Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #944: Deciduous

Episode Date: June 24, 2022

This podcast talks about what being deciduous means for mechanics and then goes through the list of all the deciduous mechanics.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, today we're talking all things deciduous. Okay, so let me first define what I mean by deciduous for those that don't know. So in Magic, we have what we call evergreen abilities. Stuff like flying, trample, first strike. Things that every set can do. Every set, not only can do, tends to do. Evergreen, not every Evergreen mechanic is in every set, but most sets.

And usually it's in a set. So, like, flying, it'd be very odd for us to make a set and not have flying. Or not have First Strike, or not have Menace, or whatever. So there's a lot of things that are Evergreen. What deciduous means is any set has access to this. Any set's allowed to use it. But it's not something that we do all the time. It's something we do usually, well, it can vary.

Some deciduous things we do often, but not every set. And some deciduous things we do on occasion. But mostly what it means is that if you want to make use of this stuff, you kind of have free range. You know, there are certain mechanics that I want to use. I can use the mechanic, but I'm sort of bringing it back. It's not something that we expect to show up with any frequency, you know. So anyway, I did an article, I don't know, a month and a half, two months ago, where I talked about this. And so today I'm going to talk about all the things I listed in the article,

and two things I missed in the article, which I'll put in here. So I'm going to talk about sort of where these came from and how they ended up becoming deciduous. Okay, so we'll start with anchor words. Okay, so anchor words, the example might be in Fate Reforged, you choose cons or dragons. Usually it's a modal choice, but the modal choice gives you two different, usually flavorful choices. And then depending on what choice you chose, that's what happens. Modal things are basically everything. Every magic set has modes. Anchor words are more like, well,

you have to choose something based on flavor. Like, the modes have a flavor component to it. And the reason it's deciduous is usually when we do modes we just list the modes, but on an anchor word card we're trying to play up either some

conflict or some key decision. Something about it that really plays into the idea of you're making a choice, and depending on what choice you make, that has an impact. But it's a modal card. It's just kind of a flavorful modal card. And I think this just came about that we did it a couple times and realized kind of the flavor power of it. came about that we did it a couple times and realized kind of the flavor power of it. You know, one of the things that's happened over time is we've really come to understand how potent flavor is in really mechanically making something more coherent, more intuitive, and just feeling like, giving the card an overall feel to it.

So we're much more willing to do that kind of thing. So anchor words have become deciduous. Next, blood tokens. So blood tokens are a little weird. Blood tokens first showed up in Crimson Vow. Basically, it's an artifact token where you can spend one and sacrifice the token to rummage, discard a card and draw a card. We haven't reused it yet.

It only showed up in Crimson Bough. The reason I stuck it here is we've made a lot of artifact tokens. I'll call it repeatable artifact tokens, where the set makes not one of them, but multiples of them, and they have a basic effect. So I considered all the main artifact tokens to be deciduous.

So I put blood tokens here. I do admit blood tokens are one of the ones that, you know, if you told me something on this list never shows up again, maybe blood tokens is near the top of that list. So like, whether it's really deciduous or not, it's on the cusp. But artifact tokens, like, for example, I'll talk about more later on, we've definitely started bringing them back. So, I think that's something that we recognize as a valuable

tool, and that if there was a set where blood made sense, and you know, we're a combat game, it's not like blood doesn't show up. If we had a set where blood really was key to what was going on to the flavor, the mechanics of it, an artifact lets you rummage. It's pretty useful, as people saw when they played Crimson Vow. It's just a generally good thing to have. It just lets you get card flow. So I do

think if we got to a place where blood made sense, it is something open and available to the people making it. Next, cantrips. So cantrips first showed up in Ice Age. Ironically, when they first showed up, you didn't actually draw the card right away. Oh, so what a cantrip means is it's a draw a card rider on a spell. Do something and, hey, draw a card. The idea is that it replaces itself. Now, in original Ice Age, where it premiered, you actually drew the card at the beginning of the next turn. They had made a zero-drop card, and they were worried that if that card lets you draw right away, it caused problems,

