Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #704: Tempest Cards, Part 1

Episode Date: January 10, 2020

This is part one of a four-part series of card-by-card design stories from Tempest.

I'm pulling away from the curb. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. And I dropped off my children at school. Okay, so today, my very first podcast. Wait, wait. Number one, I talked about Tempest, which was the first set that I led. And somebody on my blog brought up that while I did a podcast about the making of Tempest, I never did a card-by-card on Tempest. And so I'm going to write that wrong today and for the next bunch of podcasts. So it's time to talk Tempest. So the list I got actually is in order of color. So this is in, I think, collection number order. So anyway, normally I've been doing them in just straight alphabetical order. But I'm going to try something a little different. So anyway, normally I've been doing them in just straight alphabetical

order. But I'm going to try something a little different. So I'm going to do this one in color order. So the order we would print the file. No, I'm sorry. We'd print the file by rarity. So this is collector number, which is by color, but alphabetically by color. Okay. So where do we start? Let's see. Aura Tog! So, Aura Tog costs one and a white. It's a one-two creature. It's an A-Tog.

And you can sacrifice a creature to give it plus two, plus two until end of turn. So, the A-Tog story. So, the original A-Tog came out in Antiquities. And you could sac- it was one and a red for a 1-2 creature. You could sac an artifact to give it plus two, plus two, and it'll end of turn. And I loved Aetog. It was my favorite card for a while. And so when I was

working on Mirage, they had this green creature that ate forest to give itself plus two, plus two. And I remember going, guys, this, you know, if we say an untapped forest, this is a green, it's a green atog. And so we ended up making it for a tog.

Okay, well, it was a red atog. There was a green atog. And then in the next set, we ended up making necrotog that ate, oh, I'm sorry. We ended up making chronotog that ate turns. Then we made necrotog that ate... Oh, I'm sorry. We ended up making Chronotog that ate turns. Then we made Necrotog that ate the dead. So we knew that we had...

This was the next set, and we had to finish the cycle. We had a red, a green, a blue, a black. That meant we need a white. So the question was, what would a white 8-tog eat? We decided it would eat enchantments. And once we decided that, it was pretty much just following the template, right?

It's 2 mana, 1, 2. Sack the thing you care about. He gets plus 2, plus 2 until end of turn. And we ended up making aura togs. So that was kind of the completion of... Back in the day, we... Back when I was working on all the development teams, I was very fond of doing the cycles across sets.

Uh, now that I don't, you know, now that I'm more in charge of the beginning part of the process, at the end part of the process, um, and I, I, I less have control over individual cards, uh, we do less of those cycles. I think I really like doing them, which is why we did so many. Okay, next, Avenging Angel so many. Okay, next. Avenging Angel. Three, white, white. It's a three, three angel.

It's a creature. And it's flying. When Avenging Angel dies, you may put it on top of its owner's library. So I remember about this idea. We liked the idea of an angel that just kept coming back. And we tried a bunch of different things. We tried, like, it could get itself out of the graveyard. And in the end, we decided we played around dying to top a library.

So the idea was if it died, you got it. So you never sort of lost it. But when it died, two things would happen. One, you would lose your card draw essentially because you have to draw it again. So you'd lose your card draw to get it. And then you had to draw it again. So you lose your card draw to get it. And then you had to cast it again. So it was sort of like an angel that couldn't die exactly, but there was an effort to get the angel back out. And I thought that was pretty cool.

Okay, next. Circle of Protection Shadow. One and a white enchantment. One, the next time a creature of your choice with shadow would deal damage to you, prevent this damage. Okay, there's a lot of baggage in this one. So first off, let's talk shadow a little bit. So shadow was a mechanic that Mike Elliott had made. It was part of his, he had made a set called Astral Ways. So before Mike came to work for Wizards, he made his own magic set.

When he got hired by Wizards, they paid him for his set, and the first set he worked on for design was Tempest. Now this is the first set I did, and Mike and I had talked a lot about wanting to do design. So when I got the opportunity to lead the team, and I could pick my team, there's a real short story

of that is, Richard hadn't done any magic design since Arabian Nights. Talking with Richard, he said he was interested in doing another magic design. So I went to the powers that be and said, if Richard was on my team, could I lead the next magic design? And they said, Richard will be on the team? I go, yeah.

