Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #715: Unsanctioned, Part 1

Episode Date: February 21, 2020

This is part one of a two-part series on the design of Unsanctioned. In it, I walk through the designs of all sixteen of the new cards.

I'm pulling away from the curb. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. I'm going to drop my kids off at school today. Okay, so today is a podcast all about unsanctioned. For those that know me, which I assume you do if you listen to my podcast, I love me some unsets. And so I will talk all about how unsanctioned came to be. And then I'm going to talk through all 16 of the cards we designed for the set, all of the new cards. Okay, so first off, how exactly did Unsanctioned come into being? So, I don't know, a year and a half ago, two years ago, Gavin Verhey was given an assignment by Bill Rose, our VP, to make a product that they codenamed Parachute.

to make a product that they codenamed Parachute. And the idea was we wanted to make a product that was sort of evergreen, meaning we could put it out whenever. And when we needed it, like we wanted something in our back pocket that if we ever needed to have an extra set out, you know, for budgetary things or something, we just had something that was already done.

And so the idea of Parachute was we'd make it, it would be something that was sort of evergreen that could go out wherever, and then when we needed it, we'd pull the cord on the Parachute. So one of the challenges of Parachute was it couldn't be, it had to be something that allowed us to make something that really could live anywhere. And it's tricky, for example, when doing reprints, because if we want to get reprints in the system, if we put valued reprints in the product and we don't know when the product's coming out, it just makes it harder to work around those things. Cause we, we look at all our reprints and all our different products. Um, but then Gavin came up with an interesting idea. Uh, he actually,

uh, asked me if I could come talk to him and and he said, you know, Unstable had done very well. We have never reprinted silver-bordered cards. I mean, we had a few promo cards, I guess, for when Unhinged and Unstable came out. We did a few promo cards. And even then, I think the promo card only for Unhinged were the old cards. Anyway, we really haven't reprinted any Uncards, and it doesn't affect anything, meaning it doesn't interconnect to tournaments. It's not something that's going to... It really is a thing that we thought there would be interest in, but it was disconnected from

things in a way that whenever it came out was fine. It didn't matter when it came out. And there was an idea that had been bouncing around Wizards for a while of half decks. I think originally we had a product for new players. It didn't end up happening. But the idea was you had five 30-card half decks and then you can mix and match any of the 30-card decks to make a deck and play. And they liked that idea. And so Gavin said, well, what if we took that and we applied it to uncards? And then, so it would be a sealed box. And then to juice it up a little bit, we'd make some new cards. And so originally it was

scheduled to be each half deck would have three new cards in that color. And on top of that, we would have some Full Art Lands. I think originally the plan was to do one cycle of Full Art Lands. We ended up doing two cycles of four art lands one in foil, one in non-foil and we also, for every basic land so 12 basic lands per half deck we got a cycle of what we call squirrel lands which are basic lands with new arts

that the artist hid squirrels in them and I don't want to it's fun to find the squirrels so I don't want to tell you where the squirrels are. But go look. The squirrels are sort of hidden in the art. So anyway, the idea was that all the land in the set would be new. So there would be 12 of each of the basic lands, the squirrel lands, and then there would be two cycles of two of each basic land, one foil, one non-foil, of the

four lands. And also we'd have counters. I'm sorry, we'd have creature tokens and stuff, double-sided creature tokens. But the idea was that there would be 15 new cards, a bunch of new basic lands, some of which would be full art, and then we'd reprint stuff from unglued, unhinged, and unstable. And he came to me and said, what do I think?

And I said, I like it. I was on board. I'm like, we're making more un-cards? I'm there. So basically what happened was we had an outside contractor named Gabby who was in charge of compiling all the decks. And then she did some first passes at some card concepting for the new cards. And then I was given the task of overseeing the new card design, since, obviously, I've overseen all the un-cards.

And un-designs are tricky. They're tricky to get right. So anyway, I oversaw the un-designs. And we got greenlit. We officially were a parachute. Now, interestingly, we made the product, and the product was so much fun that everyone was like, oh, we can't stall this too long. So we sort of pulled the cord pretty fast just because we're like, oh, this is so fun.

We should just get this out. So I think we're making another parachute. But anyway, it was a very short-lived parachute. It was kind of like, I have a parachute. You can use it. Pull the cord. Anyway, so that a very short-lived parachute. It was kind of like, I have a parachute. You can use it. Pull the cord. Anyway, so that was the idea. So I'm now going to talk about the 16 new cards.

Notice I say 16. Originally, we were supposed to do 15. I'll get to that. In fact, the last card I'm going to talk about, because it's alphabetically... I'm going by collector order. It's collector order of a last number. It might also be alphabetically the last as well. Okay, so I'm going to start order. It's collector order of Elastin number. It might also be alphabetically Elastin as well. Okay, so I'm going to start with Flavor Judge.

So Flavor Judge costs one and a white, two mana total. It's a 2-2 bird advisor creature, obviously. Tap, choose target spell or ability that targets a permanent you control. Then ask a person outside the game if the story of what will happen makes sense. If they say no, sacrifice Flavor Judge and counter that spell or ability. Okay, so a couple things. First off, this card came about, so we have what we

call the key art, which is that the art, in this case it was the art on the box. Sometimes it's just the art we use to sell the set. And the key art, usually the key art is on the booster box, I guess. Right, usually the key art's on the booster box. If guess. Right, usually the key art's on the booster box. If you ever see a booster box, you can fold it up so that there's like an image there and then the cards.

