Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #139 - Rise of the Eldrazi, Part 4

Episode Date: July 11, 2014

Mark continues with part 4 of his five-part series on the design of Rise of the Eldrazi.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so the last three podcasts, I've talked about Rise of the Eldrazi, but I'm not yet done. So we will continue to do that. And I've gotten up to Kozilek, Butcher of Truth. So one of the things is, there were three Eldrazi titans. There was Emrakul, Kozilek, and Ulamog. And each one of them had a very different flavor to them. So I think that... I already talked about Emrakul.

Emrakul, I think, sort of made you question your sanity. And I think that... I don't know what Emrakul did. I know that Kozilek messed with your brain maybe Kozilek's the one that made you go crazy well I know that each of the I know Ulamog liked to eat things

each one of them had a certain flavor that they did I'm not an expert on the Adrazi flavors exactly but I know we're talking about Kozilek I know Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, was all about

messing with your mind. That's why he was the Butcher of Truth. And why he very much was about knowledge and misinformation and he just messed with your head, I'm pretty sure. So anyway, what is Kozilek, Butcher of Truth? So he's a ten mana creature,

legendary creature Eldrazi, 12-12. When you cast him, you've got to draw four cards. He had Annihilator IV, and he had the Shuffling Claws. If for any way he got to the graveyard, he got shuffled into your library. So it's interesting. He is the cheapest of the three. I went and looked this up because I think I got it wrong last time. So, Kozilek costs

10. Ulamog, I think, costs 11. And Emrakul costs 15. And so, the more expensive ones, they gave... we gave Emrakul protection from colored, which protected him a lot. We made Ulamog instructable.

So, Kozilek was the most fragile of them, but it was the cheaper. But he also drew you four cards that you couldn't stop. Even if you countered it, you didn't stop drawing on the four cards. And so he had a huge card advantage. So even if they stopped him, just getting him in play gave you a lot of advantage. And

I think all of the big guys, the Titans had at least Annihilator 4 I think is Ulamog the one they had? I forget which one they had I think two of them had 4 and one had 6 I don't remember, Gryroth got my head

but anyway, Coastal Lake was definitely daunting when you got him into play okay, next Linvala, Keeper of Silence 2 white, white, 3,a, Keeper of Silence. Two white, white, three, four angel. Flying, because there's an angel. And activated abilities of opponent can't be activated.

So one of the things that's interesting is, let me talk a little bit about our iconics. One of the things we like to do is, we like to have each color has a large, rare, splashy creature that's kind of just connected with that color. And we try to make sure that not only is it connected, but that thematically, philosophically, it matches up. And so one of the things we've tried to do with angels is we've made them very protective,

and that their abilities tend to protect their owner. A, they'll fight for you, and they're good fighters, but also usually a lot of their abilities protect your creatures or protect you, the player. And this one clearly protects both you, your player, and your creatures from your opponent's activated abilities. And so it definitely is kind of like, while I'm here, I shut down things that you might do to harm me.

Okay, next, Mnemonic Wall. Okay, Mnemonic Wall is for 4U, 4 in the blue. It's a 0-4 wall that when it enters the battlefield, you get to regrow an instant or sorcery. So one of the things I was talking about was there definitely was a theme in red and blue of playing spells. There was a deck that sort of allowed you to take advantage of playing spells, get some cheap creatures in.

And this... Well, actually, this was doing double duty. So it played in that deck, but it also, if you wanted to, could play in a deck with a defender theme. Now, blue, interestingly enough, I don't think had as many defenders. One of the colors that should have had defenders.

Instead, it was in red. I talked about that already. But anyway, this was a good... This both was... We had a Defender of Matter theme. We had a Spell of Matters theme. we had a Spell of Matters theme, and this sort of was the crisscross, where both decks might want to use this card.

And in general, when doing design, I call them crisscross cards, because they're important. And what that means is, you want cards that say, oh, well they hit this strategy, and they hit that strategy. Because one of the things to remember is,

if your card is only good for one particular type of draft environment, one draft archetype, if it's only good in one particular deck, then what happens is it always goes to that deck. That no one else wants it but that one deck, and it drifts until they get it. And so the problem is, A, it means the person playing that deck always gets this card, so there's a lot of repetition of play, and it's important that we want some variety. And so there's a lot of repetition of play. And it's important that we want some variety.

