Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #842: Planeswalkers, Part 2

Episode Date: June 11, 2021

This podcast is part two of a three-part podcast walking through every Planeswalker that's ever gotten a card.

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 in a podcast not too long ago, I started talking about the planeswalkers. But I did not get through them all, so I'm going to do more this time. But let me start by saying that I was using a list that was an incorrect, well not incorrect, but incomplete list. And so I realized I missed a bunch of Planeswalkers. The idea was I wanted to talk about every Planeswalker that had a card. And the list I had was missing some stuff. So I want to catch up on the stuff I missed, and then I'll continue on from where I left off last time.

Also, I think I have enough that this is going to be a three podcast and not two. Okay, so we start with Amontau. So Amontau showed up in Commander 2018. She's the youngest planeswalker we've ever had. She's a little girl, and she controls fate, which is, so she's a very cool character, very popular. She has kind of this creepy art with little butterflies in it. We, I don't think we've visited her home plane yet. I don't think we know what her home plane is. I don't think we know what her home plane is. But the interesting thing about it,

I get asked a lot about will we see more Emmental. And she's a really fun character. The tricky part about her is controlling fate is a very powerful bower. And so it's challenging sometimes to use characters that are really powerful. One of the reasons we did the whole mending and to depower our planeswalkers was

so they were less gods and more, you know, planeswalk, you know, more, you know, mages that were more relatable. And Emmental definitely is a little more in the old school of, you know, controlling fate is very godlike, if you will. But she is pretty popular, so I'm hoping we will see her again. Okay, next up is Bob, Bevy of Beebles. So Bob is one of two Silver Border Planeswalkers. He showed up in Unsanctioned. So what happened was, when I was making Unsanctioned, I wanted to make a planeswalker,

so I had to go to sort of the creative team and pitch something that they didn't think they would do in Black Border. And I had a long list of things. But I think not too long down my list was a collective of Beebles. And they were like, yeah, that's all yours. So we don't tend to do Beebles in Black Border.

And up until very recently, we haven't done any sort of collective. I'll get to Grist later on. I'm not even sure if Grist technically is a collective. But Bob, anyway, is a collective of Beebles. It's not a single Beeble. It's a whole bunch of Beebles. It was inspired by a Richard Garfield head.

It was a game that he had designed that we had never made called The Goblin Game, where the hit points in the game were the number of goblins you had. So I loved the idea of a card where your loyalty is the number of beevils you have, the number of creatures you have, which are beevils. Anyway,

it is a silly planeswalker. I don't expect to see, I don't think Bob's going to cross over to Blackboard anytime soon. But it is a very fun, goofy sort of planeswalker so I enjoy Bob Okay, next up is Dak Faden, the greatest thief in the multiverse

Okay, so Dak Faden came about because we were doing a magic comic and the people making the comic wanted a character that was sort of their own character, so they got permission from us to make their own Planeswalker. And Dag Fane, the whole idea of the character was...

I mean, he was a thief, so he stole things for a living, but he was, you know, a thief with a heart of gold, sort of. He tried to do well while he was also robbing people. We ended up putting him in conspiracy because he was a popular character, and we were looking for something that made sense in conspiracy. So we did put him on a card. Now I'm going to give you a little spoiler here, so heads up.

Dag Faden dies in War of the Spark. And the reason he's not in War of the Spark is, at the time we were making the set, we didn't know whether or not... We didn't know he was going to... Like, we didn't know he was going to die in the story. And so we ended up not giving him a card. Had we known he was going to die in the story, we would have given him a card. And maybe one of these days

in a supplemental set, we'll give him a farewell card. But anyway, that is Dak Fadden. Okay, next up. Dak in Black Blade. So this is a newer Planeswalker. I mean, newer Planeswalker, and we just printed the card.

Showed up in Modern Horizons 2. So Dak in Black Blade was originally a legendary creature all the way back in Legends. When the team that made Legends, a lot of the characters in Legends were inspired by characters from role-playing games they played. So my best guess is that where Dakin originally came from. But anyway, he was a blacksmith that forged a sword,

the Black Blade, and anyway, it sent him down a dark path, if you will. But anyway, there was a short story tied to a video game that talked about him becoming a planeswalker. And I think when Ethan was making Modern Royphans 2, Ethan had always

wanted to find a place to do a Dakin planeswalker card, because in the story, after Legends, but in the story, he later becomes a planeswalker, so we thought it'd be cool, and this just seemed like a good place to do it. He is quirky in that it's a character

mechanically that cares about lands, and that's not normally a white-blue-black thing, but that is the character, so we still connect to that. But anyway, that is Dakin Blackblade. Okay, next up,

