Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #874: Zombies, Part 2

Episode Date: October 1, 2021

This is another podcast in my Zombie series where I talk about the history of Zombie card design. It includes many card-by-card design stories of individual Zombie cards.

I'm not pulling in my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Coronavirus edition. Okay, last time I was talking zombies, and I like talking zombies, so I thought I'd talk some more zombies. So I'm up to invasions where I left off. So invasion was our first sort of set with a grand theme, and that theme was multicolor. The whole block, the whole block, I mean, sorry, early sets had themes. This was the first block to have a theme, and it was a multicolor block. And so one of the things we really were looking at was ways to play around with color.

So as you will see, most of the zombies in the set do that. So the first up is Metathrand Zombie. One and a black, one, one, black regenerate Metathrand Zombies. So if you listened to my podcast last time, I talked about this. So this card is a reprint of the card Drowned.

What we realized was we were trying to find... One of the things we were doing in the set was it was a multicolor set, but to try to balance it to make sure that people had enough stuff to draft,

we said, you know what? We need to do some monocolor cards that have activations in other colors. And so that way, look, you want to draft if you're playing those colors, but okay, maybe people can play these cards if they're desperate in the colors. This card

is not a particularly good card to play if you're desperate, but some of our other cards are. And I think we just realized that when we looked back at Magic, it wasn't easy to do reprints with all-color activations. Magic didn't have a lot of them. They had a few. Alpha had one in said stroll. And so

there were a few of them, and we just thought it was entertaining here to, I mean, we had to reskin it, because Drowned didn't quite make as much sense. But anyway, it's a redone version of an old card, which is Drowned. Okay, next up, Hateweaver. So, Hateweaver, one and a black for 2-1. Oh, I'm sorry, Hateweaver, okay Hateweaver, one and a black for 2-1.

Oh, sorry, Hateweaver... Okay, once again, to refresh from last time, one of the problems that we run into in early Magic is there was a limitation at the time that you could only have one creature type on most creatures. And so whatever was more important to the creature type got on the line. And so there's a bunch of cards in Invasion

that come the great creature type update would go back to becoming, would eventually become zombies because they were flavored as zombies, but they were not zombies at the time we made them because we only could put one knight in. So zombie decks at the time couldn't play them. So Hateweaver was a creature knight,

creature wizard, sorry. Marauding Knight was a knight. Nightscape Apprentice was a wizard. Nightscape Master was a wizard. And, uh, but, we did get to some, oh, and Sabo's Assassin was an assassin. But there

were two actual zombies. I'm sorry, there were a bunch of zombies. There were a bunch of zombies. There were a bunch of zombies. Two in mono-black and three in multi-color. So we did get a bunch of zombies in. And you'll notice me starting to get more than one creature type on stuff

in a second. Okay, so first is Frexen Delver. Three black black. When Frexen Delver comes into play, return target creature card from your graveyard to play. You lose life equal to that card's converted mana cost. This card was definitely, one of the things that we liked about Zombies was the idea of, I talked about

last time, that I really enjoyed Zombies having a life, playing around with life as a cost. Sarcomancy did that. You know, the, what was that? Anyway, there was a bunch, Hatred did that. There were a bunch of things

that went in the zombie deck that really played around with life as a resource. I like that as being something that vampires could do, and I like something that zombies could do. So the zombie deck early on played around with that. Vampire did as well. There's enough life things that both could do that. And then Friction Reaper,

4 black, 3, 3. When Friction Reaper becomes blocked by a green creature, destroy that creature. It can't be regenerated. So that's just a color hosing card we did. Okay, so now we get to the gold zombies, and we get to two cool ones in a second. So Pyro Zombie, 1 black, red, 2, 1. At the beginning of your upkeep, if Pyro Zombie's in your graveyard,

you may pay 1 black, black. If you do, return Pyro Zombie from your graveyard to your hand. 1 red, red. Sacrifice Pyro Zombie. Pyro Zombie deals two damage to a creature or player. Okay, so I think I made this card. So we had a cycle of cards in which it was a multicolor card that had two activations, one in one color and one in the second color. And the idea was that those two abilities were synergistic with one another.

