Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #182 - Legions, Part 2

Episode Date: December 12, 2014

Mark continues his 4-part series on the design of Legions with part 2.

I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, well last time I started talking about the design of legions. And I only got it to be, which means that I'm not done yet. So today we will continue on talking all about the all creature set. Okay, so where did I leave off? Let's see. creature set. Okay, so where did I leave off? Let's see. I left off with...

Oh, Caller of the Claw. This was a very good card. Okay, so Caller of the Claw was two and a green for a 2-2 elf. Had Flash, although it was written out because Flash did not exist yet as a keyword.

And when he came into play, for each creature, for each non-token creature that had gone to the graveyard this turn, you got a 2-2 bear token. And so the idea of this was, we were trying to give green some answers to mass removal. So the idea is, I play a whole bunch of green creatures, because what green does is play lots of creatures, your opponent somehow wipes the board, but what do you as a green player do? And so, we're like, so one of the things that's always fun is,

when you try to solve the problem in the color that you are doing, there's a lot of tendency to want to solve the color by having the color do something it doesn't normally do. And like, oh, could it counter the mass removal spell? No, that's not what green does. So we're saying, what green does is green makes lots of creatures. That's what green does.

Green overwhelms you with creatures. Or makes giant creatures. It does both. So the trick to doing that was okay, well what if green had a way to recoup its losses? You wipe away all bunch of creatures, green goes, bam, I got them all back. Maybe not exactly the ones that you got rid of, but at least, you know, if I have a whole bunch of creatures, I could turn them into something that is, you know, pretty potent

as a response. Also, at the time, green also was king of making 1-1 tokens so there also was a chance where you could make 1-1 tokens sacrifice some means and then use this

to replace all the sacrifices you just made with 2-2 creatures this card was pretty good it saw tournament play it was definitely made with tournaments

in mind it was made as a green answer and it was interesting in that it was proactive in that it was proactive in that it both served as an answer, but also there were decks that could proactively use it.

So it was a pretty fun card. Next, Canopy Crawler. So Canopy Crawler was for three and green, so four mana, a 2-2 Beast, with Amplify 1, and tap plus one, plus one to target a creature for each plus one, plus one counter. So the idea with this is the bigger you made it,

a bunch of Amplify creatures work this way, which is you put it into play, you Amplify it, and then based on how much you Amplify it, it affects how strong its activated ability is. And the way this one worked, and a bunch of them worked, was you had to Amplify it at least once, or else you couldn't use the ability.

Now, notice that the creature costs four mana. Hopefully, by the time you get this out, you still have an elf in your hand. Now, the other thing about amplify is, if you had an amplify card in your hand, sometimes you'd play things in a different order to make sure that you had the correct creatures in your hand when you played the amplify creature. In general, we tried to make most of the amplify creatures a little on the cheaper side, so that you'd have cards in your hand when you play the amplified creature. In general, we try to make most of the amplified creatures a little on the cheaper side, so that you'd have cards in your hand. And this is a good example of one where, you know, if you can get the number high enough, this thing gets really potent.

And so, in a deck that's concentrated on beast, for example, this thing can be pretty potent. And, remember, beasts tend to be a little bit bigger. So at four mana, you probably still have some beasts sitting in your hand. Next, Celestial Gatekeeper. Hold on one second, I need to drink some water. Okay, Celestial Gatekeeper. Three white-whites, so five mana for a 2-2 Bird Cleric.

I'll get back to Bird Cleric in a second. It's flying, and when it dies, you exile it and return two target birds and or clerics to play. A bunch of things going on here. So first off, Bird Cleric. Let me talk about that. So I mentioned that Mirrodin is where we started doing Race Class. Well, one of the things you can see is we messed around a lot in this set with, like, a lot of the precursor

to Race Class is sitting here. For example, this card, we wanted to affect Birds and Clerics. So what we did is, thematically, we decided to make it both a Bird and a cleric. The set had avens, which were like,

you know, bird-like people, humanoid bird-ish people. And the default was, all through Odyssey, the aven were bird soldiers. But in this set, we started having

some bird clerics. Actually, there might have been one or two bird clerics in Odyssey. But the idea was, the aven actually kind of had,

we represented them by both their race, which was bird, and their class, which was soldier. So this card is interesting. So White is always sort of messed around a bit in the graveyard. I mean, if you go back to Alpha, it has Resurrection, which got a card out of the graveyard. We took a little time trying to figure out what we wanted White to do.

Finally, the spot we came up with, which this actually isn't quite what we came up with. Nowadays, what White does is White gets back little creatures. And the idea is, it constantly needs to fuel its army. And so it has some... Usually it gets them back to hand, but sometimes it gets them back to play.

