Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #723: Theros Beyond Death Cards, Part 1

Episode Date: March 20, 2020

This is the first part of a series (of five) of card-by-card design stories from Theros Beyond Death.

I'm pulling up my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so I'm going to start talking about the cards from Theros Beyond Death. I've already done the podcast where I talked about the history of the set, but now I'm going to go in-depth talking about individual card designs. So we're going to start with Archon of Sun's Grace. So two white, white. So four mana total. Two witches white. It's a 3-4 creature in Archon of Sun's Grace. So two white, white, so four mana total, two witches white. It's a 3-4 creature in Archon. It is flying and lifelink. Pegasus creatures you control have lifelink. And then Constellation. Whenever an enchantment enters the battlefield under your control, create a 2-2 white Pegasus creature tokens with flying. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about Pegasus and Constellation.

A couple things. One is, so I talked about when we decided to go back that we wanted to have an enchantment matter mechanic. Constellation had been what was in Journey into Nyx. We did explore other things, but we found that Constellation seemed to do the best job. One of the tricky things about enchantments is, well, enchantment

creatures easily get put in the graveyard, because it's not that hard to get creatures in the graveyard. It's a little bit trickier to get other enchantments in the graveyard, and it limits some of the interactions that we had. Now, the other problem we ran into was

in Journey into Nyx, all of Constellation was put on enchantments. And it created this play design issue where everything kind of snowballed because the things you needed to trigger were themselves on it. And so, we had two

options coming into the set. One was, we could do the same thing, but the effects had to be very, very small because they self-triggered and snowballed. It just meant we'd have to make the effects super minimal. Or we could make them larger effects, but we'd have to put them on things that themselves weren't enchantments.

And what that meant is it made you have to limit a little bit what you put in the deck, meaning, oh, my, this is what we now call AB. The constellation mechanics in this set are, oh, well, you need some constellation mechanics, but you also need enchantments, and the constellation mechanics aren't the enchantments. And so it lets you create a balance between how many enchantments do I want, and then how many constellations do I want. The plus side is this version let us make pretty powerful constellations. For example, you get a 2-2 flying creature every turn.

That's pretty good. Every enchantment gives you a 2-2 flying creature. The other thing going on here on this particular card is... Pegasus. Pegasus. One of the things that happened in early magic is there are definitely some fantasy creatures that showed up. You know, Pegasus showed up pretty early. But because early on in magic, it was a little more hard-edged,

some of the creatures that were a little softer, like Pegasus and unicorns, we weren't quite as aggressive with. And I think in recent times, we're like, you know what? No! You know, part of fantasy is embracing all the different aspects of fantasy, and part of growing the audience is, you know... Yes, there's people that like more heart-age fantasy,

but there's people that like softer fantasy. We should make that stuff. And we don't have to... We can make that stuff powerful as well. So here's us trying to sort of give Pegasus, this card not only is it a constellation card, it also can function as a Pegasus card, and that it rewards Pegasus, so there's, there's a, this card has a bunch of different functions to it, so anyway, I like this card,, it definitely is a fun card, and a card to encourage you to play enchantments,

and or play Pegasus, depending on what you're trying to do. Uh, next, Commanding Presence. So, Commanding Presence costs three and a white. Uh, it is an enchantment, an aura, uh, enchant creature. Uh, enchanted creature gets plus two plus two and has first strike and, quote, whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player create a 1-1 human soldier creature token. So one of the problems in general for auras is a card disadvantage problem. So the idea is I play an aura and I

put it on my creature. If you later destroy my creature, not only am I losing the card that is my creature, but I'm losing the card that is my aura. And so the idea, and one of the issues aura have always had, is that auras have been, from a tournament level standpoint at least, hard to play just because that card disadvantage of them can be pretty strong. So one of the things we've tried to do over the years is find reasons and encouragement to help you with that.

So a good example here is, yes, this card makes your creature better, but every time you deal combat damage, you're also generating a permanent. And that is something to help offset the card disadvantage, is that if I can hit you a number of times, you get a bunch of creatures. Even if you later kill my creature and this enchantment with it, it still has netted me a bunch of creatures, which while not technically card advantages or tokens, pseudo card advantage. One second, I got a sneeze. Sorry. Am I going to sneeze? Okay, maybe I'm going to sneeze in a second.

I averted my sneeze. Okay. Next up. Dawn Evangel. So, two and a white. Sorry. Two and a white for a 2-3 enchantment creature, human cleric. Whenever a creature dies, if an aura you control was attached to it,

return target creature cards from a mana cost two or less from your graveyard to your hand. Okay, once again, we are trying to find a way to help offset auras. And so the idea here is, it says whenever a creature with an aura dies, there's a trigger. It creates an effect. And the effect is, you get to return a small, a cheap creature back to your hand. This is one of White's abilities. Black is number one in reanimation. Black can really reanimate anything or also get creature cards back to your hand.

