Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #997: Noncreature Artifact Tokens

Episode Date: January 6, 2023

In today's podcast, I talk about the seventeen noncreature artifact tokens from across Magic's history.

I'm not pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another Drive to Work at Home Edition. Okay, so today I've decided to talk about non-creature artifact tokens. So, artifact tokens that aren't creatures. So, I'm going to—there are 17 of them in the history of magic so far. So, I'm going to talk about them and sort of talk about how they came to be and talk a little bit about the evolution of the artifact token as a resource in design. That is my topic today. Okay, so the very first artifact token was a gold token. So it was an artifact, sacrifices artifact, add one mana of any color to your mana pool. So I think it first showed up, there's a card called Guild in

Born of the Gods. Three and a black sorcery, exile target creature, put a colorless artifact token named gold onto the battlefield. It has sacrificed this artifact, add one man of any color to your mana pool. So it turned something into gold. To guild something, I guess cover it with gold.

And then we had King Makar, which was in Journey to Nyx, the gold-cursed. Two black, black, two, three, legendary creature, human, inspired. Whenever King Makar, the gold-cursed, becomes untapped, you may exile a target creature. If you do, put a Cull's artifact token named gold into the battlefield.

It has sacrificed its artifact. Add one mana of any color to your mana pool. Gold shows up on Curse of Opulence in a commander set. It shows up in the First Tyrone games. So, and that's Theros Beyond Death. Anyway, the, was that Theros? Anyway, it must be Theros Beyond Death because I don't think the original Theros had sagas. So, the idea originally was we liked the idea of an artifact that you could get any color out of.

And so the original plan was, this was like what treasure became. We'll get to treasure in a moment. This was our first stab at treasure. And I think we liked the flavor of gold. It felt like, you know, I think the time, we didn't really appreciate the vagueness helped you a little bit when making tokens, that when you say gold, it allows you to do some really cool stuff, like, oh, you're like, um, King Makar is King Midas, right? Everything he touches turns to gold. We were doing, you know, a, a story from Greek mythology, because we were

in Greek mythology world. Um, uh,. So gold ended up having two problems. One is that it was a little more specific. Treasure is a little vaguer. I mean, treasure could represent gold, but it doesn't have to be gold. And the second thing is it didn't have a tap on it. And that later proved to be a problem for us. Mostly because of the way it interacted with the mechanic.

There was a mechanic in Aether Revolt that you could tap things. You could tap artifacts to pay the cost of things. And the fact that the gold, you could tap them to pay costs and then sack it actually caused us some problems. So anyway, gold is our first... So gold is, like I said, an interesting thing to point out is we're talking, this is Theros block, right? This is well into Magic's history.

This is the first time that an artifact token non-creature, Alpha had Hornet tokens, which were one-one flying artifact creatures. So, artifact creature token showed up in the beginning of the game. But a non-creature artifact, it took a while. It's interesting, this natural Theros block, that we even see it. Okay, the second one is Landmine. So Landmine says, red sacrifices artifact. This artifact deals two damage to target attacking creature without flying.

So this came from the card Goblin Kaboomist from Magic 2015. So it's a Goblin Warrior, 1-2. At the beginning of your upkeep, put a colorless artifact token named Landmine onto the battlefield. With red, sacrifice this artifact. This artifact deals 2 damage to target an attacking creature without flying. Then flip a coin. If you lose the flip, Goblin Kaboomist deals 2 damage to itself.

So, as you can see, I think early on, like, Landmine's a great example of, we are just trying to design this individual card. Ooh, it's cool. I have a goblin that lays Landmines. How do we do that? And it's one of those things where we, like, the tokens allow us in design some flexibility

to do things that, like, literally wouldn't fit on the card. If you look at Goblin Kaboomus. So Goblin Kaboomus, by the way, was designed by Stone Labrande. So we did this thing during Magic 2015, where we got game designers that weren't Magic designers to design a card. And so an outside person designed this card. And in order to make it fit, I think the reason we did a token was the text didn't fit without the token. There's no way to do it.