Okay. And they said that I could pick the rest of my team. So Mike and I talked a lot about wanting to do design. So I put Mike on the team. And then Charlie Coutinho rounded up my team. Anyway, Mike, because it was the first set Mike had worked on, he brought a bunch of stuff in that he had done on After Ways. The two most famous is Shadow and Slivers. Both of those came from After Ways. And then the flavor was

that one of the things we said about Wrath was Wrath had been grabbing creatures from other planes and sticking them on Wrath. Wrath was an artificial plane. And they were populating it. And some of the creatures that they tried to bring got stuck in between. And so they weren't quite in the old world of a new world. bring got stuck in between, and so they weren't quite in the old world of a new world, and that was represented by the shadow realm and the shadow mechanic. Shadow, for those who don't know, means if I have shadow, only creatures with shadow can block me, and I can only block creatures with shadow.

So it's kind of like high flying, where I'm a flying creature that can only block flying creatures. high flying, where I'm a flying creature that can only block flying creatures. Anyway, so this set actually had all five of the normal circle protection. So in Alpha, Richard made five circle protections. They were enchantments. They cost one and a white. And then for one mana, you can prevent all damage from a source of the appropriate color.

And the idea being that white was the most defensive color. If I get these out. Oh, well, you know, it's really hard to defeat me, you know, if you have all red creatures and I have circle protection red, it becomes very hard to defeat me. I don't know why we felt... the circles take up a lot of space, and they are... they can be pretty nasty, especially against a monocolored deck. But, I don't know, this... it was back in the day, and so the set had all five circle protections, plus, because shadow was a thing, we decided to give you some protection from shadow. So we made a circle that could protect you specifically from shadow. So we had a circle

protection shadow. So there were six circles of protection in the set. But I think the idea was we were a little concerned that if Shadow ended up being really good and you weren't playing Shadow Creatures, we wanted something in your sideboard that could deal with Shadow Creatures without... Because if you side in one Shadow Creature, the chance that you draw the one Shadow Creature is

not super high. So this was kind of a sideboard answer for Shadow Creatures. That was the idea. Okay. Okay. Next. What is next? Next is... Humility!

Okay, so humility costs two white white. It's an enchantment. All creatures lose abilities and have base power and toughness 1-1. So the idea is everything, whatever it is, it's not that anymore. It's a vanilla 1-1 is the idea. So I made this card. I mean, the idea is white is a defensive color. I like the idea that white just makes everything harmless. I was very, anyway, I was very excited by this card I thought it was super flavorful

I thought it was a neat answer for white to really solve problems all of which were somewhat true I guess but it ended up being a Ruth nightmare for a bunch of reasons I mean not that the rules can't handle it it can

but it gets complicated especially when you start interacting with other effects. The one that became the big problem is I made a card called Opalescence in... Where did I make that? Urza's Destiny, I think? Anyway, I made a card called Opalescence, and Humility and Opalescence together were mind-melty. But anyway, this became the poster child for confusing cards for a while.

You know, for like cards that just make weird rulings. But this baby was all mine. I did like the card. I do think it's flavorful. I do think the effect in a vacuum is kind of, it's a fun effect. I mean, not fun, but an interesting effect. But, you know, that's humility. Next, Light of Day.

Three and a white enchantment. Black creatures can't attack or block. So one of the things we did in this set was we made a cycle of color hosers. But we weren't goofing around. These weren't like... I mean, back in the day, for those that don't know their history of magic, including Alpha and stuff,

the color hosers were crazy strong. Alpha had some really strong color hoses, and we were continuing in that, and so Tempest made some strong... This is not the strongest of the color hoses, but it's pretty strong. The idea that, oh, you're playing a mono-black deck that maybe has creatures, and, oh, those creatures

can't attack or block. Oh, and by the way, I'm an enchantment, and you're black, so you can't deal with it. It was pretty nasty. And anyway. So there was a whole cycle of them. But we did it on purpose. I mean,

