Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #184 - Legions, Part 4

Episode Date: December 12, 2014

Mark concludes his 4-part series on the design of Legions.

I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so the last three podcasts, I've been talking all about legions. And so today I will continue. In fact, the plan is, today's the last day since I'm up to S. Although I have a decent amount to talk about being that I'm up to S. Okay, last time I ended with Scion of Darkness. So this time I'm picking up with Seedborn Muse, a very popular card from this. So Seedborn Muse is one of the Muse cycle. It's the rare cycle of spirits that all had enchantment-like effects on them.

So Seedborn Muse is three green green, five mana total for two four spirit that you get to untap your permanents during your opponent's during other players' untap steps. So this was a rejigger of a card called Awakening from Stronghold. Awakening just untapped your creatures and lands during other people's upkeeps

or untaps. This one does all permanents, so it also does your artifacts and enchantments if somehow they got tapped. Really, I guess artifacts is the main thing there. This was a very popular card. The Muses in general were added because it was all creatures. We wanted to make sure that we were mimicking other elements of cards, and so the Muses were stuck in definitely definitely to have things to build around and have, you know, an enchantment sensibility on some of the cards. Like I mentioned before, they were pretty popular. The Muses were definitely one of the big hits. And a lot of them saw play. Seaborn Muse for sure saw play. But

a lot of them definitely saw some constructive play. Next, Skin Thinner. So Skin Thinner is a one and a black, two mana, two one zombie, and then for more three black black, you got to tear something. So tear means you destroy target creature, target non-black creature, non-artifact, non-black creature,

and it cannot be regenerated. What we use is called bury. So real quick, a little side here. So every once in a while, we create terminology and realize we don't need it. So a while back, when Richard Garfield first made the game, he made terror. So terror, yeah, terror, the idea of terror was it scares you to death. And so, but it didn't work on black creatures and it didn't work on black creatures, and it didn't work on artifact creatures, the flavor of which...

Black creatures, they're used to scary things, and artifact creatures, they don't have a lot of emotions that much, and so you can't scare a golem to death. And then, it had a rider on that kept you from regenerating if...

A target creature cannot regenerate. And for a while, a lot of our kill spells had that little rider of target creature cannot regenerate. I think Terra had that on it. I know most of early Magic, the kill spells had it on it. And at some point, we realized that... Well, so what happened was, it got written out so much that they decided, oh, why don't we just shorthand it and put a vocabulary word,

so instead of having to say, destroy target creature, that creature can't be regenerated, it got changed to bury target creature. Bury as in put in the ground, B-U-R-Y. But eventually what we realized is, A, that we were kind of just hosing regeneration for no great reason. Like, the whole point of regeneration is to survive things, like perhaps kill spells. So we stopped putting that rider on and said, you know what? Destroy target creature. You can regenerate.

Well, that's one of the answers to terror-like effects is regeneration. So when we stopped doing that, we're like, oh, since we're not really saying you can't regenerate, we don't need Barry anymore. And we stopped using Barry. The weird thing is that players to this day still bug me to bring Barry back, even though we don't functionally do what the word Barry

did. I don't know if they just love the word or something, or just not... Maybe people don't realize exactly one for one what the word meant. But the reason we don't use Barry is we don't stop... Mostly, we don't stop regeneration anymore. Kill spells are one of their weaknesses is if you have

mana for regeneration. And the reason we didn't feel we needed to host regeneration is regeneration already has a mana cost, meaning they're already moments down where if they can't pay to regenerate, you can kill them then and then you can get by it. So because regeneration had the mana to activate it,

look, it had a weakness. There's windows where it was down that we just didn't need to hose it in every spell. And there was a period, really, where we hosed all sorts of spells. Okay. Back to Skinthender. So, Skinthender is very interesting in that

it shows kind of one of the neat things about morph so the idea was it's a 2-1 zombie so when it's face down as a morph it's actually more powerful than it is face up i mean it is a zombie uh one of the things that was neat one of the reasons that putting morph in the same set as a tribal set actually worked out interestingly is sometimes the reason you were a morph something was because you needed the creature type. There's definitely times where, for example,

there's times with Skinthinner, Skinthinner you usually play face down because killing something is so important and limited, but there are definitely cards where you sometimes would play them face up because the need to get the creature type was important enough, or you would turn them face up, was important enough

because you needed to be able to count them. And the fact that this was a zombie, there definitely was some zombie effects that helped you get zombies back from the graveyard. Well, this was an awesome card to get back from the graveyard. It's a kill spell. The other thing that's very interesting is,

and this is a good examination of this, is how Morph provides... I keep talking about how a lot of cards are kind of split cards in some way, and this card kind of is a good examination of this, is how Morph provides... I keep talking about how a lot of cards are kind of split cards in some way. And this card kind of is a split card. In that it can do a couple different things. For two mana, for 1B, it's a 2-1 zombie. Now, most of the time,

