Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #662: Modern Horizons Cards, Part 3

Episode Date: August 9, 2019

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

I'm pulling in my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. So I'm in the middle of doing Modern Horizons card-by-card stories. So we're up to Kay and Kaia's Guile. Okay, so Kaia's Guile costs one white black, so three mana total. One of which is white, one of which is black. It's an instant. Choose two, and there's four choices. Each opponent sacrifices a creature. Exile all cards from each opponent's graveyard,

create a 1-1 white and black spirit creature token of flying, or you gain four life. And then it has Entwine three. Choose all if you pay the Entwine cost. So remember from last time I talked about Entwine, this is a mechanic I literally dreamed up in Mirrodin Black. I went to bed trying to solve a problem and in my dreams I dreamed it up and woke up and wrote it down. So normally an Entwine card has its modal and you have two choices.

You pick one and then if you pay the Entwine cost you get both. So this is kind of mixing an Entwine with a Command. A Command is something in which you have four choices and you pick two. So this is kind of an entwined command, where you get four choices, pick two, but if you entwine it, then you get to pick another two. So this is kind of a cute tweak. The other thing that's nice about this card design is, so there's four things. So each opponent sacrifices a creature. That's a black ability.

Exile all cards from each opponent's graveyard. Both white and black can do that. Create a 1-1 white and black spirit creature token with flying. Both white and black can do that. You gain four life. White does that. Now, white can't get rid of creatures. Black can gain life.

Neither does it quite the way that those both are doing it. But it is something that white and black can do. So the idea is all the effects here are things that are playing around in white and black space. One is just a white effect, one is just a black effect, and two are a white slash black effect. So it's a nicely designed card. The other thing that threw people with this card was it references Kaya. So Kaya is a white-black planeswalker. We met her originally in Conspiracy Take the Crown. Then she showed up sort of helping out Bolas run the Orzhov,

though she rebelled against that. She then joined the Gatewatch. Anyway, for some reason, because there's not a lot of planeswalker referencing in Modern Horizons, people thought this was some leftover from somewhere. I think they'd had a white-black card. They were looking for a white-black character. They thought

it'd be fun to do Kaia. This is not leftover anything. This was made for this specific product. Because the way the creative works in the set is we can go anywhere and do anything. It just is an opportunity to reference a lot of non-Planeswalker characters because we can go

to specific worlds. A lot of times when we're trying to do something, we have to do it within world. And so Planeswalkers could be on that world, so sometimes we can refer to Planeswalkers a little more. But in this set, because we could spread it out, we could just mention things that are locked to certain planes. So we did a little bit more of that than we normally do, because we're kind of plane agnostic in the set. But anyway, this card was made for this set. It is, the Planeswalkers are part of our multiverse, so this was meant for this set. Okay, next.

Kess, Dissident Mage. One blue, black, red. So four mana total, one of which is blue, one of which is black, one of which is red. It's a 3-4 legendary creature. It's a human wizard. It has flying, and during each of your turns, you may cast an instant or sorcery card from your graveyard. If a card cast this way would be put into your graveyard,

exile it instead. So essentially what it's kind of doing is kind of letting you have flashback spells from your graveyard at the same cost that they normally cost. So it turns out that blue and black and red are the three colors that, in different ways, can cast instant sorcerers out of the graveyard.

Blue and red are more instant sorcery colors. Black's more a graveyard color. But each one of them has access to do this ability. So there's not a lot of three-color cards in this set. There's only one or two in Modern Horizons. And I think that it came up with this card. It was kind of neat because it overlapped three things. It seemed like a neat commander, just because it's kind of a fun build-around.

Normally, when we care about instants and sorceries, it tends to be a blue-red deck. Because it's in stuff like that. Blue-red is the color combination that most often cares about instant sorceries. But the fact that this ability was something that black could also do is kind of neat to put it in three colors. It allows you to make an instant sorcery deck that is a three-color deck rather than a two-color deck. On Tuesdays, we play we have an R&D lunch where we play whatever the latest set is and we bring in lunch.

And so yesterday I played, I got to play Modern Horizons and I got to play Kes and she was quite good. I played a blue, black deck and splash red just so I could play. Well, I splashed red for a couple spells, but one of the main spells was so I could play Kes. And she did not disappoint. Every time I got her out, I did very well. Okay, next, King of the Pride. Two and a white, so three mana total, one of which is white. It's a 2-1 cat. It's a creature, obviously. Other cats you

control get plus two, plus one. So, one of the things when we were first designing Modern Horizons was there was a lot of, um, a lot of the of one of the things that's neat about Modern Horizons is because it's kind of, it's planned agnostic and it allows whatever mechanics, I mean, within the range of what we were allowed to use, but we had access to a lot of mechanics. We just could do a lot of different things.