Or maybe just, I don't know. I think it was nice to be able to literally make landmines and have something representing the landmines I mean I'm not sure whether it fit with that I mean on some level you needed something to represent the action that it could be used so I guess you fundamentally needed a token

but it's a good example the second time ever to use a token wasn't even someone in the building that made it this was someone external that made it and this was a way for us to activate it to make the card work ever to use a token wasn't even someone in the building that made it. This is someone external that made it, and this was a way for us to activate it, to make the card work, to make the flavor work. Next up is Stoneforge Blade. So this is a token artifact equipment,

the first artifact, sorry, first equipment token. Indestructible, equip creature gets plus five, plus five, and it's double strike. Equip zero. So this came from Nahiri the Lithomage in Commander 2014. So she was three white, white, planeswalker Nahiri, three loyalty, plus two, plus one, white core creature token onto the battlefield. You may attach an equipment you control to it. Minus two, you may put an equipment card from your hand or graveyard on the battlefield.

Or minus ten, put a colorless equipment artifact token named Stoneforge Blade onto the battlefield. It has indestructible and it says what it does. Nahiri Valensimanser

can be your commander because this wasn't a commander thing. This is another good example where Nahiri, we were trying to get the flavor of Nahiri. Nahiri,

her whole shtick is she can make things out of stone. That's what a lithomancer is. And she is known for making weapons out of stone. And so, yeah, we can have her interact with other equipment. But it was kind of cool that she could make her own unique equipment. And so the Stoneforge Blade came about because we just wanted something.

We were making her ultimate, and we wanted something that just seemed really cool. So, you know, plus five, plus five, double strike. It's indestructible. the equipment's indestructible, it's got equip zero. It's just you sort of make this super powerful thing that can help tilt the game. And so that seemed like a different way to do an ultimate. Like, one of the things about designing Planeswalkers is,

like, it's tricky making ultimates, and a lot of times you go down to similar space. So we were trying to branch out. So it's interesting to me, okay, the third time we've ever done a non-creature artifact token was, oh, we were just trying to make a better ultimate for a planeswalker. Okay, next up. Oh, we get to clues. Okay, so now I think gold was our first attempt to make something that we thought had some utility to it. So clues came about. So clues were in Shadows Over Innistrad. So what happened was we had gone back to Innistrad

and we decided we wanted to have a little bit of a different feel to it. So instead of the normal sort of gothic horror we had done the first time we'd visited in the original block, we did what we called cosmic horror, which is a different style of horror. And a big part of cosmicmic Horror is unraveling mysteries.

And so we liked the idea that we wanted there to be a mystery element to it. So I don't know if you guys remember it, but Jace was the face of the set, and he wore like a trench coat, like a detective. So I think what was going on is we really wanted, we were trying to sort of get the flavor of investigation into it. And I think what happened was, I think the earliest version of investigation was drawing you cards. And what we found was it was just a little bit too efficient. And we're like, okay, is there something like, can we give you less than a full card was basically the question. is there something like, can we give you less than a full card, was basically the question.

And Clues was the answer to saying, okay, well, what if we give you something that requires more resource? Like, it's a card, but it's a card that requires you investing something in it. And then once we realized that, like, that was the answer. That's how we can make a lot more investigate cards, was making Clues something that was not a full card. Now, it ended up they played really well. Players really liked them. And Clue's, I mean, like I said, I know we sort of messed around a little bit with gold. And kind of in the back of our heads, we were thinking, oh, maybe gold could be something we use from time to time.

But what Clue said is, you know, artifact tokens can be not just a one-of thing. It can be a mechanical thing. Investigate became a mechanic in the set, and clues enabled the whole mechanic. Now, interestingly, I think if we had it all to do over again, I'm not sure whether we'd create the keyword action that then makes the token. You notice our other ones

in this book, you just make it. Make food, make blood, you know, make treasure. But this was early on, like I said. Clues came about because they were an answer to how to solve Investigate. They weren't... Investigate wasn't the answer to how to solve Clues.

