Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #651: War of the Spark Cards, Part 2

Episode Date: July 3, 2019

This is part two of a five-part series on card-by-card design stories from War of the Spark.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so last time I started talking about War of the Spark. So this time I'm going to continue. I'm up to B. So I got some more to talk about. Okay, so this time I'm gonna start by talking about a cycle. The Bond Cycle. So there's Bond of Discipline, Bond of Flourishing, Bond of Insight, Bond of Passion, bond of passion, and bond of revival. So let me explain what all of them are, and then I'll talk about the bond cycle. So bond of discipline, or actually, let me describe the bond cycle, then I'll walk you through each of them and explain how it works.

So one of the things that we were trying to do in War of the Spark is, now, yes, it's a planeswalker war, all the planeswalkers are fighting, now, yes, it's a planeswalker war. All the planeswalkers are fighting. But they're not the only ones fighting the war. The Ravnicans are fighting the war. The war takes place on Ravnica. And so we wanted the guilds to be involved. And one of the things we were looking to do in War of the Spark is,

what are things that we can't do in a traditional Ravnica set, in a guild set, that we could do here? How do we make this feel different? And one of the things that we realized was, look, they're having a war. Ravnica, the city itself, is at stake. Well, clearly the people of Ravnica, the guilds of Ravnica, would fight. And not only would they fight, but they'd fight together. So the idea was, this might be an interesting opportunity to demonstrate the guilds working together. Because that is something you don't normally get to see. So the challenge was, we wanted to communicate the guilds fighting

together. How do we do that? How do we communicate the guilds fighting together? And that was the challenge. So this was a clever answer to that problem because A, we wanted to communicate guilds working together and B, we wanted to do so in a way that like made for good gameplay. So for example, the kind of lowest hanging fruit would be a three-color spell, right? It's, you know, the two colors of one guild

and the two colors of the other guild, I assume they would overlap and then you would have a three-color spell. The? It's, you know, the two colors of one guild and the two colors of the other guild, I assume they would overlap, and then you would have a three-color spell. The problem is, this isn't really, while there are multi-color cards here,

this isn't a set all about drafting three-color, and so that was kind of a little bit awkward. So the question was, what else could we do? That's when it dawned on me

that one of the neat things was there was an overlapping of the guilds, meaning if the guilds were fighting together and you've picked two guilds that overlapped in the color, perhaps you could use the color overlap as their center, meaning you could make a cycle of mono-colored cards that represented the guilds working together. So let's start with Bond of Discipline. So Bond of Discipline costs four and a white,

so five total, one of which is white, sorcery, tap all creatures your opponents control, creatures you control gain lifelink until end of turn. And so the idea there is, let's see if I can remember this right, so tap all creatures your opponent control sounds Azorius, creatures you control gain lifelink until end of turn sounds Orzhov. So my guess is this is

so the idea is where does Orzhov overlap with Azorius? Discipline, obviously. And the idea is that one of the cool things is that you, we were trying to make effects, so each one of these had two effects.

Each effect made sense in that color but were representative of a different guild and not only did the two colors have to be representative of different guilds but they had to be synergistic so that it uh they worked well together so for example if all my creatures get lifelink and i tap all if i tap all creatures my opponent controls and give my creatures lifelink and I tap all creatures my opponent controls and give my creatures lifelink, well A, I get a hit, like now I'm willing to attack with everybody because your creatures are tapped and I'm gaining a whole bunch of life

because my creatures have lifelink. So it rounds a pretty big swing where I get through for a bunch of damage and if there's a clock we're fighting, all of a sudden I'm gaining a lot of extra life. So it's a very neat combination. Okay, Bond of Flourishing. Look at the top three cards of your library. You may reveal a permanent card from among them and put it into your hand.

Put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order. You gain three life. So it's this one. So this one seems like, look at the top three cards of your library. You may reveal a permanent card from among them and put it in your hand. And then life gain. So this one seems like, look at the top three cards in your library. You may reveal a permanent card from among them and put it in your hand. And then Life Gain. So this is green.

So Selesnya's involved. And I guess Simic's my guess. That is Simic and Selesnya. That Simic is about... Life Gain probably is Selesnya. And searching out your library for something is probably Simic. That's my guess here. Bond of Insight.

Three in a blue, Sorcery. Each player puts the top four cards of their library into their graveyard. Return up to two instants and sorcery cards from your graveyard to your hand. Okay, well, Milling, that's Dimir. And getting instants and sorceries, that's Izzet. So that's Dimir and Izzet working together.

Once again, like I said, each one of these is combined in a way where they're synergistic between each other. Like the idea that I'm milling and I'm milling my opponent, so that's good for me, but also I'm milling myself so that I can get some stuff back.

