Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #616: Rakdos

Episode Date: March 1, 2019

This podcast is the seventh in my Ravnica guild series. In this podcast, I talk about the Cult of Rakdos, the black-red guild.

I'm pulling up my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so I'm back doing some podcasts about the guilds, now that Ravnica Allegiance has come out. And so last time I talked about Azorius, so now I'm talking about Rakdos, Black and Red. So I'm going to talk a little bit about what Black and Red represent, how we ended up making Rakdos, and then I'll walk through what we did for each of the three visits to Ravnica. Okay, so let's start with Black and Red. So Black is all about wanting power. That Black is willing to do whatever it needs to do to be able to have the power that it craves.

And where Black sort of steps out from everybody else is, Black really believes that the key to sort of succeeding in life is being willing to do what others are unwilling to do. That there's a lot of limitations that people put on themselves that are self-limitations. And Black is like, look, if you want to get things done, you just have to be willing to do what it takes to get them done. Um, you know, black is very big on the idea, um, that, you know, somebody needs to look out for you and why not have that be you?

Who is more invested in your own, uh, well-being than you? And so black is just, you know, the white-black conflict very much is about the good of the group versus the good of the individual. Black's the good of the individual. Black is like, I, you know, black believes in systems where merit, you know, if I try really hard and I succeed, you know, I can succeed because

I put in the time and energy and the effort. Black is big on merit, you know, black is big on sort of, you know, rewarding those that are willing to do what it takes to get the job done. Red, red is all about following one's heart. Red's about, you know, red really believes that, like, you know, the key to being happiness is sort of listening internally and following what your emotions say and what your body says. And like, you know, red feels like, look, you want to live a life fulfilled.

And living a life fulfilled is not having regrets. It's not, you know, it's seizing the moment and listening to what your emotions say. seizing the moment and listening to what your emotions say. So red is very in the moment and very wants to sort of live life, you know, wants a sense of living life fully. Okay, so what happens when you take sort of the willing to do whatever it takes mentality block along with the live in the moment red. You get Rakdos.

So Rakdos is very much about the idea of, so when black and red get together, you start to get hedonism. And what hedonism means is I'm going to do what I want to do for the betterment of me. I want, you know, and that

black and red come at hedonism in a slightly different aspect. Black is a little more about the selfish part of it, and red's a little bit more about, you know, living in the moment part of it. But yeah, get them together. And black-red's very hedonistic. It's very like, I'm going to do what I want to do now. I'm going

to live in the moment. I'm going to, you know, and we knew that when we wanted to get black and red together, we wanted to capture the sense of I, so like for example, to me, the perfect example of a character that is the marrying of black and red is the Joker from Batman's Nemesis. Because the Joker

very much wants to sort of make things happen and do what he wants to do, but there's a chaotic element to him. And red's chaotic element also gets played up quite a bit when black and red get together. Because you see a little bit

of black sort of what red does is makes black play into the things that black enjoys a little more that black naturally has a state of being a bit disruptive and doing things that are on the more violent side

and black by itself has a little bit more restraint you sometimes see the side that leans toward blue that shows some sense of restraint. But when black gets against this red, there's no restraint. So the idea that we really liked for Rakdos

was it was the guild that's about doing what you want to do in the moment and doing whatever it takes to get rid of things in your way. So one of the things mechanically, like one of the things we always have to keep in mind is not just sort of philosophically where do they overlap but where do the mechanics overlap. So when black and red get together, black and red are the two colors with the most removal or the most efficient

removal. Actually, the highest amount of removal and the most efficient removal. Black is number one in creature killing. Black is number one in creature killing. Red's number one in direct damage. You know, a lot of black and red is sort of like, I'm going to play my creatures and then I'm just going to blow up everything in their way, you know. If you look at something like red-white, Boros,

that's a little more like, I'm just going to have so many creatures spilling out so fast that you're going to have trouble dealing with them. Where something like Gruul is a little more like, I'm going to ramp up and make bigger and bigger creatures and you're going to have trouble dealing with them. Black-Red is more like, well, I'm not going to have as many threats as Boros, or as big a threat as Gruul, but I'm going to have more answers, meaning I'm going to make it harder for you to deal with the creatures I do have. Now, one of the tricky things about Rakdos

