Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #864: Equipment, Part 1

Episode Date: August 27, 2021

In this podcast, I start talking about the history of the Equipment subtype and share some card-by-card design stories.

I'm not pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the Drive to Work Coronavirus Edition. Okay, so today I'm going to talk all about equipment. So it is an artifact subtype that we made back in Mirrodin and has since become evergreen. So I'm going to sort of talk about how we made it, how it became evergreen, and just some of the challenges that we've had along the way with equipment. Okay, so our story begins, actually, our story begins before Mirrodin. If you go back into early magic, for example, like Flying Carpet was in Arabian Nights. And even if you go back to Alpha, I mean, clearly there were objects that existed in early Magic

that were representing of things you would use or things your creatures would use. The reason I use Flying Carpet is Flying Carpet had a template where you could tap it, and as long as it stayed tap, the creature that had it gained flying. Now, Flying Carpet also had this thing where if the creature died you lost the flying carpet, but we did a bunch of mechanics in the early days where there were things that represented the creature making use

of it. We had a couple different weapons and things, but essentially the idea was, we really liked the idea that wouldn't it be cool to give your goblin a sword? You know, to be cool to give your goblin a sword? To be able to give something to your creatures. And so early Magic had bounced around with that

idea. We definitely had cards that kind of mimicked your creature got to care about it. There were definitely cards that... And the template we tended to use was you would tap it and pick a creature, and as long as it stayed tapped, that was true of the creature. And then if it ever became untapped, but you could choose not to untap it, but if it ever became untapped, then the creature lost that ability. And so it had a lot of

what you would later see with equipment, the idea that I have something, I could give it to somebody, but if, you know, if the creature dies, I could give it to somebody else. Some of the early ones, like Flying Carpet, were tied to the creature, so if the creature died, it died. But we moved away from that pretty quick. So anyway, okay, so now we get to Mirrodin design. So we're in the middle of Mirrodin design. So the one thing we knew about Mirrodin coming into it was we wanted an artifact theme set. Basically what had happened was Invasion had been the first set that really had a theme for the block. It was the multicolor block.

Before that, the way we did blocks before that were really just kind of like, oh, we just picked two mechanics and, you know, put them together. And Invasion's the first time they said, okay, we're going to be about something. The block is thematically, mechanically about something. And that it's not just all taking place in the same world. It's more than that. There's a mechanical identity to the set.

And Invasion, the funny thing is Invasion started because we liked the idea of just doing a multicolored block. But it went over so well. And also, the other thing we did in Invasion was we started sort of separating out, like, what if we do the allies here and the enemies there?

We started, like, having a theme allowed us to sort of play around with the theme. Anyway, the next block was Odyssey. That had a graveyard theme. And then it was Onslaught. That had a tribal theme. And when we got to Mirrodin, I really wanted to do an artifact block. And when we got to Mirrodin, I really wanted to do an artifact block. I had pitched it.

I think as soon as we realized Invasion was cool, I think I said I wanted to do an artifact block. And, I mean, I guess what happened was Odyssey sort of became the graveyard once we figured what we wanted it to be. But I really wanted to do an artifact block. And so I kind of was, Bill Rose at the time was the head designer. Bill's now the VP of R&D. But at the time, Bill had the role basically that I hold now. And I was in his ear and said I really wanted to make an artifact block.

So at some point, Bill's like, okay, it's time. We're making an artifact block. And so Tyler Beelman, who was the creative director at the time, in charge of the creative team at the time, we're making an artifact block. And so Tyler Beelman, who was the creative director of the time, in charge of the creative team at the time, he and I really were fascinated by the idea of a metal world. And we did a lot of, but part of that was, okay,

it's an artifact set, what were the cool things you could do with artifacts? And so we went and we looked at the long list of items, of things like we'd want to do with artifacts. And so, we went and we looked at the long list of items, of things, like, we'd want to do with artifacts. And one of the things on that list was equipment. I think, interestingly enough, we called it equipment. Like, equipment is interesting.

Like, we named it equipment. We referred to it as equipment. In design, we called it equipment. It ended up being called equipment in print. And so, it's always been called equipment. I think it's always been called equipment. I think it's kind of the obvious name. We wanted some term that is pretty generic.