So that's valuable to me as well. Bond of Passion is four red red sorcery. Gain control of target creature until end of turn. Untap that creature. It gains haste until end of turn. Bond of Passion deals two damage to any other target. So Bond of Passion, that is gain control of target creature until end of turn is Gruul. And deal the damage to any other target is probably Boros.

So Passion is where you see... So once again, also when they named the cards, the Sword is saying, well, where's the overlying between Boros and Gruul? Where's the overlying between Izzet and Dimir? So I think that's kind of cool. And the final one

is Bond of Revival. Four and a black. Sorcery. Return target creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield. It gains haste until your next turn. So let's see who we have left here. This is... Well, getting things back

from the graveyard is Golgari. And we already had black, blue. And we already had black, white. So... Oh, and Rakdos.

Okay, so this is... Yeah, this is Rakdos meeting with Golgari. Bond of revival. So those are the two cowards most likely to... I think that's right. Yes. That's my guess.

That's a mix of those. Hopefully I got those all right. But anyway, the thing I liked about that design is it did a nice job of conveying something that was key to the war, but in a way that was sort of organic and made sense here. And those designs took quite a while.

We made them in vision. I think they got tweaked in set design, but mostly, I mean, the basic concept got made in vision and they stayed all the way through. I know they rejiggered some of the effects and I'm not sure if the lineups we had, if they, like, once you pick one of them and determine the lineup, so, like, once you say, oh, I'm going to have is it B with Dimir,

well, then that starts determining what everybody else has to be. Like, once you pick one pairing, like, you have options of pairing. For example, let's say I'm going to make, you know, the white one. Well, I can take any two

of the white gills and pair them together. I think the way we did it, you needed to pair an ally gill with an enemy gill is the way it worked out. Because if you didn't do ally with enemy, let's say you did ally with ally, what you ended up doing is you'd make five cards that just repeat the same guilds twice.

If you do ally with enemy, then you hit all ten guilds within the five card cycle. So you had to do ally and enemy. That's the way you had to do it. And so... Wait a second. If that is true... So Bond Revival... Oh, I might have messed this up.

If you have to do ally and enemy, you can't do... What did I say? I said... Oh, no. Golgari and Raktos works. That's one enemy and one ally. Okay. I think I got them correct.

But anyway, like I said, I'm proud of that cycle in that it was a very complex problem to solve. And I love when you find a way to sort of do a lot of things but in a simple execution. That is always the challenge of design, is trying to take complex ideas but execute it in a simple way. Okay, next. Casualties of war. So two black, black, green, green. So six men in total.

Two of which is black, two of which is green. Sorcery. Choose one or more. Destroy target artifact. Destroy target creature. Destroy target enchantment. Destroy target land. Destroy target planeswalker.

So black, green, and black, white are the two colors that can destroy any permanent. Just because they're the two colors that they have the overlap between them that are able to destroy all the permanents. And so obviously we did this one black green. One of the things, obviously we're doing a war. Like you'll notice this has a little more mass destruction than normal, just because we're trying to convey war. So we want a bunch

of big splashy cards. So this is a good example of something where it's pretty splashy. Like, if used correctly, you know, six mana and you can destroy five things. Now, this is up to, you don't have to choose all of them if there's not an artifact to destroy or enchantment. You don't have to destroy all of them. But it really, like, when it's

working at its best, it's just really pinpoint destruction. Now, it costs a lot of mana, but it's pretty effective. So it's, I think, a pretty cool ability. Okay, next. Chandra, Fire Artisan. So, two red red, so four mana total, two of which is red.

Legendary Planeswalker Chandra, a loyalty four. Whenever one or more of your loyal encounters are removed from Chandra, Fire Artisan, she deals that much damage to target an opponent or Planeswalker. Plus one, exile the top card of your library. You may play it this turn. Minus seven, exile the top seven cards of your library. You may play it this turn. Minus seven, exile the top seven cards of your library.

You may play them this turn. So one of the challenges here is, normally when we do Chandra, she's a pyromancer. We use all the pyromancer abilities. But we have a giant also here, and she's going to be it. So we wanted to make sure we separate them a little bit. And one of the things that we've made a Chandra ability, in fact, Chandra, I think, premiered the ability, is what we call Impulsive Draw. Chandra's super impulsive. It's

one that we have to really show impulsivity. And so we thought it'd be cool to sort of make her have this super Impulsive Draw card. So, like, her plus one is Impulsive Drawing one thing, and her minus seven is seven things. And the one reason why we like putting this on a Planeswalker is one of the challenges about Impulsive Draw is if it costs mana to do it, well then you don't have the mana to cast the spells.

