Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #902: Champions of Kamigawa Block Mechanics

Episode Date: January 29, 2022

In this podcast, I take a look at all the named mechanics from the Champions of Kamigawa block.

I'm not pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the Drive to Work Coronavirus Edition. Okay, so Kamigawa Neon Dynasty is coming out very soon. And I'm going to be doing podcasts soon talking about how it got made and such. But before I do that, I wanted to take a podcast to look back at all the mechanics from Champions of Kamigawa Block. And sort of walk through them a little bit and kind of give my opinions on them and talk about them. I've said this before. I believe that Champions of Kamigawa Block

is the weakest block mechanically. I don't mean power level. I just mean from a design standpoint. It's the block worth the design mechanically that I'm least happy with. There are individual sets that I think were worse designed from early Magic, but this is the whole block that I... The block is very parasitic, meaning a lot of the mechanics require you to have the same mechanic to play.

We'll talk a little bit about that today. But anyway, it was just... It wasn't ideal. But one of the things about returning to it is it made us go back and look at it. And one of the things I'll get into is we had to figure out what exactly we wanted to bring back. So today I'm going to look back at all the old mechanics to sort of give my honest opinion on all the original champions of Kamigawa, sort of named mechanics, although a few of them were more nicknames than names, maybe.

Okay, so we start with Bushido. When this creature blocks or becomes blocked, it gets plus one, plus one until end of turn. So Bushido first actually showed up, that mechanic, on a card called Chubtoad all the way back in... What was Chub Toad? Ice Age. In fact, Modern Horizons 2 has a card that is a frog samurai with Bushido that's making joke of Chub Toad

and sort of redoing Chub Toad. Anyway, we finally named it Enchanted Kamigawa Block. It had existed before. Bushido means, I think, a way of the sword. Oh, so in the set, what we did is every samurai

in the block has Bushido, and every creature with Bushido is a samurai. It's one for one. There's no samurais without Bushido. There's no Bushido creatures that aren't samurais. I think Bushido's a fine mechanic. I mean, it plays fine. Probably the biggest strike against Bushido's a fine mechanic. Um, I mean, it is, it plays fine.

Um, probably the biggest strike against Bushido as a mechanic, as a named mechanic, is you don't want a lot of it. Um, it's a much better mechanic in small doses than in large doses. Um, and so, uh, that was, I think, the biggest strike against it. Like, I'm not sure whether, it came about because they were trying to find a keyword for samurai. And it is a clean combat mechanic. And the idea is samurai are good at fighting. But looking back, it just isn't something like...

It's the kind of keyword in small doses that just does a much better job. And there are a lot of samurai. So that's my biggest strike against Bushido. I don't think we wanted it in the volume that we had it. Okay, next, flip cards. So flip cards were cards in which a single side of card, it was single face, but there were two sort of cards. Imagine if you had a card and you turn it 180,

and there was a separate card, and sort of the art overlap between them. And the idea was that you would play the first card, the one that had the casting cost, the mana cost, and then you would, under a certain condition, it would flip. So it would turn 180 degrees. So the biggest problem we have with flip cards... I think flip cards were really cool thematically and

even mechanically were cool there were two problems with them two main problems with them one was a logistic issue which it was hard to tell when they were tapped which side it was

so let's say I put out the first creature and then I attack. Oh, is it that creature or is it, did it change already? Like, it was hard to tell. It's already, when you just had it oriented up and down, okay, it's oriented in the direction of what it is. But once you turn it sideways, like, not everybody taps to the right or taps to the left. Like, people sort of vary a little bit. And so there was logistics issues with it. That was one of the big problems. The second thing is the aesthetics of

the art. The way the art did it is, we kind of did two pieces of art. So, no matter which orientation you have, there's a right upside piece of art. But it means that there's art that doesn't matter. Like, it just, it wasn't aesthetically very pleasing. And now, I think flip cards were a cool idea. In some ways, they paved the way for double-faced cards. I think double-faced cards were a better execution of what flip cards were. Because it allows you to show two states in a very clean way. You get creative for each state.

They don't confuse each other. And it's always clear which state the card is, because whatever is up is what it is. And there's no sort of elements of the card that you're supposed to ignore. But I do think, I mean, I think flip cards were a nice, like, I don't know if we got to double-faced

cards as easily without flip cards being there as sort of us pushing in that direction. Okay, next, Soul Shift. When this creature dies, you may return target spirit card with mana value N or less from your graveyard to your hand.

