Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #168 - Onslaught, Part 5

Episode Date: October 24, 2014

Mark continues with part 5 of his 6 part series on the design of Onslaught.

I'm pulling away from the school. We all know what that means. It's time for another Drive to Work. So today was my children's first day of school, so I was dropping them off. And so I'm coming... Luckily the school is right near my house, so you will get a full Drive to Work podcast. Okay, last we met, I've been talking about Onslaught, but I'm not yet done. In fact, I think last we met, I had gotten up to J. So I'm going to start speeding things along here. I don't want this to be an infinite number of podcasts. Okay, so we're going to start today with Kamal, Fist of Krosa.

So he's four green green for four three druid legend, and he has two abilities. So for one green mana, target land becomes a 1-1 until end of turn. And for two green, green, greens, so five total, three of which is green, creatures you control

get plus three, plus three, and trample. So for those that recognize his second ability, his second ability is exactly the spell Overrun. Overrun was originally in Tempest, my first set,

and it did exactly that. It gave all your creatures plus three, plus three, and trample. So originally, by the way, Kamal's original ability was that he could animate lands, and then he gave a bonus to all lands. He either gave all lands plus one, plus one, or plus two, plus two, and so his original playtest name was Kamal Landlord. And the idea was there was a lot of other ways in the set to animate lands.

So not only could he animate lands, but he also, he could reward you from other animated lands. But we decided that was a little too much, especially for the main character. Kamal, for those who don't know, is the main character of the story. He was in the previous story. So Odyssey and Onslaught are a continuation. So Kamal, Pit Fighter, was the main character. He was a red card in Odyssey, and this is the continuation of the story, but he has changed.

When we tend to do characters more than once, often we'll change their color to demonstrate how they've changed. And he started as a pit fighter, but he slowly became, realized that he needs to sort of be a champion of the world, and a champion of Krosa. So he becomes Kamal, Fist of Krosa. Anyway, one of the things that was fun about him was

that we were trying to find ways to feel like he's the same person, but yet he has a different feel to him. But anyway, he definitely is... He was very red in his red incarnation. He's very green in his green incarnation. But he is actually a pretty fun card.

And he definitely encourages you to play a lot of creatures, because he sort of stampedes for the win. So you want to have a lot of little creatures. Next, Crowson Tusker. Five you want to have a lot of little creatures. Next, Crowson Tusker. Five green and green for a 6-5 beast, and it cycles for two and a green. If you cycle it, you get to go get a basic land and put it into your hand. So this card,

later on, when I get to it, we this is Onslaught, and then there was Legions, and then there was Scourge. In Scourge, Brian Tinson, the lead designer of Scourge, messes around with what we call land cycling. This is a precursor to that. This is definitely the idea of, here's this creature, and I can use this creature,

or if I choose to cycle it away, it helps you get land. Now, you also get to draw a card. So it's sort of like, you get helps you get land. Now, you also get to draw a card, so it's sort of like you get to go get land and cantrip, so you actually get two cards when you cycle this, because you get a land and the card you draw from the cycling. But the idea of this card is it's a giant

big beast, but it costs seven mana. So later in the game, it's very valuable to you, but earlier on, when you actually need mana, you know, it's nice in that it bookends, and it's definitely, it's the same sort of space that Brian will later explore a bit more in Scourge.

Next, Lava Mancer Skill. So Lava Mancer Skill is an enchantment, an aura, enchant creature, for 1R, and the enchant creature has tap, deal 1 damage to target creature or player, and if a wizard, the enchant creature also gains tap deal one damage to target creature or player. And if a wizard, the Enchanted Creature also gains tap due two to target creature. So there's a bunch going on here. Let me talk about this.

So first off, this is still back before Enchanted Aura. So it actually said Enchanted Creature on it. The Aura technology hadn't come yet. So this is interesting in that this ability, it does two abilities. First is it grants basically the prodigal sorcerer ability, or now the prodigal pyromancer ability. But remember, this is before that had really been cemented

as a red thing. I think what happened was when Alpha came out, Richard Garfield made a prodigal sorcerer. And it was a blue card, and it tapped and did damage. And Richard kind of liked the idea that, well, it's just little small, you know, little small effects. And as a wizard, we want to see blue doing wizardy-like things.

