Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #195 - Scourge, Part 4

Episode Date: January 23, 2015

Mark concludes with the last of his 4-part series on the design of Scourge.

I'm pulling on the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, today we are doing the fourth and I believe final part of Scourge. Scourge is the third set in the Onslaught block following Onslaught and Legions. I spent the last three podcasts talking all about its design and many cards from it. And I'm not done. So I got up to R, that's what we are. So we are up to Raven Guild Initiate. So Raven Guild Initiate is a blue card, costs two and a blue, so three mana for a 1-4 wizard and it has the ability Morph, return a bird you control to your hand. So as I said last time, I talked about Brian and his team were experimenting with alternate morph costs.

So the idea was, early on, morph just costs mana, and by the time you get to the third set, it's like, well, what if you didn't have to spend mana? And there's some fun stuff, because there's some great surprise morph moments when you can do things without mana. Now, Brian and his team went a little too far. I think if you look at concertar-kir, we definitely changed some stuff around so that morph was a little more... didn't surprise you quite so often in destructive ways. There's what we call the five rule in concertar-kir, where in order... if you were going to morph up and be big enough that you will fight a 2-2 and win, meaning you defeat it and you don't die, then you cost at least five mana to unmorph. Now, there are the reveal stuff.

So there are ways, like we experiment even in Kanzatar Kyr with finding ways to unmorph without spending mana, like we do here. This card is a lot of fun only because unsummoning something, while it's fine as a cost, really can be built around so it's not a cost. So that you're, you know, not only do you get to un-morph your creature, but sometimes returning a bird to your hand can be very valuable. And there's different morph things that are birds because there's avian stuff. And so there's shenanigans and fun stuff you can do.

That's one of Blue's big themes, as I talked about last time, is shenanigans matter. So that's another shenanigan card that you can do a lot of cool, fun things with. I like shenanigans. Okay, next, Raven Guildmaster. So one blue blue, so three mana for a 1-1 wizard mutant. A mutant. Whenever you deal combat damage to your opponent, you deal, you mill them for 10. A mutant.

Whenever you deal combat damage to your opponent, you deal, you mill them for 10. Mill means you take the top 10 cards of their library and you put them into their graveyard. Mill is a nickname that comes from Millstone, the first card to do that ability. Oh, real quickly, this comes up on my blog all the time. Why don't we just call it mill? Why do we spell it out every single time? Two things. One is, if we ever get an action keyword for it, and that's what it would be,

we need a word that in a vacuum makes sense. Mill comes from millstone, which doesn't really have anything to do with what's going on. It's a mental attack. So we've experimented with words. We've actually tried to find words. The problem we come up with is every time we get a word that sounds good for making you forget, which is kind of what what milling does it also sounds like it could be a discard effect

and so we haven't we haven't found the right word that goes oh that makes sense to be this but not that and that's the tricky part um i know people are used to mill one of the things that happens is if you just use any term enough it just starts to feel natural that it's just like okay that feels natural and the reality is i know that mill if you're used any term enough, it just starts to feel natural. That it's just like, okay, that feels natural. And the reality is, I know that mill, if you're used to it, might sound just fine. But in a vacuum, what does it mean? You know, you're grinding wheat, right? Anyway, it's a very odd... The connection between a millstone and the building in the first place was very tenuous.

It's like, the sound of the millstone drove people crazy. But it was tenuous in the first place was very tenuous. It's like the sound of the millstone drove people crazy, but it was tenuous in the first place. And in a vacuum where you don't even have the millstone to try to connect to, just mill... Anyway, I know there's people that love mill and want us to use the term mill. I don't think we're going to use the term mill.

We might use another term. So maybe one day we'll do that. Anyway, Raven Guildmaster, every time I hit you, I make you lose the top ten cards in your library. It's a morph card. You morph it for two blue and blue. And the idea for this card is, I'm a morph creature, should I block it? And if you don't block it, I go, ha ha, lose ten.

Now after that, it gets trickier because now you know I have it. So the first time I can surprise you for ten. But this goes in a deck. We often, one of the strategies, so when Richard first made the game, he needed to make sure that the game would end. So what happened if you guys are stalemated or something? Well, as soon as one person

can't draw a card, they lose. It's just a way to make sure the game ended. And Richard included it more as a safety gap of just, well, if nothing else ends the game, this will end the game. And then in Antiquities, the East Coast playtesters made Millstone, which was a card that milled two cards off the top of your opponent's library. And it was the first deck that said, oh, here's a strategy.

