Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #164 - Onslaught, Part 2

Episode Date: October 10, 2014

Mark continues with part 2 of his 6 part series on the design of Onslaught.

I'm put on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today, well last time, I started talking about the design of Onslaught. And today I'm going to continue. So today, last time I did the overview, and today I'm going to talk more about the actual card-by-card stories. And what I like to do is, as I talk about cards, I hit a lot of the issues that maybe I didn't talk about in the big picture as I hit the small picture. So we're going to start in A with a Phaedo Alchemist, a 1U, 1, 2 wizard that you could tap or untap. You could tap or untap target artifact or creature and head morph U. So last time I talked about how when the rules team came to me, as I was trying to sort of branch out what morph could do,

I came up with the idea of activated abilities, or triggered abilities. When you un-morphed, they triggered and had an effect. We saved those for legions, but the one thing I did do is we did put some stuff in this set that had tap abilities. So that's kind of allowed us to have a little bit of a sense of having a spell,

but they weren't, instead of being abilities, just the creature naturally could tap to do it. And so this is another example of a creature where if you untap it, it could tap things, and so that might be useful. That your opponent might be planning the attack, figuring out what you can or can't attack with, and sort of planning ahead, not knowing that that morph you have, oh, secretly, for just a single blue mana, could tap one of their creatures.

And notice, for example, it has a very low morph cost, and that's very much on purpose, so that essentially for you, you could tap something. But, and the neat thing about this is, it's a 1-2 creature, you could tap something. But, and the neat thing about this is it's a 1-2 creature, which means the act of using the morph ability actually shrinks its size but you get a little bit of

use out of it. So it turns it from a 2-2 into a 1-2, which it goes down. But because it has this ability it allows you to sort of get some interesting use. So one of the things about morph that we definitely looked at is a lot of times morph's more upgrade, but sometimes you can trade.

It's one of the advantages of having a 2-2 rather than a 1-1 is the base ability is there's a space to go down from it. Next, also in the Ephedo, Ephedo Grifter. 2-U, 1-1 Wizard. Tap two untapped Wizards to tap target permanent. So one of the things, the reason I wanted to point this out, they're very similar from a feto. So one of the things is I wanted to stress that

we were trying hard to make sure that the different creature types had different themes to them. Well, one of the things we wanted to do was we wanted to focus on a bunch of different creature types and we wanted them each to have their own deck, meaning there's a certain style of play they have. So wizards, we decided were, they were blue, they were

going to mess with you. They were going to tap your stuff, they're going to counter your spells. They're just kind of very much, you know, tricky blue wizards. And another thing that we tried to do, one of the things that we wanted is, before this happened, before Onslaught,

tribal mostly meant I grant an ability to my creatures of a certain type. If you go to Alpha, you have Goblin King, you have Lord of Atlantis, you have Zombie Master. Each one of those, which were the very first tribal lords, is kind of like, oh,

well, if I have Goblin King in play, my goblins are stronger. If I have Lord of Atlantis in play, my merfolk are stronger. One of the things we tried really hard in Onslaught is to come up with some ways to make creatures have value in a slightly different way. So here, for example, they're part of a cost.

It's like, well, I need to have wizards in order to do something, but I'm using them. If I tap them for this effect, well, then I'm not using them. The good thing about wizards, and the reason that tapping wizards made a lot of sense is, in general, wizards are small. Having a mechanic where you had to tap beasts to do something is a lot more, a larger

cost, because beasts are big enough they want to attack. A lot of wizards are 1-1s and 1-2s, and so tapping them isn't that big a deal. You'll notice when we get there that we also mess around tapping with soldiers, also that are small, but we'll get there. Next, Arcanus the Omnipotent. Three U U U for a wizard legend. Tap, draw two cards, two blue and a blue. You can bounce Arcanus back to your hand. You can return him to your hand. So one of the things that was going

on in this block, in fact, both Odyssey and Onslaught, was the idea of the pit fighting. So one of the ideas behind the story was there was a place where wizards would fight with magic, kind of to recreate what you, the players, were doing. And it was called pit fighting. And the idea was these two people would get into an arena, and then using whatever magic they could, they would fight. And some of the fight was actual fighting, and some of the fighting was magic. Kamal was, Kamal Pit Fighter, originally, was one of the best pit fighters. And he was the main character of our story. And what happens in Odyssey, he was Kamal Pit Fighter.

