Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #798: Planar Chaos Colorshifted Cards, Part 1

Episode Date: January 8, 2021

This is the first of a two-part series talking about the 45 colorshifted cards in Planar Chaos. I talk about which cards they were colorshifted from and why they were in the set. I also talk about which ones were us testing changes for the future.

I'm not pulling in my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another Drive to Work, Coronavirus Edition. Okay, so today's podcast came from an idea from my blog. Somebody was interested in me talking about the 45 color-shifted cards from Plane Shift, and talking about, are they in the correct colors? So, let me explain what the color-shifted cards are, and then I will go through and walk through each of the color-shifter cards and talk about where they came from and how it color-shifted, and whether or not it's in color or not in color. So today is a very color-pie-infested episode, for those that are infused, infused episode, maybe is a better word. Okay, so back many years, so we decided, I decided to do a time-themed block.

Time Spiral, and then Planner Chaos, and then Future Sight. And early on, so Time Spiral was the second set once I became head designer. The first set was Ravnica. The second set was Time Spiral.

And I was really, really into the idea of block planning, of doing, you know, having the block be something in a larger sense. And so, I knew I wanted to do a time theme, and the idea I came up with is, well, how do you divide time into three parts?

Well, how about past, present, and future? Okay, well, past made a lot of sense. We could show off cards from the past. We could make what we call a time-shifted sheet, which are all these cards from the past that showed up, and we had a new card frame, so they showed up in the old card frame. And future site, the future set, oh, that made sense. I'd hint at things from the future.

But the problem with the present is, well, isn't the present just normal magic? How do we make the present exciting? How do we, like, how is the present just not, eh, normal magic? And the idea I came up with was the idea of an alternate reality present set, where it's set in the present, with was the idea of an alternate reality present set, where it's set in the present, but not the normal present, an alternate reality. What if magic had

been different? And so the idea of the alternate reality was that we would mess around with the color pie saying, well, what if the colors had the same philosophies? We didn't change the color philosophies. What if we just had made different decisions on how to execute? For example, we use card drawing in Magic to represent knowledge. But what if instead it represented the growth of green rather than the knowledge of blue? And so the idea was that we were playing around with like a what if. So Planet of Chaos was what if the color pie had just ended up differently? That was the idea behind it.

It turned out to be problem causing because once we make cards they exist, and the idea that this color pie isn't real, like even now on my blog, it's a running joke of how I say we don't do something and someone says, but you did this card and they show me a Planar Chaos card. But anyway, so we had done a time-shifted

cheat and time spiral, which were cards from the past. They were cards but anyway, so we had done a time shifted sheet in Time Spiral which were cards from the past they were cards in the original card frame just 121 different cards from the past just a wide selection of cool different things that we had done Future Sight, we ended up doing a future shifted sheet where

they were cards potentially from the future, doing things we had never done before. For this set we did, the time shifted sheet was color shifted. So what we did is, we took cards in Magic that existed in one color, and in this new color pie, they existed in a new color. Some of the cards were us shifting things into colors they should be, I'll get to that. Some of them are us shifting things that made sense within this alternate color pie. But anyway, we were trying to show cards in different forms. So what I'm planning to do today and probably in my next podcast, I think this is a two podcast

thing, is I'm going to walk through, there's 45 color shifted cards. I'm going to walk through each of the color shifted cards, talk about where it came from, and then sort of talk about what we were doing with it. So we're going to go in collector number order here. So we're going to start with Chalcederm. So Chalcederm is two white white, five five, it's a beast, vanishing four, and it says Chalcederm can't be the target of spells or abilities. Okay, so the original Blastoderm was from Nemesis. So the original Blastroom, interestingly, had fading and not vanishing. So, fading, the way fading worked is you came with a certain number of, was it

fading counters? I think it was time counters. You came with a certain number of fade counters. Vanishing did time counters. But you came with a certain number of fade counters. And then, on any turn that you couldn't remove a counter, it went away. So it came up with three fade counters.