one of the ideas was, back in the day, is we really liked I mean, color pie and color pie philosophy is important. I like the idea that helping your allies and hurting your enemies really reinforces what's going on. So it's kind of cool to have... Oh, this, by the way,

was not... This was a cycle, but it was a 10-card cycle because it had each card affecting its enemy. So it was a white card that hurt black, and then a white card, I think, that hurt red. I think. Or was it a one-way cycle? Let me think about that. Actually, it might have been a one-way cycle. Now that I think. Or was it a one-way cycle? Let me think about that. Actually, it might have been a one-way cycle.

Now that I think about it, is there a white card? No, no, I think it was ten. Well, we'll see as we go through. I think it was ten cards. I think it was ten cards. But anyway, there's some really potent, really, I mean, used in larger formats potent. Because it's quite powerful. Okay. One second, guys.

As we like to say, safety first. Okay. I'm now safe so we can continue. Okay. Next. Okay. Next is Oram, Samite Healer. So Oram is one white white, one three, legendary creature, human cleric. Tap, prevent the next three damage that would prevent any target this turn. Okay, so when Michael, Ryan, and I made the Weatherlight Saga and we made the crew, one of the templates that we followed was we realized that a lot of the archetypes we were playing into was similar to Star Trek.

It's like, oh, we had a ship and the ship traveled. And so we're like, okay, well, what does a ship need? Well, we need a captain. That was Sisay. We need a second in command, which was Gerard originally. And then when Gerard became captain, when the Tongarth became the second in command, you need an engineer. That would be Hannah. And you needed a doctor. You always have a doctor. And so we decided we wanted a doctor. And we decided for our doctor,

we'd make a Samite healer. Because Samite healer was a very iconic card. So we thought it was fun to have our healer be a Samite healer because we wanted to make it magic-y. So Oram's original name, by the way, because we were lazy, was O-R-A-M, which is just Maro backwards. And then we realized people were mispronouncing her name, so we changed it to O-R-I-M to be easier to pronounce. Because with O-R-A-M, people... Anyway, people weren't all pronouncing it the same, but we changed it to I, people pronounced it the same.

Anyway, Orm was... When we first made the story, she didn't play a major role in the story, but then when the story sort of got taken away from us in the Mercadianians mass block, they ended up having a major role in the Mercadian mass block. So, well, I mean, she had a role in our story, but it was a more minor role in the story we had pitched. Anyway, we decided that we wanted to spread the crew over

a course. We had many sets to make, and so we wanted to do one or two every set. So this set, Orm's in the set, and Stark, which I will get to later. Stark was the traitor that told them how to find Sissay. We'll get there. Anyway,

this was a Samite Healer. Well, Samite Healer tapped to prevent one damage. Okay, well, it's legendary. We wanted her to be more impressive, so instead of one, it tapped to prevent one damage. Okay, well, it's legendary. We wanted her to be more impressive. So instead of one, it tapped to prevent three damage. So it was like a super Samite Healer. We thought that was cool. Okay, next. Quickening Lysid.

So Quickening Lysid costs one and a white. It is a Lysid. What stats are a Lysid? It is... What stats are a Lysid. What stats are a Lysid? It is... What stats are a Lysid? Hold on, I'll find that in a second. It's a Lysid. One white tap.

Quicking Lysid loses this ability and becomes an aura enchantment with this enchant creature. Attach it to target creature. You may pay white to end this effect. Enchanted creatureure. Attach it to target a creature. You may pay white to end this effect. Enchanted Creature has first strike. Hmm.

Okay, I'm missing the power toughness. My guess, it was this was the commons, and the commons were one ones. So I believe, I believe... Oh, hold on. Oh, it's a 1-1. I was right.

It's a 1-1. Okay, so the idea of the Lysids... So Michael and I, Mike Elliott and I, each came up with a slightly different version. Mike came up with the Lysids. So the Lysids were creatures

that could turn into enchantments, into auras. So the idea was I'm a 1-1 creature, but for one white and tap, I can hop onto a creature and become an aura that grants first strike. Now, A, there's a lot of flexibility there because I can be a 1-1 creature or I can be a first strike enchantment. And probably more important is when I change types, when I become an aura, I stop being a creature.

