Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #672: Banned & Restricted, Part 3

Episode Date: September 13, 2019

This is part three 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 another drive to work. Okay, so today I'm continuing on my podcast series about cards that have been ban-restricted that I had a hand in making. I hold the record, sadly, for the most ban-restricted cards. So today I'm trying to tell you, not all these cards. Some of these cards were 100% mine. Some of these I had a hand in that were completely mine. So next up is Hermit Druid from Stronghold. So one and a green. So two mana total for a 1-1 human druid creature.

Green and tap. Reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a basic land card. Put that card into your hand and all other cards reveal this way into your graveyard. Now this seemed innocent enough, right? This was, oh, well, you get to go get a land. And rather than make, you know, we don't want to... A lot of times we were looking for ways to help you get land that doesn't make you shuffle your library. So this seemed pretty clean.

Like, oh, we'll just go get the next one. And I think the reason we put them in the graveyard was just ease. It was just kind of, okay, well, where do you put them? Let's put them in the graveyard was just ease. It was just kind of, okay, well, where do you put them? Let's put them in the graveyard. Little did we know, the reason this card is on the ban and restricted list is if you have no land in your deck, or sorry, no basic land in your deck,

then you will mill your whole deck into the graveyard, and there are decks that want to do that. So that is how this card ended up being broken. mill your whole deck into the graveyard. And there are decks that want to do that. So, uh, that is how this cart ended up being broken. We were just trying to make an innocent cart that got you some land in a way that we thought was a little different and didn't require shuffling. But, uh, you know, a lot of these,

it's funny that a lot of these carts that ended up being broken started from such an innocent idea. Like, I mean, sometimes we set out to make a card that's a little dangerous. We know it's a little dangerous. A lot of these are not that. A lot of these are us just trying to do something we think is goofy and fun, and then it gets broken.

Next, Humility. Two white-whites. So four mana total, two of which is white, from Tempest. It's an enchantment. All creatures lose all abilities and base power and toughness 1-1. When I made this card, the flavor of this was I thought was pretty cool. It's just your, everything's just being turned into a 1-1. Once again,

this was not made to be something that I thought would be powerful necessarily. More of just something that like, oh, well, you know, if I have more creatures than you do, then I have more creatures than you do, then I'm more willing to just turn everything into a 1-1. And I thought, like, white was all about, like, equaling everything. So it felt very white to me. This card, along with the card called Opalescence, that turns enchantments into creatures, was one of the most complicated two-card interactions we've ever had.

And I made both of them, so rules managers love me. Anyway, Hyper Genesis from Time Spiral. Sorcery. So it has no cost. You can't cost Hyper Genesis. Suspend three, one green green. So rather than cast this card from your hand, pay one green green and exile it with three time counters on it.

At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a time counter. When the last is removed, you may cast it without paying its mana cost. That's how Suspend works. So starting with you, each player may put an artifact, creature, enchantment, or land card from their hand onto the battlefield. Repeat this process until no one puts a card onto the battlefield. So this was a cycle in Time Sp of suspend only cards. I think it was a cycle in which there were cards in which you had to suspend them. You could not suspend them. And all of them were just sort of redone versions of cards from the past. And I think the idea of the cycle was mine. And then we as a team sort of filled out what we wanted it to be.

So I'm not sure if I picked this effect specifically. Not 100% sure about that. But I did, I think, I mean, the team made the cycle. And I definitely, the idea of the cycle, I'm pretty sure was mine. So I will take partial responsibility. Okay, next. Invigorate. Two and a green from Mercadian Masks.

It's an instant. If you control a forest, rather than pay the spell's cost, you have an opponent gain three life. Target creature gets plus four, plus four until end of turn. Okay, so I was the big advocate in Mercadian Masks of doing the alternate costs. I'd always like to pitch cards from alliances, so I made a new cycle of pitch cards, and then that wasn't enough. Every color had an alternate way to cast spells. Green was by giving the opponent life.

