Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #140 - Rise of the Eldrazi, Part 5

Episode Date: July 18, 2014

Mark concludes his five-part series on the design of Rise of the Eldrazi.

Okay, I'm pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so the last four episodes or podcasts have been about Rise of the Eldrazi. And I'm close to done. I'm up to S, but I'm not quite done yet. So today, if all goes according to plan, will be the final day for the Rise of the Eldrazi. Okay, so when we left, I was about to talk about Sarkhan the Mad. Oh, Sarkhan. Okay, so we had met Sarkhan before. I think we met him during Shards of Alara block.

So Sarkhan, for those that don't know the story, comes from a world without dragons. A world of warlords and... Anyway, let's just say a world you might get to know pretty soon. Anyway, Sarkhan has always revered dragons because in his world, the dragons were these mighty creatures that died off. And he has been fascinated his whole life with dragons. In fact, as a planeswalker, his shtick,

like, one of the things we do is we have a page on our wiki where we take each of the planeswalkers and we spell out what's unique about them. What is the shtick to each planeswalker? And mechanically, what is the space we're supposed to keep away from other planeswalkers so that

planeswalker has something that feels uniquely their own? So Sarkin's thing is he loves dragons. Sometimes he turns into a dragon, sometimes he makes things into dragons. He just loves dragons.

And so, in fact, there's a cool piece of art on Form of the Dragon, which shows Sarkin becoming a dragon. It wasn't the original Form of the Dragon, which shows Sarkhan becoming a dragon. It wasn't the original Form of the Dragon, obviously, but it was in, I think, From the Vault, maybe? Was it From the Vault Dragons? Anyway, that's one of my favorite pieces of Sarkhan art,

is him turning into a dragon in Form of the Dragon, which I think is really cool. Anyway, so in this part of the story, Sarkhan has gone mad. Mad, I say! He's a little crazy. And the reason he's a little crazy is that he has been driven crazy by Nicole Bolas, I believe. Or maybe Nicole Bolas is taking advantage of the fact that he's gone mad?

I'm not quite sure why he went mad. And so, Nicola Bolas lured him to, or told him to go to Zendikar, and Sarkham was one of the three planeswalkers that, entering the Eye of Ugin, popped open the prison and let out the Eldrazi. So anyway, so the interesting thing

about the two planeswalkers in this set is both of them are weird. Both of them do something that... Like, for example, neither one of them... Well, Gideon was weird because he didn't really have an ultimate. Sarkin is weird because he has no plus ability. So let's talk about what he does.

So Sarkin the Mad is a planeswalker. Three, black, and red. Starts with a loyalty of seven. Apparently when you're mad, you have a lot of loyalty. First ability is zero. Reveal the top card of your library and put it in your hand. Lose life equal to the converted mana cost.

Second ability is minus two. Target creature is sacrificed and replaced with a 5-5 dragon. And minus four is each dragon you control deals damage equal to the power of ... Each dragon you control deals damage equal to the power of... Try that one more time.

Each dragon you control deals damage equal to its power to target player. And so the idea is, it lets you get cards, lets you make things into dragons, and then you can use your dragons to attack directly. You know, sort of a fire weapon, if you will. I tried really hard, really, really, really hard, to change the first ability from a 0 to a plus 1 and the reason is

I wanted you to have the dream that you could gain loyalty and the thing about a plus 1 was if you did plus 1 every time you drew a land you would go up in loyalty most of the time or 60% of the time

you wouldn't draw a land so most of the time you would go down because you would draw a card that had a converted mana cost and you'd lose something. I guess if you drew a one mana thing, you'd stay even. But anyway, I could not convince the powers that be to make it plus one. I really...

I wasn't super fond of the fact that this could never come back. I mean, the idea, I guess, is you start with a lot of loyalty and you just spend it. You never ever get it back. I kind of like our planeswalkers. There's some way to get their loyalty up, even if it's hard to do and, you know...

Anyway, I do... This is fun. Like I said, Sarkin's all about the dragons, and so I do like... It is pretty cool that he does neat dragon-y things. And like I said, now he's black-red. When we first met him, he was red-green, I believe. And anyway, he shifts colors.