White is king of the small things. So White can reanimate and or raise dead small creatures. Usually we define that as creatures that are either two or less or three or less, depending on what the set is. This one's doing two or less. And the idea is white is the color of the army of the small creatures, and getting back small things are kind of another way for us to draw them, essentially. It's harder to say, draw a small creature,

than it is to just go get back a small creature. And so this card is doing a bunch of different things. One of the big things it's trying to do is really encourage you to play more auras because it's going to offset the auras for you. Like one of the dangerous things about auras is this idea that I'm going to lose my card advantage, so this is offsetting the card advantage.

Okay, next. Daxos, Blessed by the Sun. So, white, white. So, two mana total, both of which are white. It's a legendary enchantment creature demigod. Two for power and asterisk for toughness. And, Daxos' toughness is equal to your devotion to white. And then whenever another creature you control enters the battlefield or dies, you gain one life.

Okay, so there's a bunch of stuff going on here. First off, Daxos, if you ever read the novella that Jenna Helen wrote for Original Theros, Daxos fell in love with Elspeth. And he died. And this is, part of the story is he making his way out from

the underworld as well. And he is, there's a cycle of demigods in the set. So we were looking for things that we had not done in Theros. And one of the places that we... I had made a Hercules card. One of the big things in Greek mythology

is that the gods seem to like getting it on with the mortals. And a demigod is someone who is half god, half mortal. So the idea is they're not quite a god, but they're a little more than a human. They're a demigod. And we really hadn't done anything with demigods. So this time around, we made a cycle of demigods. The demigods are...

It's an uncommon cycle. All of them are enchantment creatures, and all of them have devotion. But either their power or their toughness is equal to their devotion. It varies from demigod to demigod. Daxos is obviously equal to his toughness. Also,

he's gaining you life as you play more creatures. Obviously, each of the demigods go really well with the strategy of that color. White is all about playing lots of creatures, lots of small creatures, normally, although later it plays bigger creatures. And the idea is you get a Daxos, he comes out pretty quick, he's only two mana, and he's especially good in a mono-white deck, he's Devotion. The reason he's double-white mana

is to help him with his Devotion, and help you in the deck. He mostly wants to be played in a a mono-white or a mainly white deck. So, he very consciously is two white mana.

Okay, next. Daybreak Chimera. Three white white. So, five mana total, two of which is white. It's a 3-3 Chimera. Three white white. So five mana total, two of which is white. It's a 3-3 Chimera. It's a creature. This spell costs X less to cast, where X is your devotion to white. And it has flying. It's a 3-3 flying creature.

So the idea is that this is a five mana creature, but it's actually a two mana creature if you have three, among your-mana creature if you have three, among your permanents, if you have three white mana symbols there. So last time, by the way, we didn't do a lot of devotion in white. Last time, I think devotion was centered in

mostly black and green. But this time, it made sense, by the way, the reason we did that was mechanical. There's no reason philosophically that white devotion can't be in white from a philosophical standpoint. White is definitely one of the colors, for example, that most... It's most devoted to things. So we decided to mix it up this time.

Add some white devotion in. And this card is kind of nice because... Look, it's a 3-3 flyer. And the cheaper you get it, the better. And the idea is... Hey, in a deck that's a little bit white, not bad if you can make this one or two mana cheaper that's not bad but in a deck that's heavy white and you're getting this out quickly this is it's a pretty good bargain. One of the nice things about devotion by the way as a mechanical standpoint is really it's all about giving you a number

to care about that number in some way. And there's a bunch of different ways to care about the number. Cost reduction. I don't know if we did any cost reduction in the original Theros. I don't remember off the top of my mind doing that. I mean, we might have. I don't remember doing that. So anyway, it's just another way to play around with devotion.

Devotion is a pretty flexible mechanic. Because there's a lot, I mean, there's a lot of effects tied to numbers, and so there's definitely things that you can do there. Okay, next. Dreadful Apathy, two and a white. It's an enchantment in Hora, enchant creature. Enchanted creature can't attack or block, and two white, exile enchanted creature. Okay, so this one's playing around and kind of joining two different cards. One is that white gets Pacifisms. And the second is that white expensively can get cards that exile Creatures.

So this is kind of cutting the difference. The idea is for four white, white, so for six mana, although spread out over multiple turns, you can just exile a creature. But, instead of having to wait until you get to that much mana, it allows you to incapacitate the creature. Uh, so, if I put it on, if I put my deadly apathy, dreadful apathy on something, it's a pacifism, right? They can't attack or block. Now, it costs a little bit more than pacifism. Pacifism usually costs one and a white. But you later have the ability to spend mana to get rid of the creature.

So if I want to incapacitate it, it's great. And then later, or even the next turn, if not being able to attack or block is not enough of an answer, because maybe it has a trigger or activated ability or something, that it's very valuable, even though it can't attack or block, you can take advantage of that. And the flexibility is kind of cool. I like the idea of passivisms that over time you can upgrade. It's kind of cool. Okay, next.

