Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #118 - Zendikar Part 2

Episode Date: May 2, 2014

Mark shares stories about his time producing the Pro Tour video coverage.

Okay, I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so last time I started talking about cards from Zendikar, and I got to E, which meant I was not done yet. So today I will pick up where I left off with Explorer Scope. So Explorer Scope is an artifact that costs one. It's an equipment. When an equipped creature attacks, look at the top card of your library. If it's a land, you get to put that into play tapped.

So one of the things that you'll notice as we go through this card set, that landfall, usually when you put together a set, you figure out what the essence of the set is. Usually there's one mechanic that you are building the set around. And Landfall was very much the key mechanic of this set. And so we had a lot of ways for you to get lands into play at different times. And so this one allowed you to get lands into play during an attack, which is tough

because lands don't play at instant speed so it's tricky to get lands into play during combat. So anyway, and we also had a lot of, one of the flavors we had was a lot of our equipment was flavored as stuff to navigate with. The idea of landfall was you discovering

new areas and so the tool, you know, the maps and the scopes, the things that help you find land are things that help you explore new territory with the flavor. Anyway, this card was fun. I mean, we've done peeking at the top of a library before. It's the kind of thing where we don't want to do it too much, but a little bit is kind of fun, and looking for land is pretty good. One of the things you find

when you look at the top of the library, you want to make sure that what you're looking for happens enough of the time that it matters, because if it's too if it's too if it misses too much of the time, it's not fun. And land's kind of nice, because land is 40%, so that's a decent hit rate. A lot of times we'll do non-land.

That's 60%, roughly based on a part of some land. Okay, next. Felidar Sovereign. It's a cat beast for 4WW. It's a 4-6. It has Vigilance, Lifelink, and at the beginning of your upkeep, you win if you afford him more life. So this is our alternate

win card. So usually in a block, we'll have at least one alternate win card. So the idea of an alternate win card is magic, basically magic has a couple ways to win baked into the game. So the main way to win is I reduce my opponent to zero life. That's the

major way to win. Secondary, there's a decking thing built into the game to make sure that the game ends if nothing happens. So when you can't draw a card out of your library, you lose. Essentially, the rule is that if I'm going to draw and I'm unable to draw, then I lose the game. So that's what's called decking. So those are the two natural ones.

But one of the things that's fun and one of the things that makes Magic the game it is, is that we are constantly shaking things up and changing things around, and so, you know, I mean, the key to making, the key to what makes Magic a special game, I believe,

is that, you know, it's different, and things work different ways. And so, one of the things that's awful fun to do, I like, I mean, I'm a huge fan of alt-win conditions, alternate win conditions, because it's kind of neat to go, oh, well, normally I win in such and such a way, but this time I'm going to do something a little different.

So this is a win condition that we've actually used once before on a card I think called Test of Endurance. Although Test of Endurance I think was 50 life, and this is 40. So the idea essentially is you get this creature out, now he has Vigilance. Not Vigilance, sorry, well he does have Vigilance.

He has Lifelink, which gains you life. So inherent in this is the card says, okay, get me out, and hopefully I can get you to the win condition myself. Where Test of Endurance was like, hey, your deck has to be designed to gain 50 life. So, you know. The other thing we always do in alt win thing we very often do in alt win conditions

is it'll be a trigger. You notice that instead of just being a static ability that happens whenever it happens, it's a triggered ability that happens usually at the beginning of upkeep. Why is that? And the answer for that is that we want to make sure that there's some answer to it.

For example, this is a creature. So this creature has to be in play. So we want to make sure that there's some answer to it. That, for example, this is a creature. So this creature has to be in play. So we want to give you a window where your opponent knows that you're going to win, but they have a chance to try to stop you. In this particular case, because it's a creature, hey, creature kill is a very common thing. So we want to make sure in alternate win conditions that there's a little bit of, okay, I've set things up.

Can you stop me before the beginning of the upkeep? And that's why we do it. I'm not sure why we put this particular, I mean, this is one of those old wind conditions that just kind of we made and thought it was cute. It doesn't tie into the set particularly. I mean, creatively it ties

in, but I'm not sure whose cat beast this is. It must be one of like, does the Coors have a cat beast? I'm not sure whose cat beast this is. Does the Coors have a cat beast? I'm not sure. Okay, moving on. Next is Frontier Guide. So Frontier Guide costs one and a green.

It's a 1-1 elf scout. And for three green and tap, you get rampant growth. And by rampant growth I mean you can search your library for a basic land and put it into play tapped. So, this is an example of a card. One of

the things that we were trying to do is most of the time when you play landfall, you're playing it during your main phase. It's very much like a sorcery. That you're playing at a time that's a very known time that you're not surprising people. But we wanted to have a little bit of surprise, and so this is one of the cards.

