Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #128 - Worldwake, Part 2

Episode Date: June 6, 2014

Mark continues his series about the design of Worldwake.

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 the design of Worldwake. And this time I will continue. I started talking cards. I got up to C. So that means I have plenty left to talk about. So last I left, we were on the C's. So I want to talk about Comet Storm. I left, we were on the seas, so I want to talk about Comet Storm. So Comet Storm was X, red, red. It was an instant

and it did X damage to target, I think, creature or player. But for a multi-kicker of one, you could add another target. So, way back in Alpha, Richard made a card called Fireball. And Fireball is a somewhat complicated card

where you could either do damage and or split it. It was a little complicated in how you would do that. Common Storm is trying to be the modern day Fireball. And probably following in the footsteps of Fireball, it too got very confusing in its templating. Yeah, Fireball

is classic for the number of times we've tried to rewrite that. We've tried it with X and Y. We've done all sorts of stuff. So it shouldn't be a big surprise that Common Storm was so problematic. In fact, I think if you ask the templating people, so what happens every set is near the end of development or in the middle of development, a representative from development, usually the lead developer, sits down with the lead editor of the set, and usually Del, Del is not, Del Logo, who is Magic's head editor,

if she's not on the set, she's usually involved in templating. And then also Matt Tabak, who if he's not the lead editor of the set, is usually involved because he's the rules manager. And they basically sort of figure out how to word things. Usually, probably, if you had a pick,

there's usually one or two cards in every set that eat up the lion's share, a much larger percent of their time than the other cards. And Common Storm might have been the card for this set. I know that Common Storm had lots of issues. X spells are already tricky. Targeting's tricky. And if I remember correctly, this card took some time.

Now, I've made it my goal in life to not be good at either templating or collating. Because when you're good at either of those two things, they make you do them. And that's just hours of my life I'm trying to save. So, I was not in these meetings, but from what I understand, that Common Storm

was problematic to template they did it I mean Common Storm was a lot of fun in that when you do multi-kicker it's one of the things that like we were talking about

what can you do with multi-kicker oh extra targets seems like a cool idea and one of the things that came up recently since uh uh is Strive

is a mechanic in Journey to Nyx. And a lot of people are like, isn't Strive just multi-kicker? And the answer is, yeah, Strive is a subset of multi-kicker, much like most things are a subset of kicker. Any repeatable thing that you can do more than once is a subset of multi-kicker. The problem with kicker and multi-kicker, which is we're careful when we use them, is they encompass so much more, like, the idea that any mechanic that you spend extra mana to do something is just kicker, eh,

kicker's a little too broad for that to mean every other mechanic just is the same thing. Because there's lots of subtlety in how that's used. So, anyway, that's my... So the question is, if that's true, why do we use kicker and multi-kicker in Zendikar block? And the question is, if that's true, why do we use Kicker and Multi-Kicker into a Zendikar block? And the answer was, we were trying to bring back something people were fond of.

We needed the extra mana. We decided that if we're going to bring back Kicker, this was the right place to do it. Probably if Kicker never got invented in the first place, I would not have put it in the set. But the fact that it already existed, a lot of the damage had been done, and it filled the role really nicely, and people liked it, so I brought it back, but forever, the curse of the kicker is forever. People will always be comparing. Most mechanics go,

hey, isn't that kicker? Next, Dragon Master Outcaster. So this was for one red mana, it was a 1-1 human shaman, and for upkeep, if you had six or more lands, you got a 5-5 dragon token. Dun-dun-dun!

So this and... What was the name of it? There was a green creature in Zendikar that I talked about where it was a 1-1 creature, and if you had enough lands, it got five plus-and-plus encounters every turn. Both these cards were originally in Zendikar, and they were a little too close, but we liked them both, so we decided to push one back.

I forget why we pushed this one back, but we did. And it's kind of exciting. The thing that's neat about this card is it feels... It's one of those cards, so when you do design, there's a certain effect that we have where you say to somebody, once something happens, this turns on. And

when the thing turns on, the player just feels like it feels free. At some point I was going to have six lands, I got six lands. There was no energy. A lot of costs feel like you're doing something. Like, oh, well I have to pay a life or pay some man or whatever. And this card just feels like, I'm just,

