Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #198 - Holiday Cards

Episode Date: February 6, 2015

Mark explores the design of the special holiday cards.

I'm pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today I am talking the holiday cards. So I'm going to explain what these things are, and we've made nine of them, and I'm going to walk through all nine of them and talk about how each one got created. Okay, so let me start with what is a holiday card, because a lot of people might not even know what I'm talking about. is the holiday card, because a lot of people might not even know what I'm talking about. So many years ago, in fact, by many years ago, I mean 2006, Elaine Chase is the senior brand manager, brand director of Magic. She's the person on the brand team in charge of Magic.

And so back in 2006, she came to R&D and said, you know, a lot of other companies will produce holiday things that they give away as little tokens of appreciation to their employees and business partners. And that she thought it would be fun to do that for magic, that we could make a magic themed sort of a holiday card that we would give out. And rather our holiday card be a greeting card, our holiday card would be an actual magic card. But there were a bunch of constraints she had, and so she said, number one, she wanted it to be silver bordered, that she wanted to be clear that this wasn't something, it was something fun

that you could play with and have fun with, but it wasn't intended for tournament play. Number two, that she wanted it to have a holiday theme, but not particularly more general holiday than a specific holiday. I mean, obviously, we skirt, you'll see, we skirt the line a little bit. But the idea was, she didn't want to get too specific on any one holiday. And part of having this over border was, she wanted them to be kind of goofy and fun. You know, that most people wouldn't actually play with the card, more people would see the card. So she wanted to make sure the cards were fun to see, and also fun to play, but also

fun to see. So she set out and said to us, okay, I want to do this, you guys, you make magic cards, make me a magic card. So what happened was, design and creative sat down and said, okay, we didn't need, development didn't really need to get involved too much because these aren't going to be play tested. I mean, there's no place that's going to use these that's going to be very serious. So we always consult with development to make sure the numbers aren't in the ballpark, but there's not, there's no play testing that goes into these things from a developmental

standpoint. So really it was design and creative trying to figure out how best to make a holiday card. So the process that we came up with, and we did this for the very first card and we've done it ever since then, is we started by figuring out a name and a concept we like. And not just a concept, but a name that went with the concept. So the idea is, in fact, we pretty much start with a name. What's the card going to be called? And then creative will come up with some idea that they like. They'll run it by us. And then the way it works is we don't start design until the art is done. That's not normally how it works.

But with this card, what we want to do is have it out, get the artist, we get back, and we can see what the card looks like, and then we can adapt our design to make sure we match what the flavor of the card is. Usually what will happen is we know going in rough things about it. We know usually the color and the card type of it usually going in. But a lot of little details won't get figured out till we get it back. And this is proven to be, usually what happens is, I think some of the early ones I did and as we've been moving along

I've been involving my whole design team and so the later ones really are the work of the entire design team coming together okay, let's go back to 2006 and begin with where it all began Fruitcake Elemental so Fruitcake Elemental costs 1 green green so so three mana, for a seven seven elemental. It is indestructible, and at the end of the turn it deals seven damage to whoever controls it.

And for three mana, you can give control of it to another player. And then it had flavor text, and the flavor text said, Experiments intended to create the perfect holiday emissary resulted in a substance harder than dark steel, and a fraction is merry. So, the dark steel joke is, this card is indestructible. So, obviously, let me

start by saying that I think we've shifted a little over the years, sort of, our goals. We always want silver border. This card is tricky in that it is Silver Border only in the mechanics don't make sense without the concept, and the concept we would never do

in Black Border. So, Fruitcake, for those that might not know what a Fruitcake is, it's an American thing. A Fruitcake is this cake-like thing made out of hard fruit. It is a holiday, something you make for the holidays. Supposedly, it's supposed to be this sweet treat.

But it's got a reputation for being both very hard and that it gets regifted. The people don't want it, and they give it to other people. So the joke we were playing around with, fruitcake elemental was, okay, it's an elemental. And magic always has all sorts of elementals. I've made fun of this in past unsets. The idea that elementals can be, you know, what's an element?

You know, once you start assuming, like, time is an element, we definitely have had a lot of fun with what elements are. So this is playing around with, okay, what if it's made of fruitcake? And what would a fruitcake be? So clearly a fruitcake has to be something that you can't destroy, so it's indestructible. And people keep gifting it back and forth.