So a lot of times, players make requests. I mean, I'm on my blog all the time. Players request things all the time. I make lists of things people ask for, and then when I find opportunities to do things that people have been asking for, I'm on my blog all the time. Players request things all the time. I make lists of things people ask for. And then when I find opportunities to do things that people have been asking for, I like to try to do them. A lot of time, I have to really wait to find the right spot for things because, you know, certain things have to be positioned in the right place. But Modern Horizons and the nature of it really allowed us to have things that are a little more, don't quite fit as easily because the constraints of the set is just a little wider. So one of the things I was looking at, a lot of people wanted various tribe type things.

And so that's where we got Changeling. We did a bunch of things. And so the white-black draft archetype is Lords Matter. So this is in white, obviously. draft archetype is Lords Matter. So this is in white, obviously. So what happened was, in Amonkhet, we were doing top-down Egyptian.

One of the things about actually ancient Egypt is they revered cats. Cats were a big deal to them, and they really liked cats. So we thought, like, oh, here's a chance to do a little bit of cat tribal. The cat tribal went over really well. We made a commander deck with a cat theme. Anyway, surprise, surprise, people

really like Cats. And so we've definitely sort of been keeping up the Cat theme. We saw an opportunity to do another Cat card here because it went in white and white-black was the Lords Matter sort of made sense here. So anyway, we made a Cat. So for all you Cat lovers out there, here is yet another Cat Lord. This one's a pretty good Cat Lord, too. Plus two, plus one is no laughing matter. And in draft, if you're playing Changelings, plus two, plus one to all your Changelings also is pretty good. Okay. On to the next card.

Okay, next is Lesser Masticore. It costs two generic mana. It's an artifact creature. It's a Masticore. It costs two generic mana. It's an artifact creature. It's a masticore. Two, two. As an additional cost to cast the spell, discard a card. Four. Lesser Masticore deals one damage

to target creature. And then it has an ability called Persist. When this creature dies, if it had no minus one, minus one counters on it, return to the battlefield under its owner's control with a minus one, minus one counter on it. Okay, so... There was a card... What was Okay, so there was a card

What was it called? There was a card in Antiquities I'm blanking on the name. It was Mishra something. Mishra's It was a 5-5 creature with banding. An artifact creature. But you had to discard a card every upkeep.

And everyone used to complain that, I mean, the card wasn't particularly a good card. And everyone used to complain that the card wasn't particularly a good card. And people complained because it required you to discard a card every turn. Like, how could a card possibly be good if you have to discard a card to it every turn? So I took up that mantle and I said, I think it's possible

to discard a card every turn and yet have a good card. So I made Mastercore in somewhere in Ursa Psychoblock. And so basically, I think it was four mana for a 4-4. It had... I think it had flying? I think it did. I'm not sure if it had flying. Anyway, you could spend mana to regenerate it. You could spend mana to do one damage to things.

And it was quite the powerful card. Even though you're discarding a card a turn, it was a very powerful card. I mean, still played in older formats. So, in Modern Horizons, we like doing rifts on older cards. So this was kind of like MasterCore Junior, but less on MasterCore. So, instead of

a 4-mana 4-4, it's a 2-mana 2-2. It still has the pinging ability, but I think it's a little more expensive than it was on MasterCore, I think. I don't remember exactly. it's a little more expensive than it was on Master Core, I think. I don't remember exactly. I think Master Core was 2, and this is 4, I think. But, instead of making you discard a card every turn, it merely makes you

discard a card when you play it. So, it's just one discard, not continual discarding. And then, to just give it a little twist, and to use an old mechanic, we used Persist. So, Persist was made by Nate Heiss during Lorwyn design. So originally, the idea of Lorwyn and Shadowmoor, with Lorwyn, you know, Lorwyn is the

bright version of the plane, and then it goes through a metamorphosis, and there's a dark version of the plane. And we wanted to differentiate the light from the dark. So the idea we had originally was, what if on the light side, things don't tend to get killed, they're more injured and stuff. It's not quite as severe. So we liked the idea of minus one, minus one counters as this idea of, well instead of killing you, I'll just injure you. That seemed not quite as severe. The problem is, normally you heal and so minus one, minus one counters, rather than feeling less severe,

felt like cooler like oh I'm not not only am I going to do damage to you but damage is not even going to heal and it just felt meaner and so we ended up moving the minus one minus one counters from Shadowmoor to Eventide like so we ended up putting a plus one plus one counter theme

in Lorwyn and a minus one minus one counter theme in Shadowmoor now A it did a lot of fun things. It did a mirror. But also, it felt meaner. It felt like a meaner world. Like Amonkhet, we wanted it to feel like a mean world, so we stuck minus one, minus one counter.