is some of the guilds have a very clean definitive part of the game state for example the Golgari revolves around the graveyard so there's an area of play Boros revolves around the attacking you know the combat

so you know Simic very much plays around with plus one, plus one counters. There's different guilds that have different areas and spaces that they've carved out where there's a real mechanical space it's latched onto. The problem with Rakdos is, Rakdos doesn't have a clean and clear part of the game that it's playing around with. You know, it's more an attitude. game that it's playing around with, you know. It's more an attitude,

and that's why Rakdos has been a little bit tricky, in that part of what we want with Rakdos is there's a feeling when you play that we like. That there is a recklessness and a willing to do what it takes sort of quality to Rakdos.

One of the things we always joked is that Rakdos throws the best parties. If you want to get invited to a pretty exciting party, you want to go to the Rakdos parties. Now, not everyone survives every Rakdos party. You can get injured there, but it's fun.

They pull out of the stops. The thing with Rakdos we really played up is the idea that they are willing to take big risks. That's another thing that with Rakdos we really played up is the idea that they are willing to, you know, take big risks. And that's another thing that we played around with Rakdos, is the idea that of all the guilds, they're the most willing to take the risks. Because black is the color that is willing to sort of do what it takes to get the job done,

and red's the color willing to sort of play a little bit into chaos. And so you get them together, and you really have this, this, this skill that, like, okay, I'm willing to, I understand that by taking risks, there's a huge gain to be had, and we wanted to capture that as well. So, it's tricky, there's no particular games, there's no, like, part of the game that Black Red is making theirs. It's more of an attitude.

So, Dissension was the first set that had the Rakdos in it. So, I talked about last time in my Azorius podcast that Rakdos and Azorius have actually always been together. They were together in Dissension. They were together in Return to Ravnica, and they're together

in Ravnica Allegiances. And they're the three colors of sight. The two guilds that have shown up in the first, second, and third guild set of sights that didn't have all the colors. Obviously, dragons made it all the colors. So,

what happened was, we actually figured out both Azorius and Simic, which were the other two colors in Descention first. Rakdos was actually the last guild, because it was the last guild in the last set for us to figure out. And the stumbling block we really had for a while was, how do you in gameplay capture the flavor I've been talking about? We like the flavor. We like the idea

that, you know, they're kind of the wild bunch that are just sort of, um, that have this kind of chaotic energy to them. But how do you get that in gameplay? How do you make that something that... And the other question, and this is something we always ask,

is the player that enjoys red and black, what exactly do they want to do in play? And eventually what we came to is, what if we could inspire in gameplay that same attitude of kind of live in the moment, do what needs to take, take risks, and go big. And so what we decided was, what if we made Black and Red, we encouraged them to play in a game style that made them sort of use their resources, that they didn't wait to

do things, they sort of acted in the moment. And so we came up with Hellbent. That they didn't wait to do things. They sort of acted in the moment. And so we came up with Hellbent. So Hellbent was an ability word that said, as long as you have no cards in hand, dot, dot, dot, something is true. And so Hellbent could go on spells.

It could go on creatures. Basically, it said, okay, look, if you've been playing all your cards when you can play them, we'll reward you. And the idea was, okay, well, if we sort of say to the Rakdos player, look, just play all your cards. Don't wait. Don't hold back. Just play all your cards. You know, that got some of the sense of what we wanted. That we wanted that Rakdos was the color combination

that wasn't holding back. And so we liked that Helbent was this interesting way to sort of encourage Black Red to do something a little bit different. So we made it now, that one interesting thing about Rakdos in Descension was there was no overlap within that expansion. That the two other guilds were Azorius, white-blue,

and Simic, blue-green. In fact, the only overlap in the small set in Descension was in blue, obviously, between Azorius and Simic. But you did not play the set by itself. Current guild sets you play by themselves. This you drafted with original Ravnica and Guild Pact.

