Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #708: Tempest Cards, Part 4

Episode Date: January 24, 2020

This is part four 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 my daughter off at school today. Okay, so we are talking about Tempest. So this is the fourth and I think the final podcast. Me talking about Tempest cards. So I talked about white, blue, black, red, and green. So it means we're time to talk about multicolor. So I'm going to start with a card called Dracoplasm.

So Dracoplasm is blue and red, so two mana total, one blue, one red. It is a creature, a shapeshifter, a 0-0 creature. It has flying, and when it enters the battlefield, sacrifice any number of creatures. Dracoplasm's power becomes the total power of those creatures, and its toughness becomes the total toughness. And then it has our Dracoplasm gets plus one, plus one until end of turn. That's fire breathing.

Okay, so if you guys know the card Grisilda from Unstable, this card was trying to be that way back when. The original idea was I mash two creatures together, and I make a combination of the two creatures. But the rules couldn't really handle exactly that.

So what we did is, we said, okay, we'll make it a creature. You can sacrifice any number of creatures, and this gets to be as big as what you sacrifice. And then, because you're sort of making a dragon, we then gave it fire breathing. But the idea is you're sort of taking... It's a sort of shapeshifter-y thing that's dragon-esque that you take creatures and you form it into this. It wasn't quite what I wanted.

What I really, really wanted was take two creatures and mash them together. I would later do that in Unstable since it turns out the rules, the Black Border rules, aren't so good at doing that. But anyway, that is Trickleplasm. Next, Lobotomy. Lobotomy is two blue-black, so four mana total, one of which is blue, one of which is black. It's a sorcery. Target player reveals their hand,

then you choose a card other than a basic land from it. Search that player's graveyard, hand, and library for all cards with the same name as the chosen card and exile them. That player then shuffles their library. Okay, so one of the things I've talked about in previous podcasts, how it's fun to be the first one to do an effect. Well, Lobotomy, which is now an effect we do

from time to time, this is where it premiered. This is the first time we did it. I think when I made this card, I liked the idea. One of the things that we were definitely doing early on in Magic was trying to encourage you to not always play four ofs. And so we would make cards that said, oh, well, if you play, you know, instead of playing all four ofs, you play two of this and two of that, you're more protected against this.

But anyway, the idea was, I guess it was made as a means A to fight against combos, because you can go get a combo piece. Now this particular card, you have to catch it in their hand. We would later go on to make more just blunt versions where you just go in the library, you know, name what you want and go get it. This one I would note, by the way, does not get things out of exile. So if you have something sort of sitting in limbo in exile, you can get around losing it to lobotomy. But anyway, this is one of those cards that was a nice marriage of sort of being a cool effect, having sort of the perfect name. You know, the idea that one of the things we talk a lot about is that blue and black are the colors that deal with the library.

And normally, blue is more about messing with your memory, and black is more about permanent damage. And this particular effect, because it was brand new, I made it blue-black. The ability has since kind of become more of a black thing. I made it blue-black. The ability has since kind of become more of a black thing. I think because we were doing it for the first time and it felt sort of splashy, I made it a gold card. But this effect essentially

has really moved into black. Black's the one that goes in. The idea is blue makes you forget things by milling you, you know, so, like, blue sort of lets you, like, blue attacks your library kind of randomly, you know, where black is more precision. It goes in and gets exactly the thing it wants.

So blue is better at milling in general and better at sort of going through your library. But black is better at sort of exacting, sort of going at the exact thing it wants. Okay, next. Ranger and Vek. One green-white, so three mana total, one of which is green, one of which is white. It's a 2-2 creature. It's a human-soldier-archer. It's got First Strike, and for a green mana, you can regenerate Ranger and Vek.

So, originally, this creature, instead of First Strike, it had Banding. It had Banding and Regeneration. So for that, real quickly, for those that don't know banding, because we haven't made banding in forever, banding was an ability, I'm giving you the shortened version of this, but basically on attack,

you could pick any number of creatures of which all of them had banding but one, and they could attack as a band. And then, anything that blocks one of them has to block all of them. Now meanwhile, on defense, you could block, on defense, you can block with any number of creatures, at least one of them had to have banding. So on attack, all but one had to have banding. On defense,

on blocking, all but one had to have banding. Part of the confusing of the mechanic. It works differently depending on how you used it. Anyway, so the idea of a Bander with regeneration was kind of cool because one of the things about banding is you, the person who controls the band, gets to choose where the damage goes. So if I attack with a bunch of creatures and you block with a giant creature,

I can choose to put all the damage from the giant creature on my littlest creature, let's say, and let all my other creatures survive. So one of the reasons a Banner worked really well with regeneration was that I could put the damage on the Regenerator and then regenerate it. So it was a very powerful combo. Then what happened was, in between Mirage Block and Tempest Block, we decided to stop, do banding.