And then here, we'll eventually get to it, he was Kamal Pit Fighter, and then here, we'll, we'll eventually get to it, he became, uh, became Kamal Lord of, Lord of Krosa? Fist of Krosa? Um, I, we'll get there. Uh, anyway, um, Arcanus was one of the Pit Fighters, and he was supposed to be a really crafty and dangerous blue Pit Fighter. We're like, okay, well, what does the dangerous Pit Fighter do? Um, and of course, as, as we like to like to do sometimes, we like referencing the classics, right?

What does he do? How's he good? What if he just taps to Ancestral Recall? Oh, that seemed really good. And then we gave him a second ability that allows you to bounce him to your hand for four mana. So he's hard to kill because if your opponent destroys him and you have the mana, you can save him. He's also pretty expensive. He's six mana, three of which are blue. So the reason we can make a creature that's tapped and stuff to recall is, well, he's hard to get out. But he's a 3-4 creature.

So also notice that he was a wizard legend. So a little history for you. At this point in time, legend was still, Legendary was still a creature type called Legend. So when Legends first came out, that's the first set to have Legends in it, Legends was the third expansion of Magic. So Alpha came out, and then there was a Baby Knights, and then Antiquities, and then Legends. Legends introduced the idea of legendary creatures. Now, interestingly, the lands and other things were legendary, but the creatures were legends.

And so, this is still at a time where they were legends. So, this is wizard legend. And that would later change, but not for a little bit. Next, artificial evolution. Oh, wait, I'm talking about blue cards first. Not like A cards.

Blue cards starting with A. Artificial evolution was an instant for a single blue, and you could change a creature type. So essentially what it was is, remember in Alpha, well, maybe you don't remember, in Alpha there were two cards. One was named Magical Hack,

and one was named Sleight of Mind. Magical Hack changed a land type, so you could change swamp to island or plains to mountain. And Sleight of Mind changed a word. You can change blue to red or green to black. Now, Sleight of Mind and Magical Hack were permanent. Once you changed something, it was forever changed. Official Evolution didn't do that.

It just did it until end of turn. And the idea was there were a lot of memory issues, and a lot of the reason you want to use this as a surprise is they do some bigger factor, do some activated ability, and ha-ha, what you thought was going to happen did not happen. And sometimes you can do some pretty fun stuff where not only could you shut off their things, but by changing it to something that you cared about could turn on your things. The thing to remember is, during this time, I believe,

have we had a changeover yet? One of the things that happened is, at some point we changed over to having tribal stuff just affect your stuff. And I don't think, I think as an onslaught we hadn't yet made that change, that things that granted bonuses granted... Let me check for a second. So during Onslaught,

if I gave a bonus to a certain creature type, I gave a bonus to all creatures in play of that creature type. But I also got to count all creatures in play. So there was some tension that what we do now in Tribals, we just count your own things, because it's kind of weird to be playing and going, oh, I have a goblin. Is it bad for me to play my goblin?

Do they have cards that care about goblins? It's more like, look, I want to play goblins, play goblins. The version we do now creates a little less tension where you're not quite sure what to do. And I know there are people that love that tension. A lot of other people didn't like the tension. And we decided that it wasn't a necessary tension for the game. Next, Orification. Two white and white for an enchantment.

So the enchantment said whenever a creature dealt damage to you, it gets a gold counter. If it got a gold counter, it turns into a wall. And when it leaves, when the Orification leaves, you remove all gold counters. So a couple things about this. First off, it turns things into a wall. Yes, at the time, at the time of the set,

walls had rules baggage, meaning a wall... We now have Defender, and all walls happen to have Defender, but once upon a time, having a wall as your creature type meant you had Defender. Defender wasn't even spelled out. Just walls you couldn't attack if you were a wall. So by turning things into a wall as your creature type meant you had Defender. Defender wasn't even spelled out. Just walls you couldn't attack if you were a wall. So by turning things into a wall, the flavor of this card is I have the spell up, anything that touches me gets turned into gold.