Normally the key art is the image on the booster box. For our product, because it was a sealed box, the key art was the box image. So the box image and the flavor they were trying to get to was they wanted to get a sense of all three previous unsets. So they took themes, so they ended up having a boxing ring where it was a goblin fighting a squirrel, and then the referee was a chicken. And the idea was that these are themes that have run through all the different sets. Squirrels and goblins and chickens. And so we were just trying to really play up a lot of

un-themes. You know, so and I fell in love with the chicken. I thought the chicken was hilarious. The chicken, he had a little like judge shirt and he was so cute. So once I he had a little, like, judge shirt. And he was so cute.

So, once I saw that key art, and the key art happened earlier, the key art's done earlier, I said, okay, we gotta make a card out of the refereed chicken. He's like, we have to. And so, I think early on, so there's a format, what is it called? Um,

it's a called flavor judge. Um, there's a format where you have a flavor judge and the idea of the format is whenever something happens that you don't think makes sense flavorfully, you can call over a flavor judge and they, and if it's not flavorful, the judge says, not allowed. So the idea is, you have to defend everything you're doing, and things that don't make sense flavorfully can't happen. So it's a format. Flavor magic, I think. So anyway, they have a flavor judge, and I thought the idea of having a flavor judge would be very funny. I think Chris Mooney might have come up with the first concept here for this card. I think I wanted a flavor judge, and I think Chris came up with the execution, I believe. Anyway, so we have a thing in Unstable called Outside Assistance,

where you ask somebody outside the game, and you use them to determine something. So we love the idea that what we're asking the outside person to do was decide, to be the flavor judge. Decide whether something made sense. And so the idea was we made it a little bear, a little tutu. Because a two-man tutu is just playable. And then it has the ability to protect

things. And the idea was that I can activate it to try to protect something and try to stop something from happening if I think it doesn't make flavor sense. If I fail, if the outside person says, oh, it makes sense, then I don't lose stop something from happening if I think it doesn't make flavor sense. If I fail, if the outside person says, oh, it makes sense, then I don't lose the chicken. But if I manage to

stop something, then I lose the chicken. So the idea is the chicken is a two-tip creature that has this ability to sometimes save your creatures. But the real fun in this, this card's not a powerhouse or anything, but the real fun in the card is one of the things that we had fun with outside assistance is trying to figure out how to...

How to make the... How to make the person you're bringing in have some... Like, the neat thing about bringing in an outside person is you have... It brings in some variance to the game in a fun way, in that you have someone who can make a subjective opinion, which is kind of cool. And this card thrives in the subjective opinion.

The other fun thing about this card is no one says you have to pull in somebody that knows magic. In fact, this card's almost more fun if you pull in someone that doesn't know magic and then try to explain what's going on. But anyway, that's what this card came about. It was just us bringing the key art chicken to life. Okay, next. Strutting

Turkey. So three and a white for a 2-2 bird. It's a host creature. When this creature enters the battlefield, exile target creature card with a converted mana cost two or less from your graveyard. If it has augment, combine it with the host you control. Otherwise, put it on the battlefield. Okay, so the

idea here was, we... The product was... had normal magic backs, which meant that we weren't able to do contraptions, because contraptions have a different back. So I wanted to make sure that we could add on to Unstable's other main

mechanic, which was Hosted Augment. So the nice thing about Hosted Augment, it's combinatoric, meaning you get to combine things. So we didn't have a lot of new cars, but I thought it'd be fun to have one host and one augment. And really what we did is we said, okay, we didn't say it had to be any color. The only rule I said is I wanted them to be different colors, not the same color. I wanted to add a host and augment and not necessarily to the same color. So what we did is we looked at all the effects that we had done, because we made a whole bunch of hosts.

So hosts, the way hosts work, for those who don't know, they have an enter the battlefield effect that does something, and then an augment creature you can attach to it, kind of like an aura, but it changes instead of the host, I'll say, when it enters the battlefield effect, and you

change the trigger from when it enters the battlefield to a different trigger. So the trick to making new hosts in augment creatures is finding new effects and new triggers. So this is the host. So we're trying to find a new effect. So one of the things that I wanted to do was I was eager to find an effect that would combo nice with host and augment, meaning I thought it was nice to make another host or augment that would interact in a way that would play nicely with host and augment. And when I looked at all the effects, we wrote all the effects out,

we realized that one of the things we hadn't done was reanimation. And white gets to reanimate small things. And one of the cool things is augments don't have a converted mana cost. So usually, white raises CMC 2 or 3 or 2, usually, and less. So the idea here

was it's going to get small things, but all augments are a converted mana cost of 0. So it lets you get back any augment, because they are technically creatures. And we made it such, the reason you exile it first, so if it's an augment, then you can play it, because if you just put it on the battlefield as an augment,

it would just die right away, because it doesn't have a creature on it. In order to augment, we have to tell you that you can augment. So we do. But the neat thing about this is, if you're just reanimating small creatures, you still can do that.