But if you use it as a Planeswalker ability where you're using loyalty, then you have all the mana free. So it really does a cool thing of letting you sort of have access to stuff. And the other thing was well she's she is a pyromancer we still want to get in some damage so we used her static ability as or um sorry it's a triggered ability we use uh triggered ability um as a means to uh get the damage in so the the idea is whenever she's paying her loyalty that you know, whenever she's doing... Essentially, you're plus one-ing so you can build her up from four up to seven and then

not only are you getting to draw a whole bunch of cards, but you're doing a whole bunch of damage. And so that definitely felt like it felt like Chandra, but it also allowed us to do something that's a little cooler, which is a Chandra that has a lot of functionality as a card engine to get you some card advantage in red, which is something that's tricky for us to do, because red inherently is not that great a card advantage. But we like the impulsive draw because it really plays up the idea that, well, red can get it now.

It has to act in the moment. So we like that as a red means to sort of get that flavor. So it stays red, but allows you some access to cards or something red needs. Okay, Chandra's Triumph. One and a red, instant. Chandra's Triumph deals three damage to target creature or planeswalker and opponent controls. Chandra's Triumph deals five damage to that permanent instead if you control a Chandra planeswalker. Okay, so there's a cycle called the Triumphs.

This was made in set design. And they are made to parallel, or parallel? Or mirror, I guess is a better term. They're made to mirror the defeats. So in Hour of Devastation, in Act 1 of our story of the Bolas Ark, the Gatewatch goes up against Bolas, and Bolas kicks their butts. And in that set, there was the defeats. And the way the defeats work is they did negative things,

and if they happened to do negative things to the right planeswalker, they did extra. Now, most of that was Ryder. Most of the time, the chance of them actually having the planeswalker in the moment didn't happen a lot. And it was more there for flavor than anything else. We just wanted to convey in cards the fact that they suffered their defeat. But now that the Gatewatch are winning, we saw an opportunity to

sort of flip it around. And the conditions are a little better on the flip around because the defeats, your opponent had to have the thing that you needed to get the bonus. Here, you have to have it, which means you can build your deck around it. So the idea is, if I want to make Chandra's Triumph work, well, I can put Chandra in my deck.

And so that increases things. So in each of the cases of the Triumphs, basically what happens is, they do something that is pretty much, you'd probably want to pay for anyway. One hour deal, three damage to a creature or planeswalker. That's a fine spell. It's opponent controls. We tend to do that nowadays for anyway. One R deal, three damage to a creature or planeswalker. That's a fine spell. It's opponent controls. We tend to do that nowadays

for digital. One of the things in general is where we can, we want to make sure that we lessen how many clicks and things are in digital. If there's a reason

for us to give you extra clicks because there's really good gameplay to it, we do consider that. But in the case where most of the time you're just going to do it a certain way, we tend to, right now,

give it the thing so it prevents you having to do extra clicks. Or accidentally clicking the wrong thing. But anyway, the card, you know, three damage for two mana, that's pretty good. You'd probably run that anyway.

But if you happen to have a Chandra in your deck, now you're more inclined, you know, it goes from being, you know, a good spell to being a really, really good spell. And so it definitely kind of encourages you to think about maybe running this and Chandra in the same deck. Okay, next. Charmed Stray. Costs one white. It's a cat. One one cat creature. Life link.

When Charmed Stray enters the battlefield, put a plus one plus one counter on each other creature you control named Charmed Stray. So this is similar. It's Plague Rat E. It's not exactly Plague Rat because the way it works is

each one puts it on another so the idea is I play one, it's a 1-1 I play a second one, I have 1-1-1-1-2-2 then I have 1-1-1-1-2-2-1-3-3 then 1-1-1-2-2-1-3-3-1-4-4 where Plague Rats they're all 1-1 it's a 1-1, now they're all 2-2, now they're all 3-3

now they're all 4-4, so it's not it's close, it's close. Not exactly Plague Rats in that regard. But also, it is Lifelink. So they all have Lifelink. So them getting better

is even a bit better. And Plague Rat costs two and a black and this costs a single white mana. So for example, a white 1-1 with Lifelink, that's not a bad card at all.

That, you know, especially in Limited, for example, you might play that card. The fact that when you play the second one, now the first one becomes a 2-2, now that's just graveyard. That's pretty good.

One of the questions I got asked about this was why we didn't put that you can play as many cards as you want. I don't know if they ever considered that. This card, I think, got made in set design. It's the kind of thing that if it was in the set I was doing, I would have considered maybe. It definitely has a Plague rat kind of vibe to it. Plague rats, I know, technically,

don't let you play as many as you want, but that was the impetus for Relentless Rats and things like that to let you do that. Anyway, the other funny story about this card, or, I don't know, funny, cute story about this card, is the artist, who I am blanking on their name, but the artist who drew this card had had a cat that had passed away that they'd had for a long time.

