an answer with those graveyard components, it's things that when they stop things,

they exile them rather than go to the graveyard. So now you do a counter your spell, but now you don't have the opportunity to somehow reclaim the spell later. Okay, next. So, Fertile Ground. I don't know if this is the first time we did Fertile Ground. So Fertile Ground is one and a green for Enchantment Aura, Enchant Land.

Whenever Enchanted Land is tapped for mana, its controller adds an additional one mana of any color. I don't know if this is the first time we did Fertile Ground. One of the things that we like to do in green is that one of green's strengths is it has the ability to access other colors. That plain green is the color that has the easiest time sort of accessing other colors. And so when playing green, you're more likely to maybe splash other colors and stuff. And in this, where we had some tribes, like for example, the Treefolk tribe was in green, base green,

but in black and white. And so we wanted to make sure that if you wanted to play something like Treefolks, we need to give you some tools so that you can do stuff like that. And so one of the things we did in green was to make sure that there's a little extra ways to get so that you can do that. Next. Fodder launch. Three and a black, tribal sorcery, goblin. As an additional cost to cast the spell, sacrifice the goblin. Target creature gets minus five, minus five, no end of turn.

Fodder launch does five damage to that creature's controller. So the idea here is that we're making a spell that's a goblin-centric spell. So this is what we call threshold one, which means you don't need to have a lot of goblins. Like some, so when we do tribal stuff, some spells say, hey, I want you to have a lot of goblins. For example, I scale based on the number of goblins you have, or the number of creatures you have. And other spells are like this spell, it's like, well, you don't need a lot of goblins,

but you need one goblin. And the idea is, I talked with Merfolk how we wanted to use it differently. One of the we liked with goblins is we liked the idea that goblins more often were sacrificed and then we had some graveyard stuff that interacted with goblins because goblins were red black and the other thing about red black as an archetype the idea that goblins produce a lot of goblins that's one of the themes of goblins

and that they also made a lot of tokens is that you would use them as a resource. This card is really playing in the space of trying to both hurt a creature and hurt the player. We could have done this as a red spell, or we could

have done this as a black spell. If it was a red spell, it would have done damage to the creature and the player, and its controller. Since it as a black spell. If it was a red spell, it would have done damage to the creature and the player and its controller. Since it's a black spell, to make this feel more black, we did minus five, minus five. Black, other than drain effects,

black doesn't tend to do damage to creatures. It tends to lower its power toughness. And so because we wanted this in black, once again, I'm not sure why this card was black versus red. I mean, this card could have been in either. My sense is that we had other stuff

we were doing in red, and that it made more sense to try to make this work in black. The other thing you'll notice is, the thing about minus five, minus five is, this is an interesting spell that it secretly isn't quite as strong against certain other creature types. Like, for example, treefolk tend to have a higher toughness, and giants

tend to be a little bit bigger. So this worked well, and it killed most things, but there were a few bigger things it's had a problem with. And, um, you know, it's a nice subtle way to sort of weave some of that stuff in. Okay, Gadig Teague, green and white. Legendary Creature, Kithkin Advisor, 2-2

Kithkin Advisor, Non-Creature Spells with Converted Mana Costs 4 or greater can't be cast. Non-Creature Spells with X and their Mana Costs can't be cast. So what's going on here is this was made for Constructed, I'm pretty sure. One of the things that we're always doing when making sets is we're aware of what the environment is that we're coming into. What's the standard environment?

And this is the kind of card that's made later. At the time it was made in development, now it's made in play design or late set design. Where it's like, oh, well, what's the problem that's going on? And my assumption here was there were larger spells that were causing problems. So like, okay, well, let's make a card

and position it in colors where we're trying to get people to play. That is good answer to the problems we know we have. My memory's not good enough to remember what was in standard at the time that we made this in response to. But I think what was going on was there was a bunch of decks that probably

were low in creatures, and so we were trying to make creature decks matter. We were making a tribal set. So like, okay, let's put something out there that's very substantial that will help cut down on a lot of the... that will encourage the environment to be more creature-centric.

So this card was made to be pretty strong. I know it gets played in Commander, and it saw plenty of play in Standard at the time. And I think it still seems to play in older formats. But anyway, this was designed, like, this was made to be something that addressed and answered a meta problem. And, I mean,

that's what it was designed for. Garruk Wildspeaker. So, two green green for legendary planeswalker Garruk. Time with bloodshed. Plus one, untap two lands. Minus one, create a 3-3 green beast token. Minus four, creature

should control, get plus three, plus three, and gain trample until end of turn. Loyalty 3 when it comes into play. So this was my favorite designs of the five original Planeswalkers, although I had a hand in this one, although that influenced me. This was definitely the most popular one and probably the most powerful one. It saw the most play. So the interesting thing, the real quick version story, is we tried to make this in Future Sight. Um, so we made a black, blue, and green Planeswalker in Future Sight.