And so, well, we'll let blue do little things. It doesn't do big amounts of direct damage. But eventually we realized it was just kind of antithetical to blue, and that blue having any direct damage is not really what blue is supposed to be about. And so eventually we moved this ability into red. So Prodigal Sorcerer became Prodigal

Pyromancer. In fact, the first time we made Prodigal Pyromancer was in Planar Chaos, which was a color shifting set, where all the cards on the bonus sheet were all cards that existed in Magic, but redone and reconcepted in a different color.

And so Prodigal Sorcerer was redone as Prodigal Pyromancer. Now that's one of those alternate reality things that became real and ended up getting into magic. But this is the first time, or very, very early time, where we're toying with it in red. I mean, clearly, red could always do it, but this is definitely us going, okay, previously, like in Urza's Saga, we had made this ability as a blue card.

It's an orc. Well, it's a prodigal sorcerer, so you become a prodigal sorcerer as a blue card. Now you see it slowly shifting to red. You can see this in the beginning. One of the neat things about magic, to go back and look at its history, is you can kind of see decisions we make and watch it start pushing in certain directions. One of the things I'll do today, and I do this in general when I sort of look through old sets, and when I see little hints of places that we ended up going, I try to

point them out to go, here's a little seed of what we were doing. Now, this card also has another function, which actually in some level was its main function, which is, fine, it's a Tim, not a bad idea, you may play it, but if it's a Wizard, it does two damage to creatures. And that

really is where this card shined in Limited which was, this was, are you playing a wizard deck? oh, well maybe you want to consider playing a red blue wizard deck yeah, I guess a red blue wizard deck so this was set up to be in a color combination where you might want to do some stuff that you might not normally do

and that this was one of the things we like to do is give you cards that sort of, if you take it early, it sends you down a path. And that path is something unique to that card.

But you want a couple cards like that and the drafters sort of go, ooh, maybe I want to go down this path. And if you got this card,

you know, early on, or if you took Wizards early on, you could opt into red and go the blue-red path for the, there was a Wizards deck

that revolved around drafting Lava Mansions skill. Next, Lightning Rift. So it's one R, one and a red for an enchantment. When anyone cycles a card, you may pay one to do two damage to target creature or player. You can shock anything. So this, I talked about this in my very first podcast on OnSlot. This was the card that I made to demonstrate the entire concept of maybe cycling could be a trigger. And as I talked about, one of the things that was neat is saying cycling is pretty modular as they go, meaning there's no reason to play multiple cycling cards in the same deck. And that card like this definitely said, you know what, maybe you want to do that.

All of a sudden, if you pick, like I talk about drafting, if you pick this card up early in the draft, you want to get your hand on every cycling card you can. You might play cycling cards that you would not normally play, but because it's in this deck, you'll enable it. The other interesting thing about this card that we've moved away from is this is still at a point where we look at everything, meaning this card doesn't trigger off you cycling. It triggers off anyone cycling.

And so it did this weird thing where if you got it out, your opponent really had to be careful about when they cycled, and they would try to cycle when you were tapped out so that you couldn't make use of this. Oh, I should also point out, when I originally made this card, I didn't put a mana on it. I mean, it cost a mana to cast, but I didn't put a mana on its activation. And then

playtesting showed us that it was really strong. It's funny, Astral Slide somehow didn't get the activation cost, and Lightning Rift did get an activation cost. And Astral Slide would prove to be the more troublesome card, I think, because it didn't have the cost. In general, one of our new strategies

is we tend to err toward the size of having costs, that normally when you get effects and they're just free, degeneracy often follows, so we're more likely these days whenever we're even remotely on a repeatable thing, we usually put mana on it.

Next, Misformed Dreamer. 2U, 2-1 illusion with flying. And for 1, it can become any creature type of your choice or end of turn. So there's a bunch of Misformed creatures. All the Misformed creatures have the ability, you know, 1, choose a creature type, become that creature type, or end of turn.

