Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #117 - Zendikar Part 1

Episode Date: April 25, 2014

Mark discusses many of the stories of the designs of cards and cycles in Zendikar.

Okay, I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so the very second podcast I've ever did was a podcast on Zendikar. But what I found was, early on, I was getting the hang of things, and I was doing my podcast in a single... I was doing my reviews in a single podcast. And then as time went on, I started realizing I had a lot more to say. And so, as I'm doing them now, I mean, Theros was the longest I've done so far, but that was eight, you know, and normally I do three or four. And so what I realized is, I left a lot of good info on the table. And so, I've also decided it's more interesting when I do individual expansions that I kind of want to talk about blocks.

So I decided that the next three I'm going to talk about are the Zendikar block. So I will talk about Zendikar, then I will talk about Worldwake, and then I will talk about Rise of the Eldrazi. But I decided that I'm going to revisit first Zendikar, and I'm going to do card-by-card for Zendikar, which I never did the first time around. So in some ways, I'm not going to talk about how the whole set came together. I did that in that podcast, but I'm going to talk a lot of card stories and that will fill in a lot of gaps, um, of stuff that I didn't have a chance to talk about because

I did it all in one podcast and there was a lot to talk about with Zendikar. So I made a list of cards. It's a long list. And there's a lot to talk about with Zendikar. So I made a list of cards. It's a long list. But I figure people seem to like when I talk design. So I thought I would start up with Zendikar by the cards. Okay, we start with Archive Trap.

It costs three blue and a blue. It's an instant trap. We'll get to that in a second. So what happens is it costs 5 mana, but if your opponent ever searches their library for 0 mana, you can mill them for 13. And you can pay 5 mana and mill them for 13 straight up. It's an instant for 3 UU.

3 blue and blue. When I say U, I mean blue. So let me talk a little bit about the traps. So we knew we wanted traps because the flavor, as I explained in my Zendikar podcast, we started the whole design saying we wanted to do a land matter set. And then Creative came back and said, well, what if we do this adventure world, this sort of like Dungeon Dragons, Indiana Jones sort of like this adventure theme. And we said, okay, as soon as we heard

Indiana Jones and Dungeons, and we're like, okay, we need some traps. And originally, I think I talked about this, that we had traps, maps, and chaps, which is what we call the allies. The maps ended up

being the quests, and the ch maps ended up being the quests, and the chaps ended up being the allies. But we wanted to have a bunch of things that kind of hit the flavor of Adventure World. And so traps, originally, you played them face down, and your opponent knew you had a trap, but they didn't know what it was. And once the trap was played face down, then it was free if they hit the certain condition.

So the idea was you warned your opponent that you were setting a trap, but they didn't know which trap it was. But the idea was they might know what traps exist. And so they would know what they had to play around. And so the idea was, oh, well, if you played around the things, then maybe you wouldn't hit the trap. But ooh, which trap do I have? And at some point, you have to start taking guesses. Otherwise, you're playing around all the traps, which is super limiting. That was fun, but it turned

out to be a little complex. It was wordy. And it turned out to be just easier to do them from your hand. And there was plenty of surprise value. And the sense that they were free if your opponent did a particular thing got the feel of the trap. Also, some people, this wasn't me,

but some people disliked the I'm telling you I have a trap and would rather just spring the trap on you without you knowing because the flavor they said was you don't know there's a trap. But anyway, I liked the original version. I thought it played well, but there were a bunch of logistical reasons it didn't make sense. So I got that. Next, Arid were a bunch of logistical reasons it didn't make sense. So, I got that. Next, Arid Mesa

and the enemy fetches, which have been getting lots of attention recently. So, we had done ally fetches. What set did we do ally fetches in? We had done them in Onslaught, is that correct? And so, we realized correct? And so we realized

so something that we had never done that we had meant to do and Zendikar was the land set. It was all about land. And so we decided going in that one of the things we really wanted to do to identify Zendikar

and pull it apart was say, oh, well, Zendikar is the land set. That means there's just a lot more exciting lands. And so we knew we needed a rare cycle of really exciting lands. People have been begging us to do them forever. So Zendikar made a lot of sense for us to do the enemy fetches.