So if for some reason my creature would die and I change it in response, it won't die. It just becomes an aura. So let's say, for example, I block a creature. Well, if I block a creature, I could just, before the damage happened, I could block it. And before damage happens, I could make it an aura. So the creature is blocked, but it doesn't take any damage. Also, if somebody, let's say they did direct damage on it, in response to the direct damage, assuming I had the mana,

I could activate it to make it into an enchantment. As long as it was untapped and you had the mana, it was very hard to kill it because it could hop on. And then, also it could hop off things. So let's say I put it on a creature and then you kill the creature that it's on, it just requires one mana to hop off. So it ended up being... So the interesting thing is, Mike came up with the list. The version I came up with was mine was a little more straightforward, which

was, it was like a 1-1 flying creature that you could choose to instead make it a 1-1, sorry, make it a flying aura. So the idea was either it's flying, either you can make an existing creature fly, or you could essentially make a creature that gets to fly. And I think that one was like a 2-2. So it was like, either I can have a 2-2 flyer or an aura that grants flying, I think. Or maybe it was a 1-1.

I forget exactly. But the idea was, in my version, you could have a creature that has the ability or just the ability. And mine was simpler, so we decided to try Mike's first, because Mike's was a little more complex. And people liked it. We kept it. It ended up being pretty complex.

I know the rules manager, whenever he would bring up licits, used to pretend like they didn't exist, because they were annoying to them. But anyway, there's a cycle of five or ten licits. There's a cycle of five or ten licits. There was five. Maybe in this set there was five licits, and then maybe we did licits in the next set as well. Okay, next. Okay, next.

Spirit Mirror. Okay, so Spirit Mirror costs two white white white it's an enchantment at the beginning of your upkeep if there are no reflection tokens on the battlefield create a two two white reflection creature token and then zero call and destroy target reflection okay so what i wanted here was i wanted to be a two two that kept coming back and so the idea of this thing was oh well it's an enchantment that turns into I wanted it to be a 2-2 that kept coming back. And so the idea of this thing was, oh, well, it's an enchantment that turns into... I'm sorry. It's an enchantment that makes a 2-2.

Like, what I wanted was, I was trying to make... I was inspired by... There's a card called Flickering Spirit that was in... Was it Legends? Where it was a little 1-1 flyer that you could, for free,

put it back in your hand. And so whenever it was abouter that you could for free put it back in your hand. And so whenever it was about to die, you would just put it back in your hand. So I was trying to make something a little bit different. I liked the idea of a 2-2 that kept coming back. That no matter what happened, no matter what would happen to it, it would just come back. And the execution I found that

worked the best was Spirit Mirror. So the idea is, it's an enchantment, it generates a token, but you can only ever have one token out at a time. So the idea is it's an enchantment. It generates a token, but you can only ever have one token out at a time. So the idea is essentially like, there's always a 2-2 there. Well, every upkeep, if you don't have a 2-2, you gotta make it. So it keeps coming back. And

that way, like, I can attack and block with it. If it dies in combat, that's fine. It gets to come back. Now, if they have enchantment removal, they can get rid of it. That's the way you get rid of this thing. It's not creature removal, but enchantment removal. I mean, you can destroy the token, but then next turn it'll just come back. So I like the idea of something

that kept reoccurring. The reason it has zero destroyer reflection on it is we found pacifism was problematic with, like, oh, I have a 2-2 creature. You can't deal with it. And they're like, oh, well, I just pacify it. And you're like, oh. So we allowed just pacify it. So it allows you to destroy itself so that if they did anything bad to it that was preventing you from using it, you could just sort of

destroy it and then make a new one. I'm pretty proud of this design. I like this design. I think it was pretty cool. Okay. Next, Winds of Wrath. So Winds of Wrath. So, Winds of Wrath is three white white, so five mana total, sorcery. Destroy all creatures that aren't enchanted. They can't be regenerated. So, one of the little themes of Tempest was we were trying to make auras better.