And the idea here is, oh, I get to make my creature bigger, but I'm giving them more life. So the idea was is, oh, I get to make my creature bigger, but I'm giving them more life. So the idea of plus four plus four is, well, if I actually hit them with my creature, then they gain three life, but I manage to do only one damage because I've just given them life. But if I use it to make my creature bigger and save my creature, maybe for free I'm saving my creature, but I'm, you know, giving you some life. So you're going up in life, but I've won the creature battle. The reason this card is banned is another attribute, something else that I've been a big advocate of, which is poison. So in the infect deck, where I'm trying to do 10 damage to you,

a card for free that lets me pump you plus four, plus four, and the downside is I give my opponent life, so basically in a deck that could care less than I'm giving my opponent life, it's essentially a free, better than Jaguar, Jaguar's only plus three, plus three. So it's zero mana cost, plus four, plus four, in a deck where I'm rushing to do ten damage to you with my infect creatures. So it's a card made to be infect.

Now when we designed this card, this card was not problematic really until infect came along. Infect is what got this card banned. I think it was okay. But anyway, there's a bunch of cards. There's a bunch of Mercadian Mask cards that are alt cost things that

I had a big hand in. Okay, next. Jace the Mind Sculptor. Two blue blue. Legendary planeswalker Jace. Loyalty 3. So it's from Worldwake. So it's got four abilities. Plus two.

Look at the top card of your target player's library. Sorry. Excuse me. Double sneeze. Okay. Plus two. Look at the top card of the target player's library. You may put that card on the bottom of that player's library. Zero. Draw three cards. Then put two cards from your hand on top of your library in any order.

Minus one. Return target creature to its owner's hand. Minus twelve. Exhale all cards from the target player's library. The player shuffles their hands into the library. Okay. So, for starters, when we made the Planeswalker decks, one of the things that we... When we made Planeswalkers, we made the Planeswalker cards, one of the things that I asked for up front was, we had made them so they had three abilities

but I asked up front I said you know what someday we're going to want to do four and I asked when we made the frame to make both a three and a four so we had already made the format we had made the four loyalty frame it had been made

it was the thing we knew we were going to do and we had been waiting a little bit to figure out where to use it and finally there was a story Jace was in it, Jace is one of our main characters people love Jace It was the thing we knew we were going to do. And we had been waiting a little bit to figure out where to use it. And finally, there was a story. Jace was in it. Jace is one of our main characters. People love Jace. Like, you know what?

Jace is going to be the first one to do a four loyalty ability. I got everybody else on board. The first ability, the plus two ability, is actually, what did I call it? I made a card in Future Sight that did this the idea was it was negative scry where instead of scrying for yourself you're scrying your opponent's library. It had a name. It was a named mechanic. So I thought it might be fun to do that here. Not named obviously but as an ability. And then Draw3Put, put two cards back

was just copying a spell people liked. The minus one was unsummon. And then for the ultimate, we were just trying to come up with something pretty sexy. And the idea was, well, what if we mill your entire library and then put your hand into your library? We thought that was pretty potent. So, anyway, that is Jace, Jace the Mind Sculptor.

So this card, obviously, for those who don't know, might be the most powerful Planeswalker we've ever made. I mean, there's some competition, but it's probably the winner. It is very, very strong. I think at the time, we really were trying to... I think we knew Jace was very popular, so I think we juiced this a little bit. I think we over-juiced it. I think it's a little excess-juiced. But anyway, Jace the Planeswalker.

but anyway Jason, let's go okay, what's up next next is Kakusho, the evening star four black blacks, so six men in total two witches, sorry, two witches black six total, two witches black this is a 5-5

legendary dragon spirit it's a creature from Champs of Kamigawa it has flying Six total, two of which are black. This is a 5-5 Legendary Dragon Spirit. It's a creature from Champions of Kamigawa. It has flying. When Kakusha the Evening Star dies, each opponent loses five life. You gain life equal to the life lost in this way. Okay, so I was not on the design team for Champions of Kamigawa, but I was on the development team. And originally, all of the dragons

had activated abilities. But the argument I made at the time was hey you know you don't want to have you don't have to choose

between attacking with a 5-5 or you don't choose between attacking with a 5-5 or using its ability. And so I made the proposal of what if we gave them

death triggers. Because one of the things that's awesome about a giant dragon is that you want to attack with it. But at some point someone's going to try to kill it because it's a giant 5-5 dragon. And so I thought it was kind of cool that sort of the punishment for killing it is you got a very good ability. And so I thought it was just a different way to do a dragon cycle. We had done... We haven't done that many dragon cycles. We've done a few. Mirage did a dragon cycle, and then Invasion did a dragon cycle.