Okay, so the flavor of the story of the block was the humans were fighting with the spirits from the spirit world. And we wanted to represent both the humans and the spirits. And so the spirits got two mechanics, one that was named Soul Shift and one that was not named Spirit Craft. I'll get to it in a second. So the idea of Soul Shift is whenever you kill a creature and soul shift only went on spirits you got back a smaller spirit so the idea was it went on spirits

and when you kill this spirit you can get back a smaller, it defined as cheaper, lower mana cost spirit the biggest issue at the time, one of the biggest issues was I talked about the parasitic stuff of you only can play stuff with a set. Spirits pre-existed to Champions of Kamigawa,

but there weren't a lot, and there weren't a lot that were particularly good. And so you really ended up playing a lot of cards from this set to have enough cards to play your spirit. It was also tribal. I mean, I generally like tribal mechanics, and I like the idea that we were connecting the spirits through a tribal spirit mechanic, so I like that. Things that constantly return

creatures are, from a play design standpoint, a little hard to balance. Much like, for example, when we make Persist or make Undying. Creatures that come back as other creatures are tricky to balance. And

with Soul Shift, you can Soul Shift into another Soul Shift creature, so when it dies, it shows. So you can sort of like, it slowly gets smaller over time. And while that's kind of cool and it's kind of neat to build around, it is pretty hard to balance. And it also requires

a really high amount of spirits. In that particular story, I guess it worked because of it. But it also forced our hand to make a lot of spirits. And I know there was a war with the spirits so we needed a certain amount of spirits. I think we might have made more spirits than we needed

because we were trying to support a lot of the spirit tribal stuff going on. Okay, next is Spiritcraft. So Spiritcraft wasn't on the card. Nowadays, we probably would have ability worded it. We didn't at the time. So what Spiritcraft meant was, whenever you cast a spirit or arcane spell,

I will get to arcane in a second. Arcane was just a spell subtype, one instance in Sorceries. Or a spirit, like I'm talking about here. So the idea is, there are cards that sort of care about you casting two of the things that this world did. But once

again, talking about parasitism, there were spirits that predated the set, but like maybe 20 in all of Magic before Chams and Kanagawa block, and Arcane only existed. It was a spell subtype that only existed. So Spearcraft, once again, was pretty parasitic.

It worked in Limited. Like, a lot of the parasitism wasn't a problem in Limited. I actually think Champs of Kamigawa had a pretty fun Limited environment. There's a lot of fun stuff going on. And the biggest strike against the block is the parasitism,

which, when you're just playing that block, isn't a problem. So I did like Spiritcraft Unlimited for what it's worth. In Constructed, it never really worked too well. Okay, next. Splice onto Arcane. So as you cast an Arcane spell, you may reveal this card from your hand and pay its splice cost. If you do, add the card's effect to that spell.

So the idea was, it was this one on spells, and then if the spell was in your hand, and you played an arcane spell, you could play the Splyce cost, which was usually cheaper than the normal cost, to sort of, you're sort of stapling it on to the card. So the card does what it normally does, the arcane spell, does what it normally does, it does this effect

in addition, but you still get to keep the effect in your hand. It's kind of like a variant of buyback in some ways. Interestingly, by the way, when I first made this mechanic, it actually worked out of the graveyard, not out of your hand. The idea was that you would get to cast the spell

and then later you could use it to enhance things. But anyway, there's a lot of talk to cast the spell, and then later you could use it to enhance things. But anyway, there's a lot of talk, by the way, as I get into the parasitism. That's hard to say. We had talked, like, late in the process, we had talked about maybe they're supposed to be

spliced onto instant or spliced onto sorcery or probably spliced onto instant or sorcery. I came up with that idea too late for us to work on it. It was just too late in development, so we didn't change it. We did, when we went the most recent trip to Ravnica, Guilds of Ravnica, we did try Splice on the Incinerator Sorcery as the Izzet mechanic. It ended up not playing quite as well as we

were hoping. It was a little less parasitic than Splice Under Arcane, but it, I don't know, it ended up being, there was a lot of repetition of play in a way that wasn't necessarily fun, so. I do like the general concept of Splice Under Arcane.