Um, the original version of Garruk was, um, I believe, make a wolf, double wolves, all wolves get plus three, plus three. Um, or was it wolves? I mean, it made, um, yeah, I think it was, yeah, it was wolves. It was it wool? I mean, it made... Yeah, I think it was wool. It was 2-2 creatures. So the original version was make a 2-2, double all 2-2s,

all wolves get plus two. Double all wolves. Make a wolf, double all wolf tokens, wolves get plus two, plus two. I think was the original version. Maybe plus three, plus three was the original version. Now remember, the original Planeswalkers,

the way they worked when we first made them was they had three abilities, one, two, three. On turn one, they did one. On turn two, they did two. On turn three, they did three. On turn four, they did number one again. And people thought that felt too robotic, didn't give it enough...

It didn't feel like the Planeswalker had a mind of their own, which you wanted. So we ended up changing it around, so we had, the sort of default was there was gained you loyalty, loses you loyalty, and then a big ultimate that requires more loyalty. That was the original we started from. The idea was you can work toward trying to do the ultimate, or you can work with the first two abilities that have some combination with each other usually.

This one, interesting to note, is that Garruk as a character has been flavored as being beast-centric. So the second and third ability are very Garruk. The first ability was made more as a generic green ability. Nissen now, for example, is a little more tied to land than Garruk is tied to land. So, you know, the early Flinswalker is trying to be very sort of color, loud in the color. Once again, made these early designs have a little bit, like I said, Garruk. Not that Garruk couldn't untap the lands or couldn't, I mean, but it is.

And this is a pretty Garruk-y card, I guess, since the crux of the card is making the wolves. And not the wolves, the beasts. Yeah, I think the reason we moved, by the way, from wolves to beasts is we decided that we'd like him being sort of beast-centric rather than wolf-centric. I'm not sure why I was into wolves. Or maybe because I was copying them. There were a lot of them. So maybe he'd be a little bit smaller.

Okay. Next. So next is... Giant's Ire. Three and a red. It's a tribal sorcery giant. Giant's Ire. Three and a red. It's a tribal sorcery giant. Giant's Ire deals four damage to target player or planeswalker.

If you control a giant, draw a card. And so the idea here is we wanted to make a spell that was a giant spell that giants would want to play, but it had other utility. The fact that we put it in... I mean, essentially what this was is, look, we're going to make direct damage spells.

People are going to want to play the direct damage spells. But if you are a giant, you're a little more inclined to want to play it. The flaw to this design is this card's a little bit too universally relevant. Like, one of the ideas what you want is, this is the kind of card where in theory what you want is anybody will play it, but the giant player will play it more often. But this is the kind of card that's going to get first picked anyway, it's just removal. And so this

really wasn't a card that the Giant player was going to get their hands on. It was a little bit too efficient. We had to be careful when we put Riders, Tribal Riders on things because the idea here is we wanted the Giant player to pick it up first. Well, if they don't open it, they're not going to see it. The one thing it does do is if you first pick this, you're now inclined to go oh, well, hey, maybe I want to have Giants. This card's better with Giants. I already picked it. I'm going to play it. Oh, maybe I want Giants. It does

do a little bit to maybe steer the person who took it into wanting to play Giants, but it fails in the getting the Giant player to pick it up. Okay. Guilt, Leaf, Ambush. Tribal Instant Elf. Create two 1-1 Green Elf Warrior creature tokens, clash with an opponent. If you win, those creatures gain Death Touch until end of turn.

So clash was an ability where each player took the top card of the library, revealed it, and if you have a higher per to mana cost than they do, then you win. And usually the way clash worked is... cost than they do, then you win. And usually the way Clash worked is oh, then you could take the card that you revealed and put it on top of your library or bottom of your library. So one of the cool things about Clash was everybody gets a scry, essentially. And so

it helps smooth decks and helps combos happen. But it it's one of those things where the players didn't really respond to it all that well. Some randomness is good, but I think this was a little too much

overtness in its randomness. This particular spell is a good example where it's an instant. You're trying to make creatures. Winning this can be pretty important, because if you can grant death trying to make creatures, winning this can be pretty important because if you can grant Death Touch to your creatures, it allows me, like for example, I'm making two creatures, and if I win this, I get Death Touch,