Also, we want to make sure that when people play that there's different things they have to do. And so if you just automatically know what you're going to get, a little of that is okay, but too much leads the decks to being the same and cuts down on a lot of the strategy of figuring out when to take things. The strategy shouldn't be, well, no one's going to take these things, so I don't worry about it. It should be, well, people will want it, but do I want it more than them? Do I take it earlier than them?

Okay, next. Mortician Beetle. B. Instant. 1-1. Whenever a player sacrifices a creature, put a plus one, plus one counter on it. So Mortician Beetle is definitely playing, I mean, once again, this is another

card that plays into the spawn. Um, uh, in fact, the nice thing about this is it just gets bigger as you, as you cast your spawn. And black is one of the colors that had spawn. Um, I think black also had a little bit of a sac theme that could play with this card. Um, I'm pretty sure this card was made, made to be a token thing. And then as we had other sacrifice effects we realized that it had a secondary value

which was always good next Moldiah Channelers 1GG, 2-2, Elf, Druid, Shaman play with the top card of your library revealed if it's a creature the card gets plus 3, plus 3 if it's a land it can tap for 2 of any color mana

I believe 2 of the same for two of any color mana. I believe two of the same color mana, but any color you choose. So this is definitely one of the things that's fun to do is this is a neat way to have variance. So one of the variances in the game of Magic is the card drawing. Like I always talk about how important variance is. Well, Magic has a huge variance built into it.

You have a deck that you shuffle, and you don't know the order you're getting your deck. So sometimes when we need to do variance, what we've discovered is, if we make you use things that are more iconically random, a die, a coin, the people get a little more uppity, because it just feels too random to them.

But the library, which is just as random, feels okay, because you've already accepted that kind of that's the randomness in the game. And this is important. In design, what you find is psychology becomes very important. And that it's about sort of how people perceive things sometimes as much as what it actually is. Meaning, you can make a card where you're doing the exact, the randomness is the exact same percentages. And you're flipping coins versus top of library and people will really bristle against,

bristle, sorry, bristle against the coins, but they'll be fine with top of library. And that just has to do with where people accept things. And there's a big thing on, in psychology of, there's certain givens that people have in a game and if you work your things into the given, you know, you sort of, you can get like people have already accepted something, so

if you work something into the area that people have accepted, it just, you don't have to sort of get them to accept a different thing. They've already accepted that thing, and that's valuable. Okay. And, by the way, the other thing about Moldiah's channel that was fun is that it was a card in which it really changed your strategy from turn to turn.

Because, you know, being a 5-5 creature really wants you to attack with it. Being able to attack for two mana really wants you to cast spells. And so there definitely was a neat interaction of sort of, it's a creature that was very useful, but very in its use from turn to turn. Oh, another thing I want to bring up, another reason that Variance is very fun is it is fun to force players to have to adapt. One of the most fun things I think about variance is adapting is fun, meaning one of the things that, I mean, players don't seek this out usually,

but when it happens they enjoy it is the idea that, oh, well this is what I was given and I have to do, I have to make work with what I have, what I call MacGyvering in gameplay, that there's a lot of fun in going, well, this is what I got, you know. I have some shoelaces and a lighter and a bag of chips. What can I do?

And that you really, really feel good when you figure out how to take that thing. When you draw the perfect draw, well, you do what you do. Obviously, winning is fun, and it's fun to just get the perfect draw. But sometimes it's also fun to go, wow, I've never had this combination of cards before.

What do I do with that? And a lot of magic, it's that kind of dealing with things that is fun. And so cards like this, it sort of forced you to go, okay, well, I have a 5-5 this turn. I didn't necessarily plan on attacking, but now that I have a 5-5, hmm,

maybe that changes what I want to do. Anyway, I like cards like this a lot. Next. Near-death experience. So this is an enchantment for two white, white, white. So that's two colorless and three white. At the beginning of the upkeep,

if you're exactly at one life, you win the game. So this is what we call an alternative win condition, or an alt win condition for short. We try to stick one of these, not necessarily in every set, but at least in every block. And the idea is, magic has, you know, a few key... I mean, the main way to win magic is through damage.

Secondary, you can deck people. Those are both built into the game. And then we like giving people other means by which they can win. Usually it's the Johnnies of the world that have the most fun with this, which is kind of like, oh, well, how do I do this? How can I win with this? It's a challenge to try to figure out.

