Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #216 - Innistrad Cards, Part 1

Episode Date: April 10, 2015

Mark starts a 5-part series about the cards of Innistrad.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so it's time for another set examining series of podcasts. And so I decided the next block I'm going to look at is Innistrad block. But I actually did a podcast, three podcasts in fact, on Innistrad. In fact, Innistrad was the very first multi-podcast that I had done, because I had so much to say about it. But I didn't talk about any of the cards. So what I'm going to do is, for this, I'm going to start by doing

a series of Innistrad card podcasts, talking about cards in Innistrad. I'll talk about a lot of different individual decisions, but more on a card-by-card basis. Then, I will eventually get to Dark Ascension, and then I will get to Avacyn Restored. So, I will, the three, the next three, uh, series that we talk about are all the, the sets from Innistrad.

But, if you want to know about the nuts and bolts of how Innistrad can put together, you can go listen to my old podcasts. I listen to some of them. They're very quaint. Uh, they're very early in me figuring out how to do the podcast. So, um, anyway, they're,. So anyway, they're a fun listen. But today, I'm going to talk cards. So we're going to start with A, with Angel of Flight. Sorry, Angel of Flight Alabaster. So four and a white, so it's five mana for a 4-4 angel.

It has flying, and then at the beginning of the upkeep, return target spirit from your graveyard to your hand. So the interesting thing about this is, so remember people, Innistrad. Innistrad is gothic horror, and one of the big things in it was it had a strong tribal component. And what we did was the five tribes were four monster tribes, which were vampires, werewolves, zombies, and spirits, and the humans, because you can't have a good horror tale without humans. So, the flavor of Innistrad is the humans are surrounded on all sides by monsters.

Each of the tribes, of the five tribes, were in two colors. Some of them appear a little outside of two colors. Human, for example, is centered in white and green, but they actually show up in a few other colors. Like the werewolves are human before they turn into werewolves in red, for example. Um, so basically what's going on is, uh, humans were white-green, um, spirits were white-blue,

zombies were blue-black, um, black-red was vampires, red-green was werewolves. Um, like I said, I go into more detail in the, in the industry. But anyway, uh, so spirits ended up being the problem child for us. We got what humans were up to. We got a good sense of how zombies worked and how vampires worked and how werewolves worked. The spirits ended up being this tricky one. Because, okay, what exactly do spirits do? Mechanically, they ended up being, I mean, white, blue likes having kind of a flying deck.

And a lot of the spirits fly so it had a little bit of just what we call a blue skies deck where it's just attacking a lot of flyers but we were trying to find some sort of shtick for them and so one of the things we found was that we definitely wanted some sort of relationship

that spirits have with death and so this particular card gets things back to allow you to get more spirits. It's definitely pushing a little boundaries on white. White doesn't normally do regrowing creatures, but we felt

that it was locked into spirits, and thematically we felt we pushed it a little bit. So this is a color bend. Not a break, but a color bend to try to sort of play up the idea of that the spirits have been getting more spirits, which we liked. Next, Armored Scob, two and a blue, so three mana for a 1-4 zombie warrior, and when it enters the battlefield, you mill four cards. Okay, so one of the things we did was we needed, one of the general rules

when we do tribal is, I like to take tribes, if we make you care about them, and get them in more than one color. And the reason for that is just, it makes so much more depth of play. When you go back to something like Onslaught, where we did racial stuff, you know, race matter stuff in Onslaught, like we had goblins, but they were all red, and we had elves, but they were all green, and it just made a very heavy mono-color deck.

And what happened was, there was just a lot of repetition. Because, like, well, if I'm playing mono-red, I'll play the best red cards. And it made a little more of the same. But when we spread them out and put them into at least two colors, then players are like, okay, well, you could play mono-color one color. You could play mono-color second color. You could mix and match them. It just gives you a little more flexibility in what you're doing.