I already did it. I was going to do it anyway. You know? And so, cards like just, I already did it. I was going to do it anyway, you know. And so, cards like this, we definitely make use of this, the feeling of something that feels like, I'm not even doing anything, it's just it is. Now, the reality is the fact that you have to have a certain number of lands in play dictates when you can play it and when it's

relevant and, yes, cheap to put out but it doesn't matter until later, so I like the card a lot, it's interesting but it definitely is a very feel-good card because you, the player playing it, often feel like, you know, I have six mana out, so I drop my guy,

and then like, oh, I get dragons. Feels easy. Didn't do much of anything. And it's fun to play around that space. Sometimes we do mechanics that actually seem like you're investing more than you are, like Exalted, where it felt like,

oh, I can only attack with one creature. That felt like a big cost. And the reality is, the payoff is pretty good. But this is reversed for things that don't feel like, like the payoff seems awesome, but the cost doesn't seem like much. And people undervalue the cost, which is nice, because you feel good about it.

Okay, next. Everflowing Chalice. So Everflowing Chalice was an artifact that cost zero. It had multi-kicker two. And then for each time you kicked it, you got a charge counter. And then it tapped for one colorless mana for each charge counter. This was the other hard, back-to-back, the too-hard-to-template multi-kicker card. So this card is interesting, and it does the following, which is,

it doesn't do anything if you don't multi-kick it. I think this is is interesting and it does the following, which is, it doesn't do anything if you don't multi-kick it. I think this is the only card that's true of. The other card has an effect. We want to be careful how often we do stuff like this. And the reason we did it this way

was it was just a much cleaner card where if you got one free kick, like, let's say, instead of costing zero, it cost two, and then you got one free one in, it just became a lot wordier to word. The reason we did it this way was it's kind instead of costing zero, it cost two, and then you got one free one in. It just became a lot wordier to word. The reason we did it this way was it's kind of cleaner to say, you pay for the counters,

counters tell you how many mana you get out of it. And this is one of those multi-kicker cards that we might be able to pull off, not in multi-kicker world, that it might be when it comes into play, spend two mana, if you get two mana, you spend, put a counter on it. So this is one of the cards that kind of was dressed up as multi-kicker because we were in a multi-kicker set. But it's quite possible if this wasn't a non-multi-kicker set that we would word it in a

slightly different way, you know, not through a multi-kicker lens. But this card is definitely interesting in that it sort of says, how much do you want to invest in the card? And one of the things about cards like this, this is what we call a variable card, where you, the player, I mean X spells are variables, you, the player, determine how strong it is. Like, if you get this early on, for example, let's say I get this early on, and I pay two mana

to essentially tap for one color. Well, you know, we've done a bunch of cards like that. That's, if you really need the mana, it's okay. But you draw this late in the game, you could probably get three, four, five, maybe six mana depending on how late you get. Maybe if you have other multi-kicker spells in your deck or X spells or whatever, this allows you to really reach. And so, anyway, I think this is a fun card.

It's a little on the confusing side, admittedly. One of the things in general we've discovered is, and Suspend was like the ultimate version of this, which is whenever you have to manipulate counters, whenever you're using the external thing to mark something, the act of explaining to people how to do that gets complicated. You know, whenever it's not, like, if it's just it comes into play with a certain number of counters,

that's not too bad. But when it's like, it's a variable, and you, depending on something, depict the variable, and that impacts things, that tends to get a little more complicated. Doesn't mean we don't do them. Obviously, we did it here, we do them. But it definitely is something that creates a little extra confusion. Next, Eye

of Ugin. So Eye of Ugin is a legendary land. It says colorless Odrazi spells cost two less. And for seven and tap, search your library for a colorless creature and put it into your hand. Okay, so this card, this card was a very

interesting card. Okay, so to understand this card, let's talk a little bit about the story. Okay, so what we learned is long ago in Zendikar, so the Adrazi are creatures of the blind eternities, which is a space kind of in between all the planes in the multiverse, that for a planeswalker to go from plane to plane, have to pass through

the blind eternities. And what we know of the Adrazi is they are ancient ancient creatures that somehow we think come from the blind eternities anyway so many many years ago thousands of years I believe

a long time ago the Odrazi show up on Zendikar and I'm not the story expert here but I believe what happens is there are three people, three planeswalkers, managed to trap the planeswalker, not planeswalkers, managed to trap the Odrazi on Zendikar. And the, so the three planeswalkers were Sorin, Ugin, and the planeswalker we've never referred to

anything other than the Lithomancer. But the three of them managed to trap the Eldrazi on this world. And they did it at a place called the Eye of Ugin, Ugin being one of the three. So it turns out that in order to release the Eldrazi, that you have to get three planeswalkers to the Eye of Ugin.