Like we wanted a sword and a spear and a shield and boots and a magical orb to all fit in this. And so equipment did a good job of feeling like that. So anyway, we knew early on we wanted to do equipment. like that. So anyway, we knew early on we wanted to do equipment. It was one of the things that we said we wanted to do an artifact block that we wanted to see if we could... A lot of times what happens is we come up with an idea,

just an idea floating around, and like, oh, we really should do this. Vehicles is another example of this kind of thing, where we talked about doing vehicles forever, and then finally we had a set where we're like, okay, if we're going to do vehicles, this is the set to do them. Mirrodin was where we're like, okay, if we're going to do vehicles, this is the set to do them. Mirrodin was that set for equipment. Like, if we're going to do equipment, it's an artifact world, it's all about artifacts.

We're going to have more artifacts than normal, we're going to care about artifacts. If we're going to do something with artifacts, this is a great time to introduce a new artifact thing. So, we said, okay, let's do equipment. Now, the first attempt we had on equipment, we made them just like auras. They were literally, I think the earliest version we did was, for all intents and purposes, it just was an artifact aura. It was an artifact, but when you cast it, you put it on something,

and when that creature died, it went to the graveyard. I think the reason I tried that first was, like, one of the things I often try is, what is the simplest version of something? Does the simplest version work? And what we found was two things. One was, like, auras have all sorts of problems. I'll also do a podcast on auras one of these days.

Auras have lots of challenges to them. And so repeating, like, just making them work the same just meant all the problems and auras were just going to pop up again. The second issue was flavor-wise. Like, for example, when I said when we made the precursors to this,

it was interesting that you tapped it, and as long as you didn't tap, that creature gained the abilities. But if it untapped, you could move it to a different creature. So the idea of the equipment sort of existing beyond the creature, that creature gained the abilities. But if it untapped, you could move it to a different creature. So the idea of the equipment sort of existing beyond the creature, that if you give a sword to a goblin and the goblin dies, well, the sword just falls to the ground.

You can use a sword. The goblin dying doesn't make the sword no good anymore. And the second part of it was that something about it really was the idea of moving it around. Like, I give a sword to my goblin, but then my goblin falls, so I give a sword to my goblin, but then my goblin falls. So I give a sword to my merfolk, or, you know, whatever. The idea that you could put them on different things made a lot of sense.

And early on, we were trying to sort of do, trying to find the simplest way to do it. But what we found was, okay, we have to at least figure out how to make it something that you could choose to put on something and could be put on different things and if that creature somehow died, you didn't necessarily lose it. Like, we didn't want the negatives of auras.

I mean, auras still exist and there's value to auras, but we thought, if we're going to make something new, first of all, auras exist. Let's make something different and let's fit the flavor of what we're trying to make,

which was equipment. Okay, so the idea basically then was, we said, okay, how do we make it such that a creature can have it, but if a creature dies, it doesn't die with the creature? And so the,

probably the biggest innovation we came up with was the idea that, unlike auras, equipment can sit on the battlefield, that they don't need to be attached to something to exist. Like, one of the problems of auras is auras, by definition, have to be connected to something. So if the thing you're on goes away,

then it has to go away. But the idea of, like, give my goblin a sword, my goblin dies, okay, the sword just falls to the ground, somebody else can pick up the sword. Okay, so mechanically, okay, the sword just falls to the ground, somebody else can pick up the sword. Okay, so mechanically what we realized was, what if we created something that could exist by itself? Not that it necessarily had to do anything by itself, but it could exist as an artifact. It was a thing. And that's when we came up with the idea of equipping. And what equipping meant was, okay,

imagine you have this thing, but then there's an extra step you take to then connect it to a creature. And the fact that it can exist without the creature meant if the creature dies, the rules know what to do with it. Well, if I give a sword to my goblin and the goblin dies, well, the sword just sits there because it can exist by itself. That was the big innovation with equipment, is the idea that this thing can exist as its own entity, even though it's associated with being connected to creatures. And the other thing we wanted, so we did end up using equipment,

and equip attaches things, much like an aura attaches things. So we did use sort of attaching, the attach mechanic got used, if you will. Attach is a keyword, is a keyword action that says this thing is now connected to that permanent. This permanent is now connected to that permanent.