And usually our alt win cards aren't so good that they show up in tournaments. There's a few exceptions, obviously. Poison managed to make fringe in tournaments. Battle of Wits showed up at fringe in tournaments. But usually the alt wins tend not to be the dominant decks, only because we want to make sure that it's not, you know, if it's too easy to win a dominant decks, only because we want to make sure that it's not, you know,

if it's too easy to win a certain way, then it shifts the game too much, and you want the balance in the game. But it is fun, and this is a perfect example where, okay, I have a challenge, I've got to get to exactly one life, how do I do that? And not only do I have to get to one life, I have to keep it to the beginning of the next upkeep, or the beginning of my upkeep. And we always tend to do alt wins, we tend to do alt wins as triggers, because we want to give your opponent

a turn to deal with whatever you're doing to try to stop you okay, nest invader 1g22 Eldrazi drone when it enters the battlefield you get a drone, a spawn sorry, a spawn a spawn, once again

for those that haven't listened to all the podcasts is a 0-1 colorless creature token you can sac for 1 colorless mana. So this is a perfect example of how we make Grizzly Bear. So Grizzly Bear, which is 1G2-2, or what's it called now? You can tell I...

We've remade Grizzly Bears with a different name. As an old-timer, I always remember them as Grizzly Bears. 1G2-2 is something that we're just allowed to do better than, and in fact, we often do better than. In fact, there's a long list of cards, which I would call the Strictly Better Than Grizzly Bear cards, and this is one of them.

And the idea is, you get a little something extra on Grizzly Bear. Grizzly Bear is not at the top of the curve. And so, for example, you can get a spawn. This card is actually pretty good. If you ever play Limited and Rides on Drive, that curve is good. It's funny, because I talked about how the one W22, that was just a vanilla, was not good. And this, which is a 1G22, just gives you a spawn.

Turns out that's the difference. Getting a spawn definitely makes it worth its while. That actually is, in this environment especially, especially in green, which ramps. Okay, next. Narkana Revenant. So this is a 4 BB, 4 black black, 4 4 vampire shade that all your swamps tap for an additional black,

and it has the shade ability, tap a black mana, get plus 1, plus 1 until end of turn. So there is, in this block block there was a vampire theme and while we didn't continue allies we did continue vampires which makes me question why we didn't do allies

it was a mistake by the way on the record I mean not that we should have carried the ally mechanic over but we should have added creature type ally it flavored what made sense it would have played nicely

it really wouldn't have been hard to do so anyway mistake on our part but anyway the vampires did carry through, and this was us sort of mixing a vampire with a shade. So black has an interesting

relationship with mana. So green is the color of long-term mana, of rampant growth and, you know, elves that tap for green and stuff. Red, we get the short-term, the rituals, the things that you get mana that's here and gone. Black kind of dips its toe in,

and where black gets to dip its toe in is it can... They say the rich get richer. Well, the swamp gets swampier, if you will. The black is allowed to both get swamps and to make its swamps produce more black mana. They can get black mana out of its swamps. So one of Black's themes is that it tries to encourage you to just play black.

That it definitely, of all the colors, the color that most says, you know, these other colors are nice, but wouldn't you like to play more of me? Play more black. Black's your friend. Black's your buddy. Play more black. What could go wrong? And so the idea is we were mixing up two different things here. So one was black is allowed to tap for more, you know, is allowed to make a swamp to tap for additional black. Oh, and black also is a color

of shades. Shades being creatures that can pump themselves up. The problem we ran into was, well, normally we do the pump up on shades, but in this environment, we were trying to make vampires matter. So the answer? Vampire shades. I don't even know what that means.

I'm not sure what a vampire shade is. But we have one. So it is both vampire and shade. Maybe it's a shady vampire. I don't quite know what that means, but the creative team was okay with it, so I was okay with it. Next spell, not of this world. Seven mana for a tribal instant Eldrazi. So you counter-target spell of an ability targeting a permanent you control,

but it costs seven less, or it's free if the creature or the permanent you are protecting is a creature with power seven or greater. So the idea is, if I want to tap out to play Giant Eldrazi, if you want to do something,

oh, well I have this free counter-spell that can protect my giant Eldrazi. It doesn't just protect Eldrazi. It also protects other giant creatures. But the idea of the spell was it means the wish to protect your Eldrazi. Ogre's Cleaver. A two-mana artifact equipment

that equips a creature and gets plus five, plus oh, and you equip it for five. The idea here was we wanted the denizens of Zendikar definitely needed

to fight the Eldrazi, and so we wanted to give them a few tools. They tended to like their equipment, so we're like, how do you fight a giant creature? Well, how about with a giant equipment? We made this expensive, and it only pumps power, so it doesn't really, you don't survive the fight with the

Eldrazi, but at least you can stop them. Hopefully. Hopefully. Unless it's like Ulamog, or I guess Ulamog's less indestructible. Okay, next. Aust. W. Sorcery. Put target creature second from the top of owner's library. Its controller gets three life.