So for those that don't know what fetches are, they come into play, you pay one life, and then you go get one of the basic lands. So Ered Mesa, you go get a mountain or a plains. And the idea is that it's not both colors. So it's a dual land that makes you pick which way you're going. Now, the reason they're very good is they combo super nicely with the lands from Ravnica. What do we call those?

The Bolt Lands? I don't know what they're called. They're the ones in which you pay two life to make them come and play untapped. But the awesome part about them is they have their basic land types. So the Fetches work really well in Vintage because you can go get the original dual lands,

and they work really well in Modern because you can get the Ravnica dual lands. And so they're just very powerful cards because even though they, quote-unquote, only get two basic lands, in reality they have access to other things. And in fact, a lot of times when you're going to get your land, if you have the right land ratio, you can get many colors with these lands, not just red or white,

because you can get dual lands that have other colors on them. Next, Armament Master. So that was a core, a 2-2 core for WW or white-white. And what it did was it gave all your other core plus two plus two for every piece of equipment equipped on this guy. So let's talk about the core a little bit. The core have their origin in Tempest. So Tempest, which was, this was the second podcast I did. The first podcast I did was about the design of Tempest,

which was my very first design. So the flavor of Tempest was there were a bunch of creatures that were from other worlds that were trapped in Wrath, that were trapped kind of between the planes. They were the creatures that were the shadow creatures. And so there was the Delphi and there was the Kor.

And so when we decided to do Zendikar, somebody, someone on the creative team came up with the idea of what if this was the Kor's home planet? What if this was where the Kor were from? Because we knew the Kor were from somewhere. And one of the things that's fun to do is, we often sort of do things in Magic where we make something up. I guarantee you when we made Tempest, we knew the Core were from somewhere else,

but we didn't know where they were from. And it was kind of open, you know, one of the things that's fun to do is leave some open-ended stuff that later on down the road, somebody can say, oh, we'll pay that off. And so the Zendikar, I mean, not Zendikar, the Kor and the Delthi were just kind of like, well, they're from somewhere. We don't know where. They weren't native to Wrath. In fact, they were trapped on Wrath

in the Shadow Zone. But, and so anyway, they came up with the idea of what are the Kor from here? And the Kor, they're humanoid, but they have this little Goatee-looking thing Off their face But anyway, we were trying to give some definition To the core And one of the things that we decided was Was one of the big things About this

Was we were trying very hard To We were trying very hard to Once we figured out It was the Land Matters set We wanted to to... We were trying very hard to... Once we figured out it was the Land Matter set, we wanted to... Make it... Sorry.

It was the Land Matter set. Sorry. It's the Land Matter set. And we wanted to make sense of it, so we came up with the idea of Adventure World. Once we knew we were doing Adventure World, we then started doing a bunch of mechanics that made sense for Adventure World.

Well, one of those things was equipment. Equipment made a lot of sense for Adventure World. And we'll get to equipment in a second. I'll talk a little bit about the flavor of equipment. Hold on one second. This is where driving comes in. I need to fix my mirror, so I'm going to put my window down and fix my mirror.

That's what was throwing my... That's what was throwing my attention uh, that's what was throwing my attention. Uh, see, I'm driving while I do this. Most of the time I make you forget that I'm driving, but, uh, I actually have to pay attention to the fact that I'm driving. Okay, sorry, back to Armament Master and the core. Um, so we knew that we wanted equipment to be a big part of what was going on. If you look at Dungeon Dragons, for example, or even Iron Man Jones, whatever, the equipment's a big part of it, and we wanted to make sure we played up the equipment. And white has had a theme for a long time of having an

affinity for equipment. We started that in Mirrodin. And Mirrodin had a lot of equipment. We introduced equipment in Mirrodin, and we decided that we wanted to give white some angle. White was the soldier army color, so we decided that white would be good with equipment. We had equipment here. The core were here. We're like, oh, what if we make core good with equipment? And so there's a lot of themes in the core that sort of encourage you to play with equipment,

and it allows you, if you're drafting white, that one of the decks you can draft is an equipment-heavy deck. Speaking of equipment, let's get to Blazing Torch. Okay, so one of the rules we had for the equipment of Zendikar was that the equipment had to all make sense for an adventuring party. Now, we wanted things that you could double as weapons and use in a fight, but one of our things was that with few exceptions, the equipment had to make sense.

