Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #181 - Legions, Part 1

Episode Date: December 5, 2014

Mark Rosewater begins a series on the design of Legions.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, today is design day. So last time I talked about a set, I talked about Onslaught. So I'm continuing in the Onslaught block. So today I'm going to talk all about the 100% creature set, Legions. Legions. Okay. So, where to start? Okay, so, um, Legions, nicknamed Moe,

this block was Manny, Moe, and Jack, named after the Pep Boys, which is an auto parts store in the West, which many people have never heard of, so they made poor code names. Um, so this set came out in January of 2003, and like I said, it was 100% creatures. So where did that idea come from? So I don't know whether it was Bill's idea or Mike's idea. I'll give credit to Mike. I think it might have been Mike's idea, although it could

have been Bill's. But anyway, the idea was, what if we did a set with all creatures? Now it turned out that this set, the major mechanics of the block were tribal, which was all about creatures, and morph, which only went on creatures. And so the idea was, what if we could do a set with the gimmick being every single card is a creature? Now, it turns out there's not a lot of things that every card could be. Obviously, Allow Reborn, let every card be a gold card. Hypothetically, we could do every card as an artifact, maybe, but there's not a lot of things that the entire set can be.

Creatures happens to be one of them. So, the expansion symbol, for those that care, was a shield with two cross spears. symbol, for those that care, was a shield with two cross spears. And so the set continued Morph and Cycling and Tribal from the first set. It did add a few wrinkles, though.

The biggest thing is, I tell the story when Morph came around, so if you remember the Onslaught stories, the rules team had gone to Mike and gone to Bill, and they were sort of lukewarm on the idea, and they came to me, and I really liked it, so I had mocked up some cards to play with.

Well, one of the things I had done with morph was I made a bunch of morph triggers, which meant when you morphed it, or when you turned it from face down to face up, something happened. And we decided to save those because we were doing the all-creature set, that would be a way to sort of introduce some spell-like

effects into an all-creature set. There would, by the way, be a big debate, or a big... debate's not quite the word. There was a big argument about the correct way to make an all-creature set. So the design team was led by

Mike Elliott, and also included Mike Donais. They were the same people that did OnSlot. And the development team was William Jockish. He was the lead. And then also the team was Elaine Chase, who's the current senior brand manager of Magic. Mike Donais, who was the... There's always a person who's on both the design team

and the development team. Mike, by the way, was really a developer and not a designer. I mean, more of a developer than a designer. And Worth Wolpert, who now oversees Magic Online. So anyway, William really, really believed that if we're going to do all creatures, that we should shy away from doing creatures that acted like other types of spells. So one of the things about creatures is, there's a lot of ways to mimic spell effects with creatures. For example, if you do a creature that has

an enter the battlefield effect, it's a lot like a sorcery. Especially if the creature is minimal and the effect is big. If you do a creature with flash with an ETB, that's a lot like an instant. You could do a creature that has a globalB, that's a lot like an instant. You could do a creature that has a global effect. That's a lot like an enchantment. You can do artifact

creatures, obviously. That was allowable within all creatures. There are ways to do things that mimic a lot of stuff. Mike believed that was important because we had to fill in for things we were missing. William believed it was against the whole spirit of the thing. And the funny thing is it's not like we don't make those cards.

We make creatures in every set that have enter the battlefield effects. We make creatures with global effects. It's not like Mike was trying to add something that Magic didn't already do. But, anyway, there was much, much debate. I'll get into it a little later, but there was a big debate between the two of them

of how many creatures that were functioning as something other than a creature was the set supposed to have. The set had 55 cards, 55 commons, 45 uncommons, 45 rares. Okay, so I talked about morphs. The morph triggers got introduced.

