Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #725: Theros Beyond Death Cards, Part 3

Episode Date: March 27, 2020

This is the third 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. And I've been talking all about Pharaohs Beyond Death. Okay, so I'm up to red. I've previously talked about white, blue, and black. Okay, so we start with the Akroan War. Three in red, so four mana total, one of which is red. It's an enchantment saga. As the saga enters the battlefield, as the saga

enters and after your draw step, add a lore counter. Sacrifice after chapter three. Chapter one, gain control of target creature for long as a crone war remains on the battlefield. Chapter two, until your next turn, creatures your opponent controls attack each combat if able.

And then chapter number three, each tapped creature deals damage to itself equal to its power. Okay, so first off, Akros is our version of Troy. So when we do like the Trojan War, instead of being

like the Trojan horse, it was the Akroan horse. So this is us doing our version of the Trojan War. The Trojan War was a big war seen in the Iliad and the Odysseys when he's returning home from the... Anyway, so this is us trying to capture that sense of a war. The cool thing about this card is that it plays in some space that's kind of unique to sagas. So for example, red gets temporary stealing. Now normally when red steals something, it steals it for the turn. But the sagas allow us to do stealing for

not an infinite number of times, not forever, but for more than one turn. Because it comes out and it allows you to hold on to it. And essentially what happens is you play it, you get to steal something. And now notice that when you steal something, unless it has haste, you can't attack it

because it doesn't grant. Oftentimes when you steal something, it also grants it haste. This is not also granting it haste. But because you hold on to it, the idea is turn one, I steal it. Now, if I steal a haste creature, I can attack with it. But assume it doesn't have haste. But, because you hold on to it, the idea is turn one, I steal it. Now, if I steal a haste creature, I can attack with it. But assume it doesn't have haste.

Then turn two, I get to attack with it. And then turn three, I'm going to do damage to all tapped creatures. So, number one is, I gain control of the creature. Okay? So now I have control of the creature. Number two,

then, okay, so, I have control of the creature. Number two, then, okay, so then my next turn, I force all your creatures to attack. And then on that turn, I can attack with this creature. I then force all your creatures to attack. And then the following turn, I'm going to destroy, well, I'm going to have all tapped creatures do damage equal to themselves. Now, I get to choose what I steal.

As long as I steal something whose power is equal to or greater than their toughness, I'll get to attack with it once, and then it's going to destroy itself, assuming I picked the right creature. Also, since my opponent must attack with all their creatures, their creatures are going to be tapped. So this is a pretty potent spell. Now, notice, by the way, assuming you're not stealing a haste creature, you mostly have the creature for one turn. You get one attack with it.

So that's not that different than the Threaden or Red's normal stealing effect. It's a little bit different in that I steal and it happens next turn. I can block with it for a turn that doesn't normally happen. But anyway, it is I think it's overall a pretty cool card. Next.

Anax Hardened in the Forge. One red red. It's a legendary enchantment creature. It's a demigod. And he is a star three. And then his power is equal to your devotion to red. And whenever Anax or another non-token creature you control dies, create a one one red sadar creature token with this can't block. If the creature had power four or greater, create a 1-1 red satyr creature token with this cant

block. If the creature had power 4 or greater, create two of those tokens instead. So the idea is, I get a creature, so he is, Anax has two red mana, so at bare minimum he's a 2-3. As long as you have two other red mana, so when any creature dies, including Anax, you're going to get

a 1-1 red satyr. And then if you have four or more devotion, oh, I'm sorry, if the creature had four or more power, sorry, if the creature who died had four or more power,

you get to create two tokens. So if you have devotion to four, when Anax dies, you'll get two tokens. It doesn't, it only cares about the creature dying that determines whether you get two. Not whether a devotion, not whether he has devotion to red, the creature that dies has that. But now if he, if you have a devotion to four, then when Anax dies, you would get two. Anyway, the idea is you're turning creatures into these satyrs. Now notice the reason we can't block on them is one of the biggest problems with token generators