Like, I'm an adventurer party. I would need this equipment. So Blazing Torch made perfect sense. Like, oh, okay. Well, I need to light the way. I'm going into caves and in the dark. And hey, having a torch is very valuable. But you know what? A torch is a pretty good weapon.

It's a stick on fire that can be used as a weapon. So the funny thing is Blazing Torch... What set was Blazing Torch from? Blazing Torch was originally... Oh, no, no. Blazing Torch, what set was Blazing Torch from? Blazing Torch was originally, um, oh, no, no. Blazing Torch was from this set. Uh, and then we would later reuse it in, um, in Innistrad, which is funny. Um,

but a lot of people thought that we made it for Innistrad because it's so, because it, like, vampires and zombies can't block, and that's, you know, it really fit that set. But actually it was from this set. Um, so what the equipment does, by the way, costs one mana. It's an equipment.

Equipped creature cannot be blocked by vampires or zombies. And then you could sacrifice it, tap and sacrifice, to do two damage to a creature or player. So the idea essentially is, if I have it, I keep the scary things away, the things that don't like light,

which are vampires and zombies for flavor. And the set had a vampire sub-theme. There were a few zombies. I think we flew in for flavor. And then really the idea was I throw to people. That's why it's good. But we had a little what we call trinket text. I mean, there can be Black Friday vampires and zombies. It occasionally came up. It wasn't irrelevant. But it was there more for flavor than anything else. Okay, next. Blood Tribute. So it costs four black black. Oh, I didn't mention what it was. I think it is a sorcery. And the kicker is that you tap an untapped vampire. So let's

talk a little bit about kicker. Oh, and then what the spell does is opponent loses half their life, and if you kicked it, you gain the life. You drain it. So instead of a life loss, it's a drain. So one of the things we were trying to do is whenever we bring back mechanics, we always like to play around a little bit. And, I mean, this card definitely shows how there's a lot of things going on. So for starters, we were trying to use Kicker. The reason we put Kicker in was a land set made you want to play a lot of land. And so we're like, oh, well, you're going to end up with a lot of mana.

So Kicker worked well. Now, this particular card doesn't give you extra mana, or isn't a kicker for mana, but that's why Kicker was in the set. So we had a vampire theme. There's a sub-theme of vampires. So what had happened for this set is, for the longest time, magic vampires were one of Black's Iconics. So what happened was, when magic first came out in Alpha, Black's Iconic was the Demon.

And if you notice, Lord of the Pit was probably the most high-profile black card. Now, Sanger Vampire was in Alpha, but it was an uncommon. And so the highest Iconic originally was the demon. But then a year or two in, Wizards got a little skittish. We were a young game. We were worried that maybe having demons would just get us a lot of attention. And so we decided to sort of not do demons for a while. So I wrote a whole article called Where Have All the Demons Gone?

We were a little skittish and we were worried, and so we stopped doing demons. And then eventually we looked around and looked at Buffy the Vampire Slayer, just lots of other meaty properties that were popular. They were doing demons. Why aren't we doing demons? So we started doing demons again. In the absence of the demons, we started making the vampire the iconic for Black. But eventually demons came back, and so black had a unique problem that no other curler really had,

which is it had two iconics. And we decided that what are we going to do? So we eventually said, you know what? Maybe instead of making black the iconic, which by iconic I mean big, splashy, rare creature, what if we made vampires what we call the characteristic race of black, or a characteristic race. So a characteristic race is like the small race, like in green the elves, or in red the goblins. Now black had zombies, but we thought we might have some room to do vampires. So we said, well what if some of the time the characteristic

race of black is vampires? Instead of being the big, iconic thing, and that doesn't say we can't occasionally make rare, big vampires, but that we would make vampires something you would play a lot of, because there's a lot of flavor of, you know, dens of vampires and stuff. And so, for the first time ever, in Zendikar, they were uncommon. You know, we had simple creatures that would be vampires. They weren't big, splashy things all the time. They could be small, simple things.