So it was this ability. Remember when I told the story about how I came in and gave some advice to the design team? This cycle of, not cycle, but these cards, they were all in blue. They were in the file at higher rarities, and I said, you know, this was the glimmer of, I saw a little bit of tribal. This was what said, oh, well, these are really cool. And my problem was, I liked these cards a lot, but at the time, there just wasn't that much tribal in the set. And it's like, okay, it's neat these become any tribe,

but, you know, it'd be cool if it meant something. And then as we upped the amount of tribal in the set, all of a sudden, these things started becoming much more interesting. It's like, oh, well, whenever I play them in, whenever I need something, they can become something to help. And they did a lot of cool, fun things. Next, mobilization. So this is an enchantment for two and a white, so three total. Soldiers have vigilance, although it wasn't keyworded yet, so it said soldiers didn't tap on attack.

And then for two W, you can make a one-once soldier. So this is definitely an example. So one of the things about soldiers is, we like the idea that soldiers came with armies. That soldiers weren't big, because we supported a bunch of different creature types, a soldier being one of them. And so the idea of a soldier was, a soldier beats you because it created an army.

It's not that any one soldier was particularly that powerful. The strength of soldiers lies not in the individual soldiers, but in the soldiers together. And so what this card was trying to do, it just helped you. Like, this is like, you know, this was a rare. It's like, okay, you get this card, this thing will come pumping our soldiers. This card makes sure you have soldiers. It also gives all your soldiers vigilance, so it allows your soldiers to be both offensive and defensive at the same time. And the idea is that it's not that you, like, if I have overwhelming forces, it's not that you can't kill some of my guys, but some of them will get through.

And that a lot of the way white works is the idea of the way it rewards the army is it makes a lot of little guys, and then it has rewards, usually swooping rewards that affect everybody. Okay, next. Mythic Proportions. Four green, green, green, so seven mana total, three of which is green. Enchant Creature at the time, not Enchantment Aura. So Enchanted Creature gets plus eight, plus eight, and trample. So one of the things we had done is during Urza's saga, we had made a cycle of cards, which we called the Make Me Cycle.

Where it's like, make me a Sarah Angel, make me a Sanger Vampire. Where what they were is, they were enchantments or auras that you put on a creature that helped turn it into a famous magic iconic creature. And those were very popular, and they tended to make things plus three, plus three plus three plus four plus four so we decided I mean this is really

just one of you know a one of but we're like okay let's let's really see how far we can push an aura and this is the first time

I believe we've ever made something this big I mean we later would go on to make some big stuff as well but this is the first time just sort of like bam

you know it turns whatever it is it turns into a dangerous, dangerous threat. Because even if it's a 1-1 vanilla creature, it's now a 9-9 trampler. And if it's bigger, it's just even more

dangerous. Okay, next. Nentuko Husk. So this is a card we don't always call it Nentuko Husk, but we make it a lot. So Nentuko Husk is a card we don't always call it Nantuko Husk, but we make it a lot. So Nantuko Husk is a 2 and a black for a 2-2 zombie insect. The reason is the Nantuko were insect creatures, and he's dead, so he's a zombie insect.

And you sacrifice a creature to give it plus 2, plus 2 to end a turn. So this is one of those cards, the reason we keep reframing the card, is this is one of those cards that seems really simple on refining the card is this is one of those cards that seems really simple on the surface and it does all sorts of crazy good things. It does lots of good things. One of the things that we were trying to do with the Cleric deck

was the Clerics and the Zombies made use of Sacrifice in different ways. Zombies had the ability to generate a lot of Zombies, which you then could use as fodder, where clerics tend to sacrifice for effect. But anyway, and also, black also had regeneration, not regeneration, well, has regeneration,

but had reanimation abilities and stuff. But Nentuko Husk is just one of those cards that, like, we don't always call it Nentuko Husk, but it just works in a lot of sets. It's definitely one of those cards that, like, seems very simple, but when you actually start interacting and mixing, it just mixes really well. I mean, one of the things you look for when you're making a set is making sure that your cards kind of, like, have a nice, clean surface value,

but then do a lot of things. They interact in a lot of neat ways. And Nentuko Husk definitely does that. Nosy Goblin. Nosy Goblin is two and a red for two, one goblin. Tap, sack, destroy target face-down creature. So here's an example of something that we really don't do. This is kind of out-of-color pie. So one of the things that we've shifted away from is red no longer destroys.

