Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #111 - Judgment Part 3

Episode Date: April 4, 2014

Mark shares the third part in his series Mark on Judgment, the third set in the Odyssey Block.

Okay, I'm pulling out of the orthodontist's parking lot. You all know what that means. Well, it means two things. One, I had to take my daughter to the orthodontist this morning. And two, it's time for drive to work. Okay. Last two podcasts, I've been talking about the set Judgment, the third set in the Odyssey block.

And so today, I'm going to do, I think, the third and, I believe, final installment of Judgment. I've started last time talking about cards. And when last we left, we were at like N. So I'm going to pick up where we left off and talk about some cards from Judgment. And just give some stories and some behind the scenes of what it goes, what goes into making a magic set. And remember, this, the Odyssey block was back in 2001, I believe, so Judgment would have been in 2002. I believe this is the spring of 2002. So this is over 10 years ago. This

is a long time ago. It's interesting when I do these podcasts and I think about stuff like, it doesn't seem like that long ago to me, but when I actually start doing the math, you know, 2002, like my eldest daughter was two and my twins weren't born yet. So that's a long time ago. But it seems like yesterday in some ways. Okay. So last we left off, I was talking about Nantuko Monastery. But today I'm going to talk about Phantom Neshoba.

Okay. So the Phantom mechanic I talked about in the very first podcast on Judgment. So basically, it's a mechanic in which the creature had a power of, sorry, had a toughness of zero and came into play with a certain number of plus one, plus one counters. And then whenever it took damage, it could prevent all the damage by removing a plus one, plus one counter. So the flavor essentially is that whenever it took damage, it would shrink by one. So Phantom Neshoba cost five green and a white. I had Trample. It was a 0-0,

but it came to play with six plus one plus one counters. And so essentially it was a 6-6, became a 5-5, became a 4-4, became a 3-3, became a 2-2, became a 1-1, and dead. And, by the way, the way it worked was if you could find ways to get plus one, plus one counters on it,

every plus one, plus one counter would be essentially an extra life for the thing. And so, Phantom Neshoba actually saw quite a bit amount of play. Oh, also, in addition to everything else, Phantom Neshoba, whenever it

damaged, you gained life. So, it wasn't exactly lifelink, but it was very similar to lifelink. So what happened was, to give a quick history of lifelink, so in the set of Rabianites, the first ever expansion, there was a creature called El Hajaj, which was a black creature that basically whenever it did damage, you gained life equal to the damage it did. Then in Legends, so two sets later, there was a white aura called Spirit Link. Not Spirit Link. Yeah, Spirit Link. Sorry. And Spirit Link was an aura that whenever an enchanted creature dealt damage,

you gained the life. So the interesting thing about Spirit Link, by the way, was you could put it on your creature, and then it essentially, by the way, was you could put it on your creature, and then it essentially was like a lifelink, or you could put it on your opponent's creature, and then it kind of neutralized their damage, because for every damage they did, you gained a life, so it essentially was a way to neutralize your opponent.

That was an ability we liked, we used a bit, and eventually we keyworded it. But before we keyworded it, and one of the reasons we keyworded it is every time we'd write it out, it was written out a little bit differently, and so whenever you'd face a creature that had this ability, you didn't quite know how it worked, and there were some inconsistencies.

So what we did is, and this is the reason we keyword stuff, is if we use something enough, we keyword it, we give it a word, it works a unified way, and so whenever you see it, you know what the ability is, you know what it does. And that one of the things that's definitely, this is also true of Death Touch, which was before Death Touch existed,

things worked all sorts of different ways, and how each one worked you have to remember, and that the game's a lot harder when things that are similar work slightly differently than always working the same. Anyway, my little side thing. So Phantom of Neshoba was a very popular card. The Phantom ability was pretty powerful,

especially on a creature that was a 6-6 trampler with essentially lifelink. So it's all a bunch of play. One of the goals I had set was we'd wanted white and green to be a viable deck. And cards like Phantom of Neshoba and Morrowind's Wake and some of the lands,

in fact, made that possible. And white and green did show up in standard at the time. Okay, the next card is Planar Chaos. So that's two and a red. It's an enchantment. So every upkeep, you have to flip a coin. If you lose the coin, the enchantment goes away. And then whenever a caster flips a coin, if they lose, their spell is countered.

