Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #671: Banned & Restricted, Part 2

Episode Date: September 13, 2019

This is part two of a four-part series on all the banned or restricted cards I had a hand in designing.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so last time we were talking about banned and restricted cards that I had a hand in making because I have the record of having the most banned and restricted cards that I've made, or helped make. So we were up to D, I believe. So we're going to start with Dark Depths from Cold Snap. So it's a legendary snow land. Dark Depths enters the battlefield with 10 ice counters on it. Three, remove an ice counter from Dark Depths. When Dark Depths has no ice counters on it, sacrifice it. If you do, create Merit Lage, a legendary 2020 black avatar creature token with flying and indestructible.

So one of the things that we did in Cold Snap. So the idea behind Cold Snap was We wanted to do an extra set We wanted a gimmick to it The gimmick was it was the Lost Ice Age set Found in a file cabinet or whatever And so we were trying to find things from the Ice Age story That we hadn't yet made into cards And one thing that's in the Ice Age story is Merit Lage being frozen in ice.

This ancient creature. And so we thought it'd be fun to sort of make a card that played into that. And the idea was, okay, it's trapped in the ice. You know, if you can get it out of the ice, then it gets free. And so the idea behind it essentially was it comes with ice counters on it, and then you pay.

So essentially it requires you spending 30 mana over many turns to free it. But there's some combos in magic, the most common of which is there are some spells in magic, black mostly, that remove counters off things. And so a much quicker way of freeing Merit Lage is not carefully spending mana over many turns, but casting one spell and freeing it.

And so this card has definitely seen some play in some older formats that have access to Dark Tabs. Okay, Darksteel Citadel. This is from Darksteel. It's an artifact land that's indestructible for tap, a colorless mana. So I'd made the five artifact lands in Mirrodin and I thought, hey, why not make another artifact land? We're not done yet. And so this one, the idea behind it was a tap for colorless,

but it's indestructible. So indestructible was a mechanic we introduced in Darksteel. And I'm not sure why I thought we needed one more artifact land. Obviously, we banned them all. Or sorry, we restricted slash banned, depending on the format. But anyway, I think I liked the idea of an indestructible land, something you just couldn't destroy. I think I liked the idea of an indestructible land, something you just couldn't destroy. And the idea was, since in Darksteel, everything that was indestructible was an artifact, because it was made of Darksteel.

And so the idea was, oh, we'll make one more artifact land. Artifact lands are fun. Now, I think Darksteel Citadel, at one point, we were printed., one artifact land in a vacuum without too much support for it, I guess was okay. Although, it gets dangerous in a set that cares about it. But anyway, that was my six artifact land, Darksteel Citadel. Okay, next. Deathrite Shaman. So, Deathrite Shaman. So Deathrite Shaman costs a one hybrid mana, which is black or red.

Not black or red, sorry. Black or green. It is a one, two elf shaman, a creature, obviously. Tap exile target land card from a graveyard. Add one mana of any color. Black tap exile instant or sorcery card from your graveyard. Each opponent loses two life. Green tap exile target creature from a graveyard.

You gain two life. So we spent a lot of time on this card trying to figure out the idea behind it, the original design was that the shaman uses the graveyard as a resource. And so the idea is it always removes a card from the graveyard, but we thought it was kind of neat that depending on the card that got removed, it did different things. So the idea was, and so we divvied them up into creature card, land card, and instant or sorcery. I think we talked at one point about being the instant or sorcery would be non

creature, non land, but it just got too wordy, so we ended up making instant or sorcery. So the idea is, you can get a land card, you can get a spell card, you can get a creature card. I know, poor artifact and champions got left out, but, uh, anyway, we thought it was kind of cool that, uh, you know, um, because there's going to be less spells, usually,

in your deck than creatures, we could make that one a little bit more aggressive. The other thing we wanted to do was we wanted to do a mirrored thing where black and green could do effects that felt black and green, but there was some sort of connectivity to them. So black making the opponent lose life,

and green making you gain life with a nice mirror. And then I think the land got added in last that we realized that we wanted to care about other things in the graveyard, and land-reducing mana felt very flavorful. And I think at the time, there were some discarding effects where you'd end up getting land in the graveyard.