I think Tempest was the first set not to have banding. Banding originally showed up in Alpha, and it was in the set, I mean, it was in Magic, it was an Evergreen mechanic through Tempest. And then as of Tempest, we removed it as an Evergreen mechanic. So we had to change the card. We ended up giving it First Strike, and I'll be honest, First Strike and Regeneration are not the combo that Banding and Regeneration are. I think we were trying to salvage the card, and we're like, well, we need a white ability. Banding was a white ability. And back in the day, there were a lot less choices of a white ability. White could have Protection. White could have First Strike. White could have, I mean, banding, so banding right away.

Double strike didn't exist yet. Vigilance as a keyword didn't exist yet. Life link as a keyword didn't exist yet. There were a lot of other things that white would later get. Now, given some of those things existed written out, but I think we were trying to get a keyword here. Anyway, a little bit of a non-bow. I mean, if you have First Strike,

it's not often you have First Strike that you need to have Regeneration. I mean, obviously, I'm not saying it never works. If I attack with my 2-2 First Striker, you're not going to block with anything with power, with toughness, two or less. But if you block with a bigger creature, at least I can Regenerate and not lose it.

But yes, it is a lackluster mix. So for those wondering why we made this lackluster guard, it really had much higher aspirations and got changed, I think, late in the process. I think we removed banding. I think what happened was the set only had one or two banding cards. And we're like, you know what, we should just remove banding. And there wasn't a lot that had banding to begin with. So it wasn't that hard to remove it.

But that was one of the cards that had changed. Okay, next. Selenia Dark Angel. Three white black for a flying angel. She is a 3-3 creature, so she's an angel, legendary angel. She has flying, and for two life, you can return Selenia Dark Angel to its owner's hand. She has Flying, and for two life, you can return Selina Dark Angel to its owner's hand. So the idea is it's a five-mana 3-3 flyer, and it's very, very hard to kill Selina Dark Angel, because for two life, you can put her back in your hand.

So you can, and it doesn't cost any mana, it just costs life. So unless you're very low on life, it is just very hard to deal with Selina Dark Angel. So real quick, who is Selina? She's legendary. So there was a character, one of the Weatherlight crew, a guy named Crovax, who was a nobleman. He would later get cursed, and Selina's involved in that story, and become a vampire. That's part of his path.

But anyway, the way it works, the way the story works, is Croac's, his family had this cursed artifact and the cursed inside the cursed artifact was Selene the Archangel and you could release her and she served you she sort of with this artifact

she as an angel was forced to serve whoever. And supposedly it was a cursed artifact. So, Crovax ends up falling in love with Selenia, and he frees her from the artifact. But it comes to find out that the curse is not the artifact. The curse is Selenia. And the second that she is let free,

she leaves. That, you know, any affection or anything she showed toward Krovac was just sort of a byproduct of being forced to serve him. And not only does she leave him, but sort of the freeing of her is what, what, uh, creates the curse and it, it sort of curses Crovax. Um, um, now not only has she abandoned him, which makes him sort of sad, but also, uh, the curse upon him sort of brings lots of bad luck and horrible things, um, horrible things happen to Crovax. He eventually joins the Weatherlight crew to go save Cisse.

The reason he goes is because he has reason to believe that Selenia is in Wrath. And in order to get there, he's the one that has access to Wrath. I forget the details of it, but anyway, they let him come with them. When they're in Wrath, they finally find Selenia, and Selenia is about to kill Mirri,

and Krovac, seeing no choice, kills Selenia to save Mirri, but that is the thing that finalizes the curse, and then he becomes a vampire. So the killing of Selenia to save Mary, but that is the thing that finalizes the curse, and then he becomes a vampire. So the killing of Selenia is what sort of curses him to vampirism. But anyway, Selenia was, we wanted to have an angel in the story.

We didn't have an angel on the crew, although the new Weatherlight crew does have an angel, a Sarah angel. So we wanted to have an angel that was tied to the story, so Selenia became part of the story. Anyway, we wanted to make it and put it in the set so it is here. She's an angel so she flies but she's black-white because her character very much is a tainted angel if you will.