So a couple things about this card. First off, we... So there is a guy who works on the Pro Tour named Nick Fong, who's a... He's the main scorekeeper. And Nick loves wacky red cards. He loves multiplayer play, And Nick loves wacky red cards. He loves multiplayer play, and he loves wacky red cards. And so we refer to these cards now as Nick Fong cards.

They're just, crazy things happen. What's going to happen? I don't know. And we make these maybe one a block. We just make crazy red, you know, who knows what chaos they will create sort of cards. And the interesting thing about this card is we have kind of this love-hate relationship with coin flips,

which is there's a secondary audience that really, really enjoys coin flips. It just enjoys, you know, they're Timmies mostly. The randomness is fun, you know. That part of the game is just crazy things can happen, and it's fun to see what happens, and that, you know, this thing can cause a lot of chaos to happen. Now, for the people that are a little more serious, sometimes having this much randomness is annoying, and they don't like coin flips, you know.

I remember there was a pro tour where Donny Gallitz was playing, and all he needed to do was get this creature into play, but every time you played the creature, you flipped a coin, and if you lost, it went back to your hand. So you had a 50-50 chance of getting it into play. And for five turns, he lost the flip, which is just, you know, statistically speaking, very unlikely, but it happened. And like, at the Pro Tour, like, you know, he lost a crucial match, a crucial game, in a crucial match, just because he had bad luck.

And that really, on that level, is something that's not very fun, they're not very fond of. And so we tend to try to keep the coin flipping at a level in which, on that level, it's something that's not very fond of. And so we tend to try to keep the coin flipping at a level in which it's fun, but it's not going to show up in competitive play. There are a few famous examples where we didn't do that and it caused problems. During, in Mirage, there was, what was he called? Frenetic Afrit, which had a creature that you flipped a coin and if you won, it phased out. So essentially, whenever your opponent would try to kill it, you had a 50-50 chance of saving it.

And so it could become very, very hard to kill if you got lucky. And that was a tournament-quality card. And anyway, learned our lesson. And this card is far from a tournament-quality card. It's definitely for the fun, casual, such as multiplayer play. But anyway, I do like having cards like this.

I do recognize there's an audience that really does enjoy this card, beyond just Nick. But we have to be careful. One of the things you also will notice is we try to figure out how many people like something, and the more people that like it, the more often we do it. So this is the kind of card that, not tons of people that are asking for this card, but there's enough that we do it, you know, once a year or so. Next, Quiet Speculation. Okay, so this was, costs one and a blue, it's a sorcery, and you got to go through Target Player's Library and put three flashback cards from their library into their graveyard. And you

could flash it back for blue-black. So this card ended up being another tournament card. It's one of the things that seems kind of innocuous when you make it, and then it turns out to be nowhere close to innocuous. Because really what happens is, for two mana, I'm getting access to essentially three cards. If you just think

of this as, you know, flashback cards in your graveyard, you can play them. And some of them, even the ones in this set, there's a cycle that you have to pay mana for. So essentially for two mana, I'm kind of drawing three cards. You know, well, that's pretty good. I mean, one mana drawing three cards is one of the best cards ever made in the game. So two mana drawing three cards. Now given, you know, and unlike Ancestral Recall, you get to pick the cards you get. So, anyway,

Quiet Speculation turned out to be very, very good, and it has flashbacks. I mean, this turned out to be, like I said, I think when we made it, we weren't thinking quite, sometimes you miss the card advantage when you make cards. This is one of the ones where I think when we designed it, we were kind of just trying to make something cute, seem fun, and I mean, this is the kind

of card where I know we had John in mind when we made it, but really ended up being a super spiky card. Okay, next we have Riftstone Portal. So Riftstone Portal's a land. You tap to add one. And if it's in your graveyard, all your lands tap for green or white. So this is kind of the Jedi land, if you will,

the incarnation land. I mean, technically it's not an incarnation, partly because it's not an incarnation, but it's similar. It's another card in the set that says, oh, by being in the graveyard, I grant some ability. And the ability is, oh, it gives you access to green and white men. All your lands can tap for green or white. This is the third and final of the non-basic lands I've talked about. Like I said, our real goal was we wanted you to play white-green. And the problem whenever we want you to play two colors is we have to give you

the mana fixing to make that happen. Mono color, you're fine. You can just play all the basic lands. But as soon as we ask you to do more than one color, we have a responsibility to give you the mana to support it. If you notice, for example, a lot of Ravnica blocks, which are all about two-color play, a lot of what we have to do is make sure that you have the mana so that you can play it.