We have a bunch of cards. As we go through today, you'll see, we have a bunch of cards to sort of enable Land Walk. Not Land Walk, Land Fall. So this is another Land Fall enabler, and this is one that enables you to do it at instant speed. Now, it's a bit expensive, in the sense that it costs four mana to use this, so

if you're mid-combat your opponent has some idea that you have something. So, one of the things we tend to do is if we're going to do something that's really going to make something happen in the middle of combat, a lot of times, especially if it's a repeatable thing that's on the board, we

will make it cost a little more expensive so your opponent has to be aware that you can do it. If it just costs one mana, it's very easy to kind of cast a spell and it just seems like you have one mana left over, where four mana, you kind of got to commit to it. I mean, sometimes you can fool your opponent into believing you just didn't draw anything, so you can surprise them, but it's a little trickier, a little harder, and we definitely wanted this to be something where people were more aware they were walking into it and less surprised by it. One of the general philosophies we have in general on what we call onboard tricks,

which means it's something I'm doing, it's on the battlefield, is people feel bad when they fall for onboard tricks because they feel like, oh, I should have seen that. And so we're trying to be careful not to make them too subtle. It's one of the reasons we're extra careful about lands having activated abilities that happen during combat because lands don't even sit where people are paying attention to them. And I'm not saying we never

make them. I'm just saying that we are careful about them. That onboard tricks can be frustrating if they happen too much. And so we want to be something that happens from time to time. But especially tricks that happen mid-combat where it really can wreck you in combat. We want to make sure that you have some opportunity for people to notice and it's not super subtle. Okay, next is Gatekeeper of Malakir.

Malakir? Malakir. So this costs black and a black. It's a Vampire Warrior. It's a 2-2. He's got a kicker of black. And if you pay the kicker, then target player has to sacrifice a creature. Okay, so this is a good example of a card. So one of the things I explained last time,

that we definitely had a mono-colored theme running through the set that we wanted to enable some mono-colored play. Probably the color we pushed the most in mono-colored play was black, because black had a vampire theme, and the vampires were mono-black. So this card's interesting in that it's... In a mono-black deck, it's a very powerful card,

because in a mono-black deck, it costs two and then it costs three, so it means with two mana, you can do this, and three mana, you can get the kicker. Outside of a Mino Black deck, it's really hard to use because it costs 3 black mana to use it most efficiently, you know, to get them to use the kicker. And so BBB, outside of a Mino Black deck, is very, very hard. So this was a card we clearly were steering toward the Mino Black deck. Very good in a Mino Black deck, not hard to cast in a Mino Black deck. Not hard to cast in a Minal Black deck.

Really hard to cast out of a Minal Black deck. And this was a very good card. This card got a decent amount of play. We definitely were pushing the Vampires because it's the first time we had moved the Vampires to a characteristic race. We wanted to make sure the Vampires... It was something that you could do. Anyway, here's something that I have not done in a while in Drive to Work.

I had to get gas. I did this once about a year ago. Normally I try to avoid getting gas during the show, but I was desperate. That's all I could do. I was running out of gas. My little gas light went on. I'm like, oh, I'm not going to make it to work. I was running out of gas. My little gas light went on.

They're like, oh, I'm not going to make it to work. While some of you might enjoy the Mark runs out of gas and has to call AAA podcast that probably would run for a long, long time, I'm going to try to avoid that. So, I'm going to try to continue my podcast while getting gas, which unto itself is quite the challenge.

A little obstacle course for Mark today. Okay, so what's next? Oh, Gatekeeper Malakir. So, yeah, we definitely were trying to make a very good vampire, and we wanted to be playing Mineral Black Deck. This card ended up being, it was one of those cards that we thought were good.

I think it was a little better than we thought it was. It turned out to be quite powerful. Okay, so what's the next card after Gatekeeper? It's Goblin Shortcutter. So Goblin Shortcutter is a 1R21 Goblin Scout, and when it enters the battlefield, the target creature can't block.

Now, I love this card. I think this is the first time we made this card. This is one of those cards that you think, like, I know we've done a couple different times, and it's possible that this isn't the first time we did it, but my memory that this isn't the first time we did it, but my memory is that it's the first time we did it, so I'm going to pretend like it is.

So one thing that I love about this card is that I love enter the battlefield effects that have some interesting variants on how much they can matter. You know, that, like, sometimes this ability is meaningless. For example, on turn two if you play it, a lot of times you don't even have a turn one play to play. But later in the game, you can draw it,

and it can swing the game, it can win the game. And so it has a lot of variance in it, and that... I mean, a one or two one is fine as a two drop, so I don't feel bad if you can't make something not block, but it's neat in that it's a card that has value in different parts of the game and that's really important.