Elspeth Conquers Death. Three white white. Enchantment, Saga. Chapter 1. Exile target permanent and opponent controlled with converted mana costs 3 or greater. Chapter 2. Non-creature spells your opponent casts cost 2 more to cast until your next turn.

Chapter 3. Return target creature or Planeswalker card for your graveyard to the battlefield. Put a plus or plus encounter or a loyalty counter on it. Okay, so. One of the things... Original Dominaria had sagas

we liked them the players liked them we spent a lot of time thinking about where sagas should return and what One of Us for Theros as I explained

in the Theros podcast is it needs to be a world where there's stories to tell either because we've been there before and there's stories

from our previous visits visit or or visits, and a world in which it's playing in top-down space where you know the myths and stories that it's from. So, Theros, we've been there before, there are stories to tell, and it's based on top-down Greek mythology, which are stories that players actually do know. Also, it is a set that cares about enchantments and it's an enchantment matter set. So all those mixed together made Saigas a great choice here. So this story is telling the story not of Greek mythology

but of the previous set. So in the previous set, Elspeth was our hero and we wanted her to go on a, tell the story, sort of a Greek mythological story. So she's recruited by a god. She ends up having to kill a god herself. And then, because, you know,

Heliod cannot allow a mortal to kill a god, go unpunished, Heliod kills her. Now, we were careful when we did the story to make sure that there was an underworld and communicated that she was going to the underworld. So, there were a lot of Elspeth fans. We didn't want to think we were forever abandoning or killing Elspeth. We did, I guess, abandon her a little while because she was trapped in the underworld. But anyway, this story is trying to tell her death. So, how do you tell her death? Okay, well, first off,

it kills something. Um, now, in order to sort of limit things, um, it, it's making you kill something bigger, so it's not killing smaller things, but I'll tell you something bigger, I guess. Um, and then it sort of delays things. She's stuck in the underworld, so it makes it a little bit harder for you to play some spells, not good spells, and then the glorious return. She gets out, and now does she get out, but there's a little bit harder for you to play some spells. Not creature spells. And then, the glorious return. She gets out. And not only does she get out, but there's a little reward for her getting out. Now, we could have just said a planeswalker gets out.

Because the story of Elbeth is the planeswalker gets out. But we need this saga to be a little more generally useful. So, the idea was, much like Elbeth escaped, maybe your creature escapes. And escape is a mechanic option. So, this is, well, not technically escape. Very escape-y in that you're getting out of the graveyard. Okay, now speaking of Elspeth, let's get to Elspeth, Sun's Nemesis. Two white, white, so four mana total.

Two witches white. Legendary planeswalker, Elspeth. Loyalty, five. First ability, minus one loyalty. Up to two target creatures you control each turn. Get plus two, plus one until end of turn. Minus two ability. Create two one, one human, white creature soldier tokens.

Oh, wait, wait, wait a minute. Oh, yeah, right, right, right. Sorry. Minus two. Create two one, one white human creature soldier tokens. Sorry. Minus three loyalty. You gain five life.

And escape four white, white. Exile four of the cards from your graveyard. And then you can cast the defensive escape. So the idea is that you cast her for four mana, she gets on there, she has five loyalty, so you can, all her abilities are negative loyalty abilities,

so minus one, minus two, and minus three. So obviously you can do any combination over the turn to add up to the five. You can do minus two, minus three, for example. You can do minus one, minus one, minus three. You can do minus one, minus one, minus one, minus two. You can do minus one, minus 3, for example. You can do minus 1, minus 1, minus 3. You can do minus 1, minus 1, minus 1, minus 2. You can do minus 1, minus 2, minus 2. You have a lot of different options there. The idea being that because

she has escape, you know, the way you sort of refill her is by escaping. So for 6 mana, you get to return her. I mean, it also requires excelling 4 cards from your graveyard. So I mean, it also requires exiling four cards from your graveyard. So, I mean, there's a cost to keep you from easily being able to do it too many times. But, I mean, you should be able to do it once and probably twice.

Now, she was designed to be a slower card. Obviously, escape works well. I mean, it's six mana to escape. She, the card was designed to be in a slower, controlling deck. I don't know, right now in tournaments there is that slower, controlling deck, at least in the standard. So she might not be seeing lots of play, but that's what she was designed to be.

And the real question is, does that archetype exist for her to be played in? I like a lot in the design that there's no plus. The idea, essentially, is the plus is the escape. The one thing we did do that we got some criticism for, which I will acknowledge, okay, is we

her minus three on some level makes a lot of sense in the control deck where you would play her, but is a little less splashy and so a lot of people are like the minus one, minus two seemed more impactful to people than minus three.

