Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #165 - Onslaught, Part 3

Episode Date: October 10, 2014

Mark continues with part 3 of his 6 part series on the design of Onslaught.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so the last two podcasts, I've been talking about Onslaught. The design of Onslaught, obviously, and as of the last podcast, I've been talking about the cards. I've been doing card-by-card stories. So when last we left, we were in C, so in C we shall stay. So the next card is Callus Oppressor, which is for one blue and a blue. It's a 1-2 Cephalid.

And then, what do you do? When it enters the battlefield, you can choose a creature type. You can tap to steal something, and then as long as it remains tapped and you can choose not to untap it, you get to keep that thing. So it's kind of like Old Man and the Sea.

It's one of those cards that lets you lock down and tap things and steal things, except when you play it, you have to decide what creature type you're going after, and then you are locked into that creature type. So one thing to point out, it's a cephalid. So what happened was, the previous year in Odyssey, I had this wonderful idea of changing up all the creature types and not doing the normal things. And then we got to Onslaught

and said, oh, we want to do a tribal set. And we want to do all the normal things people would expect. And so the problem we ran into was, uh, uh-oh. So, we changed a lot of things over. The weird thing, story-wise, is we didn't leave the continent of Otaria,

which is where it all takes place. So, I think the story moves from, like, one section to a different section, because, like, apparently the goblins weren't a lot in this section, but they were in that section. Anyway, we just sort of, uh, I don't know, we made it work. But you'll notice there's a little bit of nods to some stuff from the previous year, like Cephalid, just to sort of say, well, look, we are in the same relative place.

So that's why you get a few things like a Cephalid here or there. Next, Catapult Mafter. So Catapult Mafter. So Catapult Mafter is a white card. It costs three white white for three three soldier lord. And you can tap five untapped soldiers to exile target creature.

So I have a bunch of issues on this card. We'll talk about it. First off, I should mention it's a soldier lord. We do not support lord as a creature type anymore. I will come out and publicly say, it makes me a little sad. I like Lords. I think the reasoning is

that they want the classes to be more jobs. I don't know, and Lord wasn't really a job. I'm not going to try to completely understand the rationale, but we've done away with Lords, and so this card no longer, I believe no longer is a lord, or maybe we support lord on the cards that have lord but don't

make a lord anymore. Anyway, so this guy, you had to tap five creatures to exile a creature. So the other issue I have is, I'm not a big fan of white unconditionally getting rid of things. I like white much more either getting rid of things, but there's an answer to it, or it's restricted in the rid of things. I like white much more either getting rid of things, but there's an answer to it, or it's restricted in the kind of things. In general, one of the things white's supposed to have trouble with is,

you're on your side, you're not harming me directly. You're not harming my creatures, you're not harming me. You're doing something that maybe is positive for you, but white's sort of like, well, I can't really justify, you know, if it was hurting me, I could justify it, but it's like, oh, you know, like White in this quandary of like, what do I do with a creature on your side that gains you life? It's like kind of helping you, but not really actively hurting me, that White's supposed to have a problem with those kind of things,

and cards like this make that not so. So I do like the idea, by the way, and I talked about this, how wizards and clerics and soldiers are all doing this, of having you tap creatures at a cost, meaning one of the things we were experimenting with in general was just finding different ways to make creature types matter. Um, and you'll see a lot of the stuff we're goofing around with here will lead, like, in Ravnica to stuff like Convoke, where the idea of a creature being a resource is something you can use to help cast spells and things. Um, I mean, here, obviously, it's a resource in that you have to use it to activate the ability,

but it's kind of all connected, and it's playing around in a similar space. And Onslaught really was the first set to play in the space. Because we were doing the tribal theme, it allowed us to really kind of dig deeper. One thing in general to understand is that the way magic tends to work is that everything kind of, we play at a surface level and then we focus

where to, you know, we move our focus each year and then wherever we're focused we dig deep. And the neat thing

about digging deep is you just find stuff that you normally don't do. Once you say to me, okay, I can make creature types matters in all sorts of ways,