So, for example, on this particular card, well, for one red-red, you could sac it to do two damage, right? And for one black-black, you could get it back. And so the idea was these two things work together, and we like the idea of a zombie that sort of lit himself on fire and sort of jumped and blew things up. Ah, but he's a zombie, so he'll come back. Okay,

then we get to some signs of me trying to solve this problem that was affecting zombies. So, Shivan zombies, black-red for Tutu, creature barbarian zombie. And Vidalian zombies, blue-black, Tutu, for creature

merfolk zombie. So what I did was I made a cycle of two-drop tutus that had both creature types of both colors. So the idea was, I think the red cards were barbarians and the black cards were zombies. So, for example, the black-red card was a barbarian zombie. The blue-black card was a merfolk zombie. If we made a blue-red card, I think these were just ally colors. It would have been, you know, like a barbarian, a merfolk zombie. If we made a blue red card, I think these were just ally colors.

It would have been, you know, like a barbarian, a merfolk barbarian. But I'd really been trying to find a place to do more than one creature type, and so I made the schtick of this, and the whole idea was it overlapped on the two, so it had to be both. Because, like, a merfolk and a zombie got together,

so it's both merfolk and zombie. It was weird creative, I met respect, but it was me really pushing and trying to get the idea of, look, we need to be doing more putting more creature types on stuff, because I wanted things to matter. Like, it was really frustrating to me, the number of zombies, like, between last

podcast and this podcast, the number of cards that were basically zombies, they were flavored as zombies, but it wasn't creature type zombie. It was really high. Okay, so next we get into Plane Shift. And I got to make my first zombie lord.

So, lord of the undead, one black, black, two, two. All zombies get plus one, plus one. One in black, return target zombie card from your graveyard to your hand. So one of my pet peeves had been zombie master. Basically helped your zombies. It gave them swamp walk, which, yeah, yeah,

you could play evil presence or whatever and turn your opponent's thing to swamp, but that's not a great card. And the other thing it did is it gave them regeneration. And so I'm like, okay, I just want to make like, the funny thing is, Merfolk, the Lord of Atlantis gave all Merfolk plus one, plus one. Goblin King gave all Goblins plus one, plus one. Those are so much

better! So I'm like, okay, can we just make could we please just make a zombie lord that makes zombies better? So we gave it plus one, plus one, and then like, okay, what if we did something that was useful for zombies? How about getting zombies back from the graveyard? That's pretty flavor one. And then like, okay, what if we did something that was useful for zombies? How about getting zombies back from the graveyard? That's pretty flavorful. And so anyway, I think Lord of the Undead was just a much better.

I mean, I'm glad that Alpha had a zombie lord. It was not debated. So I'm happy to finally make a better zombie lord. Also in Plane Shift, we get a bunch of zombies. You can, it's funny, you can tell as I get a bunch of zombies. You can... It's funny. You can tell... As I get a little bolder,

I start pushing more zombies because I like zombies. And so... Anyway, we got a whole bunch of zombies. So, Maggot Carrier, black for a 1-1. When Maggot Carrier comes into play, each player loses one life.

So, there was a cycle of cards. I think the first one was Tempest. Tempest had... What was the name of the card? It was Mog Fanatic. So it was red for a 1-1 and you... Oh no, that's not this card. That's not this card. I'm confusing cards. This is an Entra-the-Battlefield effect, not a sack effect.

So I just think this was just the idea of like zombies, at least early on, so I just think this was just the idea of like zombies at least early on zombies back in the day were a little more aggro

and so the idea of I'm just going to get a lot of zombies out I'm going to have things rewarding for having zombies and then the idea that I'm trading one for one but I'm making you lose a life

like okay that's a one drop we can make for zombies I mean there are better ones obviously if you're access to all the cards. So, Nightscape Battlemage, I think it's the one card in that is, it's Creature Wizard, that

was not listed as a zombie, that later is listed as a zombie. But we do have a bunch of other zombies. So, Nightscape Familiar was one and a black for a 1-1 zombie. Blue spells and red spells cost one less to cast. OneB regenerate, knights get familiar. This was part

of a cycle. So the cycle all said, my ally spells cost 1 less, and then they had an ability. I think most of them had a static ability. In black, we decided to put regeneration, but that was activated because of regeneration. I did think I convinced them to make the black one of these zombies.