So one of the things we do from time to time is try to show some evolution of planeswalkers. You'll see some shifting colors. I mean, Johnny's a perfect example where he was white, and then he was white-red, and now he's white-green. You know, he shifts around a little bit. We think that's sort of fun. Okay, next, share discovery. Blue sorcery. Additional cost, tap four untapped creatures, and then you draw three cards.

Or, sorry, not draw... Wait, hold on a second. Yeah, you draw three cards. So this is us kind of going to do... We do this from time to time, where we kind of nod to a famous card and go, well, famous broken card. So this is almost Ancestral Recall,

with the exception of it's a sorcery rather than instant, and, oh, by the way, as an additional cost, you have to tap four creatures. Unlike Ancestral Recall, with the exception of it's a sorcery rather than instant, and oh, by the way, as an additional cost, you have to tap four creatures. Unlike Ancestral Recall, where it's don't do that. And definitely, this is another one of those cards where we're trying to take advantage of stuff like spawn or having extra creatures.

It's funny, because one of the things that's interesting is that this is one of those abilities that sounds a little more benign than it is. The idea of, oh, okay, I just got to tap some extra creatures, but like, if they're spawned, it's okay. I mean, I guess they can't block, but the spawn doesn't matter as much.

But like, oh, I can't attack these creatures, instead I have to tap them. That is a real cost, and it doesn't sound as much a cost. Sometimes we can do cards like this that seem splashy, because the cost is not... You don't understand, some costs are not as, like, when you make cards, there are three

different types of cards. There are cards that do what you expect, and they match your expectations. There's cards where the cost seems high, but in reality, it's actually well worth it. And there's cards where the cost seems low, and in reality, it's a little more expensive than you realize. Hold on one second. My wife pushed my

mirror in. Okay. So, this is one of those cards where I think the cost seems, doesn't seem quite as high as it really is. Tapping four creatures actually is a much bigger cost than I think you realize. And we like to mix them up. We like to have spells that seem worse than they are and are better, or seem

better than they are or worse, and cards that seem like what they are. One of the big things about magic is, and I've talked about this, that a lot of our game is discovery. A fun part of the game is the reason people play for as long as they do, and our average player is up to like nine years, so that's a pretty long time for a game, is the idea that you never stop exploring. I don't know if I've talked about this in my podcast or not, real quickly. But I have what I call my crispy hash brown theory. I've talked about this in my article. And the idea is when you eat a hash brown,

that the best part of the hash brown is the crispy outside. The inside's okay. I mean, once you eat the crispy outside, you eat the inside. But the crispy outside, that's the best part. And that magic, most games, that the crispy outer part of the hash brown is the exploration learning part, where you're trying to understand the game and figure out what it means.

But at some point, you crack the game, you figure it out. You know, Othello is all about the corners, or Tic-Tac-Toe is about the middle, or whatever the strategy you need to figure out is. And then, at that point, it becomes more more about like, you know, there's a point in Scrabble where it starts becoming about memorizing the two and three letter words where in chess, it's about memorizing the open moves. It shifts from sort of a learning phase to more of a memorization where it's like, okay, now I have to learn what people before me have learned. And I think the discovery phase is fun. It is the crispiness of a hash brown. And then what magic does is we keep regrowing our crispy outside.

That every couple months we put on a new set and everything gets turned on its ear again. Plus we rotate cards away too. I mean new things come in and things go out. So it's an ever-changing, especially for standard, it's an ever-changing environment. And so things you might know are constantly being checked. It's an ever-changing, especially for standard, it's an ever-changing environment. And so things you might know are constantly being checked because even though you discovered and learned something, oh, well now things have changed. And our game has a lot of flux in it for that reason.

And I think it's a very, very important part of it. Anyway, my crispy hashbrown theory. Okay, next. Oh, by the way, real quickly, because this comes up. One of the things that people talk about all the time is that I repeat stories. They go, you've already told that story on the podcast. And so, let me explain really quickly why that is so, which is

