Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #670: Banned & Restricted, Part 1

Episode Date: September 6, 2019

Not that I'm proud of this, but I have the honor of having had a hand in creating more cards that have been banned or restricted than any other designer. In this podcast, I walk through the many cards I've helped design from this list and talk about their designs.

I'm pulling out the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. I'm gonna drop my son off at camp. Okay, so today I'm gonna talk about a record that I have made that I'm not too proud of. So, I believe it was during Mirrodin Block that I earned this distinction. that I earned this distinction. Up until that point, Richard Garfield had made more banned and restricted cards than any other designer. And I passed him in Mirrodin.

We banned a bunch of cards in Mirrodin, many of which I made. So anyway, so today I'm going to be talking, and probably more than just today, because I've made a bunch, I'm going to be talking about the banned and restricted cards that I had a hand in designing. Now I should note that not all of these I solely designed. Some of these I only had a small role in.

But I'm going to talk about all the cards that have ever been banned or restricted that I've had a hand in. And tell you the stories of how they came to be. So that's the plan for this podcast. Like I said, I believe this is more than one podcast. But we shall see. And once again, I'm only talking about ones that I had some hand-in. There's lots of ones that existed in sets that I might have been there, but if I didn't have a hand-in, I'm not going to talk about it. So there's some that other people have made that I really didn't make.

Okay, so we're going to talk about it. So there's some that other people have made that I really didn't make. Okay, so we're going to start with Aetherworks Marvel from Mirrodin. So it is an artifact, a legendary artifact that costs four. It says whenever a permanent U-control is put into a graveyard, you get an energy counter, and then tap

pay six energy. You look at the top six cards of your library. You may cast a card from among them without paying its mana cost, and then you put the rest of the cards on the bottom of your library in a random order. Okay, so for starters, energy is my mechanic. Energy was

originally made for Mirrodin, original Mirrodin. But when I handed the set in, Bill thought I had too many things going on. So it ended up changing over to charge counters. So there was a bunch of charge counter stuff. That originally was energy. And anyway, I liked the mechanic.

And I had been on the lookout for where to use it because I really liked the mechanic. It took until Kaladesh to find the right place. Now, Kaladesh ended up being the perfect place for it. I mean, it fit the environment. It fit sort of a larger invention theme we were going for. So it finally showed up in Kaladesh. And this card came about, we were trying to make a card. One of the things we tried with our energy cards was to make energy cards that didn't

require you to play a deck full of energy cards. So for example, this card here has a condition that will happen. I mean, your permanents are going to be put in the graveyard if you're just playing a game of magic, even if this is your only energy card. So, it allowed you to generate energy, and then it gave you a way to make use of that energy. Now, energy is pretty parasitic. You know, having one way to use energy makes you want to have other ways to get energy. So, there definitely is a little bit of, even though this was made so it could stand alone, it definitely was more powerful in an energy deck.

And obviously since it got banned, it was very powerful. As a rule of thumb, probably the thing that's gotten in the most trouble on banned and restricted cards is skipping the mana cost. The mana system is a very important way to sort of safeguard and make sure that things are not abused. And so we've got,

I mean, I'm not sure which either skipping mana cost or drawing cards. Those are the two things that historically have caused the most cards to get banned or restricted. This does the former, obviously. But anyway, I did like that. Oh, and this was the card

when we first premiered the mechanic. We did it at PAX, PAX is a convention, Penny Arcade Expo, which is a convention here in Seattle. At the time, it was PAX West, I guess it's now called. There's more than one PAX.

And we bought out a theater right next to the convention center, and we had stuff all weekend long premiering Cowardash. And we started with a really big show, and in that show, I premiered the mechanics. And Aetherworks Marvel was the card I showed off to first show Energy. Here's what Energy is, and it's the very first card. It's the very first thing people saw when they saw energy was Aetherworks Marble.

Okay, next. Ancestral Vision from Time Spiral. So this is a sorcery without a mana cost. It does not have a mana cost, but it has suspend, a suspend four for a blue mana. So rather than cast this card from your hand,

you may pay blue mana and X out with four time counters. At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a time counter. When the last time counter is removed, cast it without paying its mana cost. And target player draws three cards. So one of the things we played around with in Time Sprawl, first off, we made a mechanic called Suspend. Where did Suspend come from?

