Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #109 - Judgment Part 1

Episode Date: March 28, 2014

Mark talks about Judgment, the third set in the Odyssey Block.

Okay, I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, today I'm talking all about judgment. So previously I've talked about Odyssey, and then I talked about Torment, and today I'm going to talk about the third and final set of the Odyssey block, judgment. So let's start with the big lesson that we all learn from judgment. It doesn't have an E. Okay, technically it does have an E, but it doesn't have two E's. Yes, this is what taught me how to spell the word judgment.

J-U-D-G-M-E-N-T. No E there. That seems like it wants to be there. So anyway, for those who remember Odyssey and Torment, Odyssey was a graveyard block. Torment came up with the crazy idea of making it a black-centered set in which blocks to enemies, white and green, had less cards. Well, because we like to balance things out,

Judgment was the white and green set that had the cards that black did not. Okay, so this set came out in May 27th of 2002. It was the 26th expansion of Magic. So there were 143 cards, 55 commons, 44 uncommons, 44 rares. But of those cards, only 16 were black. That's not a lot of black cards. 33 green and 33 white, 27 blue and 27 red,

3 non-mystic lands that were all connected to green and white, 4 multicolor cards that were all green and white. So, the set had a very strong green and white theme, and black played a very small role. And not only, like the opposite of Torment, Torment, the best cards were black.

A lot of the strongest cards in the set were either green or white or green and white. There definitely was a push toward, not only was green and white more dominant, but the development pushed those cards a little more. So let me talk quickly about the design team. So this was the first lead design of somebody that would go on to lead a lot of magic sets.

That person would be Brian Tinsman. The interesting thing is, while Brian was technically the design lead, it's a little more to it than that. So the design team was myself, Bill Rose, Richard Garfield, and Brian Tinsman. Now, if you ever see the credits, Mike Elliott also gets credit in the design. Mike created the incarnations, which I will talk about. So Mike got the credits, Mike Elliott also gets credit in the design. Mike created the incarnations, which I will talk about. So Mike got credit because he made a mechanic

that was in the set. But Mike technically, I mean, Mike wasn't on the design team, but he did get design credit because he made something that ended up in the set. Okay, so let's talk a little bit. So what happened was, Bill Rose,

I think at the time, Bill was the head designer, but Bill had not yet become VP. He was still head designer. And what happened was Bill was very busy. And so Bill had led the design for Torment. And so Bill decided that because he was busy, he was going to let Brian control the file. And that, it's funny, he essentially did what I do now when we call a strong second,

file and that, it's funny, he essentially did what I do now when we call a strong second, where Bill sort of ran things but didn't control the file. And, I mean, he might have given Brian a little more latitude than I give my strong seconds, but Brian was officially the lead designer, although he was very, very much listening to what Bill had to say. This is Brian's first lead design, and it's very atypical. Normally, this is not how you do your first design, but Brian was kind of in the right place at the right time, and a smart guy, and sort of, Bill said, okay, Brian, I'm going to put you in charge, although that meant that Brian had to listen to Bill. Bill had a lot of say in what was going on. Richard, for those that like

a little bit of trivia, I believe this is the only design that Richard Garfield was on since Arabian Nights ever. It's the one time that he was on set that I didn't lead. Most of the times that Richard was on set were ones that I led. This is a rare case

where Richard was on set I didn't lead. I was on the team, but I did not lead it. So Richard, at the time, was still working at Wizards, and he liked being on sets from time to time. And I don't remember why this particular set, but I think maybe he was entranced by the idea

of the color balance being off. But anyway, so Richard joined up, and so the four of us were the team. I mean, it's a pretty hardcore design team. I mean, it's funny that even if you count Mike Elliott, who got credit on this, it's interesting that every single person on the design team not only would lead a design of their own, but would lead multiple designs of their own.

a design of their own, but would lead multiple designs of their own. In fact, every single person on this list led multiple magic designs. I'm not even sure. I guess Invasion is a subset of these five people. It was me and Bill and Mike. But anyway, for a team of five, it is pretty rare that every single person on the team would also have run multiple other design teams. That's pretty rare. Okay, so let's talk about what the set did.

