Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #659: Modern Horizons Cards, Part 1

Episode Date: August 2, 2019

This is part one of a four-part series on card-by-card design stories from Modern Horizons.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, today is the start of a Modern Horizons card-by-card walkthrough. Where I'm going to tell lots of stories about the design of Modern Horizons cards. Starting with Abominable Treefolk. So Abominable Treefolk costs two green blue. So it's a four mana creature, one of which is green, one of which is blue. It's a star star snow creature. It's a tree folk.

It has trample. Abominable Tree Folk's power and toughness are equal to the number of snow permits you control. And when Abominable Tree Folk enters the... Try that again. When Abominable Tree Folk, it's harder than it sounds. When abominable treefolk enters the battlefield, tap target creature an opponent controls. That creature doesn't untap during its controller's next untap step.

So there's a lot packed in here, so let's unpack it. So first off, it is a star star creature equal to the number of snow permanents you have. Now, it is a snow creature. Now, remember, when I talked about Modern Horizons, one of the themes we decided to end up doing was snow. There have been a lot of requests for us to reprint the snow basic lands, and we were looking for themes that just made sense in the set.

Snow ended up making some sense. We ended up focusing snow in green and blue. So it was a draft archetype. There was enough stuff in it that was a draft archetype centered in green and blue. One of the things we like to do is we like to make gold cards that are uncommon that help communicate what the set is about. I don't 100% know.

My guess is this is the gold uncommon. This is what it looks like. And I know green and blue are the colors for snow. So the nice thing with this card, first off, is because it's a snow permanent, it gives itself a size. It doesn't automatically die. It's automatically a 1-1 because, you know, it counts itself. Now, one of the things this card clearly tells you to do is you're not going to play this card unless you care about snow permanents. The reason this is a good build around is it says, hey, I'm good, but only if you collect as many snow permanents as you can.

So what it's saying, if you draft this card early, it's saying, A, draft a lot of snow permanents. B, draft a lot of snow covered land, because the way snow covered land works is it's in the packs. You have to draft it. You can't just play whatever amount you want. You have to draft the snow-covered land. And so taking this early really puts you on the, you care about snow. Draft snow things. And does a good job of sort of communicating that. The other thing it does, which is cute, is it's green and blue. So one of the things you do on a gold card is you want to communicate both colors. So first does, which is cute, is it's green and blue. So one of the things you do in a gold card is you want to communicate both colors. So first off, this is a star star trampling creature.

That's pretty green. That's sort of in green's, green is the color of variable creatures. And it's also the thing that sort of counts your permanence and I get bigger. It does that sometimes with land, does it sometimes with creatures. So snow permanence makes sense. But you need a blue element to it. And it's a snow creature, right? So it's a snow tree folk. So how do you communicate snow? Well, a clean and easy answer is using an ability that R&D has

nicknamed freezing. So the ability when you tap something and it doesn't untap until for a turn, we call that Freezing. It's not keyworded, but the nickname in R&D is Freezing. So it made a lot of sense to have a snow creature do what we call Freezing, which is it locks things down, which is pretty synonymous with locking things in ice or making things super cold so they can't move. This particular one says target creature and opponent controls so that... Oh, that's interesting.

Usually we say that because in... Well, this is going on Magic Online. In digital, it's just an extra click. And so if there's something that doesn't... Like, if you really seldom would want to lock down your own creature, we just say opponent control so it doesn't accidentally do that and doesn't require the extra click. Or it's not an extra click. It helps prevent misclicks. I guess it's not an extra click. It's a misclick issue. Anyway, that is Abominable Treefolk. Okay, next. Alpine Guide. Alpine Guide costs

two and a red. It's a snow creature, a human scout, three, three. When Alpine Guide enters the battlefield, you may search your library for a mountain card. Put that card onto the battlefield tap, then shuffle your library. Alpine Guide attacks each combat if able. And when Alpine Guide leaves the battlefield, sacrifice a mountain. Okay, so this card started as a card called Trick's Goblin. I think it was the original name. And it started not in this set, but in a set that I did.

I think Battle for Zendikar. So Trick Jarrett works on the community side. Right now he does a lot of stuff with our YouTube channel and stuff. right now he does a lot of stuff with our YouTube channel and stuff and Trick Trick has a Kiki Jiki Commander deck that has

or at the time had Valakut in it and so he had come up with a card he thought was cute so Red does Temporary Mana so the original version of this card was when it entered the battlefield you you search your library for a mountain, put that on the battlefield, and then at the end of turn, you sacrifice the mountain.