One of the big things, it's not something that gets a lot of attention, I guess, but one of the things is you have to always make sure that your set supports the mana base that you're trying to get people to play. And like I said, usually that's about color. Sometimes it's about other things, but more than that, it's about color. Every once in a while, it's about supporting colorless. Sometimes we'll make a bunch of colorless lands,

so if you want to do something in a mono-color deck, you have choices. Anyway, I think all three of these cards, the non-basic lands, saw some play. This one saw the least. I think the other two were a little more useful, but I know all three saw some play. Next, Solitary Confinement.

Okay, so Solitary Confinement is an enchantment. It costs two and a white. The upkeep cost is discard a card or sacrifice this enchantment, and its effect is you skip your draw step you can't be targeted and prevent all damage to you so the idea of this card it's got a cute flavor

is I cast this protective bubble around me and as long as I have this protective bubble around me I cannot be harmed but I can't access anything

I can't get other spells I can't cast other spells. I can't cast other spells. I mean, well, I can cast spells that I have, but since I'm not drawing cards and discarding cards, I'm quickly losing the resource of cards. And the idea of this thing is, well, how long can I survive? Every spell I cast is one less turn that I can survive. And we do this from time to time. These cards are dangerous. The kind of cards to say, oh, you can't hurt me, because if you don't make it hard to keep it up,

then it's just like, oh, I can support this thing, and all of a sudden... For example, let's say the reason we get you to discard your draw step is imagine I have a Howling Mind, a card that lets me draw an extra card. Well, if I just had an extra card drawn every turn, and I just had to discard a card a turn,

then it's like I wouldn't... Like, one card negates the other card, and now you can't hurt me for the rest of the game. And so we have to be very careful with these kind of cards to make sure that they will, in fact, go away. That's why we have to be kind of harsh to make that happen. Next is Spelljack. So Spelljack is an instant that costs three blue, blue, blue.

So six mana total, half of it blue. And it's a counterspell that exiles a spell, and then you are not allowed to play it for the rest of the game. So the flavor of this card is very interesting. I'm stealing your spell. You cast a spell, and then I get it. interesting, is I'm stealing your spell. You cast a spell, and then I get it.

And anyway, it's definitely, it's a fun spell. It's complicated, and you have to be careful whenever you're stealing stuff from your opponent. It has a little bit of rider, so I believe it lets you cast it for colorless, so that once I steal your spell,

then I can cast it even if I don't have the color to cast your spell. I think that, I didn't write that down, but I think that's on the card. We've messed around in this space quite a bit. One of the things that's fun to do is blue has a theme of stealing. And so one of the little games we play in R&D is to figure out new things blue can

steal from you. Like, okay, we've stolen all the permanent types. Okay, this steals a spell. Can we steal, you know, we keep finding different kinds of things you can steal. And in the little types. Okay, you know, this steals a spell. Can we steal, you know, we keep finding different kinds of things you can steal. And it's a little game we play. This is the kind of card, also, by the way,

that you have to be careful. The reason it costs six mana, three of a blue, is this card is fun if it happens infrequently. If it happens too much, it can be very, very annoying. So that's why it's so expensive.

Sutured Ghoul. Four, black, black can be very, very annoying. So that's why it's so expensive. Sutured Ghoul. Four black, black, black. Star, star. Trample. When it ETBs, you remove any number of cards from your graveyard, creature cards. And then its power and toughness is equal to the combined power

and the combined toughness of creatures you remove from your graveyard. Okay, who can name what card? This is an updated version of an old magic card. Can you name it? The card is Frankenstein's monster

from The Dark. So in that set when you came into play, you removed any number of creatures from your graveyard and then you got any combination of plus two, plus zero, plus one, plus one, or plus zero, plus two counters. Yes, three different counter types on one card.

Not exactly a stellar design. And this card is trying to unify that. It has a little bit of memory issues, although since you exiled the cards, you can sort of reference them. But it is definitely trying to get the sense of a Frankenstein. You're getting things out of the graveyard, bodies out of the graveyard, you're stitching them together, you're making this monstrosity, this combination of them.

Anyway, it's funny because, obviously, Innistrad would go back and really take the Frankenstein's monster trope to the wall and do a lot of stuff with it, but definitely you can see that we're, you know, when Innistrad came along,

we were trying to sort of take these tropes and do them all in one place. But the Frankenstein tropes, the werewolf tropes, the vampire tropes, I mean, they were spread throughout of Magic. When Innistrad finally came around, it's not like Magic never did them. It just hadn't all done them in the same place. But here's a good example of us just doing Frankenstein's monster. Okay, next, Sylvan Safekeeper. So Sylvan Safekeeper is a green 1-1.