I like what it's trying to do. I like that you're adapting future spells. Just the thing to be careful of is whenever you have a spell that just keeps doing the same thing turn after turn,

there are just issues that you have to be careful of. Okay, next up, Arcane. Let me talk about Arcane. So Arcane was an instant or sorcery subtype. So it... Most... Not all, but most

of the instants and sorceries, a lot of the instants and sorceries in the set are arcane. So by the way, instants and sorcery subtypes... Instants and sorcery can share subtypes, but they can't coexist on other things. Maybe they can with tribal, but we don't really support tribal anymore.

But anyway, so arcane really only goes to instants and sorceries. It might have been interesting in retrospect had we had more things that cared about it. Like, the only thing that cared about was splice, but it is, I will say something, it is something that over the years, like, whenever

we care about sorceries, we always say, oh, might we want to make these arcane? We have a rule that we tend not to use subtypes outside of creature types unless it's mechanically relevant. And so every once in a while when we want to care about instance of sorceries or have a subtype, we'll talk

about arcane. Maybe one day, but it's definitely sort of this word and wanting of something more than just what it was. Okay, next. Ninjutsu. So you pay a mana cost, return an unblocked attacker you control to hand, put this card onto the battlefield from your hand, tap, then attacking.

So I made ninjutsu... I think we had decided to save ninjas for betrayers of Kamigawa. I think that might have been a mistake, but we were trying to give something to betrayers that champions didn't have. And so we saved, we put samurai in champions of Kamigawa, but we saved ninjas. So one of the big things of betrayers of Kamigawa was ninjas. So we really wanted a ninja mechanic. things of Betrayer's Kamigawa was ninjas. So we really wanted a ninja mechanic.

And so the thing I really played into is the idea of sort of the sneakiness of ninjas. Like, and the idea that I originally played around with was the idea that the ninjas of this world had sort of illusionary magic. So they could fool you into thinking they were something else. I know there was a joke at the time this came out of, like, you know, people hiding, like,

ninjas hiding in elephant suits or something. The idea had always been that you're using magic to sort of create an illusion to hide what you are. That was the flavor I had intended. So ninjutsu probably was the most popular mechanic of all of Champion's Block. It is the only mechanic I think we've brought back to a set outside of a Kamigawa block. Outside of a Kamigawa set.

Ninjutsu was in the first Modern Horizons, for example. My biggest strike against ninjutsu, like I said, as the creator against ninjutsu, um, uh, like I said, as the creator of ninjutsu, I do think it plays well. I do think it fits ninjas. Um, the one weird thing is we did the same thing with samurais, with ninjas that we did with samurai. Ninjutsu, every single ninja had ninjutsu. Every creature with ninjutsu was a ninja.

It was one for one. In retrospect, looking back, by the way, I wish we hadn't one for one all samurai and all ninjas. I think there are fun things you can do with samurai and fun things you can do with ninjas that don't require this. The reason for that, by the way, for those curious behind the scenes, is Bill really had pushed the idea,

like back in the day, we used to make the mechanics. When we were mostly done with the mechanics, we made the creative. And Bill had the idea of turning that on the head. Now, nowadays, we make them, we make them together. Like, creative and design are working together back and forth as we make something. So it's not

we make one, he makes it and hands it off. But anyway, Bill was trying to flip the script. He wanted to do sort of a top-down block. But what Bill did was trying to flip the script. He wanted to do sort of a top-down block. But what Bill did is he swapped how it worked. And at the time, like, we would finish design and then do creative. So he had creative do all their work, or a lot of their work

first. And so what happened was we were trying to match mechanics to existing creative. And I think at the time, this was Brian Tinsman's set, I think Brian, or Champions was, I think Brian really felt this need to sort of use the mechanics

as strongly as possible. And so, it was very ham-fisted in that, like, every samurai has this ability, has, you know, has Bushido. Every ninja has ninjutsu. I think that was a little heavy-handed. And

there are a lot of cool things that, like, there's a lot of neat things you could do with ninjas, top-down ninja things, that aren't about being sneaky in attack. You know what I'm saying? And so one of the things that always bugs me about ninjutsu is, because we've done a one-for-one, we just missed out on other cool

ninja designs. Now, when we brought ninjutsu back in Modern Horizons, not all the ninjas have ninjutsu. There are some simpler ninjas in it. So I thought that was cool. Okay, so those are all the... I'm sorry. Ninjutsu was the first mechanic for

Betrayers. I'm well into Betrayers. Or not well into, but I'm into Betrayers right now. Okay, so next mechanic was Offering. So Offering would have a creature type in front of it, creature type Offering. You may cast this card anytime you could cast it instant by sacrificing a creature type, same creature type,

and paying the difference in mana cost between this and Sacrifice Creature. So this mechanic only showed up on a rare cycle, and it was a cycle, so each type hit upon a different creature type from Kamigawa block.