And so we like the idea of paying life as a means to save her. That felt pretty fun. Okay, next. Sky Spirit. One white blue. 2-2 flying first strike. It's a spirit. It's a creature.

So this card is interesting. So in Legends, there's a card called Thunder Spirit, which is one white white 2-2 flying first strike. It is rare. I don't know why it is rare. For some reason, it is rare. All the rare cards in Legends went on the reserve list. So that card is on the reserve list. We're not supposed to make one white, white, 2-2 Flying First Strike, which is a flying creature.

So we decided to make it here, and we color-shifted it. So instead of being a mono-white card, it's a white-blue card. And so instead of one white-white, it's one white-blue. So Sky appeared with just us redoing Thunder Spirit, but with enough of a tweak I mean, a tiny tweak, but enough to be in two colors is different from being in one color. But we brought it back. Okay, next. Vadi Ildal. So Vadi Ildal is two black, green.

So four mana total. One which is black, one which is green. Legendary creature, human warrior. Tap. Until end of turn, target creature has base power one or base power toughness one. So he can change either power or toughness to one for the turn. And he is a 3-3. Okay, a couple things about Vadi Odal.

First off, he's a legendary creature, so he is on the Predator, the second in command on the Predator. Grevin, who is second in command to Volrath, is the captain of the Predator. Vadi serves him. In the story, when the

when the when the Weatherlight first shows up in Wrath, they are attacked by the Predator. Grevin jumps on the ship to fight Gerard. Vati, seeing an opportunity to maybe score some points with Volrath, and accidentally, accidentally, getting

rid of Grevin, fires upon the ship. The firing upon the ship knocks the ship, knocks Grevin, knocks Gerard over the side of the ship. At the time they think he's dead, he doesn't die. And then Brevin comes back and he's not happy with Vati. And then through a series of three different, the flavor text of three different cards, he talks with him and he ends up, Brevin ends up throwing Vati, spoilers, throws Vati over the side of the ship.

And anyway, so Vaati is named after the code name for Tempest was Bogavati, which is an Indian plane of poison snakes. It's like a world of poison snakes. Originally Tempest had poison in it. The poison ended up getting taken out.

But the code name was named after the fact that it was a poison world. Originally, Tempest had poison in it. The poison ended up getting taken out. But the codename was named after the fact that it was a poison world. Originally, we were... It's funny. The Phyrexians were there, and we liked the idea of poison being there. We ended up taking poison away, but poison would come back when the Phyrexians later come back in a big way in Scarves of Irritant. The Phyrexians and poison always have some relationship. Anyway, so we named... So, Bogavati was the name on the set,

which I think is an oddly spelled version of Bogavati, the Indian world. So we used that. So Vati is, I think the code name was B-O-G-A-V-H-A-T-I is how we spelled Bogavati. So Vati is a reference to the code name. One of the things we'd like to do back in the day is occasionally. So Vadi is a reference to the codename. One of the things we liked to do back in the day is occasionally name a card that was a nod to the codename. Like, um... Um...

Uh... I'm trying to think what the, uh... Okay, a good example, but there's a few sets where we've made nods to the codename. This is us making a nod to the codename. So Vadi Odal is interesting in that we liked his ability. It was kind of cool that he can reset things.

Black green's a little quirky. Probably nowadays this would be blue or blue green. Black green's a little bit odd. But back in the day, black did a little more transformational stuff, like some of the early stuff, like the Coffin Queen stuff that did it, so I think we've shifted a little more to blue where it makes more sense, but anyway,

the one problem we have with this is Grevin Ilvec kills Vahd-i-Ildal in the story. Grevin Ilvec's a 7-5 menace. The problem is Vahd--El-Dal has the ability to lower Grevin's power to 1. So if Grevin attacked, Vadi-El-Dal could block him, tap, reduce his power to 1, and survive. Meaning Grevin wouldn't actually kill him in combat. And if Vadi-El-Dal

really wanted to, he could lower Grevin. I mean, in order to block him, you need another creature to block with him, because Grevin is the baddest. But assuming they get in combat, Vadi could also reduce Grevin's toughness to one, and then have them both die.