Suspend came from, I think it was a mechanic that Brian Tinsman and his group had come up with for... What did they come up with? It might have been... They came up with... I forget what it was. Brian Tinsman was on a team that came up with it. And I think they pitched it to me. It might have been for Scourge. They pitched it to me, and I said, oh, this is

um, or maybe it was for, oh, I'll bet you it was for, actually, Saviors of Kamigawa. That makes more sense time-wise. So I think his team came up for Saviors of Kamigawa. What I said to him is,

it didn't really thematically fit in Savior's, and it felt like a bigger mechanic. There was more we could do with it. So I said, let's save this and use it in a large set. So we ended up, I ended up, so we had that mechanic. We had a card called Split Second that we originally made for Cold Snap. That was kind of a redoing of Interrupts, where spells that, like, couldn't be responded to.

And I realized that we had a bunch of mechanics that were all time-related. So I came up with the idea of doing a block dedicated to time mechanics. And then that led to the idea of having the three sets be past, present, and future. So once we came up with the idea of the first set being the set of the past, I had this brilliant idea of having because of the reserve list, there were cards that we couldn't print on the reserve list, I said, you know, it might be fun

to make some suspended version of reserve list cards. Because we can't make the exact, like we can't make Inception Recall, which is a card thrifting off of, but suspend would allow us to make a card that you could let you draw three cards for a single blue mana. Now, you had to wait four turns,

so it wasn't quite in Search and Recall, and also, it's different enough that it's, you know, we're not reprinting in Search and Recall. Having to wait four turns is a significantly different card than immediately getting to draw three cards. So what we did is we made a bunch of cards that were exactly classic old cards and then made it such that if you suspended them you got um you got it at the cost that the card is famously for being at

now the problem with this card is well if the card costs one there's not you know if that's the discount um you know we talked about it costing more mana um i think originally the card costs one, there's not, you know, if that's the discount, you know, we talked about it costing more mana. I think originally the card we talked about, you know, cost four mana or whatever. Something in which it's not a bargain to do.

But we decided that you just would never feel good. Like, it was splashier if it just was always in social recall. You had no choice. It was take four turns in social recall.

So we ended up not putting a mana cost on it. We did talk about it, but we thought it was a splasher this way. And so we ended up making it. And I was the one who made the bold suggestion of making it in social recall. I thought it would be kind of sexy. It wasn't. And it was. Next, Ancient Den from Mirrodin. So it's an artifact land tapped for white. So I came up with the idea in Mirrodin that it might be cool, because Mirrodin had an Artifact Matters theme.

So I thought it might be cool to make basic lands that had the attribute of being an artifact. And the idea was, well, as an artifact set, people would be playing a lot of artifact destruction. So the downside of playing an artifact land is your opponents could destroy your land with their artifact destruction, which they would be running standard. And artifact destruction is much cheaper than land destruction. And so the idea was that you would be putting yourself at risk, that there would be a downside to them.

Now, on the upside was, oh, here's a set that cares about artifacts, and you had an affinity for artifacts, and you had things that made you sacrifice artifacts or counter artifacts. So it being an artifact had value. So I thought it was cool that it had value as an artifact and it had some vulnerability by being an artifact. Well, so we made a mechanic called Affinity. So Affinity from Artifacts was a mechanic that said,

for every artifact you have, this costs one less. Well, it turns out, A, that Affinity was really strong, and B, Artifact Lands were essentially made Affinity cards cost two less. Because A, they were artifacts, so affinity for artifacts, and B, they tap for mana. So essentially, it allows you to sort of get two mana to play an affinity for artifacts card.