means I can kill two of your attacking creatures, no matter what they're, I'm assuming I can block them with a ground creature. That's pretty potent, that's pretty loud. And so, like, missing this, if you're setting yourself up, because you don't know if you're going to win when you cast it, so it's sort of like, okay, you're attacking me. Either I can really kill two of your big creatures,

or maybe at best I'm chump blocking. That's such a high differential that you really feel bad when you miss, and that's one of the things. I think some of our designs had too much of a gap, which is maybe why the mechanic didn't I don't know, wasn't quite as didn't make people quite as happy as they could have

this was a good card and it did see play and limited I don't think something struck it oh, the other thing by the way, you might notice that it makes elf warrior tokens so you might be asking yourself, wow it's not often that you see two subtypes on a token.

That's on purpose. We like to keep our tokens as clean and simple as possible. And so, from a memory standpoint, just making them one thing makes it easier to remember what they are. Okay, then why is this an elf warrior? And the answer is, morning time. The next set in the block was going to care about classes. So we made Lorwyn care all about races, Mourningtide cared about classes. And so we knew that there was going to be synergy with classes,

so we decided to make the tokens, the ones that made sense, have both a race and a class. So they worked with Lorwyn, and then they also worked with Morningtide. Now, that decision ended up making a lot of complexity on the board, and it would lead to things like Duel of the Order, but anyway, that's what we did. Okay, Guiltleaf Palace.

It's a land. As Guiltleaf Palace enters the battlefield, you may reel an elf card from your hand. If you don't, Guiltleaf Palace enters the battlefield tapped. may reel an elf card from your hand. If you don't, Giltleaf Palace enters the battlefield tapped. So the idea was, taps for black or green. This is a dual land, so we made a bunch of these, and the way they worked is they were in the colors of the tribe. So elves were in black and green, so the taps were black and green.

And essentially, if you wanted of be at its most efficient, meaning it comes to play untapped, so like to be in an original dual land, if you will, an alpha dual land, you needed to be able to prove that you were playing that tribe. And so we use reveal. Reveal is an interesting thing. It's a cost that we use that, and generally players like it because it doesn't feel like much of a cost.

Like, oh, well, if I have it, I mean, two things. One is it requires deck building requirements that is kind of invisible at the moment of play. Like, oh, look, I have it. Well, I can show it to you. The other thing is giving away information actually is something, but most players, it doesn't feel other thing is, giving away information actually is something,

but most players, it doesn't feel like that much, and the less experienced you are, the less you feel like giving away information means something, because you can't process all your information, so you're not going to process your opponent's information. So, like, saying what's there does not seem like it's such a big deal. But anyway, we made, I think we made one of these, I think we made one for each of the eight races, I believe.

It did do this weird thing where we don't often make dual-land cycles that are incomplete dual-land cycles. We did that here because not every combination had a tribe to go with it. But anyway, I think these were definitely, I don't know, I think these lands are interesting in playing in a cool space, which is sort of a narrow dual land space, where the idea is this is a dual land, but it's not necessarily for everything.

This is a dual land that fits specifically in a certain criteria, you know, like a certain depth to play it. I think that's a neat design space. Okay, Goat Napper. A card causing much debate. So Goat Napper is two and a red. Creature, Goblin Rogue. When Goat Napper enters the battlefield,

untap target Goat and gain control of it until end of turn. It gains haste until end of turn. Two, two. So the thing about this is Goat Napper. There were no Goats in the set. Why about this is Goat Napper there were no goats in the set. Why would we make Goat Napper? Because they're changelings. Changelings are goats. My argument

at the time was I thought we should have one goat in the set. That I thought emotionally like Goat Napper that'd be fun. Like right now I was like Goat Napper where's the goat? It's like oh I get it. They're changelings. What I wanted is Goat Napper where's the goat? It's like, oh, I get it. They're chain clients. What I wanted is Goat Napper, where's the goat? There's one rare goat.

Why would you make this? There's one rare goat. And then you go, oh, they're chain clients. I really would have liked to have one goat. And I fought for one goat. And I lost. We later made in, later in the block, I don't remember whether it was Morning Tide or Shadow or, we later made a goat.

We did make a card that made goat tokens. But I was, I really at the time, I didn't remember whether it was Mourning Titan or Shadow. We later made a goat. We did make a card that made goat tokens. But I was... I really... It might sound silly, but I really, really did care about that, and I tried hard, but I just didn't... I wasn't able to...

