Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #194 - Scourge, Part 3

Episode Date: January 23, 2015

Mark continues with part 3 of his 4-part series on the design of Scourge.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, today, part three of Scourge. Arr! Whenever I talk about Scourge, I want to talk like a pirate. Because it's a pirate word. Anyway, for the last two podcasts, I've been talking all about Scourge, the third set in the Onslaught block. So there was Onslaught, there was Legions, and then there was Scourge, the third set in the Onslaught block. So there was Onslaught, there was Legions, and then there was Scourge. So as I explained previously,

Scourge was marketed as the dragon set, without particularly really being a dragon set. And last, we got up to F. So we are going to talk, starting with F. So the first card today is Final Punishment. So Final Punishment is a black sorcery, costs five mana, three black black. It says target player

loses life equal to the damage dealt this turn. Interesting. One of the things that's fun for designers to do is figure out ways to sort of mimic effects in ways that flavorfully match how you can do things.

Brian and his team, Brian Tinsman was lead designer, and his team was him and Worth Worldport. So this card is kind of like double the damage. It's not exactly double the damage, because it only doubles damage to the player. But it's a way in black to kind of double damage that's a little bit different. It's kind of like, well, once you damage them,

I make you lose life equal to how much I've lost. So, it's different of like, well, once you damage them, I make you lose life equal to how much I've lost. So it's different. Like I said, I like the fact that it's similar but not exactly the same. That's what I like to do in colors. I like them to have effects that play in a slightly different space

so when you play them, they're not exactly the same. And this is a good example where it's similar to double the damage but not quite. It's a little bit different. Next, Forgotten Ancient. Three and a green

for a 0-3 elemental. Whenever any player plays a spell, you may put a plus one, plus one counter on Forgotten Ancient, and beginning of your upkeep, you may move any plus one, plus one counters on it to creatures you control. So this card is famous for being the very

first You Make the Card. Back this is early on the website I came up with an idea that I thought would be fun. One of the things when we started the website is we wanted to have it be as interactive as possible. That we wanted the people reading it to feel like they were participating

directly in magic. That they were involved., that we wanted the people reading it to feel like they were participating directly in Magic, that they were involved. We wanted that to be a two-way thing, not just we were telling you information about how a game was made, but we wanted actual opportunities where the players could have some influence. And so I came up with the idea of You Make the Card. And so I had it run by R&D and I got permission and I said that I would, you know, oversee it and make sure that everything worked and that it was doing what it needed to do so that it would work in the set, and that I set up a schedule so development would have

time to play with it and everything would be hunky-dory. So anyway, the card was made, and the way it worked is, for those who have never done You Make the Card, we actually just started it up recently, or this year, or last year. make the card. We actually just started it up recently, or this year, or last year. The way it works is the audience gets to vote on something. And little by little, as they vote, the card slowly takes form. I think in this particular case, I think we started by having the audience choose a color. They chose green. Then they chose a card type. They chose creature. Then then I forget what was next but anyway

eventually they pieced it all together they chose which artist was going to illustrate it and they chose the sketch the artist was going to use and they chose how big it was going to be and what the ability

was going to be and the abilities were all sent in by people so like you know and the flavor text and the name every single thing was sent in

now this card's playtest name named by the person who did the mechanic, whose mechanic we chose, was Mr. Baby Cakes. So I still refer to him as Mr. Baby Cakes, because that's an awesome playtest name. So Forgotten Ancient, the interesting thing about Forgotten Ancient was we gave them three, you know, you guys, three choices on what to do. I went to development and they gave a power-toughness-mana combo. You could pay this much mana and be this big. So one of the options I think was a 1G11 as opposed to a 3G03. And development told me that that was the more powerful version.

Purely like which card is just stronger. Uh, but the public chose the 0-3 because their shock was the big spell at the time for, you know, the red kill spell. And they really didn't want it to die to shock. Uh, and as a 1-1, if you played it, they could just shock and kill it. But as a 0-3, they couldn't. Um, and so the audience chose 0-3. Even though, it's funny, I don't know whether the audience just liked the 0-3 better, thought it was the most powerful version, I don't know.