We've learned that minus one, minus one counter makes the world feel harsher, not lighter. Anyway, Nate had made Persist for Lorwyn, and when we moved the counters, we moved the mechanic. And Persist was the inspiration. I made Undying in Dark Ascension as a riff off Persist. So anyway, it's a fun mechanic. We can only do it in a set that has minus one, minus one counters. Obviously in this set, Modern Horizons, because we were accepting a higher

complexity, this set just has both plus and plus one counters and minus one, minus one counters. We don't normally do that, but this is also a higher complexity set, so we said, okay, that's something we could do here. But anyway, I like the whole package, and it's kind of a fun card. It's obviously not as powerful as Master Corps, but that is

mega powerful. Okay, next, Lightning Skelemental. Black, red, red. So three mana total, one of which is black, two of which is red. It's a 6-1 elemental skeleton, so it's a creature. It's got trample. It's got haste. And whenever Lightning Skeleton deals comment damage to a player,

that player discards two cards. At the beginning of the end step, sacrifice Lightning Skelemental. So this is a cross between two cards. Ball Lightning and Blightning. So yes, by the way, the design name for this card was Ball Blightning. I don't know what that... That's the kind of name that I would have... I mean, in general it's a cutesy name, but this is the kind of set where we do cutesy stuff. Anyway, I'm not quite sure why they changed the name. But

it is a combination of those two effects. One of the things that we did in the original Time Spiral is we mix and match effects, but we tended to mix and match things that weren't always particularly well-known, so it became very obscure to understand. Ball Lightning and Blightning are both pretty prominent spells. Like, Ball Lightning, for example, first showed up in the dark. It was designed as kind of a weird variant on direct damage. It was designed as kind of a weird variant on direct damage.

You know, I cast, I think, Ball Lighting, RRR, Red Red Red for a 6-1 Haste trample. So the idea is, I have this thing, it's going to attack. If you don't block it, it's going to do 6 damage to you, so it's 6 damage for 3 mana. If you do block it, it's going to kill some number of creatures. And if you don't have enough toughness, it's going to also get through for some damage. So it was a neat twist. It's the kind of card we like a lot. We, there's not that many cards in Magic that we've made more rifts off of than, than, uh, Ball Lightning. We've done a lot of Ball Lightning variants. So, um, it seemed only apropos. Uh, and anyway, it is a fun, I don't know, I think it's kind of a, uh, this is a cool card and it definitely, um There's some multicolored stuff in the set,

so it felt nice as a blue-black. Sorry, as a black-red card. Not blue-black. A black-red card. Next, Llanowar Tribe. Green, green, green. So three green mana. It's a 3-3 elf druid.

It's a creature, obviously. Tap, add, green, green, green. So this is Llanowar elf. First showing up in alpha. Very famous magic card. Three Llanowar elves stapled together. Llanowar elf is a green for a 1-1 that taps for green. Well, staple three of them together, you get green, green, green for a 3-3 that taps for green, green, green.

Also in the art, one of the fun things we did is each of the Llanowars pictured in the art is a Llanowar from a different time. We did Llanowar Elves, so it's three different Llanowar Elves together. So it's a lot of fun there. It's definitely one of those cards that is a... is a... the kind of thing that I like to do in Modern Horizons, where you get to sort of riff off things. And it's the kind of card that if you don't get it's a riff, hey, a three mana, three three, the tap sort of three green mana is also a fine card all by itself.

But definitely if you understand sort of the thing behind it. And Llanowar Elves is pretty famous. Like I said, you know, we have to be careful about riffing off things nobody knows. Well, there's few cards as famous as Llanowar Elves. It started in Alpha and has shown up in Magic many, many times. Um, so, anyway, pretty famous. Next, Murder Soul.

So, two and a white. Uh, it's, uh, so three mana total, one of which is white. It's a three, two spirit soldier creature. Uh, it's got Convoke. One sec. Ah, phew! Sorry. Got so tight to myself. Um, it's got Convoke, Wait a sec. Sorry.