I, when I record this podcast, I will drive to work and I will record it. And about half the time, about half the time, I'm like, that's good. Print it. Or not print it, but record it, whatever. Good. Good to go. But a lot of times, I'm like, you know what? Nah, nah, I can do better than that. And the next day, I'll record again. And I have four days, I drive to work four days a week because I work at home on Fridays, and I only need two

podcasts a week. So I'm recording most days because if I don't like it, I'm re-recording it. And sometimes, like the first podcast of this one, the number part one of my Rise of the Drowzee, I did three times. And so I record every week, but not quite half, but a little less than half of what I record doesn't get used, you know. So like 20 or 30% maybe I record and it doesn't get used. So I don't always know when I, even if I can remember if I told the story before, I don't always remember if the story I told was during a time in which I recorded it and saved it. And so a lot of times I have a good story

and I'm like, well, I don't know if I told the story or not. But I'd rather err and occasionally tell some good stories more than one time than never tell the story. Now odds are I've told you this very thing before. But I just want to remind you that I try as much as possible to have a variety. When I do article stuff, I try to tell you a few things that weren't in the article. But I'm on 130-something, 137 or something. I've done a lot of podcasts. And so A, remembering it all is tough. And B, remembering what I actually told you versus what I recorded and didn't tell you is even harder. And if you remember, I can't remember card names.

I can't remember Dark Confidant. So anyway, I'm doing the best I can. And so, by the way, I will say, if you want to get to know me, my friends say that I'm famous for telling the same stories multiple times. So I like to think this is a chance for you guys to get to intimately know me and share what it's like to know me in person where you get to hear my stories multiple times. Okay. Next. Souls Attendant. W. stories multiple times. Okay, next.

Souls Attendant. W. Human Cleric. 1-1. Whenever a creature enters the battlefield, you may gain one life. So, you guys might remember a card called Soul Warden, which was this card almost exactly. And people are like, why didn't you just print Soul Warden? And the answer is, the reason I

stretched the word may when I read the card. This is Soul Warden, but with a may. Soul Warden was not may. Was required, I mean, not required, but it wasn't an option. If someone played a creature, you must gain the life. And so the judges came to us, and the judges said, you know what, you know what's better? It's better when it says may,

because that way, if someone missed a trigger, we're like, oh, well, it's optional. You obviously just chose to miss it. So we started making things may. Then, da-da-da, Magic Online came to us and said, you know what's really a problem? Lots of may effects, because every time there's a may effect,

we have to prompt you. So, for example, Soul Warden is a good example where every time a creature comes in play, if it's may, every time, do you want this life? Don't you want this life? And so we then went back to saying, okay, let's not do may

because it becomes a lot of extra clicks on Magic Online. So the lesson of this story is that magic has a lot of different things that impact on it. We have to think about it. We have to think about judging and organized play. We have to think about Magic Online. One of the things, I'll do a podcast about this, about that when there's so many different things that you have to keep in mind when you're designing that on some level aren't about the design at all. You know, there's developmental issues.

There's creative issues. There's tournament issues. There's magic online issues. There's templating issues. There is so many different things that when you design you have to worry about that go over and above just the design itself. And like I said, that's where they have a problem. I'll probably do a podcast on that one of these days

because there's a lot of different factors to keep in mind. Okay, next. Sphinx of the Magosi. Three U U U, three blue blue blue, three colors, three blue, six six sphinx, flying, and for two and a blue, you can draw a card

and put a plus one plus one counter on the screen share. So, this card uses a little trick. So this is a, I'm pretty sure this is a rare, might be a mythic rare. So we did a little trick on this thing, which is you make somebody activate something, and then do two things they would like.

Like, for example, if you paid man and drew a card, you'd be happy. If you paid man and put a plus one plus one counter, you'd be happy. Well, how do we put a plus one plus one counter, you'd be happy. Well, how do we make an exciting card? Let's you do both. Where you're like, I would have paid two, three, you know, I would have paid two of you to draw a card or put a plus one plus one counter on.