Anyway, I just, I mean, this is one of those things that, as a game designer, sometimes the cards that you enjoy most are very subtle. And this is one of those cards that really, I think it does some neat things and it kind of has a nice flavor.

Anyway, I'm a big fan of Goblin Shortcutter. Goblin Sharpshooter, completely different card, not this set. Okay, next is Grappling Hook. So I explained last time, oh, Grappling Hook is an artifact, it's an equipment, costs four, equipped creature has double strike, and when equipped creature attacks,

target creature must block if able. So this was done, literally, this is top-down. We said, okay, we need to make equipment, we want equipment to be something that you would actually use on the battlefield. And so we spent

some time and energy thinking about, okay, well, what kind of thing would you use if you were an explorer that would be useful as an explorer, but you could double as a weapon? And Graveling Hook, we're like, okay, okay, this is pretty cool, that obviously I can use it to climb, and if you've ever seen the art in any of the Indica, there's a lot of climbing that goes on, but it's a hook on a chain. It's a weapon if you need it to be. So the idea is it gave you extra reach.

You know, like I could swing and I can hit you. So the double strike is trying to represent that, you know, it's fast and it has long reach. So it can hit you before you can hit it. And because it's a hook, you can grab things. And so the idea is the reason I can force you to block me is I can smack you with it and then hook you with it. And now we're in combat together. And I thought that was pretty cool. And like I said, that was completely a top-down mechanic.

And one of the things I was very happy with, which is interesting, is Zendikar was not a top-down set. You know, Zendikar was a bottom-up set. We were doing a land set. It was all about land mechanics. And so, I mean, I like the fact

that we managed to take a set that very much started from bottom-up, but imbued a lot of top-down stuff into it.

That while the set didn't come from an origin of top-down, it has a lot of top-down qualities to it that's very cool. That, you know, we managed to take

a lot of elements of the adventure world. And like I said, Kicker and Landfall pre-existed it being the adventure set. But everything else in the set, the traps and the maps and the quests and the allies

and all the equipment, all that stuff came after. And that, I mean, I think that was pretty key to making the set feel the way it did. And that, I mean, I think that was pretty key, you know, to making, to making the set feel the way it did. And so anyway, I think I was pretty happy with that. I thought it was pretty cool. One second, I'm writing down my gas so I know what I did. Okay, we're getting back in the car. So a little gas excursion. If you hear all the traffic around me,

it's right in the center of everything. Okay, so... Okay, back in the car. Let's move on to the next one, which is Graspector my writing is a little sloppy there so let's see

okay Droolgraspector is that how it's pronounced did I write that down right so it's 2BB it's a specter it's got? Did I write that down right? Okay. So it's 2BB. It's a specter. It's got flying. And then... So plus 3, plus 3,

if your opponent's hand is empty, and it's got the specter ability, which is whenever it hits you, you have to discard a card. So real quickly, a little history on specters and hypnotic specter in particular. So in Alpha,

Richard made a card called Hypnotic Specter, which cost one black and a black. Probably the reason it was so awesome was there was also a card in the set called Dark Ritual that allowed you on the first turn to get out the Hypnotic Specter. And for many years, people thought the Hypnotic Specter was broken. And the reality was, it wasn't really the Hypnotic Specter that was broken. It was actually more the Dark Ritual that was broken.

And the Hypnotic Specter was pretty famous, because when you get Hypnotic Specter out turn one, now Hypnotic Specter was random. I hit you, and you randomly lost something. You didn't lose something of your choice. And so that meant Hypnotic Specter did things like could take land from you. It can be very, very devastating when gotten out early. Nowadays, we do very little.

I mean, we do a little bit of random discard, but we tend to avoid cheap random discard that can make you lose lands before you get your mana base going. So most of the spectability now tends to be your opponent picks what they discard, and it's not just, it's not random. In general, one of the things we've learned is

there's a time and a place for random, but random can be very demoralizing, and especially on discard where it's one thing to say, oh, you have to discard a card, and that's painful unto itself, but randomly discarding a card early, like literally, and this happened back with the Hymn to Turok, which is a card of sorcery for black-black, where your target opponent discards two random cards.

And it was from Fallen Empires, I think it was. Anyway, and the problem with Hymn to Turok was that, you know, on turn one sometimes, again, with a Dark Ritual, or turn two, that all you needed to do was just hit a land sometimes, and they lost the game. And, like, that's not fun. Like I said, it's one thing to sort of punish them. It's another to keep the game from happening.