Phyrexian Bloodstock. Four and a black, three, three. When Phyrexian Bloodstock leaves play, destroy target white creature, can't be regenerated. That was part of the anti-cycle for color hosing. Phyrexian Scuta. Three and a black, uh, three, three. Pay kick, kicker pay three life.

If you pay the kicker cost, Phyrexian Scuta comes into play with two plus or multiple encounters on it. Once again, more paying life for zombies. Lava Zombie, one black red. When Lava Zombie comes into play, return a black or red creature you control to its owner's hand.

Two, Lava Zombie gets plus one plus zero until end of turn. So it's a one black red, four three. So we did a cycle of what we called, what would you call this mechanic?

Gating, I think. It didn't have a name in the set, but we called it Gating. And the idea was, when this enters the battlefield, you have to bounce another creature, although back then, you had to bounce a creature of the same color, and it was a multicolor cycle, so they were all two colors, so you could bounce either of the two colors. And then, okay, then,

we get to the next step, which is Apocalypse. So Apocalypse has, how many zombies does Apocalypse. So Apocalypse has... How many zombies does Apocalypse have? It has a bunch of zombies. Apocalypse has one, two, three, four, five, six zombies. So it has Grave Defiler, three and a black, two, one. Grave Defiler comes into play.

Reveal the top four cards of your library. Put all zombie cards revealed this way into your hand, and the rest of the cards on the bottom of your library, and the one black regener cards are on the bottom of your library, and then for one block, regenerate Grave Defiler. So, yeah, you'll see, so, we're starting to solidify more zombie themes. Zombies are getting creatures

back from your graveyard, because one of the things about zombies is that they keep coming, and then also that it's playing around with life, because zombies are sort of the undead. Let's see, Mournful Zombie, two and a block for two, one. White and tap. Tiger player gains one life. That's a weird

zombie, but obviously Apocalypse was the enemy color set. Oh, I see. There's two of them. So quagmire druid, two block, two, two. Green and tap. Sacrifice a creature. Destroy target enchantment. So both of those are just I think we start

using... So you start seeing the zombie being more used as a default. I was a big advocate of this. But sort of like, we're making a black card, oh, why not make it a zombie? At this point, by the way, vampires were more high rarity, and that's why we're not seeing lower rarities being vampires.

And then we got zombie boa, 400 black, 3-3, one black, choose a color. Whenever Zombie Boa becomes black by a creature of that color this turn, destroy that creature. Plays the ability only as a sorcery. So the idea in this card is

you could sort of make it uncomfortable. Like, you sort of could turn on Death Touch, although Death Touch didn't exist yet. But you sort of like, oh, I have Death Touch versus green creatures this turn. It's kind of how it played. Okay, and then there's two gold cards in

the set, in Apocalypse, the last set of the Invasion of Black. There is black and green for a 2-2 zombie elf. Black and tap, add black to your mana pool. So I think this was a continuation of the allied ones that we had done.

The Shivan zombie and Vodayan zombie. I think this was a continuation of the allied ones that we had done. The Shiv and Zombie and Vodalian Zombie. I think we made an enemy cycle. And so you have Land of War Dead, which is a black-green zombie elf, 2-2. Tap for black to try to play that. It's a zombie, but normally an elf would tap for green. And then Putrid Warrior, white and black, 2-2. Whenever Putrid Warrior deals combat damage,

choose one. Each player loses one life, or each player gains one life. So we did the same thing where there's a zombie elf and a soldier zombie, for example. The one thing I will point out, by the way, on zombie boa is zombie boa is a zombie snake and quagmire druid is a zombie druid.

So I start making arguments that let's find places where it makes sense to have more than one and oh, it's clearly a druid, but it's dead. Oh, it's clearly a snake, but it's dead. And we want to communicate it's dead, but like, the card feels very druidy. The card feels very snakey. So I start convincing them to let me put additional things. So I, you can see me, my influence slowly seeping in over time. Okay, now we get to Odyssey. Okay, so the thing about

Odyssey was okay so here's the story is Bill comes to me and says all the members of the creative team we lost I think the creative team was three people at one point back in the day back here and one or two people had left

and then the last person was either leaving or had never run a set. Like, there was nobody that had ever run the creative on a set. And I had done it for... I had done the creative for Unglued, and I had done Names and

Flavor Text for... Oh, no, no, sorry, sorry. I'd done... No, Urza's Legacy. I'd done the card concepting for Earth is Legacy. So anyway, I was the only member of R&D who had done names, had done flavor text, had done art descriptions, that had done all the creative work. So Bill came to me, he was the head designer at the time, and said to me, Mark, could you, for Odyssey, run the creative? Meaning names and flavor text and help with the card concepting.