But the tricky part was, in order for that to be true in Innistrad, we had to figure out how to take all these monster tribes and get them in two colors. And the problem was everything wanted to be black. You know, vampires, that sounds black. You know, zombies, that sounds black. Even werewolves. It's funny, before the set had come out, there had been, I think, three werewolves, and all three werewolves had been black. And we're like, okay, everything can't be black. So we said, okay, how do we figure this out?

So we eventually decided that we would put vampires in black and red and play up the bloodthirstiness of the vampires, that we would do werewolves in red and green and play up sort of the nature aspect of them. Spirits ended up in white and blue. And we're like, okay, well, zombies want to be black and blue. But what's a blue zombie? Now, historically, there have been a few blue zombies that drowned from the darks of blue zombie.

So the big question is, what exactly did a blue zombie? And that's when we realized that there's two types of zombies. So the traditional zombie, we think of Dawn of the Dead, that was, okay, creatures raised from the dead through some necromancer or something, and they're mindless and they attack. That was one kind of zombie. But another kind of zombie, especially when you go to gothic horror,

is Frankenstein's Monster. It's the idea of a zombie made through science, not through, you know, witchcraft or something, but made through, you have sort of used your scientific means to bring the dead back to life. And that is a pretty good trope. Especially for gothic horror. So we're like, okay, what if Blue,

because Blue's all about technology, what if, you know, Blue has the wizards, and they're the ones bringing back the dead in the blue? So we made the scabs, and the scabs were sort of the artificially made, the Frankenstein monsters, if you will, of the set. And so one of the things that we liked a lot was this flavor of, well, if you need dead things to make them, maybe some of them require you to have creature cards in your graveyard.

And it's flavorful. It's like, okay, well, I want to make my scob. I've got to go dig up some dead bodies and make the scob. But in order for that to work, we needed to make sure that Blue had the means by which to get things into your graveyard. So, my long story here is, where Armorscop came from.

It came to be a support card to get stuff in your graveyard. Now, the funny thing is, if you're playing blue-black, the reason you want to do that is because you are playing a zombie deck, a blue-black zombie deck, and there's some zombies in blue

that require you getting stuff out of the graveyard. But, if you mix blue with green, blue-green, green had a flavor of green looking to the graveyard. But, if you mix blue with green, blue-green, green had a flavor of green looking to the graveyard, of honoring the dead, and green's always had a flavor of caring about the graveyard, things in the graveyard. And so, like a little boy from way back in Ice Age, for example, so he said, okay, well, we're going to make some green cards that care about things in your graveyard, so if you max blue with green, blue dumps things in your graveyard, and green cares about things in your graveyard. So if you max blue with green, blue dumps things in your graveyard, and green cares about things in your graveyard. So this card both played in a

blue-black deck and in a blue-green deck. Okay, next, Army of the Damned. Five black, black, black, so eight mana total, sorcery. Make 13 2-2 zombies, put them into play tapped, and then flashbacks, seven black, black, black, so for 10 mana, you get 13 zombies for 8 mana and for 10 mana, you get 13 more zombies. So this came about because we were trying to come up with what is the biggest baddest of each of the monsters you can make. So for example, at the same time, same session, this was made in a design team meeting.

The same meeting we made this, we made Olivia Valerian, who was called Count Dracula in design, that was Lord of the Vampires. And she could turn people and do all sorts of... We'll get to her. But anyway, we're like, well, what is the king of the zombies? And we said, you know, really?

It's not like... You go to the zombie movies, it's not like any one zombie is more powerful than another. You know what's scary about zombies? It's not one zombie. It's a horde of zombies. That's what makes zombies scary, is that it's a never any one zombie is more powerful than another. You know what's scary about zombies? It's not one zombie, it's a horde of zombies. That's what makes zombies scary, is that it's just a never-ending horde.

So we're like, okay, instead of making one big bad zombie, a big nasty zombie, why don't we make a lot of zombies? And the funny thing is, as I'll be getting to it, but there's a zombie for a black, a B for a 2-2 that comes in by attack, which I'll be talking about later today. And like, that's not super scary. I mean, there's a zombie for a black, a B for a 2-2 that comes in by attack, which I'll be talking about later today.