Or, no, and. You know what's better than or? And. So, one of the things we definitely do is to try to make things exciting sometimes on higher rarities. At lower rarities, you kind of want to do one thing. You want to be simple. You want to be clean and clear. But at higher rarities, you know what? You can get a little splashier. It's like, okay, not only am I drawing a card, but I'm getting bigger. So it's like, all is good. I want to get bigger. I want to draw a card. No tension. No tension at all. I mean, we could have made the card draw a card or put a plus one counter and made a little bit of

tension. And hey, we have some tension. Magic wants some tension on cards. But sometimes you don't want tension. You just want, yeah, I'll choose both. We did, by the way, we did joke for a minute about having the template be you may draw a card and or put a puzzle in the corner on it. But the actual circumstances

where you somehow want to do one and not the other is very, very slim. And we thought we'd confuse people, so we didn't do that. Splinter Twin! Dun-dun-dun! Okay, this is an enchantment, an aura, for two red and a red. Enchanted creature has

tap, make a token copy of me for the turn. And for those... Here's how you can tell that a card ends up really becoming good, is you get decks named after it so if you watch Modern and All, there are Splinter Twin decks

which tells you this card is very good so here's what we've learned cloning is very good copying things is very good even if you just copy them for a turn, it's very good and Splinter Twin tends to enable combos that the reason you want to copy something for a turn usually is some interactions there is fun things Splinter Twin tends to enable combos that the reason you want to copy something for a turn usually is some interactions.

There is fun things... Splinter Twin was... Splinter Twin was clearly made as a Johnny card because there's just fun, wacky things you can do with it. The power level was high enough that the Spikes used it. So it is definitely a Spike Johnny card. There's a lot of... I mean, one of the things that's interesting is

it's not that Johnny's the only one who wants to figure out what to do things with Spike. Spike clearly, I mean, Timmy at some level as well. For Spike, the real issue is, is there something that I can get advantage out of versus just am I messing around? And Splinter Twin really does enable you to do some pretty

strong stuff, which is why it's so good. But I will admit, this is another kind of card that got made. I don't know who made this card. This is the kind of card that I look at and I go, did I make this card? It seems like the kind of card I would have made, but I was not on the design team and so I know I made a few cards in development. I'm pretty sure this is not mine. This is Brian

or somebody from the design team is my guess. Although, if there was a hole in development, I could have made it. I don't remember. Anyway, my assumption is I didn't make this card, although it's the kind of card I easily could have made it. I don't remember. Anyway, my assumption is I didn't make this card, although it's the kind of card I easily could have made. I do love my cloning, and I love my tokens.

Surakar Spellblade. 1UU 2-1, and it's a Surakar. I'm not even sure what a Surakar is. It's that thing. Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery, put a charge counter on this creature, and whenever this creature deals combat damage, you get to draw a card

for each counter on it. So one of the themes that was going on was there definitely was a sorcery, instant sorcery theme. I think it was played through Red-Blue. Like there was the creature that got plus 3 plus 0 if you cast an

instant or sorcery. This one in the same deck. The idea is you got a bunch of creatures that cared plus 3 plus 0 if you cast an instant or sorcery this one and the same deck the idea is you got a bunch of creatures that cared about instant sorceries you played with instant sorceries they particularly went well with rebound one of the reasons we played up this theme was because rebound was in the set and so the fact that you got a spell that cost one card but got you two spells

worked really well with things that rewarded you off having instantants and Sorceries played. But anyway, this is part of the red-blue deck, and like I said, I was a fan. Okay, next, Time of Heroes. One and a white for enchantment. Creatures with level counters get plus two, plus two. So one of the things we're trying to do, the last card was trying to help rebound. This card was trying to help rebound. This card was trying to help

level up creatures. So one of the things you want to do when you make a set is you have mechanics and you want to make sure that you enable your mechanics. Sometimes you're subtle about them. Like for example, the last card, it wants you to play Instants and Sorceries. Okay. Now, if you stop to think about it,

you realize, oh, it plays particularly well with rebound because rebound cards essentially are two spells in one. But the reality is, I mean, that's a little subtle. You know, it's not like you read this card and go, oh, I've got to play rebound. You figure it out. It makes sense. Where Time of Heroes is not subtle. Time of Heroes, you know, has a little megaphone going, play with level-up creatures! You know, it's very,

very blunt. And blunt is fine. We definitely wanted people to sort of be able to, whenever we make new mechanics, if they can, we want people to sort of collectively play with them. We have something we call linear, so things are linear and modular. Linear means you

see it and it gets you to play other cards of a certain subset. Where modular is like, oh, I don't, this card doesn't make you want to play any other cards in particular.

It's just general and it fits with whatever. So this card is a linear card because it says, oh, we'll play with level up creatures. This card is only as good

as the number of level of creatures you have. So it's very linear. And people like linear themes so we make sure that, even with some of the mechanics that aren't necessarily linear mechanics, we like to make some cards that make them linear.