This is a couple things. One is, I'm not the biggest fan of keywording five cards. Usually, if it's a cycle, I won't keyword cycles. I think we needed to keyword this so it worked. Like, I think in order sometimes one of the issues

is if you write something out in the technical language, it can be a little more complicated. And if you keyword it, it allows you to do some shortcuts in language. I think that's what's going on here. But anyway, there's only five cards and it's the kind of thing...

I didn't necessarily dislike the cycle. I don't know if it needed to be keyworded, and it is a tricky mechanic from a play design standpoint. It's a hard thing to balance because you're sort of like getting to do something cheaper based on what you have. And once again, the theme of this block is, you know, it really only worked if you were very dedicated to that creature type. And so in Constructed, you could sort of build around it,

but in Limited, it got harder to do. I mean, you could do somewhat and sometimes if you, I mean, it was in the second pack, so you didn't know necessarily until midway through the draft that you wanted to care about something, but you had a little bit of time after that to try to help make that so. The good news is, the creature types were very color-coordinated, so if you had drafted a lot of

a certain color, there was a certain creature type that you probably had by accident. So... Okay, next up, Channel. So, Channel is an ability word. It has a mana cost. It says discard this card and then generates an effect.

Usually with Channel, the effect you generated was thematically tied to the card you're discarding. Often it would be a smaller version of the effect. You know, you do a bigger effect if you just cast it, or you could spend Channel, spend a mana cost, and discard it. Channel is a pretty cool effect. My biggest strike against channel is the same strike I have against kicker, which is it's so broad in what it does that there's just a lot of mechanics within that space

that I'd rather just make those individual mechanics. Like, one of the problems with kicker is you make mechanics and people are like, oh, that's just kicker. Like, well, yeah, with Kicker is you make mechanics and people are like, oh, that's just Kicker. Like, well, yeah, because Kicker is wildly broad and there's a lot of nuance and differentiation you could do. And one of the things you want with making magic sets is you want the ability to make keywords and flavor them and really build on the word. And that Kicker is so generic that I don't want to constantly just be putting Kicker in. A, it doesn't feel new, and B, it doesn't give you the words

that thematically sort of tie things together. I do like Channel. I do think that Channel is, I mean, what it's doing is kind of cool. I like the idea of get a larger version of the effect or a smaller version of the effect. That's kind of cool. And Channel gets used a couple other ways.

I do think that it is useful. Like, from a design standpoint, there's neat things you can do with it. It's just pretty generic in its overall. It hits a wide swath. The idea of, oh, I can spend mana and discard this card to do something is pretty wide.

Okay, so now we get to Savers of Kamigawa. Okay, so next up is Epic. So Epic says, for the rest of the game, you can't cast spells. At the beginning of each of your upkeeps, copy the spell except for its epic ability.

So this is another cycle. There's a cycle in Savers of Kamigawa. Oh, by the way, I just realized, Channel cycle in Saviors of Kamigawa oh by the way I just realized Channel was from Saviors of Kamigawa so what happened was real quickly Bushido, Flipkart, Soul Shift, Spirit Craft, Splice and Arcane and the Arcane subtype

were all in Champs of Kamigawa most of those carried over Njutsu and Offering showed up for the first time in Betrayers, and then Channel, Epic, Sweep, and The Wisdom, which is an unnamed thing, I'll explain in a second, were all in Saviors of Kamigawa. Okay, so Epic came about

because Brian Tinsman was trying to basically make legendary spells. Like, he wanted to make something that was so grandiose that it felt like that it felt truly epic in scale. So what they ended up with is this mechanic where, like, you cast this spell and it's so grandiose, that's it. You're never casting anything else for the rest of the game.

So there are two problems with Epic. One is, by the way, it's on a cycle. Like I said, I'm not completely against keywording just a cycle, but this might be another one of those where if we put it in reminder text, we could write it in much cleaner, friendlier language than if it was in sort of magic ease. So the big...