I can start finding things that I might not normally stumble upon because normally you only have a couple cards that care and so you tend to do, okay, I can make creature types matters in all sorts of ways, I can start finding things that I might not normally stumble upon. Because normally, you only have a couple cards that care. And so you tend to do the things that we do all the time, because it's fine, people like them. And it's not until you do a set and we're focused on it, we're digging deep, like, okay, we've done that. Like, one of the things I wanted to do was find ways, and by the way, everything when I'm talking about this, Mike Elliott and Mike Dine were the design team. A lot of what I'm trying to explain is I would give suggestions and I would help,

but they did a lot of heavy lifting. I don't want to undercut all the work the two of them did on this design. I definitely came in at one point and helped sort of push in a certain direction, but then they took the ball and ran with it. And one of the things that Mike Elliott's really really good at is extrapolating is once you say to him we're playing with this area

he will go to town to figure out different ways to use that area and so once he was on board on doing tribal he went to town and he found a lot of cool ways to use tribal so sometimes when I tell stories I definitely tell them from my point of view only because that's where the stories are from in my mind because I know the things that I was involved in.

So I want to be clear here that the design team was very, very involved and did a lot of the heavy lifting and a lot of the work. I was definitely involved in the big picture of definitely pushing in certain directions, but I was not the person designing all the cards. There was a very dedicated and talented design team doing that. Okay, next, Catapult Squad. One W for two one soldier. Tap two untapped soldiers.

Deal two damage to target attacking or blocking creature. Now this I can get behind. So this is an ability that we do to white, where white can attack attackers or blockers, and the flavor is, once you mess with me or my creatures, I will get involved. I like to say that white's like the Federation, where it's like, it doesn't fire first,

but once you get involved with it, it's like, okay. Once you're getting in a fight with it, white's like, okay, you're involved, and now I can affect you. Another thing I didn't talk about before, which is interesting, is that this card, for example,

says tap two untapped soldiers. Notice that this is a soldier. So really what the card says, okay, tap me and one other untapped soldier to do one thing, and then I need multiple soldiers to do something else. But the first one is kind of at a discount, because the card itself is a soldier. Also, because it's tap an untapped creature, that is different than a tap symbol. So when you play this creature, on the turn you play it, if it was tap, do something, you couldn't use it. It's summoning sickness.

But if it causes tap two untapped creatures, that is not a tap symbol. So you can use this ability the turn you play it. And so this definitely is something where you can play it, then right away on defense, this card could get used. Okay, next, Centaur Glade. Three green and green for an enchantment. Two green and green make a 3-3 Centaur token. So just like Cephalid, this is another carryover from Odyssey Block. One of the green elves had gone away,

and in their places we had Centaurs, and we had Menentuko, which were insect druids. Much like the Aven were bird soldiers. I was messing around with trying to have multiple creature types. And so Aven were always bird soldier and the Nentuko were always insect druid. Sometimes they had a third ability too. Definitely need testing the waters of what we could do with creature types. So Centaur Glade

was just a token maker. We had a bunch of these. You'll see one. We have one red coming up. I'll talk about it a little later. But the idea essentially is one of the ways to... In general,

Onslaught was a very creature-centered... even more so than normal. I mean, obviously creatures play a big role in magic. But in this environment, Onslaught was more creature- so than normal. I mean, obviously creatures play a big role in magic, but in this environment, Onslaught was more creature-centered than normal, and so having some token makers, especially repeatable token makers,

center-related would be pretty good. Especially in limited, Scarf is great. Okay, next, Choking Tethers. Three you instant, tap up to four target creatures, or for one you, you could cycle it and tap one creature. Okay, well I talked about this in my first podcast, but let me dig in deep now that we actually got to an example of this kind of card. So one of the things,

when I was messing around with ways to experiment with cycling, one of the ideas was, what if you could generate effects, but the effects were smaller versions? So essentially, the way this card works is, oh, well, for three of you, I can tap up to four creatures, or for one of you,

I can get a cantrip that just does one. And so essentially, in some ways, it made these into split cards. It's like, I have a choice between two things. And because cycling was involved, one thing was always a cantrip. It was always like, I do something. But we wanted to make sure that the cycling effect, because what we didn't want to do is,

while it was a split card in nature, we wanted the two things to be related. We didn't want to say, do thing A, or thing B that's a cantrip that's got nothing to do with thing A. You'll notice that when we do these cards, it's like, do thing A, and then thing B, which is a cantrip, is a smaller version of thing A, or thing B that's a cantrip that's got nothing to do with thing A. You'll notice that when we do these cards, it's like, do thing A, and then thing B, which is a cantrip, is a smaller version of thing A. So it's kind of like, do I want to trade this card and get just a little bit of it, or do I want to keep it to get the full thing?

