Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #110 - Judgment Part 2

Episode Date: April 4, 2014

Mark continues his talk about Judgment, the third set in the Odyssey Block.

Okay, I'm pulling up my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so last time I started talking about Judgment, the third set in the Odyssey block. And I talked all about the designers and the key mechanics. Well, today I'm going to continue that. I'm talking about cards. So for today's podcast and maybe the next podcast, we'll see how long this goes, I'm going to talk about just card stories. One of the reasons I really enjoy doing card stories is it's one thing to talk about the overall structure, which I feel I always should do,

but kind of talking about individual cards, you just kind of see a lot of how things came together in a sort of more personal way. And anyway, players like card stories, I like telling them. So I'm going to do that. So we're going to start with Balthar the Defiled. Okay, so for those that know the story or maybe don't know the story,

the main character was Kamal. His mentor was a dwarf named Balthar. And Balthar showed up in the previous set in Torment, in red, because he was a dwarf. But in the story, oh, poor Balthor showed up in the previous set in Torment, in red, because he was a dwarf. But in the story, oh, poor Balthor is killed.

The mentor killed. Oh, Joseph Campbell. Anyway, and we decided that just because you kill a creature doesn't mean you can't see him anymore. People always tell me that about Venser, by the way. They're like, okay, okay, Venser's dead. We're zombie Venser. But in this case, they're like, okay, okay, Venture's dead we're zombie Venture but in this case, we did in fact get a zombie version in the story, he is raised from the

dead by the Cabal who, um, they're kind of evil if you know much about the Cabal, but anyway so we made a zombie version, Balthard the Defiled, so he's 2BB for a 2-2, so 2 black and black for a 2-2, so 2 black and black for a 2-2.

And he gives all minions plus 1 plus 1 and then for black, black, black you can exile him and then you reanimate all players get to reanimate all red and black creatures. And so, anyway, it is

a fun card. A couple things about it. One is, it might be the only minion lord in the game, and we no longer support minion. Well, what that means is we no longer make cards that have minion on them. I believe that if you had minion on you in the past, you still have minion on you. But Balthar is a leader of a tribe that is not really... So why did we get rid of minions?

Not my call. I probably would have left minions, personally. But what happens is, every once in a while, creative goes through and says, are these creature types pulling their weight? Are they doing what they need to do? And the idea is, having too many creature types, like, you kind of want some cohesion.

You don't want things being everywhere. And so they go through one, and they go, you know what, this isn't pulling its weight. Let's stop supporting this one. So Minion is no longer supported. So poor Balthar does not get to give any new creatures plus one, plus one. But anyway, he's a

pretty fun card, by the way. I, as a fan of reanimation strategies, he's pretty fun. Next, we get the Battle Screech. So Battle Screech is for two white, white, and you put two 1, 1 flying birds into play. They're white tokens. And for flashback,

you can tap three untapped white creatures to flash it back. Okay, now this card is interesting on several levels. First off, it is us doing flashback. I mentioned last time that, you know, the mechanics had come back, your flashback and threshold, the two main mechanics had come back.

The interesting thing about what this card is doing is it's evolving flashback, and there's a cycle of cards in this set that have flashback that don't require mana. And that is quite interesting, just evolving flashback, and there's a cycle of cards in this set that have flashbacks that don't require mana. And that is quite interesting, just because flashback traditionally requires mana, and now it says, okay, you know, there's ways for you to get this back without necessarily spending mana. Now, the tricky thing about it was we had to make sure that the card needed to be played by the, you know,

we wanted to make sure the card wasn't too easily played by colors outside of it. And so with each of these cases, we try to make sure to do things that tie them to the color. Obviously the white one, it is a tap-untap white creatures. So, you know, the interesting thing, by the way, is years later with,

this wasn't true at the time, years later with Hybrid, we enabled the deck that didn't actually have white in it to flash this back. But at the time, if you wanted to flash it back, you had to have white creatures. This was a pretty popular card. Token making is something that white has become better at. White's always done it, but we've upgraded white's token making, especially the little 1-1 token making, both the ground soldiers and the flying birds, usually.