Now, this particular card was playing into that because the idea is, oh, well, the kicker is I need to have a vampire. That if I have a vampire, instead of damaging you, I'm draining you. Now, you don't need a lot of vampires. This is what we call the Threshold 1 card, which meant you just need to have one vampire in play. But it

did encourage you that if you were playing and you picked up this card, you kind of wanted to have a vampire. And so, clearly the vampire deck prioritized it, but not a bad card. And so, it just sort of said, okay, if I want to play this, I've got to make sure I have a vampire.

It also was us playing around a little bit with the kicker. I mean, we had done alternate kicker costs previously, last time we had done kicker. But it's fun to sort of, when you do kicker, it's neat that not all kicker costs are mana-based. Most of them were, which is why we brought it back. Okay, let's

get to a different black card, Bloodghast. This is a very powerful card. So it was black and black, so two black. It was a Vampire Spirit that was a 2-1. It could not block. It had haste if opponent had 10 or less life, and for landfall, if you played a land, it returned from your graveyard to play. I think it came back to play... Oh, no, it wasn't tapped because it can't block. Okay, so there's a bunch of moving pieces going on here. So we like the idea of a rare zombie that could come back.

Or not a zombie, it's a vampire. A rare vampire that could come back from the dead. It's an undead creature. We're like, oh, you keep thinking you kill, but you don't. You know, vampires are hard to kill. You don't get that stink through the heart. It keeps coming back. You know, vampires will regenerate.

I mean, not in magical terms, but in, you know, real terms. Okay, so a couple things going on. The biggest concern was, I know development didn't want this thing to be a blocker because the ability to keep coming back and constantly blocking was annoying. And so we have two choices, or a couple different choices. One choice is to have it come

like they tapped, which slows down its ability to block. And usually you don't want to attack with it. But the better choice is what we did here, is just hey, we don't want it to block, say it can't block. One of the things we've learned over the years is that one of the best tools to do something is just either tell the player

they can't do it or force the player to do it. I know, for example, when we get to Rise of Adrazi, you know, there's... I mean, I'll tell that story again, but sometimes if you want somebody to do something, you tell them to do it. And sometimes you don't want them to do something, just say they can't do it.

And so Blood Gas very much was like, hey, guess what? You can't it. And sometimes you don't want them to do something, just say they can't do it. And so blood gas very much was like, hey, guess what? You can't block. And now the haste of tenor-less life. So one of the themes that we wanted, I think this got added in in development. I don't think we did this in design. Was the idea that we wanted a little theme

for the vampires. And so the vampires ended up having this, if your opponent is tenor-less life, they get a bonus. And so what it did is it said to the vampires, hey, be an aggressive tribe. I mean, you want to be attacking. And then so we gave this one the little vampire rider so that, hey, so later on it became more powerful. You know, you wanted to beat them down.

And anyway, development really pushed this card. It ended up being very good. And I was happy. He wanted to beat them down. Anyway, development really pushed this card. It ended up being very good. And I was happy. This card did a lot of good things. It was a landfall card, which I always liked. It was a vampire card. It did a lot of neat things.

Kosti's Trickster. So this is a merfolk wizard for a single blue man. It's a 1-1. Whenever an opponent shuffles, it gets a plus one, plus one counter. So this is kind of the penance for us doing the enemy fetches.

So one of the things that over the years we are very hesitant to put a lot of shuffling in. One of the things we realized is shuffling the library takes time, especially in tournaments, and there really is a cost every time you have to shuffle a library. In particular, we've been trying to lessen the library shuffling,

and we've been trying to, as much as we can, make it happen at the end of your turn so you can shuffle while your opponent's taking their turn so no one's waiting for you to shuffle. We really wanted the fetches here. The other reason the fetches made a lot of sense, I didn't mention this when I talked about the fetches, was not only were they something that people wanted,

but they played really well with landfall, which was the big mechanic of the block. Or of the set, I should say. The first two sets. Last set didn't have Landfall. So they played really well, but we felt a little guilty that we were introducing so much shuffling.