So the idea was that it gave you temporary mana, which is what red does, but the going to get a mountain triggered Valakut, because Valakut cares when a mountain enters the battlefield. So it was kind of this cutesy way to do something red, but in a way that's untraditionally how red does it, and would have some fun interactions, because there's things that care about mountains entering the battlefield. That was the origin for this card, was Trick trying to... he just had a neat idea how to do something a little bit different. For various reasons, the card

kept getting changed in design. Every time we changed it, we would change the name of the card. So it went from Trix Goblin to Trix Parking Ticket. It kept getting more inconsequential, was the joke. And in the end, it didn't end up making it into Battle for Zendikar. I know Trix tried to get it in multiple other sets. I know it tried to get it in multiple other sets. I know it was in 2019 for a while. Anyway, this is the set it finally stuck in.

It changed a little bit. It's not a goblin. The land stays in now for as long as the creature stays in play, but now it's forced to attack, which it didn't have to do before. So it's gone through some iteration, but it's just interesting how you have a card and just the idea of it sort of morphs over time. And there are definitely cards where it just takes a while for it to see play.

I talk about, so with my designer sometimes, that one of the skills of a designer is persistence. That if you have an idea you really like, you sometimes have to wait for the time and place where it works and does something. The other thing that helped it a little bit here is that they, well, A, it was in a set where there were some wilder things going on. There definitely were some interactions. And by making this a snow creature, it also allowed you to have some interaction with snow, because the land you can go and get, while it has to be a mountain, can be a snow-covered mountain. And so the card also interacted a little bit with

things that care about snow. Okay. Next. Answered Prayers. One white white for an enchantment whenever a creature enters the battlefield under your control you gain one life if answered prayers isn't a creature it becomes a 3-3 angel creature with flying in addition to its other types until end of turn

okay so the idea of this card is it is a card white likes creatures white has a lot of interactions with creatures and this card was just made to sort of do... I mean, for example, we have had many iterations of the creature that gains you a life whenever a creature comes into play. We've done that a bunch of times. We've also done a bunch of cards where White has a non-creature that turns into a creature under certain conditions.

One of those conditions can be when a creature enters the battlefield. So this is sort of combining multiple things we've done before, but into a singular card. So the idea is, beyond just getting a life when a creature comes in play, it also turns on. Because of the nature of turning on, it can only happen once per turn. So if it's an angel, it's an angel. It can't, again, become an angel. So the idea is it triggers off every creature, but the turning itself into a creature only cares once per turn. But the idea is that angels somatically tend to be protective of you,

and we often tie life gain to angels, so the whole package is pretty sweet. often to tie life gain to angel, so the whole package is pretty sweet. I think it's a cool sort of white card combining multiple things that white does, and I think that's kind of one of the fun things that you get to do in Modern Horizons, is mix and match things and put them together. Okay, next, Astral Drift. Two and a white for enchantment.

Whenever you cycle Astral Drift or cycle another card while Astral Drift is on the battlefield, you may exile target creature. If you do, return that card under its owner's control beginning in the next end step. Cycling, two and a white. Cycling means, obviously, you can pay that man that discarded his card to draw a card. So this is a rift off of Astral Rift. Actually, Astral Slide. Lightning Rift is the red version that does bolting.

Or does shocking, exactly. So Astral Slide, back in Onslaught Block, we had brought back Cycling for the first time. Cycling had originally been in, or it was a Saga block. No, actually, it had originally been in Tempest block, but we didn't print it there. Richard Garfield made it there. And then it got printed for the first time in Urza's Saga block. Anyway, on slot, we were trying to bring back

I really wanted to bring back cycling. But we had not done any, we had not really repeated a mechanic before. We had done Evergreen. We had upgraded stuff to Evergreen, but we'd never sort of done a mechanic, a keyboard mechanic, then brought it back for a block. And I really wanted to do that. I thought cycling made the most sense here. But one of the things that other

players, sorry, other R&D members wanted was to show that we were expanding in some way. So one of the ideas I came up with is, what if we had some cards that cared about cycling? What if we can make cycling something you could build around? But that wasn't something cycling did before. Cycling was pretty non-linear before in the sense that if you wanted to play a cycling deck, play it. There wasn't a lot of cards that interacted with cycling. And I said, well, what if this time we had some cards that interacted with cycling? So I made Lightning Rift and I made Astral Slide.

Those are the two cards I made as kind of demonstration of what we could do. Interestingly, Astral Slide, I put a cost on it because it does 2 damage. Not Astral Slide. Lightning Rift, I put a cost on it because it does 2 damage. Astral Slide, I didn't put a cost on it because I thought that Flickering, removing a creature that would come back, was something that wasn't quite as powerful. So we didn't put a cost on that.