Next, we have Benevolent Bodyguard. So Benevolent Bodyguard was actually part of a cycle, but a very subtle cycle. So in the set, there were five 1-1 creatures that cost C, or a single colored mana, that all had a sac ability. You could sac them for free to do something. So Benevolent Bodyguard, you could sack it to give protection to end a turn to a creature.

So it sort of was a shelter, if you will. It protected your creature for one turn from a color of your choice. The other things in the cycle were Hapless Researcher, Cabal Trainee, Dwarven Scorcher, and Crowson Warfarer. So the interesting thing, if I remember correctly about this card, is over time in Magic, we had made a bunch of different C1 ones that sacked for effect. And I think we hadn't made a white one. And I think this cycle started because we were trying to make a white one.

But then what we realized was the whole cycle is really good for the environment because of Threshold. That when you're trying to enable Th threshold, you want to find ways to get cards in your graveyard. So 1-1s have this problem that they're good early, but they sort of lose their value after the early game because they just can't get through. And these cards allowed you

to turn that, you know, you could attack with them early and then turn them into value. And you could also use them to get in your graveyard to fill up for threshold. So it all worked very nicely. Next, Book Burning. So Book Burning is one of the Punisher cards. So Book Burning is a sorcery for one and a red. Your opponent had to choose either to do six damage,

let you do six damage to their head, or mill them for six. So this is a really good example of kind of what Punisher can do. Red is not a milling color. Red cannot mill. So if red cannot mill, why is red milling on this card? And the answer is the Punisher mechanic allows us to give some abilities to red that red can't do. And the reason is red doesn't get to control them. So red is sort of like mill cards or I smack you in the face. Your opponent can go, okay, smack me in the face. So because you can't control the milling, that your opponent always

can keep you from milling, we allowed Red to bleed a bit and get into some abilities it can't normally do. Also, another design thing to understand, notice the aesthetics that it's six damage or six cards, so that the abilities feel connected. That was another important part of Punisher.

The numbers didn't always line up. There's a bunch of different ways to do it, but you do want to feel like the choices have some sort of correlation to each other. In this particular case, the number six happens to do that. Okay, let's go to the next card, which is very similar, which is Browbeat. So Browbeat doesn't quite have the aesthetics that Book Burning does. Browbeat is a sorcery for two and a red. They either do five damage or draw three. My guess, by the way, is this card was originally due six damage, draw three,

because of the aesthetics. One of the things about aesthetics is you can match it, doing half works. You want to do something where there's a pattern you can see. So five to three is not a good pattern, but six to three is a pattern. My guess is this card was too good at six damage, which is why it's five. My gut is we turned it in at six, and development likes aesthetics not as much as design likes aesthetics, and development's attitude is, look, where we can we'll match aesthetics, but when the card's unbalanced, we will make the card balance. And so design sort of lines everything up aesthetically beautiful, and then development keeps most of it, and I try to keep an eye on it

and keep the aesthetics where we can. Because something I've learned, maybe one day I'll do a podcast on aesthetics, but one of the things about it that you learn is that humans just

seek out certain things and when you sort of hit the things that people seek out, they just feel better. The cards just feel better. And if you break it enough, like, you know,

Grizzlebrand is a classic example where it's like, 7-7, pay life, draw 7 cards. How much does it cost? 8. And then people are like, what? It needs to cost 7. And literally, the number of letters I got because Grizzlebrand cost 8. Aesthetics does matter, and it really does have an impact. And like I said, I'll do a podcast on aesthetics one of these days. It's a good full half hour worth of talking. Next, we got Cabal Therapy. So Cabal Therapy was known as Go Fish in design. The reason is, you're playing the game Go Fish.