So people, like, for example, level of creatures aren't linear. In fact, in some way, you can argue they're not linear because they all require mana, and so they fight each other for mana requirements. But we wanted to make a card, and actually there's another card coming up too, where, like, that kind of encourages it,

hey, hey, come on, play a bunch of, play a bunch of heroes. You know, play a bunch of level up guys. Next, we get to the third and final of the Titans. Ulamog, the Infinite Geyer. So he's an 11 mana, 10-10, obviously a legendary creature Eldrazi. When you cast him, destroy target permanent.

He's got Annihilator IV, and he's indestructible. So basically, the schticks, okay. I talked about this last time, and I messed it up. So there's three titans. I think, okay, Eladamri, not Eladamri. I always make that mistake. Eladamri is the king of the Elven Tempest. Emrakul. Emrakul messes

with reality, I believe. Koslek messes with your mind. And Ulamog messes with your stuff. He's the hungry one who eats everything. Which, in retrospect, by the way, maybe he should have Annihilator 6

and Emeril Coast would be Annihilator 4 since he's the guy who eats everything. Although he also is cheaper. I guess we made Annihilator 6 and the real expensive one. So anyway, he's the destructive one. He just eats hungry and eats everything. He's an infinite guy-er, which

I think means a giant gaping maw that eats things, I think, is the metaphor we're going for. Anyway, he was, we made him indestructible, so he was really, really hard to kill. And he was hard to stop. So you always, when you got him up, you felt good. Okay, Ulamog's Crusher. Let's talk about Crusher. So Ulamog's Crusher was an 8-8 for 8 Eldrazi with Annihilator 2.

And he had Must Attack. There's a great story here. So originally he was in the file. We had two common Eldrazi, a 7-7 and an 8-8. And the problem we're finding in playtesting is, so one of the things we do is when we playtest, R&D playtest, but we also bring in other people, often from game support or other parts of the company, to come play, who have no magic,

but haven't played the set yet, so we can sort of gauge what, you know, it's a good way for us to feel a sense of how the average player might play. Because they come in not knowing anything, we see what they do and get first impressions and stuff. So one of the problems we noticed was they would get out these giant

common Odrazi, and they wouldn't attack with them. You know, they'd go, okay, well, I'll use it to keep them from attacking me. And the reality was, you know, this thing's an 8-8 Annihilator 2. You really want to attack with it. But they weren't. And so, Eric Lauer

came to me, and he said, I don't know what to do. We really want, we were talking in a development meeting, we really want these, the players just aren't attacking with them. How can we teach the players that they should be attacking? And I go, okay, I got it.

We add, this creature must attack. And then what'll happen is, they'll get it out, and they'll attack, they have no choice, and then they'll realize how awesome it is attacking, and they'll learn, we should attack with Arad'll realize how awesome he was attacking and they'll learn

we should attack with our Adrazi they're really good and so that's why this says must attack it's just a a teaching tool to help teach people

to attack with their Adrazi their 887 Nihilator 2 should attack so that's why it has must attack next Umbra Mystic Umbra

no no no Umbra Mystic 2 and a white for 2-2 human wizard oh sorry 2 and a white for a 2-2 human wizard. Oh, sorry, two and a blue. It's 2U. My handwriting is messy.

2U for a 2-2 human wizard, and your... Oh, no, it's 2W. It's Umbra Mystic, 2W, 2-2 human wizard. Your auras have totem armor. So, totem armor. I'm doing all the linear cards today. So, totem armor. So totem armor... I'm doing all the linear cards today. So totem armor

was a mechanic that if it went on auras, and if your creature would die and had an aura with totem armor on it, your aura would die instead of the creature. So all the totem armor... All the totem armor auras... It's hard to say. All the totem armor auras...

I didn't say Tendrister, basically has this extra, like, regeneration quality, which is, when you're about to die, I sort of regenerate you. And so this just says, hey, play auras, all your auras gain Totem Armor. Now, this card is a little bit better outside of Limited than it is in Limited, since most of the best auras had

Totem Armor, but it definitely made you outside to make a deck more of auras. This card also went nicely with the core card that you drew a card every time you played an aura and got plus one, plus one. It plays nicely with that card. Anyway. Okay, next.