Turned out Astral Slide ended up being the more powerful card, partly because there wasn't mana attached to it, and partly because the Flickering interactions proved to be quite potent. Anyway, I think the idea for this set was we didn't want to bring back Astral Slide, a little bit too strong. So we made a tweak of it, and then we added in cycling. So the idea that this card not only does it do it for any cycling creature, but if you cycle this card, it also does that. So that was something we had messed around with back in Onslaught as well,

is the idea that when you cycle cars, they can generate other effects. So this was kind of taking two different cycling themes from Onslaught and combining them into a singular car. Next, Iula, Queen Among Bears. One and a green for a 2-2 Legendary Bear. Obviously a creature. Whenever another bear enters the battlefield under your control, choose one. Either put two plus and plus encounters on target bear, or target bear you control fights target creature you don't control. So this was the brainchild of Ethan Fleischer. So Ethan has a bear commander deck that he's had for quite a while. And one of his regrets

is there's not a good commander for his bear. So in court 2019, he actually ended up making the first legendary bear, Gorklaw. The problem was, the way Gorklaw ended up was, he really was a commander for large creatures, because he rewarded things with power four or greater. The problem is not all, some bears are four or greater. Most bears aren't. So while he was a legendary bear,

and he had a theme that you could build around, which is larger creatures, he wasn't really a bear lord. And Ethan realized that he had goofed. He had made a legendary bear, but the legendary bear wasn't a bear lord. He wanted a legendary bear to run his bear deck. He needed a bear commander.

So one of the themes of the set was there was a lot of tribal components to it. The changeling theme really helped you put a lot of tribal stuff that wasn't naturally there. Anyway, he saw the opportunity. He knew there was going to be some legends in the set. There's, in fact, a cycle of monochrome legends. And so he made it. He made his Barrel Lord. And I often talk about how designers sometimes, every once in a while, they make

something that's very for them, that's very much a, something that speaks to them as a designer. Like, a lot of times you're making cards for other players, but every once in a while, one of the funs of being a designer is you make a card for yourself. Not that you don't think other people might enjoy it, but one of the perks of being a Magic designer, sometimes you just make a card that you really want to exist. My perfect example of that was Doubling Season.

I love doubling things. I just thought it would be really fun to have a card that doubles everything or lots of things. Countress and tokens. And I just made it. Now it went on to be Beloved and obviously other people loved it too. But I made the card for me. Knowing that there would be some people who think, obviously I enjoy it. There are other players like me.

But you don't get to make a lot of cards just for you. Most of your cards are made for other people. But every once in a while, you get to make a card just for yourself. And this was Ethan doing that. This was Ethan's doubling season, if you will. So anyway, for all you bear fans, there is your Bear Lord. Okay, next. Birthing Bows.

Bows. Birthing Bows. It's an artifact, costs three. For four and a tap, you get to create a 2-2 colorless shapeshifter creature token with Changeling. So one of the things we did in the set, I talked about this during my Modern Horizons podcast, was we used Changeling as a glue to really make the tribal themes of this set work. changeling as a glue to really make the tribal themes of this set work. And so one of the things that that means is trying to find a lot of different ways to interact with changelings. One of which was making changelings. And so this was something we often do. We make an artifact

that just makes a creature of some type. In this case, it makes changelings. Changelings are all Shapeshifters, so it makes sense they're Shapeshifters. And this is just kind of, you know, one of the problems some decks have, tribal decks, is you just don't have enough of the tribe. And so, yes, we made a lot of Changeling individual creatures, but this is a card that said,

hey, do you need a lot of fill-in-the-blank, a lot of goats, a lot of oofs, a lot of brushwags? Pick something where there's not a lot of them and you want to make a bunch of them. This allows you to make a bunch of them because it gets to make a lot of different creatures. Okay, next. Blade Back Sliver. One and a red for a 2-2 Sliver. Obviously a creature.

It's got Hellbent. As long as you have no cards in hand, Sliver creatures you control have tap. This creature deals one damage to target creature, player, or planeswalker. So one of the things that we went back and forth on this card is, so one of the things we try to do when making Slivers was looking at all the mechanics, because this set could have whatever mechanics it wanted within the constraints of in modern Dragons of Tarkir earlier. And so one of the things we looked at was Hellbent.

And we liked the idea of, what if we rented Hellbent? And the big question in this card was, A, it had to do something in Hellbent, right? Hellbent's a condition. And so the idea that we toyed around with is, okay, what's a clean, simple thing we could do at Hellbent? I think we wanted to make this in red, so the idea of just pinging something, of doing one damage to something, seem clean. Now, the big question was, we were trying to figure out whether it was

figure out whether it was all slivers have hellbent, tap for one, or hellbent sliver creatures you control have this. And I'm not sure why we ended up in this version. I think the original version we did was all slivers have hellbent, do

one damage. This is one of those things where I'm sure there was a templating reason to put the Hellbent first and, like, this is a sliver that's quirky in the sense that this sliver doesn't always grant its abilities. Like, it only grants

its abilities at Hellbent, but being that its abilities only work at Hellbent, if we said all slivers get Hellbent, it basically works the same. So there's... I'm trying to figure out why from a templating standpoint. There's a templating reason

they did this. Maybe it's so... It might be, if you had to write this out, it was harder to write out. My guess is the reason it's templated this way is just less words that granting hellent to more creatures just cause... Oh, here's maybe the problem. Hellbent is

an ability word. Can you grant an ability word and still use the ability word? Hmm. Maybe that might be the issue. Maybe it's hard to grant ability words. And because this one essentially was the same, whether or not this had the ability word or all had the ability word, okay, this is my best guess. I don't know.