So this becomes a very important story point. And Nicol Bolas, behind the scenes, manages to get Chandra and Jace and Sarkin Ball all to Zendikar. And the three of them will, of course, come to the Eye of Ugin together. And, spoiler alert, next set called Rise of the Andrazi. Anyway, we knew we wanted to play this up.

And so we decided what we wanted to do was a hint at what was coming. So Eye of Ugin is an interesting card. It's what I would prefer to do as sort of a preview card, which is, it shows up in a set in which a lot of its utility isn't, like for example, Eldrazi spells cost two less. Or Kolas, what's that?

It says Kolas Eldrazi spells cost two less. Okay. There were no Eldrazi spells, you know. They didn't exist yet. In fact, I think even because Eldrazi was a creature type but it didn't exist as a creature type yet. So even your changelings

couldn't get rewarded by this yet because it didn't exist yet. Now the second ability to go get a colorless creature happened to play nicely with the Eldrazi because they were most of the big titan stuff were colorless. But, the, um, but it

also played, magic has lots of other colorless creatures. So, we gave you a card in which the first ability was meaningless, although it hinted at something. And the second ability was useful, although once again, it hinted at something. Now, we've done this before. In Mirrodin, we did the

Cauldron Cycle, which was the sword, the shield, and the helm of Cauldre. And the second one, which I think was the shield of Cauldre, which was in Stronghold. Or not Stronghold, sorry. It's Mirrodin Blunt. It was in Darksteel. It talks about the helm on it.

Well, the helm doesn't exist yet. It's like, well, when you get all three of these out, you know, or all of them are indestructible or whatever. So from time to time we'll do that. We'll, you know, Tempest did one too where they, there's the spike mechanic where it did spike drone in the first set, but the spike mechanic came later. From time to time we do this where we kind of tease at something.

Now Tempest was an example where we kind of hit it in plain sight. You didn't realize this one card was going to become a mechanic. Where, like the Shield of Kuldra, it literally mentions a card you've never seen before. And same with Iwugin. It talks about a subtype you've never seen. Eldrazi spells cost two less, or colorless Eldrazi spells cost two less. What's an Eldrazi?

Now, if you go and look at the flavor text, the flavor text, I think, talks a little bit about the Eldrazi. And because they were buried so long ago, the creatures of this world, it's kind of seeped into their mythology. I believe some of them were thought that, I think,

like, Ula was one of the gods, which turned out to be Ulamog. And so, anyway, it's definitely... You can see, if you sort of look at Zendikar, there's this hint that something was going on. And we thought it would be really, really awesome to have a little teaser. Now, we did something else with this land that we don't do normally. Actually, we did a couple of things. One is...

I don't know if this taps for mana, which is a big no-no for land. Normally, one of our rules is lands tap for mana. The second thing is that we pretty much at the time, and we've since changed the legendary rules, so this is no longer true, but at the time, we had stopped doing legendary lands. But we're like, okay, this is such a special thing, and we didn't really think this was going to be a top-end tier tournament card. I mean, it had possibilities. It had fringe, maybe.

But we wanted, like, if ever there was a Legendary Land, like, you know, this was the story point. We were putting this on to have a neon light to sort of give a hint of what was coming in the next set. I remember, by the way, the other thing about the Eldrazi is the next set, the name was known. When people bought Worldwake,

they knew the third set was called Rise of the Eldrazi. So when you see Eye of Ugin, and it affects Eldrazi spells, and the next set's called Rise of the Eldrazi, and the flavor text talks about the Eldrazi, you know, you kind of go, hmm, nothing's going on here. And people, this card, by the way,

people were very excited about this card. One of the things you worry about is when you make a card that kind of its full function isn't there yet, it didn't matter. People were excited. It said Eldrazi on it. Next it's called Rises Eldrazi, and they were very excited by it. And like I said, it definitely was a fun card.

Okay, next. Harabaz Druid. and like I said it definitely was a fun card okay next Harabaz Druid one and a green for a 0-1 human druid ally tap at an X of one color where X equals the allies you control okay so I talked during the Zendikar podcast

or at least the card by card podcast talking about how we had different types of allies and there were had different types of allies. And there were three different types. We called the fighters, the wizards, and the clerics. Real quickly to recap. The fighters were ones that every time you played an ally, whether this ally or any other ally entered the battlefield that you controlled,

this ally got a plus one, plus one counter on it. The second one, when it entered the battlefield, it said, when I enter the battlefield, I generate an effect. The effect is equal to the number of allies I have. Number three were the clerics. The clerics came into play, and they granted an ability to all allies you controlled. So all three of these were scalable.