And the art description was done to let him put his cat into the picture. And I think he also put the art director, Don is the art director, I think he also put Don's cat in. So anyway, there's a bunch of cats of people in here. These are real cats. But it was a nice little sentimental thing people in here. These are real cats. But it was nice, a little sentimental thing. He had a cat that he lost and so the fact that he got to

immortalize his cat on a card I thought was cool. Anyway, and this card is definitely, like I said, we've been pushing cat tribal a bit more

just because there are a lot, we've discovered that cats are quite popular. Surprise, surprise, cats are popular. But we, I know in Amonkhet we started pushing a little bit of cat tribal and those were

crazy popular. So just in general we're doing more cats these days. We saw an opportunity to do a cat here and so we did. Okay, command the Dreadhorde. Four black blacks, so six mana total, two of which is black. Sorcery. choose any number of target

creatures and or planeswalker cards in graveyards, command the dreadhorde deals damage to you equal to the total converted mana cost of those cards, put them on the battlefield under your control. So the cool thing about this was is it allows me to animate as many creatures as I want. Normally, these days, it costs you five mana to animate one thing, and this lets you animate any number of creatures you want, and planeswalkers, but because it's a black card, and

there's a cost that comes to it, which is you're taking damage. So you can do as much as you want, but you've got to keep in mind the danger of I'm going to lose life equal to this. So this is a very black kind of card where it's sort of like

great power but at a cost. That is black. Black is all about power through opportunity. So the idea is I can have all sorts of creatures in play. It might cost me some life but I can really be in a good position. And the other thing you can do

with building your deck is you sometimes can put things that getting them back maybe can help you get life. And so there's some combos you can do where it helps offset some of the life. Okay, commence the end game. Four blue blue instant. This spell can't be countered.

Draw two cards, then amass X, where X is the number of cards in your hand. And amass is put X plus one plus one counters on an army you control. If you don't control one, create a zero zero black zombie army creature token first. So amass, I talked about it, I think I've talked about amass already,

but it's a mechanic we made to represent the eternal army or the dread horde. And this is a card just kind of playing in that space. We put a mass in blue, red, and blue, black, and red because those are both colors. And this card is definitely kind of playing in the space of, like all the colors can make creatures. That's something every color can do.

This one is trying to play a little bit in the space of how would blue make the army? And so I like the idea that it's amassing equal to cards in your hand. We call it the Morrow ability. Morrow ability is blue and green. And so caring about cards in your hand is something that blue and green will do, especially for determining size of creatures. So this is locked when you do it, meaning it amasses when you do it.

But this is amass X. So this can allow you, in theory, for example, if you have a hand of seven cards when you start the turn and you cast this, which will put you down to six, but then you draw two cards, you'd be up to eight for example. And maybe if you combine with something else. But anyway, at bare minimum, it's an 8-8 creature if you have a full hand.

So that's pretty good. I'm not sure why they made this tool. It can't be countered. Maybe just make it a little stronger for constructed. Red and green are the primary colors of campy constructed. Blue is kind of secondary. But I think they thought it would help this card. Oh, here's my favorite story about this card. So one of the things that I...

So when the pre-release happened for World of the Spark, it was the same weekend as the opening of Avengers Endgame, which I'm sure you guys have heard of. It made like $1.2 billion in its opening weekend. As of right now,

it's still only the number two movie of all time, but by the time you guys are hearing this, I assume it's the number one movie of all time. It's on pace to do that.

But anyway, there's a lot of similarities between War of the Spark and Avengers Endgame, and a lot of people accused me on my blog of like, oh, well,

you clearly planned this. And on my blog, I would say to them, guys, you know, like, well, it's awesome, and I like the synergy, and I go, but we couldn't have planned this.

Like, let's say, for example, many years ago, just the Avengers people told us what they were doing, so we knew what the movie was, which wasn't the case. But let's assume we just knew that. We would have trouble planning this if we tried to plan it. That's the funny thing. Like, let's say our goal was to make it happen.

It would have been hard for us to do. So anyway, I'm explaining this on my blog. I'm like, guys, you know, yes, it's serendipity and it's kind of cool and a little bit of, I mean, there was a giant,

the big battle against the undead army was going on in Game of Thrones so it was a very geeky weekend which being part of the zeitgeist

is actually really cool. But anyway, I'm explaining my blog that okay, guys, it's just coincidence, okay? It's not planned. And the very next day the I'm explaining my blog okay guys I this it's just coincidence okay

it's not planned and the very next day we we preview the card commence the end game and they're like oh really yeah

just coincidence and they're like okay I I it anyway it was very funny

they were like we don't believe you commence the end game so I'm telling you it was a funny. They were like, we don't believe you. Commence the endgame. So I'm telling you, it was a pure coincidence. But it's cool. So I like to think it's serendipity in the best way. Okay, next. Contentious plan.