And so it was very strong. Now the funny thing is, if affinity for artifacts hadn't happened, I think it might have been okay. I mean, even without affinity, it was strong. There's lots of reasons why you want to cut your artifacts or sack your artifacts or do stuff. And the reason that we kept them in there, we talked about this, was there's a lot of fun things. If you're kind of playing honestly with them, there's a lot of fun things you can do. And

so it saddened me when we had to ban the artifact. In fact, we banned all six or six artifact lands. We banned them all at the time. And the reason was, artifact lands were just so good with the video for artifacts. And it didn't matter because the artifact decks didn't play tons of color, it didn't matter which ones you had. It was kind of crazy that in the original version

before we banned any of them, you could play all of them. And so that allowed you to have a mana base of almost all artifacts. I think you could have a mana base of nothing but artifact lands. Which just accelerated everything. I do like this design, but it did teach me that making a land have the property of something is dangerous territory. Speaking of dangerous lands,

Ancient Tomb from Tempest. So it's a land, it taps for two colorless mana, and it deals two damage to you. So I like colorless lands, and I think the idea behind this land was, well, there's a cost to be paid. Yeah, you get two mana, but, well, I mean, you have to pay two life.

And as it turns out, that is just pretty broken. There was a Pro Tour, a Pro Tour Los Angeles, the one that Dave Price won. And basically what I was told is every deck, most decks were monocolor decks, and every deck was how do we abuse Ancient Den?

Like, Ancient Den's the broken, like, in the format, one of maybe not the most, but one of the most broken cards in the format was Ancient Den. And so, the reason decks played mono color was you really couldn't afford to play two color and play Ancient Den. So you played one color so you could play Ancient Den.

And there were mono red decks that played Ancient Den, and mono green decks that played Ancient Den, and mono white decks that played Ancient Den. I think there was mono blue decks, maybe even mono black. I think there were all the colors, but they played Ancient Den. And it's basically what we

learned in Ancient Den. I don't think we learned this at the time of Ancient Den because we made a few more cards to tap for two mana, but we eventually learned that cards to tap for more than one mana, if they're not really narrow, are problematic. Especially if you can just use them to cast any spell, they are problematic.

So Ancient Tomb caused many a problem. Next, Archbond Ravager from Darksteel. So this costs two mana. It's an artifact creature. A beast. You sacrifice an artifact, put a plus one plus one counter on Archbond Ravager.

Then it had modular. Oh, it's a modular one. Which this creature enters the battlefield with a plus one plus one counter. And then when creature enters the battlefield with a plus and plus one counter and then when it dies you may put it its plus and plus one counters on a target artifact creature so it's a zero zero

but it comes in with one counter so essentially it's a one one creature but it's a zero zero with a plus and plus one counter you can sacrifice counters to put plus and plus ones on it and then if this ever dies

you get to move them to another artifact creature Arkborn Ravager proved to be mega powerful. And there's a bunch of reasons. One of the things it would be comboed with was there was a card that every time an artifact

went to the graveyard, it did damage to the opponent. So you get a bunch of stuff, sacrifice it, make this bigger. If this died, then just move to another creature. Sometimes it would move to another Arkborn Ravager so that you could just keep moving things. Anyway, this card, then you just move to another creature. Sometimes you move to another Arcborn Ravager so that you can just keep moving things. Anyway, this card... When I made it, I was just trying to be clever.

Modular was a mechanic that we had in Darksteel. Modular... Oh, the modular mechanic was a riff off the Chimeras that were in original Visions. So the Visions teams had made things called Chimeras. They were artifact creatures that when they died, you got plus and plus one counters to go to their size

oh I'm sorry I think you got a single counter that granted everything about them like it would be a 2-2 vigilance creature that died you would put a

counter on another artifact creature that was plus 1-2 and vigilance so we cleaned that up a little bit made them plus and plus one counters

didn't do other abilities just did the plus and plus one counters but anyway modular was our take on sort of commirrors for this. We were doing artifact creatures. And then I liked the idea that you could sacrifice things to put

counters on it. And I felt like, oh, sacrificing artifacts made you want to play artifacts, but also just did it in a kind of different way. Anyway, the fact that there's no cost to stacking the artifacts meant that you can make this thing real big, so your opponent kind of had to assume that it was as big as the number

of artifacts you had, which caused a lot of crazy things to happen. Then even if you put artifacts in this thing and it died, they moved to another creature, like I said, off another artifact creature. Okay, Ash Knot's Coupon. Zero from Unglued. Artifact. Tap. Sacrifice Ash Knot's Coupon. Target player getslued. Artifact. Tap. Sacrifice Ash Nod's Coupon.