Some things like auras always have to be attached, but some things like equipment, and this was the big innovation, don't need to be attached. There are things that can be unattached and then become attached. And so the idea we had here was that it could sit on the battlefield by itself, and then we'd have an equip cost. Okay, so the first set that had equipment was Mirrodin.

And there were 20 equipment in it. I mean, we decided this was, like, it was the artifact set. This is one of the big things about it. So we really went all in on equipment. 20 equipment is a lot of equipment. And a lot of it was common. There was a decent number of common. I mean, they existed at all rarities.

But we definitely put a bunch of common. And there were some pretty strong ones in common. Like, one of the things we've learned over the years is whenever you're doing something new, it's very easy to not, like it's very easy to cost and to balance because the way we tend to cost things normally is we compare them to things we've done before. Okay, well, this is what that costs. And then we try to extrapolate and say, well, okay, this is like that, but not exactly like that. And I think early on, we were giving too much credence to the negativeness of auras without realizing that we'd really taken away the biggest negative of auras. The real downside of an aura is the card disadvantage, right? I spend mana and a card to do something,

and then you can spend one mana, not only destroy my creature, but destroy my aura. So now, your one card is destroying two of my cards. But equipment got around that problem. Equipment said, well, you know, I mean, you can destroy the equipment. You can shatter or whatever. You can directly destroy the equipment, but then that's one for one. If you destroy the creature, you're not destroying the thing attached to it. And that was really a different animal. So when we first made equipment, I mean, Mirrodin has all sorts of developmental issues.

I'm not sure what the most broken set developmentally. I think Mirrodin is number one or number two, Urza's Saga being the other one. But as a sense, like, for example, Throne of Eldraine is very powerful, but neither is as powerful as Mirrodin or as Urza, as far as, like, how crazy it kind of got. So anyway, we made a bunch of things. Now, one of the fun things about it was

some of the items we'd made in the past, you know, we just made for you, the player. Like, a lot of the equipment we had made in the past was like, well, we made a sword that's kind of like, well, you, the player, have the sword. Or you, the player, have the armor, you know. It's sort of like you, the planeswalker, when we gave you equipment,

like, if you equipped anybody originally, it was sort of like you, the planeswalker, when we gave you equipment, like, if you equipped anybody originally, it was kind of like you equipped yourself. And then we had tried our hand at sort of things that kind of got the flavor of giving the sword to the goblin. But the one nice thing when we made equipment was

we really were allowed to sort of dive much deeper into that. So, like Lightning Greaves, for example. So, Lightning Greaves is an equipment that costs two mana. Equipped creature has haste and can't be the target of spells or abilities. Actually, I'm reading the original

text. So, now it has haste and shroud. Because at the time, we used to we now if we were doing them now, it would be hexproof. And we've done more recent versions that are hexproof. But at the time, that used to... If we were doing them now, it would be hexproof, and we've done more recent versions that are hexproof. But at the time, that's how it was. Shroud wasn't a keyword yet.

Shroud became a keyword in Future Sight, which will be two sets later. But for example, I don't think we had done boots up to that point. I think Lightning Greaves might be our first boots. And even some of the other stuff. I mean, we had done gauntlets and armor and hammers and swords and stuff and axes, but

it really allowed us to start getting much more fine-tuned in some of that stuff. And so there were a lot of cool things. I remember, so Bonesplitter's funny. So Bonesplitter is an equipment that costs one. Equip creature gets plus two, plus zero. Equipped 1.

This is what we first made and said, okay, this is the base level equipment. Turns out that Bone Splitter is a little better than it's supposed to be, you know, especially at Common. But that was sort of us trying very simply. And then one of the things, if you look at the early things,

there's definitely us experimenting around. For example, Viridian Longbow is us using equipment to grant a tapping ability. So that costs one. Equipped creature has tapped. This creature deals one damage to our creature player. Equipped three. So that means I'm giving them a bow, and then I can shoot people with my bow.

