Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #193 - Scourge, Part 2

Episode Date: January 16, 2015

Mark continues with part 2 on the design of Scourge.

I'm pulling out my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so last time I started a podcast on Scourge, the dragon set. So Scourge was the third set in the Onslaught block, following Onslaught and Legions. As I talked about last time, it was pitched as the dragon set. Didn't have a lot of dragon stuff in it, a little bit. We'll talk more about that today. So we were up to C. So we're up to Chill Haunting.

So Chill Haunting is an instant that costs one and a block, so two mana total. So as an additional cost to play it, you had to exile X creature cards from your graveyard. So as an additional cost to play it, you had to exile X creature cards from your graveyard, and then the spell that target creature got minus X minus X until end of turn. So essentially what it let you do is it allowed you for pretty cheap, for two mana, to kill things, but you needed to use creature cards in your graveyard as a resource. And the idea is this was a creature-centered block. You had a lot of creatures. Legions was all creatures. And the idea was, oh, in a block deck, hey,centered block you had a lot of creatures legions was all creatures and the idea was oh in a block deck hey you probably should have a lot of creatures so you know that should work out just fine

it's a fun card that definitely makes use of resources a little different I enjoy one of the things that's fun for me is finding different ways to make use of different resources and the graveyard is an interesting one it's one of those things that we always use a little bit, and every once in a while we focus on. It wasn't the focus of this block,

but I do think the spell worked well in this environment. Next. Clutch of Undeath. 3BB Enchantment. Enchant Creature. Remember, Enchantment Aura back then was Enchant Creature. Enchanted Creature gets plus 3, plus three if it's a zombie. Minus three, minus three if it's not.

So we've been doing... This is an early version of this kind of mechanic where it's an aura that has one use in a certain way and a different use in another way. So the idea here is, if you're playing a zombie deck, you can use it to build up your zombies and make them stronger.

If you want to use it on your opponent, even if you're playing zombies, but if you want to use it on your opponent and they don't have zombies, you can use it to kill. And so it's a versatile card, especially in the zombie deck, where you have the options of beefing up your zombies or killing other things. The fact that this spell is a kill spell when you need it to be,

but also creature boosts, it just gives you a lot of versatility. The key to making this kind of card design-wise is to make sure that they feel like companion pieces. And there's a strong desire to make sure that the A effect and the B effect feel connected. Because they feel disconnected. It's like, Enchanted Creature, if it's a zombie,

gains regeneration. feel connected because they feel disconnected it's like enchanted creature if it's a zombie gains you know uh regeneration but if it's not it gains flying it's like what why why is it you know it doesn't make sense but this thing's like plus three plus three if this minus three minus three if not and that seems very connected so the key whenever you're doing a spell this is a good just note in general on design is that whenever a spell does more than one thing, you want those things to feel connected, like they belong on the same card for a reason. If you have a card in which you have two abilities that have no sort of connection to each other, it makes the card feel disconnected. Now, there's different ways to make them feel connected. This particular one is an aesthetic thing where you're using the similar numbers. There's a lot of different ways to make them feel connected. This particular one is an aesthetic thing where you're using the similar numbers. There's a lot of different ways to make them feel connected, but it is

very very important that your different components do feel connected. Okay. Next. Consumptive Goo. Ooh, another Ooze. BB for a 1-1 Ooze. So it costs 2 black mana for a 1-1 Ooze. And then for 2 black black, 4 mana, target creature gets minus 1, minus 1 until end of turn, and put a plus 1, plus 1 counter on Consumptive Goo. So one of the cards that I joke that we keep making is the blob.