I'm going to specifically win by doing this. That's not just a default win. I'm going to try to do this. And over the years, milling has been something that's been fun for us to do. A lot of limited environments, there is potential to mill somebody out. You know, there's a card or two that can do it. Sometimes, like with Dimir, we push it a little more than that. But anyway, it's the kind of thing we have fun with. This is definitely made for a casual kind of mill deck.

Or even in limited. The other thing in limited, by the way, is just milling somebody ten cards once, because you only have 40 cards in limited, is very, very potent. And let's say, for example, you're playing, you manage to get like two of these in your draft. Just hitting them once with each one is probably enough to win the game. In fact, hitting them once

might be enough to win the game. Hitting them with two is almost definitely enough to win the game. Next, Rock Jockey. So this is a goblin, a two and a red. It's got three mana for a three-three goblin. You can't play Rock Jockey if you've played a land this turn, and if you've played Rock Jockey, you can't play a land. So essentially what this card is doing is it is using your land drop. So it's a three mana, three, three, which in red is decent, and at the time was very good. But you have to give up your land drop to do it. On turn three, giving up your land drop is a pretty big deal.

So this is actually not an insignificant cost. When we did Zendikar, we actually experimented with the idea of using your land costs, spells and stuff that required the land drop as a cost. And we looked at this card, this is one of the cards, this really is the card that did it first. In fact, Brian didn't actually work on Zendikar, but Brian was very fascinated by a lot of the same themes that ended up being things we explored in Zendikar. Obviously his land cycling, he messed

around with land tokens. He did a lot of different things with land that I, it was one of the things that made me realize that there was a lot of potential for land, which is what led to Zendikar, even though Brian actually wasn't on the team. Rockjacky, by the way, is Brian experimenting with using a land drop. We did experiment with that during Zendikar. Proved to be not that much fun. People tended to mana screw themselves. And so, it just led to bad behaviors that you then would lose in a way that you weren't quite sure why you

lost, but it was annoying. But anyway, Rock Jockey. Next. Rush of Knowledge. Rush of Knowledge is a blue sorcery. It costs four in the blue, so five mana. And you've got to draw cards equal to the highest converted mana cost of creatures you control.

So this was another one of the CMC cards. This was one of the more popular ones because drawing cards is pretty good. And so the idea is if I can get out something that's decently big, you know, I can draw a lot of cards. And, to be fair, for five mana, even if I draw three cards, especially Unlimited, it's okay. And if I draw four cards, that's pretty good. So, you know, getting a four dropout before you cast Rush of Knowledge is not that hard. I mean, obviously, you had dreams of bigger things.

In fact, we'll get to one of those bigger things next. But, anyway, it was a popular card in Limited. I don't know of so much constructed play, but in Limited it was very good. Next, Scornful Egotist. It costs 8 mana, 7 and a blue, for a 1-1 wizard with Morph Blue. Okay, so in Magic, from time to time, we make what I like to call What Cards. Yes, that's What Cards. The idea is when you make the card,

when the player first sees it, they go, What? And this is a perfect example. It's an 8-mana 1-1. An 8-mana 1-1? No, it has Morph, so you can get it out pretty cheap. It's got Morph for a single blue. So in turn three, you can play it. On the next turn, for single mana, you know, single blue mana,

you can turn a face up and have your little 1-1 wizard. But why would you want to do that? And the answer is, let's go back one card to Rush of Knowledge. So Rush of Knowledge says, hey, I want something expensive in play, so I can draw a lot of cards. Well, imagine on the third turn, you played Scornful Egotist in its morph form, then on the fourth turn you turned it back up and the other elixir managed something else, and then on the fifth turn, so you can get land every turn,

you play Rush of Knowledge and draw eight cards, because this is an eight converted mana cost creature. But the problem was, in a vacuum, if you don't understand the theme of the set, it just looks really odd, because it makes you go what? And you look at it and you're like, why does this cost 8 mana? Only later do you realize that the 8 mana is a

benefit. Like, the more flits you get it out, that's how you're supposed to get it out, and then having an 8 drop that you can get out much, much earlier than normal allows you to do fun stuff with things like Russian Knowledge and other converted mana cost matters cards. So what we found on these kind of cards is you have to do them in small doses because

they're very confusing when you first encounter them. Now, a little bit of that is fun. A little bit of seeing something and going, what? You know, it's a little bit of fun. And what we've trained players is when you get confused, like, okay, I got to look at more cards. If we do that on too many cards, we just confuse people. But on one or two, it was kind of fun. And I often have fights. I like doing these kinds of cards when they, they, I like having a little bit of shock value, as long as you minimize how much shock value there is. So, and Scorch of Eagletooth's got a lot of, like, a lot of people, like, I got letters.

