Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #705: Tempest Cards, Part 2

Episode Date: January 17, 2020

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

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, last time we started talking about cards from Tempest, the first set I ever led. And so we got, we were in the middle of blue. So we're going in Woburg order. So I got through white and part of blue. So we're up to precognition. So that's four and a blue. So five mana total, one of which is blue. It's an enchantment. At the beginning of your upkeep, you may look at the top card of target opponent's library. If you do, you may put that card on the bottom of that player's library. So it's interesting. So in Fifth Dawn, which would happen many years later, Aaron Forsythe came up with the Scry mechanic.

Then, in Future Sight, a number of years past that, I came up with Fate Seal, which was negative Scry. I then realized that actually I'd made Fate Seal long ago, because I made this card back during Tempest. So, I actually, Fate Seal was actually designed before Scry was designed. Although I do not think Aaron made the negative of Precognition. But anyway. So this is Fate Seal on a card from long, long ago.

Fate Seal is a mechanic on, I think, one card on a future shifted card in Future Sight. Which basically is a negative Scry. Anyway, I like the idea that you could mess with opponents on a future shifted card in future sight, which basically is a negative. Let's cry. Anyway, I like the idea that you could mess with opponents, and precognition means the ability to see the future. So you can see the future, and you can mess with it.

So, it's also interesting, it says target opponent's library. I'm curious why it doesn't say target player's library. Like, I can see the future. Do I want to help myself or hurt my opponent? But I didn't, so. In retrospect, I wish that this card had been Target Player. Next, Propaganda. Two and a blue.

So three mana total, one of which is blue. It's an enchantment. And it says, Creatures can't attack you unless their controller pays two for each creature they control that's attacking you. So, a couple things. This ability would later get pushed into white, white being more the taxing color. I think early on, because blue did taxing and counter spells,

that we thought, like, oh, blue's the tax, because it had taxing counter spells. And eventually we realized that it made more sense in white than it made in blue. And plus, blue had too much, so we moved it over to white. But anyway, this was the original version of the effect. This effect first showed up in blue. And actually, this saw some play. Especially because blue was a little more powerful in the early days.

And this just was a very good answer to creature decks because this required them to spend their money if they wanted to attack you. There were definitely some strategies back in the day with blue where blue would play control and what it would do is just shut things down. And propaganda was good for sort of shutting down creatures. But anyway, it did see some play.

Okay, next. Next is Steel Enchantment. So Steel Enchantment is blue, blue. It's an enchantment. It's an aura. You enchant enchantment, and you control enchanted enchantment. So in Alpha, Richard had made control magic, which was you enchant a creature and you steal it. And he made, what was it called? I think it was called steal artifact.

And you can enchant an artifact and steal it. I think when we were making Tempest, I just realized that of the permanents that you could steal, I mean, I guess there was some card we made that you steal lands, but of the permanents that you might want to steal, that stealing an enchantment felt like just, oh, we'd missed it.

You know, we hadn't made it yet. And because it was called steal artifact, we called it steal enchantment. It's a little cheaper than steal artifact because there's just better artifacts to steal than enchantments, at least back in the day, that was true. Anyway,

this is just one of those cards that I felt like had been missing from magic, like you know, oh, you can do this or do that, but why can't you do this? Like, blue can steal permanents, like, you can, you know, and we I think

we later would make steel any permanent, but I think that came after this? Like, blue can steal permanent. It's like, you can, you know, and we, I think, we later would make steal any permanent, but I think that came after this. I think that was in, I think, Urza's Saga, which would come after Tempest. But anyway, I do enjoy stealing things, so that was me increasing the number of things blue can steal. Okay, next.

Time warp. Three blue blue, sorcery. Target player takes an extra turn after this one. So one of the things that I like to do is take cards that Magic has broken and try to make a non-broken version of them. I spent many a time, many, many cards in Magic have been me trying that. Now sometimes I remake a card. Well, usually what I want to do is take a card and remake it in the proper level. Sometimes I can take a card

that's too weak and try to make it stronger. Sometimes a card that's too strong and try to make it weaker. This is the latter, obviously. The funny thing is, I think we came down on this was still a little bit too strong,

that I think Time Walk now is six mana or more. But anyway, it's just me saying, hey, I like Time Walk. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 2 mana is way too cheap. How about 5 mana? So this is me trying to power adjust.