Which is, it's ooze, it just eats things. If you'll notice, a lot of the oozes historically get bigger over time. Because one of the you know, vampires hunt at night. What do oozes historically get bigger over time because one of the you know, vampires hunt at night. What do oozes do? They eat things and grow. That's kind of what oozes do. Sometimes

they're acidic, I guess. Sometimes they destroy things. They destroy things and they get bigger. It's kind of their thing. So, consumptive goo is definitely playing in that space that essentially you can go around and start eating other things. And the thing that's cute is early in the game you can eat small things

and as you get more man, it starts eating bigger and bigger things. Daru, Warchief. So two white, white for a 1-1 soldier. Soldiers you control cost one less and, sorry, soldiers you cast cost one less, soldiers you control are plus one, plus two. So remember, the Warchief was a cycle,

all of them, it was a five card cycle, all of them made whatever creature type they cared about one less, and they were always of their own creature type, allowing you to play future Warchiefs cheaper. And then, they granted an ability that made sense for that group. Not all of them were power toughness bonuses.

I think, in fact, maybe only white was a power toughness bonus. The idea was each one wanted to play to their play style and white is all about building the army and soldiers are about having lots of small soldiers. So this definitely plays into the soldier deck where you want to get a lot of small soldiers up and then the warchief sort of makes them stronger as a group. You know, plus one, plus two to your team is good if you have a lot of small creatures, which is what white does.

Okay, next. Dawn Elemental. White, white, white, white. Yes, that is four white mana. For a 3-3 Element elemental, it is flying, and it has prevent all damage to card name. So we make these kind of cards every once in a while. Essentially, it's like, it's a decently costed body

that's really hard for your partner to deal with. Now, note this only prevents damage. You still can terror it, you know, murder it, whatever destroy effects you want. But it really, in some ways, is designed to be hard for red to kill. It doesn't say protection from red on it, but really this is sort of a white anti-red card because red mostly deals all its kill spells are all damage-based.

So when it prevents damage, it's really hard for red to deal with this thing. In general, red does not have a lot of flyers either, so this is made as a white card that's meant to be extra hard for red to deal with. Like I said, black can deal with this thing. Black's got a ton of kill spells, most of which kill this thing. But red has a problem with it.

Next, Day of the Dragons. So Day of the Dragons costs four blue, blue, blue, so seven mana total, three of which were blue. It's an enchantment. When it enters the battlefield, you exile all of your creatures and then replace them with five, five red dragon tokens. And then, if this ever leaves play, you have to sacrifice all your dragons,

whether or not they're tokens, by the way, and then you return all the creatures. This was a real cute thing. I like a lot the idea of you're turning all your things to dragons. It has a little bit of the wonkiness of if you have other dragons somehow and this dies, it kills those dragons

in addition to the tokens. It's in blue, so blue doesn't have a lot of dragons. The other thing is, if you lose dragons along the way, It's in blue, so blue doesn't have a lot of dragons. The other thing is if you lose dragons along the way, let's say I turn my creatures into dragons and my opponent kills some of the dragons, when this enchantment leaves play, I get all my creatures back. So they're a little bit of

flavor disconnected. I turn myself into dragons, you kill some of the dragons, but then they come back even though the thing they've been turned into was killed. But it was just too wordy to word it any other way. I think that's why it went that way. And I think the reason they had the rider is they wanted you to have an answer to it. Like, all my creatures are not

5-5 dragons. How do I deal with that? Like, well, you can deal with enchantment and turn small back with the flavor. This is definitely one of the things, maybe this is one of the things that got people, when they looked at this thing, going, oh, maybe we can make this a dragon set, in that this is a good example of a card that's in blue.

Blue is not normally the dragon color, but it has a card that makes sense thematically in blue that ties to dragons. Note, by the way, that dragons are still red tokens, that the set wasn't trying to underlie the iconicness of red as a dragon creature. Sometimes, like, one of the things we do with dragons from time to time, historically, is every once in a while... So, when you do surveys of creature types, and we ask our players what they like, the number one most popular creature type is dragons. By actually a decent margin. People love dragons. And so every once in a while, we did Mirage, we did Invasion, we did it in Kamigawa.