And like, that's not super scary. I mean, it's a one drop, so it could come out fast. But the reality is, skating zombies, a 2-2 zombie is nothing particularly scary. But enough of them are scary. You know, like, eventually, how many before they get scary? So,

originally this card made 20. It made 20 zombies, and then it made 20 more zombies. Just because 20 seemed like a crazy high number. And then when we were later in design, we were like, oh, Tom Lapilli was the development rep on this team. And Tom said, I think 20 might be too much. But we had this theme of 13 in the set. That was something

that we had started at 13 is an unlucky number. We were playing around with horror. Like, oh, might be kind of fun to have more 13s than normal. And so Tom's like,

you know, we're doing this 13 thing. How about 13 zombies? So you get 13 now, you get 13 later, it's 26 zombies. Well, that's a lot to deal with. 26 zombies is a lot to deal with.

So it ended up being that. And I, this is one of my favorite. Not my most favorite. We'll get to that. But one of my favorite cards in the set. I'm a huge zombie fan, for those who don't know. And one of the things I really wanted zombies to do in this set was I wanted to capture the sense of that zombies aren't fast.

They're not particularly strong fighters. It's not like you're supposed to be afraid of them because you can't handle a zombie. You can probably handle a couple zombies. The average guy can take a zombie. They're slow, right? But enough zombies, and it starts to be scary for you. What makes zombies scary is they just keep coming.

And then I wanted to make a deck that just kept coming. And so the idea here is, you get enough mana, okay. If the zombies can last to the longer game, we're giving them some tools. They're going to pump out a lot of zombies. So you better defeat them before they get to that. Because they get eight mana, oh, my God, 13 zombies.

And if they get another two mana to 10 mana, 13 more zombies. A lot of zombies. And I've had a lot of fun. I remember I was playtesting the set with Bill Rose, who's the vice president of R&D. And Bill got Army of the Damned. What happens from time to time is Bill has us come and play with him.

He can get a sense of where the set's at. So I had Bill join a playtest. And then I gave Bill his cards. And he got his cards. So he made a zombie deck because he got Army of the Damned. And this was back when there were 20, not 13. And Bill managed to, two turns in a row, play 20 and then 20 more zombies

and just destroyed me. And I remember after we lost that game, Billy goes, I like this set. So, anyway, Army of the Damned is just fine. It's super, super flavorful. Okay, next, Avicennian Priest. One and a white, so two mana for a 1-2 human cleric. For one and tap,

tap target non-human. So one of the flavors going on in the set was we two mana for a 1-2 human cleric. For a 1-and-tap, tap target non-human. So one of the flavors going on in the set was we were trying to get an idea of it was humans versus the world. It wasn't, by the way, that the monsters were teaming up against the humans. They weren't. The vampires and the zombies and the werewolves and the spirits, they each had their own agenda. But each one of them was trying to... So the thing that's funny, if you notice about all four of them, is each one of them, the way they get more of their kind is coming from humans.

Vampires bite and turn humans, turn them into vampires. Zombies bite and turn humans into zombies. Werewolves bite and turn them into werewolves. And spirits, I guess, don't technically bite them, but when humans die, they turn into spirits. So all four are humans that turn into them. And so, in fact, if you remember

at the Dark Ascension pre-release, we had what we called the bite game, and we were playing to the idea that all the monsters were trying to turn the humans into monsters. And there's a thing where certain people in the tournament got assigned one of the monster races, and when they beat a human, meaning they beat someone else in the tournament that wasn't assigned a monster race, they turned them into that monster race.