It went the other way. Anyway, Clues have been very successful. I mean, clues were very successful in showing what we could do with artifact tokens in a way that was much more structural. And so it gave us some ideas, as you will see. Next up, chronologically, is the Ethereum cell. So Ethereum cell is an artifact token.

Tap, sacrifice this artifact, add one mana of any color to your mana pool. So, this is on Tezzeret the Schemer in Aether Revolt. So, two blue, black, a Planeswalker Tezzeret, loyalty five, plus one,

create a colorless artifact token named Ethereal Cell with what I just said. Minus two, target creature goes plus X minus X to end your turn where X is the number of artifacts you control. Minus 7, you get an emblem with the beginning of your combat in your turn. Target artifact you control becomes an artifact creature

with base and power of 5-5. So this is another example where we were trying to do something and we liked the idea that he could do something that made a low-value artifact. Something that was an artifact token that had some use but wasn't as powerful. But the fact that later on, his ultimate could turn those little things

into 5-5 creatures felt pretty cool. And it also allowed you, in the early game, like, one of the things with Planeswalkers is you want the plus ability, usually, and sometimes the minus ability to be something that can help you early game so that you can sort of survive to build up to the point

where you get to the ultimate. Now note, this is the first time we do essentially what ends up being treasure. I don't think... So what was this? This was in Aether Revolt. Treasure doesn't happen to Ixalan. So, yeah, so... it's possible if we were,

if treasure had existed, this is essentially treasure, that we maybe would have done a treasure, I'm not sure, but that you can sort of see us starting to revolve around. It's interesting that we didn't do gold, and if it's all gold and flavor-wise, but that we added a tap into it.

You can tell, like, that's something we wanted. Which brings us, by the way, to treasure. So treasure, tap, sacrifice artifact, add one color to your mana pool. So these first show up in Ixalan. Basically what happened in Ixalan was we had pirates, and we were trying to represent

the pirates. And one of the things we realized was we'd seen what Cluze had done and we had messed around a little bit with gold. We knew the idea and with Tezzeret, we knew the idea of an artifact thing that made mana was super useful. It was generally useful.

And so I think this time we got a little smarter. Rather than call it gold, gold had a name, we called it treasure. I think early on we had messed around with just using gold and then realized when Aether Revolt

was doing its thing that it needed to tap on it. And then we said, okay, well, let's go more generic. We sort of also learned that one of the problems with gold is gold is so specific when you're trying to do cards, if it kind of didn't match the flavor, it'd cause problems. Where treasure is nice in that treasure can be gold, treasure can be whatever you're trying to do cards if it kind of didn't match the flavor to cause problems. Where treasure is nice in that treasure can be gold,

treasure can be whatever you want it to be. And we've used treasure in a lot of different sets. Like, you know, in Infinity, it's a keychain. You can do a lot of fun things. Like, well, what do people treasure? So it's a little more open-ended. Treasure has definitely proven to be a very valuable tool. One of the dangers of Treasure

is that the reverse, is we liked it so much, and it's so much utility, that I think we overused it a little bit, and we're now pulling back a little bit on Treasure, being careful about how often we use it and where we use it, and a lot of times now Treasure's coming into play tapped, so you can't use it that same turn. But anyway,

Treasure was a huge hit, and I really think that Treasure, like Clue sort of opened the door, if you can't use it that same turn. But anyway, treasure was a huge hit, and I really think that treasure, like clues sort of opened the door, if you will, but treasure really beat down the door and said, this is a cool thing that we should be doing more of. Okay, next up is food. So, Throne of Eldain, so food is two and a tap,

sacrifice artifact, you gain three life. So we were working on, I think food came about not in vision design, but in set design. One of the things that came up during vision design and then got like set design, we were doing a lot of tropes, like we're doing fairy tales.