So the idea with this card is it's a very powerful creature. A 7-7 indestructible creature is pretty good. The problem is it's going to do damage to you at the end of turn if you keep it around. So you don't want to keep it around. So what you want to do is you want to give it to your opponent. And so there's this little game you play where you're passing back the fruitcake. I'm going to go back and forth. So the flavor text is making reference to dark steel.

When we first created indestructible in Mirrodin Block, actually, in dark steel, when we first created Indestructible in Mirrodin Block, actually, in Dark Steel, it was a substance created by the Mirrins that was indestructible, could not be destroyed. And so the flavor text is making reference to the fact that it's indestructible, so it's harder than Dark Steel, it's a joke. And obviously it's a fruitcake, so that's obviously the intended flavor here. Oh, by the way, so the way it works is, creative and design agree on a name, then it gets concepted and it gets sent out to the artist,

comes back from the artist. Once it's back from the artist, design then makes a mechanic for it, and then creative comes in and creative will do the flavor text. Sometimes the flavor text is necessary to help massage everything together. One of the things that's tricky is that we're always trying to make sure that the flavor and the whole package comes together.

And much like most Silver Border cards, the Uncards, that it is trying to create something larger in the sum of its parts. Like Fruitcake Elemental, if you just read the mechanic, it doesn't seem, the joke's probably not there

until you understand it's a fruitcake. And then once you understand it's a fruitcake, you're like, ah, I see. It's being passed back and forth. So Fruitcake Elemental was the very first one we did. It was green. And it went over really well. Elaine was correct.

So what happens is, if you work for Wizards of the Coast, you're an employee, you will get a holiday card. Or if you are a business associate and have any business dealing with wizards, you will get sent a card. It's something that has become part of our yearly holiday ritual. Sometimes

I know, like at past, sometimes we've done spell slinging like if world championships line up correctly where you have a chance to win it at spell slinging

so there's a couple different ways that players have been able to get their hands on them in fact fruitcake I'll mention

interesting enough that December was the the finals for the first great designer search and I remember that everybody who came to the party we had a party December was the finals for the first Great Designer Search. And I remember that everybody

who came to the party, we had a party, a Great Designer Search party, and everybody who came to the Great Designer Search party got given a fruitcake elemental. So, anyway, that was the very first one. That was 2006. So 2007, we need to do another one.

So the first one was just us riffing off some holiday-themed thing. So the second one, I thought it might be fun to do a parody. We hadn't done a parody yet. So the second one was called Gifts Given. So for those unaware, there's a card in Champions of Kamigawa called Gifts

Ungiven. So we thought it'd be a nice riff. I think it's the same artist that did this card. So the card is a parody of Gifts Given, except I think in the original, the person is unwrapped. It's got a moonfolk has unwrapped the gifts, and here she's wrapped them. So Gifts Given is an instant that costs three and a blue, so four mana total. You search your opponent's library for four cards with different names, reveal them to the opponent. They choose two to go into the graveyard and two to go into your hand.

So gifts ungiven, you get them from your library, and they go to graveyard in your hand. So this is I get it from my opponent's library. And the flavor text is, thanks, you shouldn't have. So one of the things that's tricky about doing a silver border is we have interesting guidelines.

Basically what brand wants is they want it to be, have enough, something about the card is different enough that we can, with a straight face, put a silver border on it. But they did want it to be something that wasn't so goofy that you couldn't play it. They wanted it to be...

not quite as wacky as our wackiest un-cards. They wanted it to be something that's... kind of you could put it in a deck and play it. The idea is if you happen to get a holiday gift card, you can play it. It's not just funny to read it in a deck and play it. The idea is if you happen to get a holiday gift card, you can play it. It's not just funny to read. It's entertaining to play with. So we're trying to get the balance of being something that is fun to read, but also will play well.

So gifts given, the reason I was able to put a silver border on this is I normally am not allowed to put my opponent's cards into my hand. That's a line we draw in Black Border. That I can steal your cards, I can exile them. But usually if I want to get cards out of your library, what I do is I exile them, and then I can cast them as if they were in my hand. But because we're in Silver Borderland, I can just put them in my hand, and that way the template matches gifts I'm given, it's just more of a direct parallel. my hand, and that way the template matches Gifts Ungiven. It's just more of a direct

parallel. Anyway, this is the second. This is 2007. This card also went over very well. I think that this card was such a... Us playing around in parody space made people very happy. We don't always do parodies, but as you'll see, as time has gone on, we've

started to do more and more parodies. We realized that people really like the parodies. Okay. Which brings us to 2008. So 2008 was called Evil Presence. So P-R-E-S-E-N-T-S. So this one was a takeoff, Evil Presence. P-R-E-N-C-E.