And as long as the spell lasts, they stay gold and they're gold statues. You can block with them, but you can't attack anymore. So does anybody know where this spell came from? This was me doing a white version of a card called No Mercy from Urza's Legacy. So No Mercy was a black card that said, whenever a creature damages you, kill it. I'm like, well, this is white. White's not quite as mean as black. So instead of killing you, it paralyzed you. Now the interesting thing is is when I made this spell

it wasn't orification, it didn't turn you to gold my spell was just I think whenever you got hit you got a counter on you and you became a defender I think in my head my idea was more like oh well I had this sort of aura of pacification or something and like when you come

I sap away your desire to want to hurt me and so you're now a pacifist, and you no longer will come and attack, but, uh, creative team said, nope, turn your gold, so, I mean, it was cute, okay, Aven Brigadier, 3WWW, that's 6 mana, for a 3-5 bird soldier flying, all other birds get plus 1, plus 1, all the soldiers get plus one, plus one. Okay, so there's a bunch of things about this card to talk about. So the first is, there's something that I started doing during Odyssey that we continued during Onslaught, which was, so early on, when magic first started, things had one creature type. So when Alpha came out, you were something. In fact, the reason a lot of people ask why Goblin King wasn't a goblin, when

clearly in the art, he's a goblin, and the answer was, Richard wanted to have lords. Interestingly, we no longer support lords, but Richard wanted to have lords, and so, since he only could have one creature type, he made it lord and not goblin. So, the, anyway, I felt that that was wrong.

We had space to fit more than one. So what I did in Odyssey is I messed around with a few creatures that were hybrid by nature. So like the Aven were bird soldiers. They were both bird and soldier. And so I continue that here. The reason the Aven worked out pretty well is we had some bird tribal and we had some soldier tribal. And it allowed us a way to get some...

The Aven allowed us to get soldiers not just in white, I mean, this card's white, but also to get some soldiers in blue. Because blue naturally doesn't have soldiers, but blue does have Aven. And since Aven were bird soldiers, it was a nice way to get some soldiers in blue. Because blue naturally doesn't have soldiers, but blue does have Aven, and since Aven were bird soldiers, it was a nice way to get some soldiers into blue. So the other thing that this card is messing around with

is the idea that, oh, I'm two different creature types, and maybe I can cross the streams. The thing that made this card interesting is, if you were playing a bird deck, and birds were white and blue, you could play this creature, and you could use him in a bird deck. If you were playing a soldier deck and birds were white and blue, you could play this creature and you could use them in a bird deck.

If you were playing a soldier deck, now soldiers were more white, but there was a little bit of blue in the Aven, you could use this as a soldier thing. Or if you're making an Aven deck in which they're all bird soldiers, oh, then even better. And I think you'll see, one of the things that's very interesting about this set is, the set after this, which is Mirrodin,

is when we did the global creature type change. We went to the race class system. Now, a lot of people always ask, why is it that the set after the set that should care, did you change to race class? And the answer is we kind of figured out during Onslaught, but not early enough to be in Onslaught. And by the time we figured it out,

we didn't want to make the change mid-block, so we made it right after. Obviously, it would have been awesome to have that change done during Onslaught. It would have thematically made sense to introduce the change. It would have added some extra dynamism to the set, but anyway, we didn't really figure it out.

We needed to do it until Onslaught, and by the time we figured it out in Onslaught, it was too late to have it in Onslaught, and by time we figured it out in Onslaught, it was too late to have it, you know, to have it in Onslaught itself. It just, we figured it out a little too late. Like I said, this card also shows how this thing boosts not just your birds and your soldiers, but all birds

and all soldiers. We've since changed that. Okay, next. Baron Moat. A land. Enters the battlefield tapped. Tapped for black. Cycling for black. So I talked about this last time. I just wanted to talk about the cycle a little bit. This is the first alphabetical one that has a cycle.

The idea was we had had cycling lands. So Richard originally, just to refresh this, Richard came up with cycling. Richard wasn't on the design team for Onslaught. Where did cycling come from? on the design team for Onslaught. Where did cycling come from? Cycling came from the fact that Richard had created cycling. I'm sorry. Cycling was a repeat, but where did cycling come originally? So cycling originally was in the first set that had it was Urza Saiga, but it actually was designed by Richard in Tempest Design. And we had a bunch of cycling cars, but not a lot. Just a couple.

I mean, I don't even know if it had a mechanic necessarily. And then we decided it was pretty cool that there's too much stuff going on Tempest, so we held some stuff back. And then Mike Elliott, who was on the design team for Tempest, then used it a year later during Urza's Saga. Yeah, okay. But anyway, it was coming back. We were bringing back cycling.