One and a blue. It's a sorcery. So two mana, one of which is blue. Proliferate, draw a card. So this is just a nice, simple proliferate card. Cantrip, because proliferate by itself is not enough to do that. So the thing that I like a lot is when I made the proliferate, I mean, my team made the proliferate mechanic in Scars of Mirrodin,

we actually had a lot of proliferate in the set, all the way down to Common. There were a bunch of draft record types we were intending. in the set. All the way down to common. There were a bunch of draft record types we were intending. It really was meant to cross between the Mirrens and the Phyrexians. And for various reasons, development got scared and really majorly scaled down how much proliferate there was in the set. And they pulled most of it out of common.

This time, I mean, there's a couple different things. One is in this set, proliferate is about building up yours, not knocking down the opponent, so that allows us to push a little more. We've done proliferate so we have a little bit of understanding of how to make it work. We now have play design so we can be a little more aggressive. Anyway, through a whole bunch

of factors, we were much more aggressive with the use of proliferate this time than we were last time. I think this set, I think there are as many proliferate cards in War of the Spark as had existed before War of the Spark. That means in all of the Scars of Mirrodin block, plus we've made a few others in Commander and Unstable and stuff. So anyway, it was definitely...

It's nice to see us being a little more aggressive with Poliferate. I think Poliferate's a very fun mechanic. I think it can do a lot of really fun things in Limited. And I feel like Scars of Mirrodin, not that it didn't play our role, but they mostly were of higher rarities. And I feel like we're much more willing to push it here. So I think you'll just see it play a much larger role in Limited, and I think that's fun. I think that's kind of cool. Okay, Davriel, Rogue, Shadow Mage.

Two and a black. Legendary Planeswalker, Davriel, Loyalty, three. At the beginning of each opponent's upkeep, if that player has one or fewer cards in hand, Davrio, Rogue, Shadow Mage deals two damage to them. Minus one. Target player discards a card. Okay, so this card got designed long before we knew who Davrio was. As I explained before, we had a hole in black,

a hole in white, I'm sorry, one in black, one in blue, and two in white. And we filled them with cards mechanically we thought were interesting cards. Later, Brandon Sanderson wrote

a short story, a novella, using Davriel, introduced Davriel. And so we saw this golden opportunity for us to make use of that. And so we decided to make this card Davriel. So it wasn't designed originally to be Davriel. Now, one of the things people talk about is

in the novella, they go into a lot more detail in some of his mind abilities and stuff. And one of the things that's tricky is that we needed to keep it off of Ashiok. Ashiok does a lot of mental stuff. And so, we

like the idea of Davriel from a mechanical standpoint being the discard. We like the idea of having a strong discard planeswalker. And so that's the niche we're putting Davriel into. Like one of the things that's interesting is in the stories we can go in a little more detail and be a little more exact. But in the card play, we need to have characters have a very clean sort of mechanical card play identity. And having a mono black planeswalker that's all about discard allows us to do some neat things. And so that's

the plan for Davriel, is to really push up the discard part of his character. So, one sec. Okay, so Davriel, the thing, so, originally when we made the card, it was just a minus ability, which was a discard. It's like, oh, he's a discard guy.

He only had so many uses of it, so loyalty three, minus one, okay. Well, he comes into play, and then over the course of three turns, he can make them discard three cards. Or longer. I mean, the other thing that's nice about the minuses is you don't necessarily need to use them every turn.

But then, the idea was that we like the idea that the reason this is at the beginning of upkeep is it's triggered so that the effect goes off. And that way, if you use his final loyalty ability, the effect is still there and it'll happen. Because we didn't want him to have a static ability and then use a final thing.

And you would expect it to work work but have it not work. So that's why it's a triggered ability that sets it off at the beginning of the upkeep. But anyway, this is a nice, clean, simple card. And one of the things I like about the Uncommon Planeswalkers is it allows us to make some nice, clean, simple cards that are Planeswalkers and have a feel to them, but are a little more straightforward.

Because one of the challenges is, if we had done 36 Planeswalkers as complex as a Mythic Rare Planeswalker, it really would have been problematic. But this is a good example of a card where it has a simple effect, it's not that hard to track. The static ability really, in some levels, is tied to the ability. So, you know, it's not that often I have to worry about it. It doesn't do that much outside of me using its ability. So it's a nice little package. It's clean.