That's fun. There are a bunch of hosts that are small creatures. But the idea that we then combined it to work with augment, now it just is a really good card to your augment deck because it interacts with all your augment cards. And it allows you to sort of get back augments that you've lost. The other thing is once we decided that's the effect we knew it was going to be in white

and then we spent some time trying to figure out what would be a cool white creature I think we ended up being going with a turkey because we thought it was funny I think we thought it was funny I don't remember exactly we did think for a while was there any creature that made sense with the effect? But it's really a weird effect.

There's nothing natural. So we're like, okay, it's not necessarily going to make... There's no creature that makes sense that it brings back old creatures. And so we just made something funny. Because the host augments the combination, and then we're kind of funny. And so turkeys are funny. So we decided just to make it a turkey. Note that it is a creature bird um one of the things that old that we had done in the old uh unstable back

in the day was um birds whatever type they were so for example there was a chicken theme and so all the chickens were chickens um and so i made the call because we did a thing called a grand creature update many years ago where all the black border non-birds turned into just bird. So instead of being a hawk or being a falcon, you just became a bird. But because the silver border wasn't done back then because they just did black border, the creature types in silver had never changed. So when we were redoing this product and reprinting things, I made the call that we should just

move all birds to birds. So, for example, Chicken-Ola King, which is in this product, which is a Chicken Lord, changed from helping chickens to helping birds and he himself became a bird. So, by the way, Chicken-Ola King is a very strong card. We've now...

The strongest Bird Lord is now Chicken-Ola King. Very strong card. We've now... The strongest bird lord is now Chicken on the King. Very strong card. If you want to play a bird tribal deck and you have access to silver border cards, I would play Chicken on the King. Anyway, so we did make Strutting Turkey a bird. Anything else with this? I think that is it.

Next, Circadian Night Owl. Three white white. For think that is it. Next, Circadian Night Owl. Three white white for a 4-4 Legendary creature. It's a bird knight. It's got Knight Lifelink. So damage dealt by knights you control also causes you to gain that much light. So essentially it gives lifelink to knights, but in a fun way.

And then it has two abilities. For a white mana, Circadian Night Owl gains vigilance until end of turn. Activates this ability only from sunrise to sunset. And for black mana, Circadian Night Owl gains flying until end of turn, activating its ability only from sunset to sunrise. So during the day it has vigilance, during the night it has flying. So some people ask why it's vigilant during the day. The answer was, so obviously owls are nocturnal.

We like the idea that it flies at night because they're nocturnal, and that that's when owls actually fly. That meant we needed to give it some ability in white that made sense, and vigilance seemed to be the best white thing. So the idea is at night it sits in its tree, sort of keeps watch, and at night it leaves its tree because it's nocturnal and flies around. But anyway, that is why.

We thought that it played the nocturnal, it should fly. We talked about swapping them, maybe, you know, maybe it gets, during, but the other thing we liked is, we liked the idea that the white activation cared about day, and the black activation cared about night. That, I mean, from a flavor standpoint, that seemed relevant.

Like, literally, white's a sun, right? So we like the idea that it's a creature that's white and black. Oh, while we're here, let me talk about the enemy commanders. So one of the things that I wanted to do in this product, since we were making new cards, is make some things that we hadn't made that I know people want from Silver Border. One of them is enemy colored legendary creatures. Commanders. We made ally commanders in Unstable because we ended up making factions that were allied

for various reasons. But we had never made allied. There wasn't any ally Silver Border commanders. So I wanted to fix that. The challenge was the product were 530 card monocolored decks. So the solution I came up

with was, okay, what if we make a card that has an activated ability in the color, or I'm sorry, that has an ability, it doesn't have to be activated, but we'll make a card that can function that can function, you know, that can function. Like, if you just have white, this is a 4-4 creature that at least during the day you can give vigilance to. And it has lifelink.

I mean, the knight, it's a knight. So it gives itself lifelink. And so we oh, actually, let me back up a little bit. So anyway, so we knew we wanted to make creatures, so I knew I needed, we cycled them out, and we knew we needed a white creature that had a black activation, and a blue

creature with a red activation, and so on. I think early on, I think Gabby had made a card called Night Owl. We liked the pun. We like sort of nodding to pop culture. The idea of knights that are birds. There's a popular series of books and there's movies and there have been riffs

on this. The idea of birds that serve as knights is something that has shown up in pop culture. And the idea of a night owl just seemed funny because obviously N-I-G-H-T. Night owl is someone who stays up at night. And then when we had to go name him we decided to use S-Y-R from Eldraine Sir. And so I managed to come up with the idea of Circadian because Circadian is the biorhythms. Anyway, this is probably my favorite name that we've ever come up with. Circadian night owl is from a pun standpoint.

I'm very happy with it. Anyway, so we liked the idea that it had two activations, one that cared about day, one that cared about night. We felt that the night was slightly stronger than the day from a perspective, like flying's a little bit stronger than vigilance. We like the idea that it's a night owl, so it's a little bit better at night. So the idea is, it's usable

in mono white. The other thing you'll see is we did help you, you mix your two decks together, so some of the time you might mix the second color in. And if not, we solved that problem. I'll get to that. We also came away for you to help you occasionally activate it in a deck that didn't have that color. But anyway, yeah, we ended up picking Flying because of Vigilance because we needed something in white.