Well, what happens in a fairy tale? And then we found like, oh, well, you know, there's a gingerbread house or like Little Red Riding Hood has a basket of goodies. There's just a lot of stories where food played a role. And so the idea of how do we represent food? And the idea of tying food to life gain seemed pretty cool. Like in many, many games,

the idea of I have some sort of energy of some kind and it lowers and then I need to have food to raise my energy. Elf needs food badly. And this really played into that in a nice, clean, simple way. Now, one of the challenges of making food is it slows down the game. Like, if we make food too plentiful to get, games just take longer. So one of the things that we've done in sets that use food,

I mean, Throne of Eldraine being the big one, is making sure there's other resources for food, that food has meaning over and above just being a life gain, that there's ways to use the food. You know, there's some fun cards in Throne of Eldraine where you can use the food to kill other creatures or to drain things.

There's a lot of different ways to use food in a way that can help the game end rather than help you stall the game from ending. So anyway, we had clues, we had treasure, we had food. All of them proved to be really super flavorful and definitely sort of cemented the idea that artifact tokens have design value in a way that can be used structurally

in a larger sense. Not just, I mean, we still do one of tokens, but it really said that this is a resource we could use in a larger context. Okay, so the next one, this is do one of tokens, but it really said that this is a resource we could use in a larger context. Okay, so the next one, this is a one of feather. So feather is one sacrifice feather return target Phoenix card from your graveyard to the battlefield tapped. So this was on, in Ikoria, Everquill Phoenix. So two red red for four four Phoenix.

Mutate three red. If you cast a spell for its mutate cost, put it over or under target non-human creature you own. They mutate into the target creature on top, plus all abilities from under it. Flying, whenever this creature mutates, create a red artifact token named Feather with one sacrifice Feather return target Phoenix card from your

graveyard to the battlefield tapped. So, the interesting thing here is I'm not quite sure why they used a token. That's an interesting question about... I'm sort of wondering about why exactly did we use a token. I don't know whether this was a space issue

or whether it was just a cool flavor issue. I think the idea they liked is... Oh, actually, I know what it was just a cool flavor issue. I think the idea they liked is... Oh, actually, I know what it was. They were trying to reward you for mutating and one of the things about artifacts is when you can offset something onto a singular artifact,

most of the time here, we're writing what the artifact does. You're not saving that space, but you are... It allows you to say, oh, as a one-time thing, you can do something, and then there's a memory aid for that one-time thing. That's one of the biggest things about tokens in general, is I'm going to do something, there's memory issues, I have to

remember it, it's not easy to track on the card, so we make it as a separate thing. And Feather's a good example where, okay, we want you to mutate it, we want a reward, but it needs to be a simple reward, and so using an external game piece, I reward, but it needs to be a simple reward. And so using an external game piece, I think, made it easier to do that.

Yeah, the other thing that's funny is one of the things we've learned is whenever you make a token, it exists now. So, like, Feather exists. Now, clearly Feather is tied to Phoenixes, so it is not like we'll we're going to make a bird deck and just throw Feathers in. But I don't know if we ever make other phoenixes, ever make a callback.

It's fun to think about can we do callbacks. It is something we think about. But a lot of times when we're cuffed and making something, it's a little bit harder to throwback. Okay. Next up is rock. So it's an equipment. Equipped creature has one tap. Sacrifice rock. The creature deals two damage to any equipment. Equipped creature has one tap. Sacrifice rock.

The creature deals two damage to any target. Equip one. So this was made by Togo, Goblin Weaponsmith. It's a commander card. So two and a red, two, two. Legendary creature, Goblin Artificer. Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, create a colorless equipment artifact token named Rock

with the abilities I just said. And he has partner. So Togo, I think, was in flavor text. He was a character that loved rocks. And so I think they decided to make a Togo card, and a Togo card had to care about rocks, because he loves rocks. And I think this was one of the things

where they wanted to make a resource that you could generate. He was made as a commander. And so so I think they liked the idea. I think fundamentally it's like, well, what do you do with a rock? You throw the rocks. Okay, how do we make that?