I mean, templating happens during the end part of set design. With the exception of unsets, I'm usually not involved in templating. Templating happens way after I hand off the file. Unsets, because I'm the un-rules manager, I actually sit in on un-templating because the rules manager sits in on templating. So as the un-rule manager, I sit on templating for uncards. So I do sit on for uncards.

That's the only time I do templating. So this is me just sort of making a guess. But that's my logical guess, is that granting ability words might be tricky. So anyway, that is Blade Black Sliver. Okay, next. Cabal Therapist. It's one of our preview cards,

original preview cards. Cabal Therapist costs black for a 1-1 horror. It's a creature. It's got menace. At the beginning of your pre-combat main phase, you may sacrifice a creature. When you do, choose a non-land card name. Then the target player reveals their hands

and discards all cards with that name. Okay, so this is based on a card called Cabal Therapy. So Cabal Therapy, I think costs a single black. It was a sorcery, I believe. And it must have been in Odyssey block because it has flashback. And it said, choose a card, target player reveals their hand. If they have the chosen card, they must discard it. I think it's non-land. Yeah, non-land, because this one says non-land. So I originally had made that card.

It was called Go Fish. Oh, sorry. So the original, sorry, the Kabbalah therapy originally was be sorcery, name a card, target player reveals their hand, and then discards the card, non-land card, and they reveal, they discard any copies of the named card if it player reveals their hand, and then discards the card, non-land card, and they discard any copies of the named card if it's in their hand. Then it had flashback sacrifice a creature.

So what had happened was I had originally made the card called Go Fish, which was just the sorcery. Just sorcery, be, name a card, they discard a card. They discard a card if it's the named card. All copies. If it's a non-land card, all copies of the non-land card. There's a card if it's the named card. All copies. If it's a non-land card, all copies of a non-land card. Anyway, and it just was too weak and we didn't make it. So when Odyssey came around and we had flashback, I'm like, oh, we could do flashback. So since it has a non-man-up flashback cost, that tells me it must have been in one of the later sets.

So my guess is it was in Torment, I guess. Anyway, it's in Odyssey block. I think it's in Torment. Because it's a non... I think all the Odyssey had... All the flashback costs were mana. And then the non-mana ones were in Torment and in Judgment. It's a black card, so that tells me it's in Torment, I think.

Anyway, so I made the reversion of Go Fish, but with a Sack of Creature or Flashback cost, and it ended up being a really good card. And the reason is, the second time you use it, you know what's in their hand, right? So it allows you to take a shot at getting something in their hand, and sometimes you hit. But then, for sure, the next time, it's a coercion,

although non-land coercion, you know that you get the card. So anyway, one of the things we wanted to do in this set is do rifts off famous cards. Cabal Therapy is a famous card. So the idea here is, it's a creature that just sits there, but every turn it allows you to do basically the flashback version, which is you can stack a creature to look at their hand. But, much like Cabal Therapy, after you do it once, you now see their hand. So that makes your future guesses much, much better of hitting something. And so it's sort of like, first time I use it, maybe I hit something, maybe I don't. But now, I know it's in their hand. I can watch

what they play. Next time I want to use it, my chance of hitting is almost for sure. I mean, I know it's in their hand. I might not know their new cards Next time I want to use it, my chance of hitting is almost for sure. I mean, I know it's in their hand. I might not know their new cards, but I know it's in their hand from what I saw from last time. And so after the first time, you should be hitting every time because you've seen their hand. Now, maybe at some point they run out of cards or they're able to play all the cards you know, but for a while, provided you can create things to sacrifice, that's the key to building around this card is can create things to sacrifice. That's the key to building around this card,

is having the things to sacrifice. But anyway, it's a fun tweak on what the original card had done, and a lot of the fun cards, I mean, a lot of, I think the joy of Modern Horizons is us doing the riffs on old cards. That's a lot of the fun.