I got so tight to myself. It's got Convoke, so your creatures can help cast the spell. Each creature you tap will cast a spell that pays for one or one mana of the creature's color. When Murderous Soul enters the battlefield, if you control no tapped lands, put two plus one plus one counters on it. So this is mixing a couple things. So Convoke is a

Celestia mechanic that showed up in original Ravnica and showed up in Guilds of Ravnica. In fact, the only guild mechanic that we used twice. And the other mechanic is, well, an unnamed mechanic, was a mechanic from Prophecy. So Prophecy played around with this caring about your mana thing. And one of the mechanics was an unnamed mechanic, but it rewarded you for being all tapped out. And so, for those who remember Prophecy, Prophecy sort of gave you ways to spend your mana and also rewarded you for

having all tapped mana. And it also had Rhystic, where if you had mana up, you could stop your opponent's spells if you paid two. Anyway, it was a very, very, for those that don't know, Prophecy is a very, very spiky set. It's all about making very razor-thin decisions about how your mana works. Anyway, just a combination of those two abilities. The thing that's kind of cute about it is that first, what I want to do when I play the spell is tap out all my mana

because instead of a 3-2, then it becomes a 5-4. But because I can use my creatures, I can cast the spell probably a little earlier, because I can cast it, tap out my stuff, and then also tap some creatures to play it. So it's very versatile. And then, you know, if you play your cards right, you can get a 5-4, which is pretty cool for 3-mana. Okay, next, Meriden Besieged. So 2 and a blue, so 3- mana total, one of which is blue.

It's an enchantment. As Mirrodin Besieged enters the battlefield, choose Mirrodin or Phyrexian. If you choose Mirrodin, this enchantment says, whenever you cast an artifact spell, create a one-one colorless Mir artifact creature token. If you choose Phyrexian, it says at the beginning of your end step, draw a card, then discard a card.

Then if there are 15 or more artifact cards in your graveyard, target opponent loses the game. Okay, this is a masterfully designed card. There's so much going on here. So for starters, Mirrored of the Siege was the name of a set. From time to time, we'll have magic cards that have names of magic expansions. But usually, they're things like visions or conflicts or something in which it's just a

generic word. It becomes trickier when you're referencing something that's very specific. So for starters, they got to make a card. And I think the goal was they wanted one card in the set that was named after a magic expansion. And they wanted to pick one that was kind of tricky to do. So they picked Mirrodin

Besieged. Now Mirrodin Besieged, the set, took place in the middle of Scars of Mirrodin block. So what happened was, we went back to Mirrodin, and there was a war. It turns out the Phyrexians had invaded. And in the first set, in Scars of Mirrodin, we put watermarks. The Phyrexian watermarks were on, like, maybe 10% of the cards. But you come to the middle set, and it was about 50-50. In fact, at the pre-release, we divided up all the cards in half. Everything with a Phyrexian Watermark went into a Phyrexian Booster Pack,

and everything with a Mirren Watermark went into a Mirren Pack. And you chose your side, and you played with that half the cards at your pre-release. It was a pretty exciting pre-release. And then we did this whole thing where the outcome of the war was a big mystery and we didn't tell the audience the name of the third... Well, we gave you two possibilities. If the Phyrexians won the war, it was going to be New Phyrexia. But if the Myrins won the war, it was going to be Myrid and Pure. And we mocked up logos and boxes and it turns out that

well, for those who know the history, the Phyrexians won. It became New Phyrexia. But anyway, so anyway, this card is riffing off a mechanic known as Anchor Words that comes from Fate Reforged. So in Fate Reforged, it was the beginning of two timelines. This is during Khans of Tarkir block. One timeline led to the Khans being in charge.

That's Khans of Tarkir. One led to the dragons being in charge. That's dragons of Tarkir block. One timeline led to the Khans being in charge. That's Khans of Tarkir. One led to the dragons being in charge. That's dragons of Tarkir. And you had this choice to pick what you wanted to pick, Khans or dragons. So they use the technology, the Inker words, but instead of Khans or dragons, you're picking Mirren or Frexian. So if you pick Mirren, you're making, whenever you cast an artifact spell, you're making a Mir token.

Mir tokens right now, I hope, I mean, mirror tokens so far, we've only ever made them a mirror. I hope someday we make them not a mirror, a mirrored in just because I like mirrors. But currently they're from mirrored in. So you're making a mirror token, which is an artifact creature that's unique to that. And then Phyrexians are doing this thing

where you're looting, but when you get enough artifacts in your graveyard, you can make somebody lose. So the idea of the Phyrexians, once again, they tend to use poison with infect, but they're very much about making people lose. That's a Phyrexian thing. But the neat thing is both these things care about artifacts.