I mean, if you're trying to beat someone down early with the deck, maybe it's something you would consider. Especially if you have the ability to get back zombies. Now, for three mana, it's a colorless 2-2 creature. And for five mana, if you play the 2-2, five mana, it can turn into a terror effect. And then essentially what it does is it makes it

from a 2-2 colorless creature to a 2-1 zombie, and you get a terror for five mana. And it's a good example of, there's a lot of different play that comes out of Skinthinner and knowing what you do and how to use it best. Morph is definitely, I mean, people are seeing that now

in Conjure Tarkir and that Morph is an interesting mechanic. There's a lot of neat decisions that go into it. The other thing, by the way, the people, one of the big arguments we have is aren't Morphs,

because Morphs are, in R&D terminology, what we call gray ogre. So in early alpha, Richard made a card called gray ogre, which was two and a red, so three mana for a 2-2 creature, an ogre, obviously. And that is not particularly a good creature in a vacuum. And that is not a particularly good creature in a vacuum. You know, a gray ogre, like a grizzly bear, is two mana for a 2-2, in our needs to speak. And a gray ogre is three mana for a 2-2. Well, clearly, two mana for a 2-2 is much more efficient than three mana for a 2-2. And when I finally end up doing the Concepts Archeer podcast,

there's a big, big story about us messing around with morph, and we actually tried doing Morph for two men rather than three men. But anyway, story for another day. But the interesting thing is, one of the big arguments people bring up is, well, isn't Morph kind of outclassed? Isn't a Grey Ogre weak? And what I say is,

is that Morph actually has something that a Grey Ogre does not. And what that is, is a Grey Ogre is a 2-2. You know what that is. Under no circumstances do you have to do any math to reevaluate anything about it. It's a 2-2.

Where a morph creature has potential, especially if you have a bunch of mana open, especially if you have five or more mana open in cons. So when you play a 2-2, even, for example, let's say I play a face-down 2-2 of a color I can't even turn up. I can't turn it up. Okay? Even that is more powerful than a gray ogre because although you know it's nothing but a 2-2, your opponent doesn't and they have to act as if it might be something. So for example,

if you have five mana open and you have a 2-2, even if you know you can't turn it up, for all intents and purposes, for you it's a Grey Ogre. For your opponent, because they don't know, they might not block it. You can bluff with it. You can't bluff with a Grey Ogre. I mean, you can. You can pretend you have a Jagdgorf or something, but it's much, much easier to bluff with a Morph creature. And,

part of what Morph brings with it is the sense of mystery. And that not knowing what it is really is unnerving to the other player, and that there is value in it being face-down. And that's why sometimes when you're filling out stuff in drafts, occasionally people will put an off-color morph in just because they need the extra creature. And if you have a few morph creatures,

meaning you have some true threats that are morph creatures, it allows you to put in an off-color too every once in a while, with your opponent, you know, having to act like it's one of your other Morphs. Anyway, a bunch of Morph. More than you ever wanted to know about Morph. Okay, one of these days, by the way, maybe one of these days I'll do a podcast on Morph. Morph is a very fascinating thing. Okay, next, Skirk Alarmist.

So Skirk Alarmist costs one and a red, two mana total, for a 1-2 Wizard. It has Haste and Tap, turn face down card face up, and then sacrifice it at end of turn. So this is playing in a space that Red has moved a little bit away from that I'd like

to move back, actually, which is the idea of getting effects but getting them temporarily. Red has always done this, and it's kind of ebb and flowed. You know, red definitely has, you know, things where I throw you, and you gain flying, but then you hit the ground, and you're dead.

And so the idea of, I sort of get value, but I get value immediately and right now. So the idea of this card is, I can play it with morph cards. Essentially, what it does is, it turns for free, or tap this creature, you essentially get the morph cost. It turns it face up. You don't have to pay the morph cost.

The downside is that you lose the creature at the end of the turn. But for a lot of morph creatures, the spell is the crux of what it's doing anyway. You know, that it's, the creature that remains is nothing special, and that it's the cost of the, you know, it's the morph effect that remains is nothing special, and that it's the cost of the... You know, it's the morph effect that really is the value of the card. And so this card allows you to get that. It also allows you to pay off-color morphs in a deck

that can't necessarily even play them upright. And that's dangerous because they get trapped in your hand. But the card does allow you to do some neat things, especially in Limited, where you're more likely to run off Karamors. Okay. Skirk Marauder. So Skirk Marauder is one and a red, two mana, for a 2-1 Goblin. And for two-arm morph, you get to shock something.