So like, that's the minus three. So people felt a little bit let down by her ultimate, although not quite an ultimate in a traditional sense. I don't know whether the minus three should have been more splashy. I do think in a deck that needs to use her, it actually is a very useful ability. But I get the sense from people reading it,, it actually is a very useful ability. But I get

the sense from people reading it, it doesn't seem quite as useful as it is. Anyway, I hope there are formats that have some slower white components where she makes sense in, because she is a fun card. But, anyway, okay, next, let's talk

about the god who killed her. Heliod. So Heliod's son crowned. Two and a white, so it's three mana total, one of which is white. He's a legendary enchantment creature god. And that barely fits on the creature type line. 5-5. He's indestructible.

As long as your devotion to white is less than 5, Heliod isn't a creature. Whenever you gain life, put a plus one, plus one counter on target creature or enchantment you control. And then one in white activated ability. Another target creature gains life link until end of turn. Okay, so first off, the gods were back. We made a decision to...

We didn't have room for all 15 gods. That's a lot of gods. Last time we spread them out over three sets. We decided to do the five major gods, plus we did the mystery Red Gearing God you hadn't met before, which I'll get to. And we did, in the buy-a-box, Athreos is the guardian of the underworld,

so it made sense to have him be the Biobox. Okay, so when we brought him back, there was a couple sort of... I mean, there are certain givens from the previous time we did the gods. So number one, they're enchantment creatures. The gods themselves, one of the things we do in Theros,

and the reason that Theros is enchantment matters in heavily enchantment, is that the enchantments represent the influence of the gods. The gods themselves are enchantments, and the cool thing that happens is, when you first play them, until you have the devotion to white that you need, they essentially just exist as an enchantment. And then, they turn into a creature. Note that this only really works if they have two creature types

because if they're a creature but they're not a creature until something happens, what are they? And that becomes kind of fuzzy. Being enchantment creatures means they get to be enchantments. Also, legendary enchantment creature God

literally just barely fits on the line. So making something legendary has to be it's a God. Enchantment creature has to be because it's a god and a god. So, I mean, if god was a slightly longer word, we'd have some trouble. Also, the gods were all indestructible. That was true last time.

We decided that again. We have decided that not all gods in all worlds need to be indestructible. It is tricky to design them. Now, the one nice thing about these gods is, because they turn on and off, you can destroy things that knock down their devotion. So one of the ways to deal with the creature is to lower their devotion. So there's interaction with the board that can lower they can get rid of in some sense. I mean, they can come back later. And

we kept the same devotion level it was five last time, it's five this time so the idea is you need a devotion to five I think all the gods have one mana in their symbol so you need four more to turn them into a creature and the idea is they're pretty cheap and one of the cool things about them turning into the creature is we get to make pretty powerful creatures

but because you have to get to a to a certain state, hey, normally on turn three, you're not going to have five white mana symbols. Is it even possible? It's not really possible. Without shenanigans, it's not possible. You could guess a one drop that's one white mana, two drop that's two white mana, and a three drop that is...

Which means on the fourth turn, it's possible that you can attack with him with Heliod or any of the gods. On the first turn, that you can attack with him, with Heliod or any of the gods. On the first turn, that you could attack with him. That is possible. Okay, the next thing is, they basically need two abilities. One is a static ability, and one is... Well, they have two abilities.

Not all of them necessarily are static and triggered. In this case, one is a triggered ability and one is an activated ability. So whenever you gain life, put a plus one counter on target creature or enchantment you control. So the idea there is it's sort of a life reward card. And then as you gain life, it's just powering up your things. The reason it says enchantment you control is you might want to put her on Heliad. And Heliad might not be a creature yet. Or you might want to put her on another god

that's not a creature yet. So that's why it says a creature or enchantment. There are enchantments that can turn into... There also are a few enchantments that turn into creatures. But anyway, unless you put them... So if you're enchantment, later it becomes a creature.

And with stuff like Heliad, that's possible. And that's why it says creature or enchantment. Then the activated ability grants lifelink to things, and the reason that is valuable is you care about life gain. That whenever you gain life, and that's, it's not per one life you get, but chunk of life you get. So, anyway, this sort of feeds together that not only does life help make your things bigger,

but this can grant things life. So if you want to get your creatures, this is meant to work really well with a deck where you can get creatures through. White Ops wants to go wide. And every time you do something, you can help build things up. Whether you're building up Helad to be even larger when you wake up with a devotion, or whether you're building up another creature that has evasion or something else that you need at the time. Okay, moving on to the next.

Okay, next. Heliod's Intervention. X, white, white, so it's an instant. Choose one. Destroy X target artifacts and or enchantments, or target player gains X life. So the interventions are a rare cycle. They're all...

I think there's a mix between instants and sorceries. They all... I think they all cost X mana symbol, mana symbol. I think that's true. I might be off on that. They all have X for sure in their cost. And they are modal. They let you do one of two things that both care...

They're basically a modal X spell. We've done modal before. On some level, we've done some modal X spells because some of your options with direct damage X spells, you've given some. But this is a little bit different. This is a modal spell in which it's not that you can affect quite highly to the spell as much as

there's two effects and you choose between them. And anyway, this is kind of a fun thing. It lets us... Not only do we have the... We have the god cycled out at Mythic,

but we also wanted something at Rare to sort of... Something splashy that played into the god. So we did this at Rare. So that is definitely cool. Okay. Okay.