is that you can use them to stall the battleground and the idea is this wants you to be aggressive with them. It says look you can't use them for defensive purposes so you might as well attack with them. Now maybe you'll hold off to attack with a whole bunch at once so you can swarm them but you at least won't use it for defensive purposes which is what often happens with Witch Creature tokens. Especially with red, we wanted it to be more offensive than defensive. Again, this is part of the

demigod cycle. As I said, some of them have devotion equal to their toughness equal to devotion, some is power. This one was power. It's red. It kind of makes sense that power is equal to it. Next, Arena Trickster. Three and a red for a 3-3 human shaman creature,

obviously. Whenever you cast your first spell during each opponent's turn, put a plus one, plus one counter on Arena Trickster. I mentioned this during when I was talking about blue that one of the things we did

with the red-blue archetype for drafting is there's a play things on your opponent's spell flavor. Blue and red already are the spell callers, but to give them something a little different from other blue-red archetypes,

this really records you for doing stuff on your opponent's turn. And this is one of the enablers. I talked about the blue enabler. This is one of the enablers that encourage you to have that behavior. Like I said, part of making those strategies work in an archetype

is having some things that enable it and some things that reward it. I'm sorry, this is not enable. This is a reward. This is a reward spell. So some things that enable you to do it allow, you know, like for example, maybe there's more flash creatures or more instants. And then there's things that reward you for doing like this, where, hey, when you do it, you get some effects.

So, hey, you want to do this and encourages you get some effect. So, hey, you want to do this. And it encourages you to do that. Okay, next. Blood Aspirant. So, Blood Aspirant costs one and a red. So, two mana total. One of which is red. It's a 1-1. It's a satyr berserker.

It's a creature, obviously. Whenever you sacrifice a permanent, put a plus one, plus one counter on Blood Aspirant. And one and red tap. Sac a creature or enchantment. Blood Aspirant deals and one in red, tap, sac a creature or enchantment, Blood Aspirant deals one damage to target creature. That creature can't block this turn. Okay, there's a bunch going on here. One is,

when we went back to Theros, we had a meeting of the Council of Colors to talk about enchantments and how all the colors interacted with enchantments. What colors like enchantments? What colors don't like enchantments? What colors can destroy enchantments? And one of the tricky things was,

okay, well, what does red do in an enchantment-centered world? Well, red is not a color that can destroy enchantments. It's not a color, I mean, every color gets a little bit of likes enchantments, constellation stuff, but red, we really wanted red to have some identity. And one of the things we hadn't really identified

was what was the color that might sacrifice enchantments. We don't want to be black because we don't want black to sacrifice its own enchantments because we like making deal with the devil enchantments where you get yourself in trouble. And we don't want to make it easy for black to get rid of its own enchantments. We are allowing black to get rid of the opponent's enchantments

as I mentioned in black. But, who would be the best? And we realized that we had an opportunity to define something in red. Now notice, red is not going to sacrifice enchantments all that often. It really only matters in a place where there's a lot of enchantments, like in an enchantment-centric deck.

I'm sorry, enchantment-centric set. But anyway, we said that red could do that. Another thing that we did in this set is black and red, one of their, the deck archetype, has to do with sacrificing resources. That I build stuff up, and then I can sacrifice resources. So black is sacrificing creatures. Red is sacrificing enchantments.

It also gets to sacrifice creatures some with this card. So this card, where normally in a normal set this would be sac a creature to deal one damage to a creature. In this set, it lets you sacrifice either a creature or an enchantment. Oh, the other thing we did here is

the reward for sacrificing the creature is it gets bigger. That's good. But the other thing we also did is Oh, notice by the way whenever you sacrifice, it doesn't It gets bigger. That's good. But the other thing we also did is... Oh, notice, by the way, whenever you sacrifice, it doesn't care why you sacrifice. You don't have to sacrifice it to this effect. If you, for example, have one of the omens, which are... I talked about the enchantments that have an enter the battlefield effect that you can sacrifice and scry to. When you sacrifice that, you get to do this.