And the idea was to see at the end of the tournament, were there more vampires or werewolves or zombies or spirits? Anyway, Elvin Priest was trying to say, okay, this is a monster hunter. This is someone dealing with monsters. So we were trying to find a clever way to say, how do you deal with monsters? And so in the end,

we said, okay, well, humans are banding together. So one of the human things we did is we said, you know what? Humans aren't particularly good against humans

because they're fighting the monsters. So by targeting non-human, it made it kind of cool, a neat way to sort of say monster without actually having to say monster since we couldn't,

we had to spell it out in some way. So non-human did a good job. There's a couple different ways we did this. I'll get some other cards, but that's how we did it here. Okay. Avacyn's Pilgrim. It's a green 1-1 human monk that taps to add white. And the idea is we wanted there to be a white-green human deck. In the beginning, the monsters, so what happened was, originally I wanted vampires and werewolves and zombies, and we wanted them to be tribal, so we put them in two colors.

And then we realized that they ended up being in ally colors, and then we came to the conclusion of we wanted spirits, and we're like, oh, those make sense in ally color, and kind of humans ended up in green and white, more of a default. Now, humans are in all the colors, but we wanted to make green-white a deck you could draft and something where humans mattered there.

And so part of that was we wanted to make a few things that linked green and white together. So having a green human that tapped for white, meaning, you know, a lot of times we'll have a Land of War elf-type card.

Well, this card, instead of tapping for green, it's tapping for white. So it's definitely kind of promoting that when you get this card, it says, well, if I have this, it's a little easier to play white. And so,

just trying to encourage you to put white and green together to try to make a green-white human deck. Okay, next. Battleground Geist. Four blue for a 3-3. Flying. Other spirits you control get plus one, plus zero. There also was a companion one that gave you plus zero, plus one. But this was

the more powerful one. And one of the things we were definitely trying to do is, like I said, the spirits get more identity once we get to Dark Ascension. But we definitely were trying to, I mean, there definitely was a tribalness to spirits. Like, spirits said you wanted to get a bunch of other spirits. And they were flying, so having sort of a power boost allowed you to sort of just take to the skies, boost them up, and a lot of times you can win that way.

Bitter Heart Witch. Four and a black, one, two, human shaman. When it dies, you get a tutor for a curse, and enchant target player. So the place we were going for this one, which is kind of cute, is it's a witch! If you kill the witch, she curses you. There's a curse on the witch.

And so it just does this neat thing where if you kill the witch, you get to go get a curse. And this card was made to enable a curse deck. It wasn't really a draftable thing. It wasn't something that you... It was hard to actually draft a curse deck, although I know people tried. But it was more of a casual constructed. One of the things about the themes is not every theme is meant to be at every level of play. Not every theme is constructed.

Not every theme is draft-worthy. Sometimes you just want some fun themes that go, hey, if someone really gets into this. And we knew that curses were going to be that. They're fun. They're flavorful. And clearly there's a deck where you just keep piling curses on your opponent, and so we wanted to, you know, make you do that. Now, this card exists for one other reason,

which is, we really wanted the card to say curse on them in the creature type line. We wanted them to be aura curses. But in order to be one of the rules, I think it's still true, but at the time especially, when Mark Gottlieb was the rules manager,

was he would not put a subtype on a card unless there was a card that cared about the subtype. He wouldn't put it there for flavor reasons. There had to be a mechanical reason to do it. And so that meant we wanted to make sure there was a card that said, hey, you have to label them so that I can go use them. And so we made this card in response to his asking for that. I mean, it was super flavorful. The witch dies and curses you is really cool. But we made the card such

that we could make curses something. Okay, next. Blasphemous Act. Eight and a red sorcery. It deals three damage to each creature and player and it costs one less for each creature you control. So it's basically sort of a red wrath. This is us bending the cardide a little bit as well.

Normally red, one of red's weaknesses is supposed to be its damage, because its creature control is damage based, that high toughness creatures are supposed to be a problem. We stretched that a little bit there. We really liked the 13. We liked the fact that it was really expensive. You had to make it

cheaper. And the neat dynamic of the more creatures you have, the cheaper it is, but your creatures are going to die, and so the combination was good. I think this card, when it was first made by, I think it was made by Jenna Helen, was called Enter the Hellmouth, which, by the way, is the name of the pilot

episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So, anyway, we have some vampire, we have some Buffy fans. In Odyssey, I made a card that was a nod to Angel, so I too am a Buffy fan if you didn't know. Okay, next. Blazing Torch. It's an artifact