So Vadi could have them both die, or Vadi could have neither of them die, but there's no real world where they fight in combat and Vadi would die and Grevin would not die but then we said well when Grevin enters the battlefield you have to sacrifice the creature okay what if that creature is

Vadi-El-Dal it's not that Grevin fights Vadi-El-Dal he just sacrifices him which is kind of what happened but anyway that is Vadi-El-Dal okay oh one more thing by the way which is kind of what happened. But anyway, that is body hillside. Okay. Oh, one more thing, by the way. A little fine-tooth thing. When Grevin is filling up the plane with creatures,

he grabs a bunch of races. Three of them, the Kor, the Vek, and the Dahl, are ones that are successfully transported and if you are in favor, meaning if the tribe likes you, you're N so you're N Vek, N Kor, or N Dal

means that you are N Kor means you are of the Kor people and the Kor people like you and if you're not if you've been sort of kicked out of the group you're ill so Vadi Il Dal means that he's from the Dal and And if you're not, if you've been sort of kicked out of the group, you're ill. So Vadi-il-dal means that he's from the dal,

and he is on the outs with the dal. So Greven-il-vek, for example, he is from the vek originally, before he got experimented on by Volrath, so he is from the vek, but he's out of favor with them, so he's ill-vek. Meanwhile, Oracle-en-vek is from the vek, but he's out of favor with them, so he's ill Vek. Meanwhile, Oracle and Vek is from the Vek, but in favor with them, so it's an Oracle and Vek. You know, that's the naming convention that Michael and I came up with. Okay, now we get to artifacts.

Booby Trap. Six. Artifact. As Booby Trap enters the battlefield, choose an opponent and a card name other than a basic lamb card type name. The chosen player reveals each card they draw. When the chosen player draws a card with the chosen name, sacrifice Booby Trap.

If you do, Booby Trap deals 10 damage to that player. Okay, so there's a card in, I think it's Unhinged, called Letter Bomb. And what Letter Bomb is, you take the card when you cast it, and you shuffle it into your opponent's library, and when they draw it, it explodes and does, I think, 19 damage to them. This was Letter Bomb.

Literally, it's called Letter Bomb. Mike Elliott made it. It's called Letter Bomb. It was a very sweet card, but the shuffle the card into your opponent's library just wasn't something Black Border did, so we made a Black Border version of it, which is, okay, I'm naming a card, and when you draw the card, boom, it explodes. Now, instead of, you know, like, in the, normally, like, the way Letterbomb works is you shuffle this card, and so they draw this card. Um, so the way Booby Trap works is you have to name a card, so, A, you kind of got to know what they're playing in their deck. Um, the one nice thing about Booby

Trap is, if you're aware of what they're playing, and aware of something they're playing in four of, your odds of it going off are much higher. That's why it does less damage. It does 10 damage and not 19 damage. But anyway, this was Letter Bomb and it had to change. Bottle Gnomes. Bottle Gnomes cost three. They're artifact creatures.

They're gnomes. They're 1-3 creatures and you can sacrifice them to gain three life. I think reinforcements or refreshments is the flavor text. Bottle gnomes were a very popular little creature. The three mana for a one three, and the fact that you can sacrifice them

for life for free without any mana. They actually showed up a little bit in some tournament play. There was definitely a point in time where three toughness mattered as far as there was a point in time where one of the most popular creatures were these two one knights and anyway. So one of the questions about bottle gnomes is could they become food? Because it says refreshments. And you gain life.

They gain free life. We've gone back and forth. The only one problem we've run into is all the food costs two mana and sack it and gain free life. And the Bottle Gnomes is free and sack to gain free life. So I don't think we've made this food. But we

talked about it. I think we like the idea that food mechanically lines up and all the foods work exactly the same, and you don't have to remember that this food costs two and that food doesn't, so for right now, I guess the reinforcements are not refreshments. Okay, next. MSC Tome. So MSC Tome costs four. It's an artifact. Five and tap, draw two cards, and discard a card. So in Alpha, there's a card called JMD Tome. JMD Tome costs four. Four and tap, draw a card.

So JMD is for J. Michael Davis. Mike Davis is the person who came with Richard when they first pitched RoboRally to Peter. Peter said, oh, we can't make it. There's too many components. But what I could make is a card game that is played quickly. That inspired Richard to make Magic. Mike Davis also for a while was the VP of R&D. He's the person that hired me. He sadly passed away a few years ago, but an amazing man.

Anyway, J.M.D., J. Michael Davis, that Tome was named after him. So later in, was it Antiquities? There was a car called J.L.M. Tome. And J.L.M. Tome is for J.L.M., which is Joel L. Mick, which was the head designer for a while on Magic. And then he ended up becoming a brand manager on Magic.