So, one of the things that happens from time to time in design is you have design philosophies sort of clashing together with mechanics. And I'll explain. So, blue is the color of unsummoning. So, what is more severe than unsummoning? How about unsummoning to the top of your library? That's like super unsummoning. Meanwhile, white is the color of delay.

Well, how do I delay something? I mean, not get rid of it, delay it. Like, well, I could put it back in your hand, or I could put it back in your library. I could, you know, put a tooth from your top. You're not going to get it for a little while. That's me delaying you. And so for a while, both white and blue were putting cards on the top of the library, or, you know, a few down from the top of the library. And we had a thing called card crafting, where we talked about sort of design development issues, more technical

stuff. And basically we said, okay, do we want white and blue both putting cards on top of the library? We decided a long ago we didn't want green doing that. And so the question was, who should be doing this? And we went back and forth. We finally decided it was better to pick a color. And so we decided that blue made more sense and that it felt more like a super-run summon. And so white no longer has this ability,

and blue now does. Okay, next. Overgrown Battlement. 1G04 wall.4 wall, defender. Tap green for each defender you control. So, one of the things we wanted to do is we wanted to have a Defender Matters theme. And so one of the ways to make Defender Matters

is to have defenders that tap for scalable abilities. What scalable abilities means is you tap to do X. X is the number of whatever, you know, tribal thing you're caring about. In this case, defenders. Although technically it's not tribal, because walls...

You're not caring about walls, because not all of these are walls. This one happened to be a wall, but a lot of the red ones, for example, were elementals. So actually, defender matters. Technically, it's caring about a mechanic. But it works a lot like a tribal card in that it's like, oh, well, for the number of defenders I have in play,

this one allowed you to cast things. So what you could do in this version is you could play a bunch of defenders, protect yourself, and then use it to get out larger things earlier because all I need to do is get a couple defenders out and all of a sudden I'm capping this wall for a while, especially if I have multiples of these walls. Okay, next.

Pelica Worm. 4 GGG, that's 7 mana total, 4 colorless, 3 green, for a 7-7 Worm. It is Trample. When it enters the battlefield, you gain 7 life. When it dies, you draw a card. So this is definitely one of those things where we were trying to make a big creature that just was attractive that you wanted to play, and even if they killed it, you weren't super unhappy.

I mean, you're unhappy, but they wasted a kill spell and you still got a lot. So notice it's a seven converted mana cost card. It makes a seven seven. You gain seven life. Yeah, drawing seven cards would have been too much. So basically what you do is up front you get some life and you get to play with this. But if they ever kill it, you get to replace it.

You get to draw a card. And so it definitely just tries encouraging you to go, hey, it's worth your while to play with this. But if they ever kill it, you get to replace it. You get to draw a card. And so it definitely just tries encouraging you to go, hey, it's worth your while to play this creature. And then in play, it's a 7-7 creature. It's a giant worm. So that was pretty cool. Pestilence Demon. Five black, black, black

for a 7-6 Demon flying. And then for one black mana, it can do one damage to every creature and every player. So, Time Spiral was a set where we did a lot of nostalgia, and we filled it to the brim with cards referencing other cards, and every card was like, remember this? Remember that? So we don't, we really haven't done another nostalgia set, but that doesn't mean we don't do nostalgic cards from time to time.

And so this card is a callback to a card from Alpha and Urza's Saga at Common for some reason. It calls Pestilence, for those who might not know this. So Pestilence was an enchantment, and it allowed you to do one damage to each creature and player for each block you spent. And then, if you had no creatures in play, it would go away. So notice that this card doesn't

have the rider, because, well, it's a creature. So if you have no creatures in play, then it's not in play, and obviously it's gone away. But anyway, we thought it was kind of cool to put pestilence on a creature. We felt like a demon made a lot of sense. And notice, once again,

a little aesthetic thing the design does, which is very subtle, but it costs eight and it's a seven six. Anyway, entertains us. So next, Rage Nimbus. Rage Nimbus. Rage for the Nimbus. Okay, so Rage Nimbus is a two and a red for five three elemental. It's got Defender flying, and for one and a red, target creature must attack.