that costs one. It's an equipment. Equipped creature cannot be blocked by vampires or zombies, and equipped creature has tap, sack, deal two damage to target creature or player. So it's really cute. I have a torch, and I can, you know, zombies and vampires are afraid of the fire, or I can throw and do damage to somebody. My favorite story about this card is, at the time, the head of the creative team was a guy named Brady Dommermuth, and Brady came

to me and said, you know, the whole torch, you know, and referencing vampires and zombies is cute, and I like it, it's flavorful, but the card might read better if we just made it shorter. So maybe, can we take that line off? And I was like, Brady, it's a reprint. We didn't make it from this set. It was actually from

Zendikar. And it's kind of funny, because if you didn't know that this card wasn't from this set and you read the card, you're like, well, of course,

a torch? How does a, this is gothic horse that gets. And, like, it references zombies and werewolves, zombies and vampires,

which are two of the big monster tribes. Anyway, it's funny this card is a reprint. I mean, the perfect reprint. The reprints I love

are where, like, exactly, where somebody comes to me and is giving me notes because they assume it's from the set because it's so perfectly fits the set. Of course it's from the set. Except it wasn't. Okay, next. Bloodgift Demon. Bloodgift Demon is

three black black for five four demon. So five mana for five four demon. It is flying and beginning to upkeep target player gets to draw a card and loses a life so the neat thing about this card is at the beginning it's a means for you to draw cards but later in the game either when you're unable to draw cards or your opponent more likely is lower at life and you and you can use this as an offensive thing, you can angle where you do it.

I think this card started as just you, just you lose a life and draw a card. And then we thought, oh, it'd kind of be clever if you could choose who does it. And we changed it, which is a little tricky because a lot of times black things, they can burn you and this card doesn't quite have that. But we thought it was kind of neat

that you could let other people draw cards. And in multiplayer play, it's actually played quite interesting. Okay, now we get to our first double-faced card. Bloodline Keeper, two black, black, for a 3-3 vampire. It has flying. You tap to put a 2-2 flying vampire creature token, a black creature token, into play.

And then for black mana, spend one black, you get to transform it if you have five or more vampires in play. He's also a vampire, so you get to count him. And then if you flip him, he turns into Lord of Lineage. Lord of Lineage is a five-flying vampire,

and all the vampires you control get plus two, plus two, and he still makes the two vampires, except now, because of his bonus, they're all four, four vampires. So the thing that's cute about it is you have a little vampire, he makes more vampires, and then you get enough vampires, then they all turn into 4-4 vampires, and he starts making 4-4 vampires.

One of the things we were trying really hard to do on all the double-faced cards is just play into some fun tropes and things. And the idea of sort of a Lord Vampire, you know, making more vampires, we thought was really cool. We actually did it twice. We messed around with Count Dracula as well with Olivia Valerian.

But anyway, it just was a really cool card and it definitely has a neat sort of flip condition. One of the things we were trying to do with the double-faced cards is the means by which you transform the card, we wanted to have different things going on. The werewolves are all tied up. I'll look at the werewolves in a second.

But the other cards, pretty much outside of the werewolves, each have their own unique transform condition. Okay, next. Bonds of Faith. 1W, Enchantment Aura, Enchant Creature. The Enchantment Creature gets plus 2, plus 2 if human. Otherwise, it can't attack or block. So what it is, is this is a pacifism card.

It turns off all the monsters. If you put it on a monster, they can't attack or block. So what it is, is this is a pacifism card. It turns off all the monsters. If you put it on a monster, they can't attack. But if you need to use it for yourself, you can use it on your humans, and it makes them better. And it's kind of cute that it's playing out this idea of this faith, you know, the Avacyn sort of magic. It's something where it inspires the humans, but it cripples the monsters.

We thought that was kind of cool. Okay, Boneyard Worm, one green for a star star worm. Its power and toughness is equal to creature cards in your graveyard. So this is, we decided to make a brand new Lurgoyf. Two things. One is, Lurgoyf cares about all graveyards. This only cares about your graveyard. And Lurgoyf plays star star plus one.