Actually, it gets them back to play as much as the hand, now that I think about it. But anyway, white, sort of, its reanimation is more a strategy to keep building its army, and so it can funnel and get little things, because that's what white is more about. Now this card, and you can only get birds or clerics, which by definition aren't particularly big. There are not a lot of giant clerics and giant birds. So this kind of stays true to that general sense, since birds and clerics aren't particularly big. There are not a lot of giant clerics and giant birds. So this kind of stays true to that general sense, since birds and clerics aren't that big. But definitely, you can see

us, if you go back in earlier sets, you get a sense of us trying to feel around and get a sense of what exactly certain colors should be doing. And it took us a little while to find our feet on white reanimation, but I'm happy where we ended up. I feel like it does a good job of feeling white. The other big thing that you want to do is we try hard to make sure that different colors feel different

and that we didn't mind having a second color that did a little bit of reanimation, but we didn't want it stepping on black's toes, and black is the big reanimation color. So the idea was, well, white can't do it quite as well as black, and only the small things, where black can just do big things, and so it gives a little bit of separation. Okay, Chrome Shell Crab. For you, 3-3 Beast.

For more, for you, exchange control of two creatures. Okay, I'm pretty sure this is my card, only because I happen to know my past. So, before I came to Wizards, I'm a Johnny, I used to build crazy decks. Two of my favorite cards was a card called Gauntlets of Chaos and a card called Juxtapose. Gauntlets of Chaos was an artifact, Juxtapose was a blue sorcery, I think. And both of them allowed you to exchange one of your cards

with one of your opponent's cards. Juxtapose took the control of your hand somewhat, but the idea essentially was, I have something, you have something, we exchange them. Then when I got into Tempest, I made Ledger Domain, which is just like, you can just, not like, you can just choose. You get to choose your creature, you get to choose their creature, you just get to choose. You're a creature, you get to choose.

They're a creature, you just get to choose. And I had a lot of fun building decks where the point of my deck was I was going to get something that I wanted to give to you. In fact, the card Donate, which shows up in Urza's Legacy, I think, or Urza's Saga Block, was a card that I had made because I had so many decks

where the whole point of the deck was to give my opponent something they didn't want. Anyway. So Chrome Show Crab is falling into that camp. Next. Okay. Of all the things I tried to stop in the set, of all the things I tried to stop,

this next card was the one I actually tried the hardest to stop. Now, the funny thing is, it wasn't the card I was trying to stop. It next card was the one I actually tried the hardest to stop. Now, the funny thing is, it wasn't the card I was trying to stop. It was the name. Okay, my next card is called Click Slither. It's a 1RRR, so 1 and 3 red, so 4 mana, 3-3 insect. You sac a goblin to give it plus 2, plus 2, and trample to end a turn. Okay, everything mechanically about I was fine with. My problem was the name, click slither. So it turns out in this set, we have a cycle, or three cycles of slither, of slivers. See, you needn't even talk with me.

We have three cycles of slivers. One of the slivers is named quick sliver. So in the same set, we had quick slither, Quick Sliver, and Click Slither. It's hard to say. And so I went to creative team. Now, at the time, I was not part of the creative team. What had happened was, for Odyssey, the creative team that was there had left. Bill had asked me to step in, and so I did the naming for Odyssey.

had left, Bill had asked me to step in, and so I did the naming for Odyssey, and I did, I trained a guy named Ray Nakazawa who was going to replace me doing naming on the creative team, and then I was, so by the time Onslaught happened, I wasn't doing, directly doing creative anymore,

and so I went to them and I said, guys, guys, guys, this is, come on, come on, you, you, the, the two names can't be so close. And they're like, one's a red goblin, one's a, I think it was a green sliver. They're not going to be in the same deck. What does it matter?

I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. They're just too close. You just can't be that close. And I argued with them and argued with them, and I just, I could not convince them. Flash forward, we're doing coverage for a pro tour. At the time I was producing, I think it was Randy Bueller and Chris Capula.

And anyway, they were watching a board state, and one of them said, oh, I think he has a click slither. And the other one thought he said quick sliver. And so they're talking for like two minutes on screen, in which one of them assumes he had a click slither, and one of them assumes he had a quick sliver, and so they're talking for like two minutes on screen, in which one of them assumes

he had a quick slither, and one of them assumes he had a quick sliver, because he had like a red-green deck. They just had a limited deck where both of them could be in the deck. Or maybe he had both in the deck, I don't know. But anyway, it was like my nightmare scenario where there's miscommunication because two names are just too close.

So, anyway, and like I talked about last time, I also had an issue with the Legion's Legends problem, where we already had a set called Legends, and I felt that Legion's was too close. At least that wasn't in the same limited environment. At least you had to be talking about magic in general, and the confusion between Legion's and Legends is a little less.

You know my favorite set? Legion's. What? Legion's. But, anyway. The Click Slither, I believe I showed it. I mean, it didn't need to be called click slither. There are plenty of other names for this insect. Okay, next, cloud reach cavalry.