If you have other creatures you're sacrificing for other means... For example, if you're playing a black-red deck where you have multiple things that can sacrifice, if other things are sacrificing, Blood Aspect, like I said, it's a reward card. It still lets you care about that. Now, it gives you its own sac outlet, so it has its own way that it can get bigger,

but it's open-ended so that it doesn't require its own effect to get bigger. Also, what we did is we did one damage to creatures. So, the idea is that it helps you in combat and can help you kill small things. And it's a tap effect, so you can only... You can't combo and sacrifice multiple creatures

to kill bigger things. The other thing we did is target creature can't block means, well, we want to give you some reason. Let's say there's nothing small in play. We still want to give you reasons you might want to make use of this. So, you know, if I have small things I can kill, yeah, maybe I killed the small things

or things that have a low toughness. But let's say my opponent doesn't have anything that I can kill. Well, it still might be advantageous for me to use this to get through to be able to hit them, maybe with the blood aspirant that's gotten really big. Okay, next, Dream Shaper Shaman. Five and a red for a Minotaur Shaman. It's an enchant creature, 5-4. At the beginning of your end step, you may pay two and a red and sacrifice a non-land permanent. If you do, reveal cards from the top of your library

until you reveal a non-land permanent card. Put that card into the battlefield and the rest on the bottom of your library in random order. So one of the things, there's a card called Polymorph that was in blue in Mirage, I think, that takes a creature and turns it into another creature. We decided a while back that Polymorph feels pretty red. Well, sorry. Polymorph, where you have complete lack of control feels very red. Polymorph affects where you have some control feels more blue. So the idea is if I'm going to change you into something,

if I know what I'm going to change you into, that's more blue. If I don't know what's going to happen, that is red. Now in this particular case, this is not about changing your opponent's stuff. It's about changing your things. And the idea here is you can sacrifice anything that isn't a land and then you go get a permanent that isn't a land. And so the idea is it lets you change one thing into another. The reason it's very open-ended that says any permanent is

if we were very specific, you could put just one of that in your deck and then you'd be guaranteed to turn whatever it is into that one thing. But the idea of not having any permanents is pretty hard to pull off. So by saying non-land permanent, okay, sacrifice something, you're going to go get something, but probably your deck has lots of non-land permanents in it. So it's tricky to take advantage of that, to control exactly what you're getting. The fun part of this is it lets you turn small things, like tokens or something, or small creatures that maybe aren't useful anymore, into bigger things. And so we felt this was pretty fun.

And like I said, we're playing more in letting red do shape-changing where you don't know the outcome, where there's a chaotic element to it, because that feels pretty red. Okay, next. outcome where there's a chaotic element to it, because that feels pretty red. Okay, next is Final Flare. So Final Flare is two and a red. It's an instant, so three mana total, one of which is red. As an additional cost to cast a spell, sacrifice a creature or enchantment, Final Flare deals five damage to target creature. Now this is a great example where I talked before. We said red can sacrifice enchantments.

So this spell we would make in a normal set, except it would just say creature. Like red, for example, Goblin Grenade. I mean, the mana cost was cheaper for Goblin Grenade. But Goblin Grenade, like sacrifice creature, do 5 damage. And I think that might have been 5 damage to anything that 5 damage to a creature. Anyway, that card's kind of strong.

So in a normal set, we might let you do this with just creatures. But because we're in a world where, oh, enchantments matter, we've decided red can sacrifice enchantments, it just lets us make a card in a slightly different version. You know, I mean, because you can sacrifice enchantment, maybe it costs one more than normal. I'm not 100% sure. I mean, it costs, it means something you can sacrifice enchantment, maybe it costs one more than normal. I'm not 100% sure. I mean, it costs, it means something that you sacrifice enchantments.

But it just gives you some more utility. And it lets us make a spell that's a little different than the spell might be in a normal set. It helps reinforce the flavor of the set and reinforce the theme. And so we always look at where and how to do that. Okay, furious rise. Two and a red. So three mana total, one of which is red. Enchantment. At the beginning of your end step, if you control a creature with power four or greater,

exile the top card of your library. You may play that card until you exile another card with Furious Rise. Okay, so this is us playing around a couple spaces. One is the idea of what we call impulsive draw is I get a card, I get it for a limited amount of time, and I have to cast it. Normally, impulsive draw is still end of turn. This is playing, we're messing around a little bit with impulsive draw, playing around a little different space. The idea here is I get a card card and I get to keep it until, let's see. Oh, I see.