So it's cost B, it's a sorcery, and you would say, do you have, blah, name a card. If they did, then they'd reveal their hand and discard any copies of the card you named. The card also has flashback, sacrifice a creature. So the interesting thing is I made go fish without the flashback cost a bunch of times. I kept trying to get in sets, and it just wasn't quite good enough. And then when we realized that we had flashback available,

oh, well, doing it a second time is very, very valuable, because your opponent has to show you their cards to prove they don't have it. So if you can do it a second time, you now know their hand. And so adding the flashback on this card took it from being a not-quite-good-enough-to-print to being a tournament-quality card. This was played in tournaments. But anyway, one of the things that's fun about doing design is that you try to get cards in that you like, and for different reasons they don't get in, and so you keep trying to try them again or tweak them, you know, and that Go Fish was a card that I tried to get in multiple sets, and finally finding a solution to getting

it in and to making it, you know, a very playable card, anyway, it made me very happy. I was kind of happy this card ended up where it did. Next is Cage Mail. It's an aura, a chant creature, for one W, and chant creature goes plus two, plus two, and can't attack. So this is something that we started doing, I mean, this is one of the early examples of this kind of card. What this card is doing is, it has different value depending upon whether you play it on yourself or your opponent. I mean, obviously it does the same things, but the point is,

if I'm playing it on myself, I'm going to put on something that's naturally defensive, then I'm just trying to make it bigger. And the fact that it can't attack is not too big a deal. I have a creature I'm intending to be defensive. Offensively, if my opponent is beating me with something that I just can't stop, I put this on them to stop it. Now, it is a downside. It makes it better for blocking and such. But, you know, if I'm really desperate to stop the thing that's going to kill me, well, you know, hey, maybe I'm willing to

make it bigger to stop it. And so, it's interesting in that it has value in that how I use it for myself and how I use my opponent is stressing different parts of the card. But when the card comes together, the nice thing is it feels cohesively whole, like the card does a distinctive thing, but it has different value depending on how you play it. This card is also a card that I would parody directly in,

was it Unhinged? With Word Mail, which was a card that got bigger based on how many words were in your title. Although it allowed you to attack, obviously. Okay, next, Commander Isha. So this is a legendary creature for two white and a white, two four flying, protection from creatures. So, let me talk a little bit about protection from creatures.

So one thing about protection is protection is an open-ended mechanic. It's a very interesting mechanic in that protection from fill in the blank. So, because it's defined what it means, so protection actually does four different things. This is one of my dislikes of protection is it's a very, very complex mechanic. It's like it does four things. That's a lot for a single mechanic to do. So what production does is it says, I can't be targeted by the color in question.

I can't be enchanted or equipped by something with a color in question. Any damage done by the color in question is reduced to zero, and I cannot be blocked by any creatures of the color. So that's a lot put together. I mean, the overall flavor's nice. The reason the protection's still around is it's got awesome, awesome top-down flavor. It's like, you know, I have protection red.

Red magic cannot harm me in any way. And we've kind of spelled out all the different ways that red magic could harm you, except, obviously, untargeted, non-destructive. It's funny, because early on, by the way, protection's gone through a lot of phases. Early on, most people don't know,

is when protection first happened, the ruling was, like in Alpha, protection meant, oh, you can't be affected by things of that color. So, like, if you wrath a god early on, if you had a black knight and you wrath a god, oh, black knight goes, sorry, white, you know. And so it didn't care.

It's like, oh, you're white, can't destroy me. And then there was a phase where there was this thing called semi-targeting. So balance couldn't kill a black knight, but counted it to figure out how many creatures there were. And then eventually they figured out, okay, we need to define what it is. It can't be affected. It was too vague. And so they came up with the current rules. So protection from creatures

rule-wise works just fine. I mean, it does what it says it does. You know, you cannot, creatures cannot target you, they cannot block you, damage from them is reduced to zero. I guess the aura equipment thing doesn't really matter until we make

creature equipment one day. I'm just joking there, but everybody, ooh, Maro says creature equipment is coming now. Anyway, my big problem with this card is it is just super, super non-interactive. It's like,

okay, you just can't, for starters, it's I'm unblockable, okay? And then, really what this card says is, unless you can destroy me with a spell, I'm just going to wreck okay? And then, really what this card says is, unless you can destroy me with a spell, I'm just going to wreck you because you can't do anything about me. And I don't find protection from creatures to be all that fun. We do it every once in a blue moon.