and they liked that card, so they made all of them a turn later. We later realized that that just wasn't necessary. Cantrips became deciduous almost immediately after Ice Age, just because we realized that the key to a cantrip is the idea that the card costs you mana, but doesn't cost you a card. And that lets us make smaller effects that are hard to get on cards. For example, we can make one-drops that are too tiny in effect

that you could put on a normal one-drop spell. It just lets us... It's another costing tool that sometimes, you know, if you add a cantrip to it, you can adjust it to get to the right cost. Plus, there are sets and times where cantrips just

thematically play into what's going on. Cantrips are deciduous in that it's not a requirement. Every set doesn't need to have them. Every set doesn't have them. I mean, there's card drawing

every set, but a cantrip is more defined as it's not the main thing going on the card. Card drawing is card drawing. It is, I'm doing an effect. Oh, and it's a bonus draw card, meaning I'm not charging you the cost of the card. So we do do that, and we do it often. This is one of the decision-making ones that we use quite a bit. But anyway, I listed it here. Next is clue tokens slash investigate. So Clue tokens were first showed up in Shadows over Innistrad.

And they are the first kind of artifact token of this ilk where, hey, you make a bunch of artifact tokens. It has a general utility that gets you something. In this case, a card. Clue is two tap sack draw card. I think it's tap. It's two and sack draw card. I'm not sure whether it's tap or not. I think it is.

Anyway, the idea is we wanted, the reason clues came about was we wanted to have the word investigate. There was a mystery flavor to Shadows Over Innistrad. And we wanted you to investigate. So we were looking for a cool way word investigate. There was a mystery flavor to Shadows Over Innistrad, and we wanted you to investigate. So we were looking for a cool way to investigate. We had toyed around the idea of drawing cards, but that seemed to be too much card drawing. So the backup was clues, where the idea is, I'm drawing a card, but I'm drawing sort of the potential

to draw a card, rather than a full card. I still got to pay two mana to get the card. So I'm drawing on the opportunity to pay mana to get the card. So I'm drawing on the opportunity to pay mana to get a card. But anyway, we made clues. They went really well. The players really liked them. They were very useful.

So it is something that really opened our eyes up to artifact tokens. Does clue tokens have to come with investigate? So in Midnight Hunt, we did do some more clues, but we did it with investigate. I do think it is possible to have clue tokens that don't come with investigate, but investigate's a good word. So, I mean, there's some draw to using investigate just because it's powerful. You'll note the other artifact tokens don't have a sort of

a keyword action that generates them, like you don't cook food or anything, but I don't know. I mean, I think we are free to use clue tokens without investigate, but investigate is an awesome word, so I imagine some of the time when we have clue tokens, we will use investigate,

but we're not required to do that. Next up, colored artifacts. So the first colored artifact showed up in Future Sight as a future shifted card. It was a white creature. Oh, I'm sorry. That was the first enchantment creature. It was a blue creature. It was a mirror. Sorry, that was the first enchantment creature. It was a blue creature.

It was a mirror. And ironically, in Future Sight, we were hinting that we were going to go back to Mirrodin and that the Phraxians were going to take over. But it turns out that we ended up using colored artifacts in Alara before we got back. And then we did do some colored artifacts in Scars of Mirrodin Block in New Phraxia, but it was less colored art.

I don't know. It used Phraxian mana, which you didn't have art. I don't know. It means Phyrexian mana, which you didn't have to pay color for and stuff. Anyway, sorry, deviating. So, colored artifacts are something that we introduced as what we thought was this flavorful tool. It has turned

out, after doing enough artifact blocks that sort of blew up in our faces, Mirrodin caused those problems, Kaladesh caused those problems, whatever. We've had a number of sets with an artifact theme that have caused those problems. It turns out that having all artifacts be generic mana is problematic. And so what we basically said is, hey, if we need to make artifacts colored, we can.

Not colored. Colored, we can. And so it just became something that we can do. Now, this is another one that is really close to being evergreen. We do colored artifacts a lot. I'm not sure if we're quite at every set having colored artifacts, but we're very, very close. So this is one of the ones that's right on the bubble.