And then, yeah, so a lot of early equipment. So let me run through real quickly of the 20. So, like, Banshee's Blade was two. Equipped creature gets plus or minus one for each charge card on Banshee's Blade. Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage, put a charge card on this card. So Banshee's Blade was the first equipment that acquired counters,

so it could grow with time. Like, Bone Splitter was our vanilla. Let's see, Dead Iron Sledge one mana equipment, whenever an equipped creature blocks or becomes blocked by a creature, destroy that creature and equip creature so the idea here is, whenever I get in a fight with something, I and the thing I get in a fight

with are going to be destroyed and the thing that's cool, a good example here, this doesn't make a good aura because the second I get in a fight with something, I die and the aura would die. So, like, in an aura,

it really becomes this, like, okay, well, you know, whenever I block a block, I and it all die, but then you lose that. We were trying to take advantage of mechanics and things that would make sense because there is continuity of the things sticking around. And Dead Iron Fledge is a good example of that. Imperial Plate

costs two. Equipped creature gets plus one plus one for each card in your hand. Equipped two. So, this is a good example where we took some fun auras and, like, Imperial Armor is this. Imperial Plate's us nodding into that.

We also had some fun taking things that were auras and getting to juice them up a little bit because an equipment is a little bit better than an aura. So, I mean, this does what the aura does and maybe it costs a little more to use because you have to play it for two and equip it for two. But if your creature dies, you get to move it. Or not even if your creature dies. The other nice thing about equipment is sometimes

I put it on a creature, but then I get a better creature that's more valuable to have that. Okay, Fire Shrieker. Three mana. Equipped creature has double strike. Equipped two. Yeah, a lot of what you'll see in... It's funny. We're both trying to sort of do some

basic, simple equipment, and we're trying to explore where equipment can be. So Golem Skim Gauntlets one, artifact equipment, and we're trying to explore where equipment can be. So Golem Skim Gauntlets, one artifact equipment. Equipped creature gets plus one, plus zero for each equipment attached to it. Equipped two. So that's us doing some linear designs, like the idea of, it's, it's, you

would draft this, it's an uncommon, and then it says, oh, what you want to do is play a deck with lots of equipment. And so this encourages you to play a lot of equipment. Lean and Scimitar, along with Bone Splitter, so one mana, equip creature gets plus one, plus one, equip one. So Bone Splitter and Lean and

Scimitar were kind of our base level simple commons at the time. Lean and Scimitar is closer to being correct than Bone Splitter. Interesting how power plays out. But it is definitely looking at sort of, like, we did have a lot of clean, simple things. Lightning Greaves, two mana.

Equipped creature has haste and can't be targeted. Spells or abilities are shroud. Equipped zero. This is us, A, making our first boots, but also messing around with equipped zero, which means I can move it around for free. We don't do a lot of equipped zero. One of the lessons of Lightning Greaves was

you kind of want to have, like, you wanted to mean something to move things. In fact, one of the things over time that started to happen is, um, we've been much more conscious now about making equip costs a little bit higher. Not that we don't do some in cheap equip costs, but we kind of want you to commit and have a creature

having the equipment. The idea that you just constantly move it around, um, developmentally can cause some issues. Play design-wise can cause some issues. So, like I said, it's not that we don't make cheap equipment, we don't do Equip Zero much, but we tend to make things a little more to equip. Locks it on Warhammer.

This was a pretty popular card. Costs three. Equip creature has plus three, plus zero, and trample, and whenever this creature deals damage, you gain that much life. Equip three. And once again, you can see at the common level we were trying to sort of make nice, clean, simple cards. At the uncommon level, we start making

sort of exciting cards that you might draft early that it just changes what you want to do or how you do it. Like I said, Laxant of Warhammer was definitely a card that saw a lot of play. Mask of Memory. Two. Whenever a equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, you may draw two cards. If you do,

discard a card from your hand. So this is something we're trying to get card advantage into it. The funny thing is, I think this card might have originally been what we call Curiosity. Just equip creature, win a deal, damage, draw a card. And I guess we felt that wasn't good enough, so we had you

draw two cards and discard one. Part of it also might be... Yeah, that's my assumption. My I guess we felt that wasn't good enough, so we had you draw two cards and discard one. Part of it also might be... Yeah, that's my assumption. My assumption was we were just trying to make it better. It's funny. I think nowadays we are just willing to make the curiosity. I think one of the things when you first make a set, first make a mechanic, is you kind of want to make sure it's splashy enough.