Which was from Alpha, I think. It turned enchanted land into a swamp. And so this one was a little trickier. Let me explain the card. So the card is two black, black, four mana, four sorcery. Put a creature card from your hand into play under an opponent's control, and that creature attacks each turn, but it attacks its controller.

So the Silver Border part of this card is, you can't normally attack your controller. The game doesn't let you do that. But we're in Silver Borderland and we're just like, whatever. Deal. The flavor text for this card was, Tis better to give than receive. So this card was in a strange space where, I'll

be honest, a lot of times when we come up with a name, in my head I have an image of what's going to happen, and that sometimes that's what we get back, but sometimes the artist goes a different path. So what I thought this was going to be was a person being attacked by Christmas slash Hanukkah slash Kwanzaa presents, holiday presents, that have teeth in them or something. holiday presents, that have teeth in them or something. And so imagine a person being attacked by a swarm of delicately wrapped packages with bows,

except they have all the teeth on them and they're attacking him. That's what I thought we were going to get. We ended up getting a goblin tied up with ribbon. So it's a little different than I thought. And so one of the things we were trying to do is, the original an Enchant Land, and clearly, when this came back, it wasn't an Enchant Land, and we tried for a while to make it an enchantment so it would match, but

in the end, we decided we would just go with the flavor of what we needed. We didn't try to match the parallel too much of the parody. The name, really the name was the only parody of this element. So what ended up happening is, we said,

okay, well what if you're giving a gift to your opponent, but it's not a good gift, it's an evil gift, so it attacks you. So the idea is,

oh, I give you a creature for my thing, but every turn, instead of it attacking for you, it attacks you. And because the attacking you is not something

Black Border really does, we got our Silver Border. So this is another one that definitely um we we oh so you'll notice by the way the first one was green the second one was blue we realized we started on the path of okay let's do different colors and so we actually said okay let's not do green let's not do blue oh let me explain real quickly so here's how it works. I didn't explain the process. So what we'll do is we will generate names, a whole bunch of names. And then, and I'll go to R&D and say, anybody got any fun names?

Because really, we want clever names for these. And so we, the very first thing we do is we generate a long list of names. And then what will happen is we'll go to the creative team and the design team and people will sort of comment on what names they like. Usually it has to be something where I feel I can design something for it.

I also have some constraints. I've been the one that's sort of like been trying to have us do different kinds of cards just to mix it up. And then creative has to sign off, especially Jeremy, because we want to make sure that there's a concept they think they can work with. That they think they can do something funny with the concept. And so this

year, the goal of year three was not green, because we had done green. Not blue, because we had done blue. It could be black, red, or white. We decided we were going to do all, or I decided, to do all the mono-color cards first. And so we came up with Evil Presence. I think what happened was,

we'll make names of stuff and we'll carry over from year to year. So Evil Presence had been on before. That wasn't the first name. We had come up with the name before. And so we said, oh, Evil Presence. Let's do Evil Presence. It was a black card. Evil Presence is one of the cards, by the way. One thing that I've been very, very happy with is how the cards tend to line up and all the pieces click together. Evil Presence is one of the cards, by the way. One thing that I've been very, very happy with

is how the cards tend to line up and all the pieces click together. Evil Presence was one of the trickier ones for us. Because I think we were trying to do a lot. We were trying to do a parody. We were trying to capture the flavor. Anyway, it's definitely one of the cards that we had a fiddle with the most. Okay, let's get to year four. Year four is Se is seasons beatings

it's red red red red red red red I didn't really die I think it's a sorcery I'm pretty sure it's a sorcery it has a it has a not a keyword but a in italics what is it called ability word

it has an ability word that says family gathering and it says each creature target player controls deals damageing. And it says, Each creature target player controls deals damage equal to its power to another random creature that player controls. Flavor Texas arriving home, he suddenly longed for the blood-soaked battlefield behind him. So the idea was a goblin was coming home, and in this goblin hold,

there's a lot of fighting because they're goblins. It is the season's beatings. This was another name we'd had for a while. I think what happened was year four, we're like, okay, not green, not blue, not black, which means red or white. And we thought this was a pretty cool-sounding red card. And so once we had the name Season's Beatings,