You get to do two damage to target a creature or player. This is like Skin Thinner. This actually... So what happened when Onslaught came out was a few of the tribes really, really took off. The two biggest, I believe,

were Goblins and Elves. In fact, both Goblins and Elves still show up in Modern in that the power of Onslaught... Actually, Onslaught... Take that back. Onslaught's not in Modern. Maybe I'm thinking of Legacy.

But the goblins in the set were really, really good, and this card actually saw a tournament play. And once again, it's one of those things where sometimes you just want a goblin, 1R, 2, 1 goblin, and a deck that cares about goblins is fine. The fact that I can turn this into a shock for not that much mana, two are, you know, three mana is not really, being that I still get the creature out of it,

I mean, my 2-2 becomes a 2-1, but a 2-1 goblin, which in the deck that I was running, those goblins are mighty, mighty important. But, and like I said, the thing about Morph that's very interesting to me is once you understand Morph, and Morph is complex, so make no mistake, I'm not saying that Morph isn't a complex mechanic, but once you get the basics of it, something like a card like this is a pretty simple card, given the context of you understand Morph,

but it has a lot of neat and interesting play values, a lot of things you can do. The fact that this creature, for example, can take out four toughness creatures all on its own. Or you can do a lot of combo tricks where you're chomping one thing and using its damage to help kill something else. There's a lot of neat things you can do with this card.

Okay, next. Skirk Outrider. Skirk Outrider is a four mana card, three and a red, for a 2-2 Goblin, and it gets plus two, plus two, and trample if you control a beast. So this is what I refer to as a threshold one card. The idea, what a threshold one card means is I need you to have something, but just, you only need one of it.

As long as you have one of it, you're good. A count me is something, I've talked about this in previous podcasts, in previous, uh, Legion's comment. So count me is when I get an effect based on how many I have. So I want to, if I have a about this in previous podcasts, in previous, uh, Legion's combat. So, count me is when I get an effect based on how many I have. So, I want to, if I have a count me in my deck, you know, if I'm doing damage equal to the number of, you know, goblins I have, oh, well,

I want every goblin I can get my hand on. I'll play goblins that are suboptimal goblins, because I want every goblin I can get. If I have a threshold thing, what I want is, I need enough that I can make it matter. And this card's a good example where 4-mana for a 2-2, nothing special. 4-mana for

a 4-4 trampler is pretty special. It's pretty good. That's a good, that is a good value proposition. But in order for that to happen, you need to have a beast. So, let's talk, there's another little theme that goes on in this block. Is cross-t cross tribal stuff.

Now, we did it a little bit here. You would see it a lot more in lore when we went back to tribal. And what that means is, we try to make a few cards that say, Hey, this card might say to you, Hey, rather than just make a goblin deck or just make a beast deck, you have the possibility of maybe making a goblin beast deck. That you could have some cards that care about goblins and some cards that care about beasts and go in the same deck. So we call those crossover cards, where the idea is, a crossover card is when you take

something that fits in two different decks and position them so there's a possibility that the two decks can merge and be played together. Usually those go at uncommon because you want them to be powerful enough that they're worth the risk. And it's the kind of thing that if you get early, it can sort of affect how you draft. But you don't want it too low because, I mean, actually I don't know if this is a common or uncommon but nowadays we tend to cross over to uncommon just for drafting. It's a better situation when they sit. Every once in a while

we'll do them in common depending on how big the themes are. Next, Spoke, Spew, Invoker. So two and a black for 3-1. So three mana for a 3-1 zombie mutant. I believe all the invokers were mutants. And then for seven and a black for 3-1, so 3 mana for a 3-1 zombie mutant. I believe all the invokers were mutants.

And then for 7 and a black for 8 mana, target creature gets minus 3, minus 3 until end of turn. So for 8 mana, you get to start killing things. So this is another one of the invokers. In fact, the one right after this. Let me bring up that one too, and I'll talk about both invokers at the same time. So Stonewood Invoker was

1 and a green for a 2-2 Elf Mutant. For seven and a green, card name gets plus plus five, plus five to end your turn. Okay, so let's look at these cards. One of them is a 2-B-3-1. One of them is a 1-G-2-2. Both of those cards are playable and limited. Neither is an amazing card, but more, I mean, if those were vanilla creatures, you would often play them in limited. Not always.