So anyway, Deathrite Shaman. Next, Deathwish. This is from Judgment. So one black black, so three mana total. Two of which is black. It's a sorcery. You may choose a card you own from outside the game and put it into your hand. You lose half your life rounded up. Exile Deathwish.

So we made a cycle of wishes in Judgment that let you go get cards from outside the game. I think we were having trouble divvying up who got what. So what we ended up doing was white got Artifact or Enchantment, blue got Instant or Sorcery?chantment, blue got instant or sorcery?

Or no, blue got instant, red got sorcery, green got creature, and then we let black get anything but at the cost of half your life. So the idea is black. We also love the idea that we could call it death wish because they were wishes. And that death wish, you know, like puts you closer to death. I thought it was awful cool. Anyway, I think all the wishes, or most of the wishes? No, no, no, no. I think, oh, the reason it's on this list is I think all the wishes got banned in Commander.

That's why I think it's on this list. My list here is of everything that's ever been banned or restricted. So I think that's banned. I think all the wishes are banned in Commander. Okay. Okay. Moving on. Okay. Um, okay. Moving on. Okay. Next. What do we got next here? Hold on one second. Okay. Next up, we got Dig Through Time. So this is from Khans of Tarkir.

So six blue blue, so eight mana total, two which is blue. It's an instant. It's got delve. Each card you exile from the graveyard makes the casting... Each card you exile from the graveyard while casting the spell pays for one. So it allows you to reduce the spell by exiling cards from the graveyard. Look at the top seven cards in your library, put two of them in your hand, and the rest are on the bottom of your library in any order. So the interesting thing is I first made Delve on a couple cards in

Future Sight. So Future Sight had this gimmick where there were future shifted cards. Cards from the future, or at least potential futures. And one of the mechanics we had was Delve. I think Delve was on three cards in Future Sight. Two or three cards. Anyway, we had tried a couple times to get Delve in. I think we talked about looking at Delve as a Golgari mechanic. In the end, we ended up using it for, in Kata Turk here, for the Sultai.

Black, green, blue. in Kansatarkir for the Sultai, black, green, blue. Because black and green are the graveyard colors and blue has an instant sorcery theme and these tended to go into instant sorcery. Although I guess not all of them are instant sorcery. Anyway, it made sense. The Sultai cared about the graveyard

and they were very much about using resources. And anyway, it made, like, a good fit, so we ended up putting Delve into Kinds of Tarkir. Um, turns out Delve was one of those mechanics that is fine in standard and crazy good in older formats, which is a lot easier to get a lot of cards in your graveyard. Um, so Dig Through Time, when we made it, I don't think, I think it never got banned in Standard, but it got banned in, I think, in Modern and in Vintage. Anyway, Delve proved to be one of those mechanics that just gets much better in older formats. Anyway, Dig Through Time. I do like Delve. I think Delve is kind of cool.

I think you have to be careful on what kind of spells you are reducing the cost of, but it is a cool spell. Okay, next, Disciple of the Vault. Mirrodin costs a single black mana for a 1-1 human cleric. It's a creature. Whenever an artifact is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, you may have target opponent lose one life. So we made two of these cards.

These were made as a mirror. There was a white one drop that gained you a life whenever an artifact enters the battlefield. And then there was a black one that made your opponent lose life whenever an artifact went to the graveyard. So, enters the battlefield, gain a life.

Leaves the battlefield, opponent loses a life. Interestingly, the black one that causes life loss proved to be way more problematic than the white one that gained life. That is an ongoing theme of Magic Design. Anyway, this was just made, I mean,

it's one of those things where I think this card was made pretty innocently when we made it. I think the idea was just to make something that interacted with it and it was a way to make artifacts matter. The fact that it's a win condition, essentially if you just do shenanigans with an Artifact deck and have this out, you know, and this one drop,

it just gets to be a win condition in a pretty easy, simple way. That's why I think it ended up getting banned. It just made things a little bit too easy. You could do lots of shenanigans with your Artifact Matters deck and then your opponent kind of died just because Disciple of the Vault was out. Anyway. So next is a cycle. The double cycle.