we had the goblin, then we're like, okay, we wanted some kind of fight. This is one of those cards that is really, really on the cusp of being something we could just do in Black Border. It's a little... I mean, the random element of it makes it a really wildly

random card. Because when I put this on your creatures, I could destroy all your creatures, or I could destroy very few of them. So, anyway, because what happens, by the way, is the damage all gets assigned at the same time. It's not as if if I kill one

creature, it's gone, and then I can't target with another creature. So, every single creature could all beat up on the same one little tiny creature. So, you know, you could have 20 10-10s and a 1-1, and every single creature beats up on the 1-1. That can happen. I mean, unlikely, statistically, but

the other thing we did was we were trying to get the flavor of the goblin coming home, so we actually used the ability word because we didn't know how to convey it through the mechanics. And so, family gathering, we're like, we just gotta tell you this. We talked about doing it through the flavor text, and we did it a little bit.

The flavor text definitely reinforces that he's coming home, but we needed the ability to really hammer home that what this mechanic is representing is him coming home with his family. And so it was one of those ones where sometimes it's crystal clear what you're doing, but this one was like, you weren't seeing the season's beatings. We were implying what was about to happen, and I think if you're looking through the house, you can see them fighting inside the house, but

it's subtle, and so we were trying, and the other thing is because these aren't, you know, they're silver-boarded cards, we can do things like make up ability words, and you know, we have some freedom to sort of stretch a little bit on what we're doing. Okay, so now we get to 2010.

Okay, so we had done a green card, a blue card, a black card, a red card. That mean it was time for white. So this was actually pretty tricky because we had a lot of names, but I was really consistent in wanting a white card. And so one of the things we had played around with quite a bit is having cards with snow in the name, and so there were a number of snow

cards we had toyed around with. Eventually, we decided to do a parody of a card called No Mercy from Urza's Legacy. So, No Mercy is a black enchantment that says whenever a creature deals damage to you, you destroy it. And in the art, you see...

So in the story of Versus Legacy, we were on Teleria, and there was an explosion in which it created all these time bubbles where things were trapped inside these bubbles where time is moving at a different rate. Well, it turns out there was Phyrexians that were there. They were trying to invade, and the Phyrexians

got trapped in a slow time bubble, which meant that, I'm sorry, a fast time bubble, which meant that while from the outside world it seemed like very little time had gone on, inside, a huge amount of time had gone on. So the Phyrexian invasion was able to build and build and build, and it was hard for them to be attacked, because whenever Urza and his forces would come to attack them, they would see them coming from so far away,

they had so much time to prepare. So in the art, you see the creatures from the slow time bubble trying to come out to attack. So anyway, we wanted to sort of capture that feel, and so what happened was, with Snow Mercy, we decided it might be funny if you conveyed the slow time bubble if it were

a snow globe now some people have definitely said to us hey snow globe shouldn't that be an artifact and in another world it might have been we really were trying hard to mimic no mercy and be a white card so I really wanted it to be an enchantment.

So while it has some artifact-ness to it, it is a white enchantment. So let me actually tell you what it does. So Snow Mercy is two white-white, paralleling the two black-black for No Mercy, snow enchantment. We realized that there's snow involved, so we can make a snow enchantment. Whenever a creature deals damage to you, put a globe counter on it,

and then it has tap, untap, tap, untap, tap all creatures with a globe counter on them. And then the flavor text says, warning, shake gently, contents may cause choking, hypothermia, or interplanar invasion. What's that? Planar invasion.

Sorry. So warning, shake gently. Contents may cause choking, hypothermia, and or planar invasion. So probably the cool part of this car and the part that actually gives it its un-ness to it is we were trying to convey the snow globeness of it, and Matt Tabak, the rules manager,

came up with the idea of adding tap and untap. So the idea is you have to shake the globe, and when you shake the globe, you tap all the things that are in the globe. So the idea is as things attack you, you stick them in the globe, and then you can shake the globe to tap them. And so the idea was Snow Mercy destroys them,

White taps them rather than destroys them. So as things damage you, you kind of can trap them in the globe And so the idea was, no mercy destroys them, white taps them rather than destroys them. So as things damage you, you kind of can trap them in the globe so they can't hurt you. But anyway, the tap, untap, tap, untap is a thing of genius, which Matt Tapex deserves credit for. And it did a good job of just giving this enough silliness that we got the silver border on it. Okay, so now we're slightly half-past the way. So now we had done all five mono-color cards. So I decided, so I said to my team,

let's look for something other than that. So one of the names, which I believe Mark Gottlieb had given, Yule Ooze, which is the next card. Mark had given that name for years. But the problem I had said to him is, I really believed that Yule Ooze wanted to be red and green. Turns out oozes are red, green, and black. Those are the colors of oozes.