We talked about First Strike. So the options were First Strike. We gave Lifelink... Oh, the reason that we gave Lifelink as the base ability is because it's a black and white creature. Lifelink's in both black and white. It's true that flying is in black and white, but we felt that was okay.

And then so we were left with Vigilance and First Strike, I think. And Vigilance just played better than First Strike. I mean, First Strike's a little more nighty. We got that. We played with First Strike. It just was... I don't know. Vigilance just played better than First Strike. I mean, First Strike's a little more knight-y. We got that. We played with First Strike. It just was... It is... I don't know.

The Vigilance ended up playing better. So, anyway, that is Circadian Night Owl. Next, Alexander Clamilton. So, a 0-4 legendary creature, a Clamfolk Advisor Rebel. Whenever you cast a wordy spell, scry 2. So a spell is wordy if it has four or more lines of rules text.

One R tap, choose target creature you don't control, reveal the top card of your library. Alexander Clamilton gets plus X plus O until end of turn where X is the number of lines of rules text on the revealed card. Alexander Clamilton fights that creature. Okay, so the story of this card

is when Gabby was originally working and doing concepts, one of the things I had said to her was I really wanted a Clamfolk. We had sat down ahead of time, and I'm like, oh, I want to have an enemy cycle thing. I wanted to do a five-color post-augment creature, which we'll get to. I think I had brought up the Night Owl joke.

There's certain things that we brought up and said owl joke. There's just certain things that we brought up and said, there's something here that might be fun. And one of the things I said is I wanted to have a clam folk. That's one of the things I said I wanted to have. So I think the one that, the first pass that Gabby made was called Calamity Jane, which is a play on Calamity Jane, which was a sharpshooter, a woman from the Wild West. The problem with it was, it's just not enough people know Calamity Jane. I went around and asked a little bit, and it was one of those things where the people that knew it thought it was very funny, but not enough people knew Calamity Jane.

So I went to the pit and I said, okay guys, we need a funny, I said, here's where we're going to start. Let's come up with a funny clam name, and then we'll design to match the name. And Chris Mooney pitched Alexander Clamilton, and I literally said, oh, we can stop. We found our name. Now let's figure out what Alexander Clamilton does. We can stop. We found our name.

Now let's figure out what Alexander Clamilton does. So this design was a combination of Chris and Ari Nee. Chris and Ari both were finalists, and Ari won of the Great Designer Search 3. So the real thing is, okay, what do we know about Alexander Hamilton? He's a writer, died in a duel. So we thought it'd be fun to play into those two aspects of him.

So I think Chris was the one that recommended the idea of him caring about wordy spells. So wordy is a mechanic that first showed up in Unhinged that showed up again in Unstable. And wordy just cares about something that has four or more lines of rules text. Doesn't count reminder text. Doesn't count

flavor text. So anything italicized, it doesn't count reminder text. Doesn't count flavor text. So anything italicized, it doesn't count. But the way the rule works is if a line has at least one word of non-italicized rules text, then that counts as a line of rules text. So anyway, Chris came up with the idea

of a Kerm Wordy Spells. And then we knew we wanted some kind of dueling mechanic. And we thought it was cool, because you were activating it in red. This was the blue card, so blue activating red. That it could fight, because green and red have fight. And then Ari came up with the idea of making him a 0-4. And then he gets a boost based on how wordy the card is that you reveal. Which means that his scrying can be relevant,

because if you scry, you can place things atop your library and know that I have a wordy card coming so that I can fight something. Anyway, this card came out great. Oh, the other fun thing was, obviously it's a Clamfolk, because it's a Clam. I think we originally made it a Clamfolk Advisor and then Chris said can we make it a Rebel and we said as long as it fits we can make it a Rebel

and it fit so we made it a Clamfolk Advisor Rebel I think we even squeezed the font size down a little bit to get Rebel in we did have all sorts of fun flavor text by the way for this card I think the one that Chris wrote that we were going to include We did have all sorts of fun flavor text, by the way, for this card. I think the one that Chris wrote that we were going to include was Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Shells Your Story.

But it just didn't fit. This is an awardee card. It just didn't fit. Okay, next. B.O.B. Bob Bevy of Beebles. Three blue blue for legendary planeswalker Bob. And his loyalty has an asterisk.

As Bob, that'd be a Beebles, enters the battlefield, create four one one blue Beeble creature tokens. The number of loyalty tokens on Bob is equal to the number of Beebles you control. Create or sacrifice Beebles whenever Bob gains or loses loyalty. Plus one, up to X target Beebles can't be blocked this turn, where X is the number of cards in your hand. Minus one, draw a card. Okay, so one of the things I said early on was I wanted

to do another Planeswalker, but I wanted to do an un-Planeswalker, right? I wanted to do something that... So I actually went to the franchise team with a bunch of wacky ideas. Some of the wacky ideas of like, maybe we would do that, but one of them was a collective of Beebles, and they're like,

all yours. So we don't do Beebles. A, we don't do Beebles in Black Border because they're a little too silly. And B, the idea of a collective is a little weird for Planeswalkers. I mean, maybe we do a collective of something more serious. We weren't going to do Beebles. So anyway, I had full range to do Beebles. So I came up with the idea many, many, many years ago. Richard Garfield made a game.