And I said, sure. And so that meant that I got to choose the creature types of the Odyssey block. And so I made sure that there were some zombies. So, for example, there were some zombies. So, for example, Odyssey has five zombies. And then Torment has one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Seven zombies.

And then Judgment has a couple more zombies. So you can start seeing, like, my influence grows on just trying to get more zombies. As the advocate, or to get more zombies. As the advocate, or a advocate for zombies. Okay, Crypt Keeper is one and a black, 2-1. Sacrifice Crypt Keeper, remove target card and graveyard from the game. So,

we start expanding the idea of, okay, well zombies very much care about the graveyard. They can come back from the graveyard. They can get other creatures back from the graveyard. So maybe we could do more things with the graveyard. And this is back from the graveyard. They can get other creatures back from the graveyard. So maybe we could do more things with the graveyard. And this is us like, well, what if they had a way to remove things from the graveyard?

We start sort of making zombies a little more graveyard-centric. So next is Famished Ghoul, three and a black. One black, sacrifice Famished Ghoul, remove up to two cards in a single graveyard from the game. Three, two. So, in the same vein, the idea of, what if

zombies not only could remove things, but could remove things as a cost? What if it was a resource that they used? Rotting Giant. One in a block. 3-3. Whenever Rotting Giant attacks or blocks, sacrifice unless you remove a card in your graveyard from the game. Zombie Assassin. Four in a black.

Tap. Remove two cards in your graveyard and Zombie Assassin from the game. Destroy target non- and a black. Tap, remove two cards in your graveyard and Zombie Assassin from the game. Destroy target non-black creature. It can't be regenerated. Three, two. So you can see here, one of the themes of Odyssey was, Odyssey was a graveyard set. And so I really saw an

opportunity to start using graveyard as a resource and so you can see, Zombie Cannibal, black. Whenever Zombie Cannibal deals combat damage to a player, you may remove a target card in that player's graveyard from the game. So you can see all the zombies in the set are removing cards, either removing

opponent's cards, or removing your own cards, that I started trying to give an identity to zombies. So in this block, which is a graveyard block, they very much are... Zombies have a really close relationship with the graveyard. Okay, so now we get into

Torment. So remember, the flavor of Torment was there were more black cards in it than normal. So it made it prime to have more zombies. So there are a whole bunch of zombies here. Caring Worm, three black, black, 6, 5. Zombie Worm. Notice Zombie Worm. Whenever Carrion Worm attacks or blocks,

any player removes 3 cards in the graveyard from the game. If a player does, Carrion Worm deals no combat damage. So we played it around a little bit here, where it's a Zombie Worm and the opponent has a choice. The way it sort of eats the opponent's graveyard is, I'm hitting you with a 5-6-5,

which at the time was a little aggressive. Now it's not so much. And, like, you can sort of lose your own graveyard to stop the damage. So it kind of, like, eats the graveyard, and when you have nothing more to feed it, it starts hitting you. The thing about Zombie Worm real quick I'll bring up is

the tactic I was using at the time was whenever it mattered that it was a zombie and it mattered that it was the other thing, I would argue to put both things on it. And so some of the time I was successful, some of the time I wasn't. Gloom Drifter, for example, which was also in, was a creature minion

and not labeled as a zombie. Okay, Grotesque Hybrid, four and a block, three, three. Whenever Grotesque Hybrid deals comment damage to a creature, destroy that creature. It can't be regenerated. Discard a card from your hand. Grotesque Hybrid gets flying and protection from green and white will end a turn. Okay, so the idea here is it has

kind of a Death Touch-y kind of ability. This is before Death Touch was a named thing. Now, obviously Alpha had Cockatrice and Thicketbastard. So, like, the idea of destroying something. But we had done it more in block. And this is a good example of us sort of starting to, like, do it enough that when I come and say,

Hey, let's just make it a keyword, we were having cards that were kind of doing that. And then also, one of the themes of Odyssey block was enabling you getting cards into your graveyard. And so this card lets you discard a card to make it fly and get protection from green and white. So it can protect itself from green and white spells or give it evasion. But it's sort of letting you get things into your graveyard. Because there were things like zombie cards tended to want to use the graveyard, either bringing things back or eating things, Grotex Hybrid works synergistically with them.