Vendetta. Be instant, destroy target non-black creature and then you lose life equal to that creature's toughness. So this card what's that was it in? It was in an older set. This is a reprint. Brian really liked this card because he was looking for things

that could deal with larger things but weren't one of the issues you have with Eldrazi is, if you make it too easy to kill Eldrazi, people spend all this time and energy getting a giant Eldrazi, and then if you just kill them, well, that's problematic. You don't want to make it too easy to kill them.

And so, Vendetta's nice because, well, it can kill Eldrazi, but, man, it's painful. If I kill, for example, a 15-15 creature, I lose 15 life. You know, this might be in play, and I have this in my hand,

I'm like, I can't guess it, I can't afford to lose 15 life. So Vendetta was a good job of sort of being there and able to kill things, but not easily, and it scaled, which was nice. So the bigger things you're killing, the more it costs, essentially, to kill it. Next, Venerated Teacher. This is the card I was thinking that I just read, and I'm remissing.

2U, 2-2, Human Wizard. See, 2C, 2-2, Human Wizard. When it enters a battlefield, put two level counters on a level-up creature. So the idea of this card is, oh, when I come in, I get to level something. Oh, did it put up two on every level-up creature? I did not write that down. It might put two on every level-up creature? I did not write that down. It might put two on every level-up creature. Anyway, it's encouraging to play level-ups.

It's a level-up enabler, if you will. Another linear level-up card. I don't know. I don't remember whether it just did one creature or all creatures. So, I'm sorry, I don't know. My note's not as good as it should have been. Next, Vengevine. 2 GG for a 4-3 elemental with haste.

When you cast your second spell each turn, it gets to come back from the graveyard to your hand. So the idea here was, this was kind of made in development because we were worried about something. I say they, and I realize I was on the development team. We were worried about something in the environment. So this was one of the times where, in fact, this might have been the first time where

Eric really wanted haste on a green creature, and we negotiated to make haste tertiary. So on constructor cards, we could give it haste. And then I remember I suggested the trigger of playing a second creature per turn, because I liked the idea that green got its stuff back, but it played in a green strength rather than black strength. And so the idea was, oh, we'll play a lot of creatures. That's how you get your Vengevine back, and that's very greenish. So I liked that.

Next, Vent Sentinel. So 3R for an elemental, 2, 4, another defender. And for 1R, it did 1 damage for each defender to target a player. So I talked about the green wall last time that did this, and this is the red version of, okay, you want to make defender matters? Another linear card. Well, just count defenders.

And this card is nice, and it did damage. It was a finisher for the wall deck. One of the problems in general with having a, I keep calling it a wall deck, a defender deck, like this one, they're not all walls. The problem with the defender deck is they can't attack, so it's hard to win with a defender deck, especially if you're really dedicating

to it. So the nice thing about this card was this was a win condition for a defender deck. You could have a deck of nothing but defenders, and this card could win for you because if you get enough defenders out, this really could chop down somebody's life total in just a few turns, assuming you have enough defenders out, this really could chop down somebody's life total in just a few turns, assuming you have enough defenders out. Once again, I do like that this wall at least feels red.

I mean, we did a halfway decent job of making the defenders that were red feel red, but, ah, anyway. I've griped up on my red wall thing enough. Okay, next. Wall of Omens. 1-W-0-4 wall. It's a defender.

And when it enters the battlefield, you get to draw a card. So this is a color-shifted card. So we did a card back in the day called Wall of Blossoms, which was a 0-4 wall that when you played it, you got to draw a card,

which was very, very good. And the idea at the time was, well, white's supposed to be the defensive color. Like, walls are really supposed to be a white thing. And all colors get cantrips, so that's something white can do. Well, maybe we should put the really, really good effective wall in white. And so we made Wall of Omens. And surprise, surprise, the card was really good.