We've done it a few times. Plane Chase. I'm sorry, Plane of Chaos. Where we'll do a cycle of dragons. We don't normally do that for the other Iconics. Like, for example, when we did the Angel set and had a cycle of angels, there still was a white, you know, it was white and blue and white and red and white and green, but white was always there. was white, you know, it was white and blue and white and red and white and green, but white was always

there. So one of the things about dragons is every once in a while when we think it's worthy, we'll cycle out dragons just because they're, I don't know, they're so popular and the people like the dragons. I don't know why I'm doing the telling the accent. Okay.

Next. Decree of Annihilation. Okay. Mark talks about what he doesn't like about some of the cycling design. Okay, so Decree of Annihilation is 8RR, so 8 red red, so 10 mana total for sorcery. Exile all artifacts, creatures, lands, graveyards, and hands. I find it very bizarre, by the way, that this says... Oh, I guess it's red. So red doesn't destroy enchantments. So it destroys everything but enchantments.

Also, it doesn't destroy planeswalkers because of the time. They didn't exist, so it didn't name them. But notice, now it doesn't destroy all the permanents other than enchantments. It destroys all graveyard cards and all cards in hand. Which, for red, is not something red traditionally does. Then for cycle 5 red-red, for seven mana as opposed to ten mana, you can cycle it, and if you cycle it, you destroy all the lands. A small version of the effect.

So here's my problem. One of my problems in general with cycling is there is this desire when you design to try to prove what you can do, to say, look how clever I'm being. And one of the things when you be clever is there are ways to take mechanics and bend them and make them act like other mechanics. And this is a good example of,

this is taking cycling and turning it into a split card. Because the idea of cycling is, I mean, the original concept of cycling is, I have a card, and if at any moment I'd rather have something other than that card, I can trade it in for a different card. You know, that cycling allowed you to say, oh, I don't need this right now, I can trade it in

for a random card. And then we started this thing, this block where we started doing small effects, and at first it was just tiny effects, and now you get to stuff like Degree of Annihilation where it's like, okay, so I have a spell that for seven mana is an uncounterable,

because when you cycle you can't be countered, an uncounterable red Armageddon with a cantrip. You know, it's like uncounterable red Armageddon with a cantrip. And like, that is so much more powerful than, I mean, ten mana to destroy everything. I mean, sometimes you do that, but what's much more powerful? This seven mana uncomfortable cantrip Armageddon. And like, that's not the point of cycling. Like, one of the things that's important is, the goal of Magic, from Magic Design, is that we are constantly making new sets, and that we want the sets to feel fresh and new. But, look, the game is the game. A lot of what we do is try to make sure the game consistently plays the

same. That we want, we don't want to feel like it's such a radically different game. Like, what game am I playing? You know, we want enough departure that it feels different and that you're excited. You know, we want to make sure that each new magic set is playing differently so that there's, you know's variety but look we want it to be magic we don't want you to play a set and go wow is that that doesn't even feel like magic we don't want that um and part of doing that is having mechanics to help define things and give you a different feel um in order to do that though we need to make sure that we understand what mechanics are doing and have those mechanics do that thing. There's not a lot of value of having mechanics

have lots of different functions because all it really does is it makes it harder for other sets to have a consistent sense and flavor. You know, the second that split cards, I'm sorry, the second that cycling just becomes split cards, well then cycling and split cards aren't different things. And that is, that is wrong. Like I want cycling to be cycling and split cards to be split cards and I want them to do their own thing. I'm not a big fan. I want cycling to be what cycling is which is a way to trade in cards. I don't want it to be a way to do alternate spells

let alone uncountable cantrips which it has to be to still be cycling. So anyway, my little rant on Decree of Annihilation. This whole cycle had this problem

where just the small cycling was so big, such a big effect that it didn't, it wasn't like I'm trading away this for a small effect.

Some of the kinds, when I'm spending seven mana and Armageddon-ing and drawing a card, that's not a small effect. That's a pretty big effect. And that moves away from cycling.

So Decree of Justice. I'll tell you about one more decree. This is another real popular one. So XX2WW. So two Xs, two colorless mana, and two white mana. So two, two, and two.