So the white one was double dip. Four in the white, so five mana total. One which is white, instant. Choose another player. You gain five life. And then at the beginning of the first upkeep in the next game with that player, you gain five life. Then double take was a blue one. Three blue, blue.

So five mana total, two witches, blue, instant. Choose another player. You draw two cards. At the beginning of the first upkeep in the next game with that player, you draw two cards. The black one was double cross. Three black, black. So five mana total, two which is black, sorcery. Choose another player, look at that player's hand and choose a card other than a basic land. That player discards that card. At the beginning of the first upkeep in your next game with that player, look at that player's hand and choose a card other

than a basic land. They discard that card. Then red was double deal. Four and a red sorcery. Choose another player. Double deal deals three damage to that player. At the beginning of the first upkeep in your next game with that player, double damage deals three damage to that player. And then double play. Three green, green sorcery. So five mana, two wishes green.

Choose another player. Search your library for a basic land card. Put it on the battlefield and shuffle your library. At the beginning of the first upkeep in your next game with that player, search your land for a basic land card, put it on the battlefield, and shuffle your library. At the beginning of the first upkeep in your next game with that player, search your land for a basic land card, put it on the battlefield, and shuffle your library. So the double cross, this is from Unhinged. I'm sorry, this is from Unglued. The idea behind the double cross cycle was that it did something now in the beginning of the

next game. So we tried to come up with things that we thought were valuable that you'd want to do during your first upkeep. And so it had, like, get a land, you know, do damage to the opponent, make him discard a card, draw cards,

and gain life. All that felt like relevant at the beginning of the game could be valuable for you. I think these got banned in Commander just because they do create, like, the idea is it's a multiplayer format. I play with Susie, and then I'm playing another game with Susie, but the other people in my game with Susie are completely different people. It felt very weird to go, oh, well, before we begin, should I mention that I get extra cards and some life?

And, you know, it's like, I'm playing with Susie, but these other people weren't in the game in which I cast all these spells. So it just felt really weird. And there's just no way, anyway, it was just sort of awkward to sort of track. So I'm pretty sure these cards are banned in Commander, which is why they're here. When I say banned in Commander, it's Commander for a while allowed Silver Border cards for like three months after Unstable came out. And so they banned a bunch of cards during that time period. That's when that got banned. So anyway, that's why I have a bunch of silver border

cards. Okay, Dread Return, two black black. So four mana total, two which is black. It's a sorcery from Time Spiral. Return target creature cards from your graveyard to the battlefield. Flashback sacrifice three creatures. You can cast this card from the graveyard for a flashback cost.

Then you exile it. I think we were just trying to make, one of the things we were trying to do with Time Spiral is, we were messing around with old mechanics, so we brought back flashback, and we liked the idea of making a flashback that just had a cost that's a different cost. It's not mana. But it turns

out that being able to for free cast a spell a second time is very powerful. And there's lots of ways to get lots of token creatures and things in play that make doing this a little bit easier. For example, one of the things you could be getting back, there's numerous cards that

you can get the creature back, and the creature comes with a bunch of different tokens. More than one token, so. Anyway, that is Dread Return. Dream Halls, three blue blue. It's 5 mana 2 which is blue it's an enchantment

from Stronghold rather than pay the mana cost for a spell its controller may discard a card that shares a color with that spell

so this was inspired so in Antiquities not Antiquities in Alliances there's a series of cards called the Pitch Spells a cycle of 5 cards and the Pitch Spells instead of casting the spell you may discard a card of five cards. And the pitch spells, instead of casting the spell,

you may discard a card of the same color to cast the spell. We then, in Mercadian Masks... Oh, this is Stronghold. This is prior to Mercadian Masks. We haven't made Mercadian Masks yet. Anyway, I liked the pitch cards, so I thought it might be fun to make a card that turns all your cards into pitch cards. Interestingly, when this came out, what's it called?