This might be the third dragon cycle. We haven't done tons of dragon cycles. I know Faber-Forge and Dragonstar here do dragons third dragon cycle. We haven't done tons of dragon cycles. I know, um, we, uh, Faber-Forge dragons are here doing dragons and dragon cycles. But anyway, um, the idea here was we wanted to do something that was very black

and we wanted to do it when it died. So the idea was you weren't crazy about killing them. That kind of, one of the things that protects them a little bit is, not that they wouldn't kill them because they had to,

but it would do, you know, crazy things to them. And so this one drains them for five. Um, and so the idea is kind of nice is that, you know, when you get this thing out, but it would do crazy things to them. So this one drains them for five. So the idea that's kind of nice is that when you get this thing out, even if they kill it immediately, you still are going to drain them for five. So no matter what, you're still getting some hit on them, even if they're able to get rid of it immediately.

And often they can't get rid of it immediately. Okay, but next, Lingering Souls from Dark Ascension. So it's a sorcery that costs two and a white. So three mana total, one of which is white. Create two 1-1 white spirit creature tokens with flying. And it's flashback one and a black. So I think when we first made this, what had happened was Eric, I had made,

I did the design for Indusrod, password of Eric, who did the development, and Eric decided to take some of the flashback spells, and I think that's, yeah, right, he did enemy flashback costs so that there was reasons to, like, the way the Innistrad worked is the ally colors were tribally connected, they were monsters or humans, and so there were reasons that you had worked is the ally colors were tribally connected. They were monsters or humans. And so there were reasons that you wanted to play the ally thing. And so he was trying to, in drafting, make reasons you might want to go to enemy colors.

So he made a cycle of flashbacks that were pretty powerful that you could flashback to the enemy color. So we decided to continue doing that. And the idea was, oh, well, white, white creatures with flying. Oh, well, black and white can both make flying creatures. They're white because spirits are a white-blue thing, and the card is primarily white. But the idea is if you're playing white-black, oh, well, then you can, even cheaper than the upfront cost,

the flashback cost, is that you can get the spirits. The other thing that happened with this card is, if you were playing a black deck and you had means and ways to discard things, sometimes you would play this so that you could discard it, use it as a discard cost, and then for two mana,

you get two 1-1s, which is fine. Most of the time, people play this in white and black. Sometimes they play it in mono-white. Mono-black had to be a very specific deck that you could play it. So most of the time time that wasn't true. Lion's Eye Diamond from Mirage. It's a zero cost artifact. Discard your hand. Sacrifice Lion's Eye Diamond.

Add three mana of any one color. Activate this ability only any time you can cast an instant. Okay, so the card was actually designed by Charlie Cattino, who loves making super bad cards. I made one suggestion. I said, you know, if you're going to make a bad Lotus, it should at least be a Lotus.

Let them sacrifice for three colors. When he made it originally, you just sacrificed for three generic mana. Sorry, three colorless mana. So I suggested that you sacrifice for one of any color, like a Lotus. I'm like, if you're going to make a bad Lotus, three colorless mana. So I suggested that you select for one of any color, like a lotus. I'm like, if you're going to make a bad lotus, make it a lotus. And this card ended up being

broken, partly because you could get colored mana out of it. So my one little suggestion I think helped break it. That's why I have it on my list. Next, Living Wish from Judgment. one and a green, Sorcery you may choose a creature or land card

you own from outside the game, reveal that card and put it into your hand, oh right, green did and then you exile it green did creature or land, because white did artifact or enchantments I think blue did instance red did sorceries, and at the time that was all the land types, Planeswalker

would have come along later, but it didn't exist at that time. Right, I think the idea is we'll be winding with the wishes to get everything. Green can fetch creatures and can fetch land. So it felt apropos for green to do that. Lodestone Golem. This is an artifact creature from Worldwake. So it costs four for five three golem.