And so I think we pushed things in places where we didn't necessarily need to push it. New York Hover Sale is another simple common. One, Equip Creature is flying, Equip 2. You really could see that at a common, we really were trying to show the simplicity. Like, one of the big things that I'm very proud of in

Mirrodin, if you go look at the commons, while the set has a lot going on, the commons are pretty streamlined and very simple. Nowadays, we... I mean, it's one of the things that Magic goes back and forth simple. Nowadays, we... I mean, it's one of the things that Magic goes back and forth on. How simple are things supposed to be at Common? Obviously, New World Order really had to simplify some things up.

But we're going back and forth. One of the things that we play around with is how much complexity can there be at Common and how do you hide complexity? So, anyway, an ongoing thing. But if you look at the equipment, the Common equipment in Mirrodin, it is very clean and streamlined.

Okay, next, Nightmare Lash 4. Equip creature gets plus or minus one for each swamp you control. Equip pay three life. Okay, so in Mirrodin, we played around with the idea that maybe equipment doesn't have to be mana. I think this is the only card that isn't mana in...

Yeah, this is the only card that isn't mana in Mirrodin. So this card plays around with two things. One thing, the idea that equip cost could be other costs. We knew that when we made it. This card is kind of us nodding, saying, hey, equip cost don't have to be mana. Mana is probably the cleanest, easiest way to do it, but there are other things. The second thing is us saying,

hey, not all equipment is necessarily geared toward every color the same. For example, now, at the time, we didn't really do, or we didn't, we didn't do colored equipment. Two sets later in Future Sight, I would introduce the very first colored equipment, I guess. In Future Sight, one of the future Shifter cards was a colored equipment. A hint of things to come. But at the time, the idea was, we were fine with this card for all intents and purposes. Look, you're not playing this in not a heavy black deck.

It cares about swamps. You're probably playing this in a mono black deck. I mean, maybe you're splashing a second color. But anyway, it was okay. We said, you know what? The equipment paying life, yeah, that feels really black. What it does really cares about being in black, having swamps. So that's really us saying that we were willing to start making,

even from the very beginning, we were willing to make artifacts and push in certain directions and say, hey, not every color can use this equally. That's something we did from very early on. Obviously, as we get into color costs and stuff, we push more in that direction. Okay, Scythe of the Wretched. So it costs 2, plus 2, plus 2.

Whenever a creature dealt damage by a equipped creature this turn is put into a graveyard, return that play under your control. Attach Scythe of the Wretched to that creature. So the idea here is whenever I kill something with this card, I bring it back, and then that new card gets the Scythe of the Wretched. So, once again, you can see that we are playing around with the idea that

we can attach things. Even though this has equip costs, this has an alternate way by which it gets equipped. One of the things you'll notice as we do more and more design, I'm not sure how far we'll get today, but really, one of the things that's interesting to look at is that

we set up the base of, okay, you play it and there's equip costs, but then we circumvent that in some ways. And one of the things we've been doing more and more of is letting you equip things right away, as in enter the battlefield effect. For example, in Zendikar Rising, you know, we did that on all the equipment.

Next, Slaghornorn Armor. One. Equip creature plus zero plus six. Equip three. This is another common, just the idea of, okay, could toughness matter? Does sort of toughness matter? I know we pushed it a little bit. This is one of the things we really experimented when we made this card of

how much could the toughness be? I think at one point it was even a little bit higher, but we ended up at six. Oh, one thing, by the way, I did not mention real quickly. So when you equip, this is what equip says. It's attach target creature you control. Equip only as a sorcery. This card comes into play unattached and stays in play if the creature leaves play.

And then the current equip thing is attach the target creature you control. Equip only as a sorcery. This card enters the battlefield unattached and stays on the battlefield if the creature leaves. So one of the things is, why did we make it sorcery speed? And the answer is,

one of the things we wanted to do with equipment is we wanted to do things that make the creatures matter in combat. If you made it instant speed, it really complicates the board state. It really makes... For example, let's say I even have something as simple as Lean and Scimitar, right? For one mana, I can give a creature plus one, plus one.