Like maybe if I wrote an evergreen article, I might include it in there. This is really, really close to being evergreen. But yeah, it is something that we felt we needed. It was a knob we needed. And I understand, I know one of the complaints about colored artifacts is that artifacts and enchantments just keep growing closer and closer to each other, and the reality is what we've really come to conclusion of is, look, they're flavorfully different, they represent

different things, cards care about them differently, what cards work with them, what cards can destroy them, what cards can get them back from the graveyard, tend to differ between artifacts and enchantments, so it matters, and they're different, and we like them in the game, but yeah, they are growing closer together, and we've stopped trying to avoid that because, you know, we need, we want artifacts to be part of the game flavorfully. We kind of need them to be colored from time to time. We really can't push them unless they're colored, and we do want to push artifacts from time to time. So anyway, colored artifacts, not deciduous. Okay, Curses.

So Curses first showed up in original Innistrad. A Curse is an enchant player, an aura that's enchant player, and then it does something negative to the player enchanted. One could argue, by the way, that the very first Cur kind of was in Unglued. There's a card called Volras Motion Sensor. It was the first card that was an enchant player card, and it did make

the player, they had to balance something on their hand. So it did do something that made them like, it did kind of, I mean it's curse-like. Not technically curses. It's not a curse subtype or anything. That didn't happen until

Innistrad, but the precursor to them. Anyway, curses are just super flavorful and they have showed up in other places. Like Amiket was, oh, we're in Egypt and hey, that kind of makes sense for curses. And they've showed up a couple different places. So it is something that like, hey, if your set makes sense for curses. And they've showed up a couple different places.

So it is something that, like, hey, if your set makes, if curses make sense for your set, look, Enchant Player is something that you can do. That's something that is available to you. And the general flavor of it, nothing about it is too far from kind of normal magic. So anyway, that is deciduous. Next, cycling. So cycling first showed up in Urza's Saga. A little trivia, or little, I don't know, for those who don't know, it originally

showed up in Design for Tempest, made by Richard Garfield, as an idea of, hey, sometimes you have things that are kind of narrow, but if you have a cycling cost, cycling means you can spend some amount of mana, discard it, and draw a new card. You can sort of replace it.

The original cycling was all cycling too, but we've since done other cycling costs and even non-mana cycling costs. Anyway, it was originally in Tempest. We didn't have room for it. We had too many mechanics.

It got pushed off to Urza Saga. And it is one of the mechanics that we have brought back the most. It showed up in Onslaught. It showed up in Amonkhet. It showed up in many places. Ikoria. It showed up in a lot of different places.

We finally decided, as of Streets of New Capenna what happened was we wanted to include, we had made these cycling tri-lands in Ikoria which were the wedge ones. Well we're now

in Streets of New Capenna, hey it's the shards or the arcs and so we wanted to make the lands but they had cycling. And we're like oh but the set doesn't have cycling. And we're like, oh, but the set doesn't have cycling. And they're like, you know what? Let's just make them. We don't, let's just make cycling deciduous. So we've decided to make cycling deciduous.

And what that means is, hey, if a set wants to have a couple of cycling cards, it can. It's a pretty easy mechanic. People understand it. And we're not going to like, well, in order to have cycling, you have to bring the whole cycling mechanic, have about 20 cards.

If you want to have a cycle of lands instead of cycling, more power to you. So we've chosen to make cycling deciduous. In the article, when I mentioned that, I said that we are looking to be a little bit more open about what's deciduous. So R&D is looking at mechanics right now to say, like cycling, what is something we use so often that, you know what, if we use it, we're just going to label it. You know, if we use it, we're going to tell you this is what it is and just let sets have access to it. We're figuring that out. We got a lot of feedback from my article. So, you know, it's a topic I'm still, if you want to contact me and let me know if you're like, oh, this mechanic really should be deciduous, let me know.

Okay, next, double-faced cards. So double-faced cards first showed up in original Innistrad, and they showed up as transforming double-faced cards, meaning you played the front side, and under some conditions, you could go to the back side, the back face, and under some conditions on some of them, you could come back to the front face. So some go back and forth. Some are a one-way transformation that never comes back. Then in Zendikar Rising, we introduced modal double-faced cards, which were double-faced cards that you could play either side, but there's no means to go between the sides. If I choose to play side A, then it's always side A.