But Development thought they were going to pick the most powerful version, which was the 1-1, but they didn't. And I know Development playtested and the current version was fine. I don't think we had, did we have to change anything? We might have tweaked it. It's possible we tweaked the cost right near the end.

I know development played it, and then we got some notes, and we made one or two small changes, and we let the audience vote on what the changes were. Okay, next. Form of the Dragon. Costs seven mana. Four, red, red, red.

It's an enchantment. At the beginning of your upkeep, you deal five damage to target creature or player. At the end of the turn, your life drops to five, and creatures without flying can't attack you. You have become a dragon! So when I talk about top-down cards, you know, cards for Vorthos,

cards that are a witch dripping with flavor, this is the example. And this is probably Brian's best design. This is like, I think if you ask Brian, the best thing he ever designed his time at Wizards, this might be it. This is a thing that's quite, quite beautiful.

I would later make fun of it in Unhinged with Form of the Squirrel. Now, this card is interesting. So one of the abilities of the card, so obviously it does five damage, you breathe fire and you can do damage, whatever. Red does that just fine. It drops your life total down to five.

Red will do stuff like that. It'll make you take, you know, get some gain and some loss. Red will do that. The last one, though, can't be attacked except by flying creatures. You might know that as Moat. Moat is a white card. It is not a red card.

And so one of the big debates on this card is this ability isn't red. This is a white ability. So at the time, what we said is, look, the card is going for this overall effect. The overall effect is you are a dragon. It's important that you are a dragon, that you're flying, because we make dragons fly. Okay, we're going to make you the player fly. And we decided, you know, one of the things

that's important to realize is... One second. Sorry, my mirror was bent. One of the things we realized was that sometimes you can bend the color by a little bit when the overall flavor is so strong. Like, while that ability in a vacuum is not red, the ability as a whole is very red. Turning yourself into a dragon is very red. It definitely has a risky quality to it. It definitely has... The card evokes a very sense of red, and so we let it go. It is

careful. You have to be very careful where and how you bend the color pie. You don't want to break it. The big thing here is, it is not like red is supposed to be particularly vulnerable to ground creatures and somehow give this ability, lets red undo some inherent weakness built

into the color. So, when you are messing with the color pie, it's important that you don't undo what the colors are supposed to not be able to do. And this is not that. It's not like red doesn't have means by which to protect on the ground. So, we felt that it was okay. Next, another really

top-down flavorful card by Brian Tinsman. Frozen Solid. One blue-blue enchant creature. Enchanted creature doesn't untap. If you dealt damage to the creature, destroy it. The idea is the thing is frozen solid, and if you manage to do any damage to it, it shatters it. This is another one.

This is the one where I... The last one from the dragon didn't cross the line, and this one crossed the line a little bit for me. Blue is not supposed to be able to destroy creatures. It can steal creatures. It can transform them into other things. It can tap them down. It can keep them from untapping. It can do a lot of different things where it manipulates them, but it's not supposed to destroy them. And so this one, this is where it crosses the line.

I think Form the Dragon, okay, you're bending color pie, but it's not doing something fundamentally that the color isn't supposed to do. Where this one, eh, this is supposed to be a weakness of blue. Blue's not supposed to be able to just destroy things. And so I find this one, my mind crosses a little over where I'm unhappy. I do love the flavor of it. And the note is, by the way, whenever a monocolor car, like, this flavor is so awesome, and shouldn't it be blue? Wouldn't blue freeze things? Well, the answer is, okay, just make it blue in another color that

would make sense with this. You know, blue-black makes a lot of sense. Even blue-red probably would make sense. It's just, the thing is, not everything can go in monocolor just because you come up with an awesome idea that's a flavorful thing doesn't necessarily mean it goes in monocolor and one of the things I always stress