The fighters were as big as allies that had entered while it was there. The wizard effect scaled, their effect scaled on the allies, and the cleric scaled in that how many things they affected was scaled. So one of the things we started doing in Worldwake, I don't think we did this in Zenkai, maybe we did it on one or two cards, is we started doing some scaling effects that were not the traditional ally mechanic, but cared about allies. So Harabath's Druid, for example,

is a mana producer, and it gets more mana the more allies you have, but it's not... Well, it is an ally, so when it enters the battlefield, it does trigger the stuff. It is now working a slightly different way, where it is doing something that is caring

about number, and it's an activated ability. It's not a trigger ability like the stuff in Zendikar. And we did a bunch more of this. Kind of what we wanted to do was we wanted you to have an ally deck, so we gave you some of the stuff in the first set and some of the stuff in the second set. We did not have allies in Rise of the Drazi.

I'll talk about when we do Rise of the Drazi, one of the big complaints, probably a big mistake on our part. But we had two sets to get the allies out, so we divvied them up and put them between the two sets. And this card definitely was one of the things that we liked, because it allowed you, one of the things about the allies is we spread them through all five colors, and so in order to play an ally deck, you needed the ability to have lots of colors, and this card both

rewarded you for having allies, and enabled you to play more allies. So it fills a very vital role for the ally deck. Okay, next. Jace the Mind Sculptor. Dun-da-dun-da. Dun-da-dun-da. Okay, if you do not know Jace the Mind Sculptor, maybe you've heard of Jace the Mind Sculptor,

he costs two blue and blue. He begins with a loyalty of three, and he adds four abilities. For plus two loyalty, you look to the top card of target player's library, and you put it back on top or bottom. For zero,

you could draw three cards and put two cards from your hand on top. For minus one loyalty, you could return target creature to its owner's hand. You can unsummit it. Or for minus twelve loyalty you can return target creature in its owner's hand you can unsummit it or for minus twelve loyalty you can exile a library exile target library and that player's hand is shuffled into the library

usually you do that in your opponent so this card in R&D we have a terminology that we use for cards like this it is what we call Barochen. So what happened was, when we first made the Planeswalkers, when we were creating them, in fact, when we were figuring out what they looked like and we were making the frames for them, I requested a four loyalty frame

because I said there will come a day in which we will do a four loyalty planeswalker. Um, this was the day. Oh, people have asked me, by the way, will we ever see another four loyalty planeswalker? Not that I'm, the Jace became such this crazy over, you know, this, uh, Balrokin card. Uh, and the answer is

I think we will. I don't definitively know we will, but I think we will. Um, it's the kind of thing, it's the kind of thing, I just, I don't definitively know we will, but I think we will. It's the kind of thing, it's the kind of thing, I just, I don't know, it's exciting, and you want to do exciting things, so I believe we'll do it again.

I believe we'll do it carefully, and we'll be careful when and where we do it, and we'll be a little more aware. But, so anyway, so, we knew we wanted to do a four, well, we knew somewhere we wanted to do a four loyalty

planeswalker. So in the first set that came out, Jace was the blue planeswalker of the original Lorwyn V. He was the breakout star. Garruk was probably the strongest of the Planeswalker cards, so Garruk was also very popular. But Jace, just people liked

the character of Jace. I've talked about this before. I think it has to do with Jace is the closest to the sort of archetype of a game player. Blue has always been very popular as a magic color for experienced players. And anyway, Jace just hit all the right buttons, and people really like Jace.

So we decided, like, okay, if Jace is our man, Jace is our guy, let's make him the first four loyalty planeswalker. Okay, so... I know I went through many, many iterations. The thing that... Oh, so one of the things we do with the planeswalkers

is we try to make sure they have a shtick and Jace's shtick is he's the mind mage that he messes with your mind and so what we did is we said okay what are different

kind of effects what could he do well one he could mess with your mind that means he could I mean and the idea is he could search his own mind

for things or he could search with your mind but he could search his mind and mess around. So obviously the first ability is kind of messing with people's minds. Second ability is searching out knowledge, which, you know, he can search knowledge in his own brain, in other people's brains, he can search out knowledge.