And so we definitely shy away from it now. So this card's kind of fun. The idea that we're playing around with was, we do Spectres all the time. In fact, usually they're flavored Spectres, just like Shades. It's one of those creatures that pretty much, one for one, like specters do, I mean,

we call it the specter ability, but it means when you deal combat damage, they must discard a card. So, a couple things. Usually it's combat damage. So, one of the things that most people don't think about, but whenever you do a damage trigger, you have two choices. You can do a combat damage trigger, or whenever you do a damage trigger, you have two choices.

You can do a combat damage trigger, or you can do a damage trigger. So combat damage means I have to hit you. I have to hit you in combat. Where damage means no matter how I damage you, this happens. Most of the creatures, we try to make combat damage. If the intent of the creature is, I'm trying to hit you, we usually do combat damage. I'm trying to hit you, we usually do combat damage. And the reason is, for example, from time to time we'll make an aura that grants the Prodigal Pyromancer slash Prodigal Sorcerer ability where tap to do a damage.

And anything that was damage-based and not combat damage-based, you can stick that on. And for example, making discard happen where you could do it at instant speed would be problematic. You keep them from ever having to they'd never be able to draw again. That's one of the reasons we don't do discard at instant speed, or very, very rarely is we don't want to set up a

situation where your opponent never gets to play their cards. And so since we're going to make things that allow you to do damage at instant speed like, you know, I can't blink on the name of the card, but cards that, you know, graft on, tap, do one damage. That means that stuff like this, we need to make sure

it's combat damage. And now, a lot of people probably, like, that's one of the things that we spend a lot of time and energy meaning. Anytime we're doing damage with something, we think about, do we mean damage? Do we mean combat damage? And I, we'll have fights about that, and we'll discuss it, and it's an issue. It really matters. And we'll have fights about that, and we'll discuss it, and it's an issue. It

really matters. And I'm sure a lot of people don't even think twice about it, because most of the time you're just hitting them anyway with combat damage. But that is the kind of thing we have to think about. I think this card, we were playing around with the idea of, what if you had a specter that had sort of a built-in gulf? Fellow Dare Sovereign, I was talking about earlier today, had the same sense, where the card's going to do something, and then, you know, there is going to be...

Essentially, there's a little game built into the card. Now, I like these, where the card says, okay, I'm up to something, and if I can accomplish my little quest, then I will sort of upgrade, and something good will happen. Now, Felidar Sovereign, you're going to win the game.

That's a pretty big question. This one's a little less, but the idea essentially is it's a 2-2 creature that's been turned into a 5-5 creature. A 5-5 creature is pretty substantial. So the idea essentially is if I can hit you enough that I can weep the cards out of your hand, then I'm going to get giant. And what it does is it makes your opponent have to be extra careful

about not emptying their hand. So not only are you trying to empty it with your specter, but also it keeps them from being aggressive and have to be extra careful about not emptying their hand. So not only are you trying to empty it with your specter, but also it keeps them from being aggressive with casting their spells as they can be. Anyway, I think it's a fun card. Okay, next. Hagra Diabolus. I can tell, by the way, when I do these cards,

trying to pronounce them is part of the challenge. So this is an Ogre Shaman ally. It costs four and a black. It's a 3-3. It says when it enters the battlefield, well, I'm sorry, when it or any other ally enters the battlefield, target player loses life equal to your allies. Okay, it's time to talk about the allies. So one of the things I did is I went back

and listened to my first podcast on Zendikar to see what I talked about and what I hadn't talked about. And I'd done it all in one single podcast, so I knew I couldn't there's lots of things I hadn't gotten into, and I was hoping during these podcasts to talk about some of the issues I hadn't talked about then. So allies was a good one. I talked a little bit about why we had Allies in the set, but I didn't go much beyond that. And there's a lot of actually interesting mechanical stuff woven into the Allies.

I talked about how they changed completely during development, and Matt and I redid them. So let me explain a little bit about that. The Allies have a good story. Okay, so we knew we were in Adventure World. We knew we kind of wanted an adventure party kind of feel, that a bunch of adventurers gathered together you know, so that's where the ally idea came from

the idea of an adventuring party. And we knew we wanted a mechanic that cared. We knew it was going to be tribally based meaning we knew all the allies would be ally creature type and so we wanted to find a way to make it better. And the goal was the more allies you have the better the more it helps you

do the stuff you need to do. So, what we did was, we said, okay, let's figure out, and I forget how we did it originally. We did something, and it wasn't very exciting, and so what happened was, when we got to development,

development said, we're not real excited by this. And I agreed. I said, okay, you're right. We could do better. And so Matt Place and I went off and we came up with the following system that I'm going to explain to you how to do the allies. And the key is, so the allies we decided is we wanted the following to be true.