There's two cards. I'll talk about the other cards in a sec. But I don't know. I'm not a fan of this card. In a sense, I'm not a fan of protection from creatures. I mean, this was a legend. I know how it got here. This was a legendary creature. It was important. We wanted to make it splashy. I think a lot of times when you do something

for the very first time, it's Protection from a thing you've never done before. It's splashy. And Creatures, like, oh my, Creatures, Protected from Creatures, you know, sounded pretty cool.

And it's very powerful. So, I mean, people liked it and that it's powerful. The fact that it's flying Protected from Creatures was a little quirky since kind of the biggest die from Protected from Creatures is you can't be blocked, but it has flying. The fact that it's flying protective creatures is a little quirky since kind of the biggest die-protective creatures

is you can't be blocked but it has flying. So, anyway, not the most, not the, as the signs go, not the greatest. Okay,

that moves us to Elephant Guide. So, Elephant Guide is another enchant creature for 2G. The aura grants plus three, plus three. And when enchanted creature dies,

you get a 3, three elephant token. Green elephant token. So this is another example of... So R&D's been playing a game since Alpha called Make Auras Better. Dun, dun, dun! So the problem with auras is they create card disadvantage. That if I put an aura on my creature and you kill my creature, now I've invested two cards and you used one card to get rid of it.

So it's inherent card disadvantage. That's the problem with auras. And along the way, so here's the real problem, I guess, is beginners love auras. They love auras. Auras are fun. I used to do a thing called Deck Clinic where we would go to, when we went to events,

back when I went to every convention under the sun, and we'd set up a little table, and people would come and show us their decks, and we would give them advice on how to make their deck better. And I had a bunch of, like, little truisms I would give, you know. And one of the ones I used a lot was, here's a tip, try to have more creatures in your deck than creature enchantments.

People love, especially beginners, love putting creature enchantments in their deck. It's fun. I mean, one of the reasons that Theros is what it is is it's fun to build up your creatures. And one of the ongoing things is, the reason auras are in the game is they are fun people like them,

but they've always been bad competitively, and we've tried a lot to make them better. So, Elephant Guide is a good example where we're like, okay, what's the downside? Card disadvantage. Oh, well, what if, you know, if you put this on your creature, once the creature dies, if you get another permanent, then, I mean, it's not a card, but from a card disadvantage

standpoint, you have a permanent. So like, I'm losing two things, but gaining one, so I'm only losing one. So it turns it back into a one for one. And so this card was very powerful. It definitely was a tournament card. And like I said, it was very powerful. It definitely was a tournament card. And like I said, it was very much made with us trying to we're constantly trying to find ways to

print auras in a way that makes them playable. And you'll notice, like over the years, I mean, Theros is a big example. We do it a lot in Theros, but auras are no longer the thing you're supposed to just throw out in Limited that we've made enough over the years that there's reasons you might want to think about them.

Next is epic struggle and test of endurance. Okay, so in Odyssey, there was battle of wits and chance encounter. In Torment, there was mortal combat. And in Judgment, there was epic struggle and test of endurance. So this is what we call a mega cycle. This is where we take a cycle and we spread it out over the course of a whole block. So all five of these cards were alternate win conditions. They all were enchantments.

All of them said at the beginning of your upkeep, if condition is true, you win the game. And the reason it was an upkeep trigger was no matter when you did the thing you did, your opponent had one turn to try to stop you. So if you did your thing, then your opponent would go, oh, if he starts the game with his thing being true, he's going to win the game. He or she is going to win the game. And so we have to make sure that

we give you a chance to respond. So Epic Struggle and Test of Endurance, well, Epic Struggle was two green, green. Test of Endurance was two white, white. And so what happened was Battle of the Wits was the blow away most popular one of this cycle. I mean, the other ones got played

and they were different, were fun, casual things. But none of them really had the runaway success of Battle of the Wits, which even showed up kind of fringed and constructed. So Battle of the Wits we actually brought back. So it's funny, people ask about that. If we make a cycle, we don't feel obligated to bring the whole cycle back. And many, many times there's been one card that stood out and we brought that one card back.