There was more cycling and more cycling triggers that had been introduced in the first set, but it was built upon here and tribal continued there were a few new tribes added though the biggest of which was slivers got added in the story there's something called the Riptide Project

and they were trying to clone slivers and it didn't go well so for those who don't know Slivers were originally created by Mike Elliott in a set he made before he came to Wizards. And in his original set, it was called, what was it called, something spectral, Afterways. Mike's set was called Afterways. And in his story, there was a creature that fell from the heavens and broke into many pieces and the slivers were all slivers of

or pieces of this one greater person we ended up putting in Tempest we adapted to the Tempest story so slivers in magic ended up becoming they are shape changing creatures that share a hive mind. And so the idea is, if one of them has learned how to grow wings, anybody within a certain radius will learn that from him,

and they too can now grow wings, and thus they can fly. That's the flavor of what's going on, is as the slivered learn how to grow new appendages and things, they gain abilities. And so they can share that knowledge with the hive mind. But there's a distance in the story. That's how the Girard and crew manage to beat them, is realizing that if they separate them by a certain amount of distance, they lose abilities.

So slivers got added. We'll talk about it. There are a bunch of Slivers in the set also there's just a the third set Scourge

which we'll get to next time I talk about a design Scourge had a little bit of a dragon theme I think retroactively they put one or two more dragons in here

when they realized that Scourge was going to be a dragon thing so there's a little tiny bit of dragon things going on here Retroactively, they put one or two more dragons in here when they realized that Scourge was going to be a dragon thing. So there's a little tiny bit of dragon things going on here. Also, let's see. Okay, so the new mechanics was Amplify. So what Amplify was is when you played this creature,

you were allowed to reveal from your hand any number of creatures that shared a creature type with that creature, and then for each one that did, it came into the play, or came onto the battlefield with a plus one, plus one counter for each creature revealed. So, for example, I play an elf with Provoke, not Provoke, sorry, I play an elf with Amplify, I show you three elves in my hand, it comes into play with three plus one, plus one counters on it. And the idea for that was that a lot of times with all creatures, you're sitting

with creatures sitting in your hand. And the idea was that you could use those creatures to sort of have some effect. This is one of the earliest uses, by the way, of revealing as a cost. It's something we've definitely messed around more with, but this is one of the earliest cases of us doing that. Okay, next, provoke. Provoke's Provoke's a creature mechanic. Obviously, they're all creature mechanics. This whole set's creature. Although Amplify, in theory... No, Amplify only goes in creatures, and Provoke only goes in creatures.

Surprise, surprise. They're all creature mechanics in the all-creature set. Provoke says, when I attack, I get to untap target creature, and then that creature must block my Provoke creature. So this is the precursor to fight. The big difference here is it happens during combat and other creatures could join in.

So when I untap a creature and go, you must block me, A, you get to choose, oh, I think you have to block the provoke creature. So I untap you and you must block the provoke creature. But you could have other creatures join in on the fight. So normally with fight, you know, two creatures get in a fight.

Here, if I provoke a creature and attack, you could have other creatures join the fight. So it was a little different than fight, although it's an early precursor to fight. People keep asking us if we're going to bring provoke back. My answer is, now that we have fight, it's less likely. I'm not going to say no, but fight does a lot of the role of what provoke did. The final new mechanic was a mechanic called double strike, which obviously has become evergreen.

In fact, it became evergreen almost instantaneously. So I think I mentioned this once before, but really quickly, we have done a number of things called you make the card. We've done four so far, where the audience gets to pick and vote on a card, and they end up, through their votes, making a card that we put into magic. The very first card was called Forgotten Ancient, aka Mr. Baby Cakes, that was his design name. Forgotten Ancient, when we were trying to get abilities for it, people sent stuff in.

Somebody, I don't know their name, I wish I did, sent in the double strike ability. Now, the problem is, green does not get first strike. So it obviously did not get double strike. But we liked the ability so much that we held on to it. And once we found a place for it, which was in the set, we put it in. We liked it so much, it's become a staple of Magic. Okay. So, there are a couple other things going on in the set.