Target player gets you target drink. You pay any cost for the drink. So this is... I think this was... I just printed up a list of cards that have ever been banned. I think this card was banned when Silver Border cards went into Commander.

I think this was banned. There's not a lot of Silver Border cards played. So I think that's what I think. I mean, there's not a lot of Civil Border cards played, so I think this went there. This card was originally made. I, it just tickled me. I like the idea

of making a card that just, I love the unsets of cards that just make you have stories. And so I just, it just, it tickled me to no end that like,

this card had a function kind of outside of the game. Now it was a zero drop artifact, so I mean, maybe you can make use of it. And, but just the idea, like, this card had a function kind of outside of the game. Now, it was a zero-drop artifact, so, I mean, maybe you can make use of it. But just the idea that, like, oh, I might play this because I want someone to go get me a drink. I don't know. It tickled my funny bone. I'm not sure why we made it Ashnod. Ashnod

is Mishra's apprentice. I'm not sure why I decided to make it Ashnod's good, but we were naming things after different characters, and Ashnod has shown up in a bunch of artifact names. As with everybody in that time of the story, it was an artificer. So I'm not sure why I went with Ashnod.

It's an interesting question. Rather than Taunus's coupon or whatever. But anyway, that is... I think this is... We'll see what we get there. I'm not sure how many Civil Border cards have been banned. I've made a lot of them, I'm sure.

But we'll get to other ones eventually if they're here. A tune with ether from Kaladesh. Sorcery. Search your library for a basic land card, reveal it, put it in your hand, then shuffle your library, you get two energy. I know when we were making basic land cards, we were just trying to think of what are basic effects that we could do and then just stick energy granting on them.

We liked this card because we liked just the thematic synergy of this card gets you resources. It gets you land for your mana spells and it gets you energy for your energy costs. And so, I just really like the aesthetics of it.

Like, one of the the things we make cards is beyond just the usefulness of it this card's plenty useful is trying to make things where there's some thematic tie to it and so I really like the idea that there's this tie between the nature's way and the ether ether was what energy was and the elves in the world

were pro artifacts which is weird for green but in this world were pro artifacts, which is weird for green, but in this world, there was a synergy between nature and artifacts and so I thought this card did a nice job of kind of balancing that. So I thought that was kind of fun.

Next, back to basics. Urza Saga. It's an enchantment that costs two and a blue, so three mana total, one of which is blue. Non-basic lands, don't untap during the controls,

untap steps. So one of the things we were doing back during Urza Saga was trying... I had this dream that we could make dual lands, and maybe even make them a little better than normal, if there were more dual land hosing that went on. So I made a bunch of cards designed to sort of hose non-basic lands on my quest to say, well, if being a non-basic land really had downsides, then maybe we could make the individual a little better

because there's always the threat that if you're over-committing to your non-basic lands, people could pull stuff like Back to Basics. The reason this got banned is in a lot of older formats, that's all people player, non-basics, and so it ended up being a little too strong, I guess, is why it got banned. Once again, I just have a list of everything that's ever been banned,

so I'm not always sure where things are banned or restricted, sorry, banned or restricted. Although if they're restricted, that means they're from vintage because that's the only Zets that has a restricted list. I don't know what format is. I mean, I obviously know older formats. It's way better, because non-basic

lands are crazy good, especially in older formats. So my guess is it's from an older format. Probably vintage. Maybe Vintage and Legacy. Okay, next. Bitter Blossom from Morning Tide. So it's a cost one and a black. So two mana, one of which a black. It's a two mana, one which is black. It's a tribal enchantment fairy.

It's from Mourningtide from Lorwyn Black. At the beginning of your upkeep, you lose one life and create a 1-1 black fairy rogue creature token with flying. Okay, there's a lot to unpack here. So I was trying to make a card. This card was inspired by Phyrexian Arena. So Phyrexian

Arena is an enchantment that every turn you lose a life and you get to make a card. This card was inspired by Phyrexian Arena. So Phyrexian Arena is an enchantment that every turn you lose a life and you get to draw a card. I liked Phyrexian. I made Phyrexian Arena and I liked Phyrexian Arena. I thought it was a cool card. And I was trying to look for

a different way to make use of it. And I think at the time we were trying to make Morning Tide. Lorwyn Block was a tribal block. So I was trying to come up with something in black, what would black want to do that's tribal related, and then, oh, what if it got to make a creature?