Like, people were angry of, like, what, you know, what's going on? An 8-mana 1-1, that's just, that's just not right, you know. And, like, do you know what it's doing? Why is it there? You know, why is there an 8-mana 1-1? But, anyway, we do do cars like that. I like it, but we have to be careful

about how many. And one of the big things is sometimes you do a card where people don't understand what the extra thing is. They read it and assume they're reading it wrong. Scorval Egotist,

it's in the mana cost. That's a little hard to read wrong. But sometimes you'll write stuff in the rules text, and the player so doesn't get it, they just assume they're reading it wrong and then read something else. And so that's another problem where like,

oh, it can't be what I think I read, so it must be something else, and they find something else for it to mean. Because if it doesn't make sense to people, people really work hard to make it make sense. And so you've got to be careful how many of those you do. Next, Siege Gang Commander. So Siege Gang Commander is a red card.

It costs three red reds, so five mana, for a 2-2 Goblin. When it enters the battlefield, you get three 1-1 red Goblin tokens. And then for one and a red, you can sac a Goblin to do two damage to target a creature or player. So Siege Gang Commander has a cute little story. So, Wolf Warport, I'm speaking so well today. Wolf Warport, he currently is in charge of Magic Online. He used to be in R&D. Before that, he was a pro player.

And I got to know Wolf back in his pro playing days. Worth and I actually are from the same city. We're from Cleveland, Ohio. And when Worth started working at Wizards, he mostly did development, but he was on one design team, which is Scourge. So he had a lot of fun designing cards and I remember he came to me one day

and he had done Seed Game Commander and he loved the idea of a goblin that brought goblins into play. You know, it was a goblin that had a whole team of goblins with him. But he knew it was missing something and he wanted something that was, you know, that made it have a little extra something. So I suggested, I go, what if his second ability, first ability is a trigger to enter the battlefield ability, makes one 1s. What if his second ability sacrificed goblins for some ability? And he and I talked about it.

I think we finally said that damage probably made the most sense. But the nice thing is he brings his own arsenal. And, like, this is a little guy running the goblin, and he's more than willing to use his goblins. One of the things you learn about goblins is, I think I've talked about this in my podcast, is that goblins' tactical advantage is there's lots of goblins, and so they have no problem using goblins as a resource. So, hey, the CGA commander's like, I got some goblins. They got dynamite strapped to them,

so I can just throw them and they'll blow up my enemy. So anyway, the nice thing is that he comes with three goblins. He himself is a goblin, so he comes with four uses built in. And, hey, if you play him in a goblin deck, well, you can make use of other goblins. And this ended up being a really, really good card. And so I think this is Worth's favorite card he designed. And so Worth always says that he, when someone asks him, he says, this is my design. He goes, it's a little help from Mark.

That's the, so I'm always, one of the things that I always enjoy doing is I have a lot of fun helping other people when they're doing designs. I'm just finding a little tweak, you know. There's a lot of design is finding a little nuance. And I actually enjoy quite a bit taking other people's cards,

you know, just take a little bit of nuance, tweaking just a tiny bit. You know, and as part of head designer, I really enjoy sort of taking cool cards that people give me and just doing little tiny modifications to sort of just make it slightly, a little more exciting. And that a lot of what I try to teach when I'm, you know, leading design stuff is that there's an aesthetic and a little design to car design and that, you know, there's an art to it. And so I always like to help, you know, the designers, you know, learn the tricks of the trade, if you will. Okay, next, Silver Knight, White White, Human Knight, 2- 2, First Strike, Protection from Red. So for those of you that know your Magic history, in Alpha, the very first Magic set, there was a card called Black Knight.

And Black Knight was W, W, 2, 2, First Strike, Protection from Black. And it's a very iconic, popular card. I believe what was going on at the time was red was getting a little out of hand. Or maybe we knew goblins were going to be really, really good and we wanted to make sure there was an answer to goblins. But anyway, someone one day said, you know what we should make? We should make a white knight

but for red. I'm sorry, the card wasn't called black knight. Black knight was the black card. White knight was the card. Now them. But we should make a white knight for red. And so they ended up calling it Silver Knight, and this is exactly White Knight, but for red. And it was popular. Surprise, surprise.