Obviously they're rare, so limited wasn't a giant deal, but in Constructed, where these were really good cards, we were adding a lot. So this kind of was a little bit of a penance for trying to put a few more things in to sort of punish you a little bit for shuffling. This card isn't super strong, but anyway, I like it in the sense that we're just trying to sort of, you know, if your opponent, one of the things that's fun is Magic has a lot of cards where if your opponent's always, like, let's say at your kitchen table you play

somebody and you get used to what they play, then we give you sideboard cards to kind of address things they're doing. So if your opponent's kind of abusing them on the shuffling effect, it's like, well, you can throw this little guy in and he gets pretty strong pretty fast if your opponent's not careful. Next, Crypt Ripper. It's a shade. 2BB,

2-2 shade. It has haste and has the shade ability. Black mana, it gets plus one, plus one until end of turn. So Frozen Shade, I think it was Frozen Shade, was in Alpha. Is that right? Alpha had a shade. I think it was Frozen Shade. So Richard introduced the concept of a black creature that kind of mystically could spend energy and it got stronger,

but only until the end of the turn. And that's become kind of mystically could spend energy and it got stronger, but only until the end of the turn. And that's become kind of a staple black thing. In fact, normally they're shades. So one of the things that we had started doing shortly before Zendikar was during Future Sight, which actually was a couple years before, we had rejiggered the creature keywords and we had added some stuff to extra colors. So haste had been added to black.

Haste originally was really only in red. We said we needed a second color to have it. And I felt like black was the color that could give us more things that were different than what red would give us. It ended up going green, tertiary, something they used for constructed. But in limited, you don't see it too much because it doesn't show up in common. But anyway, one of the fun things to do as a designer is to take things that are staples of a color and cross them together. And so shades, that's a classic black thing.

Haste, that's a classic black thing. And so this is a, hey, classic black thing. Haste, that's a classic black thing, as of future site. And so this is a, hey, you know what's kind of cool? How about a Hasty Shade? In fact, I'm pretty sure this is, I believe the latest name of this card was Hasty Shade. The other reason this is particularly good is we're trying to enable you to have an environment with lots of mana. This guy is really good later when you have lots of mana. And that's why the haste is interesting

in this set. A haste in Shade is not necessarily all that interesting in the average set. I mean, it's okay. But in this set in which you just have more mana than general, meaning I can draw this late game and have a lot of mana to play and this thing can hit pretty hard if you have a lot of mana, especially if you have a lot of black mana.

The set also had this vampire theme, so we were trying to reward you that one of the things you actually could draft was it was possible to draft a lot of black mana. The set also had this vampire theme, so we were trying to reward you that one of the things you actually could draft was it was possible to draft a mono-black deck, so this is one of those cards that a mono-black deck could play. And it's the kind of thing that people might take, but the mono-black deck would take faster. Day of Judgment.

So it's a sorcery for two white and a white. Destroy all creatures. Simple. So what happened was Wrath of God had a couple issues with it. The biggest issue was we've started to sour on what we call berry, which is destroy creatures they cannot regenerate,

for a couple reasons. Originally it was we feel like we're just hosing regenerate, and then eventually we're like, you know what, regenerate's confusing. We started using regenerate less, and we're like, let's not bring regenerate's confusing. We started using regenerate less. And we're like, let's not bring regenerate up. Let's just refer to regenerate. A, to not hose it, and B, just we don't need to bring it up as much.

On top of that, wrath of God is a little weird in that, I mean, I understand in Theros there are gods, but the idea of a spell, I mean, I think it was meant to be metaphorical in Wrath of God, much like a Wrath of God, you are destroying all the creatures. But anyway, it read kind of weird to some people, and so we decided we wanted to rename it, give it a different name, and we wanted to get rid of the berry. We wanted to change it mechanically. So we made a brand new card called Day of Judgment, which showed up here for the first time.