I wasn't able to win that fight. Okay. Gold Metal Harrower, W, W is tap, tap target creature. I think this is, so we did this thing in Future Sight where there was a cycle of cards

that were token makers that had tokens that were named after cards that exactly copied the cards they were making. For example, green, I think it made Land of Orr Elves. Anyway, I think the white one in the set made Gold Medal Harriers, which was this card, and the joke was, Gold Medal Harrier wasn't a thing yet. So this was

part of, I think they were future-shifted cards. And so, I think they might not have cards. And so I think they might not have been future shifted. But anyway, the joke, it must have been future shifted for this gag. The joke of it was that four of them made a card that you recognize and one made a card you had never heard of. And so anyway, I thought that was a, I liked that gag. We did a lot of fun stuff. Anyway, I thought that was definitely kind of cool. Okay.

Hamlet back Goliath. Six in the red. Creature, giant warrior. Six, six. So it's a big giant. Whenever another creature enters the battlefield, you may put X plus and plus encounters on Hamlet back Goliath where X is that creature's power. So the idea was this was an expensive creature,

but what it did is, every time you played a creature, it got bigger. And I think the flavor of it was that it's a giant so big that it's carrying a... It's carrying a city on its back, a hamlet on its back. That's what the hamlet back.

So as you get creatures, they get to live on your giant, so they I don't know, they boost them up. I think it's the flavor. It's kind of a goofy flavor. Heat Shimmer, two and a red, sorcery. Create a token that's a copy of target creature, accept it as haste,

and at the beginning of the end step, exile this permanent. So the idea is I'm making a temporary token. This is something, if you notice, if you go back to the early days, there definitely was a theme that we did with magic where you got effects that were not the effect that red normally did, but you got it temporarily.

So for example, cloning a creature is not normally a red ability, but we're like, well, but you only get it for the turn, you know, and that felt more red. We sort of did it, kind of drifted away from it and drifted back to it. I think in current modern color pie technology, we're definitely looking for more things to do where red kind of does stuff that normally you see in other colors, but because of its temporary nature, feels more red. Like red can draw cards. If you use it right now, but because of its temporary nature, feels more red. Like, red can draw cards if you use it right now, or it can animate creatures if they attack right now and they go

away. We let red sort of do things more temporarily. Interesting thing about heat shimmer is we had a mechanic which we called the reverse engineer in Kaladesh, which was heat shimmer for artifacts.

That was a mechanic in the set for a while. It ended up becoming... I think... Yeah, I think... Yeah, it went on to the Planeswalker of Kaladesh. Yeah, we tried it as a mechanic. It was fun. It's a little bit complex.

The set had a lot of complex things going on. And we ended up putting it on our Artifact Planeswalker. Artifact-themed Planeswalker. Okay, next. Horde of Notions. White, blue, black, red, green. Legendary creature elemental. Vigilance, trample, haste.

For a white, blue, black, red, green, you may play target elemental card from your graveyard without paying its mana cost. And it's a 5-5 creature. So, one of the things we did is we liked making legendary creatures that corresponded with our five... Sorry, our eight tribes

and we made one that was like Doran was all three colors of the tree folk while our elementals were in all five colors so we made a five color elemental lord the idea we were playing around with is let's see, vigilance is in white and green

trample is in white and green, Trample is in red and green, and Haste was in black and red. I think we just gave it different abilities that overlapped a bunch of different colors. Blue obviously gets a little... none of those are really blue abilities. So, but I think we tried to give it abilities that made sense on a 5-5 that sort of were things that overlapped a bunch of the different colors the idea being that it would be hard for, for example, a two-color card to have Vigilance and Trample and Haste, for example

and then we wanted to give it an ability that required all the mana because you had to have all the mana to cast it, and then did something that was just very elemental friendly and the idea of just reanimating elementals because you had to have all the mana to cast it, and then did something that was just very elemental-friendly. And the idea of just bringing elemental, reanimating elementals felt pretty cool, and something that was pretty grandiose. It's not an ability we can just sort of do willy-nilly, if you will, and so it felt like something that was pretty grandiose.

So we liked the idea that, you know, if you're playing all five colors, you get a five-drop, five, five, with three abilities, and you can animate, you know, elementals. It felt very potent. But because it's five colors, one of the things we get to do is the more colors something is,

the harder it is to play it, and the more sort of power you get assigned to it. So for Wooburg, man, so white, blue, black, red, green, you get a lot for that. And so, it allowed us to make something that's pretty sexy. Five-color legendary creatures are very popular in Commander because it's slushed by all the cards. And so, I believe this is something that gets played a bit in Commander, if I remember correctly.