I'm not saying they're near the top of your deck. But they're the kind of thing that, you know, push comes to shove. Like, okay. Especially, by the way, since one is a zombie, one is an elf. That not only are they creatures that are, you know, you would probably run anyway. But the fact that they are the right creature type means you're more than likely to run them. You know, if I'm running a deck that cares about elves, I'm going to play a grizzly bear elf.

You know, a 2-2 elf. Now people go, ooh, grizzly bear elf. It's like a little elf, little bear with little pointed ears. Okay, so the black one, I have a 3-1. At 8 mana, I get to start killing creatures. You know, now minus 3, minus 3 won't kill everything, but it kills a lot of things, and odds-1, at 8 mana, I get to start killing creatures. You know, now, minus 3-1 won't kill everything, but it kills a lot of things, and odds are once you get 8 mana, you're going to be killing

things. So Invoker, when you get 8 mana, goes from being a 2-2 to being a 7-7. Now, remember, it only grows itself. It becomes 7-7. Now, both of those are pretty potent. You know, when you get to later in the game, so you need eight mana.

So that's, we're talking pretty late in the game. You all of a sudden take a card that was an okay common that you'd most likely play and turn it into, you know, a game changer. Something that really will start affecting the game. And so invokers do this neat thing where they get to be kind of simple creatures early, and only in the late game do they turn into something. So I talk a lot about lenticular design, about how you want things that seem simple to players. And this is not quite lenticular, because the second version of the card is sitting on the card. But it is something where, because it's such a high thing, the way,

your brain can kind of shut off until you get close to it. You know, for eight men, I can do this. Well, until I start getting to six, I'm not really even worrying about it, you know. I mean, maybe you do a little bit of math when you're figuring out whether to block with it or not, going, oh, if I can easily throw away

something of equal value, maybe I save this because later in the game it's so valuable. But pretty much, you tend to treat, it's a 3-1 and a 2-2 vanilla, in the early part of the game, that you treat like you would treat any card you would. And then later in the game, when you start getting close, you're like, okay, now I've got to start protecting this.

This is valuable. But it's not valuable until later in the game. So earlier in the game, you kind of can just treat it like it was just a vanilla version of that card. Invokers have become very popular. They're a really good tool developmentally. Because one of the things we want to make sure... So one of the things about Magic is that the mana system is set up that it can punish you from time to time.

And one of the things we want to do is we want to allow people to do some things to offset the mana. I think the mana system is very important. It's one of my, what I consider the three genius ideas of Richard. But one of the things about the game is because the game is flexible and you get to control things, we do want to give you tools

to lessen mana screw. Mana screw is an unnecessary byproduct. It's not that we want people to get mana screwed. I do want people to not always have the mana they need. I do want your flow of mana to be inconsistent so you don't quite know what's going to happen. I believe that makes a better game state. And, you know, one of the problems about games,

like, for example, I worked on one, Duel Masters, where we try to fix the mana system. And the problem there is, when you know that turn one you have a one drop, and you know that turn two you have a two drop, and you know that turn three you have a three drop, it takes a lot of the drama away. And one of the things that Magic is going for is, well, it might be frustrating when you're stuck at two and you want to draw your third, or you're stuck at three and you want to draw your third, you know, or you're stuck at three, want to draw your fourth. The things you do to try to survive and try to make it work until you get what you need is a lot of the most interesting parts of Magic of scratching to get by and trying to figure out what you can do. You know, I've had some amazing games where I got stuck at three and, like, I cast all the stuff I could cast and, you know, and I knew that if I could get to four that I had a different gameplay and so a lot of what I did is I had adapted to figure out how to get to four because once I get to four I could get to four, that I had a different gameplay. And so a lot of what I did is I had to adapt to figure out how to get to four.

Because once I get to four, I could do some things that I needed to do. And I needed to survive to get there. And so I changed my play so that could happen. And that's one of the dynamic parts of Magic. The invokers are really nice because they allow... One of the things that we like, that development really likes, and design works hard to make sure it gets in sets, is things to do with extra mana.