So Battle of Wits got brought back. It didn't have to live and die with its cycle. But the reason I like Mega Cycles is I have a lot of fun of sort of having something and creating some anticipation. And the fun thing about it is when you saw two of them in Odyssey, you didn't right away necessarily know the names were somewhat connected, but you didn't know for sure that they were a cycle. But then when you saw Mortal Kombat, you're like, oh, there's a black set

and there's a black one. Oh, you know, oh, there's two missing. It's white and green. And you can realize. And one of the fun things about designing sets is there's a meta design thing and you can realize. And one of the fun things about designing sets is there's a meta design thing where you're trying to you want to make people happy within the set, but you also want to sort of play between the sets.

And making cards where people anticipate what's coming makes people happy, makes players happy. It's fun to have a pattern and complete the pattern. I talk about this all the time in my communications theory. People like completion. How do you give people completion? Well, set up the pattern so that you can then finish it. I talk about this all the time in my communications theory. People like completion. How do you give people completion? Well, set up the pattern

so that you can then finish it. I mean, sometimes structure is you set up a structure that naturally you can find an ending to where your audience doesn't know where it's going. But another time, it's set up a conclusion they absolutely positively know where you're going

and then you get to meet the thing they know. It still makes them very happy. Okay, next. Earn them gin. So we did this weird thing in this block where in Torment we had Sink or Vampire, and in Judgment we had Earnham Gin.

Both of which were highly profiled in the ad campaigns. And the funny thing was Earnham Gin in its day was a good card. It wasn't anymore. It wasn't very powerful at the time. And Sacred Vampire was never good. It was popular early on, but it was never good.

And so we kind of brought back these two cards that were like, hey, look at this card that really isn't that good anymore. Like, it was a weird campaign on our part. I mean, they were familiar, and they're like, hey, remember this? There's nostalgia to it, but it was an odd choice. And it's funny. One of the things we sold, if you go look at the Judgment ads, they highlight that Urnumdjinn is back, and they highlight the wishes.

Now, the wishes make a lot of sense. Wishes were splashy and pretty cool. But Urnumdjinn is like, hey, guys, you know how magic is new and different, and we do crazy new things? Well, guess what? We also brought this card back. Urnumdun, by the way, for those who do not know, it is a three and a green. It's a four or five creature.

And the upkeep is you must give your opponent a non-wall creature forest walk. And since odds are you had a forest play this, it allows your creature to have it. You'd make one of the creatures unblockable. In its day, back when creatures were a lot worse, this was pretty good. Having four or five for three and green was so good, they're like, okay, I'll put up with this disadvantage. There were also less creatures at the time. So, I mean, back in the day, you know, Urnum Armageddon was a deck where you played,

it was a white-green control deck where you would get out creatures, Urnum being one of the biggest, and then wipe the board with Armageddon was a deck where you played, it was a white-green control deck where you would get out a creature, as Urnum being one of the biggest, and then wipe the board with Armageddon, and then you couldn't deal with this large creature. And so at the time, well, one of the best values for your money was Urnum Djinn, but we've come a long way. Come a long way! Next is Genesis and Glory.

So Genesis was for four and a green. It was a 4-4 creature. And it allowed you during upkeep to spend two and a green. And if you did, you could return a creature card from your graveyard to your hand. Glory was three white-white, three-three flyer, and it had the ability in your graveyard. Oh, I'm sorry. The previous ability for Genesis was if this is in your graveyard, then you have this ability every upkeep.