Turn one, turn two, turn three, turn four, it would go away because you removed it. That confused people because people kind of felt like, well, when you remove the last counter, it went away. So in Planar Chaos, we did Vanishing. And Vanishing was just, it was already an alternate reality set. Well, what if we just took a mechanic that we felt we did a little bit wrong, which was fading, and bring it back in a slightly new version, which is Vanishing was just, it was already an alternate reality set. Well, what if we just took a mechanic that we felt we did a little bit wrong, which was Fading, and bring it back in a slightly new version, which is Vanishing? Vanishing is the same thing as Fading.

The only difference is, so basically what we did with Calciderm is we took Blastiderm, we added one to it, so it's Vanishing 4 rather than Fading 3, but Fading 3 meant you've got to attack with it three times. Vanishing 4 means you've got to attack with it three times. Vanishing four means you've got to attack with it three times. So, it's essentially the same card. As you'll see on other cards, I think we did change the creator on some of the cards.

In this one, it was Beast. We kept it Beast just because Beast shows up on multiple things. But this was us just sort of taking the essence of what it was, and part of the fun of this set of color shifting is finding different ways to do it. Where we can, if we could keep the card exactly the same

as we did here with Beast, notice we changed Fade into Vanishing. So we did, as we go through, these cards are redone versions, color shifted versions. There's tiny changes we'll make. I'll talk about them when we get there. But anyway, that is Chalcedon. Next up, Malak of the Dawn.

Two white, white, two, four creature, an angel, flying, white, white, white, regenerate Malak of the Dawn. Okay, so Malak of the Dawn is Ghost Ship. So Ghost Ship is from the dark. So Ghost Ship is

exactly the same, except it is... I think in the original dark, it was just ship. It was Summon Ship. This was before... Back when it was Summon. So it was a ship. So we did change the creature type.

We made it from a ship to an angel. But originally, this was a ghost ship, is what it represented. Now, the funny thing is, blue never really had regeneration. I think this might be the only blue card that regenerates. And it costs three blue mana to represent how hard it is to regenerate it.

I think they made a ghost ship, they felt it makes sense in blue, and they thought a ghost ship would regenerate. This is back in early Magic where they would match the card mechanics to what the card was, rather than... There's no larger sense of color pie in that sense, meaning... I mean, they recognized that regenerate was hard for blue to do, so they put

three blue mana to regenerate. But nowadays, like, if a color doesn't do something, we don't do it, but weak, we don't do it, because it's very hard to communicate something is weak. Anyway, so Malak of the Dawn was just ghost ship. We,

regeneration was something that, interestingly, oh, right. Normally, in normal magic, regeneration was in black and green. But we were doing an alternate color pie. So in this alternate color pie, regeneration was white. And the idea being white is rebirth.

The idea of white has already a little bit of, like, there's a little bit of white getting things back from the graveyard, and we're like, well, what if part of that, like, white is the color of healing, you know, what if you played it into regeneration as healing, and like, oh, well, white, white, so it made sense that if we were shifting regeneration, white made a sense of where that would be.

So anyway, we went to white. Okay, next up is Mana Tithe. Mana Tithe is, costs one white mana. It's an instant counter-target spell unless its controller pays one. So Mana Tithe is Force Spike. So Force Spike was originally from Legends. And the idea here was

that we shifted some of the counterspelling into white. Uh, so the idea is white does taxing. This is taxing. Now, the interesting thing was this, some of us doing Planet of Chaos definitely made us, we were exploring a little bit. And this was us exploring in what if white did a little bit of counterspelling. So, um, this was us playing in that space. We did a few cards since then. Not a lot. Counterspells,

while they have their fans, they're not super popular, so we've dipped our toe a little bit into white counterspells. I do think white, by the way, can do delaying effects and do taxing effects. So both of those make sense, even in normal color pie. But obviously we were playing in it here.

Next up is Mesa Enchantress. So Mesa Enchantress is Verdun Enchantress, which I think is from Alpha, is that right? I believe it is from Alpha. Oh, but I spelled it wrong? How do you spell Verdun Enchantress? So Mesa Enchantress... Oh, Verdun. I spell Verdurn Enchantress? So Mesa Enchantress... Oh, Verdurn. I may have spelled Verdurn Enchantress.