At my end step, so the idea is I can have one spell at a time. So if I have a spell, I'm allowed to keep that spell, but I can't get another spell. So this does let you keep the spell a little longer than normal, but because there's resource, because look you really want, you want to be drawing a new spell every turn. It's advantageous to draw a spell every turn. So yeah it lets you keep a spell a little longer than one turn, but you're heavily heavily encouraged not to do that. I mean you're heavily encouraged to play the moustache as you can. So it reinforces and plays into general red space, but a little bit different.

It also allows you, for example, if you get a reactor spell, that you can hold on to the reactor spell. I mean, your opponent gets to see what the spell is. So reactive up to a point, obviously. Another thing that I did not mention with Anax that I talked about earlier is, notice it talks about power four or greater. That is a theme in red and green. So the red green archetype has a four or greater theme in it. So all these cards work outside. I mean, you will have larger creatures in any deck. So it's not like you can't play this in a red deck with other colors. But green is going to ramp and

going to have more big creatures. So it just plays more efficiently in a red or green deck. So that is why you see stuff like that. Okay, next, Infuriate. Red instant. Target creature gets plus three plus two until end of turn. So one of the things that we had done for a long time was that red tended to have its giant growth be plus n plus o plus one plus o plus two plus o plus three plus o um but what that meant was what was very good for aggression it never let you sort of be defensive or survive fights and stuff and so we had a big powwow and that um we want to make sure that red has some utility but we also want to

separate red from green and some stuff from white. So we laid out a rule that you can see in place here, which is when red does boost, it's going to boost its power greater than its toughness. But because it's, in this case, granting plus three plus three for power, it can go up to plus two for toughness. And so this is like a giant growth. It's not quite as good as a giant growth.

It's not quite on the, you know, like green gets plus three plus three, red gets plus three plus two. Okay, so it reinforces that red's not quite as good as this as green is. And it says red's a little more on the aggression. It's not that you can't save things, plus two toughness is something. But it allows us to make a card. It allows us to play in space. Like giant growth is fun space. We want to kind of play in that space. There's a reason that white and red and green all get to do stuff in that space. But we're trying to be careful about who does what where. White right now doesn't go above plus two on power.

It tends to do smaller boosts. It is allowed to do a little more boost on toughness because it's a damage prevention color. Red, meanwhile, can go higher than two, but it needs to have its power higher than toughness, where green tends to be square-statted. Whatever grants you, it tends to do plus one, plus one, plus two, plus two, plus three, plus three, plus four, plus four. It tends to be square-statted.

This way, we take something we want to do in a bunch of different colors, give each color some identity so you get a feeling for that color. And that's important, that we want to make sure we differentiate. But, look, Giant Growth is fun space. It's good gameplay.

It leads to a lot of fun and interesting plays. So we really wanted it to be in three different colors in ways that we can chop it up. So if you see the spell in isolation, you can figure out who it is. White also, by the way, it tends to do smaller boosts, but normally grants an ability with it.

Where green, sometimes it grants trample, but other than trample, it usually just does, you know, plus N plus N. Okay, next. Iroa's Blessing. Three and a red.

Enchantment, Aura. When Iroa's Blessing enters the battlefield, it deals four damage to target creature or planeswalker an opponent controls. Enchanted creature gets plus one, plus one. A couple things. First off, Iroa is one of the gods.