Like I said, we were trying to make sure that we were hitting some things we needed for gameplay. The set had a bunch of saboteurs. That's what R&D calls creatures that, if they hit you, manage to do things. Saboteurs work well with morph because they'll just hit information. Oh, should I

block it? Ho-ho! It's a saboteur. So they work well with that. And just in general, because we didn't have one of the tricks about only having creatures, meaning having no instants or sorceries, is there is less surprise. So we resolved

that in a couple ways. One is, we had morph triggers, which meant morph things could pop up and do things, so that had a surprise to it. We had cycling triggers, so we could do things in which you cycle cards out of your hands to produce small effects. That acted a lot like instants.

We had the saboteurs. That's more like sorcery, but you could sort of generate things that you could get through. So we did a bunch of things to make sure that while we didn't technically have any instance of sorceries, there still was lots of hidden information, because that was very important. And, by the way, on the tribal front,

here's all the tribes we cared about sometime during the set, was the tribal front, here's all the tribes we cared about sometime during the set. It was Beast, Bird, Cleric, Dragon, Elves, Goblins, Illusions, Soldiers, Slivers, Wizards, and Zombies. Most of those we had cared about in the first set. Dragons was us trying to set up the next set. Illusions was part of the story, because Ixador had made Illusions. Slivers obviously started in this set. Okay, so what happens in the story?

So if you remember last time, Ixador showed up. Ixador and his beloved, what was her name, Nevia? Anyway, they were both pit fighters. She gets killed, he gets distraught, goes out in the desert, realizes he has this power to create illusions. He creates a chroma and starts causing all sorts of havoc. Kamal has no choice but to band together with his enemies from the previous Black story, the Cabal,

and to try to stop them. Meanwhile, the Cabal has turned Kamal's sister, Jessica, into Phage, who is a person whose very touch is deadly. has turned Kamal's sister, Jessica, into Phage, who is a person whose very touch is deadly. We'll get to that when I get to the card-by-cards. Anyway, Ixodor gets killed, I think by Phage. I think Phage kills Ixodor, I believe.

But anyway, Akroma has it out for Phage, I believe, because Phage killed Ixodor. And there's a major fight between Akroma and Phage. And then they morph together, along with a third creature called Zagorka, which I don't know, I'm not quite sure what she has to do with this. But they morph together into Corona the False God, which shows up in the next set, not in this set. Okay, so like I said, the design was led by Mike Elliott. The development was led by William Jockish. So for those who don't know,

I've talked about William a bit during our Who's Who, so I won't get too much into it. Go listen to the Who's Who Wave 2 if you want to hear more about William or Mike. They're both Wave 2 people. William definitely had a very peculiar way that he would look at things, and

in William's mind, he felt like we committed to a creature set, and what he thought that meant was, we shouldn't have creatures that mimic things that aren't creatures, even though magic all the time does that. It's not like it's odd to see a creature with a global effect, or a creature with an enter the battlefield

effect, you know, that those are normal things. And what Mike understood and the rest of us understood was that part of the gimmick of having all creatures is you just want to say, look, every single card says, you know,

creature on it, you know, it's a creature. The fact that the creatures could do different things to fill in the void was the point. We weren't trying to show that we could the experiment wasn't doing creatures and not doing other spell type effects it was trying to mimic a game of magic but only using creature cards

anyway, in the end William eventually sort of got worn down by the rest of R&D oh by the way the pre-release card was Feral Throwback so it was a premium Feral Throwback down by the rest of R&D. Oh, by the way, the pre-release card was Feral Throwback. So it was a premium Feral Throwback.

So another little bit of trivia is Legions was the first set to have a booster pack with more than one image. Up until that time, every single booster release had a singular image. Which is, if you think of old sets, there just wasn't all image

on them. And this was the first set to give you three different pictures. Is that true? I read this, and I wrote that down, and now I'm thinking about it, and I'm like, did any of the large sets ever do multiple pictures? This might be the first small set with multiple pictures.