And Yule Ooze, you know, I mean, we try to skate the edge on color stuff, but obviously Yule Ooze is making a reference to like a Yule log, which is slightly more of a Christmas thing. So it's a little nod to that. And the fact that oozes can be red and green. Yule Ooze was red and green.

But I wanted to do it as a gold card, so I kept holding off. But finally, we were done with our mono-color cycle. We're like, okay, I want to do some different stuff. We haven't done a gold card yet. Let's do Yule Ooze. Everybody was on board. So it's a 1-1 Ooze for two red and a green. At the beginning of your upkeep,

destroy a target non-land permanent chosen at random, and then put a number of plus one, plus one counters on the Yule Ooze, equal to the converted mana cost of the card. For red and green and eat some food, you can regenerate Yule Ooze. And the flavor text is, it loves having family for dinner.

So, Yulu's, the tricky part here was the main ability, while a little weird, was still Black Border viable. So we ended up having the little, to regenerate, you have to eat some food. Obviously, that is a rip-off of a card called Fat Ass, which is an unhinged,

which required you, it had a bonus if you were eating. And so we thought that was clever and cute, and it was all about family dinner. And the thing about the Yule Ooze that they did creatively, in fact, I didn't really explain the art of all these. So let me go back real quickly. I've been diligent. So Fruitcake Elemental was a giant elemental, I didn't really explain the art of all these. So let me go back real quickly. I've been diligent. So fruitcake elemental was a giant elemental, I mean huge, that clearly was made out of fruitcake that you could see. Gifts given, I've talked about, was the same moonfolk, instead of unwrapping gifts, wrapping gifts. Evil presence was the evil little goblin

wrapped up in ribbon. Season's feedings was a goblin walking toward his home, and you could see through the windows in his home that there's fighting going on. And then Snow Mercy was all these Phyrexians inside a snow globe. Yule Ooze was a ooze in the shape of a jello mold, but you could see inside it that it slowly eaten other things at the table. It's sitting at a table, that it's slowly eating other things at the table. It's sitting at a table, and it's slowly digesting other things at the table. And

like I said, one of the things that's also fun is the gentle balance between having the flavor we want and being fun to read and fun to look at, but also having a neat mechanical thing. Like, Yule Ooze is the kind of card you can build around and do some fun stuff with. Anyway, anything else but Yule Loose? I'm trying to remember. Anyway, okay, let's move on. Naughty and Nice. Okay, so we've done five multicolored,

I'm sorry, five monocoloredored cards we've done a gold card um somebody i forget who it was might have been someone on the creative team somebody suggested doing a split card with naughty and nice and i thought that was an awesome idea we'd never done um i mean i was trying one of the things we're trying to do the holiday cards just keep doing different things different than what we've done before well we've done monocolor we've done gold oh we hadn't ever done a split card. So Naughty and Nice, we just, we'd obviously done Red-Green,

so we're like, okay, Naughty and Nice pretty much wanted, Naughty wants to be Black, Nice wants to be White. That seemed pretty clear. They were different colors than we'd done in the two colors the previous year. So the card is one Black-Black Sorcery or one White-White Sorcery, so three mana either way. Naughty said,

search another target player's library for a card, put it in your hand, and shuffle the library. Nice said, search your library for a card, put it in another player's hand, shuffle your library. So Naughty is,

I get to steal a card out of their library. Nice is, I get to give something to another player. So the idea is, Nice, probably you'd play nice in multiplayer play where you might have somebody you're trying to help, where naughty can be used in whatever, you're just punishing somebody else. This is the first one not to have flavor

text. The problem was split cards are so tiny, there's just not a lot of room, and we really liked the parallel between how we did naughty and Nice. Oh, the art was awesome. Jeremy, the artist, worked this out. So Naughty, you see a guy. I think he's from one of the kill spells. But anyway, you see him. You look up close, and there's just red all over his face, which you perceive as blood.