This is star star. I hate star plus one. This is star, star. I hate star plus one. So I'm like, you know, let's just make star, star. If you have no creatures in your graveyard, just don't play it yet. You know, if you get this in your opening hand, okay, fine. Don't play it until you get a dead creature. Anyway, like I said before, blue and green go together. This is a good example of a green card

that cares about the graveyard. Then if you have a blue card that's dumping cards in your graveyard, well, this card goes, oh, good, good, dump cards. That's good for me. And so, for example, on turn two, if you played the Scob,

then on turn three, for example, you could play this, assuming the Scob hits some creatures, which odds are it hits something. Okay, next, Brimstone Volley. It's an instant 2R instant, so three mana. It deals three damage to a target creature or player, but it has the Morbid ability.

And what the Morbid ability says is if a creature dies this turn, the spell is changed. In this case, it does 5 damage instead of 3. And that's a pretty different change. There's a lot of things where 3 mana doesn't quite kill things where 5 mana will kill them. 4 toughness was a pretty big, important thing going on in this set. And one of the things that Morbid did that was very important to us is we wanted death to matter. We wanted things dying to matter.

We wanted you to be kind of afraid when things died. And so Morbid played really well. This is a good example of a card that, like, I would attack with a 2-2 creature. You have a 3-3 blocker. You're like, what's going on? Or better yet, I attack with a 2-2 and. You have a 3-3 blocker. You're like, what's going on? Or better yet, I attack with a 2-2, and you have a 4-4 blocker.

Or even a 5-5 or 6-6 blocker. Actually, 6-6 is perfect. I have a 2-2, you have a 6-6. And you're like, okay, I have a 6-6, you have a 2-2. What is he up to? And the answer is, if you kill this thing, then I can kill your creature. Because it'll do 2 damage, and then I can do four or five, technically. So one of the things that's neat is sometimes you would throw things in to die,

and sometimes your opponent goes, you know what? I don't want that thing. I'll take the two damage. I'm more afraid of something happening if I block and kill that thing. And so it definitely made a lot of tense moments. Every time you killed something, you were very concerned about, oh my gosh, what's going on? Is it, you know, is some bad thing going to happen? Which is exactly the feeling we're trying to get. Okay, next, Cellular Door. It's an artifact for two. Three and tap, target creature, puts the bottom card of their library into the graveyard. And if it's a creature,

you get a 2-2 zombie. So this card did a bunch of fun things. A, super flavorful. B, helps get cards in graveyard. Usually you did your own library because you wanted to get your own cards in the graveyard, but you could use it on your opponent. There's some mill strategies I know that made use of cellar door as a support card. It's not the greatest milling card, but if you have other milling going on, it can help speed along things. The funny story about Cellar Door is we made it the bottom of the library

because it's the Cellar Door. You've got to go to the bottom. And development came back to us and said, oh, come on, it's logistically harder to do. It's just so much easier to deal with the top of the library. Can we just please change the top of the library? And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. I go, it is flavorful.

The argument I get sometimes is when someone says, you know, look, you're just manipulating things. It's a little bit harder. Let's just do it the easier way. And sometimes, a lot of times, I agree, a lot of good design development is making things cleaner. But sometimes, especially in a set like Innistrad, where you're really hitting flavor and hitting it hard,

you want to make sure you take little nuances. And I felt like there's a big difference flavor-wise, or just the feel of the cardigan top and bottom. Bottom is a little more mysterious. It's something you don't normally do. It just has a slightly different feel to it. And I understand that logistically it's a little different

and you got to handle things a little different, but it just, it has such a unique feel. And it's going, the idea that the cellar door goes to a place you almost never check. It's just a pretty cool thing. Okay, Champion of the Parish. One white mana, so single white,

for a 1-1 human soldier. Other human creatures enter the battlefield under your control with a plus-one-plus encounter. So this was a human lord that made your humans better, although it made them much better. A lot of times what happens is you get a creature that gives plus-one-plus-one to all your whatever the creature type is.