My reading said this was the first set to do that. Maybe it was the first set. I'm trying to think back to things like Ice Age. I think maybe large sets had multiple pictures. It might have been the first small set that had multiple pictures. To correct my little trivia I wrote down.

Okay. There were a couple cycles. Let's talk about cycles. There was the Gem Palm Cycle. So, Gem Palm Avenger, Gem Palm Sorcerer, Gem Palm Polluter, Gem Palm Incinerator, and Gem Palm Strider. When I list them, by the way, it's in a Wooburg order, white, blue, black, red, green, for those that do not know.

These were all creatures that had cycling, and when you cycled them, they had a small triggered tribal effect. A small triggered tribal effect. That's not easy to say. So the idea essentially was that you could play them, but if you cycled them, they would help you, they were tribally connected. And what that means is they normally counted the number of things or affected things

that they had a tribal connection. Next, the invokers. So the invokers were all creatures that had decent bodies that you could play, but for seven mana, did something big. So the invokers were Starlight Invoker,

Glintwing Invoker, Smokespew Invoker, Starlight Invoker, Glintwing Invoker, Smokespew Invoker, Flamewave Invoker, and Stonewood Invoker. So the idea of these creatures was we wanted to make sure that there were some endgame things. And so what we did is, in fact, invokers have become so popular, you see them in Magic a lot now. It's something we just do. That if you need to get an endgame, what you do is you make commons or uncommons

that have a decent body that you want to play normally, just that are normally you would play. They pass the vanilla test, as they say. But, late game, and these they all cost 7. Usually invokers have to have a large effect but cost a lot of mana. The idea is later in the game

they click on and start to do stuff. So the idea is, if you get these in play early on, they're efficient beaters, usually. But later in the game they click on and start to do stuff. So the idea is if you get these in play early on, they're efficient beaters, usually. But later in the game, they click on and become really big finishing cards. And they tend to do large effects. That's why they cost a lot of mana, but they do large effects. And a lot of people

I know, when they first saw these, would poo-poo them a little bit, because it seems like, oh, that effect that I could get for just, like, let's say it was a card. You know, I want to do three damage. Well, Lightning Bolt is three damage for one mana. And even if you think that's expensive, two mana

for a spell and a card. But this is a creature you already got that's worth playing and that's worth putting in your deck in Limited, and just turns on all of a sudden late game when you have mana, just starts creating effects. And it took people a while to understand the value of that. Invokers, by the way, have become such an important tool to design and development that we literally refer to these things as invokers.

We'll say, oh, I think that your set needs invokers. What that means is you need creatures with high activated costs that can allow you to late game help make you finish. Next, the Muses. So the Muses were a rare cycle. So invokers, by the way, were a common cycle. The Muses were a rare cycle of creatures that all had an enchantment-like effect. In fact, this got added in a bit later.

I think it was added in development. Or maybe they were added in development, taken out by development, and put back in. These were definitely there to be splashy enchantment-like effects sitting on creatures. The idea was they did big, rare, splashy enchantment effects. And these were very, very popular. The muses were one of the biggest hits of the set. Okay, and then there were three more cycles. There was a common 1-1 sliver cycle, an uncommon 2-2 sliver cycle, and a rare 3-3 sliver cycle. So there were three sliver cycles, and they

got bigger as you went along. When I go card by card, I will hit some of the slivers and talk about them. The set had one straight up reprint, meaning same name, which was White Knight Came Back. It's funny, because White Knight is one of those cards that seems beloved by R&D, even though protection is all sorts

of problems. It just has a great name it's got a good flavor it's just like I'm the White Knight anyway it got reprinted in the set we did do four pre-constructed decks so there was Elvish Rage which was a mono green deck