Okay, now all of a sudden, if I have four creatures in play, my opponent has to go... And I have one mana open. My opponent has to say, Okay, any one of those creatures could be plus one, plus one more. And that really, just the amount of combinatorics of figuring out what that means really complicates things.

And so we did it at the sorcery speed so we could do combat mattering things. Part of equipment is you want it to matter in combat. It's things that you're putting on a creature, and the number one value for a lot of creatures is combat. So we really want it to matter in combat. Okay, next up,

Sword of Kaldra. Four mana. Legendary artifact. Equipped creature gets plus five, plus five, plus five. Whenever equipped creature deals damage to a creature, remove that creature from the game. Equip four. Once again, I'm reading the original. It now says exile rather than remove from game.

So this was the first legendary equipment we made. In fact, I think it's the only legendary equipment in the first set, although it's part of a cycle. So the other thing is Sword of Caldra, Shield of Caldra, Helm of Caldra were three equipments, but if you got all three into play, they generated the Caldra token. And the Caldra token... Where is it?

Where's the Caldra token? The Helm of Caldra. Where's the Helm of Caldra? The Helm of Caldra, I think it made... What was it, a 5-5? Oh, the Helm of Caldra. 4-4. It makes a 4-4 avatar named Caldor. We'll get there.

Anyway, this was definitely us trying to get as splashy as we could. Like I said, 4 mana to cast, 4 mana to equip, plus 5 plus 5. It exiles any creature it deals damage to. We were really trying to make something splashy and something that played into larger stuff. For example, it's

us playing it into flavor in a strong way. Like, one of the things, by the way, the reason we did equipment, one of the reasons, not only did we think that equipment would be

fun for gameplay, but the flavor dividends of equipment is so high. Just making all these cool things. Like, one of the things, like, if you look at something like Dungeon Dragons,

a lot of the cool artifact Dungeon Dragons are things that your creatures, your characters get to use. And it's really fun. Like, there's a lot of the cool artifacts Dungeons & Dragons are things that your creatures, your characters get to use. And it's really fun. Like, there's a lot of fun flavor space in pop culture

with enchanted swords and all sorts of fun stuff. And so this really gave us a chance to do that. Viridian Longbow. We talked about Viridian Longbow. One enchanted creature has deal one damage

to a creature or player, which does not say creature or player, which, does not say creature or player or does it say any target? Not that it says any target. But the idea that you could graft on something and, you know,

that equipment, Auras had already done this, so obviously a lot of the space we were playing in, Auras had mapped the ground already. But, for example,

the interesting thing about this card is, and this is why the equip costs three, is I can put it on a creature, tap to do one damage, I can move it to another creature that's untapped, and do another damage. So, if I have enough mana,

this card lets me sort of do a bunch of damage, you know, with this one singular card by handing around the bow from creature to creature. And that's one of the reasons why, for example, this is equip three. You've got to be careful with that. The goal of this is not to turn it into sort of a spell, but there is some neat things you can do with that.

Okay, so Varak Battlehorns, 2 mana. Equip creature has Trample and can't be blocked by more than one creature. Equip 1. This is another one of our commons. We thought that Trample just wasn't enough, and so what we call Stalking. You can only be blocked by one creature. So this says Trample and Stalking. So the Stalking call stalking. You can only be blocked by one creature. So this says trample and stalking.

So the stalking is nice, because if you can only be blocked by one creature, it increases the chance that trample means something. Volshak, Battle Gear. Three mana. Equip creature gets plus super three, equip three. That's awesome. Like, this is the uncommon. So this is the simple uncommon that's bigger. One of the things that's fun, as I

look back, is you can see us, like, mapping space and trying to understand stuff. So one of the things, by the as I look back is you can see us mapping space and trying to understand stuff. So one of the things, by the way, is my equipment podcast. They might not all be consecutive, but this is something I'm going to come back to just because there's lots of fun on equipment. Anyway, I'll finish up with Mirrodin and we'll probably wrap it up for today.