So that meant that Rakdos' overlap was with three other guilds, which is every guild that plays Ragn. So with Boros, with Izzet, and with Gruul. So one of the things that we sort of played into

was the idea that, you know, no matter what spells you have, you know, you can play them. I mean, Raptors kind of encourage you not to play too many big things just because you wanted to get to the Hellbound State as big as you could. And all the other colors did have cheap spells,

and, you know, there's a certain amount of aggression to red-black. Plus, red-black, like I said, has the best removal. So it plays pretty well. Both Boros and Gruul are also on the more aggressive side. Red, in general, tends to be more aggressive. So with the exception of Izzet,

and even Izzet is tempo-based, all the red, there's no red deck that says just sit back and wait all of them are pretty aggressive like I said, even Izzet has a tempo strategy where it's trying to keep you off kilter and part of tempo means you're constantly playing things

so Raktos did blend in with the other red guilds when you were drafting them all together. But it was, it's not like sort of modern sets where they were drafted specifically with the other ones. Once we come back to Ravnica, that starts happening, but in this first set, they did not.

So when the dust settled, Hellbent was, my memory was, it didn't do great in our poem, but it didn't do badly. Kind of the middle. I think there were a lot of BlackRock players that did enjoy the idea of having the license to play a little bit recklessly. Normally, sort of, you're taught strategically in Magic that you don't want to empty your hand.

And it's kind of neat sometimes to take something that people kind of want to do and then mechanically encourage them so it's the right thing to do. That's one of the cool things I think about Magic is when you say, hey, I know you like doing this, now I'm going to give you a reason to do it.

I talk a lot about back in Onslaught, the way I sold Bill on doing Tribal was, look, back in Onslaught, the way I sold Bill on doing tribal was, look, players want to do this anyway. They're doing it. They're doing it, and it's not good. Let's make them want to do it. Let's encourage them to do it.

And the idea of being reckless and playing all the cards in your hand, it's kind of fun. You know, it's kind of fun to not have to hold back. When the dust settled, I think that R&D's take on it is that if we had to do it all over again we would have made what R&D now calls heck-bent as opposed to hell-bent which is all but one card black and red do have a lot of destructive cards and things that are

actually, it's interesting to be able to hold some of it back, so I think in retrospect when we revisit these themes, we now do Heckbent in that it plays better to say, well, get rid of most of your cards, but let's keep one. That's kind of looking back at Hellbent, saying

oh, yeah, if we had to do it again, I think we would do Heckbent. I mean, we'd probably call it Hellbent, but we would do what was, we now call Heckbent. But anyway, so Rakdos show up. One of the interesting things about the Rakdos, the first time we saw them, was there was a lot of discussion from the creative team of how to show them up and sort of play into what they were. There's always been this little bit of sense of, not just that they're sort of always partying,

but a little bit of a showmanship to them. You'll see it come out later, but you even can see in the early one, there's a little bit of the idea of that they're performers, and that they like kind of impressing other people, and doing things to make people go, wow, that's crazy, what are you doing?

And so that flavor was there. It was a little bit lower down. You'll see it comes up more as Retros goes along. Okay, which brings us to Return to Ravnica. Okay, so we had done Hellbent. And like I said, it wasn't, we liked the general sense of the tone we were going for, but we felt the gameplay wasn't quite where we wanted it. And, you know, we

knew there was some room for improvement. So, we spent some time trying to figure out how do we... We liked the idea that you took risks, but this time we said, okay, well, what if we make a mechanic that there's a risk built into the mechanic, but you opt into making choices, and that way

you have the option of being risky, but you have the option of not being risky. And we thought it was kind of cool where we thought the idea that giving you a chance where you opt into being risky felt rectos. So what we tried with Hellbent was sort of like we kind of forced you to be risky. And we're like, okay, let's try a mechanic this time where you can be risky, but you opt into being risky. And that way, it's sort of like you're choosing to be risky. That felt righteous to us.

So the mechanic we came up with was Unleash. So Unleash is you may have this creature enter the battlefield with a plus one, plus one counter on it. It can't block as long as it has a plus one, plus one counter on it. So the idea here was creature with unleash could be bigger, but if you made them bigger you were committing to aggression. Because if they had a plus one plus one counter on them they couldn't block.