So cloud reach cavalry is one and a white, two mana, for a 1-1 soldier. And it has plus two, plus two, and flying if you control a bird. And in the picture, you see a soldier riding a bird. So I will talk about the mount problem. Okay, so one of the problems we had forever in magic is, often in magic, you see a creature on a mount. Often a horse, but we're a fantasy property, so sometimes riding a tiger, riding a moose,

or riding a bird, you know, all sorts of things. Often, for example, if we want to do, in white, a lot of times, let's say we want to have a soldier that flies, you'll see a soldier mounted on some kind of flying creature. You know, a bird, a drake, something that flies so one of the questions we always have is when you're doing the stats for a creature and you see the mount

in the picture, are the stats for the creature and the mount the creature not counting the mount and what we realize is usually we kind of mean the mount, for example if you have some sort of knight thing that's on a drake or a bird that's flying, and clearly it's flying because the bird is there,

and the card is flying, well, then you're clearly implying the bird counts because the thing has flying. So anyway, so this card is interesting. It says, oh, I don't have a bird unless you got a bird. Like, the picture's like, this is what, pictured here is what you could be doing if you had a bird. Okay, the picture's like, this is what, pictured here is what you could be doing if you had a bird.

Okay, so this card, by the way, for a little design terminology, this is what we call a threshold one card. So, when we talk about, we talk a lot about tribal, but it's actually more than tribal. When you're talking about anything linear in which one card requires other cards,

there's a spectrum. On one end of the spectrum is what we what do we call it? It's sort of you count me, I guess is what we call them. Where, like, imagine you had a creature that said I get plus one, plus one for every

bird you control. And like, okay, well you want a lot of birds. This guy says, play a deck of nothing but birds. And then he's huge. Or, the other aspect is what we call threshold one, which is if you have a bird, a single bird, all you need is one bird, then I have my ability.

You have two birds, it doesn't matter. You pass the threshold. You need one. You have a threshold of one. If you have one, you're good to go. And the reason threshold ones are good is it requires a lot less dedication. For example, let's say I have this card. I open this card up. Should I play this card? Okay, well, the question is, do I have bird? Because this card's really not worth it without bird. A 1w1 1 creature is below curve, but a 3, 3 flying creature for 1W is really good. So what you have to say to yourself is,

do I have enough birds? Now, if this creature was like star, star equal to a number of birds, that's just like, well, either I'm playing tons and tons of birds or I don't play it. But a threshold 1 is like, okay, how many do I need? Six, seven, you know, where's the point where I'm like, I'm pretty confident that I will get it? Now, this card is a little cheaper.

Threshold ones that are cheaper are a little, you want a little more birds because you need to get this earlier, where something that might be a six mana card that needs to have something, it's like, well, by the time you get it out, there's a much better chance if your deck has a few.

But, anyway, that's an example of a little card that has a lot of little nooks and crannies in it. but anyway that's an example of a little card that has a lot of little nooks and crannies in it okay next Corpse Harvester

so by the way just a little note for you who are listening for you that's everybody it is raining today so I predict in fact I'm sitting

in traffic so you might get an extra long podcast today I'm at the 15 minute mark and I'm not halfway traffic, so you might get an extra long podcast today. I'm at the 15-minute mark, and I'm not halfway to work, so a little tease that you might get a longer podcast. Hopefully, I printed enough cards. But anyway, we're on page two, so. Okay, Corpse Harvester.

Corpse Harvester is three black and black for a 3-3 zombie wizard. For one black tap sack, a sack of creature, so one in a black, two mana, tap, sack of creature, you can search your library for a zombie and a swamp. Okay, I have a bunch of things to do with this card. So first off, zombie wizard. I don't know what a zombie wizard is.

Is a zombie wizard a wizard that died? No, he's a zombie wizard. Is it a zombie with some special wizard-like properties? Is it a wizard that specializes in zombies? I bet he wouldn't's a zombie wizard? Is it a zombie with some special wizard properties? Is it a wizard that specializes in zombies? I bet he wouldn't be a zombie then. Okay, so he says you have to sack a creature to search for a zombie and a swell.

Now, this does a few things we don't tend to do anymore. One is it searches your library. So it allows you to sort of upgrade creatures into zombies from your deck. Although I think the zombies went... I did not write deck. Although I think the zombies went... Why did I write this down? I think the zombies went to your hand, not into play.

So you still had to cast them, but it allowed you to upgrade zombies and you had to play them. Really what we've done is two things. One is we've stopped doing a lot of tutoring, especially a lot of repeatable tutoring. One of the things we find is that what makes Magic such a fun game is you shuffle your library and there's randomness and each game is different. And then if you have too many tutoring abilities,

what happens is games just start becoming more similar. Like, oh, I get my tutor and then I go get the thing I always get and then the gameplay just plays out more the same. So in general we've been down on tutors, which means we've especially been down on repeatable tutors, which this card is. The other thing that's different is we've really shifted zombies to say, you know what, zombies are brought to the graveyard. They're not about the library, they're not about your hand.

Zombies are brought to the graveyard. Zombies, they're dead creatures, and so really with zombies, a lot of the space we've worked with them for cards is either they interact with things in the graveyard, they require things from the graveyard, they get things back from the graveyard. The zombies tend to mess with the graveyard. That's very much a zombie thing. Okay. Next, Crested Craghorn. So Crested Craghorn is 4R, so 4 in red, for a 4-1 beast. It has Haste and Provoke.