It's a sorcery. Put X4-4 white angel tokens with flying into play. And you could cycle it for 2W, and if you cycled it, you paid X, and then you put X1-1 white soldiers into play. And you could cycle it for 2W, and if you cycled it, you paid X. And then you put X, 1, 1 white soldiers into play. So the idea of this card is you either could put

X, 1, 1s or X angels. Angels, obviously, there was more mana than just the X. This is another card where, oh, cycling 2W. It's not cycling 2W. It's not Cycling 2W. It's Cycling X 2W.

It was too awkward to put X in the activation cost. So, like, once again, that's not a minor spell. That literally is a spell where I can spend all my mana on the cycling cost. That's not a tiny spell. I will note, by the way, a little thing about the decrees. If you look in the art of the decrees, Corona False God shows up. Sometimes, like in Decree of Justice,

you see her silhouette, like on the rock, but she either is in the art or her silhouette is in the art of all five decrees. Because apparently, Corona likes decree things. Next, Dimensional Breach. So, Dimensional Breach.

So Dimensional Breach is a sorcery that costs five white white, so seven mana total. You exile all permanents, and then at the beginning of each player's turn, he or she returns a card he owns to their hand. So the idea is you remove everything, and then little by little people get it back. The problem with a card like this is

there are ways for white to remove its own stuff and so it's not horribly hard if you remove it with this thing and then sack it. I don't think there's a rider that brings them all back if this thing is sacrificed. So you can remove everything and then get rid of this

and then nobody gets anything back. It is designed, though, by the way, because it's beginning of turn, that your opponent gets the first thing back before you get the first thing back. So, that was definitely it trying to balance. Okay, Dispersal Shield was an instant for one and a blue, so two mana, counter target spell unless X is paid, where X is the highest confirmed mana cost of a permanent you control. So, this is another one of the CMC cycles where it looks for permanents you control, takes the highest one.

In general, I don't want to talk too much about the converted mana cost. So there's a couple problems. Number one is, like I said, I explained what converted mana cost was in the last podcast because I'm like, not everybody knows. And a lot of times people think like once they understand something that everybody understands something, but converted mana cost confuses people. Part of it is the words don't do the best job. We have looked for other words to say converted mana cost with and have not had a lot of success. Um, so the reason we haven't changed it, we

haven't found anything that's any better. Um, But people don't know what it is. I tend to avoid at common saying Converted Manacost because I know it's confusing. Every once in a while we do it, but I tend to avoid it. Having it be a major thing in a set where people sort of have to get it, this theme did not go over all that well for a couple reasons. One was you kind of have to play big things before it really does something that makes you excited. So by definition, it just never happens early.

And there's moments where cool things can happen, but it is most often disappointing. You know, this card costs two mana, so I have two mana. Ooh, I can cast this card. I'm like, oh, you know. Now this one, luckily, you don't need a very high confirmed mana

cost to sometimes do what you need to do. Often, just having, you know, your opponent having to pay three is enough to stop the spell. So this particular card was a little better than most, but the CMC theme was not particularly well received. People did like the Storm Mechanic because it was very powerful.

They liked the land cycling. So there's a lot of mechanical stuff they liked, but the actual CMC theme was not particularly well received. Dragon Fangs. Dragon Fangs is a cycle. So this particular one is one and a green, two mana for an Enchant creature. Enchant a creature gets plus one, plus one, and trample. And then, if a creature with

converted mana costs six or greater enters the battlefield, and this is in your graveyard, it snaps onto that creature. So the idea of this whole cycle was, I play it, I can play it early, if the thing I play it on dies, well, sometime later, I will play a big thing, and I play a big thing, I get this thing

back. They were flavored as dragon stuff dragon things such because the development team was trying to make it feel more dragon-y and the idea is

well what if we took the things that cared about big things and just named them and flavored them as if they were dragon things because dragons are big

dragons tend to cost six mana or more although not all of them do but most of them do I think all the ones in the set do. So anyway, it's another good example where I always