I talk about this in my blog all the time is the color the separation of the color pie is crucial to the health of the game every time we nibble

away at it if we're not careful how we nibble we have the you know one day you just nibble too far and things break, and you don't want to get to that place

because it's so important. So, anyway. I talk on the color pipe. Next, Goblin Psychopath. Three R for a 5-5 Goblin Mutant. When it attacks or blocks, you flip a coin. If you lose the flip, you deal damage to you

instead of whatever you would deal damage to, creature or player. This is another example of, back in the day, we used to do, the way we would embrace red chaos is, who knows what's going to happen? It's chaotic. And the problem we tended to run into is people just didn't want to play the cards because you didn't know what was going to happen. And what we've since learned is, you can have things that feel chaotic

without it being like, you, the player, have absolutely no idea what's going to happen. What we've since learned is you can have things that feel chaotic without it being like you, the player, have absolutely no idea what's going to happen. You know, you can do things where bad things can happen, but you don't know which bad thing will happen. Or, you know, you can do things where you, the player, want to play the card, not like, play the card, maybe it'll be good for you, maybe it'll burn you. That in general, you have to be very careful that it's not great magic. A little bit of it's fun, and there are definitely cards that are flavorful. I mean, I don't particularly mind Goblin Psychopath all that much in that the kind of person who's going to play

that probably isn't trying to play a top tier deck, but we have to be careful how many of these cards we do. And we've learned that we can do a lot of the feel of chaos without quite being completely, you know, you don't have to be random to feel chaotic. Next, Goblin Warstrike. It's a sorcery for a single red mana. You deal damage to a target player equal to the goblins you control.

So this is a pretty potent little spell, because, for example, Lava Axe costs five mana to do five damage to the opponent. For example, Lava Axe costs 5 mana to do 5 damage to the opponent. Now, Lava Axe is not exactly a tournament staple, but it's played all the time in Limited, and it's not crazy. So the idea that in a Goblin deck we're having 5 Goblins just really isn't that hard. Instead of 5 mana, it costs 1. So this is one of the reasons that when Onslaught was out,

it really, really pushed Goblin and Elf decks, and this is one example of the kind of things where we push Goblins. We made a lot of cards that made it very easy to do things very cheaply with Goblins. By the way, since I'm in G, we're going to talk about some more Goblin cards. Goblin Warchief. So one red red, three mana for a 2-2 Goblin.

Your Goblin spells cost one less, and Goblins you can control have haste. Well, isn't that convenient? Goblins want to be aggressive, and they got a taste. So this is one of the things where we try to make each of the warchiefs sort of do what its deck wanted to do. And red is all about swarming you with lots of goblins. Well, giving them haste works really well.

It also makes them cost one cheaper. So, you know, you get this on the third turn, and all of a sudden, you're just being swarmed by lots and lots of goblins. The other thing that's neat about costing one less is, on turn four for example, you could play multiple two-drop goblins because normally on turn four you could play two two-drop goblins because it costs four mana. But with this out, you can play four because, you know, one of the things that this

works really well at is if you have one big creature, okay, it's one less, but you have lots of little creatures, which goblins tend to do, this works even better. And Goblin Warchief is very, very good. Grip of Chaos. So this is an enchantment that costs six mana, four colors, two red, so four red red. Spells or abilities with one target, target randomly. So this was a top-down card made by Brian called Blindness. And I know Brian was kind of bummed that they didn't keep... Brian really, really liked the top-down flavor of I make you blind, and now you don't know what you're doing when you cast spells. But I don't know. He did not... He was bummed

because I think he made sometimes you make a top down card like this nails a top down thing and then creative will change the flavor you're like why

wouldn't you keep my flavor why couldn't it just be blindness so anyway Grip of Chaos I know is a fun card there is a guy who works on the Pro Tour

who's one of the big score keepers named Nick and Nick loves crazy random rare red enchantments There is a guy who works on the Pro Tour who's one of the big scorekeepers named Nick. And Nick loves crazy, random, rare red enchantments. And so whenever we make them, we always joke about them being Nick cards. And this is a Nick card that you play it and who knows what crazy things are going to happen. Okay, next.