Okay, problems with Epic. Number one problem with Epic is you can't cast any more spells. It's a little bit too much of a downside. Like, players are just like, you know, wah, wah, wah. It's really a huge downside. A few of them, like the white one,

do let you generate other effects. But a lot of them are just like, I do this giant thing and then I don't... Like, the... I don't get to do anything else for the rest of the game. It's not really compelling gameplay. The other problem with Epic is it is just very, very narrow game space, or game design. There's just not a lot of game design.

You know, there's not a lot of... I remember we struggled to make five Epic spells, so it's a very narrow space. I do think it was grandiose. Like, one of the things that Brian Tinsman... So Brian Tinsman... Champions and Saviors were led by Brian Tinsman, and Mike Elliott led Betrayers.

So one of the things that Brian is a big fan of is he loves the grandiose gesture. He loves mechanics. They're like, what? Can't cast spells for the rest of the game. What? It didn't end up being like, when we do market research, we can... So basically

when a set comes out, we will go out. Usually we do it twice. Usually right when the set comes out, and then I don't know, three, four weeks later. We want to sort of get initial impressions and then impressions after people had a chance to play with it for a little while. And Epic's the kind of thing

where it just did not test well. People don't mind flavorful spells that have a little bit of a drawback where the drawback's super flavorful. But in general, the audience doesn't like drawback. They don't like giant drawbacks. And this just felt like a little too much of a drawback, where the drawback's super flavorful. But in general, the audience doesn't like drawback, and they don't like giant drawbacks. And this just felt like a little too much of a drawback. Okay, next is

Sweep. So Sweep is an ability word. Return any number of basic land types. It varies, whatever the, like, if the white spell says plains, if the red card says mountains. So return any number of basic land type you control to Odinor's hand. And then it cared about how many cards you would

bounce back to your hand. So there were four cards in the set. So you know how I say I don't like when a single cycle uses a keyword? Well, how about a non-cycle on four cards? A lot of times, people do top ten of, like, keywords slash

ability words, mechanics that should never have been. I think sweep falls in this category. I think what happened was they, oh, there's four cards that kind of work the same. Maybe we'll just label it. And it's a weird mechanic to label. And it's, I don't know. It also has, like, so the reason it's in the set is, I will get to wisdom in a second,

but there was a hand-sized matter theme that I'll get to in a second, but sweep existed really to go, oh, late in the game, I can return a whole bunch of lands so my hand is bigger, and then I can care about my hand being bigger. That's really why this is in the set.

It is not... I mean, I'm not against individual cards that might do this. I don't think you want a lot of them. I don't think you want to might do this. I don't think you want a lot of them. I don't think you want to band them together. I don't think you want to name them. But, you know, in a vacuum, I guess. Like, I understood what I was doing for this set.

It is not the kind of thing that many sets want to do, nor is great gameplay. So, Sweep. Sweep is probably, of all the things I named, like, if I had to, like, Sweep is probably, of all the things I named, like, if I had to, like, go back and say, I'm removing a mechanic from the block, I think sweep is my first choice,

just as far as, like, I mean, like I said, there's two different mechanics that are just a single cycle, you know, named. But anyway, I'm not a huge fan of sweep. Okay, the final mechanic, which is not even a named mechanic. It's an unnamed mechanic, is Wisdom. So when Brian made...

So back in the day, we had this third set problem in that the audience kind of got tired by the time you got to a third set. In fact, they got a little tired often by the second set. But they were very tired by the third set. So we started making third sets that really just deviated greatly, just added a brand new theme that wasn't in the block, just to give,

to shake things up. And so the theme that Brian had come up with is hand size matters, meaning something that cares about how many cards are in your hand. I think the first card that had ever done that ironically was Morrow, a card I had ever done that, ironically, was Marrow, a card I had made way back in Mirage,

which is power and toughness equal to the size of your hand. I think hand-sized matters is interesting in small doses on individual cards. I think there are fun hand-sized matter cards. Oh, and the reason Wisdom is we wanted to refer to the mechanic

and we wanted to feel... It was already a weird fit for Kamigawa. And so we gave it a nickname that we could talk about it. So it felt a little more like it made sense in Kamigawa. So that's why it's called Wisdom. But I don't even think that appears on cards. That's just our nickname for it. So anyway, the biggest problem with Hand Size Matters as a, like, set theme is one of the things you want when you make a mechanic is you want to have the set that it's in naturally pushed in that direction, right? You want it to be organic to what the set is doing.