Domri, Domri Rod. So, Domri, the time we made him, was the youngest planeswalker. Amtao has that honor now. But Domri is, like, a teenager. I think we liked the idea of having a young planeswalker, and I think they ended up putting him in Gruul, in Red Green,

because he was just sort of a wild, a literal wild child, if you will. He tends to interact with creatures, so his cards are creature-focused, and he was kind of built to go into a red-green, mid-range kind of a deck, a deck that sort of ramps up and attacks. So we ended up, the character was associated with the Gruul, and then during the, our third trip to Ravnica, he ended up

leading the Gruul, sort of got placed there by Bolas. One of the guilds that Bolas had some control over. But anyway, another spoiler here. One of the reasons, by the way, that a lot of dead characters are coming up is the list I originally looked off of only had living characters. So,

that's why a bunch of these characters were dead characters. That's why they weren't on the list. And some of them weren't supplemental products. Anyway, Domri sadly died. I think Nicole Bullis killed him in War of the Spark. Okay, next up, Dovin Bon.

So, Dovin Bon is a Vidalcan from Kaladesh. He's part of sort of the government that runs Kaladesh. It is a very white-blue organization. He is white-blue, obviously. And they sort of control things, are a little bit of control freaks. So Dovin has, his ability, if you will,

is the ability to recognize weakness in things, which is a very cool character thing and a very pain-in-the-butt mechanical thing. Like, what does it mean mechanically that he can sense weakness? So, usually we design him as being sort of a control card in a white-blue deck, but he's been tricky for us to design. He also, by the way,

he died in not the first, but the second War of the Spark book. So anyway, a lot of my early planeswalkers are ones that are no longer with us. But anyway, he has quarreled a bit with the Gatewatch and with Shondron's specifics. And I know they had another little, I don't know what it would call it, duel, if you will, in the War of the Spark. So anyway, that is Dovin. Okay, next up is

Estrid. Estrid the Mast. So she was another character that we made during, um, Commander 2018. These are, um, planeswalkers, Amontai was the same, that could also be your planeswalker. We've done that twice,

in 2014 and 2018. So Commander 2014, Commander 2018, we both had Planeswalkers that could be your Commander. I'll talk about a couple of them today. Anyway, I don't know a lot about Eftrid. The reason she got made was we were trying to make an Enchantment Matters Planeswalker. We have a lot of artifact-related planeswalkers, but not a lot of enchantments. She was the first enchantment one.

And I don't know much about her, other than she wears mini-masks and she's bald. I don't know much about the character. She is the one, by the way, I apologize, in the first podcast, I was talking about Return to Theros and how she's the character, I said we wanted to make a planeswalker that was enchantment-based, and she was the one that I said, oh, we talked about using her, and I forgot her name.

There's a lot of planeswalkers, and when I'm recording live, it's easy for me to forget things. But anyway, she was the one I was talking about. The reason we didn't use her was she just wasn't a great fit with the story, and we decided we just could have more than one planeswalker that was related to enchantment, so that's why we didn't use Estrid.

Okay, next up, Fraylies. So Fraylies was from the 2014 commander, another commander that could be your I'm sorry, another planeswalker that can be your commander. So she was going back in the past. So Fraylees goes all the way back, I think, to Ice Age.

She helped out the elves of Fyndhorn, and they treated her like a god. She wasn't. Just a planeswalker. But she she's a half-elf, half-human, half-elf. She's got an eyepatch. She's a pretty cool character, pretty stubborn.

The other big thing she did was she was one of the nine titans during the Invasion Block storyline. Urza put together these nine planeswalkers to help defeat the Phyrexians. She was part of that plan. But anyway, we were just... Sometimes we do supplemental sets.

It's fun to go back and get sort of older Planeswalker characters. And she falls in the area of just an older Planeswalker character. Okay, next up. Gaea Drone Dehada. Speaking of old story Planeswalkers. So she shows up in Modern Horizons 2. So basically what happened was, once Ethan had decided to put Dakin Blackblade into the set,

I think they were going to actually go with a different Planeswalker. It fell through. So they decided that it might be fun to do another character from the Dakin story who was also a Planeswalker, which was Giedron Dahada. She is...