That seems like it'd be pretty good. Um, we ended up making it a fairy, because, uh, fairy was one of the creatures in black, we made it fly, because it's a fairy, and you're paying a life-threatening turn, it's like, okay, we'll get a fairy. We made it a fairy rogue creature, because Morning Tide had a, um,

class-based tribes in it. So we made sure in Lorwyn block to give all our tokens both a race and a class so that the race would work with all the cards from Lorwyn and the class would work with all the cards from Morning Tide.

Anyway, I think when I made this card I don't think I realized how good it was. I mean, I think when I made this card I don't I don't think I realized how good it was I mean, I know Fruxy Arena is good but my thought was drawing a card was a little bit better than getting a 1-1 creature, apparently that is not the case, because I think this is stronger than

anyway, so anyway Mia Culpa I mean, it is a fun card, and it turns out that black has lots of ways to gain life by draining people and stuff and and so this really isn't that big a cost for black. I mean, black does... Something like red, for example, that doesn't gain life quite as easily. Maybe this is a little bit more if it did damage to you every time it made a creature. But black has a lot of

drain effects, so it's not that big a drawback for black. So it ended up being a pretty strong card, and obviously got banned. Okay, next. Braids Cabal Minion from Odyssey. So Braids cost two black black, so four mana total, two of which is black. It's a legendary creature, human minion.

It is a 2-2 creature. At the beginning of each player's upkeep, that player sacrifices an artifact, creature, or land. So what's going on here is Braids was the character from the story. She was a bit unstable. She was part of the Cabal.

And all the Cabal were named after attributes of how they looked. No one called them by kind of your real name. So like, Chainer had chains. He was Chainer. And Braids wore braids. She was Braids. And so they had very kind of your real name. So like, Chaynor had chains. It was Chaynor. Braids wore braids. She was Braids. They had very kind of like you could figure

out who they are from looking at them sort of names. And Braids was a little unhinged. She liked to torture things and destroy things. So I was trying to come up with something that played into that dangerous quality of hers. I liked the idea that she was a little unstable in that she,

not only does she make your opponent have to sacrifice things, she makes you also have to sacrifice things. That kind of the sense of crazy I was going for was that, yeah, she can help you get rid of your opponent's stuff, but she's got to get rid of your stuff too. And so she kind of brings this chaos to everybody. Now, it turns out that that ability of making someone sacrifice something every turn, even if you have to sacrifice stuff, but because you can

generate tokens or whatever, maybe a Bitter Blossom or something, it's not that hard if you're prepared for it when your opponent's not prepared for it. So Braids ended up being banned. Burning Wish from Judgment. So one in in a red, sorcery. You may choose a sorcery card you own from outside the game. Reveal that card and put it in your hand. Exhale, Burning Wish. So, this was during Judgment.

We were trying to come up with a splashy cycle for Judgment. And we were inspired by a card called Jeweled Bird from Arabian Nights. I believe Richard made this because it was Arabian Nights. And Jeweled Bird lets you get a card from outside the game. I think Jeweled Bird gets, well, you get another anti-card, but essentially it's just a card from your deck.

But, oh no, did Jeweled Bird... No, I think Jeweled Bird, you got stuff from outside. Yeah, Jeweled Bird, you did get something from outside the game. Oh, right, right, right. It costs an extra anti-card to do it, but it got a card from outside the game. And we thought that was really cool, and we were just looking for something super splashy.

We really felt that Judgment needed just a cycle, like a rare cycle that said, What? And so we came up with the idea of the wishes, and then we divvied up the wishes. I think red... So we ended up making instants for blue, sorceries for red.