And last time we had... The first time we had done it for simplicity purposes, we kept cycling all the same. So all the cycling in the first block that had cycling, or the saga, did cycling for two. We actually kept it very simple. Which is, by the way, which is almost baffling in the fact that at the time,

we didn't think mechanics were going to come back. Meaning, we didn't do it to save space for it, which sort of feels like we did. But I think more what we did, we were just trying to make it simple. But anyway, we're like, okay, bring cycling back. You know what? We can handle some cycling costs other than two. And the lands had always been a little on the weak side. And so we decided that we wanted,

because we wanted to make cycling matter in a different way, we wanted, one of the things like I explained last time, we were trying to make some linear cycling decks, which meant decks that said, hey, play a lot of cycling. And the way we did that is by making some cards that triggered off when you cycled things.

And in order to make those decks work, it helped a lot to have the lands, the cycling lands. And so we rejiggered them, made them a little stronger, and put them in. And they ended up seeing a lot of play because of that. Okay, next is Battering Craghorn. So it's two red and a red for a 3-1 beast. It has First Strike and Morph, one red red.

So Battering Craghorn was one of the more frustrating morph cards. Why? It seems so simple. And the answer is that red had I don't remember the other one. When I get to it I'll talk about it. But red had two common morph creatures, one of which turned into a 3-1 First Striker, and the other one, which was really good on the attack, but I think couldn't block. So anyway, you had a creature that one of which was harmless on defense, and one of which was dangerous on defense. and one of which was dangerous on defense.

And also, on offense, this was very dangerous. It was a 3-1 first striker. You didn't want to block this one. But the other one was something you could block. And so whether or not to block it became a very tricky thing. When they attacked, if they were playing red, and they attacked with a morph creature, sometimes the right move was to block it, and other times the right move was not to block it, but you just didn't know. And it

wasn't like the blue ones you didn't want to block and the red ones you didn't want to block, or vice versa. In Red Common, there were two, and one you really didn't want to block, and one you really did want to block. And so it was frustrating, and frustrating in a way that there's no way for players to be able to figure it out. So one of the things we learned from that is be careful when you do morph so that you want players to sort of learn things about certain colors and certain mana requirements. And so you can look and see, oh, they have so much mana available

and they're playing this color that you can have some guess at what they might be doing so that you could play around more. So that was important for us. Next, Battlefield Medic. 1 W for a 1-1 Cleric. Tap, prevent the next X damage to target creature where X is equal to the number of Clerics you control. I'm sorry, the number of Clerics in play, not you control.

So Clerics, so I talked about this earlier with Wizards. So Wizards and Clerics and Soldiers, especially, we messed around with tapping as a resource. And the reason that we did that was that they tended to be on small things. Now, soldiers were white and blue and... What else were soldiers? They might have been in red. Clerics were white and black. So one of the interesting things about clerics was they were in a really interesting color combination.

It just so happened that the two colors that had clerics were white and black. Well, that's an interesting thing. So we tried to make the clerics have a deck in which if you played white and black, they did some neat things together. So the white-black deck definitely was kind of a bleeder deck where you played defense

with the white clerics, and you kind of got offensive with the black clerics. We'll get to that in a sec. Interesting note is this card is common. This is pre-New World Order. Samhite healer-ish type thing of which this is. And this is more than just Samhite healer because you can prevent a lot

of damage. Samhite healer can prevent one. This thing can prevent, depending on how many clerics you had, could do all sorts of things. It could be really really, could be really brutal in the right deck, in the cleric-based deck. Okay, next. Biorhythm. Biorhythm is a sorcery for six green greens, so eight mana, and it resets all players' lives

to be equal to the number of creatures they control. This was just made as sort of a quirky card. Clearly there was a very, very strong creature theme running through it because of the tribal. And so most people had creatures. It was something you could sideboard in against a creatureless deck. I mean, you're playing green, hopefully.

Although you got some creatures. And it ended up being an interesting sideboard option. I think it saw a bunch of multiplayer play, and I mean, it definitely does some weird things in different formats. Next, Blackmail. So a sorcery for a single black. Target player reveals three cards and discards one. So this card has a very interesting story.

In fact, this card, it's a design story that starts in another game. So for those that have never heard of it, and I've mentioned it many times, I'm sure you have, I made a mass-market trading card game 15-plus years ago called Mood Swings. And the idea was I wanted to make a trading card game that was much, much simpler than Magic, something we could sell in mass market. Anyway, I was making a card, and my wife and I used to play a lot. The game obviously has never been released. But my wife and I play all the time.