One of the things we did, even though we didn't make cards for all 15 gods, although I should stress that Xenagos died and is no longer a god, although we have a new Red Ring god. I'll get to him later. We did want

to reference all 15 of the gods. So we made an effort between names and flavor text that even though you don't see, even though there aren't god cards, I'll hold that one second. Sorry. Safety first. Even though there aren't 15 god cards,

look, the gods do exist. We want the gods to be part of this world. So the gods are there. And so we wanted to make sure between names and flavor text that you get the sense that, yes, look, the gods still are part of this world. It's not like the gods don't exist. It's not as if just because we didn't print god cards, they're gone now. So one of the things we thought was really cool was,

look, we wanted to make reference to the gods, so you will see the gods referenced throughout. Okay, another thing going on here is, we want to make auras that matter. One of the problems in general with auras is card disadvantage. I've talked about that. So one of the ways to sort of help is to staple a spell to an aura. So for example, this is plus one, plus one. That's not that big a deal,

but it's stapled to a damage spell, right? It allows you to do damage to a creature or a planeswalker. That's a very efficient spell. You might play that spell regardless. But the nice thing is it sort of allows you to play the spell, have answers to things, and have an extra enchantment in your deck. Since we care about enchantments, we answers to things, and have an extra enchantment in your deck. Since we care about enchantments, we want to care about them entering the battlefield and care about them leaving the battlefield. We want you to sacrifice them and care if you have them. This allows us to just get extra enchantments into play.

So that is beneficial. Okay, next, Phoenix of Ash. Phoenix of Ash costs one red red, so three mana total, two which is red. It's a 2-2 Phoenix creature, obviously. Has flying and haste. For two and a red, Phoenix of Ash gets plus two plus O until end of turn. And escape. Two red red.

Exile three of the cards from your graveyard. You may cast this from your graveyard for its escape cost. Phoenix of Axe escapes with a plus one plus one counter on it. Okay, so for three mana, I get a 2-2 Flying Haste creature, and I can, for two and a red mana, plus two plus oh, Fire Breathing. The reason we tend to do that

is, if we make Fire Breathing for a single red mana, it encourages you to have to have lots of red mana. This particular card, it has two red mana. It's mana cost, it was a little less necessary to do that. And, if you want to play this with another color, it makes it a little easier to do that. Although I understand the mana cost is the thing that adjusts as well.

Anyway, it's a 2-2. You get to escape with it. It's a phoenix. Phoenixes naturally get to come back from the dead. That's what phoenixes do. It's kind of fun since there's a mechanic that plays into that very flavor. Hey, let's make a phoenix that does that. Phoenixes clearly come back from the dead. That's what Phoenixes do. This particular one also does the thing where

it gets better when it comes back from the dead. So it's a 2-2 normally, but it's a 3-3 when it rises from the dead. And getting it back is not much more expensive. Like one red-red for 2-2, and then two red-red for 3-3. So you're not paying that much more to get it. So that is kind of cool.

Okay. Next. Purphos. Purphos. Purphos. Bronze-blooded. Four and a red. It's a legendary enchantment creature. God. Seven, six. Indestructible.

As long as your devotion to red is less than five, Purphos isn't a creature. Other creatures you control have haste. Two and a red, you may put a creature card or an artifact card from your hand onto the battlefield. Sacrifice at the beginning of your next end step. Okay, so he does two things besides being

a god. He grants everybody haste. So I think all the gods in this case have a static ability and an activated ability, I think, or maybe it's activated or triggered. And he is the forger. So the reason it says creature or artifact is a little bit of flavor.

So basically he's doing, what's the name of the effect? Sneak attack from Tempest. I made sneak attack all the way back in Tempest. So what sneak attack does is it lets you put a creature's card on your hand into play, gives it haste, and then it goes away at any turn. So it allows you to turn your creatures into one-time effects.

So he has Sneak Attack built in, which is pretty powerful. It's funny, he also, because he grants everybody haste, his Sneak Attack ability doesn't need to grant them haste, because he grants them haste, which is kind of clever. So we sort of took that ability and split them off. We've made fervor in a lot of stuff for Red grants haste. That's kind of a generally cool ability to have.