Inquest. Inquest magazine, magazine that talked a lot about gaming and had a lot of magic content, dubbed this card the worst card from Stronghold. And then years later, it got banned. So they were a little off on the worst card. In fact, I remember when they banned it, I was like,

okay, I'm not sure whether or not this card will end up doing what it needs to do, but man, that seems like a weird choice for a worst card. This card in the right environment could be crazy good. And it was. The fact that a circumvent cost, this allows a lot of shenanigans. In general, circumventing costs can cause a lot of shenanigans. And so this card,

especially in a mono-blue deck where I just have infinite blue cards to discard, and the fact that once I get this out, I'm now... Because one of the things that blue lets you do is draw cards. And so, if, for example, it's a draw spell that draws you more

than two cards, and I can cast by discarding one blue card and it, I'm just going up in cards, right? And once I'm going up in cards, cards are the resource, like, the whole idea behind this is the thing that it's supposed to zap you of is cards, right? Because I'm spending, you know, I'm not paying mana, but I'm spending two cards per thing when I'm supposed to run out of cards. That's kind of the safety of Dreamhauls. But in a mono-blue deck with card drawing, oh, well I can discard two cards and go up cards. And so, you know, like opportunity

lets you draw four cards. So if I discard, if I get this out and I have opportunity and a blue card, my whole deck's blue, and I discard it and all of a sudden I get to draw four cards. So now I'm up in the number of cards that I can use to cast. So anyway, it was quite good. Earthcraft, Tempest. One and a green, it's an enchantment. So two mana total, one of which is green. Tap an untapped creature you control, untapped target basic land. So the idea here was there's a card in Alpha called Laidruid, and Laidruid was a creature that you could tap to untap a land. Laidruid was thought of as kind of weak,

although it was played in the first ever World Championship deck by Sektol. So I said, oh, wouldn't it be cool if we made a card that just made all your creatures into Laidroids? Now, interestingly, we templated this. We didn't splice it onto the creatures, which would have prevented you from using them the turn they entered the battlefield. But because I made it a cost, now you can.

So the second I play a creature, I can get mana out of it. And get mana out of it by untapping a basic land. So the idea that turns all your creatures into mana, essentially, proved to be quite potent, and obviously led to us banning the card. Or maybe it's ban restricted. My guess is restricted vintage for sure.

Okay, next. Enter the dungeon. This is an unhinged card. Black, black sorcery. So two mana total. One of which is black. Players play a magic sub game under the table starting at five life and using their libraries as their decks. The winner searches the library for two cards,

puts those cards in their hands, and shuffles the library. So one of the things we like to do in Silver Border Sets is make sub-games. Richard had originally made a card called Scheherazade in the Raby Knights. It lets you play sub-games. It was kind of fun. But from a tournament standpoint, it just took a lot of time. And having to sort of have a noob area to play in can be messy in tournaments when you don't have a lot of space. So we moved that to Silver Border. Black Border no longer does

sub-games, but because sub-games are fun, Silver Borders now do sub-games. So we did Once More with Feeling on Glued, which is also banned. I think all the sub-game cards were banned in Commander when they put them in, which is how this got banned. End of the Dungeon was unhinged, and then... What was the Red Run called? There's an unstable had. I'm blanking on the name of the Red Run. It's the Red Run where you went to one life.

You guys know the name. I'm blanking on the name. Anyway, End of the Dungeon came about because I was looking for a sub-game. I wanted something that was quirky. And then we got the idea of playing under the table. A, because you need space to play, and B, it just

seemed like a fun thing to make people go under the table. And since they had to play a game, they needed some space to play. I thought it would be kind of fun. Like, well, there's a sub-game. Where do you play a sub-game? How about under the table? Because there's a floor there. And anyway, we did put the flavor on

and enter the dungeon. And the reward was two demonic tutors. You get a tutor for two cards. The idea is when you go to the dungeon, you get your treasure. Anyway, this is a tutor for two cards, but the idea is when you're going to the dungeon, and then you get your treasure, was the thought, so, um, anyway, this is a fun card, um, one of my favorite rulings I ever made was, uh, at one of the pre-releases, we had, we ran, um, a bunch of flights of pre-releases at, uh,