So this is a good example. So Provoke is a mechanic, to just remind you from last time, in which when you attack with this creature, you untapped a creature of your opponent's, and that creature must block this creature. So really what Provoke is, like I said, the precursor to fight. It's kind of like my creature and your creature are going to get in a fight. The thing about

Crested Craghorn is, because it has haste, in many ways it's kind of a clever kill spell. You don't see it coming, and, you know, it's a 4-1 creature. There's not a lot you're going to do to survive it. And because it has a 1 toughness, it really kind of doesn't survive.

I mean, barring some shenanigans on your part, pretty much, I'm going to play this thing, you're not going to expect it, and it's going to kill one of your creatures, and it's going to die. So, in a lot of ways, it's a good example of the card used in a way to really kind of make a kill spell. On some level, this card kind of does 4 damage to target a creature. I mean, it's not completely that. You get a block if you have First Strike. I mean,

you get interaction within combat, so it's not exactly a new 4-to-creature, but it has a lot of that quality. In a lot of ways, here's an example of using Provoke to make a card that more functions like Creature Kill than it functions like a creature. Which, once again, remember, we were in the set of all creatures. So it was important to find ways to have things that, on the surface, are straight-up creatures,

but functionally fit a role that other spells in the game might fit. Okay, next. Crook Claw Elder. Five blue for a 3-2 bird wizard. Has flying. Tap two untapped birds. Draw a card. Tap two untapped wizards.

Target creature gains flying. Okay, the first thing about this, if you look at it, is something seems out of whack. Okay, I'm tapping birds to draw cards to gain knowledge, and I'm tapping wizards to fly? Shouldn't I tap birds to fly and wizards to gain knowledge? I'm pretty sure what happened is, when this card first got made, that is what it did. That you tapped the birds to make something fly, and you tapped the wizards to draw a card. My best guess of why it didn't stay that way was Wizards were getting a little out of control. I do know when we made Onslaught that we were concerned about Wizards.

The reason I know that is that Kaibuda's card, I believe, was in an Onslaught. Voidmage Prodigy. And the reason that didn't really see as much tournament play was, although that card actually was pretty good, we tend to push the Invitational cards, we had nerfed Wizards quite a bit. Nerfed being slang for made weaker. And so we had, because we were worried about Wizards, we sort of kept Wizards at a lower power level,

because we were concerned about them, because there were some powerful Wizards coming into this environment. And so we were extra careful. So my guess is this card started the way you would expect it to be. It was too good. Tapping two wizards to draw a card, because wizards were... Wizards are just better than birds. In general, they're just more powerful wizards. And there's wizards also in other colors where...

I guess there's birds in other colors. I guess birds are in both blue and white and sometimes in black. And very occasionally in red and sometimes in green. So birds show up everywhere. So I believe that it was swapped for power level. But it's a little quirky, I admit. Some of those things were like, oh, there's two abilities, and they kind of fit with the other one.

Also notice that this was a bird wizard. The Aven essentially got to be race class, so you could be a bird soldier, a bird cleric, a bird wizard. Anyway. Next, Dark Supplicant. So for a black, you got a 1-1 cleric, so one black mana, 1-1 cleric.

Tap, sac three clerics. You search your grave, hand, or library for Scion of Darkness. So when I get to S's, we'll talk about Scion of Darkness. All you need to know now is it's a big, mean, black creature. So the idea here was, so one of the things we were

trying to do is give identity to each of the creature types. And the thing we really liked for clerics was that clerics were about sort of doing rituals, and that they used their black magic, and that they tended to... The clerics themselves weren't particularly powerful. They were small. They were 1-1-2-2s. But through their black magic, they could do dark and evil things. They could raise the dead. They could summon demons.

They could do all sorts of, you know, nasty things. Also, one of the things that we're always very conscious of is we always try to make sure or most of the time that if a card cares about creature types usually it itself is the creature type so notice Dark Supplicant's a cleric

you have to sack three clerics well he's a cleric so what he's saying is you either need to sack three clerics. Well, he's a cleric, so what he's saying is, you either need to get three clerics that are not him, or just get two clerics, and then he's not going to do this more than once, but hey, you know, how many darksulpicants do you need? Or, not darksulpicants, how many cyanidartists

do you need? But anyway, that's made to work together. Next, Deathmark Prelate. Three and a black for a 2-3 cleric for 2B tap sack a zombie destroy target non-zombie and play as a sorcerer

so this card allows you to turn your zombies into weapons although it didn't work on zombies I'm not sure how you weaponize zombies but someone the Death Mark Prelude figured out how to do that it's another thing where weaponized zombies that someone, uh, the Deathmark Prelate figured how to do that. Um, it's another thing

where, um, we do a lot less now, is repeatable creature kill. We do a little bit. We tend to do it mostly at Rare these days. Um, this card actually can be pretty brutal, um, because if you put this in a zombie deck, it's like, most of my cards are zombies.

And, if I, for one for one, can trade my worse creatures for your better creatures, it can be pretty daunting. But this is another example, by the way, of a cleric, sort of. The clerics do a lot of powerful things, but a lot of it is through sacrifice. So if you're playing a black deck that has clerics, a lot of it requires sacrifice.