So Verdurn Enchantress, yes, was from Alpha. And the idea was it cared about enchantments. Well, what if White cared about enchantments? Now, the weirder thing about this card, which gets me in a lot of trouble, is White's

card drawing is something that we're always sort of questioning how we want to handle it. This card lets you draw more cards than I think White normally wants to let you draw. But the idea was, we took a card that was green and said, well, White is more the enchantment color than green

is the enchantment color. What if we took this sort of staple of enchantment decks and stuck it in White? So that's how it ended up in Mesa Enchantress. And it's a human druid. I think the original Verdurn was a human... Oh, it is a human druid. We kept it the same. So it's also a human druid.

So this card didn't change too much. This literally is just doing it in white. Note, by the way, that when we did the mana cost and everything, everything stayed the same. I mean, we tweaked, we updated rule text a little bit, but we, the card, the idea of the card was, these were exactly, they were supposed to be exactly the same.

Okay, next is Mycologist. One in white for a 0-2 human druid, creature, obviously. At the beginning of your upkeep, put a spore counter on Mycologist. Remove three spore counters from Mycologist, Put a 1-1 green sapling creature token into play.

Sacrifice the sapling. You gain two life. Okay, so this card is Elvish Farmer, which is from Fallen Empires. So, Elvish Farmer was an elf.

Obviously, we made this a human druid rather than elf, because elf and green didn't make much sense. Other than that, though, it still makes saplings. It even makes green saplings. I think we talked about changing the creature type of this, but I think our worry was if we moved too far away from the original, it wouldn't feel like a color shift. So, I think the idea is we were willing to change the creature type,

but we tried not to change the text where we could. So if it made a token, I think we'd try to keep it the same token. So this white card still makes a green token. So the reason we moved this here is it makes tokens when the game first started back around, you know, Fallen Empires was

the second year of Magic, green was king of all tokens and made a lot of the little tiny tokens. Since then, white had become... We divvied up. So green had the biggest creatures, but white had the most creatures. And that white became king of making the 1-1 tokens,

1-1-2-2s. And then green, while it occasionally made 1-1-2-2s, it also made the bigger tokens. And so this was us just taking something and I think shifting it to where... Like, some of these cards were playing in the new space that was the alternate reality.

And some of these were us just saying, oh, this card could be done nowadays, but it would be in this color. So this was just us color-shifting into white. And the idea is it makes tokens. That's white. It sacrifices the tokens for life. That is white.

It's a little quirky in that normally white cards do not sacrifice other creatures, but you could imagine making saplings that have the ability to sack themselves. Like, white creatures can sack themselves to help others, so

that little tiny quirk probably would be different if we made it as a white card, but we were doing color shifted card. Okay, so next, Porphyry Nodes. So Porphyry Nodes costs one white mana. It's an enchantment. At the beginning of your upkeep, destroy the creature with the least power. It can't be regenerated. If two or more creatures are tied for the least power, you choose one of them.

When there are no creatures in play, sacrifice Porphyry Nodes. So what is Porphyry Nodes? This is a card called Drop of Honey from Arabian Nights, going way back. The interesting thing about Drop of Honey is it's a card that kills creatures. Green's weakness is it's not supposed to be able to kill creatures without the use of other creatures.

It can fight and things. So this card was way out of color. And I think the idea on some of these, it was fun to take a card that we thought was a neat color that was just wildly out of color. And I think the idea on some of these, it was fun to, like, take a card that we thought was a neat color, which is wildly out of color. And so we put it in the color that we thought it would be. This card would either be white or be black. I mean, it's a creature-killing card.

We liked the idea. The reason we put it in white is that it cared about power and slowly... It killed the biggest thing, which is that white's the color that tends to kill big creatures. So that made sense in white. Okay, next up. Revered Dead. So one in white for a 1-1. White,

Revenerate, Revere Dead. So Revere Dead is Drudge Skeletons from Alpha. Once again, we had moved Regeneration into white. So in this set, Regeneration was a white thing, not a green and black thing. So we were looking for, like, one of the things we did

is we looked at all the cards, like, all the abilities we had shifted into new colors for the set, and we looked at cards that were just generally out of color. So either you were normally out of color and we put you in the right magic color, or you were okay in your normal color, but we had shifted for the set and we moved you into the right magic color or you were okay in your normal color but we had shifted for the set

and we moved you into the card we had shifted into. Okay, next up, Sinu Sliver. One and a white creature sliver. It's a 1-1. All slivers get plus one, plus one. So this is Muscle Sliver from Tempest. And the idea was that

we had made Muscle Sliver, I think because the idea was for one and for two mana you got a 2-2 which at the idea was that we had made Muscle Sliver, I think because the idea was for two mana you got a 2-2, which at the time was green to Grizzly Bears. We eventually decided that white should be able to get a 2-2 for 1W. And white being the pumping color made more sense. Crusade effects are more white than they're green. Not that green can't do them, but this made more sense. So we moved Muscle Sliver into white.