It's flavorful. It doesn't cause a huge amount of complexity. But it does this neat thing where, hey, I'm going to make you discard cards. And if you don't want me to make you discard cards, you can attack my creature and my Planeswalker. So there's nice gameplay there that I think is pretty cool.

Okay, next. Domri. Anarch of Bolas. Because I think Agent of Bolas was already taken. One red green, so three mana total. One which is red, one which is green. Legendary Planeswalker, Domri. Loyalty, three. Creatures you control get plus one, plus one, add red or green creature

spells you cast can't be countered this turn minus two target creature you control fights target creature you don't control so the idea is he's a three loyalty planeswalker you can go up by generating mana with him and then if you generate the mana also it makes it easier to cast creatures. And then you boost your creatures. And one of the cool things about this is the mininus is a fight ability. And so the boosting creatures works

well for combat, and it works well for fighting. One of the things to be careful of, and this is why he starts with an odd number, is that if you want to fight with him right away, he'll still live and his static ability will still work. In general, you want to be careful when you use him, because the final ability, if you use it,

I don't think he has a plus one, plus oh ability if he goes away before you resolve the fight, I believe. I think that's how it works. Anyway, Domri, we decided we wanted to put it rare. So the real question was what was going to be our red-green planeswalker. We had a couple different choices. I think we ended up putting Samut

at uncommon as red-green. And we decided that Domri, because Domri was one of, like, where we could, we moved up to rare characters that had a larger part in the story. Domri, for those, spoiler, they don't know, ends up being a victim of Bolas in this.

We see a Sparket Harness, which is not good for a Planeswalker. And so anyway, as the last Aura, we wanted to give him a little nicer card. So this is a pretty cool card, pretty aggressive. Like I said, it allows you to, really really it's creature-oriented. It boosts your creatures

when you get mana. Not that you can't use mana for other things, but if you cast some creatures, it gives them extra ability. And then you're fighting. So it helps you get removal, but it's using your creatures to do that. So it's a very, Domri's always been a very creature-oriented Planeswalker, so we liked that it was a very creature-oriented card here.

Okay, next. Domri's Ambush. So a sorcery put a plus one plus one counter on target creature you control then that creature deals damage equal to its power to target creature or planeswalker you don't control. So the idea is you get to make

one of your things bigger and then it gets to fight. So one of the things we did for all the Planeswalkers is we gave them what we called a signature spell. The signature spell has their name in it. Oh, the one thing I didn't mention in my article. We tried in... One of the things we tried in Vision

is we literally made signature a super type. So it would be signature sorcery. And the idea was that we were thinking of having some cards that cared about any of the... If you cast a signature spell or cared about it as a grouping. In the end, we decided that it didn't do enough and there wasn't enough design space there.

So while we did the signature cards, we didn't do the signature super type. It was something that I had done in vision with the note in the file of, look, you can have or not have the super type. It's something that I had done in vision with the note in the file of, look, you can have or not have the supertype. It's something that might let you do some designs,

but if you don't need to, it's not necessary to make them work. Just having their names, you know, blanks, so-and-so, in the name does enough to convey,

you know, the creative, the name in the art will convey, look, this is Domri, or whoever the Planeswalker is. So anyway, I thought that was pretty cool.

Okay, next, Dovin, Hand of Control. Two and a hybrid, hybrid being white or blue. So three mana total, one of which is white or blue. Legendary Planeswalker Dovin, loyalty five. Artifact, instant, and sorcerer spells your opponent's cast, cost one more to cast. Minus one, until your next turn, prevent all damage

that will be dealt to and dealt by target permanent and opponent controls. So basically what's going on here is he makes, he taxes your opponent's spells, so artifact instant sorcery spells,

so Dovin is more control-ish, and he's able to keep things from damaging you. So Dovin's ability, Dovin's a tricky one, Do he's able to keep things from damaging you. So, Dovin's ability... Dovin's a tricky one. Dovin's ability is the ability to see weaknesses in things, which is a... While a cool, flavorful ability from a story standpoint,

it is tricky from a magic design standpoint to do. So, we like the idea. Originally, I think he made... Thopters is what he did originally, because white and blue both have flying. He's from Kaladesh. We thought that was something that might be useful to you. I think his original ability was just negative make thopters.

That's all he did. The problem was they liked the Saheeli design, where Saheeli made servos, and we didn't want two different like Calidus things and so we ended up changing this this one from a color pie perspective is definitely pushing things the most the first

ability while white not super blue although not a breaking blue or anything but it's a bended blue and the second while something blue does it's not something white specifically does. Now, in each case, blue, like, each color is, the other color can bend to it not too badly. Like, the first ability is a white ability that blue can bend to without being too bad. And the second ability is a blue ability that white can bend to without being too bad.