Okay, next, Chiller Pillar. Three and a blue, so four mana total, one of which is blue, for a 3-3 snow insect. Obviously a creature. So for four snow mana, snow mana, monstrosity two. So if this creature isn't monstrous, put two plus one plus one counters on it, and it becomes monstrous. Snow can be paid with one mana from a snow permanent. As long as Chiller Pillar is monstrous, it has flying. So the idea is it's a 3-3 creature. When you spend 4 snow

it becomes a 5-5 flyer. So it's also playing around with, we've done we did a giant caterpillar, I think back in Mirage, where it was a ground creature, and then eventually you could sack it to turn it into a flying creature. And so this is playing in that space.

But the fun thing is it's crossing the sort of the caterpillar into the butterfly with the snow flavor. Also the name Chiller Pillar is an awesome name. I don't know who came up with that, but props. So this is a good example as we're trying to find ways to mix monstrous... I'm sorry, trying to find ways to mix snow in. I love the idea of mixing snow in with another mechanic.

So here is snow crossing with monstrous, which is kind of fun. So the other thing this does, by the way, is because you need snow mana, that requires you to have permanents that tap for mana that are snow. So Snow-Covered Lands will do that, and there probably are a few other cards in the set that produce man that are snow.

So, okay. Next. Moving on. So, okay. Next. Moving on. Okay, next is Crashing Footfalls. So Crashing Footfalls has no mana cost. What? It's a sorcery. So it has suspend four

for a single green mana. So rather than cast this card from your hand, pay green and exile with four time counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a time counter. When the last is removed, cast it without paying its mana cost. And the effect is create two 4-4 green Rhino creature tokens with trample.

So suspend was a mechanic from Time Spiral Block. The idea is you're trading time for mana. Normally when you do a suspend card, you have an option to cast it normally or cast it cheaper for a suspend cost.

Something we did in the original in Timesprout Block was we made, not many, but a few cards that you couldn't cast normally. You could only suspend them. So this card, for example, gets you two 4-4 green Rhino creature tokens, but you only can cast it by spending one green mana and waiting four turns.

So obviously, two 4-4s for green is really good, but the four turns is really a big part of the cost. Having played, as of me recording this, Modern Horizons this weekend is the pre-release for all you. But we, R&D, played with it already. We had our pre-release last week, and then we have a Tuesday meeting. It's not a meeting. At lunch on Tuesday is our play day, where we play with the current sets.

And we were able to play with Modern Horizons on Tuesday. So I work at home on Friday, so I wasn't in the pre-release, the employee pre-release. But I did get a play at the Tuesday play day. And so I had crashing footfalls. I drew my opening hand. I played it and it won me the game. It is quite strong. The other cute thing about this is there's a card called Crash of Rhinos.

Crash of Rhinos makes an 8-4 Rhino. So it has 8 power of Rhinos. And that is called Crash of Rhinos because Crash of Rhinos is the collective term for Rhinos. So this is referencing that. This also makes 8 power of Rhinos given it's 2 tokens rather than 1 singular creature. I think we have made 4-4 Rhinos before, not on Crash of Rhinos, but I think on other cards. So I think it's combining the idea that we've done Rhino tokens as a 4-4

along with referencing Crash of Rhino. So I think it was definitely something that was a combination of that. Okay, next card. Dead of Winter. Two and a black for a sorcery. All non-snow creatures get minus X minus X to end of turn. Corrects the number of snow permanents you control. So this was doing something fun. One of the things we talked about is while snow was centered in blue and green, we didn't restrict it to blue

and green things. We did a bunch of different stuff, different colors, and this card was made... I'm not sure whether the name came first. I mean, this is one of those cards that has such a clever name that part of me wonders whether the name was built into the creation of the card. I think it might have been. I don't know for sure that it was. It was not something that... Snow, by the way, happened during set design.

It did not happen during vision design. So all the snow designs happened during set design. So I don't specifically know how this card got designed. The name is so clever that part of me thinks that it literally might have been built around the name because the name is so clever. The thing I like a lot about it is it's another one of those cards that encourages a build around. And the reason is, one of the ways to make you care

about something is to help it. And the other way around it is to not hurt it. So here, this card wants you to have no permanents for two reasons. One, because for every permanent you have, your variable gets higher. Minus X minus X gets higher. The second thing is, the more snow creatures you have, you know, not only are you going to do more damage and wipe the board, but your snow creatures will survive. So if I have a whole bunch of snow creatures and I cast Dead of Winter, not only will

it help me destroy all my opponent's creatures or non-snow creatures, but mine will survive. So it's even more advantageous. So if I have a lot of snow creatures out, and I'm able to wipe the board of snow creatures, and I have a deck dedicated to snow creatures, I have a much better chance of winning

that. Now, it's in black. Snow creatures are centered more in blue and green. But anyway, it's a powerful effect. It's the kind of thing you would definitely splash in the snow deck or maybe allow you to play a black-green or black-blue snow deck. One of the things we like to do when designing cards is give you things that let you push in different directions and add different colors in with certain themes.