Next, Sunlance. So this is a card called Strafe. So Sunlance is white sorcery. Sunlance deals 3 damage to target non-white creature. So Strafe was a red card from Planeshift.

And it deals 3 damage to a target non-red creature. So in this version, we let White... We were messing with the color pie a little bit. So this is White destroying something. Normally, if White's going to kill something, I mean permanently remove it,

either it's expensive, it costs like 5, 6 mana, or it's usually involved in combat. Like, it's sort of... It's damaged you, or attacked you, or someone got in combat. Like, it's sort of, it's damaged you or attacked you or someone got in combat with you. So this card is definitely, this is one of the cards that gets brought up all the time on my blog because

white really isn't supposed to do this. We were trying to mess around a little bit in the space and said well, what if white, what if direct damage was a little bit more in white than it is now? And the idea here was, oh, well, it's not in white, so white goes well. I don't harm good creatures like white creatures. White considers white creatures to be good,

mostly. So anyway, we put that there. This is definitely one of the ones that, one of the problems with the set is we definitely gave tools to colors that they don't normally have that, in formats like Commander now, where you can play them, it gives access to something

that was meant to be an experimental... If I could have kept this in a bubble where you couldn't play it outside the bubble, I would have. But I didn't quite think that through. So anyway, Sunlance is definitely one of those cards that makes me have to talk about it. Okay, next. Anne Chronicler. So Anne Chronicler

is three blue blue for a star star creature. It's an avatar. Anne Chronicler's power, Aeon Chronicler is three blue blue for a star of star creatures, an avatar. Aeon Chronicler's power and toughness are each equal to the number of cards in your hand. Suspend X. X read blue. X can't be zero. Okay, so Aeon Chronicler. Oh, sorry, sorry.

Aeon Chronicler is, sorry. That's not the right card. That's a blue card, but I need to look at the blue color shifted cards. That's not a card. I was like, wait a minute. What card is that? Okay, so Frozen Aether is the right card. That's a blue card, but I need to look at the blue color shifted cards. That's not a card. I was like, wait a minute, what card is that? Okay, so Frozen Aether is the first card. So Frozen Aether is three and a blue enchantment. Artifacts, creatures, and lands your opponent's control come into play tapped.

So Frozen Aether is Kismet. Kismet's from Alpha. It's a white card. I don't know why it was white originally. Well, I mean, funny thing is, we have shifted back around of maybe white is a taxing thing, so something coming in play

tapped is what we thought of as taxing. So we have kind of come back around to that, but the idea of something coming in play tapped, blue is sort of king of things tapping or not untapping. And so, it made it cool to move Kismet into blue. Next, Gossamer

Phantasm. One in blue, flying. When Gossamer Phantasm becomes a target of a spell or ability, sacrifice it. 2-1. So, Gossamer Phantasm is Skulking Ghost. So, Skulking Ghost was from Legends, I think? Is that right?

Skulking Ghost is from... Oh, Mirage. It's from Mirage. So the funny thing about this is what we call the Skulking ability, which is when you target me, you sacrifice the creature. We have since moved from black, which is where I start, into blue.

Originally, it was more like a ghost-themed thing. We've moved it now into more of an illusion thing. So notice that the original card is a ghost, is a spirit, and this card is an illusion. So this is something... So there are some things that we sort of examine in Planar Chaos and then kind of change magic. So this is us going,

hmm, maybe this makes more sense as an illusion themed thing than as a ghost themed thing, just because we do more illusions in blue than we do sort of spirits in black. Okay, next. Merfolk Thermatologist. Two and a blue for a one-two Merfolk Wizard. Tap

switch target creature's power and toughness until end of turn. So this is Dwarven Thermatologist. this is Dwarven Thermatologist. I think Dwarven Thermatologist is... Where's Dwarven Thermatologist from? It is from... Oh, Weatherlight. It is from Weatherlight. So anyway, power toughness changing is something we had done in red for a while,

but we decided it made a little more sense in blue, and so now it's more done in blue. I think red can do it. I think this is a case where it overlaps, where both red and blue do this thing. In fact, red and blue both still do it. We do it more in blue than red these days. But anyway, we took it and we moved it over.