And then Glory says, if this is in your graveyard, you can spend two and a white to give creatures you control protection from a color of your choice line of turn. So this was, so there were seven cards that were the incarnations, which were creatures that had abilities in your graveyard. There's a cycle of five of them

that all granted a keyword ability, and then white and green, because it was the white and green set, each had an extra one that had an activated ability. Or, sorry, the green one was triggered, and the white one was activated. And I remember, I played a lot of Genesis. Genesis was a very fun card,

and Glory, like I said last time, Glory was the previous card in Hebrew. Okay, next, Grizzly Fate. Okay, so Grizzly Fate is three green and green sorcery to put two, two, two bears into play, but if you were at threshold, meaning if you had seven more cards in your

graveyard, instead of two bears, it would put four bears into play, and it had a flashback of five green green. So this card does a whole bunch of things. So let me start by asking the most the question I get most about this card, which is Mark, did you name this card? Yes, I

did. Yes, I did. Grizzly Fate, awesome name. By the way, a lot of people do not realize that Grizzly and Grizzly are not spelled the same. Because grizzly, as in a horrible thing, actually is spelled differently. But it makes grizzly bearer, so da-da-da! Anyway, I like this card name.

By the way, if you ask how many puns and card names I'm directly responsible for, the answer is a lot. I'm literally the person who, once we decided we're going to Wrath, said, okay, we're having Apes of Wrath. Done. Now the problem is I don't get to do names much anymore. So other than... I don't get to do names anymore. Anyway, I still try to get puns where I can.

I put puns in design names all the time. But somehow people change them before they get printed. So if you bemoan the to get puns where I can. I put puns in design names all the time, but somehow people change them before they get printed. So if you bemoan the lack of puns, I apologize. I'm falling derelict in my duty. Okay, so the other thing about Grizzly Fate, probably the more interesting thing, is that it did something that we do from time to time, and we often do in the third set,

which is it has flashback and threshold. We combine them. So one of the things that we like to do from time to time, usually in the third set, which is it has flashback and threshold. We combine them. So one of the things that we like to do from time to time, usually in the third set, is when there's two mechanics in the set that have crossover appeal, that we try to put them both in the same card. We don't always do it. You have to have a card that makes sense. This card actually worked really well. It was

fun. Having threshold making the card better and then giving it flashback was pretty synergistic. And so this card played really well. It also, like, for example, it had the potential to make eight 2-2s, which was a lot. It didn't always, but it had that potential,

which was pretty cool. Next, Crowson Verge. So there were three lands in the set, three non-basic lands, all of which were green-white affiliated. So one of the... Let's see. There were three non-mystic lands

and four multicolor cards, all of which were white-green affiliated. So Crowson Verge, enter the battlefield, tap. There's the land. Tap for one coalesce, or two-tap sack, you can go get a forest and a plains.

Not a forest or a plains, a forest and a plains. And so this was our color fixing, and because it was a white-green set, we let you go get white and green. So one of the things, one of our goals of the set was to try to make a viable white-green deck. So when Torment came out, we wanted to make a viable black deck.

When Judgment came out, we wanted to make a viable white-green deck, and ideally more than one option. So we gave a bunch of lands to really enable you to try to make a white-green deck work. This is one of the cards that really was trying to say, come on, play white-green. Speaking of white-green, the next card, Mirari's Wake. So when I

first started playing Magic, I loved making just crazy fun decks. I'm a Johnny, for those that did not know that somehow. And I would make decks, and what I would do is, I would make decks, I'd give them names, and I would give them, usually I would name them after a guy. Like, this was Sie them names, um, and I would give them, um, usually, like, I would name them,

like, like, after a guy, like, this was Siegfried, or this was, um, Roy, or, anyway, I did not name one Siegfried and one Roy, but, um, I, uh, I would, I'd give them names, uh, you know, and one of the ones, one of my favorite ones, I don't remember his name anymore. It was like Guilfried or something. And it was this mono-red deck that the center of the deck was a card called Gauntlets of Chaos, which was an alpha. So Gauntlets of Chaos is a very interesting alpha card. What it does is it makes all red creatures,

it gives all red creatures plus one plus one and all mountains to tap for additional red. The idea was you put it in play and it just makes red things better. Now, this is alpha, so it affected everybody. Nowadays, as we'll see with Mara's wig, but it affected everybody. But it was interesting that it was an artifact, anybody could play it,

but it only helped red things. There were a few of those cards in alpha, not a lot. And it was interesting because while it was an artifact, it really was just meant for a red deck. And anyway, I played while it was an artifact, it really was just meant for a red deck. And anyway, I played so much with that card. I love Gauntlets of Chaos. Is that right? Gauntlets of Chaos? No.