Okay, next. Skirk Volcanist. So it's three and a red, four mana for a 3-1 Goblin. To morph it, you sacked two mountains, and when it turned face up you did three damage dealt however you wanted among any number of creatures okay, so there's a card in visions

if I remember the card's name, called Fire Blast so Fire Blast dealt four damage, I believe to target creature or player and it cost, I don't remember what it cost it cost them one mana, four or five mana but you could sacrifice two mountains to cast it for free And it costs... I don't remember what it costs. It costs them 1 mana, 4 or 5 mana. But you can sacrifice 2 mountains to cast it for free,

which is how it often got cast. And I think this is a little nod to that. It doesn't do quite the same thing for damages a lot, although it does get to spread the damage around. So it's kind of like an arc lightning that can only hit creatures. So the fun thing in this is I can have a little thing. Now, I have to be playing red because I have to sacrifice mountains. One of the tricks, by the way, is when you have costs that avoid paying mana costs,

you have to be careful. Otherwise, you allow colors to have access to it that don't normally have access. So, for example, if this just said sack two lands, then any card could play this direct damage spell, right? But this needs to be red because direct damage is a pretty red thing. And so, oh, we have to sacrifice mountains Well, if you're playing mountains, okay, you have access to red mana. Okay, you can have a red effect And it is very important notice earlier. We had a morph where you had to discard You had to discard a zombie which was a black thing. The blue one that earlier, you had to bounce a bird. That lets you...

You were able to bounce a white card because birds were in white and... Actually, birds were in all the colors, so that one was a little easier, although I think the thing you got for it wasn't as blue-centric. It's like red. Direct damage is red-centric.

Okay. Next. Sliver Overlord. It costs Wooburg. White, blue, black, red, green. So Wooburg is how we pronounce. If you ever look at the back of the card, the colors go in. For us, the order is white, blue, black, red, green.

Start with white, end with green. It goes around. It's clockwise around the wheel. It's just how all our files are done, it's the order we put things in. When all five cards are on a color, they go in a Wooburg order. We pronounce it Wooburg.

Okay, so Sliver Overlord is a legendary creature, a legendary, sorry, a legendary sliver mutant, and it's a 7-7. So it has two abilities. One is three, search your library for a sliver, put it in your hand, shuffle your library, or three, gain control of target sliver. So the idea here is, this is, so when we first introduced slivers in Tempest, we did Sliver Queen, which was a five mana 7-7 that allowed you to do shenanigans.

It allowed you to make slivers is what it did. And so when slivers came back, we're like, oh, you know what players liked last time? Five color sliver lord. So we made another one. So this is the sliver overlord. made another one. So this is the Sliver Overlord. So for those who don't know, the Slivers, so here's what we know of the Slivers. Volrath, who had access to portals, after the mending a lot of the way the nature of the universe works, so there's not as many portals as there once were, but back in the day, there were more portals that people who weren't planeswalkers could

go from plane to plane in. And Volrath found, on some unnamed plane, found these slivers, brought a bunch back to study. He then made the metallic sliver, which was his creation, which wasn't a real sliver, which is why it only took abilities and didn't grant them, to study them. And the slivers

were these creatures that had two qualities. One is they were shape changers and the other was they shared a hive mind if they were within certain proximity of each other. And so the idea is once they get close enough, they share a hive mind with other ones and that certain slivers know how to make certain body parts through their shape changing. So a wing sliver knows how to make wings. So if a sliver gets

near a winged sliver, they can grow wings because they now know how to grow wings because they're sharing that part of the mind. And if they have wings, well then they can fly. But if they get too far away from that sliver, they lose that ability and no longer know how to grow wings. In fact, in the original Tempest story, the way that the Weatherlight crew defeats the Slivers is by figuring out that they need to separate them. Anyway. Mike Elliott created the Slivers in Tempest. He was on the Tempest design team.

And Slivers preexisted... I'm telling you how they fit into the story back in Tempest. Mike had actually made them for a set called Afterways that he made before... Not Afterways? After set called Afterways that he made before, not Afterways, Afterall, maybe Afterways. He made it before he came to Wizards. We then used them. We changed what they represented.

In his story, they were a creature that fell apart into pieces. Anyway, he wanted to bring them back because he did legions and he wanted to bring them back. So what the creative did is they, during the invasion, and he wanted to bring them back. So what the creative did is, during the invasion, wrath got overlaid with Dominaria. That's how the Phyrexians attacked.

They overlaid wrath, which is why wrath is gone now, and you can't go to wrath anymore. But when doing that, they brought some slivers to Dominaria. The scientists get fastened by the slivers, decide to start experimenting on them. It doesn't go well. And the sliver overlord is part of that experiment, I think.