Okay, next. Defiant Elf. So for one green mana, it's a 1-1 elf with trample. Now the funny thing is, we like to do this from time to time, which is make a card that on its surface just seems like, huh? What? 1-1 trample? How do you trample if you're a 1-1? Now the funny thing is, this card, nowadays when we tend to do a card like this, it's like, oh, we'll make a card like this during Theros block. Because Theros block is all about building up creatures, and we have lots of ores, and plus one plus one

counters, and lots of ways to take a little creature and build them up to a big giant creature. So that trample becomes important. So if you have a one run trampler, oh, well, building it up, trample becomes relevant, or lifelink or whatever you want to do on a small creature.

I think at the time we made this, we were just having fun. I don't think this particular set was all about, because most of the ways to beast things up,

like amplify, the creature has to have amplify. And morph can make things go from a two to a bigger creature, but it's got to have morph. So this is an example where we were kind of goofing around and having fun, but go from a 2 to a bigger creature but it's got to have morph so this is an example where we were kind of goofing around having fun but not in a set

I think we like the idea of occasionally having the 1-1 trampler so you go what? but what we want to do is go what? and then within that set you figure out how to use it where this was more like hey magic can make you use it go figure it out but it tends to confuse players when they can't

in the more immediate sense figure out out why it's there, at least at common. Okay, next. Dermoplasm. So Dermoplasm is two and a blue, three mana, for a 1-1 shapeshifter. It is flying. And for morph, it's two blue blue, four mana. And when you reveal it face up, you are allowed to swap it with a morph card in your hand and put that face up so the idea of the dermoplasm is when this thing's a morph it can be who knows what it could be that when you play it it's like at some point i might get something in my hand and then for four mana i can turn into whatever so a allowed to do some shenanigans where i got things out faster and quicker

that I might not get. They're more expensive morphs. And also let me sort of, let's say I had multiple morphs in my hand. I could play this. Oh, I have some options. I can make a turn on whatever I need to turn depending on what the situation might be.

It's another card that has me written all over it. I do love my cloning. Okay, next. Dreamborn Muse. So two blue blue for two two spirit. At the beginning of each player's upkeep, that player mills X cards where X is the number of cards in their hand.

So there's a cycle, I talked about this last time, of muses. I think they're all two two spirits at rare. And they all had an enchantment effect. I think all of them triggered upkeep. I'm not 100% that all of them did. The two I'm going to talk about today did.

So, and this one's interesting because normally blue likes drawing cards. But this kind of punishes you for having too many cards. So the idea here is, I think that one of the things that blue does is blue's the major milling color which is, you think that one of the things that blue does is blue's the major milling color,

which is putting cards from your opponents. So, real quickly, for those who don't realize, so built into the game is you lose if you get to zero life. But also, Richard needed a backup just in case the game went long. And the answer was, if you can't draw a card, you lose the game.

So one of the strategies in antiquities was a card called millstone, which is where the mill comes from, which was an artifact that tapped to put the top two cards of a player's library into the graveyard. And so it's interesting that we make a lot of different milling cards, and blue and artifact have most of the milling. Over the years, black is little by little gaining a little bit of milling.

But anyway, this is definitely a milling deck which is just a little bit different. It's like, I'm going to mill you out, but I'm going to mill you out because of cards in your hand. Well, how do I do that? What do I do where I get cards in your hand? And anyway, this card saw a bit of play, and it's

a fun card it definitely makes you rethink things the muses were all meant to be kind of enchantment-y creatures that sort of you built around

was the idea that you got this and like ooh what kind of deck can I build with this and Dream War Muse I think did that

really very well Dripping Dead so four black black for four one zombie can't block and essentially has death touch. You know, we deal combat damage to a creature, destroy it.

So this is an interesting card when you look at it and try to understand what it's doing. Because essentially, once you get into play, a four one creature, four damage is a lot, but anything can block it and kill it,

but it kills anything that it blocks. Now, there's a couple things design-wise. This is already a 4-1, so it kills most things anyway. I'm not quite sure why it had to be. I think we wanted to make it a little bit more expensive. Now, the thing that's going on here is it's a zombie, and one of the things zombies could do, it wasn't as focused as it would later be,

but you could get zombies back from the dead. So the idea here is, here's a creature that'll kill whatever stops it, and then I can get it back from the dead. I'm not sure why they made it so big, since it's a little repetitive that a four-power creature kills a lot of things, and a Death Touch kills everything, or almost everything. So putting them on the same creature, I'm not quite sure I understand why that.

But it is definitely a card that sort of plays in as a tool for the zombie player. That the reason it's... For example, if I don't have a means by which to get zombies back from the graveyard, this card's okay. I mean, six mana for a four-one, they're probably going to chump block

and die, not particularly great something you can get back multiple times has a little bit more value but anyway I think that's what it was doing in the set okay, Embalmed Brawler okay, 2 black for a 2-2

what is it, a zombie? yeah, as a zombie, amplify, and when it attacks or blocks, you lose one life for every counter on it. So this is an example of an Amplify creature in black that's kind of a double-edged sword. The idea is it uses zombies, and you very well on a zombie deck can have a handful of zombies. It costs three mana, so you definitely can Amplify quite a bit.