It's never side B. Now, I could bounce it or something, or it could die, and I could get it back from the graveyard and then cast the other side, but nothing allows you while it's on the battlefield to change the sides. Okay. Oh, so sorry. Double-faced guard. So, often when I'm driving, I get distracted by my driving. I apologize. Although, safety first. We've learned over time that double face cards are very useful. They show two states in a very flavorful way. You get two pieces of art. You get two full cards. You get two full

rules decks boxes. So, it really allows us to do some things that we weren't able to do. And a lot of magic sets have dual states. Now, not every magic card with a dual state is going to be double-faced. But it is a tool that we have. It's very splashy. The audience generally likes it quite a bit. And so we've started using it more. Recently, we've used it a lot.

So we've started using it more. Recently, we've used it a lot. We did MDFCs, modal double-faced cards, in Zendikar Rising, Kaldheim, and Shrixhaven. And then we did transforming double-faced cards in Midnight Hunt and Crimson Vow and Neon Dynasty. So six out of seven sets in a row, premier sets, had double-faced cards. Streak of theperado does not.

We are not going to be using it at that frequency, although I do think, like, every set now can say, hey, do I want these double-faced cards? And it comes with a cost. It's not something we're going to do all the time. But it is something that, hey, if it makes sense and we think it really adds value to the set, it's something we have access to.

Next, food tokens. So food tokens first showed up in Throne of Eldraine. They are artifacts that you two-tap sac to gain three life. They were, like I said, the first ones we made were the clue tokens. The second were the treasure tokens, which I'll get to. And the third were the food tokens. Then fourth were blood tokens. Treasure tokens, sorry, not treasure tokens, which I'll get to. And the third were the food tokens. Then fourth were blood tokens. Treasure tokens...

Sorry, not treasure tokens. Food tokens are very flavorful. Food, there's a lot of tropes with food. The reason it happened in Throne of Eldraine was just realizing how much food plays a role in fairy tales. Oh, Hansel and Gretel drop breadcrumbs, and then they find a house, a gingerbread house. Hansel and Gretel drop breadcrumbs, and then they find a house, a gingerbread house.

Or, you know, Little Red Riding Hood is bringing food to her grandmother. Anyway, there's just a lot of food that pops up. So, you know, Magic Bean for Jack and the Beanstalk. Anyway, food shows up a lot, and so we put it in Throne of Eldraine. It's the kind of thing that we have found super flavorful. They showed up again in Modern Horizons 2. It is definitely the kind of thing that we have found super flavorful. They showed up again in Modern Horizons 2. It is definitely the kind of thing that we've seen the value of them. There's definitely a flavor there.

It's nice and simple. Life gain is a pretty clean ability. The thing about artifact tokens, by the way, is you want to do things that most decks want. Oh, do you want to draw a card? Yeah, most decks want to draw a card. You want mana? Yeah, most decks want mana. You want life? Yeah, most decks want life. You want to rummage? Yeah, most decks want mana. You want life? Yeah, most decks want life. You want to rummage? Sure, most cards want it.

We tend to do things and artifacts that most decks can make use of. That they're not super narrow. They're pretty general. And food, it's pretty much a flavor hit. The idea that food gets you life, you know, it all ties together. And so food is definitely something that became

deciduous almost immediately. Hybrid mana. So hybrid mana first showed up in original Ravnica. So hybrid mana are mana symbols that are two different colors, so like red or green. And the idea of a hybrid mana symbol is you have to spend red or you have to spend green. You don't need to spend both, just one or the other. But for example, if I have a card that's two red or green hybrid, red or green hybrid, I can spend a minor red, I can cast that for two red red, I can cast it for two green green, or I can cast it for two red green. So the idea is that it is something, it's a tool that allows us to make multicolored cards that are or rather than and.

I almost would say it's a tool more than a mechanic in that there's a lot of different utilities for it and it's proven to be very, very useful. The story I always tell is when I first came up with Hybrid Mana in Ravnica, I remember showing it around and just nobody was impressed with it. Everyone was like, oh, okay.