Organ Grinder, 2 in black, 3-1. Tap. Remove 3 cards from your graveyard. Target player loses 3 life. So once again, you're seeing more and more of us using Odyssey Block as really giving... I was trying to give... I was trying to branch

out a little bit. Early zombie decks had been very aggro-oriented, but I like the idea of giving zombies a little bit more control, and so you're seeing more manipulation with the graveyard. Okay, Putrid Imp, black, 1-1. Discard a card from your hand. Putrid Imp gains flying until end of turn.

Threshold, Putrid Imp gets plus 1, plus 1 and can't block. So Threshold is one of the main mechanics from this block. The idea is if you have seven cards in your graveyard, then it improved. So the idea is it's a one mana, one one, but it can be a one mana, two two, if you have enough cards.

Now the important thing of putridim, interestingly enough, was it was a one mana card that let you discard cards. And that putridim actually saw a lot of play, and that's the main reason, it's because it enabled a lot of things, because it allowed you to discard cards. And Odyssey Block, really, because of graveyard synergies and stuff, that can become pretty powerful. Okay, next up, Zombie Trailblazer, black, black, black, 2-2. Tap and untap Zombie U-Control, target land becomes a swamp until end of turn. Tap and untap Zombie U-Control,. Target land becomes a swamp until end of turn. Tap an untapped zombie you control.

Target creature gains swamp block at the end of turn. So this was part of a cycle where you would tap, I think, an untapped creature of that creature type in order to do something. And again, when we made a cycle and we cared about creatures, I made sure that black was zombies. Okay, now we move into

Judgment. There are two zombies in Judgment. First is Balther the Defiled. So Balther the Defiled is creature zombie dwarf legend 2-2. All minions get plus one, plus one. Black, black, black. Remove Balther the Defiled from the game. Each player returns all black and all red cards from a graveyard to play.

So one of the things I should point out is, so Balthor, for those who don't know your magic story, was Kamal, who's the main character of the Odyssey story, it was his mentor. And Balthor was a dwarf. Balthor the Stout was a dwarf that helped him.

So Balthor the Stout showed up in... What state is Balthor the Stout in? He was in Torment. And Balthor the Stout said, one red, red, two, two, all barbarians get plus one, plus one. And for red mana, target barbarian gets plus one, plus one

until end of turn. So the idea was he was a barbarian lord. He helped barbarians. Although he himself was not a barbarian gets plus one plus one at the end of turn. So the idea was, he was a barbarian lord. He held barbarians. Although he himself was not a barbarian. Interestingly, we loved the idea that we had a character that you knew that died, and then became a zombie.

And then we wanted the zombie to feel a lot like Balthar, but instead of being a barbarian card, it became a zombie card. So instead of all barbarians get plus one plus one, all minions getians get plus one, plus one, all Minions get plus one, plus one. And then, we wanted to give him a really sweet ability, so he has the ability that if he's in your graveyard,

on the battlefield, if he's on the battlefield, you can exile him. And it's Black, Black, Black, Exile, and then you can get all your black creatures and all your red creatures back from the graveyard to play. The reason it was black and red is because he formerly was red,

as both of us thought. And so he felt like a black-red character. So we decided they went really well. At the time, by the way, we really hadn't branched zombies out yet. I don't know if today, I'll get to the point where we do. I mean, obviously, we had the Drown

and we had the Metathrone zombies. We dipped our toe into not-black zombies, but really, zombies had, say, a pretty mono-black zombies, but really zombies had, say, a pretty mono-black thing. And you can notice, by the way, that like Zombie Trailblazer and Suicide Gold, which I'll get to in a second, all have three black mana into them. A lot of the way we were building zombies