She sort of helped Dakin become a planeswalker. She's the one that, I think, inscripted him, got him to make the Black Blade. And she is very good at sort of corrupting things, that's why she has corruption counters. But she definitely is sort of a more villainous of a planeswalker, if you will. Okay, next up, Gideon Jura. So Gideon first showed up, where did Gideon first show up? He first showed up in Rise of the Odrazi. So Gideon is, he's from Theros, originally Kithian, He's from Theros, originally Kithian, and he was like an orphan on Theros. He uses law magic, and he is, he's very much about, like, he had made some mistakes in his youth,

and his friends died because of what he considered his mistakes, and so he's very protective of people. He very much wants to do the right thing. For a long time, he had a weapon called a serl, which was a... I don't know how to describe it, but it has three sort of strands on it. Anyway, he was one of the founding members of the Gatewatch. A very, you know, upstanding, you know, trying to do the right thing sort of character. Again, he's one of the characters that died. Spoilers. He died protecting Liliana. He had...

One of the big things that he had gone through in his sort of character arc was trying to take responsibility for those around him and realizing that he needed to step up and do more. And he and Liliana sort of had formed a bond over the time of the Gatewatch,

and in the moment he decided that it was important to save Liliana, so he sacrificed himself to save Liliana. The one unique thing about Gideon from a Planeswalker standpoint is, I mean, he does a lot of protective white things, but he also, all versions of Gideon, you can turn him into a creature

and get into the fight. Usually it's indestructible. He can grant indestructible and stuff. And like I said, his magic is more protective in nature, but it's also some combat-oriented stuff. And anyway, he's a planeswalker that always gets in the fight. He's always going to

jump in and do what he can. Okay. Next up, Grist, the Hungertide. So Grist shows up in Modern Horizons 2. I don't know a lot about Grist. It's a weird character. I think, though, I think, out of them so I think Grist has a consciousness but then it's collective with insects of the world I'm not 100% sure how Grist works but Grist is made up, Grist has a body made up

of insects and the creative team had come up with this character it was very weird and quirky and so they ended up putting in Modern Horizons 2, because it's a weird character to tell a story with. Not that you can't, I guess. It's just, and so they wanted to introduce it in a place,

and Modern Horizons 2 had introduced, Modern Horizons 1 introduced Ren and Six, which I'll get to, and, but anyway, it seemed like a cool idea to introduce, like, one of the things we get from players all the time is that we have a lot of, you know, humanoid characters, especially human Planeswalkers. And, like, it's nice to see something that's a little different, that's a little off the bean path.

And so Gris was us trying to do something a little quirkier, a little weirder for those that enjoy that kind of stuff. Okay, next up is Jessica. Okay, so in the Odyssey and Onslaught storyline, there was a character named Kamal who was the main character. He started as a pit fighter and ended up becoming, I don't know, he went from red to green. Anyway, he had a sifter named Jessica. Jessica's been through a lot. She got injured, and then when the cabal fixed her, they sort of turned her into Phage, and then she got merged with two other characters

to become Corona the False God, and then she finally got turned back into Jessica, but then she became a planeswalker. So Jessica, thrice born, thrice reborn, is because she's taken on... She was Phage, she was Corona she was Jessica

so she's had three different versions she became a planeswalker so in Commander Legends it was like oh, here's a cool chance for us to capture this old character she's another planeswalker that can be your commander but anyway she's definitely sort of an old school character

that played a big role in two years worth of magic stories that we got to tap into. Okay, next up is Lord Wingrace. So Lord Wingrace is another of the Nine Titans, the ones that team up with Urza to help stop the Phyrexians. I think he is originally from Urborg, which is sort of a black-aligned section of Dominaria. He's from Dominaria.

Those, the extent of my knowledge, I don't know about Lord Ringgrace. He also was in the Commander 2018 with Amontau and Eftred, three-car planeswalker that you can be your commander. And he is very land...

We made him very land-focused, mechanically. Okay. Next up... Now we get where we left off last time. I've caught up. So now we get to Nissa. Nissa Ravain. So Nissa first showed up as the

character on the box of Duels of the Planeswalkers. I think we were just trying to get a cool image for it, and so I'm not sure. We said, oh, make a cool-looking elf planeswalker. We didn't have an elf planeswalker at the time. And we made her, and

she was sort of so cool, we decided to make a card out of her. So we ended up putting her in Zendikar. We made her from Zendikar. Interestingly, when we first made her, the intent was she was going to be more of a villain. So the early version of her had a little bit more villainous tendencies.