We were trying to encourage you to play auras. I talked about the Lysids. That was one way to try and make them better. We also had the Flickering auras, where they were auras, but you could pay man to put them back in your hand. Anyway, so one of the ways we decided to make auras matter was we made our white creature removal,

like the mass creature removal, not affect things that are enchanted. So what that means is, if you're playing a deck and you can put some enchantments in your deck, then when you wrath, not only do you get wrath in your deck, but you get to keep your creatures that are enchanted. So anyway, I thought

this was pretty cool. I mean, white usually has a at least in large sets, has a mass destruction spell. So that seemed like a neat way to do it. Okay, next. mass destruction spell. So that seemed like a neat way to do it. Okay, next. Capsize. One blue blue.

Instant. It's got buyback. Buyback's three. You may pay an additional three as you cast a spell. If you do, put this card into your hand as it resolves. And this was return target permanent to its owner's hand. So this was a boomerang. You can return anything to its owner's hand.

So it costs three mana total, two of which is blue. But, so one blue blue, you can unsummon something and it goes away. It's just an unsummon. But for four blue blue, you can unsummon something and get to keep the spell so you can use it again. So buyback came about because we originally were messing around with draw triggers where cards that just when you drew them would do something and the idea was like oh maybe it would have a different color back so everybody knew that it wanted one of these cards so you drew it like oh which card did you draw and like oh it does this effect and the idea was because it didn't affect when you drew it you had to think about it when you put it in your deck um anyway it ended up not working

but Richard independently had come up with a different thing when that fell through and his idea was imagine spells that you could pay to keep them around um and so Richard suggested this, we liked it I think we really misunderstood how powerful it was the funny thing is, early, early on in design we costed these things crazy, like I think when we first costed them we costed them at two mana, because our thought process was oh, well if we want to make a cantrip, we just charge you two extra like if you want to do a spell but draw a card off it, we charge you an extra two. Okay, well, since this is sort of just drawing you an extra card,

okay, maybe just buy back costs two. What we forgot is that every turn gets you to draw your card. So, anyway, we ended up having to cost it more. Okay, chill. One and a blue enchantment. Red spells cost two more to cast. This is a part of the hoser cycle. We had made a spell,

Richard made a spell in white that made all black spells cost more. Or no, I'm sorry, made a black spell that makes all white spells cost more in alpha, so I added that backwards. White had karma. Anyway, we made a blue version of that for red. The idea being that blue is the color that did Counterspell.

And nowadays, white is the color that proactively would do stuff like this. But in the day, it was blue. Okay, dismiss! Oh, I'm talking about adding two mana. So Counterspell, it costs blue, blue. Counterspell is in the set, by the way. Tempest had Counterspell for blue, blue. I don't know whether it was Common or Uncommon.

I think Richard put Counterspell originally at Uncommon in Alpha, and I think we put it down to Common in Tempest. I think it was in Common in Tempest. Anyway, at Uncommon, we made Dismiss, which was just Counterspell, but Cantrip Counterspell. So in Ice Age, the Ice Age team came up with

the idea of a Cantrip. And originally, you would draw a card beginning of the next turn, but we eventually realized we could just have you draw it right away. And so Cantrips were the idea of a spell that just has a rider let you draw a card. So we made a lot of were the idea of a spell that just has a rider that lets you draw a card. So we made a lot of basic

effects like, oh, we'll do this basic effect, draw a card. We hadn't done counterspell yet, so I made dismiss, which was just counterspell with draw a card. Obviously, counterspell ended up being a little too aggressive, so dismiss, obviously, ended up being a little bit too aggressive.

But it's a very good spell. Actually, I think it still gets played in older formats. Okay, Duplicity. So Duplicity's three blue blue enchantment. When Duplicity enters the battlefield, exile the top five cards of your library face down. At the beginning of your upkeep, you may exile all cards from your hand face down. If you do, put other cards you own exiled with Duplicity into your hand. At the beginning of your endkeep, you may exile all cards from your hand face down. If you do, put other cards you owned exiled with duplicity into your hand. At the beginning of your end step, discard a card.