Gen Con SoCal for, uh, Unhinged, I dressed up like a donkey, and, um, Osa Levitsa Lebedowitz, a pro player, was playing. And I got called over. And the match was under the table because End of the Dungeon was going on. And so I had to make a ruling. And so I climbed under the table to make the ruling because that's what the game was. make a ruling, and so I climbed under the table to make the ruling, because that's what the game was. And I think the ruling was, there's a card called, what's her name? It's the riff off of the White 1-1, the taps that give protection to any color, I'm not going

to give the name of that, Mother of Runes. So this was Mother of Goons, I think it's called, and you had to insult somebody every turn. But there was a goblin mime in play, which kept Osep from talking. And so the question he had, which he had a pan of mime because he couldn't talk. A goblin mime goes away if you ever talk. And basically, Mother of Goons made you insult your opponent. And so he was asking, did he have to verbally insult the opponent, or could he make gestures to insult his opponent? And I ruled that the Mother of Goons did not say you had to verbally insult the opponent, that gestures were fine.

So anyway, I made that call under the table. Next, Entomb from Odyssey. So Entomb costs a single black mana. It's an instant. Search your library for a card and put that card into your graveyard and shuffle your library. So Odyssey had a graveyard theme and I thought it'd be cool to have a tutor that tutored cards from your library straight into your graveyard because there were cards that had meaning in the graveyard. This seemed innocuous enough. This seemed like, oh, kind of fun, like a wacky, weird build-around. This was made as a Johnny card. It was made as

something like, oh, what are you going to do? How are you going to use it? And it ended up being super efficient. I don't think we quite understood how the combo potential of this would cost it a B. I think if we had realized it, we would have cost it a little bit more. Normally, tutors cost a bit more. We just thought at the time,

oh, well, going to your graveyard, you have to even, how are you going to use that? But there's a lot of effective ways to use cards in your graveyard. So anyway, it ended up being too good and got banned. Okay, next. Eye of Ugin from Worldwake.

It's a legendary land. Color cell drives you spells, costs you two less to cast. Seven and tap, search your library for a colorless creature card, reveal it, and put it in your hand and shuffle your library. Okay, so this was what we call a teaser card. So the Odrazi, Rise of the Odrazi was the next set. But the Odrazi hadn't shown up yet. They were so the story is Sorin and Ahiri and Ugin

trapped the Odrazi on Zendikar. And their being trapped in Zendikar causes a lot of craziness on Zendikar. And their being trapped in Zendikar causes a lot of craziness of Zendikar, but we the players hadn't seen them yet. So the reason we put this in Worldwake was we wanted to tease that they were coming. And so, for example, it mentions Kolas

Eldrazi spells. There were no Kolas Eldrazi spells! As of Worldwake we said this thing, we were saying Gobligook. This thing that does not exist costs too much. Well, what is this thing? Now, the second ability goes and gets you colorless creatures. Now, obviously, it's expensive, so you want to get expensive colorless creatures, and the Eldrazi are expensive colorless creatures, so it works well with Eldrazi, but it also lets you go get other

colorless spells. There's other artifact creatures and things that were large color spells. So, it had some use, but really, it was a seed for the Rise of Eldrazi that kind of teased at the Eldrazi, implied they were colorless, implied they were large. You know, like, it didn't quite tell you everything about them, but it definitely hinted

at what Eldrazi were like. Anyway, it turned out that the Eldrazi are really powerful, and so this enabler of the Eldrazi were like. Anyway, it turned out that the Eldrazi are really powerful and so this enabler of the Eldrazi was a little too good. Okay, next. Fact or fiction

from Invasion. So three and a blue. So four mana total. One of which is blue. It's an instant. Reveal the top five cards of your library. An opponent separates

those cards into two piles. Put one pile into your hand and the other into your graveyard. So this mechanic uses the Divi mechanic, where the idea was there were a bunch of cards in Invasion. It wasn't named or anything,

but I think there were four cards, where one player would take some subset of cards, Divi them into two piles, and the opponent had to pick a pile. This ended up being the good Divi card, the one that ended up, getting on a ban restricted list and we also, I remember we pushed this a little bit, Randy really liked

this card, so Randy really encouraged us I think Randy was the lead developer of Invasion, so Randy really pushed this card but I just liked, the thing that I really enjoy is I like making cards where the better the player you are,

this to me is a very spiky card, the better the player you are, the more powerful the card is in your possession, meaning your skill as a magic player ups the power level of the card. And this is a perfect example of that, of if somebody who doesn't really know how to divide cards plays this, they're getting way less value than somebody that really understands how to do that. You know, so if I, for example, let's say there's 100% equity and I decide 50-50, then I'm getting 50% equity. You know, I evenly match them. But if someone else does it 75-25, and the smarter player gets rid of the 75, then, you know... I mean, it's really interesting of trying to do it correctly.