It costs a single green mana. And it has the ability, sacrifice a land. Target creature you control cannot be the target. It spells their abilities. So essentially what it does is you can sac a land to give your creature hexproof, essentially, for the end of turn. So this card is pretty famous for being the Invitational card of Ula Rade. So it's an interesting story. So when Ula Rade won the Invitational,

he actually did give me a card. He gave me a card, I think it was called World of Bums, and it was a red Enchant World that did nothing. Now at the time, we had stopped supporting Enchant Worlds, which we now call World Enchantments. So the card that did nothing. Now, at the time, we had stopped supporting Enchant Worlds, which we now call World Enchantments. So the card that did nothing

didn't even do the one thing he wanted to do, which is to get rid of Enchant Worlds. And so we told him no. And I forget, he gave some other card that was a jokey card that didn't work either. And kind of what happened was, he just kind of, like, I bugged him a little bit,

and he never gave me a card. And so it was the very first imitation. I was like, oh, I thought this was kind of a cool prize. So I was a little sad that he didn't really care about it. And then the next year, Darwin Castle won, and Darwin was very excited and handed me the card the second he won, and that turned into Avalanche Riders and became very popular. decided and handed the card to the second E1, and that turned into Avalanche Riders and became very popular. And then Mike Long won, and he got the Merfolk. What's it called?

It's the Merfolk in Mercadian Masks that goes to your library. Rootwater Thief. And then Chris Bakula won, and he made... I'm blanking on names of cards. It's the white-blue mage from Ravnica, from Invasion, that prevents you from playing a card that you name. Meddling Mage. He made Meddling Mage. And then... Yeah, next was...

John Finko won, and he made Shadow Mage Infiltrator. Anyway, so what happened was... Ula saw all these cards getting made. You know, Ula saw all these people winning, and he said, this is kind of cool. I'm a little bit sad that I didn't make an Invitational card. So one of the Pro Tours, Ula comes up to me. Now, you have to understand, at this point, it's, I don't know, five years later, you know, and Ula had gone into, I believe, into the

army. So anyway, Ula, when he had won the Invitational, back in the early days when he, you know, became pro player of the year, when he first came on the scene, when he was the littlest Viking, he had long, long blonde hair. And, but at this point, he had been in the army, and he had shaved his head, so he had a very, very, like a

super, super short, you know, I mean, almost a shaved head, but, you know, a little tiny stubble. And so he came to me and said, Mark, I didn't realize, you know, when I won the prize, I didn't understand it. I didn't, no one had done anything with it. I didn't really see what it was. But now that I've seen it happen, I really would like my prize because I have my prize. And I said, I said, absolutely, you won. I said, I, you won. I said, one caveat, the only caveat is your picture has to appear as you looked like when you won, not now.

You know, that when you won, you looked a certain way, you look radically different now. You know, I felt the card needed to sort of show the winner of the event, which looked different than he was now. So I said, my only caveat was, I want you to appear as you appeared when you won. And he was fine with that. And so we made Sylvan Safekeeper. The card's interesting. The card, I think it's a

very good card. I believe it did finally show up in a Pro Tour Type 8. Most Invitational cards, with only one or two exceptions, didn't show up in a Pro Tour Top 8. A lot of them showed up in a winning Pro Tour top 8. A lot of them showed up in a winning Pro Tour deck. Sylvan Safekeeper finally showed up in a top 8. I forget which one, but I remember when I saw it, I was like, oh, it finally made it.

It's one of those cards where it's very, very good in the right situation. In the right deck, it can be great. And then at the time, there wasn't an aggressive deck, but later on, there was a good elf deck. It might have been in Legacy or in Modern, or it probably was in Legacy.

You know, it's an elf, and so it fits really well in an elf deck, and... Anyway, that's Sylvan Safekeeper. Okay, the next card in question is Treacherous Werewolf. So I talked about how we had a Frankenstein's monster. This set also had a werewolf, which at the time,

by the way, was just a wolf. It's now been, I believe, arrived to a werewolf. So Treacherous Werewolf was two and a black for a 2-2, and the creature had threshold,

and when it got threshold, two things happened. One, it got plus two, plus two, so it became a 4-4, and two, the text,

when card name dies, it loses four life. It didn't say dies at the time, but when it got put in the graveyard from the battlefield, or from play. So the interesting thing about this card

was us messing around with the idea of having thresholds that mostly were positive, but weren't 100% positive. That if you looked at thresholds, I think mostly in Odyssey, that pretty much you wanted to get to threshold. Things were good at threshold. It was a positive thing to be at threshold.