And Hand Size Matters is hard. Because, for example, mostly mostly what hand size matters says is hey I want cards in my hand well how do you get cards in your hand well you don't cast them we can't let you draw lots of cards because that unto itself is broken there's a few things like sweep

how do we get cards in your hand they're not spells but there's more cards in your hand that's how stuff like sweep happens but pretty much the main way to make the mechanic work cards in your hand that, you know, they're not spells, but there's more cards in your hand. That's how stuff like sweep happened. But pretty much, the main way to make the mechanic work is not to do things. And as a big tip for game design out there, if your main mechanic encourages you not to do

things, it is a sign of a bad mechanic. And so hand-sized matters was a really odd fit. It both didn't thematically make sense. Like, it didn't even tie into what the rest of the block was doing. It didn't thematically tie. It didn't creatively tie.

It didn't really mechanically tie. And so it was a weird mechanic sort of sitting by itself. And then a lot of the things that sort of design development had to do to make the theme work just, I don't know, it was kind of awkward. It made a lot of awkward designs to enable it, like Sweep being a good example. That's not to say that I don't think hand-sized matters can't be interesting. For example, I'm a big fan of Maro, for example. I'm a big fan mechanically.

I like that card for other reasons, obviously. But I do think there's some fun in individual cards where you care about hands. I like having moments in time where, ooh, all of a sudden I care about what's in my hand. But I think that as a theme, it's a little bit much, and it pushes toward some sort of unfun play. Anyway, I should mention, by the way, that there were

two other, well, two other they weren't named, but they were cycles. One was Shrines, which I didn't list here. Shrines are enchantments that cared about how many other shrines were in play. It had an enchantment subtype. And then every turn, it would do an effect based on how many shrines there were.

And there was a shrine in each color. And they were legendary, because we were trying to do legendary enchantments. And so, shrines were kind of interesting. They have a little bit of a pinch point for design because it's scalable and it's in all five colors

it was a little bit of a challenge to design but it was a very fun design, it played well and we did another set of shrines in one of the core sets so it is it was something that was fun, but like I said it wasn't named. The other thing that was pretty popular that wasn't named as well is

the dragons, the dragon spirits. In Champs Kamigawa, there were five dragons and we gave them very powerful death triggers. Because the idea at the time was, what's the worst thing about like, I have a dragon, dragons are great.

What do I least like about dragons? When my opponent kills them. Well, what if I rewarded you when my opponent kills them?, like, I have a dragon. Dragons are great. What do I least like about dragons? When my opponent kills them. But what if I rewarded you when my opponent kills them? So, like, if they don't kill them, I have a giant dragon. I'm winning the game. If they do kill it, well, I get a reward and I'm happy to get that. And those also weren't named, but were pretty popular. Anyway,

that, my friends, is a recap. As you can see, I think there were a lot of individual fun designs in the block. I think there were a few cycles like the shrines and the dragons. I think ninjutsu was a fun mechanic. I mean, I think there were some mechanics

that definitely... It wasn't as if none of the mechanics were fun. A lot of the mechanics were fun. A lot of them in Limited were especially fun. I think a lot of the parasitic stuff didn't matter in Limited and was fun. I think flip cards paved the way for a cool thing, even though flip cards didn't quite

figure out the best way to do it. It definitely paved the way. It was definitely a challenging block, and there were a lot of mechanics in this that, looking back, if I could do them again, I would do them a little bit differently. But anyway, today's a look back.

When I get into the story of Champions, I gotta talk about all the mechanics in the past. And I realized that instead of using most of my time on a podcast that's about Neon Dynasty, talking about Champions of Kamigawa Block, that I would do a separate thing. So I'm doing this first,

just reminding you all of the mechanics of Champions of Kamigawa block, that I would do a separate thing. So I'm doing this first, just reminding you all of the mechanics of Champs of Kamigawa block, and sort of reminding you that it's, it was not a high bellwether of mechanics for blocks. Anyway, guys, I'm now at my desk. Oh, and real quickly, coming up will be podcasts where I talk about Champs of Kamigawa,

not Champs of Kamigawa, Neon Dynasty, Kamigawa Neon Dynasty. So I will, up and coming, I will be doing where I talk about Champs of Kamigawa. I'm not saying Champs of Kamigawa. Neon Dynasty. Kamigawa Neon Dynasty. So I will, up and coming, I will be doing some podcasts about the making of Neon Dynasty. But I'm not at my desk. So we all know what that means. That means instead of talking about magic,

it's time for me to be making magic. So I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.