So anyway, he all comes together pretty cool. Purphos' Intervention. X and Red. So Sorcery, choose one. Create an XX Red elemental creature token with Trample and Haste. Sacrifice at the beginning of the next end step. So you get to make a whole bunch of 1-1s

with trample that can attack for this turn. I'm sorry, they're X-1. Oh, create an X-1. Sorry, it's not X-1-1s. It's an X-1. So I'm creating one creature token, but it's got trample based on X. So I'm going to attack you with,

you know, if I put five mana into it, it's, or five in red. It's a 5-1, 5 to attack you with, you know, if I put five mana into it, it's, or five in red, it's a 5-1, 5-1 trample, you know, and I'm going to attack with it because it's going to die at the end of the turn. And Purpose of Intervention deals X damage to target creature or Planeswalker. So either, once again, we've done this before,

where I can do X to something, which is making an X-1, or I can do double X, where I can do damage to creatures or Planeswalker. So the cool thing about this is, hey, if I want to do damage to a player, I can make a creature

with Tramp one attack. If I want to do damage to a Planeswalker or a creature, now what do I get to do that? But I get a double up. I get to do double X. Like I said, a bunch of these X spells

do double X, so it helps us make two different effects that both fit the same cost. But anyway, that's part of the red. Red's part of the, what do they call it, the intervention cycle.

Okay, next. Skophoros Maze Warden. Three and a red. It's a 3-4 creature, a Minotaur Warden. One colon. Skophoros Maze Warden gets plus one, minus one until end of turn. So it's a 3-4.

You can pump it all the way up to being a 6-1. Whenever another creature becomes a target, and if you put enchantments or something on it, it makes it bigger. Whenever another creature becomes a target of an ability of a land you control named Labyrinth of Skopros, you may have Skopros Maze fight that creature. So the idea is there's a land that represents the maze, and this is the minotaur in the maze,

which is playing into the original Greek... In Greek mythology, there actually is one minotaur. There's not a lot of minotaurs. We make a lot of minotaurs. In original Greek mythology, there was the minotaur. There was only one, and it guarded the maze. I think Theseus fought him. Anyway, there's a combo here

where this card by itself is a fine card. It's a 3-4 with sort of Flowstone, we call it in R&D. I don't know what the plus one, minus one. But if you can get the maze, then not only that, they combo together, and now the Minotaur can fight things in the maze. So there's lots of fun flavor there. Okay, next, Storm Herald, Tuna Red, Creature, Human Shaman. It's got haste, and it's a 3-2.

It's a Creature, Human Shaman is a Creature. When Storm Herald enters the battlefield, return any number of aura cards from your graveyard to the battlefield. Attach the creatures you control. Exile those auras at the beginning of your next end step. If those auras will leave the battlefield, exile them instead of putting them anywhere else. So one of the things red gets to do is do things temporarily.

So here what it's doing is it's raising dead all your auras for a turn. Now remember we said that red gets to sacrifice auras. So one of the things it could do is it could have auras, maybe it has enchantment creatures, although this only gets back auras. Maybe you have auras, maybe it has enchantment creatures, although this only gets back auras.

Maybe you have auras that you're putting on your creatures. Like I said, there's stuff like the one that does damage to creatures that maybe you're just playing. But anyway, you get to play some auras, you get to sacrifice them, and then this lets you get them back and do, I mean, I think this is intended for more build around if you want to make an aura-centric deck. The idea being that I play a lot of auras, and then this card really lets me sort of have a second hit with all the auras in.

And it's kind of neat. We've done, you know, animated creature for a turn in red, but this is the first time we've done animate auras. And to make it powerful enough, it's all the auras, so that's kind of cool. Okay. Okay. Next. Storm Wrath.