Because... Or actually, I said it backward. If you do it 70-25, the player can take the 75. So you need to make sure you're giving them an even balance. But anyway, I enjoyed the spell. It ended up being powerful, but I still think it's a very cool design. Next, Fluctuator from Urza's Saga. It's an artifact that costs two.

Cycling abilities you activate cost up to two less to activate. So the idea of this was, oh, we have all been to cycling cards, but there's no reason really to play cycling cards with each other. On some level, they were almost anti-synergistic, because they all needed mana if you wanted to cycle them. So when we brought cycling back in Onslaught, I made cards that triggered off things cycling. But this time around, this is back in Urza Saga,

the idea I said is, well, what if you had a card that just made cycling free, essentially? Because in Urza Saga, all cycling costs two. So making it cost two less, at least as far as Urza Saga was concerned, is you can cycle any card for free. Well, the idea that you had access to cards and then you could just change your cards for other cards proved to be crazy powerful. I don't think, obviously, it was one of those things where the fact that we costed it two sets, we didn't realize quite how powerful it was.

Anyway, that's one of those where I was trying to just, I wanted to make something that let people draft, make a linear deck out of cycling. And it succeeded a little too well. Okay, next, Food Chain. This is from Arcadian Mask. It's an enchantment. So it costs two and a green, so three mana total, one of which is green. Exile a creature you control, add X mana of any one color where X is one plus the exiled creature's converted mana cost. Spend this mana only to cast creatures. The idea behind this spell was that you could use one creature to cast the next creature. And the idea was it's mana cost plus one.

So you're sort of ramping up. Anyway, once again, this is one of those things where when you help people circumvent mana cost, shenanigans can happen. So one of the things that I know people are doing with this card is you have a lot of creatures in your deck that have a lot of enter the battlefield effects. And maybe some that have death effects on it to boot. And the idea is I can just chain through them, because if I play

one drop, or what, it's cost two, cost three. Once I get this out, so let's say I'm playing my three drop, and then I can immediately sac it to get the four drop, which I can sac to get the five drop, which I can sac to get the 5-drop, which I can sac to get the 6-drop. It allows you to chain up. Also, you can play anything that's

an equal or less value. Because you add mana for 1+. I mean, you need to play monocolor things without some help, but anyway. Once again, it's me making a card I think is fun that ends up letting you circumvent mana and causing problems.

Oh, speaking of circumventing mana, Frantic Search, two and a blue, Urza's Legacy. It's an instant. Draw two cards and discard two cards. Untap up to three lands. This is the free mechanic. I've talked about the free mechanic already. We weren't allowed to have cantrips in Urza's Saga block

because Bill thought we needed to save up the equity of the cantrips. So I came up with the free mechanic. The idea is instead of this costing you, like the idea of a cantrip is it doesn't cost you the card. Well, this was, it cost you the card, but it doesn't cost you the mana. The idea was if you have enough mana to spend it, we give you the mana back. But rather than like, had this just said, add two and a blue to your,

or whatever, blue, blue, blue, whatever, add whatever mana to your mana pool, it just won't add the mana. It could have said, add two colorless and a blue mana to your mana pool. That would have been less problematic, but we said untap two lands, and this was sitting in a set

with stuff like Gaea's Cradle and Tolarian Academy and Serum Sanctum, which were lands that could tap for a whole bunch of mana. So the crazy thing about Friending Search is that sometimes you would cast Friending Search, and by through the act of casting Friending Search,

you would go up in mana. Instead of costing you mana, it rewarded you with mana to cast the spell. Well, suffice to say, that causes some problems. And this was a filtering card, so the idea that I get a filter for free, or not for free, I could add mana to my mana pool, basically,

while searching for cards that might be the cards I want to cast, just proved to be a really powerful combo card. You just synergize with what combo decks wanted to do. And so it was quite good. Not all the free mechanic spells were quite as good. Part of being a free mechanic needed to be, you needed utility that a combo deck that was going to take advantage of the free spell wanted and filtering Mega Time. Okay, Gifts