Hindering Touch. Three and a blue, so four mana instant. Counter target spell, unless it's controller, pays two. Storm. So, um, this is one of the Storm cards that didn't break. Definitely it's reactive. What we learned is proactive,

if I do this infinite number of times I win the game cards are a problem. Cards that are reactive are much better. This card actually of storm cards is the one more interesting because if you get into counter wars, it's a very good final card for the counter war

because, remember, when you cast a storm, each spell is separate. So it's like we're fighting over it so I've cast a couple spells fighting over it. Then I cast this spell and it's like, oh boy, you know, you've got to pay a whole bunch of stuff to get your spell and you can't directly counter it because there's so many copies.

Okay, next. Corona, false god. One, white, blue, black, red, green. It's a legendary creature. At the time, it was just a legend. Five, five. It has haste. At the beginning of your upkeep, the player who's turned it gains control of it So, this is... So, Brian was obsessed with the idea of a creature that nobody controlled.

He would bring it up all the time. And Corona was a major, major player in this set. You know, Phage and Dekroma came together to make Corona the false god. And so Brian wanted to do something that just was out of the box, crazy, you've never seen it before. The problem was, while it was out of the box it's not particularly

fun like so why exactly so it costs six mana one of each color and a colorless so that's hard to do it's hard to do okay i finally do that i get to the i get all my color mana i'm able to cast this spell what happens oh well on your opponent's, your opponent beats your face in with it. Now, it has haste, so you get to use it first, luckily. But it's just too expensive and too much to do for something where, you know, especially in a two-player game, it's bad. In a multiplayer game, it's horrible. You know, for example, this is Legendary. You can play this as your commander.

It's a five-color commander. I don't know a lot of people who play Corona as their commander. Only because, uh, do I want every turn to have a player take the card? I'm actually really into some weird political stuff. It's, it's, it is dangerous. Um, and the funny thing is, Phage and, um, and Ackroma were really, really popular cards. The two most popular cards in Legions. And Corona was not a popular card. It just went in the space that people didn't want to go. And one of the things about Brian that I mean,

the thing I like a lot about him as a designer, he likes to push boundaries. The biggest negative is he sometimes pushes boundaries to push them. And the big quote that I always said to Brian that I've got quoted for is, before you look outside of the box, first look inside the box. That Brian had a tendency to do things to do them

because we'd never done them, but he didn't necessarily... And this is an example of... It was two different cards that got morphed together that I would have tried to do is say, okay, what's the cool thing about Chroma?

What's the cool thing about Phage? Can we somehow make something that brings together all the coolness of the two cards What's the cool thing about Phage? Can we somehow make something that brings together all the coolness of the two cards to feel like it was a merged version of the card? And instead, Brian just did something he had always wanted to do that's way out there, and it didn't really go over well.

Now, that said, I'm sure there's some Corona fans out there, that's the most awesome card! Why are you dissing this card? But it tested very, very badly when we entered God Book Study, and this card? But it tested very, very badly when we, in our God book study. And this was supposed to be like, this was supposed to be the card you wanted everybody to want. You know, story-wise, we want to make sure that the key story characters are desirable cards. And this card did not do very well. I'm not saying there's no Corona

lovers out there, but it did not do very well. Okay, next, Crowson Drover. Three in the green for a 2-2 elf. Creatures with converted mana cost a six or more, cost two less. So this is a Warchief that wasn't called a Warchief. And it helps you cast giant creatures, but it helps you cast them for two less rather than one less because they're

making the first place. It's definitely one of those things that's a little confusing because it seems, I mean, usually if a card says you can do something, you assume you can do it. But I know some players got a little bit confused because I have something that costs six, but then it costs two less. Does it still cost six? Now, obviously we wouldn't make the card if it didn't work. But I know there's people that sort of got caught up in the loop of like, wait a minute,

now it costs four, now it can't be played. But if it kept four, then it costs six, so now it can't, you know, and it just got caught in the logic loop. And anyway, I'm not sure if the Warchief effect was the best one for giant, and there's other ways to help giant creatures. I mean, obviously the set did in many, many other ways. Next, Kurgadon. Four green for a 3-3 beast. When you play a creature with six converted mana cost or more, put 3 plus 1 counters on it.