And this is a really good card, because sometimes you want to tap up to four creatures, and sometimes you want to cantrip and tap one. And the key to this card in general is, if what you need is one, well, you might as well cantrip it. If what you need is more than one, well, use that ability. Next, Clone. So Clone is a 3U. At the time, it was creature type Clone.

We've since retroactively made the Clones into shapeshifters. So a Clone, for those that are unaware, comes from Alpha. So a Clone, when it comes into play, you choose a creature in play, and then the clone becomes that creature. Clones were very popular early on. Alpha had a clone, it had a card called the Suvin Doppelganger, which was kind of a clone that kept changing every turn. And what happened was people loved the clone,

and so we, the rules team for a while couldn't handle copying, and so we were told rules team for a while couldn't handle copying. And so we were told not to make copying cards. And then during Earth's Saga, I decided that we should make clone. Clone would be awesome. So I tried to bring it back.

And we got so far as to get the art. The art came in. In fact, the art came in copying, doing a parody of the original clone. The original clone art showed two creatures

that were facing off against each other that were identical. And so we had an artist basically and both clone and super doppelganger did the same shtick. So we tried to do the same thing in Earth of Saiga and at the last minute the rules team came to us and said, ah, we're not sure we can make

clone work. And so we ended up changing it last minute to Morphling. That's what Morphling was originally. It was Clone. And we gave an ability to sort of match the idea. We wanted the flavor of a shapeshifter, so we gave it like five abilities to try to capture that. But anyway,

finally, the rules manager at the time said, you know what? We can do Clone. I figured Clone out. And so we were allowed to bring Clone back. And Clone really, really works well in this set, because this set is all about kind of creature identity, what creatures are. And so the idea that I could use this and then copy whatever I have to make

more of the, whatever creature type I cared about, made clone actually a very neat card in this environment. Next, Contested Cliffs. So it's a land, taps for one, and for red, green, and Tap, you choose a beast, and you choose one of the opponent's

creatures, and then they each deal damage to the other. So this card is kind of the precursor in some ways to Fight. Technically, it's not exactly Fight, I believe because it assigns the damage, qualities of damage of the creature

such as Death Touch, which can apply in Fight, do not apply here. But it pretty much, and you notice it's in the two colors that Fight now exists in. So this card pretty much was some of the early experimentation with Fight.

I mean, there are definitely cards like Lurker and cards where the creature could fight with other creatures, but this is the first time where you've got to pick something and kind of force a fight between your creature and their creature. Given you had to fight with a beast, now this card is part of a cycle

of lands that care about creature types, and I'm not sure if all the creature types got one. A lot of the creature types got one. And they varied quite a bit. They're a loose, loose cycle. All that meant is they tapped for one colorless,

and they had a colored activated ability, usually with a tap, that did something creature type related. This one allows your beast to fight. Okay, Crafty Pathmage. 2-U for a 1-1 Wizard. Tap. Target creature with power 2 or less is unblockable this turn.

Okay, identify this card. So this card, you might know best from Alpha as Dwarven Warrior. So in Alpha, Richard made a card that dwarves are known for being tunnelers. So he made a card, a dwarf, and the idea was it can make small things unblockable. The flavor Richard was going for is he digs tunnels, and only small things, you know, power two or less is kind of representative of being small. So only the smaller things can fit in the tunnels. Hill giant, he's too big, he can't fit in the tunnel. So for a while we decided that, you know what, there should be a blue ability.