I'm trying to remember how that all played out. I think green got you creatures, white got you enchantments or artifacts, and then black got you anything we paid life. I believe is how that played out. Um, anyway, um, so I,

not all the wishes are on the list, but a couple are. Anyway, burning wishes got banned. Um, but we made all the wishes as a group together. It was a group creation. So I definitely had a hand in the making of it. The idea of getting things back from Exile with wishes was not true when wishes were first made. That later, I might have been less eager to do the wishes if I'd known they would get stuff back from Exile. That's not how they worked when we originally made them,

but they later ended up working that way. I think the reason for that is Exile removed things from the game, and like I sort of said, get things from outside. Oh, this was before Exile was Exile. Right, you remove something from the game, and then the wishes said get something from outside the game. Like, well, you removed it from the game. So anyway, it ended up being that way.

Next, Chrome Mox from Mirrodin. Cause zero, it's an artifact. It's got imprint. When Chrome Mox enters the game, so anyway, it ended up being that way. Next, Chrome Mox from Mirrodin. Cause zero, it's an artifact. It's got imprint. When Chrome Mox enters the battlefield, you may exile a non-artifact, non-land card from your hand, and then you can tap to add one mana of any of the exiled card's colors. So we knew when we made Mirrodin and we were doing an artifact block, we really wanted

to make a Mox, because we said, oh, what says artifact block? Mox. And a Mox, we felt had to be an artifact that costs zero that taps for mana. So we made imprint. So imprint was a mechanic. So both Brian Tinden and I had made individual cards that I thought were really cool individual designs.

And it dawned on me that each one of us had removed a card. My was a clone machine. What did that become? Soul Foundry. And his was, what was it? It was the one where when you attack, you went and got an instant or sorcery. I forget what it's called. Anyway, we each made individual cards. We weren't trying to make a mechanic or anything. We just had individual cards. And I realized that they were both cool designs but they overlapped in you removing a card as a template. And I said, you know what, that's pretty cool. I think we can make a whole mechanic out of that. So in Mirrodin, when I was trying to look for cool artifact things, I realized

that it made a lot of sense to put in an artifact set because the idea of sort of fine tuning what your artifact can do made a lot of sense. It really felt like an artifact thing to do. So we introduced imprint in Mirrodin. And then we were trying to make a mox. One of the problems is zero cost tap for mana can be problematic. So we decided to try to have an extra cost here. And the idea was, well, you essentially had to get rid of a card in your hand. And in order for the card to be of value, it needed to be colored. So you couldn't just get rid of a land. You had to get rid of a card in your hand and in order for the card to be of value it needed to be colored so you couldn't

just get rid of a land. You had to get rid of an actual card. And so that felt I mean at the time we're like oh that seems like okay that should be a decent cost. Turns out that getting mana is so valuable especially in older formats that a little bit of loss of card advantage isn't that

big a deal. There's so many ways to draw cards in older formats, especially vintage, that it just, the drawback wasn't enough to not make it very, very good in the format. So, I, most of the banned moxes were, or sorry, restricted moxes, because we're talking vintage. Most of the restricted moxes were not made by me, but I did have a hand in this one. Next, Cloud of

Fairies from Urza's Legacy. One and a blue for a 1-1 fairy creature. It's a creature. It flies, because I think all fairies fly. When Cloud of Fairies enters the battlefield, untap up to two lands. So that's the free mechanic. And then it had cycling, too. So the free mechanic was a

mechanic that I made in Urza's Saga Block where you untap lands equal to the converted mana cost of the spell. I mean, it told you the number. So this cost two, so it untapped two lands. The idea of a free spell was, provided you have the mana to cast it, provided you can cast it, once it enters the battlefield, it untaps the lands that you used to cast it. Although, it didn't specify that. One of the reasons it made free spells really good is you can tap a whole bunch of mana and then use it to untap other mana, not necessarily what you use to cast this spell. Anyway, the free mechanic is one of the most broken mechanics we've ever made. One of the signs that it's a very broken mechanic

is that you can't make it more expensive to power it down. Sometimes taking a free spell and raising the cost makes it more powerful. Not a lot. Sometimes taking a free spell, making it more powerful, you know, raising the cost makes it more powerful. Not a lot of mechanics can go, oh, I'm going to add a mana, and now it's more powerful. That's not true of most mechanics. Anyway, I think this card might have been designed for Urza's Saga and then got pushed back for Urza's Legacy.