And JLM Tome was a reference to Joel, JLM. So Mike Elliott made this one. Mike's middle name, I think his full name is Mike Scott Elliott, I believe. So M-S-E. So Mike made this tome. There was a tradition of naming tomes after designers. I'd had Morrow named after me, but Mike had never had a card named after him. So we decided we would honor the tradition. And so MSE Tome is in Scotland, JMD Tome and GLM Tome. Okay, next.

Is Grindstone. So Grindstone costs four. It's an artifact. Three and tap. Target player puts the top two cards of their library into the graveyard. If both cards share a color, repeat this process. Okay, so in Antiquities was a card called Millstone. Millstone, I think, was

two. Two and tap. Put the top two cards of target player's library into their graveyard. That was the first step. So when Richard first made Magic, because how does the game end if you get in a state where nobody gets to zero? And the answer was, as soon as you can't draw a card, you also lose. It was kind of a backup way of making sure the game ended. So in Antiquities, they made a card called Millstone that could make that a win condition.

Well, if you mill out your opponent and they can't draw a card, you'll win. I really, really liked Millstone. And so one of my ongoing quests you will see, if you've studied the history of Magic, is I've made a lot of Millstones. This is one of them. So the idea of the grindstone is I like the idea that with a millstone, normally you know exactly how much time you have, right? I'm going to mill two a turn. Well, let me count my library. Okay. Well, I have 14 cards left. That means I have seven turns to go. You can predict exactly. I like the idea of a millstone that you couldn't quite predict. So the idea was, how do I make an unpredictable millstone?

And the idea I ended up coming up with is, okay, what if I mill you for two, like a normal millstone, but if I match the colors, which will happen some of the time. Now notice, lands aren't colored. So if you hit a land, you won't, you know, they don't match. And colors is not a color. But I like the idea that it mills for two, but every once in a while it would mill for four. And every once in a very rare while, maybe it would mill for more than that.

The best I ever saw, I once saw a grindstone mill for ten, I think. But that is because the person removed their lands from their deck with mana severance, I think. But anyway, they had taken their lands out, or they had been fetching their lands, something. They didn't have lands in their deck, but anyway, that's kind of cool. Okay, next, Helm of Possession. Helm of Possession costs four.

It's an artifact. You may choose not to untap Helm of Possession during your untap step. To untap, sacrifice a creature. Gain control of a target creature for as long as you control Helm of Possession, and Helm of Possession remains tapped. Okay, so you guys might know a card called Mindslaver

that showed up for the first time in Mirrodin, and it got reprinted in Scarves of Mirrodin. Mindslaver, this was originally Mindslaver. Back in the day, I had this idea of what I used to call a marquee card that had to be a card that can go in any deck, because it's an artifact or land, that just did something magic I'd never done before. The idea was inspired by Gesture's Cap in Ice Age

and Grinning Totem. I made Grinning Totem in Mirage. Anyway, for all large sets, I tried really hard to make an artifact that just was really out there. So I made Mindslaver. I gained control of you, my opponent.

Volrath had this helmet that could mind control people, and I really thought it'd be neat. Maybe I made the... Actually, I probably made the card first and then made the mechanic to match... Made the card to match it, but... Or made the flavor to match it. Anyway, I love the idea of you taking control of another player's turn.

Mind Slaver came about because Word of Command, Richard had made a card called Word of Command in Alpha where you take control, you cast a spell out of your opponent's hand, but because it's an instant, they can respond and cast their own instant, so it's really hard to sort of catch them unaware because they'll just, in response, cast the spells.

So the idea of Mind Slaver was that I would take control of your turn next turn. So you could do what you want in this turn, but A, you're going to draw a card that you won't know, and B, you might not have all the mana. But next turn, on your turn, I'll untap it. I'll have all access to all your mana. Anyway, the rules manager at the time said it could not be done.

There was issues with it also because of mana burn. There was issues. I didn't think the mana burn issue was all that big. Anyway, we found out after art had been commissioned that we couldn't use Mind Flavor. So it had to be Volrath's helmet that took control of people. So we ended up making it a control magic variant to gain control of target creature. So what we did to make it, try it a little more fun, is

it's repeatable, but it requires you to sacrifice a creature. So you can, and you can only steal one creature at a time. But the idea is you can steal a creature, and when that creature dies, okay, steal the next creature. And hopefully you're trading away little tiny creatures for bigger creatures, because the creature you sack is one of your smallest creatures,

and the creature you steal will ideally be your opponent's best creature. Okay, next. Lotus Petal. So Lotus Petal costs zero. It's an artifact. Tap Sacrifice Lotus Petal at one mana of any color. So this was me trying to make a fixed Black Lotus. So Black Lotus showed up in Alpha, cost zero, it was an artifact, you tap, and you got three mana of any one color. So I'm like, okay, well that clearly is broken, but maybe if we just, you know, one third, one third, you know, and my idea was

I loved the idea of doing a tweaked Lotus in a way that wasn't broken. Well, guess what? Even one free mana is in fact broken. This card has been banned and restricted in numerous formats. It is quite powerful. So anyway, to be fair to me, it is less powerful than Black Lotus, but it is still pretty powerful. Okay, next. Phyrexian Grimoire.