Red is more about things can't block, or blue is a little bit more about being unblockable so this is us sticking in blue and then finally we decided it was one of those things that just blue didn't need blue had plenty of ways to do unblockability and it has ores that grant unblockability and it has lots of evasion granting and red which really doesn't have a lot of evasion

really needed this ability so we ended up moving it back although we changed it. We made a new card with a goblin rather than a dwarf. Which is quirky. It's whole flavor was building time. Anyway, this is a good

example of how the color pie somewhat influxed, which we'll try things. It made a lot of sense that this was blue and not red. Blue more does this kind of thing. But it's kind of like what happened with fog, where we moved fog over to white. And you're like, white doesn't need fog. Green needs fog. You know,

blue didn't need unblockability, or red needed unblockability. And so, sometimes we do that. We'll move it, and we're like, oh, okay, I see why it was there in the first place, and we'll move it back. Next, crown of vigor. So there actually was a cycle of crowns. I just wrote down the green one. So'll move it back. Next, Crown of Vigor. So there actually was a cycle of crowns.

I just wrote down the green one. So it's one and a green. All of them were one and a colored mana. It's an enchant creature, an aura. And back in the day, it actually said on it

enchant creature. For a long time, auras did not say enchantment on them. They said enchant in whatever the thing was. And at some point, we're like,

why is this the only creature that doesn't tell you exactly what it is? And so we said enchant in whatever the thing was. And at some point we're like, why is this the only creature type that doesn't tell you exactly what it is? And so we made enchantment and put enchant creature in the rules text. So crown of vigor gives plus one plus one to your creature. And then if you sack it, it gives plus one plus one to all creatures that share a creature type

with this creature. So what we're trying to do is make an aura that had extra value. So the idea here is, oh, well if I'm playing in a deck with a dedicated creature type, well, I can make one of my things bigger, but then I have the potential, the threat, to make everything bigger. And so

the card proved to be not ideal in that people would forget what was going on. The idea that I had something on the board that could really affect the board, but sitting as an ore, so it's kind of tucked under my creature where you can't see it, made people kind of not remember it was there. And so the crowns were not the greatest of designs. I mean, I know what we were trying to do, and our motives were pure, but the actual implication of how it played out was not ideal. In general, one

of the things that I've been very careful of is you want to make sure that things that are relevant to the whole board is something in which the audience is very aware of it. You want to make sure that they're substantial enough and they're visible enough that players see them. Putting on aura is tricky, especially when it affects everything, because this card, for example example could majorly change combat and I could have it tucked under my creature

which is kind of normally how people play it and so anyway I like the general idea though next Cruel Revival it's an instant for four and a black destroy target non-zombie creature and then put a zombie

from your graveyard into your hand so this card does a bunch of things. So one of the aesthetic things that I enjoy is the idea that, notice that it is putting one, that is two effects. One effect is take a creature in play and get rid of it, go to the graveyard. And the other is take a creature in the graveyard and bring it out. Not a perfect parallel, because the thing you're destroying is in the graveyard, and the thing comes back goes to your hand.

I think it was a power level thing. I think putting the zombie into play was just a bit much. But, and also the idea that the thing you kill isn't a zombie, and the thing you bring back is a zombie. There's a lot of nice parallels to the design that's kind of cool. This card also does something that we started doing a lot

more, but I think this might have been one of the earliest times of us doing this. In Alpha, Richard made a card called Terror. Terror destroyed target non-black, non-artifact creature. I think the reason Richard put the non-black rider on it was

literally a flavor thing tied to the card, which is, I scare you. Well, if I'm black, I'm kind of used to that stuff. Artifact, what emotions am I showing? So the idea was sort of like, well, I can scare you, but there's a subset that I have trouble scaring.

But that ended up getting grandfathered in and even to this day, although we do it less now, terror effects ended up, you know, things that destroyed creatures ended up having this non-black rider on them. And eventually we're like,

you know what? We like black having restrictions. It's better if it's killed. It just can't kill anything. But it doesn't always have to be the same restriction. And this is us for the first time going,

you know what? Instead of non-black, we're going to tell you non-zombie. Now it was baby steps. A lot of the creatures you're going to want to kill that were black were zombies. So, black still wasn't particularly good at dealing with black decks. But, not every black card was a zombie.

There were clerics and other things. And so, it was kind of a baby steps. Okay, we're not saying non-black. And moving a little farther away. Okay, next. Daru Encampment. Land, tap for one. W and tap, target soldier gets plus one, plus one to end your turn.