Ungiven. Three in the blue for an instant. This is from Champions of Kamigawa. Search your library for up to four cards with different names. Reveal them. Target opponent chooses two cards of those cards. Put the chosen cards in your graveyard and the rest in your hand. So the idea is you went and got four

cards with different names and revealed them. So this card was a redone version of another card that I had made. I'd made a card, and originally I said, the one I think I had originally was, what was it, go get, you go get a number of cards and then, or was it four, maybe it was also four. You would go get four cards and then they'd pick two and put two in the graveyard.

But the problem was I had forgotten to specify four different cards. It's what I meant, but I didn't specify it. And they started abusing it by putting forth the same card. They're like, oh, in order to get the card I want, I pick all the cards I have and you have no choice. I'm like, oh, no, that's not what I meant. But they liked how it played and so they wouldn't change it. So in Urza Saiga, I made,

or sorry, in Shams of Kamigawa, I made this card, saying, okay, this is what I meant for it to be. And so I made a new card. Proved to be, once again, triggering things to the graveyard. The way this card tends to work in Constructed is you go to get four cards

that are good in my hand or good in my graveyard and then I've just added four cards. It's like, no matter what you give me I'm going to have two cards I can cast and no matter what you give me I have two cards that have relevance in my graveyard. So it's like I'm going to go get four cards. Getting four workable cards for four mana

is pretty good. Next, Golden Wish from Judgment. Three white-white, so five mana total, one of which is white it's a sorcery, you may choose an artifact or enchantment card you own from outside the game reveal that card and put it in your hand, exile Golden Wish this is the white of the wishes from Judgment it got you an artifact or enchantment

once again, this is banned because most tutors are banned in Commander. Golgari Grave Troll from Ravnica. Four and a green creature, troll skeleton. It is, where are its stats? It is, oh, sorry, it's a 0-0 creature. It enters the battlefield with a possible counter on it for each creature card in your graveyard.

So it's kind of like a Lurgoyf. I mean, what inspired this card was a Lurgoyf. It was like, oh, I come into play. I mean, it's a Lurgoyf that sets itself at the time you play it, rather than a Lurgoyf. But the idea is, so it cares about how many dead things there are, enters the battlefield. Then you can spend one and remove a possible counter from it to regenerate it. So the idea was, it was kind of a Lurgoyf that it could regenerate, but every time it sort of shrunk a little bit. And then we made it Dredge 6.

Well, the reason that Dredge 6 is so good is in order to get the card back in my hand, I have to take six cards from my library and put it into my graveyard. Well, while in a vacuum it's a negative because maybe you'll run out of cards, on this particular card, it cares about how many creatures are in your graveyard. So, getting to mill six cards into your own graveyard is considered upside. You're saying it's an upside to the card. The fact that it has such a high...

I mean, in general, high dredge numbers tend to be very, very good in a dredge deck, because a dredge deck's all about taking advantage of cards that work in the graveyard. So what you want to do is get cards in your graveyard. So the fact that you have a dredge cost that gets so many cards is just super effective. But anyway, this is one of those cards. When I made this card, it did not have the high dredge cost on it. It was just sort of a Lorgoy variant. And at the time, I thought it was kind of fun, just because

I liked the idea that it's something you can get back that would get better with time. I thought that was kind of cool. But anyway, so what happened, the little quick story is, I made Dredge, when I made Dredge as the Gold Guard mechanic in the original Ravnica, it just got you, instead of

drawing a card, you could draw this card back from the graveyard, and they were cost to be a little on the weak side, but you could get them. That's the advantage of them. And then Brian Schneider, who was the lead developer, decided to change it up a little bit. He liked the idea of them having milling as a secondary cost

because it kind of fed the Golgari. I mean, he was correct. I mean, they're super synergistic. Obviously, Dredge is a major deck in Vintage. But I think it was a little more synergistic than he was realizing. But anyway, one of the ways you get onto

the list of the most banished cards of all time is create mechanics like Dredge. So, let's see how we do in here. I'm at work. I'm going to finish up G real quickly. Graveshot. One in a red from Time Spiral. It's a sorcery. Graveshot deals one damage to any target, and it has the Storm mechanic.