Next. Okay. Next is Lagona Band Storyteller. Three and a white. So four mana total. One of which is white. It's a 3-4 Centaur Advisor. It's a creature.

When Lagona Band Storyteller enters the battlefield, you may put Target Enchantment card for your graveyard on top of your library. If you do, you gain life equal to its converted mana cost. So the idea here is, this is a card that lets you regrow an enchantment. There are a lot of very powerful enchantments.

For example, I just talked about Heliod, who's an enchantment. We have a lot of enchantment creatures and a lot of straight-up enchantments. There's a lot of global enchantments, local enchantments. It's an enchantment matter set. There's a lot of enchantment. We have a lot of enchantment creatures and a lot of straight up enchantments. There's a lot of global enchantments, local enchantments. It's an enchantment matter set. There's a lot of enchantments. The one thing we do here is rather than give it straight to your hand, this is not giving you an extra card. It's putting it on the top of your library. So the idea is it's replacing your next draw with this card. So the idea

is I go get something I want. One of the reasons we do this is it allows us to make something that doesn't, this doesn't technically have card advantage. Yes, I'm getting back something, and so there's card utility, but I'm not going up a card. What it's really doing is letting me change what I'm, it's allowing me to turn my next draw into this, so it is useful. But to kind of offset that,

because this isn't letting you sort of put it back in your hand, it's not for naught, it is letting you gain something, so it's letting you gain life. So what it's trying to do is say, hey, go get an enchantment, and the card is subtly saying, hey, you know, the bigger enchantment you get,

the more reward there is. So the idea is, you can go back and get a cheap enchantment if you want. And if you get a cheap enchantment, maybe you can cast it the same turn. Oh, no, no, no. It's not in your hand. It goes to the top of your library. Anyway, you have some option of what you want to do. Obviously, you get to plan

out your next turn. You know you're going to draw this on your next turn. And so you can make sure that whatever it is you're getting, if you want to be able to plan the next turn, you can. So, anyway. Next, Nyxborn Courser. One white, white, two, four, enchantment creature, centaur scout. So one of the cool things, there's a cycle of vanilla creatures. One of the things in general that we've been doing is,

I think we've been reevaluating a little bit about how much complexity we can have. There's a bunch of factors going on. One is, we've been divvying up a little bit the different kind of boosters you can get. So, for example, besides draft boosters now, if you really just want to sort of collect cards for your white deck,

go buy the white theme booster. Or, if you're a collector that just wants to get all the fancy stuff, you can go get the collector booster. What that means is as people who aren't caring about drafts slowly drift into other places we can focus a little bit more on draft which means that

we are willing to up a little bit our complexity, I mean carefully in New World Order still a thing but anyway what that means is we traditionally we've done five vanilla cards in most of our large sets still a thing. But anyway, what that means is we traditionally we've done five vanilla cards in most of our large sets.

Not that we can't, and obviously in Theris Beyond Death we do, but one of the nice things in Theris Beyond Death was not only do they have one function, they play two functions. So the cool thing, for example, Nixborn Cursor is one, it's got two white mana symbols in it.

It's three mana for two four. That's pretty good. And a mono white deck, that is very good. And why do we care about that? Because of Devotion. This set has a mechanic that very much encourages mono color play. And at bare minimum, encourages you to play with spells that have more than one color mana. So this is very good for the Devotion deck. If you're playing a Devotion deck, this is something you might want. The second thing is, it's an enchantment creature. There are also a lot of decks that care about enchantments. If you're doing something

where enchantments matter, you're playing Constellation or just a general enchantment matter strategy, this is an enchantment creature. You're going to play that. So it is doing this neat thing where it's taking something that normally is very simple and just adding extra value to them. There are two different ways. Both its mana cost and its card type are something by which it doesn't make it not vanilla, it doesn't make it more complex to play, but does add a little extra synergy so that it encourages you to play other strategies that are already in the thing. And that. Okay, next.

Reverent Hoplite. So four and a white. It's a one-two human soldier. It's a creature. When Reverent Hoplite enters the battlefield, create a number of one-one white human soldier creature tokens equal to your devotion to white. So once again,

the one-ones in the set are human soldier creature tokens. Normally, by the way, uh, we tend to pick one, um, we tend, we tend to pick one creature type for our tokens. Uh, these are human, soldier. Why the human, soldier? Um, it will matter. Uh, it doesn't really matter if Theros be on death, but it, it is something where we're, we're consciously thinking ahead, and we will see. And

one of the things that's nice about getting into Devotion and White, one of White's scalable effects is token making. So this is a very nice card for White. The idea is the more White I have, the more creatures I get. Now the creatures themselves don't help you for your Devotion, because they don't

have mana cost, but it does help your strategy. If you're playing mono-white, you know, getting a lot of creatures usually is very much playing into what you're doing. So that is something that is something that will help along. Okay, next. Shatter the Sky. So Shatter the Sky is a sorcery that costs two white white, four mana total, two of which is white. Each player who controls a creature with a power four or greater draws a card, then destroy all creatures. So this is us doing two things. One is, it's a wrath effect, and then white does. We're also looking and finding ways to give white a little bit of card advantage.