Comes out early. It's already a 2-2, so every amplification is pretty good. But it's not all upside. So one of the things we like to do with mechanics in general is most of the time we like to make things upside. Players in general like upside. But every once in a while we like to do a little bit of downside. And this is a good example of where we are more likely to do downside, which is

it's not all downside. It is more upside than downside. You're probably going to want to amplify this thing. But it's definitely something where, late in the game, you can get a situation where it can't attack or block just because you have too little life.

But, I mean, I do think it's kind of an interesting way. I mean, as we're going through, Mike Elliott, who's a lead designer, I know did most of the Amplify cards. And you can tell there's a lot of kind of just making use of mechanics. One of the things Mike was really, really good at was finding lots of ways to optimize on a new mechanic. That you would give him a new mechanic, and it's like, how about this way? How about this way? How about this way?

You find a lot of neat ways. And Abominable Brawler is a good sort of interesting where it does this cool thing with Amplify, but in a way very, very different than some of the other Amplify cards we've talked about. Next, Feral Throwback. So I mentioned last time that this was a pre-release card, but I didn't say what it did.

So if you're wondering what it did, I will tell you now. So it's a six-mana card, but I didn't say what it did. So if you're wondering what it did, I will tell you now. So it's a six mana card. Four green green for three three beasts. Has Amplify 2 and Provoke. Okay. So I've talked about before. So one of the things about Amplify...

One thing that's interesting about Provoke is that if the creature gets big enough, it starts turning into what wenie would call the Abyss, which is a card from Legends that just kills a creature every turn. And so if you get this thing big enough and they can't stop it,

it can be pretty devastating. And so what's going on here is this is two new mechanics introduced in the set, which are Amplify and Provoke, on the same card, kind of meeting at rare, in a big splashy green card. And this is the kind of thing, if you is Amplify and Provoke, on the same card, kind of meeting at rare, in a big splashy green card. And this is the kind of thing, if you can Amplify it, and remember, it's a beast,

you should have a bunch of big beasts in your hand. Even Amplifying it two times. Let's say I show this card, a six-man I play, and I can Amplify it just two times. That means I have a 7-7 that every turn gets a Provoke, which is pretty much an abyss. Like, every turn, I'm going to kill something.

I mean, maybe, maybe, maybe there's enough creatures you can gang them all together and maybe, you know, take them all out and kill my guy. But it's going to devastate your side. And so this card,

we gave it as a previous card because we thought it was a lot of fun. And it showed off two of the new mechanics. a lot of fun. And it showed off two of the new mechanics. Next is Flame Wave Invoker. So Flame Wave Invoker is 2R, 2, 2. And then for 7 and a red...

Oh, I just made a mistake last time. Last time I talked about how all the invokers activated for 7. No, what they actually did is they activated for 8, 7 which was colorless, and 1 which was colored. So actually, all of them were 8 mana, not 7 mana. So I correct my previous plug-in. Anyway, for 8 mana, 7, and 1 red,

you can do 5 damage to a player. So you can see this card is pretty potent, which is one of red's problems in general is finishing. What I mean by that is Red has a lot of resources that are fast and brutal and hit you quickly, but Red tends to run out of steam, that it doesn't have as many components to the long game. It doesn't have a lot of card advantage,

at least in card drawing, it kills things. And so one of the things Red could really use is a finisher. It's like, I got him close, then they clogged up the ground, and I can't get through. Well, this is a nice finisher. If you get to eight mana, bam! It doesn't take too many fives to the head before you're dead. So this thing lava axes. Now, a lot of people complain, because lava axe costs, what, four mana?

And this costs eight mana. It costs twice as much. Actually, lava axe might cost five mana. But anyway, it costs? And this costs 8 mana. It costs twice as much. Actually, Lava Axe might cost 5 mana. But anyway, it costs a lot more than Lava Axe. But once again, as I explained, the reason that this is valuable is you are not playing the card, that you get this for free.

Now, I will admit, on some of the Invokers, we had a body that was worth playing regardless. And this is not that. This is a Grey Ogre, so it's 3 mana was worth playing regardless. And this is not that. This is a Grey Ogre, so it's 3 mana for 2-2. Obviously, you know, you play more than 3 mana 2-2, but they have the potential to turn into something,

and your opponent has to play around them because they can be something else. 2-2-2, a Grey Ogre, is not particularly strong. It's the kind of thing that unless you really needed it for, like, a tribal reason or something you probably would not play it. But this ability is so good that you play it. Because it's like if you can get 8 mana it's going to help you win the game.