I do know I named this card. I'm very proud of this name. It's fun trying to come up with collectives for things that don't have collectives. So I was very proud of Cloud of Fairies. I thought that was cool. What are we doing on time here? Okay, I'll do a few more cards. And then I'm going to call it a day.

Obviously this will be more than one. I've made a few ban restricted cards. Cloudpost, Mirrodin, Land, Locust. Cloudpost enters the battlefield tapped. Tap add C for each Locust on the battlefield I think this was another team design in Mirrodin

we liked the idea of something that I think this was the first Locust we later have made more Locusts to go with Cloud Post I think the idea was the first one taps for 1, the second one taps for 2 was, it taps for one, the first one taps for one, the second one taps for two, the third one taps for three, the fourth

one taps for four. Kind of a riff off Kindle, a mechanic that I made in Tempest. I like the idea of a land that sort of, I guess, it's more like a plague rat, I guess, because each one of them goes up. Yeah, I guess it's more plague rat-y. Each one goes up. Anyway,

obviously being able to attack for 16 mana on the four lands is pretty good. So that got banned. Coalition victory. Three. White, blue, black, red, green. So eight mana total. One white, one blue, one black, one red, one green.

An invasion. It's a sorcery. You win the game if you control a land of each basic land type and a creature of each color. So what happened there was Invasion had a play all the colors theme. Domain was a mechanic, although unnamed at the time, that rewarded you for having spells that scaled based on how many basic land types you had in play.

And so I liked the idea. I love ultimate wins. What if we had an ultimate win that sort of played into that, but going beyond just having one of each land type, because that wasn't that hard. What if we also had to have a creature of each color? Although, a five-color creature would satisfy all of those.

So if you had, I think you could have Sliver Queen or some five-color creature and three dual lands of the appropriate types, and you could meet the conditions of that. How am I getting here? Okay, let me I'm going to finish off C

and then I'll call it an A. Cranial Plating from 5th Dawn was 2 mana, 2 generic mana for an artifact, it's equipment. Equipped creature gets plus 1, plus 0 for each artifact you control. Black, black, attach cranial plating to target creature you control, equip 1. So the cranial plating to target creature you control. Equip one. So the idea here was, A, you could equip it

for colored mana, and that allowed you to move it between creatures. I like the idea of equipment that you can move between creatures. This was, I originally designed this was part of a cycle. I originally designed the cycle for original Mirrodin, and we decided that it was a riff and we should hold it back. So I held it back for

for fifth dawn. And it ended up being and we decided there was a riff and we should hold it back. So I held it back for for Fifth Dawn. And it ended up being crazy good. This was the only one in the cycle. This was the strongest one in the cycle. And the one that ended up getting banned. I think this is the one that pumps power. Anyway,

I liked the idea of it. It's a cool design, but it ended up being sort of powerful. Crop rotation. Urza's legacy costs one green. It's an cool design, but it ended up being sort of powerful. Crop rotation. Urza's legacy costs one green. It's an instant. As an additional cost

to cast a spell, saccharize a land. Search your library for a land card and put that card on the battlefield. Then shuffle your library. This is back in the day

when we did a lot of sort of more tutoring and stuff. The idea here was it let you turn a land from one land into another land, but from whatever land

you had to a land you needed. The fact that it doesn't say basic land, you can go to whatever land you want, ended up making this card is what made it banned, because there's a lot of broken lands out there, so you can go get the broken land. Interestingly, Crop Rotation was the original name for Harrow in Tempest,

and then we ended up using it here. I think I named Harrow Crop Rotation, the name didn't get used, so I named this one Crop Rotation. The name did get used. Okay, my finding card of the day is Cunning Wish. Cunning Wish is the blue witch spell from Judgment. Two and a blue instant. You may choose an instant card you own from outside the game. Reveal that card and put it in your hand. Excel Cunning Wish. So Cunning Wish, I told the story of the wishes. Anyway, I don't want to say I've made a lot of

band restricted cards or had a hand in a lot of band restricted cards but I got to see and I'm at work so anyway we will have more of these podcasts

but for right now because I'm here we all know what that means means it's the end of my drive to work so instead of talking magic it's time for me to be making magic

I'll see you guys next time