Red does direct damage. If red wants to kill a creature, it does direct damage. That means that one of the problems red tends to have is it's not good at killing big creatures. Now, since the face-down creature's a 2-2, I mean, this card in modern day would probably do 2 damage to target face-down creature. The only difference there is...

Well, I guess it's not different, because if you face it, this thing would fizzle if you get a face-off, guess it's not different, because if you face it, this thing would fizzle if you get it face-off, because it's not a face-on creature. You had to use it before, you know, the idea of this thing is I use it, and if they could flip it off, they could stop it. But it definitely...

Anyway, good example of, like, something that's kind of red and close to, like, it's in the ballpark of red, and it just did two damage, it would be red. But at the time, notice we have cards like Fiss red, and if it just did two damage, it would be red. But at the time, notice we have cards like Fissure. Red has some cards in the path that destroy creatures, but we've shifted away from that.

That's not something red really does anymore. And the reason is we really want to differentiate red from black. I've talked about this before, that red and black, and separately, white and green, are the two color pairs that overlap the most, and so we've been extra careful to try to separate them. Next, speaking of color pie breaking violations, Oblation, two and a white instant.

Shuffle target non-land permanent into its owner's library, and then that player draws two cards. Oh man, this does all sorts of things white's not supposed to do. First off, white is not supposed to get... Shuffling permanent into a library is destroying the permanent. I understand they might draw it again, but they might have another copy and draw it. It is essentially just destroying it. And then it does this thing, which I'm not a huge fan of, which says,

well, I destroyed a permanent, so hey, have some cards. And one of the things in general is we've got to be careful. I don't like white having super, super efficient removal, and the answer to white's super efficient removal is, I'm going to give you something in return for this. I do not believe white gets to break the color pie because it gives the opponent stuff.

You know, letting the opponent draw is not particularly white, and destroying permanence is not particularly white. So this is one of my pet peeves. On top of that, I also don't... This is the whole tucking thing that goes on in Commander where... Anyway, I don't like the tucking rule as a little side note. Okay, we will not go straight.

We'll keep on. We'll keep on. Oversold Cemetery. It's an enchantment for one and a block. At the beginning of your upkeep, if four or more creatures are in your graveyard, return one of them to your hand. So this is a fun card that allows you to sort of constantly regrow things, regrow creatures.

And I don't know, the flavor's kind of cute. Like, oh, we don't have enough berries. Sorry, you gotta take back your dead. This is definitely the card that, I'm a Johnny, for those who don't know. That's the psychographic, and I'm not pretending to be a Flameswalker. I like making fun, weird, wacky decks that just do cool things.

People go, what does that deck do? And this is the kind of card I like. We can just do lots of cool, weird things with it. Now, this card was good enough that I believe Spike also played it. But it's definitely a Johnny Spike card. Next, Patriarch's Bidding. Three black black for a sorcery. Each player chooses a creature

type and it reanimates all creatures of the chosen type. So the idea of this card is it rewards you for playing a singular creature type. Because it reanimates one creature type. Now it does this weird thing that we don't tend to do anymore. Like it's not that you pick a creature type and then everybody reanimates one creature type. Now, it does this weird thing that we don't tend to do anymore. Like, it's not that you pick a creature type

and then everybody reanimates the creature type of your choice. It's that each player chooses a creature type. So, usually this card is effective because if you care about it, odds are your opponent doesn't care about it. I mean, they might, at this point in Standard, because Onslaught was not, a lot of people did care. But it was just us trying to make a card that played into it.

My memory of this card, by the way, is we had a thing called the Wizards Invitational. Hold on a second. And the Wizards Invitational was an online-only event in the spirit of the Magic Invitational played by Wizards employees, all Wizards employees. We now do the Community Cup that's like that in which half is the community and half is Wizards. But this event was all Wizards employees. All Wizards employees. We now do the Community Cup that's like that, in which half is the community and half is Wizards.

But this event was all Wizards. And so what I did is I had the audience build me my decks. I mean, I tweaked them a little bit. But one of the ones we were playing was, I think... I think it was a tribal format, where you had to pick a tribe. And so I ended up playing Legends. Because remember, at the time, Legends were a tribe.