One of the things we want to do is we want to say to players, it's okay to sort of err on the side of having enough mana so that late in the game when you have excess of mana, we will give you some things to do with it. That it's okay to give excess of mana. And sometimes it's stuff like Invoker, sometimes it's mechanics like Kicker. We it's Mechanic-like Kicker. We just want to make sure there's things to do with extra mana

so that you can play the mana and not be punished by having too much mana too much of the time. Okay, next. Sunstrike Legionnaire. So, one and a white, two mana for a 1-2 soldier. It doesn't untap. Whenever another creature enters the battlefield

you get to untap it and tap target creature with converted mana costs three or less. Okay, a lot going on here. So the base of the card is I tap small things, but I don't get to untap normally. I only get to untap when the creature is played. So what that means

is that the card kind of says, every time you play a creature, the little rider is, you get to tap a small creature. That every creature spell, and not just, sorry, when I say every creature spell, I don't just mean your creature spells, I also mean your opponent's creature spells. And so this is one of those cards, for players that were fans of things that affected everything, this is the kind of card that was interesting when that happened because your opponent had this decision about

oh when I play a creature one of my creatures is going to get tapped which means you have to be careful in the order you play things and oh well if I'm going to play a creature I might want to attack first before I play my creature if I had something to say I had a 2-2 flyer that if I play my creature first you can tap my flyer

I have to sort of know the order of things. And there are some interesting things there. My comment to that, by the way, for people that like, whenever we change things and we make things easier for people to understand because they're more intuitive, sometimes in the change, we take away options. And I understand there are people there that just love having every option available to them and it's not a problem for them and and they get it, and they can read the card. And my answer is that there's a lot of decision-making that already goes in magic.

I believe that magic has the ability to put decisions where they, you know, I would rather have the decision-making focus where it matters more and less, you know, there's a point where people just get overwhelmed. And I don't believe that magic I believe when we make some changes that lessen some things so it's more clear what's going on that just means you have more ability to focus. I think magic

has more decisions to make per game than most games have. A lot of decisions I have what I call the perfect game which is imagine you were playing and you were playing in front of a two-way mirror, and the top ten pros in the world were sitting in the room watching you play, and every time you made a move,

they either went thumbs up or thumbs down. You know, you made the right play or you made the wrong play. How many games does a player play in their lifetime where the pro players would thumbs up every move they made, meaning no mistakes. You had a perfect game.

Now, I'm not talking about mana screw games where you really didn't get a chance to play, but a game where you got your mana and you had a real game. How many of those games did you play that you never made a mistake? And my belief is that for the average player, they've never played a game like that. They've never played a perfect game. That there always was a game,

that there were decisions that they could have done differently that would have improved their odds. Even if they won, there's things they could have done that would have been the optimal play that they didn't do. And that's not even also getting into a lot of stuff Mike Turian talks about, that when you start getting really good, it's not even about what

cards you play, it's about showing intent. Are you looking at things at different times? Are you giving clues to your opponent what you're doing and not doing? You know, part of playing really good at the high level is if you want your opponent to believe something, you have to act as if that thing were true. And so you have to take actions and do things that lead your opponent to believe things that might not be what is really the case because you want them to act in a certain way. Likewise, you want to be able to read your opponent.

When they look at something or think about something or have a pause, you want to read what that means so you can understand what they have. And the real good players are very, very good at reading the opponent so that they play around with what the opponent has because, you know, you just pausing for a second and go, wait a second. They go, oh, he's thinking about this.

He must have that. Oh, if he has that, I got to play this way. Anyway, this was a really interesting card, by the way, in that I like the fact that this card sort of changed how the board state works and how things happen, and it really made you think about what order you wanted to play things,

and it's just a very neat card. Okay, next is Timberwatch Elf. Two and a green for a 1-2 Elf. Tap. Target creature gets plus six, plus six, until end of turn. X is the number Timberwatch Elf. Two and a green for a 1-2 Elf. Tap. Target creature gets plus X, plus X until end of turn. X is the number of Elves in play. Not that you control, by the way. Elves in play. So this, um, this was one of the two

most broken cards in the Limited, I believe. Um, this was just kind of crazy. Like I talked about, sometimes you would play a card that's suboptimal just because it was the right creature type. This was the kind of deck where you did that. Did you have a one-drop or a two-drop or a three-drop that was an elf?

That's all that mattered. You know, and Timberwatch elves, I think, was common. I think. I mean, I remember people had multiple Timberwatch elves in their decks, and that's just crazy. Like, if I have a Timberwatch elf, it's like, I'm just getting elves out there. Because if I ever get this Timberwatch elf out, and you can't immediately deal with it, you are in deep, deep trouble. And that's an example of where I think the set did a lot of fun.