I'm naming the wrong card. Gauntlets of Chaos is a card from Legends, which was fun too. But that's not the card I'm thinking of. What card am I thinking of? Gauntlets. It is... I'm naming the wrong thing. It was in Alpha. Gauntlets of Might. Gauntlets of Might! Okay, see, I, I, I, sometimes my brain actually remembers things.

Gauntlet of Might is the card I'm talking about. Gauntlets of Chaos was a fun card that you could swap things. Um, you know, I like that card too, but that was, I also played Gauntlets of Chaos. But Gauntlets of Might is the card I'm talking about. Um, so, when we were doing Mirari's Wake, I thought it'd be fun to redo Gauntlets of Might. And here's the reason why.

White is the Crusade color. It can give all your creatures plus one, plus one. Green had become the Mana Flare color. It's the one that can make all your lands get better. So I'm like, oh, well, White is Crusade, and Green should be Mana Flare. So can't we put these together on one card?

Yes, we can. And this was a very fun card. This card saw a bunch of play. And it was another card that really sort of said, play white, green. Obviously, the shift between Alpha and then was, it only affected your creatures, it only affected your lands.

So it was Crusade for me, Mana Flare for me. And it was a lot of fun. It cost three green and a white. It was an enchantment. It gave all my creatures plus one, plus one, all my lands tapped for additional mana of any was a lot of fun. It cost three green and a white. It was an enchantment. It gave all my creatures plus one plus one, all my lands tapped for additional mana of any color I could tap for. So next is

Nantuko Monastery. So then Nantuko, this is another land. So this card is tap add one. At threshold for green and a white, you can turn into a 4-4 with first strike time to turn. So the idea here was this was another of the lands we were trying to make you

playable in your white-green deck. We were actually trying to make it so you could play all three of the lands in your white-green deck if you wanted to. Or if you had a choice,

you could have a choice. So Nantuko, one of the things that we did in Odyssey was I was playing around, I was very fascinated with the idea of having more than

one creature type. This is kind of the precursor of us getting to race class. I just realized that there was a lot of flavor in having more than one creature type, and so the Nentuko were insect druids. That's what they were. They were this race of druid-like, anamorphic creatures that were these clerical things, these cleric things. And they were very weird. I liked, I was trying to, anyway, honestly it was me sort of just experimenting with different creature types. Obviously it would cause all

sorts of problems when the next block turned out to be Onslaught, which had a tribal thing, which obviously we did not know at the time. But anyway, so this is the Nentuko. So the interesting thing people ask me is, so it turns into a 4-4 first striker. Well, what's, where's the green part? Well, the green part is 4-4. That white wasn't supposed to get a land that got that big. And so green got fat and white got first striker was the idea. That's where that comes from. That's

why it's a green and white. And the idea of a man land was we wanted to, we were trying to enable green-white and so we thought having a land you can animate, that's why it's a green and white. And the idea of a man land was, we wanted to, we were trying to enable green and white, and so we thought having a land you can animate, that's what we call man land, or person land, if you want to be more correct. Or thing land, I don't even know if it's a person.

Anyway, we made that to be something that white green would enjoy. Okay. I am pulling up to Wizards. And I notice I've gotten to N. So that's about halfway through the alphabet. Which means that we get another podcast where I will do the rest of the alphabet.

As you can see, by the way, one of the things, another reason I love doing card-by-card stories is there's just so much detail. One of the things that I find in my column, when I just sort of explain some of the detail, that people are always amazed at the amount of detail. Like, oh, this did this, and this is that, and we had this rule, and people are like, wow, I didn't know that, and people seem fascinated.

So I like telling the stories just to sort of talk about what our thought process was and why we did things and how they came out the way they did. So, anyway, I'm here, I am part, and it is time. So, as always, I love talking about magic,, I love talking about magic

and I love talking about judgment today. But even more, I love making magic. So it means it's time for me to go. I'll talk to you next time with more judgment.