We wanted them to be allies and we wanted their mechanic to be tribally based, meaning it cared about allies. I liked the idea of having an enter the battlefield trigger because I liked tying it. Landfall was an enter the battlefield, and it had a sort of flavor of the tempo of this particular environment. So I liked the idea of enter the battlefield.

The other reason I liked enter the battlefield was one of the problems when you do too much static stuff, things that affect things in play, like slivers and things, is it can get kind of complex. Slivers have a nice built in thing where all the slivers do the same thing, so all you have to do is remember what all slivers are.

So it's got a little shortcut to remember it. But if you have things in play like, all allies get this, and all allies get that, it can get complicated at times without a nice clean system. So I said, okay, let's try things a little different. Oh, the other thing I explained before was the inspiration for doing the allies mechanically was to try to come up with a way to do slivers that were sliver-like but not too much like slivers. So I didn't want to do static abilities.

Let's have slivers do it. So I really was on the idea of let's do an enter the battlefield trigger. And I liked the idea that the more allies, the better. I wanted you to care about having allies. So what we came up with was the following is all the allies would trigger whenever they came into play or whenever another ally came into play. So that meant every time you played an ally,

you would check all your other allies because, you know, essentially every time an ally came to play, all the triggers would happen. So when you played an ally, you would learn, oh, okay, what goodies do I get? And you would look around. So we actually had three different types of allies. And at the time we had names for them I think it was like Fighter, Wizard they were named after D&D characters and the last one might have been Cleric maybe okay so the first type we called the Fighter

I believe was whenever they came into play or any other ally came into play they got a plus one plus one counter so the idea is I get bigger and as more allies show up, I get bigger and bigger. Now, the only problem we had was, we needed, because we wanted it to,

we wanted the template to be, whenever I or another ally come into play, it meant that we had to let you get a plus one counter when this guy came into play, which meant, in order for it to be the right power toughness, we had to lower it by one. So, if we wanted it to be a two, two, we made it lower it by one. So if we wanted it to be a 2-2 we made it a 1-1

and then when it came into play it immediately got a plus one, plus one counter. The problem was it made these guys the fighters look sucky because they always had a power toughness 1-1 lower than they really were. So if you were a 2-2 creature you looked like you were a 1-1 creature

and players had to figure out oh no, no, no, you really are a 2-2 creature because you come into play with a plus one, plus one counter. So, they played well, that made them look a little weak. The second one was what we called the wizard, and the wizard, when it came into play, it had an effect, or when it or any, sorry, when it or any other ally came into play, it had an effect. And the Hagrid Diabolus is one of these. It created a spell effect. This one makes the opponent

lose life. And that spell effect was a scalable effect, which would be based on the number of allies in play. So the idea is, if you play a Hagrid Diabolus, that's your first ally, your opponent would lose one life, because there's one ally. Well, as soon as the second ally comes in play, they lose two lives.

Third ally, they lose three lives. And so the wizards always generated effects and they had to be scalable effects. The third one, which we called the cleric, it buffed your team. And so what it did is it would, every time it came into play, it would enhance all allies. So, for example, it would grant some key words, some basic ability to your allies.

And the idea was every time you played an ally for that turn, your allies would gain that ability. And that was the cleric because it was buffing all your creatures. It was helping all your creatures. And so those were the three different types of allies. And I remember we spread them out a little bit. One of the problems of talking about a set that I did literally... Or literally. I did a while ago, six years ago, seven years ago.

I don't remember all the details. I know we broke up who got wizards and who got clerics and who got fighters so that certain colors were better at certain things. So there was a different... One of the reasons we split things up like this was twofold. First is we want variety. That when you are playing, we want to make sure that, you know, if you have a red-green ally deck, it's not just identical to the black-blue ally deck.

That because we wanted the ally spread through all five colors because it was important thematically, we wanted to make sure that the ally decks played differently depending on what you had. And so mixing up how the ally... Now, the key was we wanted there to be a singularity so you knew how to play them. And the singularity was when you play allies,

every time an ally comes in play, you get a goodie. So sometimes when your creature gets bigger, sometimes it generates effect, sometimes all your allies get an ability to then return, but you're going to get something, and you learn to look. When you're playing an ally deck, you always are looking for the allies. Okay. The second reason we did it was

there just was a limited amount of space. For example, there's only, when I'm going to talk about scalable effects, we do this often, one of the mechanics of scalable effects, there's a limited number of scalable effects, especially in certain colors. And so, part of breaking it up also was just enabling us to do more.