And he has this sort of evil glare on him. And then you pull back, and nice is the same scene, but farther back, and you see him longingly looking at a pie tin, and then he's just eating this cherry pie. So all the stuff on his mouth isn't blood, it's pie.

It was very cutely done. Probably my favorite piece of art so far. I mean, I like a lot of the art. probably my favorite piece of art so far. I mean, I like a lot of the art. Probably my favorite piece of art for the holiday cards. And because we got two pieces of art, we got to do a sequential joke, which is tricky to do. Okay, next, Stocking Tiger, which is an artifact.

So we had done five MonoColor cards. We'd done a gold card. We'd done a split card. Time for an artifact. So Stocking Tiger. S-T-O-C-K-I-N-G. Like a stocking you'd hang by the fire. Five for a cat construct. Three, three.

It enters the battlefield with a sealed booster connected to it. And if it ever deals combat damage to an opponent, you're going to unwrap that booster and put it in your hand. And the play protect is, just hope yours isn't filled with Cold Golem. Coal Golem, I think, is a card from the dark.

And obviously, Santa will leave you coal if you're a bad boy. Or girl. Or... Neither. Okay, so this card was Stalking Tiger is a creature, a green creature, from Mirage.

We wanted a little bit of reference to that. So, because, I mean, obviously it's a tiger, so we made it a contra cat, and we made it a 3-3 to match Stalking Tiger. And then we just liked the idea that you get to unwrap something that, in your stocking, it's a present. And so, this obviously owes a lot to Booster Tutor. So Booster Tutor is a black card from Unhinged that allows you to go get another booster, open it up, and take a card out of it.

This one, though, we decided to give you the whole thing. One of the reasons we can do that is at the end of your turn, you have to discard beyond seven. So while you've got to open up the whole pack, you know, you can cast as many cards as you could this turn, and then you probably couldn't keep all of them, but you keep enough of them that, you know, you've got a nice little present for you.

Obviously, the opening up of the booster is in Silver Border territory, so we were in fine territory. I had a lot of fun. This was, so both Stalking Tiger and Mishra's Toy Factory, which we're getting to in a second, were done in design meetings.

I think so was Naughty and Nice. The last couple have all been done in design meetings. I think so was Naughty Knight. The last couple have all been done in design meetings. In fact, actually, I think you'll lose. I think all the last four, all the non monocard ones, have been done in design meetings. So, Stocking Tiger we messed around. We knew it was an artifact. I think once we stumbled upon the idea

of using Booster Tutor technology, just trying to figure out how best to use it. We liked it as being a creature combat damage, so I get this in play, but now I've got to get it through. We thought that would be fun. Okay, next. The 2014 card, the last card. Or the last card for now. We'll make one next

year. Mishra's Toy Factory. So we actually... I'm sorry, Mishra's not Toy Factory. Mishra's Toy Workshop is the name. When we commissioned the card, it either was called Mishra's Toy Factory, Mishra's not Toy Factory. Mishra's Toy Workshop is the name. When we commissioned the card, it either was called Mishra's Toy Factory or Mishra's Toy Workshop, knowing that it either could be Mishra's Factory

or it could be a Mishra's Workshop. We could pair it either way. And so we sort of went in knowing we had two possible names. Normally we nail down to one name. This one, we gave ourselves two possible names. So actually what happened was when it came back, we decided to end up doing a Mishra's Workshop parody,

so we entitled it Mishra's Toy Workshop. We also decided that Santa more had a workshop than a factory, so. Anyway, it's a land. You tap to add three mana to your mana pool, spend only on spells or abilities that put tokens onto the battlefield, and then use toys to represent.

The flavor text says, even though Urza tried to apologize, Mishra continued to bear a grudge. In the flavor text, in the art, it is a conveyor belt of toys being made, and there's little teddy bears that are being made in a construction line.

And then at the end of it, there's a razor blade that's just going through the head of the teddy bear. So the flavor text is trying to make fun of the little teddy bear. This card is another one where it's a little... I'm not sure whether or not we could actually have you add mana for only effects that generate tokens. I think the rules are...

So one of the things we discovered, one of the places that unsets have gone to in the past is sometimes there's things that make perfect sense in a just general... Like, if you explain to somebody, they can do it, but when the rules try to write it, it just gets really wonky. And this is one of those cases where if we had to write

this in a way that made actual black border sense, A, it would be really, really hard to write, and B, it might be impossible. Because this was a silver border card, we allowed ourselves to just sort of say it the way we meant and not be super rules precise.