When you cast a spell, copy it for each spell before at this turn, you may choose new targets for the spell. New targets aside for the copies. So I think what happened here was we were putting all sorts of old spells into Time Spiral.

So Storm was originally designed by Brian Pinsman, and it was broken. I have a whole scale about how things are going to come back. Named after Storm scale, because I don't think we're ever putting Storm back. Time Spiral, we were prideful. We're like, oh, we can bring it back.

Yeah, it caused problems before. We can bring it back. No problem. You know, we're good designers. We can prideful. We're like, oh, we can bring it back. Yeah, it caused problems before. We can bring it back. No problem. You know, we're good designers. We can handle it. And this card got broken. So one of the things we learned from this is win conditions that are on Storm cards, no matter how minor it seems, like, oh, one damage to any target.

How could that kill somebody? By having 20 copies. That is possible. Anyway, this was hubris in action. Us thinking we were better than the storm. We could control the storm. You can't control the storm. Great Furnace, Mirrodin,

Artifact Land, tap for red. This is the red cycle of the Artifact Lands. This one actually saw a bunch of play outside of shenanigan things because red had a sacrifice artifact theme so the fact that you could play this to get things out and then later on when you have enough mana use it as a sacrifice cost

was actually a kind of fun and fair way to use it green sun zenith xg is from mirrored and besieged sorcery search your library for a green card with converted mana cost x or less put it on the battlefield then shuffle your library shuffle a green card with Converted Mana cost extra or less. Put it on the battlefield, then shuffle your library. Shuffle Green Sun's Zenith into its own

library. There were five suns on the plane. The green sun coming out was something that had happened in Fifth Dawn. Oh, the there were four suns and the

merging of the fifth sun happened in Fifth Dawn. That's what Fifth Dawn. Oh, there were four suns and the merging of the Fifth Sun happened in Fifth Dawn. That's what Fifth Dawn is, the dawning of the Fifth Sun, which was the Green Sun. And so this, we made a cycle of Zeniths, I think, here. This was the Green Zenith. And this allowed you to go search out your library.

And then, I think the Zeniths all shuffled themselves into. There was a mechanic that we had made where you could, the cards once used got shuffled in, and I think these, to avoid abuse things, we had them shuffle in.

Grindstone, Tempest, costs one. Artifact, three and tap. Target player puts the top two cards of the library into the graveyard. If both cards share a color, repeat this process. So this was me making a mill card with trying to make mill a little bit more unpredictable.

Like with a millstone, I can go, oh, well, you can mill me to a turn. I can count how many turns we got. I can cut my library and go, oh, well, you're going to mill me out in 10 turns. But the nice thing about this card is you don't quite know. And it also was a nice way, it was a little more effective against mono-color decks. Now, people have lands in their decks, so sometimes they'll hit lands, and lands don't have color, so you're not always going to mill them. But in a monocolor deck, you're more likely, whenever you hit two of the same color,

I mean, two non-lands, essentially, you're going to keep milling. So I like that this was able to do that. I think it ended up being a little too powerful, which is why it got restricted. But anyway, it's a fun card. Gosh, Mercadian Masks, four and a blue for an instant. So five mana, one of which is blue. You may return two islands you control to their owner's hands rather than pay the spell's mana cost, and then you get to draw two cards.

I loved the pitch cards from alliances, and so I was the major architect behind the alternate costs in Mercadian Masks. So we made more pitch cards, and we made a whole bunch of other cards. And so Gush was me trying to just be inventive on, oh, what kind of things can you do? And I'm like, oh, well, we're turning land. That's a cost, because it sets you back, and this and that. But it turns out that drawing cards for free is so valuable that you can give up some tempo on your lands, especially later on, to make that happen. So Gush ended up being mighty good.

Okay, that finishes off G, so we will stop here. So anyway, the jaunt through all the cards I've made that are ban-restricted, or had a hand in, that are ban-restricted is a long list. So we will continue on in the next podcast. But anyway, I'm now here at work. So we all know what this means. This is the end of my drive to work.

So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. See you next time.