You know, we were doing allies in Zendikar and Whirlwake. We didn't end up doing them in Rise of the Drazi, which I admit was a mistake in retrospect, but we were planning to have a complete cut in mechanics, and I'll get to that when I get to Rise of the Drazi. Anyway, that, my friends, is everything you possibly could want to know,

I believe, about allies. So, real quickly, Allies were an interesting mechanic in that they were not one of the more popular mechanics, meaning when we graded the mechanics, they were middle of the road. People didn't dislike them, obviously. They were middle of the road. But when you found people that liked it, they really, really liked it. So it was one of these mechanics that the audience that sort of embraced it, really embraced it. And like I said, one of

the biggest complaints I got about Rise of the Drasi are where are the allies? And it wasn't even they wanted the ally mechanic. They literally just wanted more creatures that said ally on them, because every ally would trigger your ally, you know, your Zendikar allies. Okay, next. Harrow. So Harrow costs two and a green. It's an instant. You sack a land, and then you go get two basic land from your graveyard, not graveyard, from your library,

and put them in play cap. You ramp up growth for two. So this card first appeared in Tempest, my very first set. In fact, the working name for it, interestingly enough, was Crop Rotation. I thought it was a good name. I was sort of sad. We later used Crop Rotation on a completely different card, but I thought

it was a pretty good name for this card. So one of the neat things that I love is, I love when you get reprints that are not something you use all the time. It's not a staple reprint. Like, look, we use Cancel all the time, so sets are going to have Cancel or Naturalize or whatever. But this is Hair. Hair doesn't go in the time. It's not a staple reprint. Like, look, we use cancel all the time, so sets are going to have cancel or naturalize or whatever. But this is hair. Hair doesn't go in every set.

It's a very particular card. So I love when you can do a reprint and bring something back that has a different meaning in where you bring it back from where it was originally. And, I mean, to me, that's one of the cool things about finding the right reprints is I love giving new context to old cards. and I mean to me that's one of the cool things about finding the right reprints is I love giving new context

to old cards and Harrow is a perfect example now Harrow was a fine card in Tempest it was much more about it was partly about mana fixing, partly about ramping but here in Zendikar, with the land of landfall, it was

surprise tricks a go-go. All of a sudden, you don't expect it. Not just a Landfall trigger, two Landfall triggers. And it was one of the major players, especially in Limited. It did all sorts of awesome things. And it fixed your mana, and it ramped you. So, I mean, it just was an all-around key player. So, anyway, I'm a fan of Harrow. Okay, next,

Hedron Crab. So, this is blue for a crab, a 0-2 crab, that whenever you landfall, you mill your opponent three. So, I talked earlier about win conditions. So, milling is interesting. Milling is built into the game. So, in the second expansion, Antiquities, I introduced a card called Millstone. So I sometimes use the term mill. I realize I did that last time I was talking about Archive Trap. So mill, for those that might never have heard the term, because it comes from a magic card,

so the terminology is a little harder to know if you don't know it, means to take the top card of your opponent's library and put it directly into their graveyard. If you mill two, you would do two cards. Milling, the expression comes from millstone, which was the very first card to ever do this effect. It was an artifact in Antiquities, which you would spend to, I think it was two and tap,

and you made your opponent mill two cards. It took the top two cards from the library and put it in the graveyard. The reason behind milling is, if your opponent runs out of cards, it's a win condition. So milling is a means by which you can beat your opponent by running them out of cards. And milling has always been very popular. We do god book studies. I remember, was it Invasion?

I think it was Invasion. You know, we look at... It might have been Ravnica. Yeah, it's Ravnica. But the number one and two cards in our God Book study were both Milling cards, black-blue Milling cards. Players, I mean, not all players like Milling. Some who don't.

But there are a lot of Milling fans. So we tend to... Milling's a theme we put in not all the time, but a decent amount of time. And Heat Drunk Crab was kind of like, oh, here's a little deck you can build around. I believe it was a common card, so you could hopefully draft a couple of Heat Drunk Crabs

and then go wild. Here's a deck that you could try to have some fun with. And he was popular. He was a very popular creature. People loved the little Heat Drunk Crab. Next, Iona, Shield of Amira. So Iona costs six white, white, white. She's an angel, a flying angel.

I think she's a 4-4. She's a 4-4 or 5-5. When she's entered the battlefield, you choose a color, and then opponents, she must be a 4-4, opponents cannot play spells with a chosen color. So she is pretty brutal. So one of the things, I talk about this in my blog from time to time, which is blue is number one at counterspelling. White is number two. So she's pretty brutal. So one of the things, I talk about this in my blog from time to time,

which is blue is number one at counterspelling. White is number two. Now, most people don't think of white as being a counterspelling color, and that's because the way white does it is a little different than the way blue does it. Blue tends to do it as a surprise. You know, you go to cast a spell and blue goes, uh-uh, sorry, canceled, counter spells. Where white is more proactive in the way it counters things, which is, it says, okay, I come down ahead of time and I say what you can't do.