The Mirren one rewards you for casting artifacts. The Phyrexian rewards you for discarding artifacts, but you need a deck full of artifacts to make either side work. So the idea is this card goes in an artifact deck. It allows you to have choices when you play it, depending on where you're at and what you want to do.

And so it's a really interesting card. Also, by the way, the reason we, the Phyrexian side, the reason we made opponent lose rather than you win is A, it felt a little more Phy Fractions made you lose with Poison. And B, in multiplayer play, like in two-player play, it doesn't matter. You losing, me winning, no difference. In multiplayer play, it's actually more interesting for me to make one person lose

rather than I just win. There's a lot of politics in it. Who am I going to kill? I want to make sure once I kill somebody, I'm not too much of a threat. People want to go after me. So it just makes it more of an interesting dynamic in multiplayer play. But anyway, this is a very well-designed card.

One of the best design cards. This is a very... Just on the making something that's a total package and making use of the resources you have available in Mirrored Horizons. Anyway, this is a thing of beauty. So it is a car that, in my mind, is both a Vorthos and a Mel home run. So that is hard to do.

You don't often get to do that. Okay. Next up, Mob. Mob costs four and a black. It up, Mob. Mob costs four and a black. It's an instant. It's got Convoke. And Destroy Target Creature.

So the idea, essentially, and this is kind of cute, that for five mana, I can destroy a creature. It's actually unlimited. That's a fine cost. But if I have some creatures, well, you know what? They can help me out. The Mob can help me kill somebody. So I like it. It's flavorful. The other thing

we did in Modern Horizons is we like to take mechanics that had been used in certain colors guild mechanics are the obvious choice such as here, and then put them in other colors. Convoke is a Celestia mechanic. Obviously we used it twice. We did do Convoke once in a core

set, but in general, because we've done Convoke numerous times in Selesnya, we've used most the white and green effects. If you want to make a Convoke white spell or green spell, it gets trickier just because we've done a lot of the basic effects. But you go off to another color, say like black, and you know what? We haven't done Convoke in black very much. So there's just all this open space where we make cool cards, and Modern Horizons really took advantage of that. Okay, next, Moraphon the Boundless costs 7 generic mana. It's a legendary creature, a shapeshifter, 6-6.

It's got changeling, so it's every creature type. As Moraphon the Boundless enters the battlefield, choose a creature type. Spells of the chosen type you cast cost white, blue, black, red, green, less to cast. This effect reduces only the amount of colored mana you pay. And other creatures you control, the chosen type, get plus one, plus one. Okay, so this came about. I made this card because, as I said, I was trying to make things that players have been asking for.

And one of the most common requests I get is, can I please have a commander with tribal elements to the tribe I love? please have a commander with tribal elements to the tribe I love. And sometimes those are tribes that we do occasionally make tribal rewards for. And sometimes it's like my goat deck, my brushwag deck, my, you know, pick an animal that we don't make that many of. And what I realized was it would take forever to make all of them so I said okay, I can't make all of them what if I made one that is kind of a fill in the blank

so the idea is whatever your tribe is this can help you, you can build anything so we wanted it to be generic mana so any deck can play it but we wanted to have a 5 color identity so you could build whatever creature deck you wanted to build. So part of it was when I said, okay, I want you to

name the creature type and then help the creature type. So what two things can you do that would help any creature type? Well, one is boosting at plus one, plus one. That's a very common thing we do with creatures. All creatures have power toughness, so it's something that works on all creatures. And the second thing we decided is to make it cheaper. Just make them cheaper. So we ended up doing this blue, black, red,

green, white thing because not only did it sort of make something novel and allows you to do shenanigans with Joda and cast Lipper Queen for free and stuff like that, but it allowed us to give a five-car identity. The rules are, if a mana symbol appears in the mana cost or in the rules text, it gives it the color identity. So by having it in the rules text, this has a five-color identity. So if you play this in Commander, you can play any colors you want with it. We also gave it Changeling, so whatever else is in your deck to boost whatever your tribe is, it also will boost this.

Um, so anyway, this is one of my favorite cards in the set. Um, I just like that I was able to make something that just could address so many issues at once. Uh, that's usually hard to do. And so, um, and this was something that I made, um, I think I might have made this during the hackathon I either made it early vision or during the hackathon but it's something maybe I made it early vision

but anyway it was something made relatively early and it lasted the whole way through okay next mother bear one and a green for a 2-2 bear it's a creature 3 green green exile mother bear from your graveyard. Create two green green bear creature tokens.