So it costs three. It's an artifact. For four and tap, target opponent chooses one of the top two cards of your graveyard. Exile that card and put the other card

into your hand. So the idea here is that this is a card that gets a card out of your graveyard. Now, something I think that, I think that Tempest block was the last block that cared about graveyard order.

Notice that this card cares about the top two cards in your graveyard. For a while in Magic, we had cards that cared about what was the top card of your graveyard, or what's this in your graveyard with another card on top of it, stuff like that. We decided that having to track your graveyard was more hassle than it was worth.

So after Tempest, we made a general ruling that said we're not going to care about graveyard order anymore. We can care about the graveyard. You can care about something being in the graveyard, but we don't care about its position in the graveyard. The idea here is that I have the ability to sort of dig up stuff that's in my graveyard, but a couple things. One is, I don't have exact choice, because of the top two cards, I get sort of the second best of the top two cards.

My opponent's going to pick the one he doesn't want from me. But it allows me to get card advantage, but not... One of the things about getting cards out of the graveyard, if you can keep getting the same card out of your graveyard it gets repetitive play and so the idea here was how can I let you get cards out of your graveyard but in a way that won't be repetitive play and the idea is if I get something that's very valuable for me once I play it once my opponent goes ooh I don't want that

they'll get rid of it and so this was built in a way to let you get stuff out of your graveyard but in a way that it shouldn't let you sort of repeat things too much. But anyway, I like this design. There's a lot of... One of the things that's fun going back and looking at cards you made long ago, sometimes you cringe a little bit because there's just things... There's things we've learned since then, and like,

oh, I could have made that better. And then sometimes you look at a card and you're like, no, that was a sleek design. So I like Frenzy Informer. I think that's a pretty cool design. Okay, next. Scroll Rack. Two. It's an artifact that costs two. Two generic mana. One and tap. Exile any number of cards from your hands face down. Put that many cards from the top of your library into your hand. Then look at the exiled cards and put them on top of your library in any order.

So the idea here is it allows you to trade cards from your hand for cards off the top of your library. The reason this is valuable is A, it lets me immediately get some new cards, and B, if you combine it with an effect that shuffles your library, and there's a lot of effects like that in larger formats, Fetchlands being a popular one,

it allows you to constantly change out your hand. So if you have means by which to shuffle your library, you know, it's basically one and tap, trade anything that I don't want for new cards. And that is very powerful. This is a very powerful card. The card has seen lots and lots of tournament play. And it's funny.

This is one of the cards that when I made Scroll Rack, I wasn't, I had no idea how powerful it was. I was really just making something I thought had weird utility. And I don't even think when I made it that I was thinking about people sort of constantly shuffling their library. I was just thinking like, oh, it's a neat card, and early on you get some stuff, but then, you know, I was like, oh, you have to work through what you got. I wasn't, it didn't quite dawn on me how easy it would be to shuffle your library, so the card ended up being a lot stronger than I thought. Okay, squeeze

toy. Artifact. Tap. Prevent the next one damage that will be dealt to target creature this turn. So this is basically Artifact Samhite Healer. We don't tend to do a lot of these effects anymore just because they're very board intensive. They very complicate the board and make the math hard.

Squeeze toy. So Squee was a member of the Weatherlight Crew. He's the goblin. He's the cabin boy. Kind of a comic relief. Squee was named... There's a card called Relentless Assault that had some flavor text that I did not like. The flavor text

was like a goblin childhood poem. And I liked the idea of a goblin nursery rhyme, but I just thought it was not well executed. So I was told that in that meeting, if I could come with a replacement, they'd replace it. And so in that meeting, I came up with flog and squee up a tree, see something, flea, flea, flea.