And this was I mean it was a different take, like I said. One of the things about some of the guilds is some of them are so tied to mechanical component that it's much easier to structure because Rattus is based on a feel it's more of

we want to sort of capture this and Unleashed was a definitely interesting experiment where we sort of said okay look you can opt in the mechanic was kind of like there's an upside that comes with a downside. You choose whether you want both the upside and the downside.

The other thing it did is, we liked the idea that Rakdos is more offensive than defensive. But this allowed you to be defensive if you wanted. this allowed you to be defensive if you wanted. Hellbent at times, really, it was so forcing you to empty your hand that it made it harder for you to play defensive, one of the reasons we kind of like the idea of heckbent. But this time, it's like, okay, if you're behind, if you need your creatures to block, you can. We're not forcing you to do this.

But it does say, hey, if you have any opportunity to be aggressive, this mechanic sort of pushes you toward aggression. So it lets you be defensive if you need it to be, but it definitely encouraged aggression, and we liked that. We thought that was kind of fun. So Unleashed did not do—my memory from it is it did worse than Hellbent did. And the reason was that opting in to a negative ability, even if it comes with a positive ability, because usually if you're opting in, there's some reason to do it. Sort of giving drawbacks to yourself. Not super popular. We've learned this over the years,

that players in general like more upside and less downside. I don't know. I mean, there's a couple interesting questions here. One is, I mean, I think if you look, for example, at Riot, which is the gruel mechanic for, I mean, I'll talk about that when I get to gruel. But the interesting thing about it is you can see us using Unleashed technology, but in a slightly different way, which is rather than upside and downside or nothing,

it's upside, upside. Which upside do you want? Now, the downside of one choice is you don't get the upside of the other, but it's just psychological. It's like, oh, you get an upside. You choose which one. It's just a little happier for people

than you can choose if you want an upside, but if you choose an upside, you must take a downside. That side is not quite as compelling. Okay, so Rakdos in Return to Ravnica had Izzet on one side, so that was the red overlap, and had Golgarian on the other side, that was the black overlap. and the other side. That was a black overlap. So one of the things we had to do is

the Izzet Izzet was very, Izzet had overload. So overload was a mechanic where you could hit one target or you could pay an additional cost and hit all legal targets.

And the stuff we put in red we just made sure that it had a more aggressive quality to it. It definitely had a bunch of, like, do damage to one thing, or everything, or, you know, like, one of my opponent's creatures, or all of my opponent's creatures. You know, it definitely had a little bit of, uh, we made sure that the red

overload cards were the kind of things that Rakdos might want to play. Um, and then, uh, Scavenge was very much, was about taking creatures out of the graveyard and putting plus one, plus one counters on them. There's a little bit of anti-synergy going on in that plus one, plus one counters on these creatures kept you from blocking with them. So if you had put out a creature and didn't put a counter on it

because you wanted to block with it, it then meant you couldn't scavenge onto that creature. Now, if you're going to put a plus one on the creature anyway, it doesn't matter. Scavenge, put more on. But the mechanic did play well in the more aggressive. One of the things about Raktors is Raktors tend to be aggressive. Raktors creatures die. So the idea that it's black creatures if you had scavenge just meant the creatures that die then come back to beef up the creatures that are there.

So, there was some synergy between that. So, Golgaria and Raptors actually did play well in Return to Ravnica. Okay. So, we made Unleash. Didn't do particularly great, poll-wise. But, I mean, I do like Unleash. I do like the... I did enjoy the sort of

do-you-want-to-be-risky sort of feel. But anyway, the lesson there is is there a way to get risk that isn't inherently... that there's occasionally upside to the risk? I don't know. That's a tricky one in general. Something Rackdress is always struggling with is we want a little bit of risk-taking,

but risk-taking usually means there's some potential downside because that's why it's risk-taking. And trying to find that balance has always been tricky. Okay, so, now we get to Ravnica Allegiances. Okay, so, and like I said,

the interesting thing about some guilds, one of the things we did, the very first thing we did in the very first meeting is, and remember, both guilds of Ravnica and Ravnica Allegiance had vision design together. It was one single team for both sets. The first thing we did was we said, okay, let's go look at everything they've already done. What are the mechanics that they've done?