talk about if your theme's not a common, it's not your theme. One of the things that's always challenging is when you have a theme like dragons, which you don't tend to do a lot of common dragons. Common dragons are tricky. And so you have to find a way to point toward it. I get what they were doing

here. I mean, I do like that they took something that had a function in the set and used it as a means to point toward the theme. I can appreciate that. I mean, I like it. I don't think the auras were all that useful. They weren't particularly that strong. And the fact that you, I mean, it's like when I get my dragon in play,

okay, now it's a little bit bigger, but trample doesn't matter all that much. Usually there's not that many things blocking it. And I mean, plus one, plus one is nice. Maybe it changes the clock slightly, but like I have a seven, seven instead of a six, six. It's not as big a deal. I mean, I guess you could have built

a deck with a whole bunch of these maybe so when you finally get a dragon out it's just the craziest thing in the world but once again once you get a dragon out

you're usually in good shape so we have effects we call the rich get richer which are effects

sorry there are effects in which you do something that tends to say hey have you do something that tends to say, hey, have you done something that's probably already winning you the game? Well, it'll even more win you the game. And so a little of that's okay.

You've got to be careful, though, because they don't... A lot of times you've got to make sure that if you're behind, you have tools to catch back up. Being ahead and staying ahead. Magic's not fun if every time you're ahead, you just make it easy for them to stay ahead. Okay. Next.

Dragon Mage. I'm going to take a sip of water to give him my hiccups. Okay. Dragon Mage. 5 red red for a 5-5 dragon wizard. He got 6 or more. He has Flying. And whenever he deals combat damage to the opponent, each player discards their hand and draws 7 cards.

So can you name that effect? Yes, it hits you and it wheels a fortune! So Wheel of Fortune is a card from Alpha. It did that exact effect. It costs 200 red, I believe. It was really, really good. It's one of, actually, the most broken of the red cards from Alpha.

We go back and forth. One of the problems we have in red is red is supposed to not be very good at card advantage. It tends to be one of the anti-card advantage callers that throws out its resources quickly to try to win quickly, but there's more trouble if the opponent can survive.

And so if you give red too much card drawing, it fills in a weakness that's kind of crucial to how the color functions. So we like him a little bit. We definitely do some tutoring, but the stuff we tend to do where Red gets more cards, it's not a card advantage. So, for example, Red tutoring, you discard before you draw. So the problem with Wheel of Fortune is it's just card advantage, especially if you have an empty hand. And one of the reasons it was so powerful in early Magic is because Red really, really likes that effect.

So what we did is we then did, we tried to do Winds of Change, where the idea is I draw, I get a new hand, but I'm not getting any more than the cards I had. There's a big debate right now of when we do winds of change, where we're supposed to put it. My big issue is that if you make two effective winds of change in red, it allows red to not have to solve some problem by going to other colors. One of the things you want is you want every color to have weaknesses that can be problem by going to other color. One of the things you want is you want every color to have weaknesses that can be strengthened

by going to a second color. And that I want to be careful we don't make cards that fill in the gaps of what's supposed to be a color's weakness. Next, Dragon Tyrant. Eight red red,

so ten mana for a 6-6 dragon. Flying, trample, double strike, and fighter breathing. So you pay red mana to get plus one, plus one, end of turn. And it's got an upkeep cost of red, red, red, red. So four red mana. The idea here was just a big, bad, mean dragon. This is back when we were still doing upkeep costs.