And, in fact, a little tiny story about Moonswings. When my daughter, my first daughter was born, Rachel, we had two middle names that we liked. I really liked Emily, and my wife really liked Diana. And we both liked both names. And so we used to, at lunch, play Mootswings over lunch. And every day at lunch, we'd play best two out of three. And so we played a little game over a series of lunches where we were playing for letters every day,

since Emily and Diana each had five letters to it. And everybody thinks that I was taking advantage of my wife, who almost beat me. I was down four to one. She had D-I-A-N, and I had E, and I came back. So, anyway, so there was a card. Originally, it was like coercion, where I look at your hand, and then I get to pick

whatever card I want. Laura really hated that card. And what I realized was the way the game works is you only, you draw a hand of cards and you just play the hand of cards. You never draw more cards. Back then that's how it worked. Anyway,

and so the fact that once I looked at your hand, it took a lot of surprise out of it so Laura wanted a little surprise I said well what if I don't see all the cards what if I just make you show me three now later on

when you only had three cards sometimes it seemed the whole hand but early on it was a card that kind of got stronger as the game went on because you start with a full hand of cards

and it goes down over time but anyway I made this card and I made it for mood swings Swings, and it played really well in Mood Swings. And I said, you know, it's kind of interesting that your opponent gets a choice, but not total choice. And so I made this card, and it's a playtest name.

I'm trying to remember what it is. Mood Swings, all the cards are named after emotions. So I know the playtest name of this card was named after the Mood Swings card, but I do not remember it. It's something like Suspicion or something but anyway a magic card

that had origins outside the game of magic next Blistering Firecat one red red red so one and three red four mana total for a seven one

Trample Haste it's a cat elemental I'm sorry it was a cat should have been a cat elemental we'll get to that in a second it is a cat elemental. I'm sorry, it was a cat. It should have been a cat elemental. We'll get to that in a second. It's a cat. And then end of turn you sacrifice it. So it's kind of like a ball lightning from the dark. Which was a... Ball lightning is a

6-1 trample haste sac at end of turn for RRR, for Red Red Red. And so this basically was similar, but it had a morph cost of Red Red. So you could play as a morph, and then BAM

for Red Red, attack them with a 7-1. And so essentially, the neat thing about this was once you chose to use it, you lost it. So it's sort of like, I can have a reliable 2-2 creature, but if I really need to explode, I can do that.

And if I get them low enough, I can surprise them with a 7-1. Sorry. Okay. Oh, by the way, this thing was a cat. So the card was literally a cat made out of fire. And so the reason I say...

I wrote elemental down, not because it was an elemental, but it should be an elemental. So it was a cat. One of the things that's funny, looking back, that I wish we had been a little more exacting. Oh, well, I guess the problem was

at the time we weren't doing all that many duplicate things. That I convinced him to do, like, bird soldier, but that was, like, a special avian thing. And I think at the time we weren't as conscious of doing multiple creature types so it's like well it looks like a cat so I guess it's a cat but I'm like well but it's also an elemental it's made out of

fire nowadays it would clearly clearly be a cat elemental so I apologize elemental people we did not give you this card as an elemental which we should have by the way a little side note if I had magic to do all over again I think give you this card as an elemental, which we should have. By the way, a little side note. If I had magic to do all over again,

I think one of the things I might do is spells that are clearly created out of magic, of which a creature made out of fire maybe you argue is. I might have had elemental creatures, just like we had artifact creatures, in alpha. I mean, if I started in the beginning game, just that, like, you make an illusion, it's an enchantment creature. You make a creature that's clearly made out of

magical energy, that is an enchantment creature. And that's something we had introduced to the game from the beginning. If we'd done that, I think we could have defined enchantment creatures in a way that we could do vanilla. Anyway. Well, things that were not.

Okay, next. Bloodstained Mire. So this is one of the fetch lands. So basically, you tap, you pay one life, you sack it, and this particular one gets you a swamp or a mountain. So I think the original versions of these lands were done in Mirage.

And I think they were paid to life. The idea being is it's a dual land that makes you pick which one it is when you play it, but instead of remembering what it is, you go out of your deck and you get the proper thing. The reason that these ended up being very good is because things like dual lands that have creature types, like both the original alpha dual lands and the pain lands from Ravnica have their land type on them. So if I say search for a swamp or a mountain, oh, I could go get bayou, which is a mountain and a forest. You know, I could go get... You can get things pretty much with the right mix of lands. These lands let you get whatever color you need.