I think the design's pretty cool. Developmentally, we were still getting a handle on... I mean, one of the things I think about the development of Limited is we were constantly learning. And this set, I think, made a lot of strides from sets before it, but it clearly left some room to, you know... There were some cards that were just really warped the limited environment, and I think we've gotten a lot better

of being careful not to make comments that, like, right, you would just get Timberwatch Alfauden, like, what are they going to do? It's really, really hard to deal with. Okay, next, Totem Speaker. Four and a green for a 3-3 elf druid. Whenever a beast enters the battlefield, Totem Speaker. Four and a green for a 3-3 elf druid. Whenever a beast enters the battlefield, gain three life.

So before I talked about there was a goblin, there was a crossover between goblins and beasts. This is the crossover between elves and beasts. So beasts were mostly a red and green thing. So one crossover's in red, and one crossover's in green. And one of the things, elves had this thing of mana generation, so sometimes what would happen is you'd have an elf deck, the early game was elf,

and the late game was beasts. Usually the way it worked is more of your deck was elves, you had a lot of elf synergy, but there were a few big beasts that the elves could help you get out. And this is one of those cards that if you were playing beasts,

sometimes was very valuable, depending on the kind of deck you were doing. I mean, Elves had a couple different ways it could go. Next, Unstable Hulk. Hulk smash! One red red for a 2-2 Goblin Mutant. For more 3 RR, so 5 mana, it gets plus 6, plus 6 in Trample, but you skip your next turn. So basically what happens is, it's a face down 2-2.

For 3 mana you can turn into an 8-8 trampler, but the cost of it isn't really the mana. 3 mana is not that much. The cost of it is you give up a turn. So this is definitely an interesting card. Like I said, you can definitely see some influence here of

red. Like, one of the things that we haven, you can definitely see some influence here of Red, like, one of the things that we ebb and flow a little bit on Red is Red has this flavor of going all out, like, all short term, no long term, and we're trying to get a balance between having Red do some things that have that feel, but making sure there's some gameplay so that Red has not just a speed,

but also has a little bit of control elements. We're working hard on that. Red, in its very nature wants to be all-in, and we want enough of that to get that flavor of red, but we want to make sure there's some stuff in red that if you want to play a more controlling deck with red, that there's the ability to do that. Okay, next, Wall of Deceit.

So Wall of Deceit is a 0-5 wall, costs one and a blue, so two mana. For three mana, you can turn its face down, and it's more for a blue. So this existed for a couple reasons. So one is, the idea is, I can play, 3 mana, I can play a 2-2 creature, or for 2 mana, I can play a 0-5 wall. I have the ability to go back and forth between them. So the idea is, if I need it as a defensive thing, it's defensive.

0-5, good wall. If I want to attack with it, oh, well, for three mana, I can always turn into a 2-2. And then for one mana, I can always turn it back into a 0-5. So, for example, let's say I take this, you see it's a 0-5, I turn into a 2-2 and attack with it. Really, really, it's kind of like a 2-5. As long as I have one blue mana open, I can do two damage to you, and then I can, I mean, this is, sorry, I'm talking about how that card worked

when we printed it. Back in Damage on the Stack days, so it's a little different here. But back in the days, you could attack, do the two damage, and then you could turn it up, and it would have five toughness. So, it was the kind of card where your opponent knew when you were attacking with it that it essentially had five toughness if you had a blue open. Now that's, okay, as a side note, the damage on the stack.

I'm talking about all sorts of changes we made today. So damage on the stack, the reason it was changed was, A, it never made any intuitive sense to people who didn't understand the nuance of what it was. And just intuitively, it didn't make a lot of sense. We had a few things we would talk about how we would call them the that's lying parts of the game, where when you explain it to someone who didn't know, they go, you're lying. That's not true. That doesn't make any sense.

And we wanted to remove those from the game. The other thing that's very interesting, and this is a good example here, is I think the card is much more interesting that it's a 2-2 that comes with 0-5. Not that I can... Like, before, it's like, it's a 2-2. For everything that matters, it's a 2-power creature. And for everything that matters to me of the 1-mana, it's a 5-toughness creature. So it's like, I just have a 2-5. It's like, well, now I've got to decide.

If I attack with a 2-2 and you block with your 2-2 I'm like what do I want? do I want to kill your creature at the loss of my creature or do I want to bounce and not kill either creature that is a much more interesting decision that I just kill it

and get to save it you know one of the things you want in a game is to make sure that decisions are interesting and that the player has to really weigh them

if you're always going to do something every time you do it that's much less interesting for a game because, well, what's the point? What's the decision? There is no decision making.