So Storm Wrath costs two red red, so it's four mana total, two of which is red. It's a sorcery. It deals four damage to each creature in each Planeswalker. So it's a board wipe for red, or a pseudo board wipe. I I mean it only kills it only does four damage

so it might not kill all planeswalkers although a lot of planeswalkers that might be at four or less or at least lower the planeswalkers and it gets rid of at least all these small and medium-sized things but you know usually when white does sort of mass

it just destroys them where red and black usually care a little bit about how big they are. Black, a lot of times, will do minus X, minus X, and red will do direct damage, obviously, because that's what red likes to do. Okay, next, the Triumph of Aenex. Two

in red, it's an enchantment saga. As it enters, you get lower counter, and this has four chapters, so you sacrifice after chapter four. Chapter one, chapter two, and chapter three, until end of turn, target creature gains trample and gets plus X plus O, where X is the number of lore counters on Triumph of Aenex. And chapter four, target creature

you control fights up to one target creature you don't control. So the idea is Aenex is one of our demigods. So it's telling a story about them. So this is playing some fun space in the sagas. The idea that it could be a ramping effect, because yes, chapter 1, 2, and 3 are the same effect,

but really they're not the same effect because it cares how many lore counters you have. So essentially it's plus 1, plus 0, plus 2, plus 0, plus 3, plus 0. So it's kind of neat in that while the chapters repeat, they don't really, they scale up. And that is something that we can do with sagas. Sagas are definitely something that we enjoyed within Dominaria, we had fun

bringing them back. You can see we're playing around with them a bit. Some of them, like this one, have four chapters. All the ones in Dominaria have three chapters. And we're experimenting a little bit with what you can do with sagas. This is a good example of some space that is interesting space that sagas let you do

in a clean way where you get to have scaling effects, but in a way that's not like you're already doing the logistics to have to track the lower counters anyway. So it's no additional, like if I did this on a normal spell, I have to explain to you how to track it. But since I already have something that has to track something, I can sort of, I can sort of make use of that. So it's a neat way to get extra value without creating extra logistics.

So that is particularly cool. Okay, Underworld Breach. So Underworld Breach costs one in red. It's an enchantment. Each non-land card in your graveyard has escape. The escape cost is equal to the card's mana cost plus exile three other cards from your graveyard at the beginning of your end step, sacrifice

Underworld Breach. Okay, so first off, this is kind of like a spell in that you get it for the turn. It's very Yawgmoth's Will-E for those that know that card from way back when a black card from Urza's Saga that is super powerful and the idea here is

that it allows you to escape things, meaning it grants escape to everything. So essentially the idea is, for the cost of three cards from your graveyard, you can cast a fight of your graveyard. Yawgmoth's Will just lets you for the turn casting a graveyard. So this is like that,

except there's the added cost of you have to spend three cards per spell. So it doesn't let you get every spell, but oftentimes you can't cast all the spells anyway when you're casting stuff for your graveyard, because you only have so much mana. Anyway, this is a very powerful card. I anticipate seeing play in many formats.

Like I said, it's kind of Red's version of Yawgmoth's Will. Not quite as strong as Yawgmoth's Will, obviously. While it costs the same as Yawgmoth's Will, the escape element strong as Yawgmoth's Will, obviously. While it costs the same as Yawgmoth's Will, the escape element of having sacrificed three other cards really is a significant cost. Okay, so finally,

I think it's my last card in red. It is. Wrap in Flames. Okay, Wrap in Flames is three in a red. It's a sorcery. Wrap in Flames deals one damage

to each of up to three target creatures. Those creatures can't block this turn. Okay, so this is a space that we've been playing in a little bit more in Red. It's the idea of, we like Red having panic effects, meaning target creature can't block. But sometimes it's hard to

play those spells. Unless you're playing super aggro-y sometimes, it's tricky to have the space in your deck for that. So the idea here is, we've been doing this a little bit more, is the idea of doing a damage to a creature, and so if I'm able to kill it, I can kill it, but if not, it can't block. So the idea is, it has utility against small things, it kills with small things, but it has utility against bigger things.

So the idea is, I'll put it in my deck because it lets me deal with tokens or deal with smaller things. But if I get in a situation where I'm not able to use it that, it still lets me break through. So it is pretty flexible. And the idea is kind of fun is that if I hit you,

maybe it's not enough to kill you, but it discourages you from blocking me. So I think that's pretty cool. Anyway, I'm now at work. So I just got through Red today. So obviously, there'll be some more podcasts coming. But I'm at work. So we all know what that means.

It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys all next time. Bye-bye.