They were not yet a super type. They were still creature type. And so my deck was all about just playing these crazy, crazy Legends. And a lot of them would get discarded in my graveyard. And then when I played Patriarch's Bidding, yeah, my opponent got something. I mean, we were playing a tribal

format, so they got stuff, but I got giant, huge legends, because my deck was all about sort of discarding cards to do things, and that, when I would cast this card, I would just, like, I would kill you in, like, a turn or two. I would just have this giant, giant

army of legends. But anyway, that's what I remember. This card reminds me of that deck. That deck was a lot of fun. Actually, I think I went 3-0 in that format.

Yeah, for those that care, it was a 15-round round robin, and I went 8-7, which I was very happy with because winning the majority of my games

is good for me. Next, Prowling Pangolin. I have no idea what a pangolin is. It's a beast, apparently. Three black black beasts, six five. When it enters,

you have to sack two creatures or sacrifice the Prowling Pangolin. I have no idea what a pangolin is. Maybe we made it up. Sometimes we don't make things up. Sometimes we do. I find it funny. Sometimes you're like,

Ketelblipis, that's a cute name you made up. No, that's actually a great mythological thing. We didn't make that one up. The pangolin, I don't know. I don't know if pangolin is some made-up thing. I have literally no idea. But this is definitely the idea of black, you know, I get larger things for the cost of sacrifice.

Also, you'll notice that one of the sub-themes of Onslaught, because tribal is the main theme, is that there's a lot of cards that sort of reward you for having a lot of creatures. We are trying to encourage, sorry, trying to encourage, we're trying to encourage a heavy creature environment. And so we definitely had a lot of cards that kind of rewarded you for having

lots of creatures. Ravenous Baloth. Two green green for four four beast and you could sack a beast to gain four life. So, this card proved to be, this was a tournament tier card, a very well card. So one of the things at the time was, if I remember correctly, what was going on? I do know that there was a period of time where you wanted to be careful not to have creatures that

I'm trying to remember there's a period of time where you didn't want to have creatures that could be easily killed and so you tended to have creatures that either couldn't be killed outright or that you could gain advantage if they tried to kill them and I know that Ravenous Bailoff was played during that time it's interesting that a lot of people also played Ravenous Bailoff was played during that time.

It's interesting that a lot of people also played Ravenous Bailoff. It's not that they played a lot of beasts. The only beasts were the Ravenous Bailoff, but just having a four mana 4-4 that, you know, when it was going to die anyway, often can gain you four life. Remember, by the way, this is back during the time when damage was on the stack,

which meant that I could block your creature and deal four damage to your creature and sacrifice my creature and get life off of it, which you can't do anymore. And by the way, this is a good example of why not having damage on the stack is more skill testing than damage on the stack. Because with damage on the stack, if you attack with a creature in which,

let's say you attack with a 4-4. Well, I could block with my 4-4. In the old world, I block with my 4-4 to kill your creature, sack my creature, get 4 life. There is no decision. That's what I do every single time. Now I have to make a choice. Do I want to kill their 4-4?

Do I want to stop the damaging game 4 life? What do I want to do? I can't just automatically do the damage, kill the creature, and get the life. I have to pick what I'm doing. Now in this particular case, because it's a 4-4, more often you'll kill the creature, and get to life. I have to pick what I'm doing. Now, in this particular case, because it's a 4-4, more often you'll kill the creature, but it's the point of

that having to make decisions about how best to do things leads to better gameplay. Next, Riptide Replicator. So the Riptide Replicator was X and 4 as an artifact. As it comes into play, you choose a color and a creature type,

and then it comes into play with X charge counters, where X is what you paid, and then 4 and tap make an XX token of the creature and color type you chose. So if I say I want red goblins, and the X I put 4, then I'm going to make 4, 4 goblins, 4, 4 red goblins. This was definitely something we were making

because we were trying to sort of enable people to do what they want and have fun sort of mixing and matching. Now, the Riptide Laboratory, those know your story, is where they created the slivers. I can't remember the story exactly, but Wrath got overlaid with Dominaria, and so they see the slivers. I'm trying to remember the story exactly, but Wrath got overlaid with Dominaria,

and so they see the slivers, and they were very fascinated by them, but most of them were dead, so they started replicating their own. And when you replicate slivers, it's like one of those horror movies where you see them doing it early in the movie, and you're like, what are you doing?