Anyway, I had to name the goblins and it had to rhyme with tree. So I named them flog and squee. So anyway, when Michael and I were naming our goblin character, our comic relief, I liked the name Squee. I said, how about Squee? Once I realized that the name was Squee, and that when you make Squee possessive, it is the word

Squeeze, like S-Q-U-E-Z-E, I realized we could have some fun with that. So Squeeze Toy is a pun. For those that did my head to head recently for you not so recently but about a month ago I did head to head on pun names and squeeze toy was the top seed

so this is one of those puns that is so delicately woven in there because squeeze is a character that the idea that squeeze is a pun squeeze toy is a pun like Squeeze toy is a pun. Like something you let a dog play with. Like that squeaks when you play with it.

So we also made a card called Squeeze Play. Anyway, this is one of those puns that every time I mention it, somebody always goes, I've been playing Magic for 20 years. I never realized that. Like at work it happened. One of our people, like I mentioned, I handed out the head-to-head, the pun thing, and they're like, Squee's toy's a pun? How did I not know that? So anyway, right now, somebody listening

to me is going, Squee's toy's a pun? Yes, it is. So in the story, by the way, Squee loves his toy. It's part of the legacy. The legacy was a collection of artifacts that Gerard was supposed to guard because they combined together to make a powerful weapon known as the Legacy Weapon that was the thing that Gerard could use to defeat the Phyrexians. Urza had set the whole thing up over many years. Gerard was the person who was supposed to use the Legacy.

For various reasons, the Legacy ends up on the Weatherlight, most of the Legacy. The Legacy got scattered all around due to a story point, and the Weatherlight's job actually was going around gathering all the different artifacts from the Weatherlight. And so, by the time Gerard gets back there, the vast majority of the Legacy had been reclaimed when it was sitting on the ship. One of those was Squeezetoy. See, a lot more about Squeezetoy than you can imagine. Okay, next, Telethopter.

Telethopter costs four generic mana. It's a 3-1 artifact creature, a Thopter. Tap an undead creature you control. Telethopter gains flying until end of turn. So this card in playtest was called Radio-Controlled Flyer. And the idea was, the flavor of it was, it's a little remote control plane and you could fly it. So this card, here's a piece of trivia on this card. This card is the one card in Magic designed by my dad.

My dad designed this card. One day he's like, oh, I came up with the card name. It's called Radio Controlled Flyer. So when I was a kid, by the way, when I was, I don't know, seven or eight or something, for my birthday, I got a radio controlled plane. Now it's interesting to point out that I had no interest in a radio controlled plane, But it was my birthday, and it was my birthday present, so we took it out to fly it. And I think my dad was trying to demonstrate

how to fly it so that I could fly it, and I think my dad crashed it and it broke, and that was it. I never got another birthday present, so I always joke with my parents, that was my worst birthday present. It's something I didn't want, that I didn't get to use that got broke before I even could

interact with it. So, anyway. Um, I don't think that it had anything to do with why my dad made me a radio control flyer, but a free bonus story about Mark's worst birthday present for all of you. Most of my birthday presents were awesome, by the way. So I don't want to create some story like I had nothing but bad

birthday presents. I had very good birthday presents. That just happened to be my worst birthday present. One day I'll tell you my worst Hanukkah present. Okay, next. Ancient Tomb. So Ancient Tomb is a land. It taps for two Koloth mana, and it deals

two damage to you. So, there was a pro tour in Los Angeles. It was won by David Price. And it was a Tempest-only... It was a... What do they call the format?

It was block-constructed, but the only block... Block-constructed is a format in which you can play all the sets in any one block. The block in question was Tempest, but it turns out that when the Pro Tour was held, the only set that was out was Tempest itself. The Strongholds and Exodus neither were out yet.

We later would make the Pro Tours at the end, so the Block Constructed had all three sets in it. We hadn't quite figured that out yet, so we had an event with a block construction with one set. One of the interesting things about it was there were a bunch of different decks that got played in a bunch of different colors. It turned out the thing that defined

that format was this card, Ancient Tomb. Pretty much, Ancient Tomb was so powerful that the real question was, how do I abuse Ancient Tomb? And there were many ways to abuse it. Most of the decks were mono-colored because there wasn't really good the dual ends

in them were kind of sucky, so there wasn't really good color fixing. So, most of the decks tended to play mono-color. But there was a mono-red deck that won, there was a mono-white deck that made top 8, there was a mono-green deck, I believe, that made top eight. And the way the format was described to me by the pros that were sort of breaking it was, Ancestral Tomb is crazy.

Pick a color, because there wasn't really support to play two colors. Pick a color and play that color and put Ancient Tombs in and then get out big things early and smash your opponent. One of the things that we learned from Ancient Tomb, although we didn't completely learn. Ancient Tomb wasn't where we... We would later make a cycle of lands that you could tap for two mana but only do it twice.