That's not something we do all that often. I mean, once in a blue moon we do. It used to be very popular in Magic. Early Alpha, for example, has a lot of upkeep costs. That's not something we do all that often. I mean, once in a blue moon we do. It used to be very popular in Magic. Alpha, for example, had a lot of upkeep costs. And the idea was it allowed you to get things out a little cheaper, but there was a mana cost

required to keep them. In general, what we found is players weren't particularly fond of them. Oftentimes, players were excited to draw their card, and so they'd draw their card, because they had nothing to do, but they forgot their upkeep,

and once you draw a card, you haven't paid your upkeep cost, and then it would die, and just a lot of unfun moments. So we dialed it back. It's not something we never do, but we do very infrequently these days. And I think Dragon Pirate was just designed to be,

like, if you can get a dragon out, because there's a bunch of ways in the set to get dragons out this thing is just big and mean okay dragon speaker shaman

so one RR so three mana for a 2-2 barbarian now this is before the mirrored in the next block would be the race class

so this has a class but no race anyway dragon spells you cast cost two less. So there's a cycle of war chiefs that make everything cost one

less. And this is kind of an unofficial war chief extended card except because it's dragons and dragons are more expensive, this makes them cost two less. Okay. Dragon Stalker. So Dragon Stalker. So Dragon Stalker is for four and a white, five mana. It's a 3-3 bird soldier.

It is flying in protection from dragons. So I think what's going on in this card is... Sorry, it's the hiccup episode. What's going on in this card is I believe the protection from dragons came in development because they were trying to find some ways to take the cards that were there and up the amount

of dragoness. And so I think this was a way to sort of add a little bit of trigger text to a card. Okay, there were a couple dragons in this ad, it could matter. But it was more to just give a little flavor. Okay, speaking of now we're in the Ds, we got a lot of dragon cards. Dragon Storm! So, 8R, so we're in the Ds, we've got a lot of dragon cards. Dragon Storm.

So, 8R, so 9 mana total, sorcery. Search your library for a dragon card and put it onto the battlefield. Storm. So, what this thing was is, if you could cast... If you could, for every spell you managed to get before casting this, you get a dragon. So, the best way you tend to do this is using rituals. Because the nice thing about rituals is rituals help you get more mana. So they help get you to the point where you can cast a nine-mana spell.

And then they get you extra dragons in the meantime. The biggest problem with this is having a nine-cost storm spell, which says for every spell you cast before you cast this nine cost spell hey you get an extra thing you know um and really it's what ended up being true was it was you casting spells to even get to nine mana um and rituals the one of the things and being really really powerful with storm was rituals because rituals not only are spells that get cast, but actively get you to the point where you can cast these spells,

and they allow you to cast other spells. Storm really wants lots of mana, and so the fact that you have mana that gets to count as a spell for the Storm count proved to be really valuable. For those that aren't aware, back in Alpha, mana

rituals, meaning I cast a spell and get mana just for that turn, dark ritual being the poster child, started in black. There's a lot of flavor to them in black. But eventually when we sort of rejiggered the color pie to make sure that all the colors were sort of more even in what they did, we realized that it made more sense for red, thematically, to be the color that was getting short-term advantage. And so we moved rituals to red.

What we found over time, and Storm did not help with this problem, is rituals are just dangerous. Mana is kind of the safety valve of the game, and so when you make cards that let you get around the safety valve, it causes problems. We still do rituals, but we're careful with them.

They are very dangerous. Getting mana can... I mean, one of the ways the most easy is to break the game is just give people access to mana so that the safeguard of mana isn't the thing that's protecting you. Next, Edgewalker

walks the edge. One white black, so three mana for a 2-2 cleric, and he makes cleric spells cost white black less. But he only reduces colored costs. So, clearly there's a little theme going on. The Warchief's reduced by one. Dragon Speaker Shaman reduces by two.

This card, interestingly, reduces by two, but specifically by one white and one black. So what that means is for most clerics, which are either mono-white or mono-black, it reduces them by one and and one black. So what that means is for most clerics, which are either mono-white or mono-black, it reduces them by one and only the colored cost. But if you happen to play any white-black clerics,

and there's some, Edgewalker is one of the examples, it allows you to play it much cheaper. So for example, if you play an Edgewalker, the second Edgewalker costs only one mana. Okay, Elvish Aberration. So it's five and a green for a four or five elf mutant. Tap, add GGG, so three green mana,

and four is cycling two. So I often talk about code names, you know, card names. When we make cards, we tend to give them, sometimes they're serious names, sometimes they're goofy names. One of the real common names I tend to give is whenever there's a creature that's like, you know,

3-3 or bigger and it taps for mana, I always call it Fat Elf. And this is the epitome of a Fat Elf. 4-5 taps for 3 green. The idea here was there were a lot of big spells, so the idea is at 6 mana, if you can get this out, this can help you get out like nine mana stuff. But because it itself is expensive, it has force cycling on it.