at the time was zombies was really a mono-black deck. We hadn't quite gotten to the point where we started making tribal decks multicolored. That will come up in a second when we get to Onslaught, but we hadn't got there just yet. Actually,

it doesn't really happen in Onslaught, but it starts happening in Onslaught. Okay, Suture Ghoul, which is the last card in Judgment. Four black, black, black. So, seven mana total, three witches black. Star, star. Trample. As Suture Ghoul comes into play, remove any number of creature cards in your graveyard from the game. Suture Ghoul's power is equal to the total power of the removed cards,

and its toughness equals their total toughness. So I made Suture Ghoul as a remade version of a card that I mentioned in the last podcast briefly. Can you name the card? Yes, it's a redone version of Frankenstein's Monster. So Frankenstein's Monster, like, you could, you remove creature cards, but then you chose like, plus two, plus O-Conders, or plus

O plus one-conners, or plus O plus two-conners. It was very, very complicated to track what was going on. So this was trying to do a simpler, cleaner version of it, which is, I exile creatures and then it's just combined power, combined toughness, and exile creatures. I could, because they're exiled, I could stick them underneath the creature if I needed a reminder.

Okay, so now we get into Onslaught. So Onslaught is our first tribal set. So what happened was Mike Elliot had handed over the file. Bill was the lead designer. The set was kind of missing something.

Bill asked me to look at it. And what I had done is, Mike had done a little bit of tribal, but I think the blue creatures that could turn into anything were there. But there wasn't much to do with them. And I was like, you know what? We had just done Invasion,

which was a multi-color set. We had done Odyssey, which was a graveyard set. I really had high hopes of what if we made a tribal set. Now, at the time, it was a radical idea at the time, and there was a lot of discussion to be had, but I convinced people to do it. So one of the things I did was push hard to make this tribal,

and when we were sort of establishing the tribes, what should black be? Surprise, surprise, zombies. Now, given zombies had slowly, with some help from me, become the characteristic race of black, vampires still were kind of done at higher rarity, so we

hadn't quite got to the point where vampires also could be a characteristic race at common. So zombies really were the common black. And we were hitting all the obvious things, so like, red was goblins and green was elves, so it made sense that black was zombies, but I definitely was somebody pushing in that direction.

And so there were a lot of zombies. How many zombies are there? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21. There were 21 zombies. So my influence helping pay off. And so finally, we made a set all about tribes and zombies were the major black tribe. Another thing that I managed to do in this set is I convinced them that the zombies should have a second creature type

whenever flavorfully possible. So another thing that starts happening on Slot Block is a cursed centaur is zombie centaur, anirid and morkdiver is zombie beast, a feral vulture is zombie bird. We hadn't yet got to race class, a red mork diver, a zombie beast, a feral vulture, a zombie bird, that we start... We hadn't yet got to race class, but I did finally convince them that,

look, we should use multiple creature types when we make sense, and with zombies, they clearly have an identity of what they were before they were zombies. Now, the rule of the time was human wasn't a creature type yet, so if you were a zombie that clearly had been a human,

you were just a zombie. But if you were type yet, so if you were a zombie that clearly had been a human, you were just a zombie. But if you were anything else, even if you were just a class, if you were a class sometimes we would give you the zombie class, but if you were just a zombie human, we didn't say human wasn't a creature type yet, so we didn't say that. So I'm not going to go into all these just because there were

a lot going on, but I will talk about some of the tribal stuff. So Bone Knitter, one and a black, 1-1. One black, regenerate target zombie, and it had morph. So the idea was you could play it for three mana face down and a 2-2. But the fact that it had synergy with zombies was, if I had five mana, for example, I could both turn this face up and I could regenerate it. Now I could regenerate it, I could regenerate another zombie,

but I could sort of surprise you late game and do that. Festering Goblin. So, Black and 1-1. When Festering Goblin is put into a graveyard from play, target creature gets minus 1, minus 1 until end of turn. I was, one of my quests, and I'm not even sure I made this or not, but I definitely

was an advocate of it, was trying to make more 1-drops for zombies. And this is an actual good one-drop for zombies. We have... And once again, this is a zombie goblin, so it's both zombie and goblin. Oh, the other reason I was able to convince them to do two creature types

was we were doing tribal in the set, and I said to them, look, if we put multiple things, like the zombie goblin card, hey, that goblin deck could care about it as much as the zombie deck. So if I'm playing black and red,

and I have red cards that care about goblins, oh, look, I have a black card that could matter. And I started convincing them that it could start linking things and overlapping things. What else?