So, this color definitely, neither ability is cleanly in both white and blue, but each allows you to have a slight bend to work. And in hybrid, we let you do that. We let you have a little bit of bend, just because hybrid cards are hard to design. And we're trying to capture Dovin and make it feel like a control card and make it feel like Dovin's abilities. So this was a very tricky thing to design. So I applaud them. That's why we had him making Thopters, which doesn't really, I mean, the other thing is

that didn't really convey his abilities. Dovin isn't particularly artifact themed. I mean, where Saheeli is, like Saheeli's whole shtick is she's an artificer. So it made more sense

to let her do the artifact things. So we cheated a little bit in our early version where it made him feel Kaladeshian. Is that the right word? But it didn't really play up his abilities as much and this does a much better job of playing up his abilities. Speaking of things, Dovin's Veto. White

and blue. Instant. This spell can't be countered. Counter target non-creature spell. It is funny how blue is really supposed to be secondary spell can't be countered. Counter target, non-creature spell. It is funny how blue is really supposed to be secondary and can't be countered. But I think Eric really likes doing can't be countered in blue. So Eric's sets tend to be higher than normal. I mean, blue is allowed to do

in secondary blue, but Eric tends to push that a little more. A lot of people asked why this couldn't be called Dovin's Ban because his name is Dovin Bon. That's a great question. I just don't think we thought of it. I would call it Dovin's Ban as given the choice. I think it's a funny name. But anyway,

I think this is one of the things we're trying to do in White Blue. While the guilds are not nearly as represented as they normally are, we still are in Ravnica. We still want a little nod toward the guild. But since we didn't have a lot of multicolor cards, when we did, we definitely wanted to make sure they felt guildish

because we wanted some sense of the guild being there. So this is cool. It's tied to Dovin. Dovin leads the guild. But it also really has a very Azorius feel to it. So I think Dovin's Veto does a lot of good work, even though it could have been Dovin's ban. Okay. Dreadhorde. Dovin's ban. Okay.

Dreadhorde, sorry, Dreadhorde Butcher. Black and red for a 1-1 zombie warrior. It's a creature, obviously. Has haste. Whenever Dreadhorde Butcher deals combat damage to a player or planeswalker, put a plus one, plus one counter on Dreadhorde Butcher. When Dreadhorde Butcher dies, it deals damage equal to its power to any target. So this is a pretty powerful card. So for starters, it's a 1-1 haste for two mana, and it has what we call the Slith ability, meaning that the ability first showed up

actually in Legends on a card called Whirling Dervish, a minor black card. The card more often these days is seen in green, although both red and black have access to it. It was the ability done on the Vampires in Innistrad. And also in Mirrodin, we had this ability, we cycled the ability. And the creature, we made a brand new creature type called the Slith. So we called it the Slith ability, because it was in Mirrodin. Mirrodin had a plus a plus one counter theme.

Anyway, we've done it in a lot of different colors. Here, the idea, it's Slith, but you also get the plus one, plus one counter for dealing damage to a Planeswalker, because it's a Planeswalker set. So whenever possible, we try to make some Planeswalker synergy. So it's Slith ability plus Planeswalkers. And the idea is it just gets bigger and bigger, but because it's black-red, you get this extra, you know, and this is a nice sort of

Rakdos-feeling card. It gets bigger, bigger, bigger, and then, ba-boom! When it dies, it just does all this damage to any target. So that felt really Rakdos. And I'm pretty sure this card was made for Constructed. This seems like a really powerful card. So trying to push people into black-red. And it definitely is

a very aggressive black-red. This is the kind of card that So trying to push people into black-red, and it definitely is a very aggressive black-red. This is the kind of card that you want to play and you want to attack right away. And the idea is, I just be aggressive with this card. It's going to let me get a lot of damage in

and then help me remove something or do extra damage to my opponent if necessary. The other cool thing is this gets big enough that it gets to the point where there's nothing the opponent can do about it

other than try to block without killing it because it's big enough that if I hit you point where there's nothing the opponent can do about it other than try to block without killing it, because it's big enough that if I hit you, I'm going to kill you, and if I die, I'm going to kill you. So you get to the point where there's not a lot of answers you can have to it. I also like this. One of the things we tried to do

is while a mask represented the zombie eternal army, the Dreadhorde, we also wanted some cards in blue, red, and black that did that as well. Okay, Dreadhorde Invasion. One and a black. So two mana, one of which is black.