Non-artifact spells cost one more to cast. So one of the things we were trying to do... What were we trying to do in Worldwake? I... What is that? Is this card from Worldwake? Is that right? Is this card really from Worldwake?

I feel like this card would be from an Artifact block. And the idea was this card is something to encourage you to play Artifacts. I'm not sure why in Worldwake. Maybe it's for a Constructed deck? I'm not sure. Anyway, the idea of this card really was just to say, oh, this is an Artifact, wants to go to an Artifact deck, and it just makes it harder for everybody.

It's universal. It's not just that your opponent has to spend more. Everybody has to spend more. But if you put this in a deck that's primarily artifacts, then it doesn't matter. So one of the things we try to do when we make something matter, so sometimes you make it because it helps it,

and sometimes it hurts everything but it. And this is the latter, it hurts everything but it. Lotus Petal from Tempest. It's a zero-cost artifact. Tap, sacrifice Lotus Petal at one mana of any color. So this was me trying to make a

fair Lotus, Black Lotus. Black Lotus, originally an alpha for cost zero, cost same cost. But you would sac it for three mana of any color. And I'm like, wow. What if I just, it's just a petal of a lotus. And it's just for one. Well, it turns out just one also pretty good.

This is how you can tell that some of the broken cards in the past are quite broken. I make a card that basically does one third of what the original card does, still gets banned. So anyway, I was trying. Magical Hacker. So this anyway, I was trying. Magical Hacker. So this is from Unhinged. So, one and a blue for a 1-2 human gamer.

It's a creature. For blue, change the text of target spell or permanent by replacing all instants of plus with minus and vice versa. This was, I assume this was banned in Commander. I don't know what shenanigans, I mean, this is one of those cards when I make it, I, like, yeah, shenanigans are going to I don't know what shenanigans...

I mean, this is one of those cards when I make it, like, yeah, shenanigans are going to happen. It's a shenanigans kind of card. Like, what can you do when pluses become minuses and minuses become pluses? Crazy things. And I think too crazy. I'm not sure what the exact combination

that caused this card to get banned, but I can imagine it's a pretty crazy one. So, anyway, the Magical Hacker is banned. I almost, by the way, almost, he was almost a teenage creature type. He almost was a teenage human gamer.

Because I've gotten a lot of requests over the years for teenage to be a creature type so that you can make so that changelings would be teenage mutant ninja turtles. But now they're mutant ninja turtles. for Teenage to be a creature type so that you can make, so that changelings would be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but not the Mutant Ninja Turtles. And at the time, I didn't do it because there was a ruling at the time of Unhinged

that all the creature types in Silver Borders were actual real creature types. And so I was trying not to add too many more creature types to Black Borders since at the time, the one thing that it actually mattered, and then we changed the rule that it didn't matter, and I could have done it, and I should have done it, but I didn't.

Okay, next. Memory Jar. So Memory Jar is an artifact that costs five. It's from Ursa's Legacy. Tap Sacrifice Memory Jar. Each player exiles all cards from their hand face down and draw seven cards. At the beginning of the next end step, each player exiles all cards from their hand face down and draw seven cards.

At the beginning of the next end step, each player discards their hand, returns their hand, each card they exile this way. So the idea originally when I made this card was you discarded your hand, you drew a hand equal to the size of the hand you had, and then you, after a turn, got back your original hand. So the idea was, I have four cards, I get rid of that, I get four new cards, I have a turn, sort of a cast of four cards, then I get back my original hand. In development, they decided that it wasn't sexy enough, they changed it to seven, so now I can have a zero hand, a hand of no cards, and for five mana, I can draw a whole hand of new cards.