That's another example of just, it's a card that could exist in two colors, so we put it in the second color. Okay, next, Ovinize. One and a blue. Target creature loses all abilities and becomes a 0-1 creature until end of turn. It's an instant. So, Ovinize is Humble. Humble is

from, I think, Mirage, I believe. Urza Saga. Humble's from Urza Saga. I made Humble way back in the day. So the funny thing is, Blue does do transformation, and I think we're like, okay, well, if Blue did

transformation, maybe in this alternate reality Blue could do this kind of transformation. We don't actually do this kind of transformation, at least not instant to 0-1 in Blue, because we don't want Blue using it as a direct kill spell where if you just block my creature, I turn into a tiny thing and it dies. So we will change things

into small things at sorcery speed or as an enchantment as an aura, but we don't tend to do it at instant speed to a 0-1. We'll make it a 3-3 or something. We'll make it a bigger creature, but not a 0-1. Okay, next. Piracy Charm. Choose one.

Cost a single blue mana, instant. Choose one. Target creature gains Island Walk until end of turn. Target creature gets plus 2 minus 1 until end of turn, or target player discards a card. So Piracy Charm is um...

Funeral Charm. And Funeral Charm... I think Funeral Charm. And Funeral Charm... I think Funeral Charm is... I think it's Visions. It's either Visions or Mirage. It is Visions. That's right. So the original...

The black card... Title player discards the card. Targeted goes plus two, minus one. Or it gains Swamp Walk at the end of turn. So we changed it from Swamp Walk into Island Walk. But in this version, we changed discard from Swamp Walk into Island Walk. But in this version, we changed discard from being a black thing to being a blue thing.

The idea being that black makes, that blue also messes with the mind. So if we had reimagined the color pie, well, what if blue was a discarding color instead of black? And the thing that was cool was we had also messed with blue being forced color changing of the opponent, like we'd done with Oven Eyes.

So, like, okay, we'll take this. If we change Swamp Walk to Island Walk, blue can get Island Walk. Changing the shape of things, we're saying is blue, and negatively is okay in this thing, and discarding cards is okay. So all the things end up being something

that in this version, Blue could do. This is, I think, I mean, Blue does do some targeted, like, targeted player discards her hand and draws cards. So Blue does, and it has some old, old cards like Amnesia, but Blue does messing with mine things and does a little bit of discard in that. It can force you to, like,

discard your hand to get a new hand. But anyway, in this set, Blue does straight up discard. Okay, next, Primal Plasma. Three and a blue. It's a star-star elemental shapeshifter. As Primal Plasma comes into play, it becomes

your choice of a 3-3 creature, a 2-2 creature with Flying, or a 1-6 creature with Defender. So Primal Plasma, you'll notice, by the way, that in the name, it So Primal Plasma, you'll notice, by the way, that in the name it's Primal Clay. Whenever we could, by the way, we tried to make nods to

the original in the name. So the names where we can are making a throw there. So Primal Clay showed up in Alpha. And I think it was in Alpha. Is that right? Let me check back here. Primal Clay.

Yeah. Oh, no, no, sorry. It was Antiquities. It was Antiquities. So it was in the core set, but it first shows up Antiquities. So that was an artifact creature. So we changed it from an artifact creature and I think,

is it modern? I think it's now, yes, it's now a shapeshifter. When it was first printed, artifact creatures didn't have creature types. But anyway, so we turned it from an artifact creature into a blue creature. Shapeshifters are more blue. So it felt like, oh, this made sense as a blue creature. Blue is one of the colors that it was flying, so making two-two-flatter made a lot of sense.

And so anyway, it just felt like this made sense as a blue creature. Okay, next, Riptide Pilferer. One and a blue, 1-1. It's a merfolk rogue. When Riptide Pilferer deals combat damage to a player, that player discards the card, and morph blue. So Riptide Pilferer is Headhunter.