Like, taking an effect I know people like that I know is cool and just trying to power adjust for it so that, you know, we could still let people play it. Okay, next, Unstable Shapeshifter. Three in the blue. It's a zero-one creature, a shapeshifter. Whenever another creature enters the battlefield, Unstable Shapeshifter becomes a copy of that creature, except it has disability. So the idea here was I

was a huge fan of both Clone and the V Vasuvan Doppelganger when they first came out in Magic. I like copying effects. And so I liked the idea of, what if you had a shapeshifter that kept changing, but you didn't have quite as much control? So the idea behind this thing is, it's just an extra copy of whatever you cast last. Now, in some ways ways it kind of grants

haste to your creature because if you... this creature is on the battlefield so it becomes a copy of something you've just played then and you can attack with that turn because it it doesn't have summoning thickness. But anyway I just I thought it was kind of a quirky way to do a clone. A clone in which it keeps changing but you don't control... I mean, you control in the sense that you can choose to play more creatures, but anyway, I just thought I like clones, so

you can see that I keep making various clone variants. Next, Whispers of the Muse. Okay, so it's blue, instant. It has a buyback of five, which means you may pay an additional five mana as you cast the spell. If you do, put this card in your hand as it resolves.

Draw a card. So the idea was that you could just draw a card for a single blue mana, or for five and a blue mana, so six mana total, you can draw a card and keep this card so that you can do it again. So essentially, this card lets you repeatedly draw a card for six mana total, you can draw a card and keep this card so that you can do it again. So essentially this card lets you repeatedly draw a card for six mana. Now the funny thing was, so I talked about this a little bit last time, buyback was the creation of Richard, and he really liked the idea of offsetting the card advantage of the card by paying extra mana. You know, because normally when you cast a card, you get the effect and you lose the card. And so Richard was playing around with the idea, well, what if you didn't lose the card?

In a lot of ways, what happened was buyback kind of functioned like an enchantment with the caveat that my opponent can't easily destroy it. It's not on the battlefield. But it is something that every turn allows me, or not even every turn, when I have the mana, late game, I could do this multiple times, when I have the mana,

I can activate this thing and do this thing, and I'm not losing the thing that I'm doing. The one difference between this and enchantment, other than it's not in play to be destroyed, is I have the opportunity to do it once for the cheaper cost if I don't want, you know, I don't have to buy it back. One of the jokes at the time among the pros was that if you're really good at buyback,

you don't need to buy it back the last time. Like, the last time you play it, you don't need to buy it back because you're not going to play it again. And anyway, there's a lot of discussion. Buyback was a very, I think, interesting mechanic. It was a little bit overpowered, and it did lead to a lot of repetitive game states in the sense that, oh, well, the best thing to do is

use all my mana and cast a spell, and every turn that is the best thing to do is use all my mana and cast a spell. And every turn, that is the correct thing to do. I mean, Wizards of the Muse, I mean, while Wizards of the Muse was a good card and strong, something like Capsize is probably a little bit more... At least with drawing a card, as far as repetitive game state, you then want to cast the cards you draw. So at least then you're doing other things. Okay, that is it for blue. so let's move on into black.

Okay, my first card in black is... Okay, Carionette. So Carionette costs one in a black, so two mana total, one of which is black. It's a skeleton, a 1-1 skeleton creature, obviously. So it has the ability to black, black, exile carry net and target creature, exile carry net and target creature, unless that creature's controller pays two.

Activate this ability, only if carry net is in your graveyard. So the idea is that this creature dies, but then it can jump out, So the idea is that this creature dies, but then it can jump out and it can grab things. Now the idea is, if your opponent can bait two, it can stop it. So you can use Carionette as a means to either steal their creature, I'm sorry, kill their creature. Either you can use it to kill their creature, or you can use it to, you know, mess with their mana.