Third ability is one of the things he can do is he can undo that when you summon a creature, you are creating magic to pull them there. And he has the ability to set up that tie, which is, once again, part of the thing about mental magic is messing with the minds of the people that are casting it. And the last thing is, talk about messing with your mind. He can really mess with your mind, your brain, your deck brain, your library being your representative of your deep brain. The idea is your hand

is your sort of conscious thought, what's on your forebrain right now. And the rest of your library is the rest of your brain, your memories and everything. And Jay, see,

he can mess with that. That's why Jay says a lot of Millen type things. He messes with your mind and we tend to show messing with the mind usually interacting with either the hand

or the library. And then blue is more off the library, black is more off the hand. Anyway, this card, I know, so the lead developer of this set was Mike Turian. I know that Mike pushed this card because he's like, come on, Jace is our guy, you know, he should be a good planeswalker. Obviously, he pushed it a little more than he realized. One of the things that I think happened was there's a wiggle room for how good something is. And sometimes we're off by 10%.

And this is one of the things where Mike pushed the card, and then we were off by 10%. It was already meant to be a card that was pushed. And I know Eric Lau, who is the current head developer, is a little more cautious these days about what we push and what we don't push. But this card was definitely pushed a little more than we probably would modern day. Like I said, it was pushed and we missed. So it ended up being a very strong card. This card actually ended up getting banned in multiple formats.

And so he is the star of Worldwake. I know if someone's, you know, when you're cracking a Worldwake pack you're hoping that Jace is inside. But anyway,

he's gone on to be a defining card in almost every format he's playable in and not banned in. So, this is definitely one of the highlighting

cards of the set. I know I went through a lot of iterations, most of which was during design. Usually, Planeswalkers do a lot of iterations during design. Design will take a crack at it. Like, we turned over a four loyalty planeswalker.

That didn't change. But a lot of the individual abilities, I mean, some of them stuck, I believe, but a bunch of them changed during development. Next, join the ranks. So join the ranks costs three and a white. It's an instant. And you put two 1-1 ally tokens onto the battlefield. So one of the things that's very interesting is

one of the spells that white gets all the time is make some tokens. Traditionally, it is usually a sorcery, and it makes two 1-1 soldier tokens. But the neat thing about it is how you can take the simple spell and just turn a few knobs. So one of the knobs you can turn on these cards is whether they're instant or sorcery. If you make them instant, it becomes more of a combat

trick because now, in response to your opponent attacking with something, you can have some blockers, maybe you can take a team up and take down a two-toughest creature. But, in this set, we want one extra place, which happens in things where there's a tribal component. The nice thing is when you make a token, well, the tokens get to be something.

In this particular case, they got to be allies. Now, in a set, normally, by the way, notice that 1W Sorcery put two 1-1 Soldier tokens in play. Raise the alarm. This costs 2 extra mana. Okay, well, at least 1 of the mana is the instant. Maybe 1 and a half is the instant part of it, because that makes it a much more useful spell,

and like I said, it becomes a combat trick on defense. But the ally thing was pretty substantial. Why? Because a lot of cards that have ally cared about every time an ally entered the battlefield. And this not only had an ally enter the battlefield, it had two allies enter the battlefield.

So all of a sudden, mid-combat, remember it's an instant, you know, your fighter could get two bigger. Your wizard gets to do two spells. Your cleric gets to buff everybody twice. Okay, that one not always is as exciting as the first two, unless it's a stackable effect.

But there were some stackable effects. But, so this is definitely something like, not only do I have a combat trick, not only do I get two 1-1s, but I get all the goodness of it being allies. And so, and that's one of the things that, by the way, one of the things we love as a designer is that when you can make something that is just like, just like this card, we have made Instant Put 2-1-1s into play.

That's a card we've made. And so this card just says, okay, just one, I'm literally, I'm just changing the word soldier to ally. That's all. Just one word. And that one word can make all the difference in a card where there's a tribal component. So anyway, that's one of the things that I like about this. As a designer, I love when you can make a card that feels almost like just a run-of-the-mill card

you'd make in every set. But, oh, by the way, in this set, it's not just a run-of-the-mill card. It has all sorts of ramifications. And this is a perfect example where, yes, this does everything Raise the Alarm does, but, oh, so, so much more. You know, it

A, it's instant, but we do that from time to time. But the ally-ness of it really allowed all sorts of really fun things to happen. And by the way, even in decks in which one of the things that's cool about allies is in Limited, for example, you don't necessarily build a full ally deck. Sometimes you just had some allies.

And this could do cool things even in a deck not dedicated to allies. You know, you just have one or two allies in play. It's just that. This card really would pay off and do cool things. Okay, next. Calastria, Highborn. So, black, black for a 2-2 Vampire Shaman. If she or another Vampire dies, you pay B to drain player for 2 life.