But anyway, slivers get out, bad things happen. Maybe one day we'll visit the sliver homeworld. That's a cool idea to me. Okay, let's move on. Soul Collector. So Soul Collector costs three black black for a 3-4 Vampire. It has Flying, and any creature damaged this turn, if it dies, you get it at end of turn. Or no, you just get it. I think when it dies, it comes back to you.

And it has Morph BBB. So this creature is a 3-4. Any creature it kills, sorry, any creature that dies the turn it damages it, returns to the battlefield under the control of its controller. So let's say I have more creature, you have a 3-3, and you go, okay, I'll block. My hill giant will block your creature. I go, ha-ha, BBB, I turn it off, I have a 3-4, I kill your hill giant. Now your hill giant goes to the graveyard, and then it returns as a zombie to my side. That's what

Soul Collector does. This is a pretty fun card. It's another one of those cards where you're going to surprise people with morph, and it doesn't do quite what you want. One of the things with morph you have to figure out is whether you're supposed to block or not block, and different things can happen depending on what cards you have. And this is definitely one of those cards that blocking becomes scary.

Okay, next. Stabilizer. It's an artifact that costs two. Players can't cycle cards. Aha! A hoser. So this is a block all about cycling. Why would we have an artifact that stops cycling? And the answer is, it's what we call a safety net. So one of the things you want to do is, you want to make powerful cards, you want people to experiment, but you also want to give people tools to address problems that they pop up. Normally we give the tools, well in the past we used to give them late in the block or the beginning of the next block. If the reason it's late in this block is it refers to cycling specifically, we can't put us, we can't refer to cycling in the next block, so it's at the end of

this block. If it hosed it in a way that was general, that made sense in the next set, often we'd do it in the next block. We've definitely changed our opinion a little bit on this, and they're starting to do hosers for themes a little earlier, meaning it allows us to push a little stronger when it comes out of the gate,

knowing that if it's a problem right away, we've also provided some answers. Stifle. Stifle. Stifle is an instant that costs blue, counter-target activated, or triggered ability. So we don't do this ability often. People always ask for it. We did it here.

Stifle lets you stop things that often you can't stop. Let's you stop things. I'm doing great today. It lets you stop things you often can't stop. It lets you stop entering the I'm doing great today. Let's you stop things you often can't stop. Let's you stop enter the battlefield triggers and death triggers and, you know, any activation. For a while, Green was doing Conjuring activations. We really haven't defined this too much.

In the distance past, Green did. Blue's obviously done it a little more recent. It's not something we do too much of. It's something we do every once in a while. It's not nearly as useful as a counterspell. But it's the kind of card that people have definitely made decks out of. A real common way to stifle is

to take some card that has a very negative effect when it enters the play and that's supposed to be used as a means to control. Like maybe it's really cheap or really expensive, but it has the ability you have to do, and that you can use as a circumventant. So. Okay, next.

Temple of the False Gods. The land, tap, add two mana, but only if you... Add two mana to your mana pool, call us. Only if you control five or more lands. So the idea is, this is a land that helps you get big things out, which is part of Brian's... the Scourge's whole theme.

And so the team wanted to make an enabler to do that. And so this is a card that says, oh, okay. Well, normally we don't make lands that tap for two mana anymore. We did that in the past. It burned us almost every time we did it. We're like, okay, maybe we should stop doing that. But this one, because it's, I mean, it doesn't, I mean, it only lets you abuse it once you're already getting to high cost.

And it's like, when I have five mana, I can get, you know, like if this is my fifth land, this gets me to six mana. You know, so, anyway. Next, Tendrils of Agony. Two black black for sorcery. I drain my opponent for two, meaning they lose two life, I gain two life. And it is Storm. This is another very popular Storm kill. It's loss of life, and there's not a lot of things that prevent loss of life.

Damage is a lot easier to prevent, because you can prevent damage, you can redirect damage. This isn't damage, this is loss of life. And so it's a very, very popular Storm kill. In fact, this and Mind's Desire, I'm not sure which is more popular, but it's a very, very popular, um, Storm kill. In fact, uh, this and Mind's Desire, I'm not sure which is more popular. They're both very popular. Um, probably Tendrils, I guess, is more popular. But anyway, uh, this just shows the power of Storm. This card shows up in any format that it's allowed to show up in. Storm's just very powerful. Also, back in the day, when you have access to Dark Ritual and stuff, which is already a powerful spell. So I think one of the reasons that Tendrils

is very popular is it works really well with Dark Ritual. Because Dark Ritual lets you get it out and fuels it. And so I think it's very popular in older formats. I mean, it's insanely strong. Trap Digger. Three and a white for a 1-3 soldier. Two white and tap. Put a trap counter on your land. And then you could sack a land with trap counters to deal three damage to target a non-flying creature. So this one has tins been written all over it.