Activate this ability only anytime you can cast a sorcery. So this tells a sad little story. There's a mother bear and she dies and leaves behind her two cubs. So one of the interesting things about this is Hold on one second. I need a drink. Okay. Hold on one second. I need a drink. Okay, so in alpha was grizzly bear,

and grizzly bear is actually a nickname for any green, two-dropping green that's a 2-2. We do a lot of grizzly bears, and we've long since, creatures have gotten a lot better since alpha. So nowadays, not only can you get one green for a 2-2, but you get a lot of extra on that. In fact, I think you can get one green.

I think we've made one green 3-3. So clearly you get a lot extra with a 2-2. So this one's like, not only do you get a 2-2 creature, but later in the game, for more mana, you get two 2-2s. So, you know, they're packing a lot in here. So this is definitely a cool card. Next, Mox Tantalite.

It's an artifact with spend 3, 0. So it's got no mana cost. It's got spend 3 for 0 mana. So rather than cast this card from your hand, pay 0, and exile with 3 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 then it says tap, add one mana of any color.

So we wanted to add a Mox. Mox is started back in Alpha. Mox is a zero cost artifact that taps for some amount of mana. We've made different Moxes over the year. All that's required is it taps for mana and it's a zero cost artifact. The ones in Alpha tap for a

particular color. Those were part of the Power 9, very strong. And we've made a bunch of color, those were part of the Power 9, very strong. And we've made a bunch of ones since then. One of the tricky things about making MOCs is that they need a big drawback because it's very powerful. So the idea of using Suspend, Suspend's a mechanic that we did in Time Spiral. We actually invented it before Time Spiral,

but ended up saving it for Time Spiral. I think... I think Tinsman came up with it for some other set, and it was just... The set didn't have enough breath for it, and I'm like, oh, hold on, hold on. And then I had a suspend, and I had split second. I had a bunch of things in my pocket, and I'm like,

um, we were going into a thing, and we had this time-themed thing. I love the idea of a set that had a time theme to it, and we did past, present, future. But anyway, we made use of suspend there. Suspend ended up being not quite as awesome as I was hoping, only because there's a lot of words to explain it. The idea behind it is pretty much is things are cheaper if you, instead of paying mana, pay time. And it's a neat idea, and it played well, but it requires a lot of bookkeeping, and everybody understood it and it was one of those mechanics where

wrapping your brain around the idea of what does it mean that it costs time was a little hard. Suspend was actually pretty popular among the more enfranchised players but it was very confusing for the less enfranchised so it ended up being not really what I consider

a success per se. So anyway, but I do like the idea of using Suspend on a Mox. That's a clever sort of combination. Okay, Ninja of the New Moon. Three black blacks, so five mana total, two of which is black. It's a 6-3 Spirit Ninja creature. We had a lot of fun, by the way, in this set of making ninjas with other creature types. And it has ninjutsu for three and a black. So for three and a black, return an unblocked attacker you control to your hand, put the scarlet on the battlefield for your hand,

tap, and attack him. So ninjutsu is a mechanic I made for the ninjas back in Betrayers of Kamigawa. And the idea is you never quite know when a creature is magically disguised and is really a ninja. And then most ninjas tend to have some sort of saboteur ability or something. Something that happens when you use the ninjutsu or when they enter the battlefield or when you do damage. This one is a cleaner version.

It's just big. It's just like that thing, you know, for four mana that maybe your 2-2 becomes a 6-3. And so, you know, it definitely can do a lot more damage than you expect. So I like this as a simple ninja. Okay, On Thin Ice. It costs one white mana.

It's a snow enchantment, an aura. You enchant a land... Sorry, you enchant a snow land you control. And when On Thin Ice enters the battlefield, exile target creature and opponent controls until On Thin Ice leaves the battlefield. Okay creature and opponent controls until Onthin Ice leaves the battlefield okay so back in Theros we made a card called Chain to the Rocks

one of my favorite cards from Theros and that card is you had to enchant a mountain and then you did the same thing as you sort of the idea is you chained a creature to your mountain it was making in Greek mythology,

who gave the fire? There was a demigod that passed fire to the humans. Starting with P, I'm blanking on his name. Anyway, they chained him as a punishment. They chained him to the rocks. And then a vulture came and ate out his liver every day, and then it would grow back, and it was a torture. Anyway, we were kind of making reference to the idea of this kind of classic Greek torture,

although there were no lizards eating your, no vultures eating your liver up. But anyway, this was just a riff on that. We were doing snow covered was a thing. Snow was a thing. So the idea of instead of caring about mountains that only a red player might play, you could care about snow covered. And the idea is any deck could be playing snow covered. There's snow covered lands in every

color. So this was it required snow. I mean, obviously I mean, you don't even need a lot of snow. You just need enough snow to be able to use this. And it's clever. And it was a nice rip. I sort of liked what he was doing there. Okay, next.