Because, like, oh, I'm going to kill your creature. Oh, I need my creature. I've spent two to prevent it. Now I maybe can't cast my bigger spell. This was me messing around with the idea of... I think I made this. I'm pretty sure I made this card. Either Mike or I made it, but I think I made this one. Messing around with the idea of things, yeah, I'm pretty sure I made this card. Things in your graveyard having use in your

graveyard. And I like the idea that this thing dies, but oh, just because it's dead can't mean it can't pop up and get you. I think I thought that was pretty funny. And obviously the name is a play on marionette. Carrion is a dead thing. So instead of marionette, it's carrionette. I thought it was a cute name. But anyway, it's something that activates out of the graveyard. We don't make a ton of those. Next,

Coffin Queen. So two and a black. It's a 1-1 zombie wizard. It's a creature. You may choose not to untap Coffin Queen during your untap step. Two and a black tap put target creature card from a graveyard onto the battlefield under your control. When Coffin Queen becomes untapped, or you

lose control of Coffin Queen, exile that creature. So the idea here is that there are a bunch of cards in Magic where the creature would do something, and then it would lock down while it does it, and it doesn't untap. Meaning, it could tap to do something, but then it only can affect one thing at a time. You need to really be tapped. Old Man of the Sea from Arabian Nights worked this way. You know, there were a bunch of different cars that kind of did something. And I liked that. I thought it was kind of cool. So this was me pushing into a new area

which is reanimation. Oh, the Coffin Queen can reanimate a dead thing, but only one thing at a time. But the idea was, if you ever wanted to reanimate a different thing, you could always untap the Coffin Queen, let the old creature go, and then you could get something new.

And there's a button, like you could sacrifice it. There's other ways you could get rid of it so that you could then untap the Coffin Queen and steal a different creature. But anyway, this was just, this is definitely a good example of early magic. I mean, we still do this now, but Tempest, because it was the first

time I got to make a set, there's a lot of me going, oh, I like this effect. Like, I like this kind of card. I like this effect. Like, I'm a big fan of reanimation so like the idea of oh this repeatable thing oh but I can make it you know

and the idea that I can only animate one thing at a time sort of gets to be a limitation I thought that was a cool limitation so it's definitely

a fun thing of me playing around in that space okay Commander Grevin Ilvec three black black black

so six mana total. Three of which is black. It is... a 7-5 creature with fear. So fear is a creature that can't be black because it'll be artifact creatures and or black creatures. So it's a human war...

a legendary creature, human warrior. 7-5. When Commander Grevin Ilvec enters the battlefield, sacrifice a creature. So the idea... in the story, Grevenilvec was the right-hand man of Volrath. And one of the things I remember reading is, when you have a bad guy, that if you have a bad guy who's mainly a smart bad guy, you want him to have a sidekick that's a strong bad guy. That's sort of scary because he's so strong.

So the idea of Grevin Ilvec was, Vorath had done experiments on him to make him very powerful, but it was very painful. He grafted a spine on him. Spinal graft shows that. And Grevin is very powerful, but he is sort of kept in check by Volrath, who tortures him.

And Grevin does not particularly like Volrath, but he sort of serves him because, you know, so one of the things that we wanted to play around with was we wanted Grevin to... Oh, the other thing that happens is in the story, Grevin has a ship called the Predator. And when the weather light first shows up,

the Predator comes and attacks the weather light. And Grevin L'Veck jumps aboard the ship and fights Gerard. And Gerard ends upelvec jumps aboard the ship and fights Gerard and Gerard ends up falling over the side of the ship. Everybody believes that Gerard dies. He doesn't. But the reason that he falls over the side of the ship is

the second in command on the ship is a guy named Vadi Ildal and Vadi seizes an opportunity to both capture the Weatherlight and to get rid of Grevin Ilvec, because he's trying to move up in the world. And then when Grevin comes back, he's mad.

And there's three lines, there's three different, there's a little tiny story about Vadi Ildal trying to kill, and then Grevin comes back. And basically the line is Grevin says because he tried to shoot on the ship to kill him. It didn't kill Grevin. And it goes

I'm not sure which is more pathetic. Your judgment or your aim. And then he throws, Grevin throws Vadi over the side of the ship. The fall will give you time to think upon your failure. I think it's fine.

Anyway, Grevenovac is a mean, he's the right-hand sidekick to Suvorov Rath, and he's big and strong and nasty. We wanted to capture that, so the way we did it is made a really big creature. So fear would later

become intimidate, which would later become menace. So we've always liked having a creature keyword that involves I'm scary. Early on it was based on the card fear from alpha, which is it can only be blocked by black or artifact creatures. We then made intimidate that said only be blocked by artifact creatures or creatures that share my color. We then made Intimidate that said only black-fied creatures, artifact creatures, or creatures that share my color. And then eventually we decided not to make a color base. It just made Menace, which requires you to have multiple things to block it. Anyway, one of the things that I know when we made Commander Grevin Novak

was we wanted something big and mean and scary. So we like the idea that it's a 7-5 fear creature is hard to deal with. That's big and scary. But in order to offset that, to make it at a cost that was reasonable, we make you sacrifice a creature, which also played into the Vati story in that he's willing to sacrifice his own creature. You know, like, he's not beyond killing his own men if need be. Next, dark ritual, black, instant.