But we later realized when we were making the Gatewatch that we needed a mono-green character because originally when we formed it the first five members of the Gatewatch were mono-color characters. And Garak had just been cursed

so he wasn't a good choice because he had gotten black to him. So we decided to sort of go back and sort of advance her story a little bit and make her realize kind of the error of her ways and she sort of came around and really

as she started walking to other, planes walking to other worlds, she really started becoming this character that she realized that she made a lot of assumptions that weren't true and really changed who she was, became a little more of a good guy. So Nissa is our planeswalker

that we always theme to lands. I mean, we have a couple we do, but she's the main one that is a land theme thing. She likes to bond with land. She is a little bit of a loner. She connects more with lands than people. So whenever she goes to a new land, she always sort of talks with the land

and learns from the land. She's a cool character. Obviously, she's become good friends with many members of the Gatewatch, Chandra in particular. So, you know, she's a fun character. She actually left the Gatewatch, but then came back to the Gatewatch.

So, anyway. And she's a native. She's a native of Zendikar. Okay, next up is Obnixilus. So, Obnixilus is another one that goes back a bit. I know Obnixilus started as a human. In fact, the first Planeswalker card of Obnixilus, which was in Commander 2014, is a human version of Obnixilus. And then Obnixilus

ends up becoming a demon. I guess demons can't naturally have sparks, so in order for us to have a demon Planeswalker, he sort of had to become a human that got sort of tainted and became a demon. But anyway, he is very destructive. Basically,

he, as a Planeswalker, he harms other people. And as a characterwalker he harms other people and as a character he was the first villain that the Gatewatch basically fought in fact it's fighting him that sort of brought the first four members of the Gatewatch together

so he's kind of indirectly responsible for making the Gatewatch sort of but anyway he's a cool villain he's mean he's really's really mean. I mean, he's a demon. But he is definitely someone who I think we'll see more of. I think he's somebody who he definitely has played

smaller roles, but I don't know. I think one day we can see how Nick's like, he's a cool villain to me. Speaking of cool villains, we get to Oko. So Oko is first shown up in Throne of Eldraine. He had a very broken card, which...

Oko Thief of Crowns. And anyway, the card ended up being banned in a bunch of formats. So we were on Eldraine. We wanted to have a trickster character. He's a shape-changer. He's actually not native to Eldraine. We wanted to have a trickster character. Uh, he's a shape-changer. He's actually not native to Eldraine. He came there from elsewhere. But he really fit kind of the, um, the aesthetic, if you will, of Eldraine.

Um, and so, uh, he's another character who, I think people got a little angry with him because the card was so good. Um, but I think people like the character. And, in fact, what happens when you make a very powerful card is everybody learns the character. Like, you know, Jace having a real strong card really, really cemented everybody knowing who Jace was. Well, Oko had a similar thing.

So I do think we'll see Oko again. But anyway, he has the ability to not just change his shape, but he can change the shape of others. Obviously, he can turn things into elk for those that didn't play the card. Okay, next up, Ral Zarek. So, Ral Zarek... In my first podcast, I talked a little bit about Kiora.

And Ral has a similar thing going on to Kiora in that we were making duels with the Planeswalkers. Every deck had a Planeswalker associated with it. We had a blue-green Sea Monster deck, and we had a blue-red Spell Matters deck, and we had no Planeswalker that made sense with them. So we made two brand-new characters and said, hey, if these are popular, we'll make them into cards.

They were. We did. So Rall showed up in Dragon Maze for the first time. He is associated with the Izzet Guild. Um, in fact, during the third trip to, uh, to, um, to Ravnica, right before War of the Spark, um, he becomes a major player. He, uh, uh, Niv-Mizzet, who's the leader of the Izzet, sort of disappears. Uh, everyone thinks he's dead. He kind of was, but he comes back.

Um, a lot of spoilers today. Anyway, Rahl led the Izzet for a while and was a major player in the War of the Sparks storyline and in that whole year with Guilds of Ravnica that whole year. Anyway,

he is electrical based. He has electrical based powers. He also is a little bit of an inventor, because he's part of Izzet. But anyway, he has Electro-based powers, and normally the spell is very... Because Izzet is very spell-focused, his card powers tend to be very spell-focused.

Next up, Rowan and Will. I'm going to talk about Rowan and Will together. So they are twins. They are from Throne of Eldraine. Technically, Bolas and Ugin are twins, so they are the second twins. But they were the first twins that we knew were twins, because when we first introduced them,

I don't think you knew Ugin and Bolas were twins. Anyway, she has sort of spark magic. He has ice magic. The real unique thing about them as characters is they share a spark. And what that means is they can only planeswalk together. So if one of them wants to go somewhere, the other has to go with them, right? They have to say, okay, I'm going with you.