Okay, Deep Forest Hermit. Three green green for a 1-1 elf druid, obviously a creature. So it's five mana total, two of which is green. It's got Vanishing Three. This creature enters the battlefield with three time counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a time counter

from it. When the last is removed, sacrifice it. When Deep Forest Hermit enters the battlefield, create four 1-1 green squirrel creature tokens. Squirrels you control get plus one, plus one. Okay, first off, there's a lot going on here. One is, this card is referring

a card called Deranged Hermit from Ursa's Legacy, which was a very famous card. So, Deranged Hermit is a card on the restricted list, but it's fundamentally different, which is one reason we can print this card. Deep Forest Hermit is exactly what I'm saying here. 3GG, 1-1, all the texts are the same, except it does not have Vanishing, and in place of Vanishing, it has Echo. So Echo was a mechanic where you must pay the mana cost during your second turn with it. And if not, it goes away.

So the idea was, for the original card, for three green green, you get to make this creature. It makes your squirrels, and it makes them bigger. But if you don't pay three green green in the second turn, then it goes away. And the reason you want to keep it is, not only is it a 1-1 body, but it boosts all your squirrels, and you've just made four squirrels. But if you have other things to do with your mana or whatever, you do get the four squirrels. Now, that card, the idea is you get the body,

and once you pay the mana the second time, you keep it around. This doesn't require you to pay the extra mana. There's no echo cost. But vanishing three means you only get it for three turns. So the idea is I play it. Now, the first turn, I don't remove a Vanishing Counter because it only comes up during upkeep.

But it also doesn't have haste. So essentially, I get two full turns where I can attack with this and attack with the squirrels it makes, and the squirrels are boosted. But anyway, this was a nice knot. The other thing is, this is a squirrel and a brand new squirrel making card in a black bordered set. Something we haven't done in a while. I mean, we did do, there's one we made in another supplemental set. But one of the things you can start seeing is the ice cracking a little bit.

There were some people in R&D for a long time that did not like squirrels and did not believe the squirrels were supposed to go into normal sets. The good side of this card is I think the squirrel fans have persisted and the squirrel foes have slowly drifted away. So I see positive things for squirrel futures. This card is hinting at possibly a friendlier

squirrel future in R&D. So that's a good thing. That's maybe the best thing about this card. So this is a really fun card. It's powerful. I will say the Echo version is stronger than the Vanishing version. Deranged Hermit is a stronger card

than Deep Forest Hermit because the ability to keep it around is quite powerful, even though it costs extra mana. But it's fun to sort of bring back the card, give it a different keyword and make the keyword function differently. Vanishing III and Echo are very different keyword, and make the keyword function differently. Vanishing Three and Echo are very different mechanics, so while these cards

are similar in some ways, they're very, very different, and that's why we can, that's why we're not, like, because of Reserveless, we can't make Duran Sherman. This card, while a not-Duran Sherman, is not Duran Sherman. It is nowhere near the power level of Duran Sherman, so it is acceptable to make in

Modern. Okay, next card is acceptable to make in Modern. Okay, next card is Dregscape Sliver. One black for a Sliver, a 2-2 Sliver, which is a creature. Each Sliver creature card in your graveyard has Unearthed 2, and then it defines Unearthed 2 as, for two mana, return this card from your graveyard to the battlefield. It gains haste, exile at the beginning of your next end step, or if it would leave the battlefield, unearth only as a sorcery. So unearth first existed in Alara Plock. There were five shards, one of each world.

So one of the shards was Grixis, which was a black in its allies. So what we had done for that was we divided it up into five mini-teams. I ran one of the mini-teams, which was Esper, and I was on one of the mini-teams, which was Naya. Interestingly, I was not on the Trixis mini-team, yet

I came up with the mechanic. In fact, I know Lara, this is the one mechanic I came up with, and it was not on any of the teams that I was on. The idea behind this was me trying to create a flashback. Not flashback. Yeah, flashback, sorry.

Flashback for creatures. And I think originally I called this Flashdance because Dance of the Dead was a card that got things back from the graveyard, and flashback was the thing I was riffing on. So this mechanic was originally called Flashdance, which I thought was a funny name. I mean, that was never the real name. That was a design name.

Anyway, so the idea of Unearthed is it allows us to flashback creatures. The way it does that is it brings them back, and then at end of turn, or if they leave the battlefield, another way, it exiles them. So the idea is I get a creature that has died, but only for a turn, much of the way that Flashback lets you use the spell one more time. So we were trying to come up with cool things we could do

with slivers. We were just coming up with old mechanics that were legal for Modern Horizons that we thought would be fun with slivers. So this card, because it grants unearth, unearth doesn't mean anything unless it's in the graveyard so I think this is the first card that grants sliver cards in graveyard inability so I think that was kind of cool and unearth is just neat

because it lets you bring back your slivers and because slivers affect all your other slivers coming back for a turn can be very meaningful all of a sudden I upgrade all my slivers by some way but bring something back. So putting Unearthed on slivers, it just felt like a neat combination,

granting the ability to do things in graveyard, felt a little different. So anyway, it just was a neat mix of things that ended up making a really cool card. Next, Echo of Eons. That's also not easy to say. Echo of Eons, four blue blue. So six mana total, two of which is blue. It's also not easy to say. Echo of Eons. Four blue blue. So six mana total. Two which is blue.