You guys remember Gleemax? I don't know if you remember that. We were going to make games online. We were going to have a portal, like a game portal. It was a thing called Gleemax that never ended up working out. But anyway, we made a bunch of games for it. And one of the games was a game called The Goblin Game. And Richard had an idea. I don't think this actually got executed in The Goblin Game, but Richard had an idea, inspired by The Goblin Game, where

the idea was your hit points were the number of goblins you had. And the way you could tell how much life you had was how many goblins you had. And I always thought that was a cool idea. So I wanted to apply that to a planeswalker. I love the idea that the loyalty was the number of beevils you had. It's a collective of beevils that planeswalk across the universe, at least the universe.

And so the idea was that you would enter with some... Whenever you gained loyalty, it made a beevil token, created a beevil token, a 1-1 beevil token, and whenever it lost loyalty, it made a Beeble token, created a Beeble token, a 1-1 Beeble token, and whenever it lost loyalty, you had to sacrifice a Beeble token.

Now, be aware, if you play Beebles, there are other Beebles in the game, if you play other Beebles, those Beebles count for loyalty purposes. So, if I play a bubbling Beeble, let's say, my loyalty for Bob goes up, because that is a Beeble.

And, if I have to sacrifice a b-ball, I can sacrifice any b-ball. It doesn't have to be a token. It could be a real card if I want to. So the idea here was we ended up deciding to have two abilities, because it had the main ability. So one of them was we wanted

a plus ability and a minus ability. So the plus ability made a b-ball, and the minus ability lost you a Beeble. You had to sacrifice a Beeble. So one of Beeble's defining qualities is unblock, that they're hard to block. That's been the one defining Beeble quality. And so we liked the idea that there'd be some quality that determined how hard the Beebles were to block. And the idea is if I'm generating enough Beebles and I make them unblockable, then I can attack with my Beebles.

Then we decided that we wanted the sacrificing of the Beeble to be something relevant that you really would want to do. Draw cards seem clean. The Beebles have always been blue. I just wanted to be a mono-blue card. And draw cards seem like a clean reward, which would help you. And then once we knew that,

we decided, okay, the unblockable thing will be cards in hand. So the idea is, as you sacrifice beables to get more cards in your hand, you then enable the other beables you have left to make them unblockable and make it easier to make them unblockable. The other thing was,

originally, it was legendary planeswalker Bevy of Beables. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. No one's going to refer to this as Bevy of Beebles. This is Bob. And so I say, come on, legendary creature Bob. So anyway, I believe you call him Bob. I mean, technically Bob stands for Bevy of Beebles. But kind of like BFM stands for Big Furry Monster, but you call him BFM. So I expect people to call him Bob. Okay, next, Rings of El.

Two blue blue. It's an enchantment. So four mana total, two which is blue enchantment. As rings a bell, enters the battlefield, choose a word with four more letters. As you say the chosen word for the first time each turn, an opponent may ring or imitate a bell within five seconds. When no opponent does, draw a card. Okay, so this

there's a card called Goblin Swat Team that I always liked. So Goblin Swat Team was if you's a card called Goblin Swat Team that I always liked. So Goblin Swat Team was, if you could say the words Goblin Swat Team without your opponent being aware of it, like they had five seconds to swat the card. And I always thought that was a fun card, so I wanted to make a little more broad, open-ended version of that card. And so the idea is that I get to set the word, and then if my opponent doesn't catch me saying the word once per turn. So the idea is once I try it once a turn, that's it. I

can't try it again. So once per turn, I can try to sneak this word in conversation, and if my opponent doesn't notice, then I get to draw a card. So really the little game you're playing is, okay, I'm going to say some word. You've got to be vigilant of it. And if I say that word, but now the nice thing about this, unlike gotcha,

and we didn't end up using any gotcha cards, by the way, because gotcha was a mistake. Gotcha keeps you from interacting, keeps you from talking. Rings a bell, makes you talk. In fact, makes you want to talk. And talking more fun than from talking. Rings a bell, makes you talk! In fact, makes you want to talk. And talking more fun than not talking.

And this card is actually... It is... To execute it properly requires some subtlety that it's not just like I say the word every turn. They'll just be vigilant of that. I need to pick a word that's a little harder to track. And then I need to talk... If I try to do it every turn, I'll remind them every turn that they have to be vigilant. But if I sort of let

a turn or two go by where I'm just focusing on the things, I can maybe sneak it in calmly in a way they don't recognize and I can draw the card. So, I love the idea that originally in Goblin Swat you had to swat the card. I like something that has a little more

audio to it. And so originally, when I originally made the card. I liked something that was a little more audio to it. And so originally, when I originally made the card, I was just like, go get a bell. And, because I imagined like a little bell, like when you go to a hotel and you ring the bell, that's what I imagined, one of those bells. And, but I realized that, okay, I've got to write this so if you don't have a bell.

So we then said, okay, well, either ring a bell or imitate a bell. I think originally it said for you to go ding. The original version said either ring a bell or go ding. This one just sort of says imitate a bell. Imply that, you know, whatever bell sign you want to make. Ding, I would recommend. But I would say, by the way, if you're going to play with this card,

ring a bell. Especially the little bell like at a hotel. Like, ding! That'd be awesome. Anyway, and then once we decided to have the bell incorporated into it, having the name just make reference to that. So it rings a bell. And it rings a bell as an expression means it's familiar.