And I was very like, oh, no, no. It's this great tool. We do all these cool things. And I think over time, as people had to make set and solve problems, and, you know, like Fate Reforged was like, oh, I need to be a three-color card to work with the wedges, but I need to be a two-color card to work with the enemy colors, so how do I work with Conductor Cure and Dragon Star Cure? Oh, Hybrid Mana lets you do that. Or, you know, I'm trying to

make companions and I want them to be in as many decks as possible. Oh, Hybrid helps you. Like, Hybrid's proven to be very valuable and lets us do a lot of different things. So, and it's the kind of tool that every set doesn't need, but it's definitely something a lot of sets have made use of.

And it's been, like I said, it's been used in lots of different ways. We use it now sometimes for color identity purposes. So if we want something to be a certain color identity for Commander, but we want to make it a little bit easier to cast, sometimes we'll do it in activation costs.

Anyway, Hybrid has lots and lots of uses, and so it has become a staple in it's deciduous because a lot of sets want to use it has become a staple in, um, in, in the, it's deciduous because a lot of sets want to use it, but not every set needs to use it. Okay. Next keyword counters. So this is something that wasn't in the article. So the bonus content for you on my podcast. So keyword counters first showed up in Ikoria. Um, so basically it's a counter that says flying or first strike or vigilance

it's just a basic usually evergreen keyword that by using a counter it's permanent so normally if I grant you flying it's like until end of turn because if I said if I want to be permanent usually has to be an aura or equipment or something but the keyboard counter allows us to do something permanent we usually want to do punch out counters when we're doing keyboard counters

so there's something to remember it by. So this is a deciduous thing that we don't use often but we have made the decision on high rarities and low frequencies that we will use it in sets because, oh, we want this planeswalker to permanently grant something. Okay, it's not going to happen a lot. You know, when it happens, you can mark it. So we don't necessarily need to have counters

in the set. But when we do it at low frequency, we put counters in. When we do it at higher frequency, in a low amount of cards at higher frequency, we let sets have it. But it's something that has proven very useful. It's a clean way to say flying for the rest of the game, or well, flying as long as the

creature stays on the battlefield, you lose the counters and it loses the battlefield. Or, well, flying as long as the creature stays on the battlefield. You lose the counters, then you lose the battlefield. Well, step facing. We'll get to that in a second. Anyway, it has proven to be a valuable tool, and it is something that we've given sets access to in small amounts if used judiciously. Now, you also can use it in large amounts. It just means that you have to have punch-out counters. That is something.

I actually didn't list puncher cards here because I don't know if they're a mechanic as much as a tool, but hybrid was a tool. Puncher cards are another thing where sets have access to that. It's something that sets can use if they need it. Really, puncher cards are not so much a mechanic as, oh, I have some memory issues. Well, here's a tool I can use for memory issues.

But puncher cards are something that sets have access to. Okay, next, I have some memory issues. Well, here's a tool I can use for memory issues. But punch-out cards are something that sets of access to. Okay, next, protection. So protection first showed up in Alpha. Protection's gone through a lot of changes over the years. It meant different things at different times. For example, in Alpha, a black knight with protection from white couldn't be destroyed by a wrath of God.

That's no longer true. At one point, somewhere around 6th edition rules, maybe 6th edition rules, they sort of clarified how protection worked. It now grants four basic abilities. So you can't be targeted by a thing of the quality. You can't be blocked by a thing of the quality. You can't be enchanted or equipped by a thing of that quality, nothing can attach to you, and you can't be blocked. Did I say blocked?

Oh, sorry, all damage from things, anything that damages you for something is reduced to zero. So you can't be targeted, blocked, equipped, enchanted, or attached, or you can't be damage reduced to zero. Can't be damaged. Protection, like colored artifacts, is really on the cusp, whether it's evergreen or deciduous. We don't use it all the time because it's a little bit complicated,

but we do use it as much as we need to just because it's super flavorful. It actually got kind of, what happened was it was evergreen, it became deciduous, and then it went back to kind of pseudo-evergreen deciduous, where it's like somewhere in the middle. I put it on my deciduous list because we don't use it every set, but it's pretty close to being evergreen. If I made an evergreen article, I probably would list it as well. I probably would list colored artifacts and production in both the evergreen article and the deciduous article because they're on the cusp. Anyway, it is flavorful.