Add black, black, black to your mana pool. So one of the things I find funny, the reason I want to talk about this is Dark Ritual obviously was an alpha. It's one of the boons. So white had Healing Sav. Blue had Ancestral Recall. Black had Dark Ritual. Red had Lightning Bolt. And green had Giant Growth.

Each color had a one mana spell that did three of its thing. I think they all were common at one point and then Richard realized that Ancestral Recall was super powerful. They ended up moving it to rare to make it... This is back in the day where they thought people would only spend so much money on cards

and so not a lot of people would have Ancestral Recall was the idea. Anyway, I just want to bring out that Tempest is 1998. So Magic came out in 1993. So this is five years into Magic's lifespan. And Dark Ritual was still something we printed. Now we're like, oh, that's too powerful. We can't print it.

And we also moved the ability from black to red. But it's interesting to note that Tempest was some significance into Magic, you know, I mean, oh, I'm sorry, Tempest came out in 97. So it's four years in. It came out in 97. It's four years in. But anyway, it took us a while to understand things like the power level of certain effects and shifting the color pie and stuff. So, like, Dark Ritual, which I don't think people realize that it's something for a while we considered a staple. Like, of course you'd put it in. Like, why wouldn. So like Dark Ritual, which I don't think people realize that it's something for a while

we considered a staple. Of course you'd put it in. Why wouldn't black a Dark Ritual? So anyway, I thought it was just to point out that Tempest to me, which is sort of starting Mirage with the start of the second age, for those that know my ages of magic design.

And it's interesting that even in the second age, we were still making a drug control. Okay, Douthy Ghoul. One and a black. One, one. Creature, Douthy Zombie.

It's got shadow. This creature can be blocked and be blocked only by creatures with shadow. Whenever a creature with shadow dies, put a plus or minus

counter on Douthy Ghoul. Okay, so shadow was an ability that Mike Elliott had made in his After Ways set. That was a set that he made before he came to Wizards. When Wizards hired him, they bought the rights

to the set. And Slivers and Echo and Shadow all came from that set. So all three of those mechanics and all of them, we ended up putting all of them in Tempest. We later, because there was too many things in development, took

Shadow out and then Mike, a year later, put it into Urza Saiga. So flavor-wise, what we did was the flavor of the world was that Volrath, the Phyrexians had made an artificial plane

that they were going to overlay it onto Wrath as a means of their attack. The idea being that they would get all their troops all ready and then they would phase Wrath onto Dominaria, which basically meant that they would all appear all at once as a means to invade. So Volrath was responsible or partially responsible for filling up the plane.

And so they grabbed... This is back in the day where planar portals just worked a little more effectively than they do now. The mending kind of messed up planar portals so they don't really work anymore, at least not for living things. But anyway, they grabbed a lot of creatures from other planes and brought them onto this plane. So the Vect, the Kor, and the Dahl, for example, all came from different places.

We now know the Kor came from Zendikar. There were a couple other races that got grabbed, one of which was the Delphi, the Sultari, and the Thalacos. They didn't quite make it. The process was flawed, and they got pulled partway there, but were kind of trapped in between planes. That's how we represented shadow in our game. And the idea was that they

can interact with each other, but they're too ethereal to interact with the real world. So, the Sultari, the Delphi, and the Thalacos Sultari was white, Thalacos was blue, Delphi was black. Those three races couldn't interact with each other. They couldn't interact with sort of

the rest of the creatures. Shadow ended up being so Shadow basically is a flying variant. It's kind of like high flying. High flying is flyers to come only block flyers. So it ended up being pretty efficient because it, for all intents and purposes, it's just unblockability in constructed where the opponent, I mean in limited, yeah, yeah, there's a good

chance you'd have some shadow creatures. Shadow showed up in white, blue and black, but in, it was mostly just unblockable, which had some issues. So speaking of good shadow creatures, Delphi Mindripper, three and a black, so four mana total, one of which is black. It's a 2-1 Delphi minion. It's got shadow, so it can only be blocked by creatures with shadow.