So drain life, real quickly for those that don't know what I mean, drain life was a spell in Alpha. Drain effects mean that you, the player, something loses life, or something either takes damage, I guess normally drain effects are damage. So something is damaged,

and then you gain the life of are damage. So something is damaged, and then you gain the life of the damage. Now, there's a couple different ways we do it. One is, sometimes it's locked, where it's like, I'm going to do three damage and gain three life. Other times, and this is how it was done in Alpha, I do damage to something, and for each damage I do, I gain life.

And the flavor there, which is, I'm literally, I'm draining your life. You are going down in life, I am, I gain life. And the flavor there, which is, I'm literally, I'm draining your life. You are going down in life, I am going up in life. And you can drain players, you can drain creatures. The reason we tend to do the locked one now more often, almost always, is the complication of caring about how much damage you do, while it's super flavorful, it just makes the card much, much wordier, much more complicated.

A lot of people just get confused what's going on, and that is if you just say deal three damage, you know, target creature, target player, whatever, and gain three life, it's super simple. Everybody gets it. But the drain life version of do this much damage, and then for each damage you do you get this much life, it just gets complicated.

And that sometimes in design, you do what's simple, and the flavor carries through. Yeah, yeah, look, they're losing life, you're gaining life. Is it a one-for-one exact perfect match? No. But sometimes the match is close enough. The key in game design is you do not always need to match flavor 100%. That matching flavor at the sake of gameplay usually is a mistake. Depends on your

game, depends where your flavor is, I'm not saying there aren't exceptions to this rule, but as a general rule, if your flavor is close enough, it's okay to not be 100% if it makes the gameplay better. That if a drain life is better because it just states the value of it,

and I do 3 damage to a 2-touchness creature, but you still get three life. You know what? That's okay. The flavor of drain life is still coming through. Those effects come through well. And that it is, I think one of the mistakes that some designers will make

is to try to get something to be exact in its flavor, they will sacrifice gameplay. And in a game, flavor is really important, but flavor has to be subservient to good gameplay that it's a game you know

if it was a story and you were telling a story you know what if a game is secondary to your story hey pick the right thing for the story but in a game

if your story has to come second to your game your flavor is secondary to the game the gameplay has to come first and the reality is as long as you are close to the flavor the your game. Your flavor is secondary to the game. The gameplay has to come first. And the reality is, as long as you are close to the flavor,

the people will connect the flavor. You know, and that, yeah, whenever we do something where we sacrifice a little bit of flavor to make better gameplay, I'll get people complaining, because like, I like the flavor better. But the reality is,

in the end, you will get much more excitement out of good gameplay than you will out of the recognition of that one kind of flavor just matching a little tiny bit. Okay. One last spell, because I'm almost to

work. Colony Garden. I think that's how it's pronounced. It's a land that enters the battlefield tapped, taps for a green, and when it enters the battlefield, you get a 0-1 plant token. So, of all the spell lands in this set, this one ended up being the most powerful.

And the funny thing is, it doesn't sound that powerful. You're like, what do I get? A 0-1 creature. Oh, thank you very much. Now, there's a couple reasons why this is good. One is, it's a creature. You can block with it. There are ways to enhance it

it is in fact a creature there are and like I said there are even some ways in the set that care about plants that can make plants bigger we originally

our first version this made a 1-1 token and it was but broken to use a term you've learned today it was just too good and so we ended up

changing to a 0-1 plant token. That ended up still being good. That if it did nothing but chumped a creature, just saved you some damage, that often was valuable. There are other tricks you could do with it. It's just having a body, even if the body seems kind of meaningless,

seems meaningless, you know, 0-1, there's ways to make it relevant and make it matter. And this card actually ended up being much more powerful than people thought. Um, anyway, so I can see work I'm about to pull into the parking lot. So as you can tell, I got to K, which means I'm not done yet. So I think I have one more day. I think I can finish this up in one more podcast. Uh, Maybe make this a threefer. Anyway, I want to thank you guys for joining me today. Like I said, Worldwake was a fun set in the sense that I was very, very happy with Zendikar.

I was very proud what Zendikar had become. And Worldwake was a chance to sort of follow up on that. And it was neat. You know what I'm saying? It was also fun watching Ken do his very first lead. That was also a cool experience. But anyway, as much as I love talking about magic, even more, I like making magic.

So it's time for me to go do that. I'll talk to you guys next time. Bye.