So the idea that I have a word that I keep saying. Anyway, I thought that was a clever name. I like my name. Okay. Okay, next. A Cornelia fashionable filter. Three and a black for a 3-3 legendary squirrel creature. Whenever you cast a spell with a squirrel in its art,

you get an acorn counter. The little symbol of an acorn. Whenever a squirrel you control enters the in its art, you get an acorn counter, the little symbol of an acorn. Whenever a squirrel you control enters the battlefield or dies, you get an acorn counter. So two black tap, pay X acorn counters. Target creature gets minus X, minus X to wind or turn. Two green tap, pay X acorn counters. Target creature gets plus X, plus X to wind or turn. Okay, so I knew that I wanted to have... One of the things that Unstable didn't do

that a lot of people have been asking for is a Squirrel Commander. So I knew I wanted to make a Squirrel... And a Squirrel Commander that not only was a Legendary Squirrel, but cared about squirrels. And so I knew I needed to make that. I knew it needed to be black and green because black and green are the colors that squirrels are in.

And I was doing enemy colors. The way it ended up working out when we mapped it out was that black had a green activation. So that had, like, yes, there's more squirrels in green than there are in black. So, like, in a vacuum, probably would be a green card with a black activation. But by the way our cycle worked out,

it had to be a black card with a black activation. But by the way our cycle worked out, it had to be a black card with a green activation. So I was trying to find a way to reward you for playing squirrels. And I also recognized there was another problem, which was there's not that many squirrels. Like, let's say you're going to make a squirrel commander deck. I think there's like 22 cards that are like our squirrels or make squirrels.

There's a few other cards that generically make tokens. So those can make squirrels, like Bulrush Laboratory, stuff like that. So there's a few other cards also that can make squirrels. But there's not enough to fill out an entire deck with. So I came up with the idea of not just rewarding

squirrels, little squirrels, but also cards that picture squirrels. Because caring about art is not something that Black Border can do, but Silver Border can and does. So I thought it was fun to care about that. And like, for example, there was a card,

Goblin Habit Asher in Unstable, that cared about hats. And that was a fun card. So anyway, I like the idea of caring about art. It just made more cards relevant for the Squirrel deck. Now, given, yes, it only carries about green and black cards because it's a green and black commander. But there's a number of green and black cards

that have squirrels in them. And so it's another little task to head out to find. And then the idea was, I love the idea that you gain a counter. By the way, originally I just had it be, I think I just had it be an Ac a counter. By the way, originally, I just had it be, I think I just had it be an acorn counter. And then James Arnold, who does a lot of our graphics, said, well, wouldn't it be fun if, like, Energy,

we made it a counter, like a physical, and they made a little acorn symbol, which is awesome. And then the idea I liked was, you acquired these counters, and then there were two activities, one in black and one in green, so that you had different ways to use it. Once I knew we were in black and green, I liked the idea of, is there something that feels connective?

Either the two things work together, or the two things feel connected to each other. And then it dawned on me that I could do minus X, minus X, and plus X, plus X. So the idea is, if you're playing this in mono black, like in the half deck or something, okay, look, play squirrels, she collects squirrels, and she can kill things. And then, if you have green, you also can make things bigger. I will admit that in the squirrel deck, there's more squirrels in green than there are in black. So it is not...

Now, the good news is if you play a card that is a squirrel that has a squirrel in the art, the advantage there is you get an acorn because it's in the art, you get an acorn for coming into play, and you'll later get an acorn when it leaves. So a squirrel, which most likely is pictured a squirrel in it,

gives you three counters. And then if you happen to get a squirrel that doesn't picture a squirrel, which is harder to do, but there might be one or two, uh, it might be uh, something more like I'm something that generates squirrels, like Vulva's Laboratory, I would get two counters. And then if I have something, you know, um,

like the, what's the plus seven plus seven that has a giant squirrel? Uh, is it Monstrous Squirrel? No, it's got a different name. Anyway, um, oh, Mitofox, Mitofox, that has a giant squirrel. Uh, thatrous Squirrel? No, it's got a different name. Anyway, oh, Mitovox. Mitovox, that has a giant squirrel. That will get you one counter. Anyway, I was happy with how this came out. Originally, the name of the card, by the way,

was A Cornelia Goth Squirrel, as in Goth Girl. But we realized that different people pronounce squirrels differently. There's a lot of accents, and that not everybody got Squirrel Girl. How I say it rhymes, but not everybody says it that way. Also, by the way, I was looking for a name

for the creature and I like the idea of taking a squirrel word, like finding a name and a squirrel name and combining them together. And then when I realized that acorn started with C-O-R-N, I'm like, oh, is there any names that start with C?

And so there was Cornelia and Cornelius. And so I decided I ended up liking Cornelius. It sounded better to me. So I made a Cornelia. I love her name. So anyway, I'm very happy with her name. And it really is a squirrel word with a name. So I thought that was fun.