Well, this one is a pretty neat way. So it's a 5-mana thing, so it comes out right before you can play a 6-mana thing. It's a 3-3 for 5-mana, not particularly good. But a 6-6 for 5-mana is really good. A 9-9 for 6-mana, 4-5-mana, is very, very good. And a 12 and up is just awesome. So the idea essentially is, I get this out, I play a big thing, now I have two big things. If I play yet another big thing, I have even a bigger thing.

Anyway, this was fun. This was a reward that didn't confuse people like the last one did a little bit. Next, Lethal Vapors. Two black, black enchantment. Whenever a creature enters the battlefield, destroy it. For zero, colon, destroy card name. Skip your next turn. Any player can use this ability.

Okay. I brought this card up because I dislike this card. I like a lot of stuff. There's awesome, awesome, amazing things in the set. You got Form of the Dragon and all sorts of really cool stuff. Brian and work did an awesome job. That said, this is my podcast, so I can complain about cards. I complain if I want to.

Okay. Here's my friend, Lethal Vapors. A couple things. Number one, this is, I'm going to play a card, and it's going to suck, and anybody can make bad things happen to themselves and make it not suck. It's just, I do not like cards that, like, there's bad times and more bad times. And, you know, it's like, are you going to pull the switch? And if you don't pull the switch, then no one can play creatures.

And we'll sit around and wait for someone to go, oh, I got to do it. Like, I don't like cards that make you not play the game. And this is one of them. When you put those cards out, it's sort of like, okay, we're going to play a game of Uncle. Who's going to, you know, say Uncle first? Next, I'm not a big fan of activations of yours that other people can activate. It is confusing. I like the idea that I have to monitor your side of the battlefield to note things,

but me having to be aware of what I can and can't activate on your side, I do not like. I find it confusing. I find it leads to games in which the opponent is... You're not obligated to tell your opponent that you have things that they can use. So if the game has things that you can use, especially in a competitive tournament, like, I now have to be very careful with every card and make sure I understand, you know. And not that you shouldn't read every card in tournaments because you should, but I don't know. I'm not a fan. This also has zero colon that we've shifted away from because it's like, don't pay anything and do something.

And it's just confusing. So we now tend to make there be some cost before the colon just so it's less like, huh, zero colon, what does that mean? What does it mean? If anybody pays nothing, then what? You know, you paid nothing, skip your turn. Like, I didn't pay anything. Right, exactly, skip your turn.

So anyway, I'm not a fan of lethal vapors. Anyway. Next, Lingering Death. I am a fan of Lingering Death. Lingering Death was an enchant creature. Once again, enchantment auras at the time were enchant creatures, or enchant whatever they're enchanted. One and a black, two mana. Controller of enchanted creature sacrifices enchanted creature at the end of the next turn. So this was a kill spell, but a slow kill spell. That on my turn, because it's enchantment, I put it on your creature, and then you know at the end of your turn it's going to die. But you have that knowledge for your entire turn.

Do I want to attack with it? Do I want to sacrifice it? Like, I have a little bit of knowledge of what's going to happen. I think that was kind of cool. It also did some neat things in Limited. It definitely was a kill spell that was useful, but a little bit different, and it gave the person using it some options on how they wanted to use their creature. Next, Long Term Plans. Two in a blue instant.