But I will be coming back in future times. Like I said, not necessarily consecutive, but I think equipment's a lot of fun. It's fun to go back and look at and see where the innovations are. So anyway, Volstrak Gauntlets, two. Equipped creature gets plus four, plus two and doesn't untap its controller's untap step.

Equipped, three. Okay, let me bring us another thing about equipment. One of the things we decided was we didn't put an unequipped cost. In design, for a while, equipping and unequipping existed on the cards. So if you could equip for three, you also could unequip for three. And what that meant is you could spend three just to take it off the creature and put it back on sort of the ground, if you will.

We decided that it didn't come up enough to be relevant and that we liked the idea that, okay, if you give your creature, the creature's got to hold on to it until you can up enough to be relevant and that it, um, we liked the idea that, okay, if you give your creature, the creature's gotta hold on to it until you can give it to somebody else. You can't, and it allowed us to do things like Volshrite Gauntlets, right? Where there's a negative tied to it. Now, if I wanted to stick it on my creature, okay, there's a

positive that comes there, it gets plus four, plus two, but it also comes with a negative. Now, it's equipment, you can move it, you know, but once again, when you get rid of the downside, you get rid of the upside. But the not having the unequipped cost on it did allow us to do some

designs that we probably wouldn't have done had we not done that. Okay, the final equipment I want to talk about today is World Slayer. Five mana, whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, destroy all permanents other than World Slayer. So this is... So how many rares did we have?

So Sword of Calder was a rare. And I think that might be it. Oh, no. Imperial Plate. Plus one, plus one for all your... So Imperial Plate was a card that we knew people already knew that new was powerful. That made a fun rare.

Nightmare Lash was a rare. Oh, there are a couple of ra fun rare. Nightmare Lash was a rare. Oh, there are a couple of rares here. Nightmare Lash was a rare. That's the thing, plus one, plus one for your swamps. Scythe of the Wretched was a rare, because it kills things and takes them. Sword of Calder was a rare. The final rare was World's Lair. It's funny, I look at this card now and I'm like, man,

this is the kind of card that in modern day we'd probably make legendary, just because it's like I hit to destroy everything. Feels pretty grandiose. And it's not really like you need two world slayers. You're not like, you need a world slayer in each hand. So,

that's the kind of card, looking back, that I probably would have made legendary in retrospect. Like I said, we were willing to do legendary. We did Sword of Caldor. I think we were a little, back in the day, prior to Commander sort of being as popular as it was, we were willing to do Legendary. We did Sword of Caldor. I think we were a little... Back in the day, prior to Commander sort of being as popular as it was, we were much stingier with Legendary that we used it,

and we used it where we needed to, but we were much stingier with it, and so... But anyway, so that is... We got through Meriden. You know, one of the things before I wrap up for today, I just want to say that, like, one of the things that's really interesting for me as a historian of magic design

if you will is watching us do something and see the earlier versions see the Model T if you will and the funny thing is look there's some developmental issues that go on here but if you divorce us from that

okay we took us a little while to figure out how best to cost them this and that. I mean, it was a new thing. From a design standpoint, we really hit the ground running. Like, we have some nice very clean, simple cards. We have some exciting cards. We have cards. We have alternate costs.

You can see from the very first time we did equipment, we were dipping our toe right away and experimenting. I look back as, you know, obviously I was involved in making of these, but it's we made something very flavorful and clean and as I'll talk about in the next time

these cards went to evergreen immediately. They almost were evergreen in the set we introduced them in, although technically I guess they weren't evergreen until they showed up in another block, but I look back now and like I said, it's not that they weren't evergreen until they showed up in another block. I look back now and like I said, it's not that there aren't things we can do better. It's not little tweaks that we could

improve upon. Yeah, yeah, the power level is something that clearly has some room for improvement. But from a design standpoint, we really did a good job of making a nice, clean, mechanical shell that has allowed us to do a lot of really cool stuff along the way.

Yeah, we didn't get to colored yet. Anyway, there's lots of things we'll learn along the way. But when I look back as somebody who was involved and who still makes equipment today, we did a pretty good first pass for a new card subtype. I think we did a pretty solid design. But anyway, I can now see my desk. 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'll see you guys soon. Bye-bye.