Okay, so for starters, Odyssey was the graveyard set. The two main mechanics of Odyssey were flashback, which allowed you to play cards out of your graveyard. We just had it again in Innistrad, so I assume most people know flashback. And threshold. Flashback, which allows you to play cards out of your graveyard. We just had it again in Innistrad, so I assume most people know Flashback. And Threshold. So Threshold was, it's now an ability word. At the time, I think it was just a keyword, but it got downgraded to ability, or not downgraded, but it got changed to ability word. So real quickly, the difference between a keyword and an ability word is, an ability word is an ability that doesn't have to be on the card.

You can just write it out, The card explains what's going on. The ability word, it's in italics. It's kind of there mostly for show, to make it easier for people to understand what is going on, but it's not necessary, where keywords actually are necessary. It needs to have the keyword. But anyway, Threshold was keyworded originally, now it's

ability worded. Threshold basically said, if you have seven cards in your graveyard, anything with threshold turns on. So a threshold ability is now on the card if you have seven or more cards in your graveyard. Threshold was an interesting mechanic.

It caused a little bit of problems. It definitely had a huge swing value because what would happen is you'd have a whole bunch of cards in play and getting that seventh card in your graveyard could have giant ramifications on the board. It ended up being a little bit too swingy. Okay, so obviously Torment and Odyssey both had flashback and threshold. And Judgment did as well.

When I get to the individual cards, I'll talk about it. We definitely tried some new things and experimented a little bit. So, I mean, we evolved both Flashback and Threshold. But they were... I'll talk about that card by card. The plan, as I always do these days, is I'm first going to walk through and talk about the design kind of in the whole, and then I'm going to spend time, usually on future podcasts, going through and just telling individual card stories. That is how I do the things these days. People keep asking, by the way, early on when I first started doing this podcast, I tended to only

spend one podcast on a particular design, and I've since sort of changed how I do it. So people are like, are you going to go back and do more on the ones early on that you just did a little bit? And the answer is eventually I will, partially because a podcast is a hungry monster and partly because I did some real good sets early on that I talked about that I definitely would like to talk more about. So I will do addendum to those at some point

and talk more about some sets that I had wrapped up quickly in one podcast and I realized, oh, I have a lot more stories than a single podcast. Okay. The other mechanic that this set had that was from a previous set was Torment had a mechanic called the Nightmares. And what the Nightmares were, where they were creatures, they were black creatures, and when they came into play, removed something from your opponent. Usually they exiled it, although the word exile wasn't

used at the time. They removed them from the game. And when the creature left play, then your opponent got the thing back. Now this ability modern day has shifted over to white as part of white's answers with answers program. But anyway, so nightmares were a thing in

Torment. So it turns out that the, I wasn't sure when I did the Torment podcast, but now I've done a little research. So it turns out that the evolution in this set would be what we called gorgers and wormfang. Gorgers were red and wormfangs were blue. And what they did is they were like nightmares, except what they did is they removed your stuff, and then when it died, you got it back. So the idea was part of casting the creature was a cost you had to pay.

You had to exile something of yours or multiple things of yours. But when the creature died, then you got them back. And there were, I think the way it was done in this set was there was, there was a vertical cycle in, there's two vertical cycles, one in red, sorry, one vertical cycle in red,

two vertical cycles in blue. What a vertical cycle is, for those that don't know, is a cycle in which all the cards are in the same color, there's a common and uncommon and a rare in that color. Sometimes these days, instead of a rare, it's a mythic rare. Every once in a blue moon, it'll be common, uncommon, rare, mythic rare.

But this is pre-mythic rare, so a vertical cycle back in the day would mean a common, an uncommon, and a rare. So for red, it had Spellgorger Barbarian, then Soulgorger Org at uncommon, and Worldgorger Dragon at rare.