There's an optimal way to play it. Always play it the optimal way. Okay, next. Warbreak Trumpeter. So Warbreak Trumpeter is a goblin for one red mana. Morph XXR. And you get X11 red goblin tokens

when you turn it up. So this is definitely one of those ones where it's a one-drop goblin, so sometimes in goblin decks that need to count goblins, you'll do that. But most of the time, you'll play it face down, and then, you know, for three mana, I get a 1-1. For five mana, I get two 1-1s, you know, and so on and so on. It definitely allowed you... We talked about making later red cards.

This is a good card that allows me to have a later game, you know. If I have this in play and then it's, you know, turns 9, for example, all of a sudden I can... Or, not turn 9, but if I have 9 mana, all of a sudden I can have 4-1-1s. It could really change the later game. One of the things also was in this, in a tribal set,

token making takes on, especially when you have counties, token making takes on extra value here, which is all of a sudden, let's say I want to do damage to you and I do damage based on goblins, you know, by using this, for example, let's say I have my nine mana.

All of a sudden, I have five extra goblins in play. I have this guy and the four tokens he makes. And so this not only got to make one ones, which could be very powerful, but in this environment, them being goblins was super valuable. Next, Weaver of Lies. I'm sorry. No, next is Warped Researcher.

For you, for a 3-4 Wizard Mutant anyone who cycles if anybody cycles, you or your opponent this creature gets Flying and Shroud Shroud is written out, but essentially Flying and Shroud so this was definitely we wanted cards that cared about cycling happen, we had cards like

Lightning Rift and Astral Slide and Onslaught, this is another card this was more meant for Limited, but the idea essentially is, as you cycle things, this creature can, you know, has value. And that you can... This allows you to sort of

maybe prioritize putting some cycling things in your deck because, you know, you could cycle to either make this have evasion or cycle to protect it, which is kind of cool. Next, Weaver of Lies, 5 blue blue for a 4-4 Beast. I think Beast showed up in all the colors, maybe not white. Beast was mostly red and green,

but I think there was some Beast in black and Beast in blue. Anyway, for Morph for you, turn any number of Morph cards face down. So this is another card. So one of the things, actually, I didn't mention this with Wall of Deceit, one of the things that, I think it was Blue-Green, there was a deck that definitely

cared about morphing and had cards that manipulated off morphing. So for example, I just talked about Warp Researcher, which every time you cycled would gain flying. Well, Blue also had some cards and stuff that cared about when things got morphed.

Now, you could turn it face down because you could get the morph reveals, or sometimes there were a few cards that cared about when things were face down. Like, there's a green card that I talked about last time that got plus two, plus two for every face down card. Well, for example, let's say this is a morphed creature, and I attack. All of a sudden, I could put this face up,

turn a whole bunch of things face down, which could be this one as well, and then my guy that might just be like a 4-4 or something, all of a sudden becomes an 8-8 or a 10-10. So, one of the things we'd like to do whenever we're doing any sort of mechanic is make sure that there's some means to manipulate the mechanic. And Weaver Lies is that

kind of card. Okay, next, White Knight! WW22 Knight. First strike protection from black. It's funny. I'm trying to think why White Knight went in here. It's interesting in that

it wasn't really Knight tribal, so the tribal itself was not a huge thing. I think it just kind of fit in a lot of the swarms that there were the Soldier decks that were White Weenie decks and so it fit efficiently in there.

I also think at the time what might have been going on was it might be the time we made this set the core set stopped doing protection. Here's my guess

what happened. The core set probably stopped doing protection and the team liked white knight and wanted white knight in the environment.

They thought it was good for the standard environment but we couldn't put white knight in the core set because of protection so they were looking for a place to put White Knight in the core set because of protection, so they were looking for a place to put it. That logically makes sense, because it's not a super smooth fit in the tribal thing.

Next, Willbender. Willbender is one and a blue for a 1-2 wizard with morph, one U, and when you morph it, you get to redirect a spell, which means you get to choose a new target. So we definitely tried to make... One of the things about blue triggers was blue did a lot of

sneaky things. Counterspelling and redirecting and turning things face up and face down. Definitely the idea when you're playing blue morphs is that if they had mana open, shenanigans could happen if they had the ability to unmorph. And Willbender was a very popular card. And

the ability to move things really means that all of a sudden, you know, your opponent thinks they're doing something and you really could shift it. You know, they're going to kill your creature, not they're going to kill

their own creature. That really changes things significantly. So this Willbender is a pretty cool card. Next is Windborn Muse. I talked about all this for the last Muse.