Gravespawn Sovereign. 4 black, black, 3, 3. Tap 5 untapped zombies you control. Put target creature cards from a graveyard into play under your control. So the idea is you turn zombies into reanimation. Once again, that's one of the themes we were playing out with zombies,

so it was pretty cool. I'm not sure whether this was part of a cycle of tap or whether it was just specifically a zombie thing. But I... One of the things we were playing around with in Onslaught was different ways to care about creatures and tapping was kind of a fun way to do that. Nantuko husk. Let's talk about Nantuko husk.

So Nantuko husk was two and a black zombie insect, two-two. The Nantuko,k was two and a black zombie insect, two-two. The Nantuko, by the way, were another way I try to get to get multiple creature types is I made them insect druids. Like I made the Aven bird

soldiers. I made the insects zombie druids. So when this died, I'm sorry, insect druids. So when this died, the idea was we've got to show it's a Nantuko, so we made an insect. So sacrifice a creature, Nantuko husk gets plus or minus two, insect druids. So when this died, the idea was we've got to show it's an Nentuko, so we made an insect. So Sacrifice a Creature, Nentuko has to get a plus or minus pseudo end of turn. So definitely we... I liked

finding things where I enjoyed them before, and this was a renamed card. But it was a fun card to bring back, so that was kind of neat. Rotling Reanimator. Two and a black for a 2-2. Zombie Cleric.. Rotling Reanimator. Two and a black for a 2-2. And it's Zombie Cleric. Whenever Rotling Reanimator, another Cleric,

is put into graveyard from play, put a 2-2 black Zombie Creature token into play. So the idea is, something else we've messed around with is crisscrossing creature types. So for example, this card is a Cleric card tribally, but it makes zombies.

So you could put them in the zombie cleric deck and have things that care about clerics and zombies and start crisscrossing. So let's see, any other... Undead Gladiator. Here's a fun card. One black, black, three, one. One black, discard a card from your hand, return Undead Gladiator from your graveyard to your hand, place it in your upkeep, and cycling one black. So One black, black, three, one. One black, discard a card from your hand, return undegladiated from your graveyard to your hand,

play this ability only to your upkeep, and cycling one black. So one and black, discard this card, draw a card. So one of the things I thought was fun was zombies can get themselves back from the graveyard, so that might be interesting with cycling, and you make a zombie to get itself back, and then cycling is a way to put it there.

So I can sort of, I can cycle away to draw a card, and then later on, I can use a different card, like land or something, to get it there. So I can sort of, I can cycle away to draw a card, and then later on, I can use a different card, like land or something, to get it back. And that allowed me to, for like, two black black, I could turn cards in my hands into cards if I needed to. Okay.

So, I see that I've run out of time. So we're going to stop here on Onslaught. Hopefully, one of the little stories you'll see as I go through zombies is and well, I was one of the people that was pushing. I was not

alone in my zombie love. There were people all around me that loved zombies. So when I talk about trying to get more zombies in the game or push zombies, I was not alone. I was not acting alone. I got allies. I got support. And so there were a lot of other people that really... I think the love of zombies started growing over time.

Early on, I was sort of the alone zombie fan. But over time, I really started getting a lot more people on board. And as other people, another zombie fan sort of joining R&D, you see more and more propagating of the zombies. So one of the things that's really fun as we look through this is,

like, we go from alpha where, like, there is one zombie and one card that cares about zombies, you know, and, like, right, not until the dark do you get a second zombie, to, look, there's a set with all these zombies in it, 20-plus zombies in it. So zombies have come far. So I'm probably not going to be apart from you for a little while,

but at some point I will. And anyway, it's fun. I love watching the evolution of zombies. Zombies have a lot more to go. In future zombie episodes, we'll see zombies hopefully get to other colors and things, but we're not quite there yet. So anyway, I'm at my desk.

So we all know what this means. It means the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. Hope you guys enjoyed hearing all about the zombies, and I'll see you guys next week. Bye-bye.