For blue, it had two commons in wormfang drake and newt, two uncommons in wormfang turtle and crab, and two rares in wormfang behemoth and manta. And so what those did basically is, the idea was black was the main character in torment, red and blue were's kind of allies. And so in Torment, Red and Blue did things that worked with Black.

But in this set, that wasn't the case. And White and Green were working together. And so Red and Blue kind of, instead of having Black have it, they shifted to Reflex allies, and then it was you instead of your opponent. So it was a little bit different. And when White and green take over,

you're sacrificing your own stuff and not your opponent's stuff. Okay. So let's get to the mechanics. Other than... Oh, sorry. There was one more mechanic that appears in this set

that's from the previous sets. And that was the Punisher mechanic. Okay. The Punisher mechanic. Okay, the Punisher mechanic is a mechanic in red, there are spells in red that said you have a choice. You can allow me to do some amount of damage or do some effect. Often

that effect was not something red traditionally got a chance to do. I mean, I'll talk about some of these when I've done card by card. And so the Punisher mechanic, the flavor I always said is, do this thing I want you to do that I don't normally get to do or I punch you in the face.

It was kind of the flavor. I can't control what's going to happen and the reason I like Punisher was, for a long time the way we represented chaos in Red was we actually just had randomness. And while some randomness is okay, it makes it hard to make spells sort of work, especially for any sort of constructed thing when you don't know what's going to happen. And so we were playing around with different ways to kind of get a flavor of chaos. And so we were playing around with different ways to kind of get a flavor of chaos.

And this is one in which I don't know what's going to happen, so there's some chaos. It has some of a chaos feel to it, but it's a little more controlled. And the idea of a punishment mechanic is I have two things. I'm paying way less than I should for either ability. So no matter what I get from you, I'm getting a decent bargain. And I don't control what I get, but hopefully I set you up in a situation where both are good for me.

Now the interesting thing about the Punisher mechanic is it splits the audience. The Punisher mechanic tends to be beloved, we've discovered, by casual players and by a lot of players

that just sort of had a lot of fun with it. It was less liked by another group of players. So sort of had a lot of fun with it. It was less liked by another group of players. So recently, in Born of the Gods, we created tribute cards. And tribute cards pretty much are creatures that, when they enter the battlefield,

give you a Punisher choice. It's either the creature gets big... Instead of, I do damage to you, it's the creature gets bigger, or you let me have an effect. And the players, some of the more serious players are like, I don't control it

so I don't like it because I can't control what happens. But I think the more casual players that are more like, ooh, what's going to happen are more excited about it. So we did try to make,

we do try to make Punisher mechanics in Tribute as well such that the choice is interesting. I think one of our problems with some of the Punisher was the choices weren't

as good. We spent more energy with the Tribute of making the choices a little clearer. Because sometimes with Punisher, it's so obvious that one was the right choice. The cards are more fun when there's more choices. Okay. Now that I've talked about everything that came back, yes, we had Flashback, and we had Threshold, and we had Punisher, and we had Nightmares.

What new things did we have? Okay. I'm just going in alphabetical order here. First, we had the Advocates. So the Advocates were cards, I think they were, they might have just been in white and green. The Advocates were cards that had activated abilities that said to your opponent, oh, sorry, if I activate the ability, part of the side effect of the ability was my opponent got to draw, got to take a card from their graveyard, I'm sorry, I had to take a card from my opponent's graveyard and give it back to their hands. So when I activated this ability, I had to look through, I chose the card, but I had

to look through the graveyard, pick a card and give it back to them. And the idea was that sometimes, you know, especially in this world, threshold matters, so getting cards back could be important. And because people were discarding cards to try to get to threshold, there was more often cards in which it wasn't a vital card I could give back to them. And sometimes you get in a pinch where you're like, oh, I have to give something real back to them in order to use this activated ability. And this mechanic was made by Brian Tinsman. I'll be honest, I was very, very skeptical of this mechanic when he first pitched it. I was like, why do you want to do this? I don't know if players are going to want to do it. But the more I played with it, it actually was very fun.