When you lose control of duplicity, put all cards exiled with duplicity into their owner's graveyard. Okay, so the reason I'm talking about this one is there's two cards in Tempest that were cards I'd made long, long, long before I got to Wizards. Duplicity and Skragnoff, which I'll get to. Scragnoth's in green. So, Duplicity, I was playing around with something fun, and then I, because power level's bad with power level, I just made it way, way too weak.

So, the idea of this card is, I draw the card, I take my hand, I put it aside, I draw the top five I take my hand. I put it aside. I draw the top five cards of my library. And oh, I see. And you can swap between them. So the idea is at the beginning of your turn, you can choose which

hand. You have two hands. You can choose which hand you want. For some reason, because I feel like that's just too powerful in effect, I made you discard a card at the end of your turn, which is a really steep cost. Now, the idea is you're drawing extra cards, so on some level, I'm drawing

five cards, so the discard a card is like, well, I'm offsetting the cards that you've drawn. And then the idea is if you ever lose duplicity, you lose the exiled hand. So it's a neat idea. It's like you have two hands and you can change between them. I just, like, I'm not sure whether the card, having you discard a card really made the thing hard to use

and made it a little kind of weak. I did, I mean, I do like the novelty of the card and I do like the general idea. I think I would later go back. Did I ever go back and remake that card? I tried to remake that card. Did I ever remake it? I don't remember remaking it, or I don't remember succeeding in remaking it, so maybe I didn't.

Maybe one day. Okay, Escape Shapeshifter. Three blue blue. Creature. Shapeshifter. Three four. As long as an opponent controls a creature with flying, not name Escape Shapeshifter, Escape Shapeshifter has flying. The same is true for First Strike, Trample, trample and protection from any color okay so the idea was if somebody has evergreen keyword I have never green keyword now the way this

works is you have to name them the game does not do good defining keyword or every green keyword so you have to literally name them. So at the time of Tempest, those were the keywords that, I guess those were the keywords we had. First strike, trample, protection, and flying. Yeah, that was the keywords we had. I mean, I guess, oh, banding had been a keyword and as of Tempest, there's a story I'll tell later

in one of the later podcasts. Banding was going to be of Tempest, there's a story I'll tell later in one of the later podcasts, banding was going to be in Tempest and then got pulled. Tempest was the first set that did not have banding. So at the time, I believe those were the keywords. I guess landwalk existed

for some reason. We didn't list landwalk, although landwalk did exist as a thing. Anyway, the idea here was I'm a shapeshifter. As long as anybody else has an ability, at least of the evergreen abilities, I get the ability.

Yeah, the funny thing about this card is, I've made this card numerous times. I like this card. The card has been a couple different colors and I made a black version that looked like a graveyard. But anyway, this

I think is the first time, this is the first time I made this card. I absorbed the abilities of those around me. It is something, it is a superpower you see a lot in comics. And I think, my guess is that's where my inspiration was. I'm not 100%, but I guess that's where my inspiration came from. And so I thought it'd be fun to have a shapeshifter that could take other people's powers. I mean, or not take it from them, but copy them. Okay, next, intuition. So intuition costs two and a blue.

It's an instant. Search your card for three cards. Search your library for three cards and reveal them. Target an opponent, chooses one. Put that card into your hand and then rest it into your graveyard. Then shuffle your library. So the idea that when I made this card

was you went and got three different cards, and then your opponent chose one, and you got that, and the rest went to your graveyard. The problem was, I forgot to write down different cards. So after the first playtest, I'm like,

oh, guys, guys, I forgot. Or one of the later playtests I'm like, oh guys, guys, uh, I forgot, uh, or, or one of the later play tests. I think this might be a rare, so I mean, it didn't come up and all that, but eventually there was a play test and we had it and I'm like, oh wait, wait, wait guys. This is, uh, it's not supposed to be, it's supposed to be three different cards. And the team was like, no, we like it like this. I go get three of the same card and then I go, but that's not, the whole point is you're making a choice. If you get three of the same card, that's far less interesting of a choice.