Whenever Delphi Mindripper attacks and isn't blocked, you may sacrifice it. If you do, defending player discards three cards. So this was a constructed card. So the idea here is what we call saboteur, which is if I hit the player, I can then sacrifice the creature. Well, R&D

now refers to a saboteur as something that just when it hits the creature, does something. This, when it hits the creature, requires you to sacrifice it, so it's not a repeatable effect. But the idea is if I can get into once to hit you, not only do I do two damage to you, but also I can make you discard three cards. And the fact

that it has shadow, meaning it's mostly unblockable, at least in constructed, it became this very powerful card where I can get out a creature, I can attack you, and then if you had cards in your hand, I would usually make you discard the cards. If you didn't, if your hand was empty, okay, fine, I can keep it around and keep attacking you with it.

But it was definitely an effective card that could help get rid of people's hands. Okay, Death Pits of Wrath. Three black black enchantment. Whenever a creature is dealt damage, destroy it. It can't be regenerated. So,

Death Pits of Wrath and Furnace of Wrath were both cards that when we made them, I think we called it Death Pits of Wrath and we called it Furnace of Wrath, even though the plane at the time wasn't yet called Wrath. And we liked the name of those two cards so much that Michael and I named the plane Wrath so we can call it Death Pits of Wrath and Furnace of Wrath. We thought those names were awesome. So this card is responsible for the plane of wrath being called Wrath.

Tempest took place on Wrath. That was the plane of Tempest. The idea of this card was just, it was kind of a super terror. Like I hurt anything and it dies. Like nothing can heal was the idea of this card. Normally in magic, you know, if I do damage to something, but not enough to kill it, well, it survives. And this is like, no, any damage just is going to kill anything. There's no such thing as healing from damage.

If I hurt you, you're just going to die. And it has the rider, because at the time, for some reason, most of our kill effects, we had this anti-regeneration text on it, which was like, well, why regeneration if all the black cards that kill things don't regenerate? So we eventually stopped making all the kill spells have the anti-regeneration clause, but

it's one of those things that, like, early on, I think, Tear had it, so we just grandfathered it into black kill effects, and eventually realized we didn't need to do that, but we did do it for a while. Okay, Dregs of Sorrow. X for black. So X mana, X generic mana,

plus four generic mana, plus one black mana. Sorcery, destroy X target non-black creatures, draw X cards. So we used to refer to this spell as X4B, because it's Manacost. B being, you know, when we write things in files, we use letters rather than symbols, just because we don't have access to the symbols yet.

Actually, not in the database we do, but back then we didn't. So we refer to it, we'll refer to black as B. So X4B was the nickname of this card. We liked the idea of a card that was an X spell that lets you kill X creatures and draw X cards. But it needed to have a whole bunch

of mana and we didn't want all of it to be black because we wanted this to be something that you could maybe play in a deck that wasn't mono-black. And so we ended up putting an X spell and combining it with generic mana. This is the first time I believe we ever did that and we don't do it very often normally it looks better just to have

colored mana with an X spell so most of our X spells are like X and then however many mana we need we just do colored mana so like let's say it was going to be only two mana it'd be you know X black black this one needed five mana

we didn't want to do five black mana not only was it a little to do five black mana. Not only was it a little bit too much black mana and make you play a mono black deck, but also I'm not sure we could fit the name Drugs of Sorrow on the card and have X, black, black, black, black, black, meaning six mana symbols. That would take up a lot of space.

But anyway, I like this card, and it's definitely... It's fun when you're making a set to try to make a card that is like, oh my, this does a lot, oh my goodness, oh wow, if you have a lot of mana, you can destroy so much creatures. There's a thing we call in design, sort of, I think players call it Magic Christmas Land.

The idea that how when players see a card, they want to imagine the best possible version. What happens is this is firing on all cylinders? And like, oh, well, if I have enough mana, it's like, I destroy every creature my opponent has, and then draw cards for each creature destroyed. That's pretty major, so it's kind of cool. Okay, next.