Okay, next. Bat. So it's a creature. It's a bat. It's a bat. That's an augment. So it grants plus one, plus one. It is flying. At the beginning of each end step,

if an opponent lost three or more life this turn, and then it's augmented as one and a black. And if you augment it, you can reveal it from hand, combine it with target host, and you augment only as a sorcery. So we knew we wanted to do an augment. Somehow I really got in my head that it would be funny to do a bat. It combines with other cards in very fun ways.

And so I think I said early on that I thought bat was funny. Once again, we went and looked at all the inputs to figure out what inputs we hadn't done. And the idea here was that black causes loss of life. And so, and damage does loss of life, too. So we had the idea of, there was another one that cared

if you damaged them, and now it's like, well, if you do enough damage, but we can do a bigger effect. Well, I'm upset. We can make the creature a little bit better it grants flying and plus one plus one so it enhances your creature in a fun way and then the effect doesn't happen quite as often

but you're enhancing your creature so that has value to it and anyway I think I think we came up with the idea of doing bat pretty early on and when I was looking at what abilities we could do this made sense because the idea of vampire bats and they suck out your blood and stuff

felt kind of like Lost in Life made sense with a bat. So I like that. Next, Infernius Bonington III, Esquire. Ten and a black, so 11 mana total. One of which is black. It's a 9-9 creature, a demon beast grandchild. So demons crossed off and beasts is there, and beasts crossed off and demons

is there. I'll get to that in a second. Flying first strike, trample haste. The spell costs three less to cast for each card you reveal this turn. When Inferno is spawned into the third esquire, enters the battlefield, you may say, I'm here. If you do, it deals three damage to target player. Okay, so there is a card in Unglued

called Infernal Spawn of Evil based on a sketch that Ron Spencer had sent in for another card as a joke. I mean, he was doing some nasty creature and sent in this little mouse sipping cocoa. We thought that was very funny, and so we used that. You know, we... When I was making Unglue, I said,

oh, we've got to use that art to run Spencer. Please, please can you make this art? He said, sure. Then in Unhinged, we did Infernal Spawn of Infernal Spawn of Evil, which was Infernal Spawn of Evil and their son. So father and son. We had talked about doing the third one in Unstable. We didn't come up with a design that worked.

And, um, but a lot of people are like, oh, I can't believe you didn't do the third. And so that is one of the things that people most said they were sad to not see in Unstable. So I decided to make it. Of course, we went to Ron Spencer, who once again nailed it. Um, we didn't have the space to put Infernal Spawn of Infernal Spawn of Infernal Spawn of Evil. We talked about it. And then someone came up with Infernal Spawning of Spawnington III Esquire. We thought that was funny.

And it fit on the line. We knew... I knew that I had a... One of the things that we're trying to do is when you're making a third card in a series, you have to build on it. The first one was a 7-7. The next one was an 8-8. This had to be a 9-9.

The first one... I think it said. The next one was an 8-8. This had to be a 9-9. The first one, I think it said demon and demon was crossed off and said beast. The second one was beast and it was crossed off and said demon, which was us making fun

of the fact that when Unloose first came out, we had got rid of the demons and we had changed demons to other things. So instead of demon, it was beast. And the second one,

we made fun of that demons were back. So instead of beast, it's not going to be demon again. So this one both has beast crossed off as demon and demon crossed off as beast, referring to both of those before. And grandchild, just to tie in that, yeah, it's

a grandchild. And then flying first strike, trample, haste. The first one, I don't remember exactly. The first one had two of those abilities. The second one had three of those abilities. Each time we add another ability, meaning they've inherited from

they've inherited the ability from their parents, from the grandparent parent. They inherited the ability and they got something new. And then the tricky thing is Infernal Spawn of Evil could trigger from being in your hand. You would say, I'm coming.

And then the Infernal Spawn of Evil could trigger from being in your hand. You would say, I'm coming. And then the Infernal Spawn of Infernal Spawn of Evil could trigger from your library. I'm coming too. And so we like the idea that this one does something when it shows up. So it says, I'm here. And so the idea is when it shows up, it does damage. And then each one costs more than the one before it. So we had to go up in the cost.

But we gave it an ability to help you and because the other cards reveal themselves, to make this card play with those cards, we said okay, well I get a discount for revealing things so, if you're playing with Infernal Spawn of Evil or Infernal Spawn of Infernal Spawn of Evil it helps you make this cheaper to get it out

so I like it that all of them now play together in a way that's kind of fun okay next So I like it that all of them now play together in a way that's kind of fun. Okay. Next. Abstract and Guan Art. So one of the themes, so we were trying to do themes from all three, from all three unsets.

And so this is a, like I talked earlier about about doing the clams that was from Unglued. One of the themes from Unhinged... Unhinged was kind of tricky because the major mechanic was gotcha. I ended up not liking gotcha. I think it was a mistake. So I didn't want to bring gotcha back. We also had fractions, and fractions

I think were a half. Fractions didn't quite work out as well as I'd hoped. They were a little harder to work, so we didn't end up doing fractions here either. What could we do? Well, one other thing we had in Unhinged was caring about artists. Now, a lot of the ones in Unhinged want you to play the same artist, but I wanted this to work within this product where I couldn't guarantee you'd have the same artist. I knew you wouldn't have the same artist, but I wanted this to work within this product where I couldn't guarantee you'd have the same artist. I knew you wouldn't have the same artist. So instead, this one cares about having different artists.