And this card, you know, mostly is positive for you because a 4-4 is significantly better than a 2-2. But it came with this negative. It came with this negative that said, oh, well now there's a risk associated with it. And so it would create games where sometimes maybe you didn't want to have to be at threshold, especially if you're at 4-life.

And so we didn't do a lot of it. We did a little bit of it where it's trying to get you to say, okay, I have to be careful because, you know, like it's not often where you would try to eat things out of your graveyard or try to get back below threshold. But this is one of the cards that every once in a while, usually you didn't, but every once in a while you did. And one of the things that's funny is, when we were doing the thresholds,

one of the things that we were trying to do is figure out what threshold represented. And so one of the ideas that I liked, if you kind of look at the cards in the block, is the idea that there's transformation going on. And so there is some, like, canthropy, if you will. There are a bunch of creatures that kind of turn into other creatures. Um, and so, you know, there's a squirrel that turns into a beast! Uh, you know, there's different things that sort of turn into other things. And, uh, like a werebear.

What, if it's a bear that turns into a were, not a werewolf, but a werebear. And so, there was a lot of me playing around with that werewolf flavor. So, it's not crazy that we actually had a werewolf. Um, and the idea is I'm a human, I'm a little less harmful, but when I become a werewolf, I'm more powerful, but oh, there's some danger that comes with it. And we wanted people to sort of be aware of that. Okay, next, we have Unquestioned Authority.

I'm going to question it, though. So Unquestioned Authority was an aura. It cost two and a white. And it was a cantrip, meaning when you played, you got to draw a card. Cantrips, by the way, I talked last time about how we're constantly trying to make auras better. One of the ways that's very popular is to either let you draw a card when you play it to offset the card disadvantage, or to give you a spell effect. So essentially, you got some spell spell which is like having a card

like Ravnica did this, where there were cards that were mostly about the spell, that were secondarily about the aura effect, where getting the aura was, and not a bad thing, but like the spell effect was worth most of the card so if you lost the aura, it's kind of like you got the card, you know, since you had the spell

that was kind of like the card, you got the card and so that's one way to offset card, you know, since you had the spell that was kind of like the card, you got the card. And so that's one way to offset card disadvantage. Anyway, this was the second way to give a creature or second card in the set that had protection from creatures. I talked about Aisha the other day.

And this is... Sorry, I'm tangled up in my car trying to... So I got... I'm now at work, but I'm going to finish my car trying to... Just tingle. The, uh... I got... So I got... I'm now at work, but I'm going to finish because we have some time left. And I feel like I promised you a full podcast.

I'm going to continue here. But I left because I left for my daughter's orthodontist. I, uh... It was actually a little easier to, uh... A little faster way to get to work today. Okay, sorry. So, uh... Unquestioned authority.

Anyway, it's the other kind of protection from creatures. Like I said last time, I hated protection from creatures. I just don't like protection from creatures. It's just super, super non-interactive. I mean, the problem is, like, for example, the thing about Hexproof is

Hexproof says, okay, you can't mess with me with spells, but it will then interact with me with creatures. And this is trying to be the reverse, but the problem is you have so many more creatures that you can interact with than you do with spells. And so to say I have to deal with a spell, oftentimes you put it on something that you don't even have a spell that can deal with it, and then, okay, I have to use a spell,

but I can't use a spell. If you put this on something of any size, usually, you know, your opponent only had one or two outs, and this was not particularly good gameplay. Okay, next. World Gorger Dragon. So World Gorger Dragon was three red, red, red. So six mana for for 7, 7 flying

trampler. When it came into play, you removed all other permanents, and when it came back into play, or sorry, when it left play, you brought them all back. So this is one of the gorger cycle. If you remember, there was spell gorger, barbarian, soul gorger,

sorry, there was spell gorger, barbarian, soul gorger, orgbarian, Soulgorger Sorry, there was Spellgorger Barbarian, Soulgorger Org Worldgorger Dragon And real quick, a quick aside One of the things in fact I talked about, by the time you've seen this I talked about this in an article I believe of how one of the things that