there was Morph Mayhem which was a white blue deck there was Sliver Shivers which was a white blue green deck and there was Zombies Unleashed which was a black deck so-green deck. And there was Zombies Unleashed, which was a black deck. So, no red deck, which seems odd. Normally, we make sure to cover all the bases. I don't know if the previous decks had maybe been a little heavy in red,

so they felt it was okay to not have red. It strikes me as a bit weird that there was no red. Okay, we've talked about the set. Let's get into the card-by-cards. So, we're going to start with the most popular card in the set is the very collector number one i'm not sure how i said this is true we're collector number one the first card of the set was the most popular card of the set so can you name it starts with an a a chroma angel wrath so she costs five white white white

so eight mana for six six, six angel legend, legendary. Legends were still creature type at the time and had not yet become a super type. She had flying, first strike, trample, haste, protection from black, protection from red, and essentially vigilance, but it was written out because vigilance was not yet a keyworded ability. So flying, first strike, trample haze,

pro black, pro red, vigilant. Essentially seven abilities. So, I wrote a whole article about this, but for those who might not have read this article, I did not like this card. Now, let me explain why. So, this is what we call a kitchen sink card, which means it's just a creature

that has lots of keywords on it. I'm not against kitchen sink cards. I'm fine. Actually, call a kitchen sink card, which means it's just a creature that has lots of keywords on it. I'm not against kitchen sink cards. I'm fine. Actually, I like kitchen sink cards. They tend to be very popular with players. My problem was there was a story to Akroma. She very much... There were things that she was supposed to do in the story,

and I felt like we were just giving her, like, okay, yeah, she does stuff, but where does it match the story? And I was trying to give her an ability that I thought would be more story appropriate. But I got outvoted and not only was she the most popular creature in this set, we did what I call a head-to-head, but

a 64, every day two players, like a ladder. A 64 ladder, every day you vote for two people and you until there's one winner, so 63 days in a ladder, a 64 ladder. Every day you vote for two people until there's one winner. So 63 days in a row, there's a face-off every day. And you go from top 64 to top 32 to top 16 to top eight to top four to top two. And the winner of the, it was 64 to legend,

the winner of the legend-off was Akroma. She won. And she got a couple things. She got her own theme week. We put her into legions. We put an alternative version of her

into planar chaos. And then we did a memorial to her. A little tribute to her in the third set. So all three sets had an Akroma nod to them. So she, as I said last time, in the story, she's a creation. The funny thing

is, he makes illusions, he made her. I don't know why she's not in illusions. Maybe the illusions are so real that they're no longer illusions. I don't know. But she was an angel. But not an illusion angel. Not an angel illusion. I guess she'd be an angel illusion, but she was an angel, but not an illusion angel, not an angel illusion. I guess she'd be an angel illusion,

but she wasn't. What turned out, I guess, worked well was she just was a beater. I guess in the story, she was supposed to be a good fighter. Oh, the big controversy. Okay, so she had flying. White is flying. She had first strike.

White has first strike. Detection black, detection red, vigilance, all things white has. Trample, well, white gets trampled every once in a while on big things. That's acceptable. But haste, that was the controversy.

Red is primary in haste. Black is secondary in haste. Actually, when I mentioned it, black is secondary in haste and green is tertiary in haste, not really even all that legit at the time. But anyway, red is first, black is second, green is third. Even blue in future sight, I think, had one haste creature.

White normally does not get haste. It's not a white thing. White, um, used to get flash, but white really isn't the haste color. White creatures get a little something. They have to focus. They're not wild, unabandoned creatures.