Next. Gem Palm Avenger. So I have to talk about two Gem Palms. Just to kind of show you slightly different ways that Gem Palms work. So Gem Palm Avenger is a 5 white for 3-5 soldier. And for cycling 2-W

you can discard and draw a card and all your, or sorry, all soldiers get plus one plus one in first right. So another thing that's going on on the set is we were still living in a time where we counted everything rather than yours. So, like, if you gave

a boost to soldiers, you also gave a boost to your opponent's soldiers. And so sometimes that's annoying. We're like, oh, now I've got to count how many soldiers I have versus my opponent's soldiers. Like, is it beneficial to be recycling this? So we would later change that so the tribal stuff

just affects your things. The other thing I want to talk about the difference between the gem palm is, notice that this gem palm it affects all soldiers. So the more soldiers you have the more effects you get because the more things that are affected. Now, to

contrast, gem palm polluter five and a black for a four three zombie, it is cycling black black and when and when you cycle, you draw a card, and target player loses one life per zombie. Once again, this is not your zombies, but all zombies. Now this one is a count me, where it counts the number of zombies. The other one affected them. So those are different ways to both make them scale based on the number,

but in a different context. One affects, one counts. And so I wanted to point that out, that there's some slightly different ways to use the gem pall. The thing that's kind of cool about them is that they're leg cards that could be a big beater, but also they

essentially could be a spell. And a cantrip spell at that. So, it is kind of neat. I liked how the jam poem stuff played out. It sort of gave you some choices in how you wanted to play things. I'm checking in on time here. So I'm not even off the freeway yet.

And we're at 36. So, an extra special rainy day edition of Drive to Work. Luckily, I'm talking about cards, so I've got plenty to talk about. So next, Goblin Clearcutter. So Goblin Clearcutter is three and a black.

All right, sorry, three and a red. So it's four mana for a 3-3 Goblin. Tap Sack of Forest. Add three mana of any combination of red or green mana to your mana pool. Okay. A little trivia question. This card was inspired by a previous card. What was the previous card?

Clue, it was in Legends, I believe. Oh, no, no, no. It was in Ice Age. It was in Ice Age. And the answer is orcish lumberjack so orcish lumberjack was this card except I think it was was it a one mana one one

I think it was a one mana one one but anyway that card was just too powerful it was too much ramp but we did believe that it was something that red and green could do red does get temporary mana and so we decided to sort of give red a new Orcish Lumberjack.

We made it a little more expensive so it was fair. We made it a goblin because goblin tribal was going on in the set. And so, Orcish Lumberjack 2.0, a.k.a. Goblin Clearcutter. The other thing we liked about this, and you'll notice something we're doing more is

we're trying to one of the ways we help in drafting is make cards that really point towards certain strategies. And this card says, oh, when you draft me, play red and green. And so you'll notice we're doing a lot more stuff where there's either off-color activations, or there's things that look at certain land types, or things in which it says, oh, you know, I'm a red card, but I'm better in green deck. I mean, this card doesn't have to have green in it.

You can play this card, well, I'll take that back. You need fours. You do have to play green. So this card says, hey, play me in a red-green deck. I'm really good, but you have to be playing

a red-green deck, which, if you have this card, you're tempted, because it is very good. Okay, next. Goblin Dynamo. See, I'll get you the Gs. I'm talking about a bunch of goblins. So Goblin Dynamo. You can see I got you the Gs. I'm talking about a bunch of

goblins. So Goblin Dynamo is five red red, seven mana for four four goblin mutant. You'll notice, by the way, one of the things in the story is things start getting mutated in the story. I don't remember why. It has something to do with all the craziness with the chroma and phage, but you'll see a lot of mutants. One of the problems that we had was the Odyssey story, I got rid of all the normal creature types because I was trying to just use some different creature types. And then

in Onslaught, a set later, we decide that we're going to do a tribal set. But the previous set didn't have all the tribes that you would want. And to do a tribal set, you want goblins and elephants up. So we had this problem where the previous year really didn't offer up a lot of stuff. It did, by the way, offer up wizards, which is one of the reasons

wizards was a bit overpowered, was it was one of the few things that did have the previous year. But anyway, the problem was the story took place in the same continent, Otaria. And so, like, well, why on Otaria did this block not have any goblins or elves,

and this block had lots of goblins and elves? And so we moved to a different part of the continent, and there was a lot of shenanigans going on, so a whole bunch of mutants is showing up some of the story behind the scenes of things going crazy. Anyway, Goblin Dynamo can tap to deal one damage to a creature

or player, so it's Tim, to use a nickname, or XR tap sac, so spend X mana plus 1 red, tap and sacrifice the Goblin Dynamo, do X damage to our creature or player. So the idea was, it was a little prodigal pyromancer

that could upgrade into a fireball if need be. Although you had to sac it to use it. And so that card was very, very good. Next, Goblin Goon. So 3R, 4 mana for a 6-6 Goblin Mutant. But it can't attack unless the defending player has less creatures than you. And it can't block unless the attacking player has less creatures than you. So in order to play this card, you had to have more creatures.