So this is like Contested Clutch. It's another one of those cycles where it taps for Colas, and with colored mana, it helps. This particular one helps soldiers. It's a soldier helping land. Okay, next. Daunting Defender. 4w33 Cleric. If a source would deal damage to a Cleric, reduce it by 1.

So if anyone remembers the mechanic Absorb from Future Sight. This is the earliest of us playing around with this. The flavor of preventing 1 damage from every source. This one's more exacting. It only does it for clerics.

But it's interesting to see that you definitely... One of the things that's fun, historically speaking, and I try to do this where I can, is kind of show stuff and like, hey, here's us doing something. And we would later explore with a little... We would do more with it a little later. But here's early

us messing around in that space. Next, Disciple of Grace and Disciple of Malice. Disciple of Grace costs one and a white. Disciple of Malice costs one and a black. They are both one-two clerics. Disciple of Grace has protection from white, and Disciple of Malice

has, sorry, Disciple of Grace has protection from black. Disciple of Malice has protection from white. And they both of Malice has protection from white. And they both have cycling too. So while we did new cycling costs, we didn't completely do away with cycling too. Here's a little what we call a mirrored pair where they are two cards that kind of mirror each other.

They're opposite. They're similar, but they're opposite. So here they're hating on each other. Each one is the same stats, but they hate on the opposite color. And the reason these cards have cycling on them, one of the things we like with cycling is, you want cycling cards where some of the time they're very valuable, but some of the time they're very weak. And so having a 1-2 protection for black card, if your opponent's playing black, really good.

If your opponent's not playing black, not particularly good. And so the idea is, I can put this in my deck, and if my opponent's playing black, I keep it. If my opponent's playing not black, I can cycle it away. The other thing that's fun about this mirrored pair is it played up one of the neat qualities of clerics, where everybody else, everybody else, all the other creature types, pretty much work in harmony. The goblins want to work with goblins. The elves want to work with elves. But in, but in the story, the clerics really have a conflict with each other.

Now, we designed them so there's a cleric deck. You can play the clerics together. But flavor-wise, the white clerics and the black clerics, you know, don't get along all that great. Okay, next. Disruptive Pitmage. 2U for 1-1 Wizard. For tap, counter-target spell unless your opponent pays 1 with morph U

in some ways this spell when it's in play just means that you're taxing your opponent all spells cost 1 more it's not a hidden piece of information but the cool thing is because it's morph, the first time you use it you get to actually

most likely counter a spell because your opponent doesn't know that you can essentially Force Spike. You can make them pay one more. So if you play the morph down, it has a U cost. In fact, a lot of what we did when we did morph cards, we were like, okay, well, what does this card play like when you play it?

And so this card is a lot like Force Spike, that when you use your one blue mana, it can counter your opponent's spell. And this is another example of a creature where it's a 2-2, so when you use the ability, it becomes a 1-1. So you're trading up a little bit bigger stats

for a little more utility. Next, Doom Cannon. Dun-dun-dun! That's a pretty awesome name that sort of evokes something bad's going to happen. So it's an artifact that costs six. As you play it, you name a creature type, and then you can sacrifice any

creature you want of that type and do three damage to target a creature or player. So one of the things we try to do, and this is a really good example, is what I'll call an open-ended tribal card, which means that it call an open-ended tribal card, which means that it's designed to play with any tribe,

not a particular tribe. A lot of our tribal stuff's like, I help goblins, I help elves. This card says, no, no, no. Figure out what you want it to do. Commit to a tribe. I don't care what tribe you commit to. But once you commit to a tribe,

I'm really good in any deck that plays a lot of the same card. And so we try to do a bunch of these of just sort of like, you know, you can adjust it. You get to customize it. This card doesn't say you have to play a particular creature type. Just you have to play one. And this card, by the way, wasn't even bad in decks that didn't completely focus. Especially if you had a means to make small tokens. I mean, this card

is priced more for limited than constructed, obviously, but in limited it was very good, especially if you had the ability to use it a bunch of times. Next, Doomed Necromancer. 2B for a 2-2 Cleric Mercenary. Black Tap Sac. Reanimate a creature card

from your graveyard to the battlefield. Meaning, take a creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield. Meaning, take a creature card from your graveyard, in your graveyard, put it onto the battlefield. So, I,

when I first started playing Magic, before I ever came to Wizards, there's a card called Hell's Caretaker that was, what set had Hell's Caretaker in it?