And we're messing around with, we've definitely been messing around with everybody draws, this is a little bit different this is everybody meets a certain condition draws, but obviously if you're playing this in your deck odds are you're trying to make sure you can meet this requirement and so it's a way to sort of help

White replace something that it's about to lose because it's a way to sort of help white replace something that it's about to lose because it's about to lose its creatures next Terranica, a crone veteran one white white, so three mana total two witches white, it's a legendary creature human soldier, 3-3, she has vigilance

and whenever Terranica, a crone veteran attacks, untap another target creature you control. Until end of turn, that creature has base power and toughness 4-4 and gains indestructible. So the idea here is she essentially grants vigilance. We can't say grants vigilance because the timing doesn't work as a combat trigger. But she untaps them, so they're untapped so they can block.

And then for this turn, not only are they untapped, but they're 4-4, and they have Instructable. So every time she attacks, she turns something else into a very potent creature. And so... Now, she herself is 3-3 Vigil,

and she's not quite as powerful as the things she makes, so she has to put herself at risk, but it allows us to make a pretty potent ability. You know, because she's a 3-3, on her next turn you get attacked with her, a 3-3, and assuming you have another creature, which I generally do in white,

with a 4-4. So that is pretty cool. Okay, next. Transcendent Envoy. One and a white for an enchantment creature, griffin. One-two is a flying creature. Or a spell that's two-cast costs one less to cast. So the idea here is, once

again, we're trying to encourage you to do things like play auras. Auras are tricky because of card disadvantage that I've talked about before. This card isn't working with card disadvantage, but it is trying to give you a reason to want to play auras, and that is cost reduction.

Also note, it is a Griffin.in. Griffin is something that we do in white, and griffin comes from Greek mythology, so it's nice to get some griffins in. Okay, next. Allerios in Rapture, 2 in the blue. Legendary creature, human,

2, 3. Allerios in Rapture enters the battlefield tapped. Allerios doesn't tap during your untapped step if you control a reflection. When Alios enters the battlefield, create a three, two, blue reflection creature token.

Okay, so one of the fun things of doing a Theros is you get to do top-down Greek mythology. So this is Narcissus. So Narcissus is a person who is so enraptured by his own image that he

the idea was he was so caught up in himself that he saw himself in a river saw his image in a river and he couldn't pull himself away and so we're playing around in that so the idea that's cute here is

he doesn't untap as long as his reflection is there. Meaning as long as he has a reflection, he's enamored and caught into the reflection. The other fun thing we did, though, is he's a 2-3. His reflection is a 3-2. It's a reflection. And the idea is that if something happens to the reflection, then you get to untap him. So the idea is he's a 2-3 that comes with a 3-2. For 3 mana, that's pretty good.

And then, if something ever happens to the 3-2, then you get the 2-3. So this card is just working on lots of levels. It's super clever, it's flavorful, it's a charming little card. So I'm a big fan. Okay, next. Ashiok's Erasure. 2 blue-blue, so 4 mana total, two witches blue. It's an enchantment. Has flash.

When Ashiok's Erasure enters the battlefield, exile target spell. Your opponents can't cast spells with the same name as the exile card. When Ashiok's Erasure leaves the battle, return the exile card to its owner's hand. So, often in white, we do what we refer to as Oblivion Ring effects,

where the idea is, as long as you choose sometimes a creature, sometimes it's permanent, but you choose it, and the idea is it sort of locks it away as long as the enchantment the creature, whatever it is that's locking it away stays on the battlefield. So this is doing the same

thing, but instead of doing it to a permanent, it's doing it to a spell. That's why it is flash. The reason it's an enchantment is it has to be a permanent for as long as it's on the battlefield, it locks away the thing. In this case, it's locking away a spell. Because it's locking away a spell, it's a blue card rather than

a white card, because essentially it's a counterspell. It's not a forever counterspell. I mean, you... But, it is a counterspell, and as long as Ashiak's Erasure stays on the battlefield, not only does it stop the spell, but it has an extra little bonus, which is it stops other spells like it. So when I counter your spell, not only am I countering your spell, but I'm also keeping you from playing another version of that spell.