It made very interesting decisions, more so than I thought. And this is a good example. I talk about this all the time, which is why you have to playtest things. You can read something, and I mean, obviously, the more you playtest and the more you do design, the more you'll have a better idea of reading cards and understanding how they function. But especially when cards do something

you've never, ever done before, you've got to play cards. There's only so far you can get thinking about a card. Even if you get good at it, and I've gotten decent at it, you still are surprised when you play, because just there's things that come up that you do not know.

There are rules interactions you never thought of. There are just play style, things that just happen that you never thought of, and that this is one of those cards that when I first looked at it in a vacuum, I understood kind of intellectually, like how it interacted with threshold and how it could make a choice,

but then you actually do it and actually have the choice. And it was a lot more interesting than I thought. I hats off to Brian because my initial impression of this was not good. But when I played with it, I definitely enjoyed it. It had a lot of nuance, especially in Limited. I thought it was very, very interesting in Limited. Next, we have

the Incarnations. The Incarnations were the main ones were Valor, Wonder, Filth, Anger, and Brawn. White and Green each got an extra one. Genesis and Glory, which I will talk about in the card-by-cards.

The way these worked was, these were called Jedis in design. These were actually made by Mike Elliott. This is why Mike got credit for coming up with these. And these were very, very popular. The way these worked is when the creature died, while in your graveyard, they

granted an ability to all your creatures in play. So like Wonder granted flying to all your creatures, and Anger granted haste to all your creatures. These are very popular nowadays in combo decks that kind of dump a lot of

cards in your graveyard. Um, because automatically, once you get these in your graveyard, you enable your creatures. And, uh, haste is very good if you want to attack right away, and flying is good if you need an evasion. But, uh, these cards get used a lot in, uh, different decks that get stuff in graveyard. There's a bunch of different cards that, you know, decks that do it. But, um But they are... Anyway, they were very interesting.

They were very popular. Glory, actually, was the pre-release card. It was released during this period. All the pre-release cards were in other languages. And Glory was in Hebrew. So a fine trivia question is, name the only magic card ever printed in Hebrew. And the answer is glory,

or whatever the Hebrew word for glory is. Elliot, Mike Elliot, made these, he might have made these for an Odyssey design. Either Odyssey or, he made it earlier in the year. And we liked them, and just it was a matter of finding the right place for them. I think we decided to wait until the end of the block

because we only wanted so many things from Graveyard Matter, so we kind of spread them out. They were called Jedis because in Star Wars, you know, Obi-Wan Kenobi, I don't want to ruin anything for a movie that came out in 1976, but Obi-Wan might not make it through the whole movie. And in his death, he's able to obviously, you know, still help Luke. And so I think that was why Mike called them Jedis.

But anyway, they were super popular, and those are incarnations. Next, the phantoms. So the phantoms were all creatures that had a zero toughness, that entered the battlefield, or came into the battlefield. It wasn't meant to be a fact, but when they entered the battlefield, they came with a certain number of plus one, plus one counters. And then, any time a phantom would take damage, you could remove a plus one, plus one counter to prevent that damage.

So essentially the flavor of these was, so let's just say I had a, you know, I don't remember the names of all these, but I had a 3-3 creature. So 0-0 that came in three plus one counter. Essentially the idea was that was an elephant that the first time it took damage

became a 2-2, and the second time it took damage became a 1-1. So what it did is every time they took damage, became a 2-2. And the second time it took damage it became a 1-1. So what it did is every time they took damage it would just shrink them by one. Which is pretty valuable, right? So like, you know, I have a 3-3,

I block your 3-3, your 3-3 dies, I now have 2-2. Now I can block someone with 2 toughness, now I have a 1-1. And I can trade, but I keep my guy around.