Ore Scale Guardian. Five red red for a 4-4 dragon creature, obviously. The spell costs one less to cast for each land card in your graveyard. It had Flying and Haste. So I'm not sure where the land in your graveyard theme came from. It happened during set design. I think they were just trying to look at things that were going on, and somebody realized that there were a bunch of mechanics, like cycling and stuff, that could allow you to get land in your graveyard. And so they decided to sort of concentrate them

in, I think, red and green, and then just it became this little drafting thing. It's a quirky theme. It's the kind of thing that only worked because of the weird mix mechanics, but I like the idea. I mean, one of the things that's fun is every color combination has kind of its default, and then what we try to do is, some of the times it does the defaults, and then every once in a while we try to mix it up, and like, normally this color does this kind of thing, but hey, in this set, we get into something a little different. Well, this is something a little different, and I kind of think that was kind of cool, so.

I do like the quirky draft strategies, just to make you care about things in a slightly different way. There's a lot of red-green decks, but not a lot of red-green draft decks do this. I think that's kind of cool. Okay, next, Poshalik Mons. So it costs two and a red for a legendary creature, Goblin Warrior.

It's a 2-2. And whenever Pashalik Mons or another goblin you control dies, Pashalik Mons deals one damage to any target. And for three and a red, you sacrifice a goblin to create two 1-1 red goblin creature tokens. Okay, so Mons' Goblin Ra to create two 1-1 red goblin creature tokens. Okay, so Mons' goblin raiders is a 1-1 creature in Alpha. It's all it was, just a 1-1 goblin.

And by the way, in Alpha, there weren't a lot of goblins. There was a goblin balloon brigade, there was Mons' goblin raiders, there was a goblin king who wasn't even technically a goblin himself. I mean, as a creature type. I guess he was flavorfully, but not as a creature type. There wasn't a lot of goblins. There were just a few goblins.

But one of... So Mons, Mons Johnson, is a friend of Richard Garfield's. Mons loves goblins. And so when Richard put a few goblins in Alpha, he named one of them after Mons, because Mons loved goblins. And we've been trying to make...

So Pashalik Mons is who... Mons is Goblin Raiders. That's the character that Mons is Goblin Raiders is named after. Even though, I mean, the card... The name of Mons is named after Mons Johnson. So, anyway, we've been wanting to make this card forever. We do a vanity

rule that we don't make things named after people, but this card... Once something's in Magic History, it's part of Magic History. So, Pot of the Bonds is part of Magic History. So, sort of grandfathered it, if you will. But we had tried to make this card numerous times. It just never got made. And this was...

I think this is the third time Ethan himself tried to get it in a set. I had done numerous times before that, and other people had tried as well. So, I mean, this is probably the eighth time we tried. But anyway, we finally got it in. It is meant to be a build-around goblin card. And I like the fact that once you get a goblin, it starts replicating your goblins. I think that's kind of cute.

And it makes 1-1 goblins, which is what Mons Goblin Raiders are. Somebody asked me why it didn't make Mons' Goblin Raider tokens, because we have made token making that made specific cards but because it's just a 1-1 we thought that that might be more confusing I mean there's some cuteness to it but I think if you know Monsters, Goblins, Raiders you know they're 1-1 Goblins

so I think you get the gist of making that reference and this is something where you really can build around and just fill your deck full of Goblins and this gives you a win condition. So, I mean, not that attacking with goblins isn't another way to win. But anyway, so this is us finally.

It took a while. It took 26 years. But finally, Pashalik Mons makes it to magic on a card. Okay, next. Plague Engineer. So, Plague Engineer so Plague Engineer is two and a black it's a two two carrier

it's a creature uh Death Touch as Plague Engineer enters the battlefield choose a creature type creatures of the chosen type your opponent controls

get minus one minus one so this is very cute there's a card called Engineer Plague that I made when I make it like Urza's Legacy Urza

it's during Urza's Block. And so this is a riff on Engineer Plague. Engineer Plague was an enchantment. They did exactly this, except it was an enchantment. So they're turning it from enchantment into a creature. Instead of Engineer Plague, it's Plague Engineer. It's kind of cute. And it's a carrier. So for those that like to go deep

on their Vorthosian references, the carriers were part of the Phyrexians that was referenced in Urza's saga. I think in Urza's Legacy. In Urza's Legacy, we went to Phyrexia for part of it, or the Phyrexians were attacking Teleria.