I had an article, I showed a whiteboard, and this was the whiteboard that I showed. And it was us saying, okay, let's show all the mechanics they've done. And so what we did is we graded them on how likely they were to return um and i think the idea was it was one two and three and i think one was it's not returning two was maybe could return and three was we like it we think it's a really good like two meant meant that it filled its purpose as a guild mechanic, but it didn't have a lot of use beyond just being a guild mechanic. Where three was like, oh, this is a really,

this is the kind of mechanic that we might bring back as a non-guild mechanic. This is just a sweet mechanic. For example, both Bloodthirst and Convoke got brought back into the core set, right? So those are things that have been an original Ravnica block and were good enough. We're like, you know what? It doesn't even need to be guild affiliated.

These are just cool, solid mechanics. Where other mechanics might be like, oh, this is a neat mechanic. It's really tied to the guild, and it's not something we might do lots of, but it's a good, solid mechanic. So what we realized was, when we looked back at Rakdos, neither, like, some other guilds were like, oh, they're mechanics we could bring back. We liked them. Rakdos was kind of like, oh, we wouldn't do Hellbent again. If we did Hellbent, we would do Heckbent.

And Unleashed got low enough scores in the markets, you know, our market research that probably we wouldn't bring back Unleashed. Um, so we're like, okay, we need to do a new mechanic. We need to get the tone and sense right. So the idea that we came up with Envision, I mean, we went through a lot of different things in Envision Design. We talked about, you know, are there existing mechanics we want to bring back? And in the end, the mechanic that we handed over

to set design was called Finale. So here's how Finale works. You paid some cost and it said card name gets plus N plus O. N just means some number. Different cards would have different numbers. And we're doing something. N just tells us

there's a number there. It will change. And it can grant an ability. So card name gets plus N plus O and sometimes gets an ability until end of turn. Sacrifice it at the beginning of the next end step. Activate this ability only once. The idea of Finale, it was kind

of inspired by a card called Berserk in Alpha. So for those who don't know Berserk, Berserk costs a single green mana, target creature, its power is doubled for the turn, and then you have to sacrifice it at the end of turn. The idea being that like,

oh, my creature goes all out in the end, but it cost me my creature. And the thing we were playing around with on Finale is, imagine having creatures that could sort of, um, become something really awesome, but just for a turn, and that the cost of becoming really awesome means they go away. Um, and I thought at the time, because one of the things to keep in mind is, I just got through saying that, um, one of the marks against Unleashed was that the upside came with a downside.

Well, losing your creature is a big downside. But the idea we liked was that there are a lot of times in Magic where I'm going to lose the creature anyway. I'm getting in a combat, or I can't attack. You know, my creature right now is not big enough to attack, so it's kind of sitting here doing nothing. But there's enough times in magic where your creature for all purposes, even though it's alive, really is not being very useful to you. And so the idea of losing it but getting

some utility out it. Like, let's say I have a small creature that just can't attack. Yeah, I guess I could chump block something maybe with it. But I mean, there's not a lot of utility out of it. But if I can make it into a big threat and get through, okay, now it's doing something. And maybe it's okay that I lose that 1-1. I'm giving up a random chump block for being able to get through and doing something really cool. Or maybe I'm giving it up because I want to grow my creature

and then win a combat and kill a creature. And so, look, my creature was going to die in combat anyway. If I have a 1-1 and you're attacking with a 3-3, if I give my creature plus 2 plus 0, hey, I'm going to kill your creature. I was going to die anyway. So we thought there was a lot of times in which, yeah, the creature's going to die,

but there's plenty of times where the trade-off wasn't that big a deal. Either the creature was already going to die, or your creature didn't have enough utility anyway. Getting some utility with it might be worth losing the creature. And the idea we liked was, it really had this big sense of go big or go home, that we

like about the Rakdos. It has sort of this, it had a little bit of a you know, doing risky thing feel, and it had, you know, anyway, we thought it was kind of a cool take on Rakdos. So we handed that over to Set Design. Now, Set Design,