So this is the white Muse for 300 W, so four mana. It's a 2-3 Spirit and it says creatures cannot attack unless they pay two for each attacking creature. So there's a card in Tempest called Propaganda. It's a 2-3 spirit. And it says creatures cannot attack unless they pay two for each attacking creature. So there's a card in Tempest called Propaganda.

It's in blue. Basically, this is Propaganda. I think Propaganda was three mana. This is two mana. But also, it's in white. One of the things we realized is when we were trying to figure out what needed to be where, we came to the conclusion that white was supposed to be the taxing color. And this really was a taxing effect.

So instead of being a blue thing, it's now a white thing. And the idea is, hey, you want to do your thing you want to do? Well, just pay me my taxes. You gotta pay the piper. And then white's the one who makes the rules, so sometimes white's rules work in white's favor. Next,

Wirewood Channeler. Three in the green for a 2-2 elf. Tap at X mana of one color where X is the number of elves. This is another. It's not quite as good as Timberwatch Elf, but still none too shabby. This was one of the cards that was made to allow the elf-beast combos

because this allows you to get out bigger creatures. The elves didn't tend to be all that big, but the beasts were big. So what happened is, if you got a deck that used elves to get a lot of bigger things, you'd stick some beasts in your deck, because the biggest beasts were in green.

Next, Wirewood Hivemaster. So Wirewood Hivemaster is a two mana card, one in a green, for a 1-1 elf. Whenever a non-token elf enters the battlefield, you get a 1-1 green inset token. Now, you might ask why we have the...

Often we have the rider so it doesn't feed itself. This makes insects, so it doesn't feed itself. But the reason we say non-token is there's a whole bunch of ways to get elf tokens that we thought was a little on the degenerate side. So often when we're doing shenanigans, counting things, sometimes we do count tokens, sometimes we don't. Depends on the card. But this is one of the times

where we decided not. So this is definitely one of those cards that we... As much as this was about tribal, there also was a very strong creature theme. I mean, obviously,

Legion was all creatures. So this was the card that sort of said, hey, I'm really good in a heavy creature deck. Not necessarily a tribal deck, not that it couldn't also be a tribal deck. Tribal decks have creatures in them.

But it really was trying to say, hey, there's some breadth of what you can do, and this card is more about care about creatures rather than a specific tribe. Finally, my final card of the day, final card of my podcast, and final card of legions that I'm going to talk about is Withered Wretch. So W withered wretch was a zombie cleric of black black for uh i think it's a one one

zombie cleric i didn't write that down um and it has the ability one exile card name and target graveyard um so what is this doing here and the answer is one of the things we tend to do is we make sure that sets, sometimes it's within the set and sometimes it's a set after. The previous year's block was Odyssey. It was all about playing in the graveyard. Well, we wanted people to have their fun, but now we're doing some different stuff, and usually we give you answers to the previous year's stuff to make sure that if it gets out of control, that there's some answers. And Withered Wretch was designed as an answer to deal with shenanigans from Graveyard.

Turned out it's a really good card. It's proved very, very valuable in formats where you need to deal with Graveyard stuff. It's cheap, and it allows you a lot of control because you get a target when it gets removed. And so Withered Wretch has become a pretty valuable go-to tool to protect people from Gra graveyard shenanigans. Anyway, that, many, many cards later.

Ooh, I'm looking at my clock. I had a long podcast today. It was good. I had a lot to talk about. It wasn't even raining today, just lots of traffic. Anyway, that, my friends, is Legion. So Legion's, like I I said I mentioned this briefly the thing about legions was at the time

it was much derided by most of the experienced players because the number of constructed cards was a little lower than average but just the gimmick of all creatures played really well and like I said for many many years legions was the best selling small set of all time and it was very very telling to us

because the vocal, I guess, vocal minority on the Internet, the people that were the loudest with their voice really, really did not like Legion. They were very vocally against it. But then we'd look and we'd see, and it kept selling so well. And it was one of the early things

that made us realize that there was a portion of the audience, like I said, we called them the invisibles at the time, that we didn't understand, and Legion's really was something that opened our eyes and said, there's a lot of people playing Magic, and you have to, we had to be aware of who all the people were. We want to make every,

you know, our goal is to make every player happy. Now, obviously, the stuff Legion's did that didn't make the pros happy, I think the biggest reason was they just needed more constructed cards, and that's something obviously we constantly work on, to make sure that every set has stuff that affects and means something constructed. And Eric and his team are working really hard to make sure that happens. Anyway, that my friends is all there is to say about Legion.

So, I parked my car, and we all know what that means. That means this is the end of my drive to work. It's time for me to be going and making magic. Talk to you guys next time.