I'm like, oh no, but it's very powerful. I'm like, I get it's powerful, but that's not what I wanted to do. And I got outvoted. And so we ended up not changing, and even though that's not at all what I intended to be. So I ended up making Gifts Ungiven, which was in, I think, Champions? Or Champions Block? So I ended up remaking the card. I had it do four instead of three, just to make it a little bit different. But I did go back and eventually do it the way I wanted to do it.

But that card was not made the way I, the guy who made it, intended for it to be made. Okay, Legacy's Allure. Blue, blue enchantment. At the beginning of your upkeep, you may put a treasure counter on Legacy's Allure, sacrifice Legacy's Allure, gain control of target creature with power less than or equal to the number of treasure counters on Legacy's Allure.

Okay, this card, I think this card was made by Mike, Mike Elliott. Either Mike or me. I'm going to give Mike the credit here. I think Mike made this one. The idea was, it's a control magic. It's something that steals creatures, but it takes time to steal bigger creatures. Because one of the scary things about creature stealing is, you know, it can prevent people from playing bigger things.

So the idea is, I put this out, and it only costs two mana, and it grows and grows, so the idea is eventually maybe I get something big, but it'll take a while. Let's say my opponent has a 5-5 creature. Well, it'll take five turns to the point where I could steal a 5-power creature. But anyway, this spell would inspire a whole cycle of spells in Urza's Saga. So, it's definitely an influence. Urza's Saga had an enchantment theme, and so the idea of growing enchantments is something we did there.

Ledger Domain! Two blue blue sorcery. Exchange control of target artifact or creature, and another target permanent that shares one of those types. So, first off, Ledger Domain means sleight of hand, like a magician would use Ledger Domain. So I am a Johnny. One of my favorite decks before I came to Wizard was a deck where I would cast creatures that had horrible drawbacks and then I would give them to my opponent. There was a card called Gauntlets of Chaos and another one called Juxtapose,

which were two different spells that allowed you to change stuff with your opponent. But both of them required jumping through hoops and I was like, oh, come on, can I just make it, I just want a clean version of this effect. I like this effect, I just want a clean version. So my first, you can tell it was my set.

My first time having a set. I get to make some cards. It's a card that I was dying to have, so I made it. And then we used a 25 cent word on it, because I don't know why, but like I said, legendary domain, sleight of hand. Okay, next. Man of Severance. One in a blue.

Sorcery. Search your library for any number of land cards and exile them, then shuffle your library. So the idea of this was, once I had enough lands, I could then clear my deck out of all the lands so that I maximize my draws, was the idea. In retrospect,

I mean, I guess I understand why I put it in blue. I put it in blue so it would improve the draw. Really what this is is just make all your draws actual draws and less wasteful land draws when you don't need them. I think that's why I put it in blue. It is a little weird. Blue is interacting with land in the deck.

I mean, I guess blue is the library color. Probably we do this in black nowadays just because black is more like lobotomy color, sort of removing things permanently from the library. But anyway, I don't know. I thought it was interesting. Okay, so how am I doing on blue? Let's see.

I got one, two, three. Okay, I have a bunch of blue. Okay, so I'll do one more and stop. I'm at Okay, so I'll do one more and stop. I'm at work, so I'll do one more and stop for today. Which is Meditate. So Meditate is two and a blue, so three mana total, one which is blue, instant. Draw four cards, you skip your next turn. So the idea was, blue is the color of card draw and the color of time manipulation.

Well, maybe there's an interesting cost. What if you were willing to give up a turn for cards? I always thought this card would be a little more powerful than it ended up being. I mean, I know it's awesome play, but it wasn't. It's not. When I made the card, I thought it might be this crazy card.

There are some crazy cards in the set, but that was not the crazy one. Okay, anyway, I'm now at work. So, I hope you guys are enjoying my uh walk through tempest i i will continue i got um middle blue so the one nice thing about doing it by color is you get a little more sense of how far along i am alphabetically it's a little harder to gauge um anyway but i'm at work so we all know what that means this is the end of my drive to work so instead of talking magic it's time for me to be making magic i'll see you guys next time