It definitely was made... We were trying to make defenders matter in the set, and so we had a bunch of different cards. One of the things that we were also trying to do was have enough defenders that you'd want to play on any deck, so that you one of the things you try to do when you have a theme is

you want to have a range of where your theme is. Some of your theme you want to be playable cards that anybody will play so that what you do is you encourage people to put those in your deck. And then once they see they're in their deck,

now they're a little tempted when they see the stuff that's the more linear stuff. Like, oh, if I already have a couple walls in my deck and then I have a card that says, oh, I do this thing

and I benefit from how many walls you have. You know, for example, let's say you're drafting and you get a couple wall of omens because you're lucky. And then later in the draft you see the red wall,

the Vent Sentinel. You're like, oh, well I already have a couple walls in my deck. Wow, this thing could probably do two, three, four damage. And it's a wall, it can protect me. Oh, okay. Maybe I'll play that. So sometimes you want to do something so people are lured in because they start putting it in.

At the other end of the spectrum, you want to make sure that some of your stuff is not something that everybody wants at a high value, so in drafting, if you prioritize it, you can get it. You want to make sure that nobody wants it but one person, because then they get all of them. But you do want to make it such that it's a card that can

float a little bit, so people who want it can try to actually build certain deck strategies. And so, it's a gentle thing. You want a mix of cards, and you want to make sure that some cards get through to them so they have some idea that they can build something, but not so much so that it's repetitive. So it's tricky.

I mean, development's the one that has to balance that, but it is tricky. Okay, my final card as I'm driving up to Wizard, so I timed this correctly. It's called Wrap in Flames. It's a three-hour sorcery, and you do up to one damage to up to three target creatures,

and then those creatures can't block. So, this does a couple things. And this is, you can tell, what we call a dual-purpose card, where we wanted to make sure that we had answers to small early threats, because we wanted you to build up to do Battlecruiser magic.

But also, we needed a way for you to break through. So in some of the strategies, if you're close to winning, that you can break through to do the last few points of damage you need. So what we had was, and this is a perfect example where this will come up, where, okay, we have to deal with early cards, and we have to have a late breakthrough card, but we only have one slot. What do we do?

And one of the things you often do, and this is very, very common in design, is what we call dual-purpose cards, is where you go, okay, is there a way for me to make a card that holds together? And the idea is I'm burning these things, and so I'm not doing a lot of damage to them, but I'm doing enough things, and so, you know, I'm not doing a lot of damage to them, but I'm doing enough that they, they're distracted, and so the idea is like, okay, well, there's a lot of flavor here in saying, oh, I do a little bit of damage to them, and if I hit them, I, I distract

them, now they can't block, and so, for the early person, it's like, okay, I can destroy early things if I need to, but later in the game, it's like, oh, now I care about it as a means to get through, and it kind of does both things, you know, and that and that is an important part of design. In fact, one of the design skills that I would say is super, super important is the ability to do dual-purpose things because you are often, the number of times in design where you're tight and you have two things you have to do, but you have one slot,

that is a very, very common occurrence. It's a skill you get pretty good at. Okay, well that, my friends, in five podcasts was everything I had to say about Rise of the Odrazi. Like I say, it was a mixed bag. I think Brian did a lot

of very fun adventure stuff, and it was a really weird set, and I think Magic from time to time needs to do really weird sets. I think it was positioned at a good time to be a weird set. I wish we had carried through some of the mechanics a little more. I wish it wasn't as completely disconnected. Obviously, I wanted we had carried through some of the mechanics a little more. I wish it wasn't as completely disconnected. Obviously, I wanted allies.

I might have even carried over a mechanic, maybe more than one mechanic. I believe completely cutting her off in the same world was a mistake. Um, at the same time, uh, I kind of wish it had New World Order. Uh, it, it, as my time ahead designer, it's the only set during my set during my during the time we've had New World Order that didn't have New World Order and that I feel is kind of a failing on my part, so but on the flip side, yeah, it's one of the most

beloved drafting sets of all time and some of that might come from the fact that it just, there's lots of choices there's a lot of archetypes built in that was development, that wasn't necessarily not being New World Order, but anyway, okay, that is Razzle-Drazzy it was a lot of funpes built in that was development that wasn't necessarily not being new world order but anyway okay

that is Razzle-Drazi it was a lot of fun not only am I wrapping up Razzle-Drazi I'm wrapping up the Zendikar block so I'm not sure what block I'll go to next

but I've decided that I'll start doing these things in blocks so anyway thank you much for joining me and as much as I like talking about magic

even more I like making magic so it's time for me to go talk to you guys next time bye