It's a sorcery. Each player shuffles their hand and grigger into the library then draws seven cards. Flashback. Two and a blue. Okay, so having some fun here. This is the card Time Twifter from Alpha. It's one of the Power Nine.

Now, given I think it's the weakest of the Power Nine, although the Power Nine is pretty powerful, so it's the weakest of the power nine although the power nine is pretty powerful so even being the weakest of that still makes it a pretty strong card um the cutesy thing about this is that its um flashback cost is its cost in alpha so if the card is in your graveyard you get to cast the alpha card, right? So the neat thing about this card is it's a reprint of a very powerful card. Now, given it has to be in your graveyard. But then, for twice the cost,

so normally an alpha costs two and a blue. So here it costs four and two blue. So for twice the cost, you get to cast it normally. So the interesting thing is four blue blue is about what time Twitter should cost. I mean, maybe, I don't know, 4-blue, 3-blue-blue, but the idea is you get to cast this card, I mean, I guess this is a straight-to-modern card, so we get to be a little more powerful. But 4-blue-blue lets you do Time Twifter with the caveat that then you get a

second Time Twifter at the cost of Time Twifter. So this is a pretty sexy card. It's a pretty fun card. It really kind of showcases what Modern Horizon can do the best, which has allowed us to add stuff to Modern that's fun, that's flavorful, that's nostalgic. This is just a really well-designed card that really, on every level, the fact that you get a flashback for its alpha cost, the fact that its main cost is double,

and it just gets to do a lot of cool things. The one quirky thing about it is it does not play super nicely for the flashback cards because the time twister effect shuffles in your graveyard. Now given,

I mean, you can draw them again, but you have equity with flashback cards in your graveyard because you can cast them again. Playing in your deck takes that away, so it is not super synergistic with other flashback cards, but not every flashback card needs to be played in a flashback deck. Flashback is not a very linear mechanic, so it definitely allows you to just... I mean, you want to put this in a deck. You're not going to put this in an all-Flashback-dedicated deck. Not that that really is too much of a thing anyway.

But anyway, this is a beautifully designed card, so I like it. Okay, next is Endling. So Endling costs two black black, and it is a 3-3 creature, a zombie shapeshifter. So we'll get to that in a second. And it has a bunch of abilities. So for one black, it can gain menace till end of turn.

A second ability is for a black, it can gain death touch till end of turn. The third ability for a black, it can gain undying until end of turn. So undying is a mechanic that says when this creature dies, if it has no plus one, plus one counters on it, returns to the battlefield under its owner's control with a plus one, plus one counter on it. That's a mechanic from Dark Ascension. And then for a one, Endling gets plus one, minus one, or minus one, plus one

until end of turn. Okay, so let's unpack this card. So there was a card in Urza's Saga called Morphling. Morphling was originally supposed to be a clone. A clone had been an alpha, and then because of some rules shenanigans, we couldn't make copycats for a while. Finally, we got a rules manager that ironed it all out, figured out how to make clone working, that ironed it all out, figured out how to make clone working, and we decided as a celebration of the mechanic working,

we were going to bring clone back and make it a rare in Ursa Saga. The art was commissioned, we were all ready to go, and then there was some hiccup with the rules, and the rules manager said, what I think was working isn't quite working, I'm going to need more time, let's not make this clone. So the problem we had was, we had a card that looked like a clone. It even had the clone shtick of two creatures in the art that look just like each other except one's slightly different. So it was obviously making a reference

toward a clone. So we knew we needed to do something clone-ish. But we couldn't use clone technology. Couldn't actually copy a creature. So we ended up doing with making a shapeshifter, and we gave it five abilities. Three abilities that were in blue, that required one blue, and two abilities that required one colorless mana. Or one, sorry, one generic mana. And the generic mana was plus one, minus one, and minus one, plus one. And the idea there was so it could grow and shrink on what it was. And it was a 3-3. So it could be anywhere from a 0-6 up to a 5-1.