They were very valuable. The real valuable one was Phantom's Show, but I'll talk into my card by card, but this was a mechanic that definitely showed up, just like Incarnations. This also showed up in Constructed. The Advocates did not, but the Incarnations

and the Phantoms did. But, if we're going to talk about true impacts on Constructed, I think the mechanic of the set that probably had the biggest splash... It was a cycle, by the way. It's a rare cycle. And it's a sign

how you can make things pretty exciting with a rare cycle. So this was called The Wishes, for those who remember. So The Wishes were Golden Wish, Cunning Wish, Death Wish, Burning Wish, and Living Wish. And the idea of these, they were based on a card called Ring of Maroof that Richard Garfield had made in Arabian Nights. And the

idea of these cards was you were able to make a wish. You could go get any card you owned from outside the game. Now, different wishes allowed you to get different kind of cards. now different wishes allowed you to get different kind of cards the cunning wish got you instants, burning wish got you sorceries, golden wish I think got you artifacts and enchantments

living wish got you creatures and black I think black got you anything by the cost there was a life payment with it cunning wish and burning wish and living wish were the three that saw the most play. The reason that Golden Wish didn't was we had some problems at the time with artifacts and enchantments, and so

we actually costed it so it wouldn't be constructed. For those that are like, whatever happened? Why did White get such a sucky wish? That is why. It was developmental issues at the time. So what happened was the way the wishes work is you can go get

any card you wanted within the subset of the cards you got. So Cunning Wish can go get any instant. In tournament play, this is one of the few cards that are,

I mean, I guess, in tournament play what it means is the cards have to be in your sideboard. You can't just go get any card. You can only get a card in your sideboard.

I remember I played, we had these events called the Wizards Invitational. Now we have the Community Cup that's similar, but a little different. And the Wizards Invitational was like the Magic Invitational, but all 16 players were Wizards employees. And I played in that, I think twice. I think we had two of them.

But one of them, I remember I had a Burning Wish. I was playing a black-red deck that had been built for me by the public. And I remember I had a Burning Wish. And because we were playing Magic Online, I could access any card on Magic Online. And I remember I made this giant chart of what I could use. I had this awesome plan of what I could use. I had this awesome plan to go get Mana Clash if I ever was in a game where I just needed to do one damage

and I would go Burning Witch for Mana Clash and win with Mana Clash. Mana Clash is the card you flip and every flip you win you do a damage to them. And I was going to try to win on style points by winning with Mana Clash. Which shows you, by the way, that I'm not a spike. If that story, if no other

story could ever show you how unspikey I am, or how Johnny I am, the fact that I was planning to Burning Wish for Maniclash to kill my opponent, like seriously, had it all lined up, it never came up, but all lined up to do it shows you that I'm not, and probably never will be much of a spike.

So the wishes were made, we wanted something splashy for the set. I don't know whether Richard was the one that proposed them. I don't remember

how they came to be. I mean, Richard made Ring of Maroof, which they're clearly spawned by. So Ring of Maroof was an artifact in Arabian Nights.

So Richard, the two sets Richard led is a little set you might know called Alpha, Flash Beta, and then he did Arabian Nights. So Richard, the two sets Richard led is a little set you might know called Alpha, Flash Beta, and then he did Arabian Nights. And Arabian Nights was Richard capturing the top-down flavor of 1001 Arabian Nights. And in it, he had a card called Ring of Maruf.

Maruf is a character, important character, and his ring could grant him wishes. In fact, I think Maroof must be... Well, anyway, there's a bunch of different stories about granting wishes. This is a ring that granted wishes. Anyway,

and so it allowed you to go get a card from outside the game, and anyway, we always liked that, and we decided that it was time to... For a long time, we thought we'd never do that. And then we were like, you know, I think as magic goes along, as it ages, we become more willing to do things.

That's why I talk about how things that are silver-bordered once upon a time... You look at Unglued, they were like, things we can't do in Black Border. And a lot of them we've now done in Black Border. I like to think of Unsets, by the way, as just advanced design. We're just looking way ahead

for what we'll be doing in Black Border in, you know, 15 years, or 10 years. We'll just do some advanced work. Just, you know, see. Anyway, the Wishes went on to be mega popular. I mean, Cunning Wish and Burning Wish and Living Wish are all really, really strong.