If the set, by the way, this is a card that could have been white blue I think it well it wouldn't be called Ashy Exhumation if it was white blue but this card definitely is it is blue but it definitely is pushing up a little against the book being white blue I think in another set

especially a set that had a little less of a vinyl color theme this might have been a white-blue card. Okay, next. Brine Giant. Six and a blue, so seven mana total. And it's a giant. Five-six giant. He costs one less to cast for each

enchantment you control. So for all intents and purposes, this is Infinity for Enchantments. It doesn't say Infinity for Enchantments because Infinity isn't a thing in this set, but that is what it is. It's a cost reduction based on the number of enchantments you have. Once again, this is an enchantment matter set. We care about enchantments. We want to care about them in a lot of different ways. The way this one cares about it just says, hey, if you're playing an enchantment-heavy set, you might want to play me because I can come up pretty fast, and I'm a 5-6 pitcher.

Okay, Caliphe. Caliphe? Caliphe. Beloved of the Sea, one blue blue. Legendary enchantment creature, demigod. Star 3. Caliph? Caliph? Caliph? Caliph? Caliph's power is equal to your devotion to blue.

Creatures and enchantments you control have. Spells your opponent cast that target this permanent cost one more to cast. Okay, so a couple things going here. One is this is part of the Demigod cycle. Notice this time the devotion is power, not toughness. On Dactos it was toughness. And it protects your creatures and your enchantments, meaning it makes them cost more to target. What we refer to as spell armor.

It sort of protects your thing. Spell armor, frost armor. There's a bunch of names we've used for this. Anyway, so the idea is, she comes out, the more blue stuff, the more powerful she is, and meanwhile, she's protecting her stuff. So, she's protecting the things that are most likely powering her up, she's also

protecting making it harder to get rid of them. Okay, next. Idle on a philosophy. A single blue mana for an enchantment creature spirit, one, two. Six blue, sacrifice idle on a philosophy, draw 3 cards. So this is a good example of a card that's meant to be

an enabler for enchantments. It's a very cheap, quick-to-get-out enchantment creature. So for 1 mana I can get Enchantment Creature out. A, it will help my Devotion, and B, it will help my enchantment count because it just gets an enchantment. And the idea for this card is,

hey, most of the early game, I'm mostly there to count for either devotion and or enchantments, but later in the game, I turn on and I have this extra ability, which is, hey, for seven mana, I become a card draw. I draw three cards.

So the idea is early on, I'm there as a body, so you can count and use, and later, if I'm still around, you can use me to basically get a spell on me, which is a draw spell, which is very good for late game. Okay, next, Glimpse of Freedom. One in blue is an instant.

Draw a card. Escape two in the blue. Sorry, escape two in the blue. Exile five other cards from your graveyard. You may cast this card from the graveyard for its escape cost. So the idea is for two mana, I draw a card. That's not an amazingly powerful ability. Usually for a single mana, you can draw a card.

But, it's got escape. What that means is that later on, for two and a blue mana and five cards, I can draw other cards. So the idea is one of the things about escape is you don't want to play a lot of escape stuff together because they use the same resource. What this card says is, okay, if I'm not using my graveyard as a resource,

this allows me to get a card for two mana, and then basically for every five cards that I can get rid of, I can draw another card for three mana. And so this is just trying to optimize the use of your graveyard. This is not a particularly powerful card, but, especially in limited, it's something that can let you make sure you take advantage of the resource

if something else isn't taking advantage. Note that this is an escape card that is not a creature, not a permanent even. It's an instant. Escape can go unspelled. So this is kind of cool. Okay, next one. I'm going to mispronounce this.

Ixthiomorphosis. Two and a blue mispronounce this. Ixiamorphosis. Two and a blue, so three mana total, one of which is blue. It's an aura. Enchantment aura. Enchant creature. Enchanted creature loses all abilities and is a blue fish with base power and toughness 0-1. This is something that blue can do. Blue can do transformation. Note

though, by the way, this is depowering a creature. When we do depowering in blue, we do it on auras and we don't put flash on the aura. Meaning, we don't let blue change things to a powerless state in the middle of whatever, because that's a kill card. That's not the way that blue tends to do things. So we don't do this as an instant effect, for example, in blue. Blue can turn something into a 3-3 or something. I mean, it can change shape

and sometimes affect in combat, but not something that universally just makes it useless, like making it a 0-1. But it can do it as an aura. So the idea is, I can turn you into this thing. You do have the ability to get rid of it and maybe turn me back, but it is something I'm able to do at sorcery speed on an aura.

Okay, next. Kiora bests the sea god. Five blue blue, so seven mana total, two which is blue. It's an enchantment saga. As the saga enters, and after your draw step, add a lore counter. Sacrifice after chapter three. Chapter one, create an 8-8 blue

Kraken creature token with hexproof. Chapter two, tap all non-land permanents target opponent controls. They don't tap during the controller's next time step step. Chapter 2, tap all non-land permanents, target opponent controls. They don't tap during the controllers next time, stop, stop. Chapter 3, gain control of target permanent opponent controls. Untap it. Okay, so the story is, Kiara came

to get a sea serpent, I'm blank, it starts with an A, Ariax, anyway, came to get a legendary serpent, got stopped by Thassa, who's god of the sea.