That can't work. How are we doing on time here? Okay, I'm going to do a few more cards, just because I'm trying to get through this, and I can't get much traffic today, so I'm going to talk about a few more cards, and then I will stop. Okay.

Next, Hunter of Iblites. Next. Hunter of Iblights. So Hunter of Iblights is three black black creature, elf assassin. It's a 3-3 creature. When Hunter of Iblights enters the battlefield, put a plus one plus one counter on a target creature you don't control. Two black tap, destroy a target

creature with a counter on it. Okay, so there's a card in Tempest. I'm trying to remember the name of it. Where it enters the battlefield, you put a marker counter on a creature, and then you can kill that creature. This is trying to be that, but a little more... a little more flexible and have a little more synergy.

One of the things that we did with elves is we let elves mess around with plus one, plus one counters. And so the idea is this card functions much like the Tempest card. I can make something that I can kill it. But it also allows me to interact with things that have plus one, plus one counters. Now, maybe they naturally have them because there's something in that set.

Or maybe I'm manipulating them and granting them. It allows me to do that as well. The one tricky thing about this that the Tempest card didn't do is you are temporarily making their creature better because this is a tap ability. So I have to put it on your creature and I have a turn before I can tap this.

So I'm definitely making one of your creatures better for the turn. And so that also makes it a little bit different from the Tempest card. Imperious, perfect. Two and a green. Elf Warrior, 2-2. So 2-2 Elf Warrior for three mana, one which is green.

Other elf creatures you control get plus one, plus one. Green and tap. Create a 1-1 green elf warrior creature token. So this was made to be an elf lord. We are indeed refers to lords as anything that grants all creatures of type some ability, not necessarily plus one plus one, like if I grant all elves

death touch or something, we will call that a lord. The sort of traditional lords grant plus one plus one. The interesting thing about this one is not only does it grant an ability, but it also, the other way it helps elves is by making the elves. And because it

makes elves plus one plus one, essentially it's making two two creatures. So this card is pretty potent and has seen a bunch of play. But anyway, it is, oh and once again, it makes an elf warrior because we were trying to play nicely with Commander, not Commander, with Morning Tide that was coming up.

Incremental Growth. Three green green. Sorcery. Put a plus one plus one counter on a target creature. Two plus one plus one counters on another target creature. And three plus one counters on a third target creature. So, this card... Is this the first card that did this? I tried to put this in a recent article of mine.

Recent for me. A little a little for you guys. Um, where we've made a bunch of different cards where we mess around with a 1-1, a 2-2, and a 3-3. I think this is the first one we made. Um, and this one's a little bit cleaner in that there's not tons of memory because you're using plus one, plus one counters. Um, but we thought it was kind of fun. Um, you know, the idea that I get counters by spreading around and the one, two, three, it's pretty cool. So I definitely liked that.

Okay. Um, Jace Balerion, one blue, blue legendary planeswalker Jace, uh, loyalty three, get three loyalty. Plus two ability. Each player draws a card. Minus one. Target player draws a card. Minus ten.

Target player puts the top ten cards of their library into the graveyard. So, interesting thing about Jace is the first Jace card is very Jace-y. Jace is very, he's a mind-made. So, card drawing, milling. We also let him do illusion-based things. But anyway, some of the other cards, you know, we were trying to make a base color thing, and some of the other ones are like, well, yeah, it hit upon the character,

but definitely did a few things that maybe we wouldn't do now. Jace we would do now. We can reprint, you know, Jace Balerion's the card. I mean, other than maybe power level, though power level's probably okay. I mean, it was definitely saw play. It was a good card. But anyway, this is the card we can reprint in that this is Jace. Nothing about this, you know, like a Johnny, you know, his ultimate's a little bit not quite a Johnny

as much as other Johnny stuff, where Jace is Jace, and I think we can print that now. This was probably the second most popular card as a card. this was probably the second most popular card as a card interesting when we did the original survey on Planeswalkers on the five Planeswalkers Jace won that hands down from a character standpoint

I think it was Jace, Chandra, Liliana, Garrick, Ajani in that order and that is held true Jace and Chandra and Liliana have all been super strong. Not that Ajani and Garak are disliked at all. They're not. But those first three, uh, um, quite often end up at the top of the things.

People, those are characters people really, really like for whatever reason. Um, are we doing my time? Okay. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna end on Jace, because Jace is a fine place to end. Um, anyway, I hope you guys are enjoying this Jace, because Jace is a fine place to end. Anyway, I hope you guys are enjoying this jaunt through Lorwyn. But it is now that I'm here at work, it's time to stop talking magic, and time for me to be making magic. So I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.