And now your spells are countered, you can't do that thing. But it's not a surprise, it's proactive. And so a lot of people, when they think of counter spells, don't think of that as being a counter spell. Now, white does have access a little bit to do a little bit of taxing, a little bit of delaying. So from time to time, we infrequently do stuff like that. But more of White's Counterspells is preemptive stuff. I'm going to set the rules, and I'm going to make it so that you can't do things, and I'm going to sort of preactively counter certain kinds of cards. And I... Iona is definitely one of those kinds of cards.

And she can be a bit of a beating, especially in an environment where people sometimes can play Monocolor. Like, if you're playing a Monocolor Black Vampire deck and she comes out, she's expensive. She will cause you some problems. Okay, next. Journey to Nowhere. So it's an enchantment for one and a white,

and you exile a creature until this leaves play. So basically we had made a card called Oblivion Ring, which was an enchantment that got rid of any card. And this was basically Oblivion Ring for just creatures. Oblivion Ring, I guess, costs three mana to W, I think. So it's a little cheaper, but more pinpoint. I mean, we had a lot of discussion about...

This was one of those cards that I wanted to make, and so, as the set I was working on, so I made it. It was interesting in that there was a lot of comes into play effects in this set. So exiling your opponent's creature could come back to bite you sometimes because if they ever got rid of the enchantment,

then usually they got another trigger. Especially if you got rid of an ally or something. So sometimes you have to be careful. You have to be careful against certain colors because sometimes getting rid of a creature could come back to bite you if it had a strong enter the battlefield effect. Next,

Jawar Isle Reserve, a refuge. The refuge is, so this was an uncommon land. Common land, uncommon? Forget it. Maybe it was common. Anyway, this was a land that, it's a dual land, that comes into play tapped, and it gives you a life.

It must have been uncommon. My guess is uncommon. So basically the idea was we needed to... This was the land set. We wanted to give you a bunch of lands. This is Fowl on the heels of a gold block on Shards of Alara. So we wanted to be able to give you some lands you wanted. Dual lands made sense. These were more limited friendly. And because you get a little extra something,

the come and play tap, tap for CD, you get a little tiny something. In Return of Ragnarok, you get the gateness of them. Here, we decided to give you a life. This ended up being very, very popular because obviously sometimes these are a budget, you know, these are easier to get

dual lands because they're uncommon and not rare. And so a lot of people played them and life gain is beginning players overestimate the value of life gain. So life gain is very popular among beginning players. And so these are the people that usually didn't necessarily have all the rares, so they got these uncommons, and they thought the life gain was awesome,

so they were very, very excited by it. Next, Colony Heart Expedition. One in the green is an enchantment. At landfall, you get a quest counter, and if you remove three quest counters, you get a rampant growth for two. So continuing on my theme, you can see of how we're trying to enable landfall. This card is doing a whole bunch of... This is a super

Zendikari card. So for starters, it is landfall, but not just any landfall. This card is a quest. So what happened was, originally, they actually were maps. Originally, we were going to make artifacts that would give you some objective to accomplish.

And when you accomplish that objective, then you would get a reward. I think the earliest maps, the idea was you had to get different things. Kind of like a little scavenger hunt. You need to get thing A and thing B and thing C, but if you do... And they were tied together. I think I've told this one before, but

it was like a necromancer's map or something, and you had to go get a zombie out of the graveyard, and you had to get a necromancer, and you had to get an equipment that represented the shovel to shovel up the dead body, and then you would, if you complete your quest, you would make

a zombie that would serve you and stuff. So what happened was, we realized that you would, you know, if you complete your quest, you would make a zombie that would serve you and stuff. So what happened was, we realized that it was too hard to write all, you know, go get three different things with a lot of words, and so we decided that instead, we would have you do the same thing multiple

times, so that was easier to write down. And then on Common Rare, especially at Rare, we had more bigger quests and weirder things for you to do but we decided that we wanted to do a quest at common for limited and then we came across the idea of crisscrossing our landfall

with our quests, like what if the quest is just to do landfall and so this allowed us to sort of get the quest down at a low rarity and they actually they ended up working out quite well. I was very happy with how they worked out. Oh, let me answer the question that everybody asks me about quests.

Traps are a subtype. It's, you know, instant trap. Why weren't quests a subtype? And the answer is, I tried. Oh, yes, I tried. So here's what happened. What happened was, I really wanted to be quests, but the rules manager at the time, Mark Gottlieb, said to me,

okay, they can only use subtypes if they're mechanically relevant. And so I made a couple cards that cared about Quest. But none of them ended up making it through development. Development didn't like any of them. They ended up all going away. And since there was no card that cared mechanically, they weren't allowed to have the subtype. And I think if Eric

wasn't the... Oh, no, Devin Lowe. Devin was the lead developer. I think if Devin understood that it wouldn't be a subtype if there wasn't one card, he probably would have left a card in. I think I knew that and put him in, and Devin just didn't know, and he was cutting stuff for numbers and things.