there's some things they liked about Finale, and I think they saw where it kind of shined and did cool things. But the one thing they were thinking is we had handed over mechanical for Gruul and the way the mechanic in Gruul worked was at end of turn it triggered at end of turn

if you dealt combat damage to the opponent this turn or maybe if they actually take it back, I think if they had been damaged this turn because it lets you use direct damage on your opponent and then it triggered and a few of the cards if you did that, the reward was, in your second main phase, you could cast things cheaper. And they really

liked that. They liked the idea that, hey, how do I encourage you to sort of be more aggressive, but what if I make it easier for you to play other threats if you are? And so they took the Gruul mechanic and sort of made a condensed version of it, which they ended up calling Spectacle. So Spectacle is you pay a cost. It says you may cast a spell for a Spectacle cost rather than its mana cost

if any opponent lost life this turn. Note that when creatures do damage to the opponent, they do lose life. A result of being damaged by a creature is life loss. So this did care about combat damage. It wasn't ignoring combat damage. So anyway, the idea is if the opponent loses life for any reason, whether you damage them with creatures, you hit them with threat damage,

they pay life for an effect, any reason they lose life, you now can cast the thing cheaper. And the idea was, I don't think there was another, there was no other damage reduction spells,

and it felt like one of the things we really like to do is help you cast your spells in Rakdos. And it felt kind of neat. One of the things we always do is one of our rules is if we take all the cards

that have the guild symbol on it so like all the Rakdos cards with the Rakdos symbol meaning the Rakdosian of Rakdos cards because they have the symbol on it, meaning they're using the mechanic, or they're multicolored, or you optimize the two colors. If you put them all on a deck,

then the deck would feel cohesive. And what that meant is, look, if you were playing with Hellbent cards and with Unleashed cards, would this new mechanic feel right? Not that this new mechanic needs to be what those mechanics were, but it has to sort of play in the style of Dekto's work. And so one of the things

that we liked was Spectral just helped let you capture stuff. You know, help it let you capture stuff. And so it just played nicely with what we were doing. It captured the general sense of Rakdos. It captured the feel of Rakdos. And it just sort of, while it wasn't doing mechanically exactly what the previous Rakdos mechanics were doing, it was fitting the feel and hitting a larger strategy that, you know, that you could play them together and it would work. Okay, speaking of playing together.

So, in Rodney Collegiances, the red guild is Gruul, and that's the red overlap. And the black overlap is Orzhov. So Gruul has a mechanic called Riot. Riot allows you to either make your creature bigger or make your creature have haste. You choose which one you want. So that overlaps nicely with what's going on in Rakdos. Rakdos wants the ability to upgrade for threats, and having a choice between haste or being bigger is interesting.

It's the kind of decision that Rakdos likes. And both Rakdos and Gruul tend to have more aggro-type strategies. Like I said, the biggest difference between the two is having access to green means that Gruul has a little bit of access to mana, or more access to mana ramp, and more access to larger efficiently costed creatures.

When you go to Rakdos, what black adds to the mix is you have more control-oriented stuff, more removal, and your creatures just come with some different abilities, like flight and stuff that red and green don't have, or not much of. So we like the idea that, you know, gruul and ractors overlap. Then we get to Orzhov.

So Orzhov has a mechanic called Afterlife. It is creatures that when they die, they come back with some number of spirit tokens. So, for example, if you had Afterlife 1, it means when you die, you come back with a flyer. So one of the things that Rakdos likes about that is Rakdos already is being pretty aggressive with his creatures. It is very willing to trade its creatures.

So things dying happens in Rakdos. So if you're black creatures, then trade into another resource. That's just another resource that Rakdos can take advantage of. Orzhov tends to play a little bit slower, sort of what we call a bleeder deck, where it's slowly nibbling you away. And the 1-1 creatures are good in that deck for doing the slow nibbling. In a deck like Rakdos, where you're being a little bit more aggressive, it's just more attack for you.

It's evasive attack that allows you to help get in. One of the things about Rakdos is Rakdos can do a lot of damage pretty quickly and then it wants to have some spells and stuff to finish them off. And so having fly, having evasion

also can fill that role. Black-red in tradition has a little bit less evasion. Black has some flying. Red and black have some menace. But it doesn't quite have as much evasion as blue, for example. So the orange-yellow mechanic works nicely so that it comes together.