So when you build the Abstract Iguan Art deck, you want to have lots of different artists. You don't want all the same artists. Okay, so it's one and a red. It's a one one. It's a creature, Art Lizard. Whenever you cast a spell, note the first letter of its artist's name. If that letter wasn't already noted, put a plus one on it or an abstract one on it.

Okay, so the idea is every time I play a spell, assuming the spell I play, so when it says the first letter, whatever its name of the artist is, whether they have one name or two names, whatever the first letter in the name is, if they only go by one name, then the first letter of that name. It's not saying the first letter of the first name. It's saying the first letter in the name is. If they only go by one name, then the first letter of that name. It's not saying the first letter of the first name. It's saying the first letter of the name. So whatever the artist's name as recorded on the card. So if your name is Mark Rosewater,

because he designed the card, or I'm sorry, he illustrated the card once, then it would be M. But let's say the next time, let's say I somehow call me back and I get a new R. And next time I'm just Rosewater. That would be an R because it's the first letter in that. And you literally

have to look at the name of the card. So if someone uses a pseudonym or changes how they refer to themselves, it's literally the credit on the card. If more than one artist uses the card, you get to do the first letter of each of the artists. So yes, this card loves cards illustrated by more than one artist. Not a lot of those in Magic, but there are some.

And then the idea is you record it, and the idea is, over time, it gets bigger, and what it wants you to do is build a deck using as many different letters as you can, spread out the artists. So it's a really, I love having very weird, quirky asks because it definitely gives you something where you're doing something a little different. And... Anyway, the...

This card is... I mean, obviously people play well in the deck. I mean, one of the challenges, by the way, of this product was I was trying to make cards that I wanted people to play with and build decks around. The challenge is it also existed in this deck. Like, A. Cornelia has this issue, too, which is she really, really wants lots of squirrels.

Well, this product has some squirrels, especially if you play black and green together. But it's not infinite squirrels. And so, you know, A. Cornelia is okay in this product, but she's way, way better if you go build something with her. Aptric Aguano was similar in that, to optimize it, you really want to build a deck around it. But, but, because there's a lot of different artists in these decks, I mean, Aguano will play just fine in the deck. I mean, A Cornelia is a little more of a challenge, but I really, really wanted a Squirrel Lord. So, I tried as much as I can to make the cards playable in the deck product that they're

being played in, obviously, but I also kept an eye to, it was okay to make cards that also sort of nodded towards something bigger. You know what I'm saying? I thought that would be okay. Anyway, so I'm almost to work here. I originally thought this was going to be one podcast, um, but as I'm, I'm almost to work, and I'm at 40 minutes, so, uh, this is not gonna be one podcast, so I am going to, uh, just wrap up here, I will do the rest of the cards next time, so I have the rest of red, I have green, I have a land to talk about, and also there's a few

other stories, I will, when I, next time, there's a few larger stories that I can talk about a little bit about the sets, I will tell those as well. Anyway, I hope, I mean by the time this comes out, oh actually, actually, I actually timed this correctly, I think this is going to come out around the time that you can purchase the product. Because I got a little behind. Normally I'm like eight weeks ahead, but because of vacation I'm currently like three, four weeks ahead. I'm working to get

farther ahead again. Which means that this is going to come out close to... I mean, I don't know whether it's the week before, the week after, but sometime around the product coming out. The reason I just sort of a little bit of a pitch is this is a very fun product. If you have never played an unset,

if you've played an unset, there's so much un-goodies in this. Like, there's 16 brand new cards. Every single basic land is brand new in this set, including full art and squirrel basic lands. And we spent a lot of time handpicking

really fun reprints. I know Chris Mooney and Max McCall worked really hard on, and Gabby worked really hard on making sure we had the right combination of cards from the past. Gabby spent a lot of time picking themes for the decks and finding themes, trying to find themes that went through different sets.

Like, one of the challenges is each unset, I mean, there's a few overlaps, but each unset really has its own space it's playing in. So finding things where you can get correlation between them, which is a lot of fun, by the way. It's other than in sort of unconstructed, you know, there's not a lot of times you get to play different uncards together.

sort of unconstructed, you know, there's not a lot of times you get to play different uncards together, and so, and the combining the decks together is fun, and it really is something that, if you've never played, it's fun. I would highly recommend it. So anyway, there's so much goodies here, there's really fun reprints, and there is, I mean,'s really fun reprints, and there is... I mean, I playtest this product, and it brings a smile to my face every time. So, if you are an un-fan... Like, how can you not get this?

If you are not an un-fan, it's all... Once you buy the box, it's everything you need to play. You can keep playing. I mean, unsets already have a lot of variants built into them, but also, because you can mix and match with different decks, there's lots of things that you can do. It is a very, very fun experience. So for fans, of course, you should get it. For non-fans, this is a great way to sample Unsets. Anyway, I will be back next time talking about the rest of the cards.

Like I said, this was a smaller product than most. I was only making what ended up being 16 cards, but it was definitely a lot of fun to do. Hopefully my enthusiasm comes through as I describe all the cards. But anyway, I have just drove into the parking lot.

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. So guys, I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. And obviously we'll have another one following this, talking about the rest of the cards. Anyway, bye-bye and I'll see you guys next time.