Um, but we decided it's a special one-of-a-time thing, and I think this might be the only card in the game, I think. Well, I take that back. There are some... All of these suspend cards have haste, so there's some white suspend cards that have haste,

but that is less of true haste and more of you finally got it, let's attack with it. But anyway, Akroma just delivered. People loved Ak Chroma. And Chroma and Phage were the two most popular. I'll get the Phage when I get to pee. But anyway, a Chroma was, I talk about all my victories. Here's what I was wrong. I was wrong. I mean, let me stress again. I wasn't against the card, and I thought we could put the card somewhere. I was against the card being a Chroma. But anyway, I was wrong. It

should be a Chroma. Super popular. Made me realize that we could put the card somewhere. I was against the card being a Chroma. But anyway, I was wrong. It should be a Chroma. It's super popular. It made me realize that we could use Kitchen Sink on Legendary stuff. I think I was trying to get more flavor through it, but... Okay. Next, Bane of the Living. So it's two black black for a 4-3 insect. It's Morph. For Morph, XBB.

You've got to turn the face up, and then all creatures get minus x, minus x, until end of turn so the idea of this card was it did affect itself the cutesy thing about it was, it's a 4-3 for 2bb which is the cost of playing it, you can essentially destroy everything

with toughness 2 or less and that allows you to do that and keep your 4-3, keeps them surviving but. And that allows you to do that and keep your 4 or 3. It keeps them surviving. But, if you want, you could do stuff that's more than that, but then you're going to kill the creature. So part of the trade-off of trying to kill bigger things is you kill the creature and that thing.

But, being that this creature kind of morphed into a spell that could just kill things, and if you had enough mana, it could kill everything, it was a very useful card. Next, Blade Sliver. So two and a red for a 2-2 Sliver. All Slivers get plus one, plus oh. So to show

you a little bit how we were deviated, this is an uncommon. So this is an uncommon. In Tempest, at common, for one and a green, you got Muscle Sliver, which was a 2-2. All your creatures, all your Slivers, sorry, all your Slivers get plus 1, plus 1. So this costs one more for the same size creature at Uncommon and only boosts power and not toughness.

Hopefully that shows you that Muscle Sliver was a little powerful. And so when we divvied up this time, red got to Power Pump and I believe white got to toughness pump. Or, uh, you know, red gave plus one, plus two, plus oh, plus one, plus oh? Um, uh, yeah, plus one, plus oh. And, uh, white gave plus oh, plus one, I believe. Um, the slivers, by the way, I don't know if I mentioned this. So, Mike Elliott made the slivers and put them into Tempest.

Mike was the one that wanted to bring them back. Um, he was doing an all-creature set, and the slivers and put them into Tempest. Mike was the one that wanted to bring them back. He was doing an all-creature set, and the slivers were his babies. He really wanted to bring them back. He felt like it's an all-slivers, it's an all-creature tribal set. It's all about, you know, tribal to boot. Slivers are all about tribal, and so he convinced

the powers that be to bring them back. He put in three cycles to make sure there were enough that you could play with them. I don't believe that the slivers were not intended to come back. That was not originally part of the plan when we had made Odyssey. I think Mike... Well, Mike did Odyssey. Not Odyssey, sorry. Mike did Onslaught.

I'm not sure when Mike got the idea of doing slivers, but I know the slivers weren't here because of Mike. And then the creative... This is one of the ones where design says, there's slivers. Hey, creative team, there's lots of slivers, but I know the slivers weren't here because of Mike. And then the creative, this is one of the ones where design says, there's slivers. Hey, creative team, there's lots of slivers. And then they came up with the Riptide project to figure out where the slivers came from.

Next, Blood Celebrant. Black, a single black for a 1-1 cleric. Black, pay one life and tap, add one mana of any color to your mana pool. So, one of the side effects, probably one of the biggest side effects when you do all of something, is if that something doesn't include land,

you don't have lands to help you color fix. And so, you've got to get a little more creative to help you with the color fixing. And this is a good example of something that black does a little bit. If black pays enough enough it can get stuff so it does have access to other colors for life it's something we allow it to do also notice by the way when I say cleric

we did not start the race class system until Mirrodin the next block which is kind of crazy when this was the tribal block but I think that we realized during doing this block that really race class made sense and so we instituted it as soon as we could. It would come to pay off later in Lorwyn, although added some complexity