So they color fix. They don't just get you black or red. This one doesn't give you black or red. It can get you any color. And that's why they become very powerful. The funny thing is, when we did them in Mirage, two life was just a little bit much, and so we decided to redo them, and the fetch lands were done at one life.

And obviously, since... When I'm recording them, and the fetch lands were done at one life. And obviously, since when I'm recording this, you guys do not know this. You will find this out this very weekend. But you obviously now know that we brought the fetches back. So the onslaught fetches are back! They're in concept Tarkir. So you guys get to play with these again.

And we know you guys have been asking for them, so we're happy to bring them back. Next, the Cabal Archon. 2B for a 2-2 Cleric. B, sack a Cleric. You drain a player for two, meaning a target player loses two life, you gain two life. So I explained earlier that Clerics were in a weird space

that the two colors that supported them was white and black. Now, the neat thing about this is white Clerics creatively and black clerics creatively are very, very different. White creatives are all about helping and healing. Black clerics are about kind of the opposite, about hurting, you know. White clerics use their knowledge to heal you.

Black clerics use their knowledge to hurt you. And so it's kind of two sides of the coin. And so to make the cleric, what we wanted to do was, okay, the white clerics will do white things, and the black clerics will do black things, but the way they work nicely is, the white one protects you and sort of slows down your opponent,

while the black ones are the ones that finish them off. So this is a good example where, you know, you can use the cleric to prevent damage, and then this cleric is a win condition. It can help you win as you're holding them off. Next, Cabal Executioner. Two black black for two two cleric is a win condition. It can help you win as you're holding them off. Next, Cabal Executioner. Two black black for two two cleric. Whenever this creature deals combat

damage, your opponent has to sac a creature. And this has a morph cost of three black black. So the idea here is, and one of the things we did, I think black and red we did more, is the idea of what we call saboteur, which is if I get in and I hit you, I do something. So if I have a morph, ooh, do I want to block the morph?

You know, the morph might be a big creature that would destroy my creature if I block it. Oh, or it might be a saboteur that'll do really bad things if I don't block it. And I said earlier, by the way, that we had a problem with the common red. It's not that I don't want morphs doing different things. I want the player to make educated guesses based on what colors are they playing, how much mana do they have available, that you can sort of, you know, how have they

been playing, that I want you to figure out how things are going from the style of play. Having two morph creatures that un-morph at the same cost, in the same commonality, in the same color doesn't allow you to play around them or figure out what's going on. It just makes you flip a coin. Here, though, you know what? Block had a lot more things that punish you for letting it hit them.

So if you're playing against black, and they have a bunch of mana open, wow, you're much more inclined to want to block. Where something like red sometimes, or green, green is an even better example. Green has giant things that can un-morph. So if you're playing against green, be careful. A lot of what it's going to do is un-morph giant creatures. So maybe if you're playing against green, maybe you let those morphs hit you. Maybe you don't want to block those morphs.

But against black, oh, no. Black's going to punish you if you let them hit you. Okay, the last one for the day is Cabal Slaver. Two black for two one cleric. Whenever a goblin deals combat damage, your opponent discards the card. So this is something we're doing that's a little different. Notice, it's a cleric, but it helps goblins.

So this is something that we did a little bit in Onslaught. You'll see us do a lot more in Lorwyn when we come back to do a strong tribal set, which is clerics was a supported type. You could make a cleric deck. But this cleric didn't necessarily go in a Cleric deck. This Cleric went in a Goblin deck. But it allowed you to say, oh, well, maybe I'm going to

care about Goblins and Clerics, you know? It allowed you to cross the streams a little bit. And, I mean, it was a neat flavor, and I liked the idea that, you know, someone leading the Goblins and wanting the Goblins themselves, and so most of the cards in Onslaught that helped you in some way were of the creature type that they were helping. But we liked it a little bit, and we were experimenting a little bit with this, of the idea of, like,ught that helped you in some way were of the creature type

that they were helping. But we liked it a little bit and we were experimenting a little bit with this, of the idea of like well here's a cleric that's helping a goblin. Or maybe you want clerics with goblins. Anyway, obviously I only got to C. I'm not even done with the C's yet, so we've got a few more podcasts left. But I know you guys like the card-by-card stuff, so

I try to tell as many stories as I can. But, I've just parked my car, which means that this is the end of Drive to Work. So I'll talk to you guys next time. Thanks.