Yes, it is true I only get it for a turn, but five mana for... And I think it's the end of the next turn. Oh, the beginning of the next end step. So the idea is I sacrifice this. I wait until it's my opponent's turn to sacrifice it. I get all the cards. Now I have all of their turn and all of my turn

to use the seven cards I've drawn. So anyway, this is a good example of a card that I made that I thought was fair when I made it and got made a little less fair. Now a lot of cards I made were not fair when I made it. Okay, next. Metal Worker.

So Metal Worker is from Ursus Destiny. So I know I made this card because I was the only one that did Ursus Destiny. It's a 1-2 construct. It's an artifact creature. Tap, reveal any number of artifact cards in your hand. Add two colors of mana for each card revealed in this way. This was another artifact enabler. So the idea was it allowed you to get mana by having artifacts in your hand.

In general, this card is broken because the ability to get, I mean, for example, if I play this card and then I have, let's say I have eight cards in my hand because I just drew my card for the turn. If all eight of them are artifacts, usually not all of them are artifacts, but let's say most of them are artifacts, that's 16 mana. That's a lot of mana. You can produce a crazy amount of mana. And so this card really allows you to do

kind of nutty, dangerous things. Because a lot of times when we make expensive artifacts, it's like, well, it's hard to play that artifact so it'll be okay. You know when you allow... Make cards that can let you cast like 12 drops without a problem. Okay.

Mind over matter from Exodus. It costs two. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. So that's six mana total

four of which is blue. It's an enchantment. Discard a card. You may tap or untap target artifact, creature, or land. Okay. So this was basically turned all cards in your hand into twiddle,

but at no cost. So twiddle is a card from Alpha that could tap or untap any permanent, I think. I think we didn't want you messing with enchantments just because enchantments didn't matter, so we spelled the artifact creature land the three things that matter for tap. So, Creation, Land, the three things that matter for TAP. So, well, the major reason this was broken, it was broken for a bunch of things,

but the major reason it was broken was it gave you access to mana. It turned cards into mana in a very efficient way. For example, let's say I had, I mean, at bare minimum, I discard cards to untap lands. Now, if my lands, you know, something like a Tolarian Academy, or, well, Tolarian Academy didn't come at least until the next year, or whatever, a Mana Vault, or something that taps for three, it just allowed me to turn one card into a bunch of mana. And so it allowed me,

and if you could use those mana to draw cards, and you could do it at a rate where you're generating more mana per card than it costs to draw cards, you could go up in cards. That's usually the problem when you get into trouble. Anyway, this is one of those cards

that I think caused a lot more trouble than I intended when I made it. But looking back, looking back, I should have kind of figured out that it was I think caused a lot more trouble than I intended when I made it. But looking back looking back I should have kind of figured out that it was going to cause a lot of trouble. But anyway. It is a fun card. It just should have had mana on it I think is the issue. The ability to do it without any

mana is really where you start getting into trouble. Because it lets me generate mana. And once you can generate mana once you can turn one resource into another, especially something like cards into mana, it causes some problems. Okay, next.

Mox Lotus. This is from Unhinged. It costs 15 generic mana. It's an artifact. You can tap to add infinity, so infinite colors mana, and then 100 add one mana of any color. So, um,

uh, this was made for, one of the things that I really wanted to do, I wanted to have an artifact that cost a lot of mana, and I love the idea of something that produced um, infinite mana. Now, the funny thing is, I think when we made this,

it is possible we made this mana burn existed. Meaning, when this card got made, you had to win that turn because at the end of the phase, you were going to lose to mana burn, right, is the idea. That once I put infinite mana in my pool, I can't clear it now. Now, once we got rid of mana burn, this card got a bit better. The other thing that I thought was very funny was, we had joked about producing all sorts of colors, but usually when you add mana, you have to choose the color. And we're like, oh, well, maybe you can choose whatever color you want.