is very very important in design but that I don't think we spend a lot of time with is I think when people think about design, they think about the mechanical elements and not the creative elements. But there's something that's very important that creative is playing into the space, but it's something that design has to do,

which is when you want to make things connect, that you have to make them visible so the audience gets that it's a cycle. For example, we want to do a vertical cycle. Each one of these is a little bit different. They don't all do the exact same thing. Each one of them is a red card

that comes into play, removes something of yours that you get back when it dies, but we wanted to make sure that you got that. It's hard to see a vertical cycle, so what do we do? We put the word gorger in. It's soul gorger, word gorger in each, you know, it's, you know, soul gorger, world gorger, that it's definitely,

what's the last one was, soul gorger, spell gorger, spell gorger, soul gorger, world gorger, that it's something where you see it, you know, it's all blank gorger noun, you know, noun gorger noun, essentially the way it was set up, and that

it allows you to see it. I think that people, when they think about how we put things together, that the recognizability is not something you think a lot about, but that's really, really important. And it's very common in design, even design names, I will give design names to connect them so you get that they're connected.

Usually what happens is when development, sorry, when happens is when the development, sorry, when creative goes to the field, they look at our names. I try to use our design names to communicate things and what qualities are important about the names.

So, for example, I'll connect them all with a word to say to my, the creative person doing the naming, hey, these are supposed to be connected.

That's important. And in general, by the way, there's a lot of different ways to connect cards. You know, we'll match mana costs, we'll match power toughness, we'll give them a keyword in common, they'll be text in common, sometimes they have a creature type in common. But the creative elements are also super, super important. The name being in common, the art being either the same style art or the same concept or the same artist or just the orientation of how the picture is drawn. that, you know, there's things that say, oh, I get it, these are connected. And that's really, really important.

That, I don't talk, I mean, I'm going to do a podcast soon about this, but one of the things that's very important when making a set is the cohesion of the set, of having somebody see it as being all interconnected is really important to understanding sort of elements of what are going on. You know, and this stat had the Gorgers and had the Wormfangs, and all that being connected was really important. Anyway, anyway, I'm going off topic on Worldgorger Dragon.

So Worldgorger Dragon was one of those cards that I think we made to be more, like, more Timmy, like, crazy going on, super risky, what you gonna do, you know and it ended up being good enough that it saw some play I mean, 6 mana for 7-7 Flying Trampler was pretty good, even at the risk of losing everything

the worst thing is when you play this and like you got past it or something, where they dealt with it without removing it, so you didn't get anything back, but it was neutralized but World of the Dragon went on to be quite popular. So I think the wrap-up, that's my last card, is that it's funny to look back at Judgment.

There's a lot of cards that really stood out. I think the Odyssey block, I mentioned this when I talked about Odyssey, was it was a big learning time for us. We made a lot of mistakes design-wise that we kind of learned from. It was a super, super spiky set. Although, looking back, it was a powerful set. I guess it was spiky not just in the design, but in the development. There were a lot of very powerful cards. As I went through Judgment, like, oh yeah, this is how tournament play, this is how tournament play, this is how tournament play. I think the whole Odyssey block was pretty powerful. And I look back at Judgment, I look

back at like the experiment I look back at the experiment with the black set and the white-green set and playing around with the different mechanics in the graveyard and trying the non-traditional creature types. It was a very, very experimental year. And I'm not going to say that it didn't have its flaws because it had a lot of flaws

and it's not necessarily our best work. But in some ways, it was an important building block year and I think we has a lot of flaws and it's not necessarily our best work, but in some ways it was an important building block year and I think we learned a lot from it and that I believe if you went back and plucked that out of Magic's history, Magic would be way worse for it not being there, that we learned so much from it. But anyway,

I hope you've enjoyed listening to me talk. I'm going to try to do more blocks in order. So, like I did this time where I did Torment and did Judgment, I'm going to try to

sort of finish up some blocks because I did a lot of large sets because large sets have a lot to talk about but I'm going to try to in future

of these design podcasts hit more of the small sets so that we can I can sort of finish up some blocks to talk about. So this is the Odyssey block. There's some good, there's some bad. But I have fond memories.

It might seem like yesterday. Anyway, it was fun. In some ways, it seems like forever ago. In other ways, it seems like yesterday. Thanks very much for listening to me. As you know, I love talking about magic. But even more, I love making magic. So it's time for me to go.

I'll talk to you next time, guys. Ciao.