And then they ended up making equipment. So like, okay, take it. And then essentially you can throw a rock at once. You have to sacrifice it. So like all rocks have this ability that you can hand it to a creature and then they can throw it. So I think it's pretty cool.

And once again, this is just a perfect example of how tokens do a really good job of capturing flavor. Like Togo needed to let you throw rocks, but that's a complicated idea. And, you know, I think that it was being able to make an artifact equipment was cool. We haven't done a lot of artifact equipment. Interestingly enough, artifact equipment as a token gets designed all the time.

And most often we end up not doing it. Like I said, there's a few that we have done. But it's one of those things that like always sort of come up. And then like, ah, do we need this? And we end up not doing it. So it definitely is something we've tried a lot that has actually seen the print. Not that much. Okay, next up is Icy Manalith.

So, Icy Manalith taps add one mana of any color. So, it's an artifact that you can tap for color, but it's a snow artifact, so it's still mana. And Svela Ice Shaper. So, this is from Kaldheim. One red, green, two, four.

Legendary snow creature, Troll Warrior. Three in tap, create a colorless snow artifact token named Icy Manalith. Six red-green tap, load the top four cards of your library. You may cast a spell from one of them without paying its mana cost. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.

Also, by the way, see, there's another one. Replicated ring, also snow artifact, tap for any one color. And that came from Replicating Ring, Snow Artifact 3. Tap, add one mana of any color. At the beginning of your upkeep, put a Knight Counter and Replication Ring. Then if it has eight or more Knight Counters, remove all of them and create eight colorless Snow Artifact creature tokens named Replicated Ring. With tap, add one mana to any color.

So interestingly, they're both snow artifacts that do the same thing. I guess they just wanted different cards that had different flavor. A lot of times when we have two cards that do the same thing, we will connect them and make it the same token. My best

guess here is they had flavor they really liked and they had the space for the token, so they made two tokens. Interesting here is this one is a reusable token. There's not a lot. Let's see. There's equipment. So the stuff we've talked about, we've done equipment before, but you'll notice that most of the artifact tokens require sacrificing. Gold you sacrifice, landmine you sacrifice, clues you sacrifice, ethereum cell you

sacrifice, treasure you sacrifice, food you sacrifice, feather you sacrifice, rock essentially you sacrifice. I mean, really only stoneforged blade, like I said, that is an ultimate of a planeswalker. So, I see manalith and replicated ring really were the first in a while to say, we're not

super powerful, you know, I mean, it produces mana, so it's a mana rock, but it's something that has some reusability. And that, by the way, is space we've used a lot less. Most of our things, essentially, we use the artifact token as a means to sort of be a

delayed spell. Like, you know, this artifact has potential to do this effect and you can save and use it when you want to use it, but usually it's a one-time thing. That's how a majority of artifact tokens get designed. So it's interesting to look at something like Icy Manalith and Replicated Ring and say, oh, wow, there's definitely space. And as you'll see, we start getting a little bit more into artifact tokens

as objects and things that you reuse. Okay, next up is Icing Death Frost Tongue. So it's a legendary artifact equipment. Equipped creature gets plus two, plus oh. Whenever equipped creature attacks, tap target creature defending player controls, equip two. So this comes from Icing Death Frost Tyrant from Adventures in Forgotten Realms.

This is a D&D Dungeon Dragon. Two white, white, four, three legendary creature dragon, flying vigilance. When Icing Death Frost Tyrant dies, create Icing Death Frost Tongue, a legendary white equipment artifact token with equipped creatures get plus two plus oh. Whenever equipped creature attacks, tap-tap creature defending player

controls and equip two. I think this is a top-down design from Icing Death from Dungeon Dragons. I think if you kill an Icing Death, you get his tongue, which is a weapon. I think that's why Icing Death's frost tongue is what it is. It represents that. And once again, this is a perfect example where, oh, we have the flavor.

How do we capture this flavor? It's a dragon that if you kill it, you can use his tongue as a sword. And, you know, token is just the nice answer for that. So this is, I think, our third equipment. Although, I mean, rock is an equipment, but Icing Death and the Stoneforge Blade are more like reusable equipment. Okay, next up is Blood.