You go through your library and get a card, and then you put a third from the top. This one reeks Bryantons, but I know 100% know it's Bryans, but it really feels like Brian. It's a top-down card. It does something weird and quirky, feels like Brian. So the idea is I get something, but I don't get it right away. And this might be the first card that had you put a card so many down. I mean, maybe it's not, but it's one of the early ones, if not the first one. And this was definitely fun. It allowed you to tutor that you were paying for time as much as mana which I thought was cool

also by the way I should point out that that Brian was the same person who's not this team but would come up with suspend we pushed it off and saved it for time spiral but Brian's team was the one that came up with it

so you kind of can see and this is why I also think this might be Brian's card, is that the earliest inklings of Suspend is hidden in this card. That the same mind that brought this card would later come up with Suspend, which is Brian. That's why I'm pretty sure it's Brian's card. Mind's Desire for Blue Blue for Sorcery. You shuffle your library, exile the top card of it, and then you get to play that card for free. I'm not sure if it's end of turn or whenever. This card is Storm. This is a very popular kill spell

because if you have some weird and wacky combo kill, this allows you to essentially set yourself up and then you Storm and kill them with style, however you want to kill them with mind's desire. Once you can cast all the cards in your library, usually you can kill people. Next, and by the way, Mind's Desire is a very, very good card in almost any format that can

play it, just because it's really powerful. It's one of the more powerful storm cards. Surprise, surprise, one of the most broken mechanics of all time, along with playing things for free, when you combine them. It's broken. Mischievous Canar. Four blue for three three beasts. For two blue blue you can turn it face down, and then for one blue blue you can morph it, and when you turn it face up you you fork, you copy an instant or sorcery. And so this is another shenanigan

mess with morph kind of card. The first time you do it, you've got to surprise them. But the idea about this card normally is a lot of the things you're copying are not your opponent's spells, but your own spells. And that this definitely, this allows you to make a morph deck that is a lot of shenanigans.

It's a shenanigan inducing card. It's a shenanigan enabler. That should be a new kind of card. A shenanigan enabler. This is definitely a shenanigan enabler. Next, Mistform Warchief. Brian just went out

with the Warchiefs and had fun. So this one is an illusion, a 1-3 illusion. It costs two and a blue, three mana, and creatures sharing a creature type with it cost one less. And hey, you can tap it to make it whatever creature type you want. So essentially what this card is, is it makes things cheaper,

but you can from turn to turn can shift it. I know in Limited this card was fun because this card could essentially make whatever you needed to make shifter. It made any creature card in your hand, well, almost any creature card, we'll get to that, cheaper. And so in Constructed, obviously, in the deck that's in blue, it's a warchief that you could use on maybe creature types that didn't have a Warchief, or in something like limited, where you have a bunch of different creature types, it can make all your creature types cost one less.

I mean, not in the same turn, obviously. Next, Nefashu, 4BB for 5-3 Zombie Mutant. Zombie Mutant. That sounds like a made-for-TV movie. Okay, when this card name attacks, up to five creatures get minus one, minus one until end of turn. So this thing just attacks, and it is hard to block it, because it just kills.

I mean, it can do minus one, minus one to any creature. It's not necessarily up... And it's up to five different creatures, so it's really good at killing lots of little things. It's good at killing a big thing. Once again, the theme of the set is rewarding you for playing big things, and so, uh, Brine made

a very powerful weapon against small things, but very weak against big things. Okay, next, Parallel Thoughts. Three blue-blue enchantment. When it enters the battlefield, you search your library, get seven cards, you then exile them and shuffle them, and then, whenever you would draw from your library, you can instead draw from this exiled pile. Sort of an extra library, if you will. This is the kind of effect we've goofed around a lot. I know Doomsday messed in this area. The idea of sort of culling some subset of your deck

and then having some access to that is something we mess around with. And we messed around with it here. Okay, next. Pemmin's Aura. One blue blue for an enchanted creature that for blue, you can untap enchanted creature. For another blue, for a different activation for blue, you can gain flying until end of turn. For a different activation, you can make it untargetable for the turn. And then for one mana, you can give it plus one,

minus one, or minus one, plus one until end of turn. So, this card is Make Me a Morphling, that you put it on your creature. It's an aura that grants your creature all of Morphling's ability. In fact, Pevin's aura can be anagrammed to I Am Superman. Superman is the nickname for Morphling. So, this was definitely

created as Make Me a Morphling, and then it had a name to sort of make a nod that we were aware of that's what it was doing. But anyway, I'm not sure why this is here other than entertainment value. I guess it could have gone anywhere. Okay, next.