And in the fight, Keora's not doing so great, but she manages to get hold of the Biden from Thassa and then walks away with it. Plains walks away. So she doesn't really beat her, doesn't get the thing she came for, but in fighting her, she does manage to get the Biden,

which is this powerful weapon. Now, a lot of people say, who know the story, wait a minute, Beth's the sea god? She barely got away with her life. Yeah, yeah, she got lucky and got her Biden. But the point that I make, I talk about this on my blog, is this is a story. So as far as the people know, some stranger came up, fought with a god, and got away, stole her weapon. Now, they don't know planeswalkers exist.

If you heard the story about some stranger that stole the weapon of a god, you're like, oh. Like, it sounds like the god lost, even though, if you know the full story, that wasn't her goal, she was there for this, Thassa stopped her from that. If you knew the full story, yeah, okay, maybe she doesn't best the god. Maybe she gets lucky and gets away. But, this is about the stories of the world. And in the world, some

mortal or somebody came and stole the weapon of a god. That is a mighty story. And so, as it's passed down through the ages, it's become the tale. So it is kind of fun. Obviously, we have the mighty story. And so, as it's passed down through the ages, it's become the tale. So it's kind of fun. Obviously, we have the story of Elsbeth in the set. It's nice to have our characters and take things that happened previously

in the last visit. This happened in the last visit of Theros. So first off, she makes a kraken. Kiara loves herself giant serpents and krakens and water beasts. Number two is Tepl, non-permanent. She makes waves. She controls the water. So she's

using her waves to crash into things, to tap everything. And then game control target permanent is trying to play the idea that she stole the bident. That's what she did. So she comes, she comes looking for the serpent. She fights, splashes a lot of waves, and then she steals something. So that is the story. So anyway,

I think it's pretty cool. I like that. Also, I think in the actual story, the serpent she's trying to get is a 99988, but once again, details change in the story, so I think that's okay. Next, Nadira Kraken. One blue blue, so it is a three-matter creature, two witches blue. It's a Kraken. One blue blue, so it is a three mana creature, two witches blue. It's a Kraken. Two, three. Whenever you draw a card, you may pay one. If you do, put a plus one plus one counter on Nadir Kraken and create a one one blue tentacle creature token.

So the idea is that it's a giant sea monster, it's a Kraken. And as you draw cards, you essentially can make your Kraken bigger and add tentacles to it. And so, I think it's pretty flavorful. One of the notes I got is Kraken, technically speaking, is a Scandinavian mythological thing and not a Greek mythological thing. And if those follow me on my social media, big discussion for one day. One of the things that I would point out is it is not as if sea monsters

are not part of Greek mythology. Very much so. There are a lot of Greek sea monsters. Not a lot, but there are a number of sea monsters in there. In Magic, we call the sea monsters we have Serpent, we have Kraken. There is a movie called, what's it called? What is it? I'm blanking on the name of the movie. Clash of the Titans, in which they say release the Kraken. And a lot of people because of that and through memes and stuff, associate Krakens with

Greek mythology. I know technically the word is not Greek mythology, but the idea that there is sea serpents is a big part of Greek mythology. Kraken is something we have. It's a creature type that we have. We did put a Kraken in Theros. We put a Kraken in here. I know that the

purists, the Greek mythological purists, the Kraken doesn't belong. My note there is A, this is not Greek mythology. This is our world inspired by Greek mythology. Krakens are a fun part, and a lot of people do associate, even if incorrectly. And, like I said, sea monsters exist. There are sea monsters in Greek mythology.

It's really a matter of what do you want to call the sea monsters. We have a term for a giant sea monster that we use in magic with his Kraken, and there are people who associate Krakens, uh, pop culture-wise with, with it, so in our world, in our Greek mythological world, we do have krakens, um, it is not, I mean, like I said, the, the source material has giant sea monsters, we are not deviating all that much, we are using a word to call the sea monsters, yes, that has an origin from, from a more Scandinavian origin, but it is something

people enjoy, and so yes, we have a Kraken in Theros. We have a Kraken in Return of Theros. To the people that, the peers that don't like that, I'm like, okay, it's making a lot of people happy. I'm sorry it makes you unhappy. Okay, last one before I end for today is Nyad of Hidden Coves.

Two and a blue, enchantment creature nymph, two, three. As long as it's not your turn, spells you cast cost one less to cast. So there's a little mini theme in, I think it's blue-red, where it's encouraging to play spells in your opponent's turn. So this is part of that theme. So what it does, it says, well, I'm going to make things cheaper for you if you're playing spells in your opponent's turn. We'll probably see one or more of those spells as we go along here.

But anyway, so I made it all the way through white and part the way through blue. So obviously there's some more, uh, podcasts coming. Um, hope you guys are enjoying it. It's fun doing the card by card podcast and I do enjoy Theros beyond death. So anyway, I'm now at work. There's a little bit of traffic. So you got some extra bonus content today. Uh, but anyway, I will talk to you next time.

Uh, so instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys soon. Bye-bye.