I don't definitively know what it is. If it's worth it, I apologize. So the idea here is you are putting little land mines in your land, and then when the creature comes running over to attack you, ba-boom, and they blow up. This is one of those cards that I like because it's flavorful. It is not, the only negative about it is it's one of those cards that kind of just stalls the game because it just encourages any kind of attacking. But I do enjoy, I do enjoy the flavor

and I feel like it's not really cost to be a constructed car so it's mostly meant for limited. And in limited, there's a lot more answers and, you know, you can throw things,

you can attack with creatures you're willing to blow up and stuff, so. Next, Treetop Scout. Green for a 1-1 elf. It can't be blocked except by flying and reach. Okay, I'm not a fan of this. Like, green's not

supposed to be good at flying, so I don't think the answer is to give it flyers and just say, oh, well, they don't fly. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't fly. It's not a flyer. Not a flyer. Can't kill with anti-flying. Plumber can't kill it. It's essentially flying. So why are we confusing people?

I'm not a giant fan of the I fly but I don't fly thing. If green's supposed to be bad at flying, let it be bad at flying. Don't give it pseudo haha, I'm not really flying but I'm flying. Next, undead war chief. Two black black, one one zombie. All your zombies cost one less

and your zombies get plus two plus one. So when I talked about the war chief for the soldiers, I said, oh, maybe that's the only war chief that pumps up your team. That is not the case. So Alpha had these two things called, what are they called? Holy Strength and Unholy Strength. Holy Strength granted plus one plus two, Unholy Strength granted plus two, plus one. They both cost a single mana, white and black respectively.

Turns out the black one was really good and the white one was no good. So we still get this little thing where we let white do plus one, plus two and black do plus two, plus one. I think we've gotten, I mean, at least we make the white ones cheaper than the black one these days,

but I think we started shifting away from making black the plus two, plus one and letting white do that more, since white's the soldier color anyway and more often should do that. But anyway, zombies are big. I'm a big zombie fan, for those who don't know, so I definitely was pulling for zombies.

There's a bunch of zombie cards in this block that I know I contributed to just because I like making zombies. Okay, next. Unspeakable Symbol. One black black enchantment. You pay three life to put a plus one plus one counter on a target creature. So this is a pretty straightforward card. I like this card. This is the kind of card that I have fun with where you're trading resources. It's what we call an engine card, which is

it turns life into size, plus one, plus one counters. And so you can definitely do some fun shenanigans. This is particularly fun with lifelink. You can have creatures that, as they gain life through lifelink, you get to make them bigger. And since you make them bigger,

you get to get more life. And it just makes a fun little circle for you. Next, Upwelling. Upwelling's an enchantment that costs three and a green. Mana pools don't empty. If you put mana in your mana pool, it stays in your mana pool. I like this card a lot.

Obviously, mana pool is clear in normal magic, just because we don't need the headache of tracking at all, but having a card, which that's what your deck does and you have to track and stuff is definitely fun. It's a neat card and it does something

that's just a little offbeat. Like, one of the things about magic it's fun when you say here's a rule that exists and the rule exists for a very good reason. But,

you know what? For this one little deck we'll let you break this rule and have fun. What can you do if this rule didn't exist? And this is a really fun card that lets you do

a lot of neat things. You also can combo this. There was a creature I later made in Mirrodin, Glissa, who, her whole power is based on how much mana was in your mana pool, and she's green, so some fun stuff you can do there. Okay, next. Vengeful Dead. Three and a black for a 3-2 zombie. When card name or when Vengeful Dead or any other zombie, and not just yours, but any zombie dies, each opponent loses one life. So the idea is kind of what zombies I've always been good at is I just get a lot of zombies out and slowly overwhelm you.