The other thing to talk about that went on in... Let's talk a little bit about flavor. So the Rakdos is run by the demon Rakdos. That's where Rakdos got its name. Rakdos is named the guild after him. It's the cult of Rakdos. And Rakdos, what we call the original ten...

I don't know what to call them, the characters, that made the guild pack, one for each guild, ten characters that made the guild pack. One for each guild. A few of them are still around. Rakdos is the only one that has led the Rakdos all three times we've met him.

We have met Niv-Mizzet, who for two of the three times led met Izzet, Niv-Mizzet, who, for two of the three times, led the Izzet. He is off doing other things right now. He's aware that Bolas is coming, or Bolas is here, and so Ral is currently running the Izzet, but he's still around. A lot of the other parents have died along the way. Some, like Azor, are off track

running Salon. But, anyway, so Rakdos, one of the things that Rakdos does is he likes to make, he wants people in his guild because it's exciting to be in his guild. And so,

as I said earlier, they throw the best parties. So one of the things we've always been trying to capture is a sense of Rakdos has a showier sense to them and we want to play that up. So the idea of performers or circus does show up in both earlier versions of Rakdos. Um, the idea of a little sense of, of that performer sense or the, the dark circus sort of feel,

that is there. I think what happened this time was when they brought in the people to do the world building, um, they sort of mentioned in passing this idea of the dark circus. Um, and I think that they really took it to heart and just pushed it a little more. Like, one of the big challenges of doing a guild set is you want to both capture what the guild was and make sure that you're delivering what the guild was so that you're making something that feels right. But at the same time, you want to have something a little bit new. You want to make sure that, you know, I want these new cards in my guild deck

because it's giving me some utility that, while in flavor and matching what I've done before, is something a little bit new. And we want that not just in mechanics, but we also want it in flavor and that we want to build on the flavor. So the idea of playing up the circus theme a little bit, like I said, it was there, but really they went to town with it this time. And so you're seeing a bit more

of it. And the other thing that was going on is I think the creative team is spending a lot of time sort of re-evaluating humor. And one of the conclusions they came to not that long ago is trying to find more opportunities for humor in sets. And the Ractos, for example, has a very masochistic sense of humor, but a funny sense of humor. has a very masochistic sense of humor, but a funny sense of humor. One of the things that's fun about the Rakdos is that they embrace who they are, and they embrace the way they live.

It is not as if they don't understand that what they're doing is dangerous and risky. They fully embrace that. And that part of the humor of them, it's a very dark, twisted humor. And so it has become popular with the player base. Our player base, some of them, very much approve of dark, twisted humor. So that was a neat thing to see, is sort of

I like the idea that Rakdos has definitely added in some new components. I think Spectacle, while flavorful to what the guild does, is new and different, and, you know, it's making you care about something a little bit different. I mean, Rakdos always wanted you to be aggressive, but this particular says, you know what?

Hey, if you can get in some damage, we can do things. And so one of the things that I really like about what Spectacle does is something that Raid also did, which is when you are encouraged to attack, your opponent has less sense when you're bluffing. Because if you don't have an external reason to attack other than just doing damage, if I attack with a 1-1 creature and you have a 2-2,

well, I have to be... I'm implying that I have some way, you know, to deal with it. Like, I have a giant growth of something. Well, not black and red. I am drug damage. I have some means by which, if you block my creature, it won't be good for you. But in a world in which there's an external reason to do it,

it makes it a little bit more fun. I'm attacking. Do I have something? Or maybe I'm just trying to, you know, I want to play a spectacle card. And you're like, oh, well, they, it just makes bluffing easier to do, is what I'm trying to say.