So this was sort of Wrath 2.0. Slightly weaker because it doesn't, you know, the regenerators can sit through it, or any kind of way to regenerate creatures can live through it. But it mostly gets the job done. Disfigure. So it's an instant for one black, target creature gets minus two, minus two until end of the turn.

So this card's name in design is Black Bolt, which is funny in two different ways. Originally it was B, minus three, minus three. But I think development decided that was a little too good, and we changed it to minus two, minus two, which is still plenty good. Obviously Black Bolt, because it was minus three, minus three, is our

version of, you know, you could kill a three-toughness creature. Also it's funny, for those who know, because I'm a comic book fan, because it was minus three, minus three, is our version of, you know, you could kill a three-toughness creature. Also, it was funny, for those who know, because I'm a comic book fan, and in the Marvel Universe, there is a character named Black Bolt, who is the leader of the Inhumans. So, anyway, I thought it was funny, both that the card was literally a Black Bolt, and Black Bolt is a comic book character. So, I entertained myself by calling it Black Bolt. It ended up changing, becoming more Black Shock. But anyway, it was a very good card. Saw plenty of play. Eldrazi Monument is an artifact cost 5.

Creatures you control have plus 1, plus 1 flying and indestructible, but all you have to keep is you have to sacrifice a creature. So this card proved to be really good and limited. And might have even seen some construction play. Anyway, this card was here because we needed to let you know that the Eldrazi existed.

So one of the things that happened was originally the plan was that Zendikar was going to be a two-block set and the third set and the block was going to be completely different. Now, we already knew that we wanted the third set to have different mechanics. But the creative team, in trying to flesh out this world,

came up with the idea of the Zendikar, and the Zendikar trapped inside the world. And then it turned out that we ended up having this neat place to go for the third set, which was the release of the Zendikar. I'm sorry, not the Zendikar, of the Odrazi. And so this set was

supposed to tell you about the Odrazi, that the Odrazi existed. And that, at first you're like, who are the Odrazi? And they seem like these mythical things, and you're not quite sure what's going on, and there's the Hedrons, and we wanted to give you just enough hints of when the Eldrazi, you know, rose, that you were aware of it. Because

this was the first set, when we were trying having a third set that was completely different, a large set that was different. I mean, I guess we had done Lorwyn Shadowmore, so that was different. They were two little mini-blo set that was different. I mean, I guess we had done Lorwyn Shadowmore, so that was different. They were two little mini blocks that were connected. This was us trying, okay, we're going to have a block in which the third set is just a large set.

It is different. And when I get there, my next three podcasts that are about design will be about this block. They won't all be in order. But I'll talk about Zendikar, do a few other stuff. When I eventually do my next podcast on design, it'll be about Worldwikar, do a few other stuff. When I eventually do my next podcast on a design,

it'll be about World Wake. I'll do some other stuff. When I get my third one, it'll be about Rise of the Eldrazi. And mostly the Eldrazi monument was us just sort of saying to people, hey, be aware. And we wanted to be powerful,

so people thought of the Eldrazis being powerful, and it was. But anyway, this was just, it was there, we were setting ourselves up. And it's kind of neat, because we didn't plan to stay on Zendikar.

We actually were planning to leave the plane and go someplace else. And when Creative came up with this idea, their worry was building another world with a lot of energy. They're like, well, what if we could change this world in a way that we can reuse a lot of the Creative, but have something that's a giant enough shift that it made sense that we were going to new mechanics.