Okay, I've been railing into the red walls. The one thing I will say is we at least did a decent job in a vacuum of making each of the walls feel red. I don't think overall walls are red. And once again, this is technically not a wall. It's an elemental. It's a Defender. Defenders aren't particularly red in my mind, but I did feel like we did try hard to make each... Something we couldn't change, and we had to have defenders

in red, but let's try to make them feel red. And this one is interesting for a defender. It's a high-powered. Usually defenders have low power, but they're good at blocking, but they don't kill things. This one's a little different, which makes it a little more red in my mind, which is, I'm a good wall, a good defender. I'll block and kill things. This one's a little different, which makes it a little more red in my mind, which is I'm a good wall, a good defender. I'll block and kill things.

Now, I have a three toughness. If you send a big enough thing, you'll kill me. But the neat thing about it is I have the ability to make things attack. So both red and blue have the ability to force things to attack. The flavor's slightly different. Red just makes you get all emotional

and not think anymore and go, ah, and charge. Where blue's a little more mind manipulation. But red and blue have a lot in common. If you really, if you start to boil it down. A lot of the enemies, it's interesting how there's a lot of things they do in common. Anyway, so this was definitely a wall. This wall was pretty powerful

because it also doubled as removal. That your opponent couldn't play, it also doubled as removal. That your opponent couldn't play couldn't play small creatures while this was in play because they could force you to kill small creatures.

And so this was a pretty potent wall. It's the kind of thing we'd be careful about nowadays because it's repetitive kill and that it is even a 5-3 sometimes is a little hard to kill. Especially in this environment where the kill is a little lower than normal.

Although a lot of it can hit a 3, but not all of it. Next, Raid Bombardment. 2R enchantment. Creatures with power 2 or less when they attack. This deals 1 damage. So this card was made to do a couple things. Probably the number one thing it was made to do

was play nicely with spawn. We have a lot of spawn enabling in the set. This allowed you to essentially do damage with spawn. And you put your opponent in a quirky place. I mean, they can block and kill the spawn without any damage to them, but it allowed you to turn your spawn into damage directly. It also played with the deck I've been talking about

where you get a lot of little things through it played nicely with that deck next, rapacious one 5R54 Eldrazi Drone trample, and it has what I like to call spawn link, which is not a technical term so basically it is kind of like lifelink, except instead of gaining a life for every damage you do, you get to make a spawn for every damage you do, which is pretty good.

I mean, make no mistake, it is pretty good. Um, so the, uh, I think the idea was, remember, um, in this set, red, green, and black were more tied to the Eldrazi, and the spawn making was in red, green, and black. And so we tried to find different ways to do that. So we wanted to make sure that the different colors could make spawn a different way. I really like the idea of combat damage turning into spawn, and so the question was where to stick it. I think we loved the idea of it being with trample.

And green was doing a lot more of the make additional spawns. We said, okay, let's... We had carved a little more space up for green, so we decided to give it to red. It also was nice because red was a little more aggressive. A lot of green spawn making was a little more controlling and rampy. And so the green spawning

had a little more like sit back where the red we were trying to make a little more aggressive. I mean, there was some aggressive green spawn making, but anyway, that is Rapacious 1.

See how we're doing on Okay, I'm almost to work. The the thing that's interesting when I do these, uh, I walk through the cards is what I do ahead of time is I'll sit at home and I will just go through and anything catches my eye, I'll write it down. And then what I started doing was I'd write them down so that I know what they are so that I can know their costs and stuff. Cause early on, I've been with my podcast for a long time. I used to just name the card and talk about it. And the people are like, I don't, what is that card? I have not, I read the cards a long time ago. What does that card do? And since I can never remember names,