And then we came up with the idea of, oh, maybe you can choose whatever color you want. And then we came up with the idea of, well, what if there's an activation that made colored mana? So since you had infinite mana, for all intents and purposes, this let you get whatever colors you needed. Because the idea of the spell was, look, you're going to die if you can't win, but we'll give you infinite mana, was sort of the point of the card. I also, the reason this is a silver board of cards,

I wanted to make a generic infinite because infinity isn't really a number but it is in silver border. And then the idea of since it was infinite mana and we wanted you to add colors, we just made it

a real expensive activation card just for kicks. So it's 100 but it doesn't matter. You have infinite mana. So the idea is when you tap this you have infinite mana

in your pool. Because 100 doesn't mean anything it's just, well, you can produce whatever have infinite mana. So the idea is when you tap this, you have infinite mana in your pool. Because 100 doesn't mean anything, you can produce whatever colors you want. So the idea was, the card originally was, you can tap this, you can produce whatever colors you want, but you'll die from mana burn at the end of the turn, or the end of the phase. So if you're in your main phase, you have to win.

Anyway, I thought that was cool. With mana burn going away, the card became, I Anyway, thought that was cool. With Mana Burn going away, the card became, I mean, not that it wasn't powerful to begin with, but it became kind of uber-powerful. It's sort of like I can cast anything for the rest of the game, ever. Well, although, to be fair, Mana clears

and you have to understand when you're going to tap it to cast up. But, anyway, banned in Commander when Silver Border was available. But then it's kind of a nutty card. Okay, next. Once more with Feeling, another Silver Border card. So,

white, white, white, white. So, four mana, all of which is white. This one's one glued. Sorcery. Exile all permanents and all cards from all graveyards. Each player shuffles their hand into the library, then draws seven cards. Each player's life total their hand into the library then draws seven cards. Each player's life total becomes ten. Exile once more with feeling.

And then the DCI ruling, a deck can only have one card named once more with feeling. So it was sort of self-restricted. So this is not, I mean, I referred to this before as being a sub-game. It's not technically a sub-game. You never come back from this game.

Like, essentially, you just get rid of the game you're in and you start a new game. So it's sub-game-like in the sense that you stop the game you're in and play a different game. It is not technically a sub-game because you never come out of it. You just convert the game over to this game. I will note that Once Upon a Feeling was the name of a Buffy episode, but this got named before I of a Buffy episode, but, uh, this

got named before I believe that Buffy episode existed. So, while I would be willing to, it's one of my favorite episodes of all time of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, uh, I would be willing to name a set, uh, a card after it. Uh, this got named before that set got named. Next, Painter's Servant. This is from Shadowmoor. So, Painter's Servant is, uh, costs two generic. So Painter's Servant costs two generic mana. It's a 1-3 artifact creature. It's a Scarecrow.

As Painter's Servant enters the battlefield, choose a color. All cards that aren't on the battlefield, spells, and permits are the chosen color in addition to their other colors. So we made this card because Shadowmoor had a color matters theme. And the idea was we thought it'd be fun for you to

make things whatever color you wanted to make them. So it just kind of makes everything you have into the color you care about. And then there's all sorts of shenanigans that can care about those colors. So the reason it kind of affects everything is there's just cards that care in all the zones what the colors are. So we just sort of wanted to make it universal. Okay, play this and your cards are all red now or whatever. Whatever color it is you cared about. And Shadowmoor had a... Because it was a hybrid set, it had a color mattering theme.

Because one of the things that's unique about hybrid is while you might be paying one color, the cards are still both colors from... What color are they to care about colors? Okay, Panoptic Mirror from Darksteel. So this costs five, five generic mana. It's an artifact. It's got imprint X.

I said it's got imprint, X and tap. You may exile an instant or source your card with Corona Mana Cost X from your hand. At the beginning of your upkeep, you may cast a card

exiled by Panoptic Mirror. If you do, you may cast a copy without paying its mana cost. So one of the things that happened is in Mirrodin, we had made imprint. Like I mentioned this before in a previous podcast

how I and Brian Tinsman each made a card that I thought was a cool card and I realized they both sort of made you exile a card and then use that card as reference and realized there was a mechanic there. We made that imprint, went into Mirrodin. There was a card called Isochrome Scepter that got made that was very popular. And I'd made a card called Soul Foundry, which also copied creatures.