Primitive Etchings. Two green green enchantment. Reveal the first card drawn each turn. If it's a creature card, you get to draw a card. So one of the things we talk about is how green is, green and black are both number two, sort of tied in card drawing. Black only does that at a cost, usually life. Green just has to be tied to its creatures. The idea is that green card drawing, in green it's all about growth, and so you want to get access to growth, well have a lot of creatures

around. And so this is definitely one of those cards that say, oh, well, play a deck of mostly creatures. In fact, probably all creatures but this card, or copies of this card. And then you can draw a lot of cards. Okay, next. I talked about how when you played the Illusion Warchief, the Mistform Warchief, how you can make any card cheaper, but not this card. So the next card is Proteus Machine. So Proteus Machine was an artifact creature for three. It was a 2-2. It had no creature type. At one point early on, artifact creatures didn't have to have a creature type, and some early magic didn't. And it caused problems. This is a good example where, you know, people would want

to do something. They have to name a creature type, and it didn't have a creature type. And I think maybe it was trying to make fun of, like, a morph, FaceTime morph creature. But anyway, it had no type, so you couldn't, for example, help it with a Mistform Orchie. But anyway, it's a 2-2. For zero, morphing for zero,

you could name a creature type, it wouldn't gain that creature type. So really what happened was, it was a 2-2 creature, a 2-2 colored creature, that for 0, you could grant it a creature type for the rest of the game. And that was valuable. A lot of people would play this card because having a morph card was fine.

And just having the thing that you need to count so that you can have one extra of whatever you're counting proved to be pretty good. Anyway, this was a cute little card. I would have given it a creature type, but other than that... Okay, so we're almost done with peas. I'm going to finish peas. Actually, I just parked, but we're going to finish peas and then tomorrow we'll start with ours.

Okay, Putrid Raptor. Four black black for four four zombie beast. To morph it, you discard a zombie card. So one of the things you'll see, I'll start talking about, for some reason these all get the end part of the alphabet, is Brian and his team played around with morph costs that weren't mana. So an example here, here's something where you have to have a zombie card. Now, zombie cards were all black in this set,

so you had to discard a black card. That's how you could make sure that you were playing a black card. But, hey, you could get a 4-4 beast, you know, 3-mana, 2-2, and at the cost of a card, a black card, zombie in particular, you could get a 4-4 beast, you know, 3-mana 2-2, and at the cost of a card, a black card, zombie in particular, you could get a 4-4 creature. Last card for today, Pyrostatic Pillar. It's an enchantment for 1 and a red, 2-mana. Whenever any player casts a converted mana cost spell, a spell that costs, a converted mana costs 3 or less, a card name deals 2 damage to that player. So one of the ways to get people to play big spells

is to say, don't play small spells. No, no, no. This actually ended up being a pretty good sideboard card that you could play against certain style decks, certain weenie decks, for example, against white weenie or what they call sly, which is a low-end rat. Goblins were kind of a sly deck.

That was really, really good against a deck that just pulled out lots of tiny things. And so it was used as a sideboard, that was really, really good against a deck that just pulled up lots of tiny things. And so, it was used as a sideboard card. But anyway, I've got, so we've gotten up to R. So tomorrow,

okay, I can see, tomorrow we have, I have, I think we have one more podcast on Scourge. So anyway, I hope you guys are enjoying it.

I'm having a fun time talking about Scourge. But, it looks like, at least for a few minutes now, I've been in the parking space, which we all know what that means. It's time to end my drive to work because it's time for me to be making magic.

I'll talk to you guys next time. Bye-bye.