Legends, I believe. And it was a creature that you could... allowed you to sacrifice a creature to bring another creature back. And I had so much fun. I had lots of fun. And, in fact, not Survival of the Fittest,

same set. In Exodus, there was a black card that you could sacrifice a creature to get another creature, which you guys all know, and I'm blanking. Maybe I'll get it in a second. But anyway, I made that card because of my love of Hell's Caretaker. And I made this card because of my love of Hell's Caretaker. So this was definitely a card that let you sort of turn a creature into a reanimation spell.

That you could trade this creature for another creature. It's not like Hell's Caretaker where you couldation spell. That you could trade this creature for another creature. It's not like Hell's Caretaker where you could trade lots, just you could trade this one. The other thing that was done, I think Mike did this, I think the design team did this, maybe the development team did it, where they made it a cleric mercenary. So why a mercenary?

Because, if you go back a couple years in Mercadian Masks, we introduced the rebels and the Mercenaries. And the Rebels got a lot of fame and claim and did well at Pro Tours. Mercenaries, not so much. But there were people that liked playing the Mercenary decks, and so this was definitely a little nod to the Mercenary deck. One of the things about the Mercenary deck is instead of going up, you went down. Like Rebels, you got a small creature and got a bigger creature, then a bigger creature, then a big creature.

With Mercenaries, you had a larger creature that very cheaply got a smaller creature. And obviously, growing is better than shrinking. But this guy, being a little bit smaller and being able to get bigger things, played nicely into what's going on with the Mercenaries. So, throwing a bone to the mercenaries. Mercenary crowd. Next, Doubtless 1. So, this was a cycle.

I'm trying to remember how many there were. I think this was just a vertical, sorry, a horizontal five-card cycle. There were more than five races, but we just picked five. So anyway, this one is three and a white. It's a star star cleric avatar. They're all avatars. And it's power and toughness were equal

to the number of clerics you had. And then this guy had essentially what was lifelink, although this was before lifelink was a keyword. But each of the guys would have star star equal to power and toughness. Power and toughness equal to the number of the creature type in question, of which this was always one

and then I think about it because this creature is always the creature, the creature is at least a 1-1, it doesn't die when you play it if you don't have any of the creature because it is a creature and then each one of them had an ability on it back then our creature keywords were not as spelled out as much so we had more things

written out but essentially this was lifelink, so this is something that, in modern days, a lot of these cards are French vanilla, so we've since, you know, named these different things. Okay.

So, I will do one last card. What's my last card today? Dragon Roost! Oh, I said I'd talk about this, so I will. Dragon Roost is a red I said I'd talk about this so I will. Dragon Roost is a red card for 4 red and red as enchantment and for 5 red red for 7 mana

you get to make a 5-5 DRAGON! It's funny this is a rare card. There's not a lot of dragon tribal in this set. It's a little bit later in the block. Although not that much. But anyway,

it's just, we won some token makers. We made the 3-3 Centaur one in green. We decided to make a giant red one dragon maker. Once again, sometimes we make cards

that, like, thematically, it's creature tied, and, you know, this is a set that cares about creatures, but it's just a fun card. You know what's fun

about making, you know what's fun about having a dragon? Making a dragon to return. That's what's fun. So, and Dragon Roost is a popular card, especially in casual play. Or in environments where you get to 7 mana.

Like in Limited, this card can be very good. Because in Limited, you can get to 7 mana. In Construction, a lot of times it's harder. But anyway, it definitely was a popular card. Anyway, as you can see, I've gotten all the way to D. So I started today with C. And I got all the way to D. So I started today with C, and I got all the way to D. So that means I've got a lot more to do.

But luckily, I know these are popular, the card-by-card ones, so I will continue on. So you guys will join me next time when I do more of D, maybe even get to E. But I've now parked my car, so you all know what that means. Yes, it means this drive to work is over so thanks for joining me and I'll talk to you guys next time