And this is nice because what are you going to do? You've got to kill my zombies or they're going to kill you, but every zombie that dies, you lose a life. So also, once again, this is a thing where it looks at all zombies and not just your zombies. This is back during Onslaught

when these cards looked at everything. Which meant if your opponent was playing zombies, it was definitely a little scary because him trading your zombie for your zombie meant they lost two life. Also, notice it says

each opponent rather than saying target player or whatever. Whenever you lose a zombie in a multiplayer game, every single player loses a life. And so I know this card is good. If you want to make sort of a zombie deck to play in a multiplayer, it does a nice thing where

it helps you defeat multiple players at once. Next, Wing Shards. Wing Shards is an instant for one white white, so it's three mana. Target player sacrifices an attacking creature, Storm. So Wing Shards is the example of a card where this is not in any degenerative Storm decks. And the answer is, well, it is, what is degenerate is when I can reduce all these copies of something

and kill you. Well, destroying attacking creatures is never going to, making your opponent sac them is never going to kill them, or very rarely. And so it's a defensive card. So what we've learned is, Storm defensively is not nearly as problematic as being offensive. That if I make 15 or something and kill you, well, that's a problem.

But if I can make 15 or something and I you, well, that's a problem. But if I can make 15 or something and I mean, also, it only can kill as many creatures as you attack with. I mean, best case scenario is you attack, or your opponent attacks with a giant army, and somehow you can get a lot of little spells, try and protect yourself, and then kill them all. But it's just an example of a storm card that isn't dangerous.

It gets brought up a lot. Not all storm cards are dangerous, which is true. Doesn't mean the mechanic can come back by the way, guys. When you can't make anything offensive, it's hard to make cards. Next, Wirewood Symbiote. It's an insect, a 1-1 insect for a single green mana.

If you return an elf you control, you can untap target creature. You can only do this once per turn. So this card was inspired by... What's the little elf? There's an elf in Urza's Legacy, I think, that I made, where as a cost... What was it?

It allowed you to unsummon as a cost, and when you unsummon, you can untap things. Anyway, this card has inspired that card. I'm blanking on what that card's name is. People are yelling out in the audience. This is another... It's a shenanigan card in green. blanking on what that card's name is. People are yelling out in the audience. This is another... It's a shenanigan card in green. Not just blue gets to do shenanigans.

Green gets to do shenanigans. So one of the nice things is returning elves often is a positive thing. So both blue and green and white all have the ability to, as a cost return, creatures to your hand. They're done differently, but it's an ability we do. In fact, red and black can do it with a theme, like Plane Shift, which was the second set in the Invasion block. We didn't name it, but it was a major theme.

And so it's something that every color has some access to. Green, white, and blue do it more often than black and red. And this one, definitely, untapping a creature, you can do all sorts of things. You can have blockers that can block that, you know, essentially it gives pseudo-vigilance to things. You can re-tap tappers. You know, it lets you do a lot of fun things.

And so, um, uh, I def- It definitely was inspired by the card- What was the elf called? Um, there's a card that I made in Urza's Legacy that I said, endless fun. Um, I wrote a whole article once about, like, 15 tricks you can do with just this card. And I really, really like the card, so, you know.

One of the things we definitely do is we come back, and, like, if you do a card and you like the card, it did fun things, like, you remember it, and, like, later on, you're like, you know what, that was a real fun card. We should revisit that. And that I have no shame of taking things at work and doing them again. Sometimes people get mad at me, though, like, I really liked, um, Misfirm Ultimis, and so in,

in Lorwyn, I say, you know what, what if Misfirm Ultimis was just a mechanic, and so we made Changeling, and people are like, oh no, now you're making Misfirm Ultimis less special, like, I'm not gonna not make things less special. If people like things, I'm bringing them back. They're fun. That's why they like them in the first place. And I'm not going to restrict how many times I can do fun things. If it's fun, I can do it again. I will make things less special

because I make other cards do the same fun thing. So, you've been warned. Anyways, this kind of mail, a little Simpsons kind of mail I get. It's, you brought this fun thing back, how dare you? What will Mr. Multimus' mother think? Okay, my last card of the day. I'm almost to work.

My last card of the day is quite a, quite a card. So I have a little thing to say about this. Zombie Cutthroat. Costs three black black for three four zombie. Morph is pay five life. So I talked about this earlier, about how you have to be careful when you do costs because if you don't do

a cost, like pay five life is not a cost that's tied to anything. Anybody can pay five life. I understand that black more often uses life payment so thematically it makes sense in black and it being a black card it makes sense but here's the issue. Really what this card is, it's a morph creature that you can put down for 3 mana for a 2-2

that says for 5 life it becomes a 3-4 zombie. Do you have to be playing black mana to play this card? No you don't. And in fact, it was a very popular card, showed up in a lot of decks that played morph. Lots of them didn't play black. In fact, in Limited, this card was taken super early because any deck could play it. In the right circumstances, it could be pretty