So, you know, when you're able to get it, you can use this to get from mid-range to high range for your spells. But early in the game, you can just trade it for a forest.

Let's talk about the mutant thing a little bit. So one of the themes that was going on is because Brian wanted to convert mana acrossost to matter, the set just had a preponderance of large things. And so the

creative team had to go, why are there so many large things? We need to explain that. And so I think it was Corona or something about the nature of what was going on, or actually probably it was in the Mirari. The Mirari was also at play here. The Mirari was causing things to just grow crazy,

and it was making mutants out of everything, and everything was getting weird. So there were elf mutants and goblin mutants. Normally elves are not 4-5. If you ever build an elf deck and you're looking for bigger elves, this is an interesting one because it is an elf, even though it's a 4-5 creature. And that was justified by just making

everything mutants. And the reason why was because it was a tribal set, they needed to make sure they had some elf stuff in addition to beast stuff, and they didn't want all the big stuff just being beasts, so that's why you get some things like elf mutants and goblin mutants and such. Okay, next, Eternal Dragon.

So Eternal Dragon costs five white-white, so seven mana, for a five-five dragon spirit. It had flying. For three white-white, five mana, you could return it from your graveyard to your hand during your upkeep, and it had plain cycling, too. So this was the most powerful

of all the lamp cycling cards, and the reason is because when you get this in your opening hand, what should you do? Plane cycle it! There's no reason not to because it has a means by which you can get it back later. And not only that,

sometimes if you're at 5 mana and you're not yet at 7 mana, you might even plane cycle multiple times to get you there. Once you get up to 5 mana, you can even plane cycle multiple times to get you there. Once you get up to 5 mana, you can use this to get you the extra mana you need to get up to 7 mana

to be able to cast the Eternal Dragon. This is also one of the best dragons historically that wasn't a red dragon. And there was a lot of debate at the time. The creative team was not happy there was a white dragon. Every once in a while we have cycles the time. The creative team was not happy there was a white dragon. Every once in a while we have cycles,

and I think the creative team was much happier when there's a cycle of dragons than there's just one single sign pointing to, hey, look at me, I'm a white dragon. And it was a very, very good white dragon, too. Not only was it played in tournaments, it was just a really good dragon. And when we were iconically trying to make

dragons red, you've got to be careful where you stick it. The creator team wasn't super happy that this was kind of just random one really powerful white dragon. But the players liked it. Although, whenever I talk about the color pie, normally when we break color pie, I feel like, cool,

I don't get to do that normally. That's exciting. Okay, so thank you for joining my special hiccup episode of Drive to Work. So we got to E, but I'm now at work, and so we'll have to pick up with F tomorrow.

So hope you guys are enjoying our little jaunt through Scourge. Brian and Worth, that's the design team. Also, I learned, by the way, that they got a little bit of help from Bill Rose. He's not credited, but Bill actually helped on the team a little bit.

But anyway, I'm glad that they made a fun set, and so as we tiptoe through it, we can see all sorts of cool cards and talk about what was going on. But as you guys maybe can tell, or maybe you can't. I don't know where I put my brake on, if you can hear me put my brake on. But anyway, I'm now parked in my

parking space, or a parking space. I don't have my own parking space. I'm now parked in my parking space, or a parking space. See, I did it twice. I'm now parked in a parking space, and you know what that means. It means it's time to end my drive to work, and it's time for me to be making magic. So thanks for

joining me, and I'll talk to you next time when we're going to talk more Scourge.