What actually counts as generating a token is a little fuzzy. I mean, people have been writing me in about this. The general rule, by the way, as unmanager, since this falls under my domain, is the spell you're casting produce tokens or the ability you're doing produce tokens. It doesn't make something capable of producing tokens cheaper. I can't get the hive into play cheaper because the hive's capable of making creatures. I can

activate the hive. I can use this to activate the hive, but you actively, the thing has to be making the tokens. It can't just produce a thing that can make tokens. But because we felt we were close enough to Black Border, we decided to add a little rider of Yahadi's toys to represent the tokens.

A lot of people have been asking me questions all about what toys you have to use, and the answer is, whatever toys you want. I mean, it has to be in, you know, you have to actually be able to argue it's a toy, but pretty loose on what a toy means. There's a lot of,

toy is a pretty flexible term, but just use toys. People always ask me, by the way, because it says use toys, what if I don't use toys? I'm like, well, what if I say destroy your creature and you don't destroy your creature? I mean, the game says to do things, you've got to do them. So the intent of this card is, if you want to use it,

you need to use toys to mark the counters. If you're not using toys, you're breaking the spirit of the card. So anyway, nine in. So we had one of each color. We had a gold card. We had a split card. We had an artifact.

We had a land. So what's up and coming? Some point we'll start repeating ourselves, only because I've been trying to sort of see how many different things we can do. I'm not sure. So the way it works is we make the card very early. In fact, we will get the card in, hand out the card during the holidays. And like January or February, we have to start figuring out what the next one is because we have to commission, we commission it really early.

The way it works is there's extra room sometimes on sheets. And so we can do promotional things like this on those. But in order to have the time slot we have to work really early so it's funny that like we'll get the card and give it out and then like right after the holidays we have to start making the next one um and we'll drag out our list again now the fact that we are as we start going through things we open ourselves up a little bit um the real big question will happen next year is is there something we haven't done yet that i thought maybe we can do? And then,

are there names that we like that could fit that thing? But it is funny how, because what happens is, we commit to it, and then I don't, a whole bunch of time goes by before we actually see the art back.

And then once we see the art back, we have actually a pretty small window to make the card. It's like, we make the card, we sit around for a couple months, and like, okay, you got like three weeks or small window to make the card. It's like, we make the card, we sit around for a couple months, and like, okay, you got like three weeks or a month

to make the card. And usually what I do now is, every Tuesday we have a design meeting, and so one of the topics is, in our design meeting as a team, we will design the card. And it's one of those things that I could do it by myself, but I actually enjoy having the team be involved in it, that I

like as many people being involved in the Holiday Card as possible. And it's a nice team-building thing that the whole team gets to put together the card. So I've been very happy with how we've produced the last couple. But anyway, I'm almost to work. So that, my friends, is all about the Holiday Card.

I hope people... There's a lot of things that we do in Magic and this is definitely one of the ones that gets less time you know

it doesn't get developed and I mean I'll be honest it's designed in a meeting it's not like a lot of time is spent on the design but it is something that we

we it's a fun tradition and I really you know when Elaine first said the idea I was on board and having watched them and watched how they were received by the public, I've enjoyed them. It's funny, I think, that some have been better than others.

And that every year we're trying to learn what makes a good holiday card. One of the things I've learned recently is that I've definitely been using unsets as a little more. Like you'll notice the last couple, like for example Stocking Tiger very much makes use of Booster Tutor. I've been trying to go and see if there's fun territories that the

I mean, maybe this is my pen of desire to get Un3 made, but I do want to see if there's fun areas that we've played around with in past silver things that we can get. Because the Holiday Cards is one place where we can do Silver Border stuff. And as a man who loves

his Silver Border things, as a little tiny teaser to spare time to one day convince him to do a third set, third on set, I get to make the Holiday Cards every year. So that is fun. But anyway, I hope you guys enjoy them as much as we enjoy making them, because we actually

we get quite a hoot making them. But, ooh, I can see that there was rain today, so you guys got a little extra bonus. I was worried because there were nine cards and when I walk in, like normally I talk about a lot more than nine cards, but I'm like, well, I'll be really thorough. So I'm glad we got through today. Anyway, I'm now

parked in the parking lot, which as we all know, we know what that means. It means it's time to end my drive to work. And instead of talking about magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So I'll talk to you guys next time.