So Blood came from Crimson Vow. We were doing the dragon, not the dragon, we were doing the vampire set. And it was a vampire wedding. We wanted to care about vampires. And I became infatuated with the idea of having an artifact token that represented blood. And the idea was, for everybody else,

it has a generally useful ability. And then for the vampires, the vampires would feed on it and get stronger. So the idea was, if you're playing a vampire deck, blood is very valuable to you. It has a lot of resources. If you're not playing a lot of vampires, it has utility, but it's kind of, you lose the utility if you don't have vampires. Now, I will admit, blood did not have a slam dunk answer like clues and food and treasure. Each one of those was sort of, you know, absolutely

perfect in their design. We spent a lot of time talking about blood. Is blood a plus one plus one counter? Is blood, you know, what exactly is blood? What is it? The problem we ended up with a plus one plus one counter is one of the coolest things you wanted to do with the vampires

was they took the blood and got more powerful, right? And that, like, kind of what you wanted is you wanted the token to have general utility, and the making the vampires better went on the vampires. So what we found was that the thing that played the best was kind of a looting effect. It was base red because it's blood, so we made it discard. So you discard it and then draw, so it's rummaging. We found rummaging played really well. We leaned a little bit, and one of the tropes of blood is the idea of using blood to, like, see the future and stuff.

You know, blood omens and things like that. I admit, looking back, I don't think blood, like, there is not a slam dunk answer for blood. I think what we chose plays really well, and the idea of having blood that vampires can feed on itself was really flavorful. I think blood in a vacuum, I agree. I mean, it's not horrible. Its effect is very neutral.

But it doesn't do quite as great a job. Now, that said, I think blood is kind of cool. I think there's places where Blood as flavor will be cool, so I think there's a chance Blood comes back. I think Blood, like I said, I think Blood has some issues and it's not as clean

and clear as some of the other ones. But it does play well, and like I said, I think Blood as a flavor is pretty cool. There's a lot of cool things you can do with it. Like, there's a card. Did it end up called Bloody Murder? There was a card we made in a design called Bloody Murder where you... It was Destroy Target Creature and then make a blood token, which I thought was a lot of fun.

There's a variant of that. Grizzly Ritual. Yes. Ended up being Destroy Target Creature or Planeswalker, create two blood tokens. But yes, that's where the card came from. Okay, next up is Tamio's Notebook. So Tamio's Notebook is Legendary Artifact, Spells you cast, cost 2 left to cast, tap, draw a card. And this came from Tamio Completed Sage in Neon Dynasty, in Kamigawa Neon Dynasty.

So she was 2 green, a green-blue Phyrexian Hybrid symbol, blue. So she's five mana total. So two green-blue plus this hybrid green-blue Phyrexian mana symbol. Legendary Planeswalker Tomeo, loyalty five, completed. You can pay the hybrid cost with green,

blue, or two life. If life was paid, Planeswalker enters with two fewer loyalty. So you can play with less mana, but you lose some loyalty. Plus one, tap up to one target artifact or creature. It doesn't untap during its control or its next untap step. Minus X, exile target non-land permanent card with mana value X

from your graveyard. Create a token that's a copy of that card. Or minus seven, create Tamiyo's notebook. This is another example of, like, this is kind of like Nahiri, where we were trying to make a fun ultimate, we wanted to make something that was really cool, and we've done a lot with

what are the others called? I'm blanking on them. You guys know what I'm talking about. When you make an enchantment, and they're like, or they're not technically enchantments, they are... I'm blanking on the name of them. But a lot of times when we make something from a Planeswalker, we want to make something permanent, and we use those.

But the idea of making things that are more tangible, that can be destroyed, that are more functional objects, seems really cool. And I think there's a lot of flavor there. I think you will see more planeswalkers or legendary creatures making objects that they get represented by tokens. I think there's a lot of design space in that. That's very exciting to me.