They came with two counters on them and you could twice tap them for two mana and then you couldn't use them for mana anymore, which is us trying to fix this. But anyway, it turns out that lands tapping for two mana just kind of is broken, so we really don't make lands that tap for two mana anymore. I mean, well,

if we make a land that taps for two mana, you need to give up another land. Like, we will make lands that tap for two mana that require you to, like, boomerang another land or something. So, yes, you have two mana, but you have to give up mana to get it. But we do not give you land anymore that's a single land drop that gives you two mana without sort of making you give up access to other mana. And Ancient Tomb was a good example of just sort of how busted that was.

Okay, next. Ghost Town. So Ghost Town is a land. Taps for one colorless mana. Tap, return Ghost Town to its owner's hand. Accelerate this ability only if it's not your turn. So the idea is we made a land that was, back in the day, one of the most powerful cards was a card called Armageddon. Armageddon caused three to white and destroyed all lands. And the way Armageddon tended to work is, you and your opponent would be playing a game

and then your opponent, who knew they had Armageddon in their hand, would save some creatures, some land, and then Armageddon would wipe all your lands away and then while you were struggling to find more land, it would play the land it had been saving, and then start playing creatures and beat you down. So Ghost Town, I designed Ghost Town as a way to give you an answer for Armageddon, meaning, let's say I'm playing a mono-color deck and I have room for some other land. If I play a few Ghost Towns in my deck, and my opponent goes to Armageddon me, I get to put them back in my hand, and then I can immediately start putting them out again. So it allows me to sort of bounce back better from an Armageddon.

That was the idea. It turns out that it's, uh, the card was excellent in a deck with Armageddon. Because if I play Ghost Towns in Armageddon, and I can put all my Ghost Towns back into my hand, then not only is my Armageddon, like it just,ageddon... While it was made as a weapon against Armageddon, it proved to be a strong thing in a deck with Armageddon. So that's why we added the Activate as only if it's not your turn. We don't want you casting the Armageddon

and bouncing your lance. The idea is it was not designed to be an Armageddon answer without being a tool for the Armageddon deck. Anyway, it didn't... I mean, it's one of those things where I tried something and it ended up not being quite worth enough to get people to play,

so I don't think Ghost Town saw much play. But anyway, noble attempt. I was trying to give you an answer to something that was causing lots of problems. Okay, Reflecting Pool. So Reflecting Pool is a land, and you can tap to add one mana of any type that a land you control could produce. So Reflecting Pool is a land, and you can tap to add one mana of any type that a land you control could produce.

So the idea of Reflecting Pool is, I look at my other lands and I say, what are my other lands capable of? Now this seems like a very simple idea, because you mix it with basic lands or simple dual lands. I got it. Oh, it's a basic land and I, you know, I have a forest. Well, this can tap for green or, you know, or I have a city of brass. Okay, well, this can tap for any color because city brass can tap for any color. Where it started getting tricky was stuff like fetch lands where that land itself doesn't tap for any color. It just fetches other lands, you does that count? Oh, well, it doesn't tap for mana. Or if you have two reflecting pools out, each reflecting pool

hypothetically could tap for any color mana if the right land is out. But if you only have two reflecting pools, what happens? So it was one of those things that ended up being a little more confusing. It seemed on the surface to be something that was pretty straightforward, but not quite so much as you actually played with it. But it was a cool card, and it definitely saw some play.

And it was a neat, I like making lands that sort of are, that tap for color, but are a little bit different. I mean, obviously, we make lands to do other things in addition to mana,

but I like the idea of finding cute and unique ways to tap for mana. So that, I do think the Fletcher Pool is an interesting design. Anyway, I'm driving up to Wizards of the Peak, so that timed up just perfect. I finished just in time. So I hope you guys enjoyed these last four podcasts.

The, uh, this was all inspired because my very first podcast I ever did was about Tempest, the design. But I'd never done, now when I talk about designs, I often then do podcasts about the cards. But I'd never done one of the Tempest cards. And there's a lot of stories, obviously, being my very first set. So, it was fun to go back and tell all those stories of days of old. And somehow when I tell stories about old sets, there's a lot of me explaining how things used to work

because magic has changed so much. So, not only did you learn about Tempest, but you got a little bit of history lesson about magic. So I hope you guys enjoyed the Tempest thing. It was fun to do, and 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. And I hope you enjoyed the Tempest. We talked about Tempest. Bye-bye.