And so they saw tons of play. In fact, they still see tons of play in formats that are allowed to be played in. Because they are quite potent. The flexibility they give you is very big. And in casual things where you actually can have whatever cards you want, they're quite fun. Like I said, the time I was playing on Magic Online, I literally had a list of every red sorcery, or was it red or black sorcery

that I had access to, because it was a red-black deck. Anyway, it was tons of fun. Okay, what else can I tell you about this set? I'm almost to work. A little trivia. Oh, so two creature types got introduced in the set.

Gorgon, which is interesting since Infernal Medusa existed in Legends, but we finally called them Gorgons, which is the... I think she... I'm not sure what it was back then.

Was it Medusa? Anyway, Gorgons are the official names for what a Medusa is, and so Gorgon appeared for the first time, and Incarnation appeared for the first time. Surprise, surprise

on the Incarnations. One of the things when we make cycles, by the way, it's important that we have some means by which people can refer to them. So sometimes, as is the case with as a case with the

wishes, it's in the name. Right? They're all Blink Wish. But the incarnation, they were all in the creature type. They were all in new creature types. How do you know incarnations? Well, the seven incarnations were the only incarnations that existed and were introduced in this game.

What else am I trying to think? The expansion symbol was the scale of justice. Because white and green. It's kind of funny, though. We think justice actually is white and blue, not white and green. But I think the idea was that the black set had been the dark, evil,

nightmarish set. And the white-green set was like... So in the story, our main character is Kamal. And Kamal starts as a pit fighter. And it's all about the story of him fighting against... What was the name of the villain? The villain was the guy who made the morph creatures and made the angel... I'm sorry, I did not write this down.

A chroma. He made a chroma. And then... Anyway, long story. Kamal had to sift her, and he was fighting, the long story, Kamal had to sift her and there, he was fighting against the Kabal and then there was him fighting against, um, what is his name? Uh, he has a card. Uh, anyway, there, the main villain was, um, had, was bringing things to life from his

mind. It's where Morph came from. It's where Akroma came from. from his mind. It's where Morph came from. It's where Akroma came from. Anyway, it was definitely a lot of... And what happened was this story would kind of continue on

to the next... This was Odyssey block, but Onslaught block would continue the story. In fact, Odyssey and Onslaught both take place on the continent of Otaria, which is on Dominaria. But for a while, what we'd do,

instead of going from world to world, we would just go around different continents of the same world. I'm not sure why we did that. Rather than, you know, when we have planeswalkers that can walk from plane to plane, I'm not sure why we stayed on the same plane for so long. But we were on Otaria here.

So anyway, I'm going to wrap up here because, so next podcast I will start talking about cards. There's lots of individual stories about the cards and it was a fun set to work on. It was a little chaotic. Bill was definitely very involved, but it was

an interesting process because Brian felt, Brian, if you've never met Brian, is, Brian likes to take charge and like, you tell Brian he's the lead designer and he's just gung-ho going and so Brian was off coming up with ideas but Bill sort of, you know, had a certain design that he wanted and it was

interesting to watch because, you know, Brian definitely took the opportunity and he had a chance to be the lead designer and he took the opportunity to heart. But meanwhile, Bill also had a lot of ideas what Bill wanted, you know, so it was very interesting. And also, it was like I said, it's the one set with Richard Garfield where I was just on the team, so like...

Anyway, it was a fun team. There was definitely lots going on, lots of neat ideas. And if you look at the set, it's full of all sorts of cool ideas. It definitely was chock full of stuff. And I am parking. So anyway, I loved talking about judgment today. As we know, I enjoy talking about magic quite a bit. But even more, I like making magic.

That's my cue. It's time to go. So I'll talk to you guys next week. Or next time. Maybe next week for you, might not. Ciao.