Or even a 6-0 if you had some way to grant a toughness. And then we made that card. It was called Morphling. It was a huge... A, it was powerful. But B, it was also very popular. And we riffed on that card a couple times. We made an aura and made another creature. And then

one day, we made... We were making Planar Chaos, which was the alternate reality present set. And we made a red chain fling called Torchling in it. And the idea there was we were just doing alternate versions of cards because it was a

what-if set. So we made a what-if changeling except what if it was red instead of blue. And so we kept the two generic abilities and then gave it three different new red abilities that were in red. One or two of them overlapped because of the messing with color pie stuff.

Anyway, we made Torchling, and then that encouraged us to make what was the green one called? We made the green one next. What was the green one called? Thornling. It's called Thornling. And Thornling, once again,

had the two plus one, minus one, and minus one, plus one, but had three unique abilities with green mana. Then in Battle Bond, we made Brightling, which was the white version of it. Once again, the same shtick.

And then, that sort of said, okay, at some point we needed to make the black version. This was a set all about doing time spirally like goodness. It seemed like the perfect opportunity. It was time to make it in black. Oh, by the way, I think on the green one or on the white one, we at one point condensed the two generic abilities to one ability solely for space of text. And we had still for a mana granted either of those abilities. Just instead of writing it as two abilities, we wrote it as one ability where you could choose either version. Anyway,

we knew we needed to do black things on three of the abilities and then do the plus one, minus one, minus one, plus one. I think for fun, instead of just making the shapeshifter,

all of them are shapeshifters, we made it a zombie shapeshifter because that seemed fun. So anyway, we wanted to grant, usually we grant an invasion ability. So, you know, like it was flying on the original Morphling. So here we granted Menace, which allows it, just makes it harder for you to block. So that's blocks evasion.

We also gave it Death Touch. So that way, another way to give it invasion was just making something that you don't want to block. The fact that you can change its power and toughness makes Death Touch very powerful, because Death Touch only needs to do one damage to kill something. So if I attack and I have some mana available, not only can I make this Death Touch, but

odds are I can use the shapeshifting ability to make it big enough that it doesn't die. So that's another reason to make you not want to block it. And then, because this was Modern Horizons, we were able to grant it a keyword, a non-evergreen keyword. Undying seemed fun.

That was something where, just with a powerful ability, and, I mean, Menace and Death Touch are very ordinary. Undying definitely brought it a step up. So anyway, the one other comment on this card was it made people bring up Thornling. So Morphling and all the others except for the green one, there's two creatures in the art that are facing each other, kind of mimicking off the original clone.

Thornling didn't do that. My joke is that the other ones there is just so big we couldn't fit both in the art. But anyway, the creation of Endling caused a lot of people to talk about that. Anyway, I am at work. Okay, I'm going to quickly finish off E.

I have two more E's I want to talk about. So Ephemerate is an instant cost one white, so a single white. Exile target creature you control, then return to the battlefield under its owner's control. Rebound. If you cast a spell from your hand, exile it as it resolves. At the beginning of your next upkeep, you may cast this card from exile without paying its mana cost. So Rebound was a mechanic that allowed you basically to cast a spell twice.

We like to put it on things that are slightly smaller effects, but something that, like, getting two copies makes it worthwhile. Flickering things, which is doing instant flickering, which goes away and comes right back. This is something that is a minimal effect, so it made a lot of sense. And flickering is something that is particularly good with a wider card pool. It is something where modern has a little more impact. It matters. And Rebound just seemed like a nice mix.

At the time we had done Rebound originally, Flickering I think wasn't quite a thing yet. Or, well, we've never done this combination before. Anyway, so it was cool to do. This is a neat thing. And finally, Etchings of the Chosen. It's an enchantment for one white-black. So it's a gold card.

As Etchings of the Chosen enters the battlefield, choose a creature type. Creatures you control of the Chosen type get plus one, plus one. One, sacrifice a creature of the Chosen type. Tiger creature you control gains indestructible until end of turn. So this, I think, is the uncommon build-around for white-black. White-black's theme is tribal. Changelings are focused in white-black, and there's a lot of individual tribal cards

that care about ninjas, or there's slivers are in white, ninjas are in black. There's a cat card. There's a bunch of different cards in white and black. And the idea there is you draft all these lords, all these things that care about individual creatures, and then have a whole bunch of different cards in white and black. And the idea there is you draft all these lords, all these things that care about individual creatures, and then have a whole bunch of changelings

to allow you to interact with that. And this card lets you sort of choose, so you can pick whatever you want. And so this lets you, basically, it's your changelings plus whatever creature type you have the most of beyond changelings. And so this was meant as the build-around. Okay, guys, I'm now at work, and we finished with E, so obviously I will have some more podcasts

because there's some more cards beyond E. Anyway, I hope you guys are enjoying it. This was a really great fun set to design, so hopefully you guys are having fun listening all about it because it's fun to talk to as well. Anyway, I'm now at work, so we all know what that means.

Instead of talking about magic, it's time for me to be making magic, so I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.