I'm like, oh, that's unkind to make other people remember names. So I now try to write it all down. I write as brief as I can since I am driving. But I do have, I have a little bit of notes. Sometimes you can hear the rustling of my notes. That's what you hear. Okay, so let's get to Realms Uncharted. Okay, so Realms Uncharted is an instant for two and a green. You've got to

search your library for four lands that all have different names. Your opponent takes two of them and puts them in your graveyard, and the other two get a go at your hand. So can anybody figure out the inspiration for this card? Well, let me tell you a story. So in Tempest, I made a card called Intuition. In Intuition, you went in your library and you got, I think it was three cards, and then your opponent chose which one went in your hand

and the other two went to your graveyard. And the intent of the time was that they were all different, but I forgot to write down that they were all different. And so development started playing with it and so the answer was whatever you wanted you went and got whatever you wanted, you went

and got multiple copies of it, so that you guaranteed that you got it. And I was like, well, that wasn't really my intent. My intent wasn't that you just went and got however many, like, I wanted you to have different ones, and I said, okay, guys, no, no, no, fine, I forgot to write this down, this is what I meant. And development was like, no, no, no,

we like the card as is, we're not going to change it. And I was like, no, but that wasn't what I meant! And they was like, no, no, no, we like the card as is, we're not going to change it. And I was like, no, but that wasn't what I meant. And they're like, you know, anyway. So I'm like, okay. So years later, during,

I think actually development, because I wasn't on the design team, of Champions of Kamigawa, there was a hole, and I said, you know what, I've always wanted to make this card, but the way I meant to make it,

which is that there had to be different choices. So we made Gifts Ungiven. So Gifts Ungiven, you pick four cards. I think we made it four rather than three to make it different from Intuition. And anyway, that card was also very popular.

And so when we were making the set, once again, I think this was my doing in development. If this was made in design, I apologize to the designers. But this card is Gifts Ungiven for Land. In fact, I'm pretty sure if you went back into the card file and looked at the playtest name, I'm sure it was something like Lands Ungiven or something. But anyway, it is a green Gifts Ungiven.

That is what it is. And it allows you to sort of have some access to land and the same reason gifts are given was sort of fun is sometimes you want things in your graveyard and sometimes you want it in your hand and it's neat to give your opponent interesting choices. So one of the things people a common misnomer that people often

talk about is how people understand how we design for Timmy. We make big giant splashy exciting things. People understand how we design for Johnny.. We make big, giant, splashy, exciting things. People understand how we design for Johnny that we make, you know, things you have to build around or think about how you would make

challenging, puzzling cards. But how do you design for Spike? There's a belief that you don't design for Spike. Spike just plays the good cards. So just make cards and price some of them aggressively and Spike will play those cards.

And the answer is Spike will play what is good, but there's a difference between making cards that Spike will play versus making cards that Spike will enjoy. And one of the things that Spikes very much enjoy is the ability to, they love when cards, the power of the cards is dependent on the skill of the player. You know, for example, that, I mean, Gifts Ungiven is a very classic example of this. Factor Fiction is another famous one, where it's like,

look, I can take this card and that if I, you know, the more skillful player is going to have an advantage because, you know, part of doing both Gifts Ungiven or Factor Fiction is knowing what you want, knowing what you have, knowing what your opponent has, knowing what your opponent thinks you want.

And a lot of this is playing off your opponent. You want your opponent to have a decision because they're going to value certain things. They're going to find certain things threatening. is really understanding your opponent and making decisions in which the idea is, you know, realms uncharted or gifts ungiven or intuition, all these cards, that if you give it to an experienced player, they're just going to be better with it. They're just going to,

it's going to be a more powerful card. And that is something Spike really, really likes. The idea that, um, that a card gains power from their knowledge. Not inherently just the card themselves, but their skill as a player increases the power of the card. And that, spikes love that.

You know, because the psychographic is all about sort of proving what you're capable of. Well, having a card in which it gets better the better I am, and I can demonstrate how good I am every time I play it, that's pretty spiky and a lot of fun. Okay.

I am now at work. And so it is time for me to wrap up for today. So I got to R. So next time I will start talking about Cirque and the Mad, and I believe I will finish. So one more, well, a fifth podcast, and then we will be done. I always try to balance this, by the way, between hitting as many cards as I can, because people like to be talking about the cards,

but I don't want them to be too long. I did Saros, and that was Aiden. That was too long. And so this one's looking to be five. Five's a little on the long side, but there's a lot of fun cards. Razzle Drazzy, like I said, there's a lot of ups and downs,

but there's a lot of, you know... Brian made interesting cards. He definitely was a fun designer. I loved working with Brian. And he pushed boundaries and did crazy stuff,, Brian made interesting cards. He definitely was a fun designer. I loved working with Brian and he pushed boundaries and did crazy stuff and they're interesting cards. So it's fun to talk about. So anyway, as much as I like talking about magic, even more, I like making magic. So it's time for me to go, but I'll talk to you next time. Thanks for joining me guys.