It is complicated. When we were talking about bringing it back, we did look at finding a simpler version of it, but we didn't find something that worked quite as well. And anyway, magic has some complexity. That's some of the complexity. Next, prowess. So prowess was in Concertar Kier. It was the Jeskai mechanic.

So it says whenever you cast a non-creature spell, it goes on creatures, this creature gets plus one, plus one. We made it evergreen for a while as sort of the crossover for blue and red. It ended up sort of, there was a lot of times the set would be doing something that prowess kind of got in the way of and we would not do prowess. And so we kind of decided, okay,

instead of being evergreen, we'll make prowess deciduous. When you want to use it, you can use it. If a set needs it, there's sets that really like prowess, it's available to you, you can use it. But it set needs it, there's sets that really like prowess, it's available to you, you can use it. But it is not something that we've decided to do all the time. There's just enough sets where there's something going on where we don't want to use it that we pulled it back. And this is a good example, by the way,

of something where it came on a set, we liked it, almost instantaneously became evergreen, and then we realized we had to pull back, and then we made it deciduous. Okay, next, phasing. So this is another... Oh, I should realize I went out of alphabetical order, but... Phasing is another thing that I forgot to put in my article.

Phasing first showed up in Mirage Block. The way phasing works is something with phasing every basic... At the beginning of your turn, if it's in play, it leaves... Well, the way it originally worked was if it's in play, it leaves, well the way it originally worked was if it was in play it left play and if it was out of play it came back to play. Now the way phasing works is

you treat it as if it's not on the battlefield. It's still on the battlefield, but you treat it as if it's not on the battlefield. And where phasing is different than flickering is phasing auras and equipment and counters, things that are attached to it don't come off it. So if I phase out something that has an aura

or an equipment or counters on it, they stay on it. They don't come off. It no longer technically leaves. For a while, it used to exile it, but to make it cleaner, it now just treats it as if it's not there. So anything that looks to care about it doesn't care about it.

And because it answered some problems, we sort of pulled it back. Like for a long time, we did phasing and didn't touch upon phasing. And then we sort of realized that phasing helps solve some problems because sometimes we don't want flickering because we don't want it. Like there's a core mechanic that's using auras or equipment or something that we don't want to make it too easy for you to flicker. So phasing is a tool that we use, and it's become deciduous in that there's just different effects we kind of want phasing on.

So we don't use phasing a lot, but we do it from time to time, and it's now sitting in deciduous space. Next, sagas. So sagas first showed up in Dominaria. It's an enchantment, and it has chapters, and each turn, the turn you play it, you get the first chapter, and then beginning before draw, you advance to the next chapter. If there's no more chapters, it goes away.

It basically is an enchantment that does something different over multiple turns. It's interesting in that it came from, we were trying to make Planeswalkers way back when. We made something that, early on we had were trying to make planeswalkers way back when. We made something that, early on we had a version where planeswalkers would do effect A, then effect B, then effect C, in order. And it made them feel like they didn't have agency.

They felt kind of dumb. And so we ended up not doing that with planeswalkers. But when we were trying to figure out how to make stories into a thing, we realized that the prescriptiveness that worked against the feel of Planeswalker actually made sense with the story. Yeah, it's prescriptive. It's a story.

This is what happened. This is the order it happened in. And sagas first got included in Dominaria. They were super popular and have just become a very... We've gone back numerous times. Kaldheim had them. Anyway, we've used them in a bunch of different places

and they have been... They're just something that we can do. They're pretty straightforward. They have their own frame, but the frame looks really cool.

And anyway, we've definitely sort of established them as a cool thing. People like them and it is something that any set can make use of.

I will say for some of these deciduous things, we do think about like double-faced cards, sagas. Like, we try to sort of divvy them up a little bit so they're not everywhere. That's kind of cool if double-faced cards aren't around all the time. It's kind of cool if sagas aren't in every set.

So we do sort of, some of the deciduous, we kind of look at who is and isn't using them so that we can dole them out so that they're kind of cool when they show up. But deciduous means any set can use them. That doesn't mean you might not choose not to use them because things are wrong and you are using them, but it means that you have access to them. But we still do think about who's using what. So a lot of times with deciduous stuff, if somebody near you is using it, we want to think twice about it.