Enchantment. At the beginning of your upkeep, you lose one life and amass one. So you make an army and put a plus one plus counter on it. Or if it's already an army, put a plus one plus counter on it. Whenever a zombie token you control with power six or greater attacks,

it gains life until end of turn. Okay, so this card was inspired, we made a card called Phyrexian Arena many years ago, where every upkeep you lost a life and drew a card. We then made a card called Bitter Blossom, where you lost a life and made a 1-1 fly or a fairy. So this is something we do from time to time. Black loves enchantments where, hey, every upkeep, you lose a life, and you get an effect that's a very valuable effect. And yeah, losing life maybe will come back to haunt you, but

that's the way a black, black enchantments like to do that. It's like, you know, I'm power through opportunity. I have a chance to really get a really good effect and, oh, yeah, it'll cost something and hopefully it won't matter, but sometimes you know, black, one of black's weaknesses is that things't matter. But sometimes, you know, one of Black's weaknesses is that things it does can come back to haunt it.

That it definitely, it takes more risks than most colors. Now, power comes to that risk and sometimes those risks will help it win the game, but those risks can also come back to haunt it. And so we really like the pay one life every turn enchantments. Note, it's not optional. You must pay the life. And the nice thing about this is

Amass is a cool effect to keep, because, you know, if I build my army, I can sort of every turn sort of make it bigger. And the nice thing about this thing is if it gets big enough, once you get to a 6-6 army, it starts giving you the answer to the problem you're having,

which is the life loss, which is it gives it lifelink. So the idea is, I'm going to lose life for six turns, but if I can get to 6-6, then I can get that life back. And so it really, it's sort of like, it's this risk you're taking, and if it pays off, it, you know, like, oh, if I get to the point where it gets lifelink, you know, it'll really, it won't be a problem. Like, oh, I see the end, and in the end, if I get there, I'm fine. But along the way, something could happen, and that's kind of the cool part about playing black. The other thing we did with a mass in general is, we have a bunch of different cards that grant the army's ability. So the idea is,

there's a couple different ways to play a mass, But one of the ways to play Amass is just try to make the biggest creature you can. And so a bunch of the Amass cards grant the army an ability. So if I get those out, and all those cards also Amass. So as I make things bigger, it also allows you to have things to make your army start gaining more abilities. And I don't remember all the abilities you can gain. But you can gain quite a number of abilities. And I don't remember all the abilities you can gain, but you can gain quite a number of abilities. And so your army can be truly, truly scary, which is one of the things we wanted out of the army. We wanted you to have something that really made you afraid. Well, here's another example. Dreadhorde Twins. Three and a red. So four mana, one of which It is a 2-2 creature, and it's a zombie jackal warrior.

So one of the tricky things about the Eternals is that they want to be zombies, because they're zombies, they're undead. They want to be mostly their warriors, because they're fighting, I mean, the beasts aren't warriors, but anything that represents a creature that was from Amonkhet. Because for those who followed Amonkhet, the Eternals were made from warriors that went through this long trial because Bolas was trying to find the most efficient army he could, and only the best fighters made it there. So if you're a fighter here, you are a warrior. And then the Jackal people are from Amonkhet, so this is one of those.

When Dreadhorn Twin enters the battlefield, amass two. And then zombie tokens you control have trample. So I think one of the things we decided to do was to grant abilities not to the army specifically, but to zombie tokens, because there are multiple ways beyond amass to make zombie tokens. Like I think Luliani makes zombie tokens. So the idea is all beyond Amass to make zombie tokens. Like, I think Luliani makes zombie tokens. So the idea is, all the zombies represent the Eternal, so any zombie token you're making is flavored

as the Dreadhorde. So, whenever something grants an ability, it's not just granted to an army, per se, but it grants to a zombie token zombie, which the zombie army is. So, they all work on the Amass creature, the army creature, but they also work on any other zombie creatures you might make. And this is a good example where the other one made lifelink.

This one makes trample. There's one that makes flying. There's a bunch of ones. And so, you know, it really allows you to kind of build and craft your army, and your army can get really big and really scary. I think that is one of the fun things of trying to get this mechanic to represent the flavor is that the army in the story really is overwhelming and super scary for all the people fighting them.

And that one of the things that we were trying to capture is that this army just isn't stopping. That it's getting bigger and bigger and bigger and as it gets bigger, it gets more threatening. And so, not only can it get bigger in size but you also can get other abilities and I think that is considered you know, that is quite

quite scary anyway, how we doing? oh, we are here so I had a little bit of traffic today so a little extra content for you guys but anyway, now it works, I'm up to D so this will take as many podcasts as it needs. I got a lot of fun stories to talk about. So you guys will, I'll share all my War of the Spark stories with you.

But I'm now at work. So we all know what that means. 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.