And that, and one of the things I enjoy with a gameplay style of something like Rakdos is you want to let people bluff more. You want to let people attack a little more recklessly, but in a way where the opponent is has to make some conscious decisions about what's

going on. That leads to fun gameplay. And I really like the thing about Spectacle that is fun, I'd rate it something like I said very similar is it makes an interesting gameplay during combat of you trying to figure out what you think they're up to and then for the

Rakdos player there's a lot of joy in knowing what you know but knowing the opponent doesn't know and that there's a little bit of what I'll call delicious pain in having fun of, you know, your opponent's ignorance is somewhat hard for them, and you enjoying that. So there's a little bit of a masochistic streak, I think, in Spectacle that makes playing it

sort of, from a mindset, have a little bit of a Rakdos feel. And then, once again, one of the things, like I said, that is very unique about Rakdos versus some other guilds is that all the guilds have an emotion. Like, I'm big on emotional response. Okay, I'm playing the guild. How do I want to feel? But Rakdos is one of the few guilds that its sort of mechanical identity

is shaped around it's emotional resonance in the game choices it makes you know what I'm saying it is not doing the same thing every time if you look at it's mechanics at Hellbent, Elysian, Spectacle they play together well they have a similar

sort of mindset to them but they're not the same thing. Hellbent says, I want to play spells out of my hand. Unleashed says, you know, I want to commit to aggression. And Spectacle says, I kind of want to get in there and do damage. Now, those aren't isolated things. They click together. They actually play well together by design.

But they are making you do slightly different things. And the combination of all of them is a very delicious sense of... One of the fun things about playing Rakdos should be you, the player playing it, should be having fun. For example, it's not that you can't have fun playing any guild. But for example, the Azorius is a lot more serious that when you're playing Azorius we kind of want you to be more

quiet and harder to read that part of Azorius is that you know Azorius is very much I know what's going on but no one else does it I don't want to reveal anything and so the Azorius play style which tends to be more slow and controlling plays into that mental mindset that you want for the Azorius play style, which tends to be more slow and controlling, plays into that

mental mindset that you want for the Azorius. But that is a little less openly fun, if you will. There's people who love control and like Azorius, and they have fun playing it. I'm not talking about enjoying it. What I mean is that there's an attitude

that when you play Rakdos, that it encourages you to be a little more out there, a little bit in your face, you kind of want to trash talk. It's definitely a guild where it encourages you to be a little more bold in your choices and have fun with it. And that's one of the things that, like I said,

I really enjoy that we can do with the guilds correctly is I want you, in the act of playing the guild of making mechanical choices, um, feel the way the guild feels. And while Rakdos has definitely been all over the map as far as, you know, it's probably the guild or one of the guilds that's had the most stretch on the kindest of mechanics we've made. The one thing that I do like that unifies them is the general sense of how you play and what you're doing is a fun um

you know, like when I play Rakdos, I one of the things I want you to do as a player, I do is I want you to get in the mindset of the guild when you're playing the guild and I want you to sort of say like there's a little bit of role playing that can go in there that I think is kind of fun, that you know when you're playing of say, like there's a little bit of role playing that can go in there that I think is kind of fun.

That you know when you're playing Rakdos that the cards all sort of hint at and the flavor text and the names and the art all hint at the nature, the showmanship of the Rakdos. And on some level, when you play, you are putting on a show and that you are kind of encouraged as a player

to really get into it and have fun and play on the fact that you know things your opponent doesn't know, you know what I'm saying? And I really enjoyed that. I think Rakdos is a lot of fun to play, especially if you're more inclined to have that sort of play. So anyway, I'm driving up to work right now. So I hope, like one of the things I want you to get when I'm doing these different guild podcasts is that each guild has its own challenge. You know, no guild is easy. I mean, each guild has elements that are easier and harder. And the true challenge of the Raptors Guild is that it is the guild most sort of held together by attitude.

And that is very tricky when designing. It's fun. It's cool. When it works out, it's a neat thing. But it's a lot easier to say, oh, well, I know it revolves around this mechanical thing. At least I know where I'm looking. Rattras makes you look a little wider and harder to find mechanics. And, you know, I mean,

obviously I enjoy the challenge of doing this. That's why I'm a designer. But it's a different kind of challenge. And part of me doing the podcast is making you understand, you know, what exactly those challenges are. But anyway, I am now at work. So we all know what that means.

It means it's 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 all next time. Bye-bye.