But it's a goblin! And guess what goblins do? In fact, we used to joke that the number one strength of goblins, like the competitive advantage of goblins is that they breed fast. There's just a lot of goblins, and

when you have a lot of goblins, you can take a lot more risks. One of the things we talk about with goblins, and when you have a lot of goblins, you can take a lot more risks. One of the things we talk about with the goblins is the way they advance through their science is they try crazy things, and often it blows up, but it doesn't always, and when it doesn't, they discover something new, and because they

just breed so fast, they have lots of goblins to sort of experiment with, and so one of their competitive advantages basically is their breathing, which also means that in a goblin deck that you'll have a lot of little creatures. So Goblin Goon was made that if you play a goblin deck,

you should spill out a lot of goblin creatures, and hopefully you'll be ahead of your opponent on creatures. Next, Goblin Grappler. So Goblin Grappler is a 1-1 goblin for red, single red mana, that has Provoke. So here's an example. I've been trying to use Provoke as a good example of just different ways you can use a mechanic. And Elliot did a really good job, and Elliot and Donae did a good job on the set, in taking the mechanics and finding a lot of clever different ways to use them.

So this is a good idea of another way to use Provoke. Well, it's a 1-1 creature with Provoke. Well, how many 1-toughness creatures are there? Not a lot. The point of this creature is not to kill something. I mean, it can with help sometimes, or if it's really small. The reason this creature's here is it's really good at sort of luring away the real threat. So let's say I want to attack with a bunch of creatures, but

you have one scary creature. Well, I attack, and I use the Goblin Grappler to sort of grapple the big creature, and then, yeah, yeah, he's going to die for the cause, but it lets everything else get through. And so it's a clever way in Red to have sort of like, target creature can't

block, essentially, because I'm forced to block this creature. And so it's a neat way to sort of get an effect that allows you to get through with your other creatures,

but on a creature. And using provoke. Next, goblin turncoat. So one in a black, this is a black goblin, for a 1-1 goblin mercenary. And you can sack

a goblin to regenerate it. So one of the things that we started messing around with... Modern thought about tribal sets is whenever we have a tribe, we try to make sure the tribe is in more than one color. So you'll notice in Theros,

what was the tribal? It was Minotaurs. They were in black and red. Right now in Kanzatar Kyr, what's the tribal? Warriors. We made sure Well, they were in black and red. Right now, in Kansatar Kyr, what's the tribal? Warriors. We made sure it's in white and black, and a few others show up in other colors as well.

In Innistrad, we had a bunch of tribal, and every monster, and humans, showed up not in one color, but two colors. And that, what we've learned is,

tribal's just more interesting if we give you a second color. Now, that is not exactly what we believed at the time we were doing Onslaught. And you'll notice that most creature types are concentrated in a single color. There are a few exceptions, and that had to do with things that were naturally, like Cleric happened to be in white and black, so it showed up in white and black. But one of the things we were trying to do is we were definitely trying to sort of push certain strategies in certain colors.

And so this is a good example of, it's a black card that wants to go into a goblin deck. but one of the things we were trying to do is we were definitely trying to sort of push certain strategies in certain colors, and so this is a good example of, it's a black card that wants to go into a goblin deck. Well, okay, if I get this card, I go, oh, this wants to go in my goblin deck, which is mostly red, so, oh, maybe I'll make a black-red deck. And this is a precursor of us, like, we start seeing a few black goblins show up, because we want to get a little bit of a black-red goblin deck as a possibility. Okay, one more card, and then we will call it a day. I'm almost to work, and I'm... Ooh, wow. 44 minutes.

It's a long... My rain, my pain, your gain. My new slogan. So the last card we'll talk about today is Graveborn Muse. So two black-black for a 3-3 zombie spirit. Beginning

of upkeep, you draw X cards and lose X life, where X is the number of zombies you control. So a bunch of things going on in this card. First off, it's another one of the muses. Oddly, it's a zombie muse. I mean, the reason it's a zombie muse is mechanics. Although flavor-wise, I'm not quite sure

what a zombie muse is. I'm dead, but I it's a zombie muse is mechanics. Although flavor-wise, I'm not quite sure what a zombie muse is. I'm dead, but I'm both a zombie and I'm a spirit. I'm a zombie spirit. I have no idea what that means. But one of the things that's really cool about this card is, I mean, the reason it is zombie is it needs to count itself. So by itself, it lets you draw one card and pay one life. And depending on how many zombies you can have, you can get more.

This was, like I said, the muses were some of the best cards in the set. Gravemoor Muse for sure showed up in Constructed Play. It's interesting that also this counts your zombies and not all zombies. A little pre-card. I mean, we did this for mechanics for this specific card just because it got a little too out of control with all zombies and we were trying to make it a Constructed card, I believe. But it's interesting that we kind of sort of, the place we first went is not for sense of understanding,

but of just making your card slightly more powerful. And then it's like, oh, this plays a little bit better. I'm like, hmm, maybe we should be doing this all the time. But anyway, Graveborn Muse was definitely a very, very popular card. And I've gotten up to G. So that means that, G, I'm not done yet. So obviously I will continue doing more onslaught on my next podcast.

We'll see how far I get. I'm not sure I will have rain every day, but today you guys got an extra long podcast. But finally, after 46 minutes, I have parked my car. So we all know what that means. Yes, it's the end of my drive to work. And it's time for me

to be making magic. So I'll talk to you guys next time. Bye.