Yeah, it didn't go well. But anyway, there's a whole bunch of slivers on FlutBlock. So if you'll notice that if you put, if you name slivers with your Riptide Replicator, you can make lots and lots of little slivers, which are really good in a sliver deck. So it was definitely designed so that story-wise, this is where the slivers got made.

So if you do it with slivers, it works well. The other thing, by the way, that I really enjoy is I enjoy the fact that we let you pick a creature type that you could make what you want. Now, one of the things that's funny, at the time, silver border cards, the only way that silver border cards affected actual black border cards was all the creature

types were legal. And so you could name cow or chicken or whatever you wanted. And then they made a ruling that took that away. I forget when they did that, but it saddened me. If I want to make a blue chicken, let me make my blue chicken. Why can't I make my chicken?

But anyway, now officially... Now, if you're at home and you're not in some sanctioned tournament and you have a replicator, make a chicken. Why can't I make my chicken? But anyway, now officially... Now, if you're at home, and you're not in some sanction tournament, and you have a replicator, make a chicken. Do it for me, make a chicken. And say, I proudly make a chicken. They'll go, that's not a support creature type. You go, I don't care. Anyway, I don't care.

Okay, next. Rorik's Bladewing. Okay. He is three red, red, three red, red, red. Rorik's Bladewing. Okay. He is three red, red, three red, red, red, so three red,

six mana total, for six, five, dragon legend. Once again, legend, still a creature type. Flying haste. So, I'm trying to remember,

I don't know how he plays in the story. Most of the ones in the story were pit fighters. Maybe he was a pit fighter, I don't know, a dragon pit fighter? I'm not sure where were pit fighters. Maybe he was a pit fighter. I don't know. A dragon pit fighter? I'm not sure where he played in. But he was...

If you'll notice, one of the things that we did in this set, and it really paid off, is there are... A lot of the legends were designed to be playable and constructed. In fact, Pro Tour Onslaught,

which was in Venice, won by Osip Lebedevich, it was Onslaught block constructed, and it might be the Pro Tour with the biggest battling creature. I mean, it was a Pro Tour all about getting out giant things and battling with giant things, and it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. And Roriks did very well there. All the legends did well.

They were just like, blah, blah, giant legend, giant legend, giant legend. Anyway, it was pretty cool. Okay, my last card for today, because I'm almost to work, is Screaming Seahawk. Which, by the way, for those that don't know, the Seattle football team are the Seahawks. So this being called the Seahawk probably was not purely coincidental. So it's for you for a 2-2 bird that flies. When it enters the battlefield, you can search your library for another copy of Screaming Seahawk.

So this was us goofing around this territory. You'll see us goofing around more of cards that kind of replaced themselves. There'll also be a version, for those who know your Callblade history, we would make some cards that not only got you one, but got you all of them. And the reason we did that was

instead of each time letting you get one, we're like, just do it once. Cut down on the shuffling. If each one gets you the next one, it's going to get you eventually, let's just have less shuffling happen. That's how that came to be. But anyway, this was definitely us messing around.

The birds were a supported type, and so this was definitely meant for the bird deck. It's funny, because I had always been a big fan of birds, and in Invasion, I'd made a card. It ended up being called Carry Airy Keeper, which was meant to be this bird lord.

And then it got really nerfed in development. And I think I'm going to do something. I apologize for... I tried to make a bird lord. I tried and I failed. So sorry. And then I said, one day I'll make you a better bird lord. And so this has a bunch of bird lords. Mostly because I felt so sorry. And then I said, one day I'll make you a better bird lord. And so this has a bunch of

bird lords, mostly because I felt so bad. Okay. So we're up to S. I did pretty good from J to S. So we will have one more, I can tell, we have one more podcast for On Slot, and then we will wrap it up. But as you can, for those that heard me put my parking brake on,

I am now parked in my parking spot, which means yes, guys, this is the end of my drive to work. So thanks for joining me, and I'll talk to you next time for the final OnSlot podcast. Bye-bye, guys.