And anyway, there were carriers, which were subtypes of Phyrexians were attacking Teleria. And anyway, there were carriers, which were, it's a Phyrexian, subtypes of Phyrexian that were in Urza's Saga block. So this is making a reference to Urza's Saga in the card, because Engineer Plagues from Urza's Saga block. And then the creature type, it's following the creative to sort of match that. So there's a lot of very nuanced, like, this card references Urza's saga, not just mechanically, but

creatively as well, which is pretty cool. Okay, next. Plane-bound accomplice. Two and a red for a creature. Human wizard, one, three. For red, you may put a Planeswalker card from your hand onto the battlefield. Sacrifice at the beginning of the next end step. Okay, this is another riff on...

It's funny. A lot of these cards, I didn't make the riff of it, but I made the original. So this is a card based on a card called Sneak Attack that I made in Urza's Saga. So Sneak Attack allows you to take a creature to do exactly what this card does, but do it with a creature.

That you got a creature and you could put it into play and it got to have haste. And you didn't have to cast it, but then it went away at end of turn. And so I don't know who did it but somebody said, you know, sneak attack for planeswalkers might be fun. Especially since we had just had a planeswalker-centric set. So we knew that there was a lot of planeswalkers out there. Plus in Modern there's all the planeswalkers. So anyway or is it all the planeswalkersers? Yeah, yeah, it is because Planeswalkers start in Lorwyn

and Modern starts in Mirrodin or 8th edition. So anyway, this is another fun sort of just making reference of it. I think it's kind of fun. Okay, speaking of making fun of or referencing things, Pondering Mage 3 blue blue, 3 4 human wizard

when Pondering Mage enters the battlefield, look at the top three cards of your library, then put them back in any order. You may shuffle your library, draw a card. So Ponder is a spell that costs one blue mana that does exactly what this does as an enter the battlefield effect. And it's a very powerful card. It gets played

in a lot of formats. I think it's banned in some formats. It's very powerful. But anyway, once again, making card. The idea here is we put it on a little bit of a body, so it's a 3-4, so we can make the card cost a little more and Ponder on a 1-drop is a lot more powerful than Ponder on a 5-drop, but you also get the body on it. So it kind of gives you Ponder, references Ponder in a fun way, and it does it a little later in the game by the nature of because it's on a bigger creature, it gets more expensive.

You're not pondering turn one. You're pondering turn six, seven, eight, whatever. You have five mana. So I think that is kind of fun. Okay, Quakefoot Cyclops. So Quakefoot Cyclops costs four and a red. So five mana total. One of which is red.

It's a 4-4 Cyclops. It's a creature. When Quakefoot Cyclops enters the battlefield, up to two target creatures can block this turn. It's got cycling, one and a red, so for one and a red, you can discard this card and draw it hard. And when you cycle Quakefoot Cyclops,

target creature can't block this turn. So this is making reference off Onslaught Block. We brought back Cycling for the first time. Cycling had been originally in Versus Cycle Block. We brought it back in Onslaught Block to try to riff things and do things a little different. One of the things we did is we did cards that had a big effect,

but when you cycle them, they did a smaller version of the effect. So this is making a throwback to the Onslaught Cycling. And the idea here is that this is a creature that we like having red creatures at ETB and keep things from blocking. But one of the things that often times will give those creatures haste, but we don't always. This one doesn't. Anyway, so this is definitely giving you some utility.

We're kind of careful with cycling not to do too much of this just because cycling starts to feel a little bit more like kicker at times. So we have to be careful how often. But we do a lot of cycling to do little tiny effects. We also did this riff where we would do large cycling costs that also came with big effects. And that ended up feeling a lot like kicker. Anyway.

So anyway, we're going to wrap up. I'm now back. I'm now at work. So we got through Q. So I'm hoping tomorrow sorry, next time for you guys, next time we will I think one more. Hopefully I'll finish this off. But anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed the jaunt through what's that? Mirrored Horizons. Not Mirrored Horizons. Modern Horizons. Anyway, it's fun talking about it. There's a lot of fun cards, a lot of fun riffs.

I hope one of the things that's neat about this set is there's so many references to other things. I hope as I go through them that some of them, if you didn't know that it was referencing something, there's a lot like I said, we've joked this thing time-spir time spiral too, there's a lot of references built in here, so I hope me pointing a lot of these out are fun for you, anyway, I'm now at work, so we all know what

that means, and 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.