Next up, Volo's Journal. So, legendary artifact, hexproof. Whenever you cast a creature spell, note one of the creature types that had been noted for this artifact. So, Volo, Inherent Scholar. This is from the Dungeons & Dragons set that came out this summer. Two and a blue, legendary creature, human wizard, two, three. When Volo enters the battlefield, create Volo's Journal,

a legendary colored artifact with blah, blah, blah, with hexproof and this ability. Two and tap, draw a card for each creature type noted for target permanent you control and name Volo's journal. So interestingly, this one,

Volo's journal was done as a means to keep track of things as a tracker. So this is, it just was the easiest way and most flavorful way. Volo's known for having his journal. Volo's journal is like

one of the books you can buy in Dungeon Dragons. It lists all the different creatures and stuff. I think they wanted a Volo's journal and there was a neat way to sort of keep record of what the mechanic wanted to scale. We probably could have put a token on the card, but I think this was just more

flavorful. We were more willing now to make artifact tokens. Next up, Power Stone. First shows up in Dominar United, but mostly it's in the Brothers' War. So Power Stone, token artifact Power Stone. Tap add colorless mana.

This mana can't be spent to cast a non-artifact spell. I talked a lot about making this in my Brothers' War podcast. It went through a bunch of different changes. I think this is another example of we were telling a story, we really wanted to represent the Power Stones. They play a really big role in the Brothers War. And it's just a matter of, okay, how do we make something the best

sort of... Once again, this is a artifact token as a mechanical resource to build your set around. And the idea was, okay, we want to do a lot of cool things with artifacts. How do we enable that in a way that allows you to do those fun things but doesn't spill out? One of the biggest things whenever we're making stuff is

we want you to play the strategy we want you to play. We don't want it to just make everything more powerful. We want to make this certain strategy more powerful. So I like how this card says, okay, I'm really about enabling artifact strategies. I'm not particularly good outside of artifact strategies. So, hey, if you're playing there, I'm valuable to you, but if you're not, then I'm not.

Okay, and the final artifact token of the day is Scrap. So, let's see. Farid, enterprising salvager, tuna red, 3-3, legendary creature, human soldier. Whenever a non-token artifact you control is put into the graveyard from the battlefield,

create a colorless artifact token named Scrap. One in red, sacrifice an artifact, choose one. Put a pulse of thunder on Farid. Against menace, line of turn. Go target creature. Discard a card, then draw a card. So this is part of the commander, one of the commander cards.

Because Golem shows up in commander. Anyway, so one of the commander cards. Because Golem shows up in commander. Anyway, so one of the cool things about Scrap is it doesn't do anything. It is an artifact that's just an artifact. I know whenever we always talk about stuff like this, we have made the null thing in the past

and it just didn't make it to print. Usually what happens when we make something, we tend to have to do, even if it's minor, just so, like, it has some utility. But I think here they... I think they were just trying to make Farid as fun as it can be. And so they... I think if this was part of a larger...

Like, if this wasn't just in a commander deck, if it was part of, like, a limited environment, we'd be much more likely to make Scrap do something that had a little bit of meaning. But I think because it was really just made in the vacuum to be a commander, it's made Scrap to do nothing, so. Anyway, guys, that is the look through all the...

Oh, emblem. Emblem's the word I could not remember. So emblem is what Planeswalkers make. Sorry, I could not think of that word. But anyway, I hope today what you see is, like, artifact tokens, especially non-creature artifact tokens, are a really interesting tool. And as you look through the era, like, they started as being kind of one-of things, and then we started crafting around them, and we made, built mechanics around them. And now we're starting to make unique objects out of them, you know, we're using them for flavor purposes. starting to make unique objects.

We're using them for flavor purposes. And so I think non-creature artifact tokens have a bright future. And that if I do this podcast a couple years from now, I think it'll be more than one episode. I see a lot of potential in this. I do think you will see more non-creature artifact tokens in Magic's future. But anyway, guys, I'm at my desk.

So we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic it's time for me to be making magic I'll see you guys next time bye bye