Extinction. So Extinction is four and a black. Sorcery. Destroy all creatures of the creature type of your choice. I think this card, when I made it originally, was called Genocide because it's taking all of one creature type and destroying it. But there's a lot of connotations to Genocide and we decided that Extinction sort of captured the flavor

without being quite as real-world disturbing, I think. So we ended up not calling it genocide. Rightfully so, I think. While from a word standpoint, it does demonstrate what the thing is doing, we have to remember that cards have real meaning within the context of the world. I made this, by the way, in that there was a lot of people,

and interestingly, there's a lot of people that like playing tribal decks, and this was just kind of an answer to tribal decks. Actually, a pretty brutal answer

to tribal decks. Kind of funny that tribal decks weren't particularly good at the time, so the idea that I felt I needed to make an answer for something

that wasn't even good. Later on, with Onflot, we'd start really pushing tribal decks and, you know, starting to make some... I mean, I guess back then

there were a few tribal decks that showed up, like Merfolk and stuff, a few things back in the day. So anyway, it was just... It was a sideboard answer to tribal decks. Okay, Gravedigger. Three and a black creature, zombie, 2-2. When Gravedigger enters the battlefield,

you may return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand. So this is the first time we made Gravedigger I made it in the set okay so one of the things so vision vision the set visions introduce the first

what we call enter the battlefield effects meaning there was mana war that bounced the creature and there was there was a black card that bounced a creature, and there was... What was the black card? There was a black card that destroyed a creature. There was a green card that destroyed an artifact.

Ooptabi Orangutan. What was the black card? I'm blank on the black card. You guys know the black card. Anyway, one of the things that Visions had introduced was this idea of Enter the Battlefield effects. Interestingly, I was working on Tempest before we worked on Vision, so I had not seen those cards yet. So one of the things I'm very

proud of in Gravedigger was that I made an enter the battlefield effect before I'd seen anybody else make an enter the battlefield effect. It turns out in Magic, by the time this came out, It turns out in Magic, by the time this came out, it existed before this card. But my personal, for myself, claim to fame that made me proud was that I managed to make an End of Battlefield effect before I'd seen someone else make it. So the reason this came about was we had a mechanic in the set for a while that when you drew it, you triggered it. And the idea was that it had a different color back or something. And that when you draw the card, you're like, oh, look, it's one of those cards.

You show everybody, go, oh, look at the effect I get. And the idea was, my opponent now had knowledge that I had the card, but I got an effect right away. And so the idea that when I put it in my deck, I had to take into account that I had this effect just for drawing. I didn't have to play it. I got this effect when I drew the card. Turned out that didn't work. We ended up, then Richard brought a buyback.

We went down a different path to do buyback. But we had a card that when you drew it, raised dead a creature. It took a creature from the card from the graveyard and put it in your hand. And then I think it was just a 2-2 creature on the battlefield. And I really liked the design. So I was trying to figure out how to sort of get it. And then it dawned on me, well, what do I just, instead of when you drew the card, I just gave that effect to you when you played it. And so I just put it on that card. And anyway, it ended up becoming a

staple that we use all the time. So Also, I think it's a zombie because one of my little mini goals, as you'll see as we go through black, was I was trying to make zombies good and so I made a bunch of really good zombies and then I just made some cards I liked into zombies. So this card got made into a zombie.

How are we doing on time? Okay, I'm going to do a few more cards. I just got here, but I'm going to do a few more cards. I just got here, but I'm going to do a few more cards. Can I finish off black? I think I can. I think I'm going to finish black today. Living Death.

Three black blacks. Sorcery. So five mana total. Two witches black. Each player exiles all creature cards from the graveyard, then sacrifice all creatures they control, then puts all cards they exile this way onto the battlefield. So the idea, essentially essentially of this card is

all players take the living creatures they have on the battlefield and the dead creatures they have in the graveyard and swap them. This is a Mike Elliott card. In fact, this is my favorite design by Mike Elliott in Tempest and maybe ever. I really, really like this design. This is a beautiful design.

So the idea is you just swap the living and the dead. In order to make that happen, you have to first exile your creature cards because if you first killed them and they pulled the creatures from the graveyard on the battlefield, you would take the dead things that you just killed and put them back. So you have to exile them first so that they're not out of the way.

You sort of have to exile one set of cards so you can move the other set of cards. So it's sort of like you have to shift around like a little wood puzzle. But anyway, I thought this was a really cool card. A really cool card. Next is Parish. Two and a black. Sorcery.