Not that we don't do it. We obviously double-face cards for a whole bunch of sets in a row. But we want to be careful when and where we use it. Next, split cards. So split cards first showed up in Invasion. Originally, they were going to be in the second unglued two, as I call it, that never got made. BFM had been in unglued.

It was a card so big it had to be on two cards. So it was very popular. So I made a card so little that two of them fit on one card. I pitched it for Invasion. They were controversial at the time, but they went in Invasion. The audience loved them. And it's just become a thing that we can do from time to time. They're just a fancy way to do a modal card.

It does let you do a modal card in which each mode has a different cost. So that's nice. And they can be different colors. So split cards have come back a bunch of different times. They've proven to be... They're a useful little tool, and they're flavorful, and the players like them. So it's not something we do a lot, but it's something we have access to, and we do from time to time.

Next, treasure tokens. So this is another of the artifact tokens. Treasure. We did gold tokens in Pharaoh's Block on a couple cards. And then when we did Ixalan, we decided we needed them to tap because of the interaction. There was a mechanic in Aether Revolt where you could tap artifacts. And we didn't want you tapping treasure. It was kind of like Convoke. I'm blanking on the name, but

it was like Convoke for artifacts. Anyway, so we decided to rename them and add a tap to them. We decided to add a tap to them, which forced us to rename them. And then we decided to pick a little more generic than just gold. So treasure is nice in that if you want to represent gold, you can call it gold treasure.

But it can represent a lot of different things. Like it was Halo in Streets of Capenna. So like, you can use treasure it just means something that people value and what that can be, you know, what that is can vary from place to place. Even within the same set, it can vary. You know, what is treasure in green might be different than what's

treasure in red, for example. Much like clues and food, it's just proven very valuable. The idea of wanting a resource and wanting mana. Streets of New Campana is a good example where, hey, we had a three-color set. We needed a way to make sure you could play your cards.

You know, Treasure was a nice tool that let you do that and was super flavorful. So Treasure definitely falls in that camp of, and you've seen it. I mean, I think we use it a lot in Streets of New Campana because it was a three-color set, which needs a lot more help than normal. I don't think you can see treasure in quite that volume outside of something like a three-color set that

really needs extra help. I think it'll be used in a little more lower volumes in future stuff. I think Streets of New Campana is a little quirky in how much it used. But it is very useful and it's very flavorful, so we will use it again. Finally,

we come to vehicles. So vehicles first showed up in Kaladesh. They represent sort of artifacts that you can drive or, you know, the things that you can ride or drive, you know, and we've used them to represent boats and cars and trains and all flying vehicles, all sorts of different things.

It became deciduous almost immediately. They were very, I mean, they were a little bit overpowered in Kaladesh because we were sort of learning how to cost them. But it became clear that it's just a flavor that a lot of sets want. But it's not every set. Not every set needs vehicles. Some worlds more so than others. But, oh, there's pirates. We want ships. Oh, there's, you know, certain places do want vehicles more than others,

so we can make use of those. But anyway, it is something where it's proven to be a very useful, flavorful thing. The way the mechanics work for vehicles is that it has a crew cost it's an artifact that is not a creature but if you pay

the crew cost which is tapping some power amount of creatures so crew two means tap creatures whose combined power is two or greater

and then you crew the vehicle which means it animates it becomes it has a power toughness on it it becomes a creature and then you until the vehicle which means it animates it has a power toughness on it it becomes a creature until the end of turn and then you can attack

or block with it. And like I said vehicles is another thing that have become useful and super flavorful. You'll notice one of the through lines in all the Sigur stuff is things that are A usually pretty flavorful and B just have a lot of general

utility to them. So, or they tend to be either super flavorful, super utilitarian, or both. And one of the things I'm hoping from today you realize from this is that there's a lot of different tools available in Magic. One of the advantages of being a game almost 30 years old is we've invented a lot of stuff over the years, and we've found a lot of those tools to be very useful. They're in our toolbox. It's not that we need to use all of them all the time, but there's a lot of them we can use some of the time. And so I hope today it's just a look through what those are, a little bit of their history, and how they became deciduous.

But I've gone through everything that I had to talk about, and I just parked. So we all know what that means. It means this is 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 this indigenous talk and I'll see you next time.

Bye-bye.