in Lorwyn, but it would come back, we would see it in Lorwyn. Okay, next. Bloodstoke Howler. Five and a red for a 3-4 creature, a beast. For more, for six and a red for a 3-4 creature, a beast. For morph, for 6 and a red, you could turn the face up, and all beasts

got plus 3, plus 0 until end of turn. So this is a good example of that morph cards can function in different ways. Some of them can be very fast, some of them can be slow. This is meant as a more of a finisher card, where I get it out, and late in the game, I can reveal. So early in the game, I can play it as a morph, Iisher card where I get it out and late in the

game I can reveal. So early in the game I can play it as a morph, I can be pretty aggressive with it but later in the game this essentially can help me win. For all intents and purposes it's very similar to an overrun. I mean there's no trample but you know, and you have to be playing a beast deck in order to

effectively use it. But it was something very effective that if you got a bunch of beasts, and the beasts tended to come out later, so this was something you didn't want to use until later because your beasts tended to be bigger. Okay.

Next, Brantotherium. So four green green for five three beasts that had trample and provoke. So remember, so what this creature did, this is five three creature, when it attacks, it untaps target creature. That creature must block this creature.

So 5-3 is pretty big. 5-3 is going to kill most things that block it. Now notice we gave it a 3 toughness, so it's not it's not we refer to them as Abysses based on the card from Legends, but if you make a card that every turn just kills a creature,

it's really daunting. It's what Abyss did. The Abyss did. And so we're trying to be careful when we have things that have the possibility to do that. That's why this was given a 3 toughness, which is, okay, look, maybe I kill some of your creatures, but it's bigger.

By the time I get this out, odds are you have a 3-powered creature. But it's also a trample, so whatever you block, it can blow through. So this creature essentially, and this, like I said, provokes kind of a precursor to fight.

This creature can essentially pick a fight with something and pretty much being guaranteed to kill the thing that it picks the fight with, often trampling over. Okay. Well, I am pulling up

two wizards right now. So obviously, as is the plan I will continue for as many podcasts as it takes to get through the card by cards um

I'm up to B so I predict we have a few podcasts left um so legions is very interesting oh I didn't even talk about here's something

I did talk about which I will have to pick up on future podcasts which is legions has a very weird reputation. It was for a long time, one of the best,

in fact, it was the best selling small set, for quite a while, for many, many years. Yet, because of not having a high percentage, of tournament cards, it was considered a dud,

by a lot of the advanced players. So it was a set that, kind of had a reputation for being a dud, but was a really, really good seller, and really taught Wizards a lot about the audience, because it's very easy to see who the loud vocal

minority is, but the non-vocal majority are really important. They are a big consumer of the game, and so we have to make sure that we address them. And so this was one of the first things that really made us see, at a time called the Invisibles, the people we couldn't easily track,

because the set sold so well, even though all the vocal people didn't like the set. So anyway, I'll talk more about that in future podcasts. But I've now parked my car, so you know what that means. So it's time for me to end my drive to work and start me making magic okay I'll work on that ending

that needs a little I'm still trying to fine tune it we'll get there we'll get there anyway guys thank you very much for joining me for part one of what is it

legions part one of legions and remember next time I'll have to talk about the legions legends debate of, um, what is this? Legions. Part one of Legions. And remember next time I'll have to talk about the Legions-Legions debate. So, um, there was a big debate when we got,

okay, real quickly. There was a big debate on the name because Legion sounds a lot like Legends and a bunch of us, including me, felt that they were too close

and we should name it something different. And then eventually they go, eh, whatever, it was a long time ago and so they named it Legions. Okay, let me try the ending one more time, since I failed so miserably.

Okay, I parked my car. It means it's time for me to end my drive to work and go be making magic. I'm trying! Okay, let's forget that I messed this ending up, and I had such a lovely podcast. So, anyway guys, I hope you enjoyed this. I promise to work on my ending, and I'll talk to you guys soon.