But that's why it's not Enchantment hyphen quest, which it should be. Now, I differ a little bit on Mark. I mean, I understand where Mark was coming from because he's a rule manager and he's like, look, we just can't have words that don't mean things mechanically.

Either they mean something mechanically or we can't have them on the card. And I believe at times there's things that help group things together and make people realize they're similar. Just like I believe ability words have function and meaning. I do believe that sometimes you want things... I'm a believer

that you don't have to mechanically connect them. Now that said, I was fine having a few mechanical cards. In fact, one of the things that was frustrating is because they didn't get labeled in Zendikar, we weren't able later in Worldwake to make one because they weren't labeled. Anyway.

Oh, and the final thing is so not only did we have a quest, not only did we have landfall, but also this particular card, once again, is a landfall-enabled that lets you go get lands. You'll notice there's a lot of rampant growth in the set. Way more so than normal. Part of it was playing into the land theme, part of it was playing into the

landfall trigger. But anyway, this card was fun. This was probably my favorite of the common quests. I thought it both did good things for you and the play pattern and setup was very good. Next, Core Cartographer. So this is a Core Scout, a 2-2 Core Scout

for 3 and a white. When it enters the battlefield, you rampant growth for planes. Ah! Endless rampant growth. So, the interesting story about this card is, this card was a cycle originally. We originally had, I think it was common in the original, in our original

playtest it was common, and then we ended up, before we handed it off to development, moving them to uncommon because they were a little too good. And then development said, okay, you got so much rampant growth going on, as apparent here, we gotta cut back. And they decided that, um, you know, green had a so much rampant growth going on as a parent here, we've got to cut back. And they decided that green had a bunch of rampant growth.

We let white... Any land is allowed to get its own land type every once in a while. Back in Scourge, there was land cycling, and Shards of Lara actually brought back basic land cycling. And so it was color pie acceptable to do that,

but it turned out to be a little too good. The idea originally was we were trying to bleed into all the colors a little bit of landfall shenanigans, but it just was too much. And so what we ended up doing was, I think green did a different thing, and white was the only one, I believe, of the cycle that stayed. I mean, I don't think green stayed.

But we got rid of all the others, and so it's interesting that this card has its own little identity now, but when it started, it actually was one of a set. But when the dust settled at the end, it stood by himself. Core Duelist. So Core Duelist is a 1-1 soldier for W.

As long as he's equipped, he gets double strike. So this was the thing I talked about a little bit last time, that we really were trying to make a strong tie between the core and equipment. That we were trying to say that they were, that was their specialty. That they were natives,

you know, I talked about last time that they were natives. We finally learned where the core were from. They were from Zendikar. And that they, part of living in the crazy world of Zendikar and trying to adapt was they had become very proficient with the equipment they needed to survive. And so they had a special thematic tie saying we are good with equipment.

And a lot of that, a very common thing to do with equipment is if I'm equipped. Because it's nice and thematic. It says, oh, well, you know, he's a master of that, a very common thing to do with equipment is, if I'm equipped. Because it's nice and thematic. It says, oh, well, you know, he's a master of all weapons. Just give him equipment and he will find a way to use it. And that's the flavor I love about this card, essentially, is he's kind of like Hawkeye. He's like, give me any weapon, he'll be able to use any weapon. Even if it's not a weapon, he'll turn it into a weapon.

And I like that flavor. I thought that's kind of cool. So, okay. So I'm finally at work. Let me check. I had a lot of traffic today. It's not even raining. Ooh, I had quite a bit of traffic today.

You guys got an extra long episode. But luckily, I had many cards to talk about. So I am going to stop for today because I'm at work. But anyway, I will continue next time as I'm up to K. So we got a little more to go. Hopefully you guys are enjoying this. I think it's fun to sort of walk through. And I feel like I, because I did such a,

I did Zendikar in just one podcast last time, I had so much left to say that I'm really trying to hit a lot of different stories. And I realized that people like me talking about the stats and talking about design. So I'm trying to do as much as I can. I'm trying to make each one last as long as I can, because there's lots of fun and interesting stories. Zendikar is a really popular set, so I'm taking my time. I'm trying to tell lots of stories about Zendikar. But anyway, it is time for me to get going. So as much as I enjoy talking about magic and talking about Zendikar,

even more, I enjoy making magic. So it's time for me to go. Thanks for joining me today, guys.