I'll get to more of that when we get to Rise of the Eldrazi. Next, we have Electropotence, which is an enchantment for two and a red. It says whenever a creature enters the battlefield, you may pay two and a red to do damage equal to that creature's power to target a creature or player. So this card started as cards like this often do, without

any payment. I think it just happened when you played the card. It ended up being a little bit too combo-y, that there's ways to get a whole bunch of creatures in play at once, and then it was doing crazy amounts of damage. And so we added the cost in. That's a very common thing. Might have been added in during development. I'm not sure whether

design figured it out and added it in during design. But anyway, this definitely was a card we were trying to play around. This card's playtesting might have actually been Electropotence. I'm not sure. It's the kind of name we would have given it. But anyway, it was definitely one of the... It's a rare card. We like having build-around memes and the kind of card that says,

okay, what can you do with this? The set had a very strong enter the battlefield theme. Not only do we have landfall and a lot of land triggers, but we also had the allies and a lot of creature triggers. So this was playing into a general theme. You know, the allies were already trying

to get a lot of creatures in play, so this made sense with allies. It also just allows you to combo around it. You can do neat things with it. Next. Ameria, the things with it. Next. Ameria, the Sky Ruin. So this was a cycle. They were all lands that entered... I'm talking about one of them, but they were lands that entered the battlefield tapped,

and then they had an upkeep that said with seven or more of the basic land of your choice, or basic land of this land. This was a white one, so it's plains. You could do something. This one reanimated. And the idea here was, we liked the idea that landfall was rewarding you, but we wanted something big and splashy that you could do something. This one reanimated. And the idea here was, we liked the idea that landfall was rewarding you, but we wanted something big and splashy that you could do at higher rarities.

We also thought it would be neat to have two land cycles at rare. One would be the dual land, the fetches, but we also wanted something that was more in flavor for the set. I mean, we knew that fetches worked well with the set, but we wanted something that was... We liked the idea of saying, okay, you want to get up to a certain amount. We definitely were playing a little bit to say,

hey, there's a monocolor theme. And so this one was saying, hey, if you play into the monocolor theme or just have a lot of land, you can get there and you can do something cool. We made a full cycle of them. They all worked the same, although they had different effects when you got there.

Next, Expedition Map. It costs one. It's an artifact. You get two, tap and sack, although they had different effects when you got there. Next, Expedition Map. It costs one, it's an artifact. You get two, tap and sack, to search for a land and put it in your hand. So one of the things you often do in artifacts is you want to do things to help you with land. Because we were in Zendikar and we had landfall, we wanted you to be able to help enable landfall.

We decided this one would be cool, that it'll let you get any land, and it could go to your hand, which you then could use to trigger Landfall when you wanted to play it. And because it was Adventure World, we made it a map. We thought it was cool to have some maps. In fact, like I said before, our quests for a while were nicknamed maps, because it rhymed with traps and chaps. And anyway, Expedition Map was just, I mean, we liked the flavor of it,

and it just played really nicely with how landfall worked. And we allowed you to get any land, and there was a lot of lands that you could get that were particularly good. So, you know, we gave you a set with lots of fun lands and then gave you a way to sort of fetch out those lands and put it on a very flavorful card. Okay,

I am now at work, and it is uh, oh, I made good time today. It's raining a little bit, so I thought I might be a little late, but I'm not. So I'm up through E, which says this might be a longer series than I was expecting. So one of the things that I'm trying to do is, um, I know people like the card stories, so I was trying to be liberal in picking out cards to

talk about. Hopefully you guys are enjoying it, and I will continue doing this. So that's all for today. I will pick up next time, beginning with E. And anyway, I like talking Zendikar. Zendikar, I mentioned this during my podcast on Zendikar, which was, the story of Zendikar in a nutshell is, I really wanted to do a Land Matter set. Other than maybe Mike Turney, nobody believed in it.

Every person I told this to, their response was, eh, what else you got? And I really had to push. It took me a while to do it. And it's now the set that, like, people, like, come back to me and they say, Mark, you got to make more sets like Zendikar.

Make sure the sets are good, like, like... So it went from being this set, like, I had to, like, force through with every ounce of my will to try to make it happen to a set where, um, you know, like, now it's the standard that I'm supposed to match sets to. So, anyway, I find it very funny. Zendikar holds a warm place in my heart. Um, I fought very, very hard for Zendikar,

and I'm happy that it all worked out so well. Anyway, I always love talking about magic, and I love talking about Zendikar, but even more, I like making magic. So it's time for me to go. So thank you guys very much. It's fun talking Zendikar today, and I'll see you next time.