good, and it never tied you down. It didn't require anything. While the card is technically black, it is not black in the sense that it requires swamps for you to get it in play. And then, one of the things, just real quickly, a little side here, that when I go off on the color wheel, you know,

the reason I'm so, such a color pie purist, and I'm so, is one of the things you realize as you study the game and look at how the game clicks together is that there's a lot of things that Richard had to do to make the game work. A trading card has all sorts of built-in difficulties. And one of the biggest problems, I talked about this long ago

on my podcast, is what we call the queen problem, which is if you were making chess sets in which people could just pick their own pieces, okay, you have to pick one king, obviously,

because it's needed for the win condition. But past that, why wouldn't you just have all queens? If you can pick your, pick all your pieces, why, why bother playing with pawns or playing with, you know, knights or rooks or like, why not just play all the queens? Uh, and that's the problem the trading card games had is, well, if, if I get to choose my cards, why not just take the absolute best cards? Why? Why not do that? And what Richard said is, okay, well, we're going to build a system in so that not everything has access to everything.

You know, the mana system, along with the color pie, said, oh, well, this is powerful, but it requires you to be in blue. And this is powerful, it requires you to be in black. And this is powerful, it requires you to be in red.

And you can't be in all the colors. The mana system does not let you easily be in all the colors. And so you have to make choices. And that's where the game gets interesting. The game is interesting. And also, the mana system also said, this powerful spell is powerful early in the game, this is powerful

middle of the game, this is powerful late in the game. The original found all sorts of ways to make different cards valuable at different times. And that is crucial to making the game tick. That is why the mana system is so essential. That is why the mana system is so essential. That is why the cutler pie is so essential. You know, all these things that were done,

and my job, in some ways, last year Richard Garfield had his 50th birthday party, and at the thing, there was a little time where everyone was telling stories about Richard, and one of the things I said to Richard is that, you know, magic means a lot to me. It's given me my livelihood. You know, it is a passion, something that I care greatly about, which is something that

Richard gave me, something that Richard made and gave the world. And that I feel a lot of responsibility. And I said to him that, you know, I feel like it's his baby and I'm looking after it. And I'm making sure that it's well tended for because, you know, magic means a lot to me and I want'm making sure that it's well tended for, because, you know, magic means a lot to me, and I want to make sure that it is well looked after.

And Richard, I guess, said something that was very touching at the time when I said that, and he said, you know, he said, thank you, and you're doing a really good job. And that meant a lot to me that, you know, that the man who created this game feels like I'm doing justice to it, and that I'm steering it in a good direction. So I was very happy to hear that. But anyway, this all comes around. Zombie Cutthroat is a dangerous card. Not saying you can't occasionally do something like Zombie Cutthroat,

but it is dangerous in the sense that it allows access. I mean, you just have to be aware when you do it that what you are doing is making a card that isn't any color. And once you understand that, okay, okay, and we can do a little bit of that. I think it's just a 3-4 card. I mean, it's a zombie and that matters a little bit, but it's not doing

something so inherently black. It's just a 3-4 creature, so that made it like if it was doing really, really black things, like it was hitting you and making you discard and then I was putting that on deck so it weren't even black that would be a problem but anyway

sorry my little my little see you get a little side see when you read my writing and I go off on a little side and you're like why does he do that

because I just do that in life and podcast listeners you guys know that okay I'm now at work oh we had a little longer drive today a little traffic but we have wrapped up Scourge.

Got all the way to Z. So I hope you guys enjoyed my little jaunt through Scourge and my jaunt through the whole Onslaught block. It was a good block. It was one of, at the time, I think it was best-selling block. I mean, Mirrodin eclipsed it,

but I believe for a short shining moment, it was the best-selling block in Magic. And it held at the top five slot for quite a while, I mean, recent sets have blown it away, but for quite a while, it was near the top, and, you know, it's a block, I'm a big fan of Morph, I'm a big fan of Tribal, there's a lot of fun things the block did, I think Scourge itself did a lot of fun experiments, I don't think, for a mana cost, it necessarily turned out to be quite as awesome as it could have been. Or, it didn't turn out quite as well as I think Brian hoped. But, there's a lot of other fun things going on.

And while Storm developmentally had all sorts of problems, it was fun. It's a fun mechanic. A little destructive, but... Anyway, so I'm now in my parking spot, and we know what that means. It's time to end my drive to work. a little destructive, but anyway, so I'm now in my parking spot, and we know what that means. It's time to end my drive to work, so it's time for me to stop talking about magic and be making magic. I'll see you guys next time.