And I really realized that copying things was a lot of fun. And I like copying things. So in Worldwake, we made another copying card. And the idea for this one was Soul Foundry copied creatures. This one copied spells. But, you had to spend X mana, so the idea was, I couldn't get big spells on until later in the game.

So if I had a 5 drop spell I wanted to repeat all the time, I needed to get 5 mana first before I could put it on. But anyway, this was just made the reason I believe this was here is there's some pretty powerful spells you can put in it and then time walk, or not time walk time walk specifically you can put into Icecrown Scepter. Icecrown Scepter kind of did this but only for cheap spells and this was making it for bigger spells.

But anyway, this is here because I think there's a lot of shenanigans you can do when you can repeat the same thing, and it can cause some problems. Okay, next. Paragon Drake. So Paragon Drake costs four and a blue. It's from Urza's Saga. It is flying. It's a 2-3 creature. It's a drake. When Paragon Drake enters the battlefield, untap up to five lands. So this is another of the free spells that I made for Urza's

Saga. In general, the ones that tended to see the most play were things that you could just use. So Paragon Drake was interesting in that having an evasive creature was something that a control deck kind of wanted.

And the idea that, once again, the way this works is because you're untapping as many lands as you have, it tends to generate mana, because at the time there were lands that could tap for more than one mana. Like, for example, this is Urza Saga, so you have, like, Tolarian Academy. So Tolarian Academy could tap for a lot of mana. So the idea that I can untap it meant that I would go up and, you know, I could tap Tolarian Academy and four other lands, you know, cast Pergan Drake and have leftover mana, and then untap everything. So I'd get the...

So, like, I tap my Tolarian Academy. Let's say I can produce more than five mana. I get the five mana to play this. I have extra mana in my pool now. I get to untap the Tolerant Academy plus 4 other lands. It is pretty potent. The funny thing is,

I know there are times when you would use your Tolerant Academy to untap and you didn't even have 5 lands. It's like, oh, I'll untap because it says up to 5 lands. I don't even have five lands yet, but I get the Flare of the Academy, and I have enough artifact stuff out that my Flare of the Academy

is going to be able to cast the Peric and Drake all by itself. So, anyway, I thought that was funny. Of my broken mechanics, the free spells are probably the most broken. That's my guess. Okay, so I'm almost at work, so I'm going to finish up P in the tomorrow, or, sorry, guess. Okay, so I'm almost at work, so I'm going to finish up P

in the tomorrow, or sorry, in my next podcast. I will do I will do other letters. Okay, so P Punishing Fire from Zendikar. So one in a red, so it's two mana, one of which is red.

It's an instant. Punishing fire deals two damage to any target. Whenever an opponent gains life, you may pay red. If you do, return punishing fire from your graveyard to your hand. So the idea is it was a direct damage spell that was punishing the opponent for gaining life.

So the idea is I'm going to do damage to you and then somehow you try to heal from it it allows me to get it back I know there's some interaction there's some ways for example invigorator before

there are some ways to grant your opponent life those ways aren't in red though so you have to combo this with another color but I know some people that sort of like did things to give the opponent

life and they were able to get this back because the punishing fire not the color, but I know some people that sort of like did things to give the opponent life and they were able to get this back because the punishing fire you can hit anything with punishing fire but you tend to kill creatures and stuff with it but you also could use it on the opponent and if they gain life it lets you

sort of keep their life gained and checked at certain points okay guys, I am not at work, so how did we do? It lets you sort of keep the light gain in check at certain points. Okay, guys. I am now at work. So how did we do? We did pretty good. So we made it up through P. So I'm assuming our next podcast I will finish out.

I hope you guys are enjoying my walk through my lengthy list of band restrictor cards I had a hand in. But anyway, I'm now at work. So we all know what that means. It 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.