So Headhunter was from Onslaught Block. It was from Onslaught, yeah, it was from Onslaught Block. It was from Onslaught, yeah, it was from Onslaught. So basically what we did is blue was the color of Discard in the set, and Morph was a mechanic that we ran through all three sets in... Morph showed up in all three sets in the Time Spiral Block. So we thought it was kind of cool to take...

One of the things you'll notice, by the way, is Time Spiral Block is very willy-nilly with just having mechanics in it. Like, here's a morph! Yeah, sure, morph's here! But anyway, we did do a morph card. We thought it was a cool opportunity to do a card that made sense in the shift color shifted. Okay, next. Serendip Sorcerer.

So Serendip Sorcerer is one blue, blue, one, one, human wizard. Tap target creature other than Serendip Sorcerer. So, Serendip Sorcerer is one blue, blue, one, one human wizard. Tap target creature other than Serendip Sorcerer. Becomes a zero, two until end of turn. So, Serendip Sorcerer is Sorcerer's Queen. So, Sorcerer's Queen is that Arabian Nights is my guess? Is Arabian Nights. That's Sorcerer's Queen. It's a sorceress.

And this is a sorcerer who made a human wizard. I don't think we supported Sorcerer. I think Sorcerer and Sorceress became wizard at one point. So I think when you go... Let me check real quick. Oh, yeah. So Sorceress Queen is a human wizard now. So it had been updated to a new creature type.

So this creature matched that creature type. But anyway, so it's just, once again, blue is the color in this set that's changing other people's creatures into things. Like, normally, blue can change its own stuff and can do a little bit of changing opponent stuff, but not into smaller stuff,

usually. So, I mean, blue can use it, but usually not as a means of creature destruction. When we're in this set, we let it do more creature destruction. Okay, the last blue color shifted card was Sarah Sphinx. So, three blue, blue, four, four. Uh, it's got flying and vigilance. Uh, and it's a sphinx.

So, this is Sarah Angel, uh, from, uh, Alpha, from Original Magic. Uh, so we changed it from an angel, which is white's iconic, to a Sphinx, which is Blue's iconic. So we're like, well, imagine just when the game started, it was a Blue thing, and also, kind of imagine, like, we had figured out the Iconics earlier than we did. Alpha, Sphinx wasn't really a thing we did in Alpha, but

just imagine. It's alternate reality. We'd figured that out in this alternate reality. So Sphyrra Sphinx became, or I this alternate reality. So, Sarah Sphinx became... Or, I should say, Sarah Angel became Sarah Sphinx. Okay, how are we doing? I'm going to do a little bit more just because I got a bunch of cards to get through. So, how many do I have left?

So, it was 45, which means it's 9 per... Oh, maybe this is a good ending point. Maybe this is a good ending point. Okay, I'm going to end here. So, anyway, I hope you guys are enjoying this. One of the things that's been really interesting about the... Hopefully you're seeing today is... There really were two completely different tasks in the color pie, in the color shifting cards.

There was us messing with the alternate color pie. And there was us finding old cards and putting them where they should be or where I think they could be. Like, a lot of things, if you hear me talk about it, is we would discover things that we then would advance toward,

like the illusions, the skulking on the illusions, where we're like, you know what? Yeah, I should do that. Or we did a little bit of white counterspell. Like, there are definitely things

where we were playing in space and then we stuck there. The other ones was us moving stuff around. And the reason I regret those stuff is they're just things kind of in colors that aren't really supposed to be in that color. But magic is magic.

If the card exists, the card exists. And so the thing that makes me mad about Planet of Chaos, I mean, to myself, not you guys, is I was messing with something that I kind of shouldn't have been messing with. And now that I mess with it, I forever muddied the waters. Like I say, it's I don't think a month goes by in which

someone is like, please do this, and I go, we don't, and they go, but here you did, and like, oh, that's planar chaos. So if you haven't been to my blog yet, that is a running joke on my blog. But anyway, guys, I hope you're enjoying this podcast. I decided not to jump in because we're getting into Black. So next podcast, I will jump into, I'll do Black, Red, and Green next podcast.

So anyway, guys, I'm at my desk. So we all know what that means. I mean, this is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.