Destroy all green creatures that can't be regenerated. This is the black part of the cycle, the color hosing cycle. Black wants to kill green. Well, what is green like? Green likes creatures. What is black like? Killing creatures. Green ended up being... It's funny. This card really did a lot

to hold green back. Because if you try to make a green, especially a mono-green deck, this card just wrecks you from the sideboard. So it ended up being a little bit powerful. Rats of Wrath, one black. Creature, rat. Black, destroy target artifact creature or land you control. Two and a one.

So interestingly, this card is a two mana, two one. And that ability seems like it's something like destroy target artifact creature or land you control. Oh great, I can destroy my own things. Why would you want to destroy your own things? What ended up being a very, very important card, because of a little rule called fizzling. So

in this game, in Tempest, we had buyback. Buyback lets you repeatedly do things. Well, the one nice, I mean, the reason this card was made originally, I think we were just playing around with the idea that you know, you might want to, you know, can you as a giant come up with cool and interesting ways why you want to kill your own things? It ended up, once we started playing around with buyback, it was the answer to buyback.

So if my opponent capsizes my creature, and every turn they're capsizing my creature, if I spend one black mana and I sacrifice my creature in response to them capsizing my creature, the creature is no longer there. Thus the spell does not resolve. It fizzles. That's old slang for not resolving. It's not really an official term anymore. And because of that, because it doesn't resolve, the buyback part doesn't work. That the card has to resolve in order to, because what you're doing is adding on and return to my hand. But if the card doesn't resolve, it doesn't get and go to my hand, so it goes to the graveyard. So if I got Rats of Wrath

Rats of Wrath out and you had a capsize or something in your hand, if you had a buyback that targeted my creature or one of my things, it didn't work like Whispers of the Muse, but if you target one of my things, I could stop it with this card. So it ended up being very powerful.

So reanimate, black, sorcery. Put target creature card from a graveyard on the battlefield under your control. You lose life equal to its converted mana cost. Another thing I love doing is reanimating creatures. I made a lot of reanimation decks. I was just trying to make the cheapest reanimate I could. And the idea was, oh, well, there'll be a cost, which is the converted mana cost. So if I get a really big thing out,

it's very painful for me. The problem was, so you pay it. It's just not like, oh, look, I'm getting a horribly crazy dangerous thing out that normally costs me eight mana. Okay, I have to pay eight life for it. La-di-da, I'm going to crush you. Like, it ended up being not,

it was not as, you know what I'm saying? Like, we later learned that reanimates can't be that cheap because if you make reanimates very cheap, it makes it hard to make really good,

large creatures and we want to make fun, big, large, expensive creatures. You know, things that when you get out are really dangerous but if you can get them out

super cheaply, that causes a lot of problems and reanimate definitely was one of the things that caused some problems. Sarcomancy, black enchantment. When Sarcomancy enters the battlefield,

create a 2-2 Black zombie creature token. At the beginning of your upkeep, if there are no zombies on the battlefield, Sarcomancy deals one damage to you. So the idea was I made out a 2-2 zombie for a single Black mana, with the downside of, if somehow this dies, and there's no other

zombies, it starts doing damage to you. I tried to do that as a creature. We tried a lot of things to make it work as a creature. Like, well, in your graveyard, it has the ability. If you don't have a zombie in play, you lose one life. And in the end, it proved easier to make an enchantment that just made a token. And at one point, the idea was when this creature is dead, you take damage. So you get a 2-2 for one mana, which was at the time something black wasn't remotely supposed to get. I mean, now black gets two ones occasionally. Anyway, and then we decided, because I was pushing, I really wanted zombies to be a

thing. I said, well, instead of punishing for not having this zombie, how about we just say zombies? And that way, if you're playing a zombie deck and you have other zombies, then it doesn't do damage to you. So this thing was one of the things that definitely started putting zombies on the map from a construction standpoint. So I made this and I made, there's one other zombie I made in another set that was a B-2-2.

I made two different B-2-2 zombies. And that, anyway, I really started putting zombies. So my goal was to put zombies on the map and I did., anyway, I really started putting zombies. So, my goal was to put zombies on the map, and I did. So anyway, that is it for black.

So I, next time we come, we'll be talking red. But, I'm now at work. So we all know 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.