And they first showed up in Battlebond. And in that set, we had a mechanic called Partner With, so that when you played one, you got to go get the other. So to show that they were twins, most of the Partner With was mostly on legendary creatures, but we thought it'd be fun to have one pairing that was Planeswalkers. So we made the characters that were tied together. That's where they first got created. But the earliest appearance, not chronologically for the set, but chronologically in Magic Story,

was in Throne of Eldraine. They are twins. They're a prince and princess. They're the children of the king. And the king goes missing, and so they have to go find him. Also, the characters ended up, after that story, coming to Strixhaven.

They're studying at Strixhaven, so they were there. Um, the schtick about the card is they always appear together. So, they had partner with in Battlebond. When they showed up in Throne Eldraine, they were on the same card. Um, and, um, on, um, in Strixhaven, uh, it was an MDFC, meaning one side was Rowan and one side was Will. So, um, there, there's always a connective tissue between them. That's the cool thing about that character. Okay, next, Saheeli Rai.

So Saheeli was, she's an inventor from Kaladesh. Her origin story is kind of fun. So originally on the box for Kaladesh, we always have what we call the face of the set. There's a character, usually a Planeswalker, not always, but usually, that is sort of on the box. And we originally were going to use Chandra because Chandra's from Kaladesh.

She was going... For the very first time, we're seeing Chandra's home world. But the first set was all about invention and it was the inventor's fair. It was very much about embracing the joy of invention, right? And that's not really Chandra.

Chandra's not an inventor. And the second set was all about rebellion, and, like, okay, Chandra is very much about rebellion. Why don't we put Chandra on the second set as the face? But that meant, oh, who's the face of the first set? So we decided to make a native character of Kaladesh that was an inventor. So we made Saheeli Rai.

Her big thing is that she can manipulate materials so that she can build things. She can prototype things. So she literally invents things and uses her magic to be able to shape metal and things. And I think she can shape a bunch of different materials. She tends to use metal. And I think she can shape a bunch of different materials.

She tends to use metal. Anyway, she is... Yeah, she likes to travel the multiverse because she's interested in learning technology and learning technologies from others. And so she makes very elaborate things because she uses her power to travel, to learn, and, you know, to study. And so she really... She likes to craft more and more interesting and elaborate things.

So she's very into technology. Next is Samut. So Samut was from Amonkhet. So in the story of Amonkhet, the Gatewatch show up, and we learn, we see this world based after sort of a flavor of ancient Egypt. Nicole Bolas had crafted this world to be something, and on the surface it looks kind of nice,

but underneath you learn that Nicole Bolas is basically farming, making zombies so he can fuel a zombie army, which he attacks with in War of the Spark. And when we first meet Samut, she is a planeswalker, she's not a Samut, she's not a Planeswalker. She's just a legendary creature card

in Amonkhet. But in Hour of Devastation, when everything goes bad and Bolas shows up and all the people die and, like, let's just... Her forming of her spark is in the heart of what happens in

the second set. You know, when everything goes awry, that's what lends her spark. So the character is, she's faster than normal and she's stronger than normal. And so she's a fighter, and so her abilities tend to be

to encourage a more aggressive deck and she helps creatures with fighting. She is very combat-oriented. Okay, next up is Sarkhan. So Sarkhan first showed up in Alara. Sarkhan Vol

he first showed up in, yeah, Shards of Alara. So the very first time we saw Planeswalkers with Lorwyn, that's Lorwyn 5, we didn't have any Planeswalkers for the rest of that Magic year, and it wasn't until the following Magic year with Shardzolaro that we saw more Planeswalkers. So, Sarkinval was one of the earliest Planeswalkers.

He's base red. He's had different colors, green and black. He went mad for a while. So, anyway, Sarkinval is from Tarkir. It is a world that used to have dragons, and then dragons died,

and he is obsessed with dragons. He loves dragons. He both summons dragons and can turn into a dragon, so his cards are always dragon-themed. And he was the main character in the Tarkir storyline. He went back to his home world and discovered there was a way to go back in time to save Ugin

and thus save the dragons and he created an alternate timeline where instead of the Khans running all the clans dragons ran the clans now for most of that world of Tarkir I think I think most people consider it to be it turned out for the worse

Sarkhan may be one of the few people that, because he really likes dragons, that feels that Tarkir is for the better with dragons. But anyway, he is a character that's gone through a lot. He's been a minion of Bolas. He went mad for a while. He was involved in the freeing of the Eldrazi. So he's definitely a magic character that's just been through a lot of different story. And like I said, he was the main character

in the Khan of Tarkir storyline. Anyway, guys, I see my desk. So it looks like I need to wrap up for today. So we all know what that means. It means the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic.

I obviously have one more podcast of talking planeswalkers but anyway as for today I'll bid you adieu and I will see you next time bye bye