But the problem with that is if your opponent manages to kill it, well, then everything shrinks back down. But this card says, no, no, no, I make them permanently stronger. If I'm around and they come into play, they're just permanently stronger. And I think that's pretty cool. I mean, I really, this card was a very good card and it definitely helped make

the human deck and make something very cool. And both, I believe this card was played both in limited and constructed when people were playing as humans. Next, Charmbreaker Devils. Five and a red, six mana for a 4-4 Devil. At the beginning of your upkeep,

return random instant or sorcery from your graveyard to your hand. And then, whenever you cast an instant or sorcery, this card gets plus four, plus zero to end your turn. So this card does a couple things. One of the things is we had a lot of graveyard recursion. It's a graveyard set. But one of the things we did to help with the gameplay is we made them random. Whenever you go to your graveyard and you get something back, it's always random. Because if you control what you get back, it causes more repetition of play. I'm like, okay, well let's just deal

with the graveyard, but because we're doing a lot more graveyard stuff, we're going to make it all random. You don't know what you're getting back. And one of the things that's interesting is when you first read the card, you're like, well, how do I randomly pick an instant or sorcery? And then when you actually get to play, it's like, pick them up, shuffle them, hold them out, and your opponent picks one. And so it ended up being actually a lot easier to do than people thought from reading the card. And this played into the red-blue deck.

The red-blue deck had a theme, and limited, I'm talking draft archetype, that played around caring about spells. And so this is definitely one of those cards that care about instant sorceries. And this could pack a wallop, especially with flashback. Sometimes you can cast not one spell,

but two or three spells in a turn. And this thing, especially if it can get through, could hit for a lot. And so this definitely was one of the things that helped tie that deck together. Okay, I'm not too far from work, but I'm not there yet. Oh, next, Civilized Scholar. Ah, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

So Civilized Scholar was 2U for a 0-1 Human Advisor. You tap to draw and discard a card. If you discarded a creature, you untapped this and you flipped it over. On the other side was homicidal brute, which had a red frame. It was a 5-1 human mutant. And in the beginning of your end step,

if you hadn't attacked with it, it reverted back. So the idea was that you were a scientist, you were Dr. Jekyll, experimenting. If you found the right combination of things, you turned into the homicidal brute, and then he had to attack. Now remember, because the creature had been in play, if you could tap with it, meaning it didn't have summoning sickness, it meant it was in place at the beginning of turn. Transform doesn't change that.

So if you transformed it, you untapped it, and then you were able to attack with it. Now the issue was, it's a 5-1 creature. 5-1 can be good if you're able to get through, but also, it could get killed. So sometimes, you would transform it and let it revert back so that you could use it to loot some more. Like I said, this card was straight up

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. We were doing a lot of tropes. That trope got the core to T. But it does bring up an interesting question. The back side of the card, the 5-1 kind of must attack every turn, that's pretty red. That's not blue.

Is that okay? You never spent red mana. And the answer was, it's a little bit of a bleed. Blue doesn't normally get to do that. But it's not... One of the bleed. Blue doesn't normally get to do that. But it's not... One of the things about when you bleed in colors is are you letting the color do something that's fundamentally

playing against the weakness of the color? And the answer is this is a 5-1 creature. It's not like it's going to just pummel your opponent. I mean, they can jump with a 1-1 and stop it. So it's not like if this turned into a 5-5 creature that would be a little more of an issue.

But it's a 5-1 creature. It's something that it could kill one of their creatures, but it's not going to just... It doesn't become a giant creature. Even blue has some access to bigger creatures. But the idea is it doesn't undercut what blue is, and so it's not giving blue access

to stuff that really contradicts blue. Anyway, we did a little bit of bleeding. Some of these cards are just very flavorful, and you know, I'll get to another one. I'm not sure what's prevalent today, probably tomorrow, but maybe we'll see. I'm almost at work.

But there's a few swapping colors, and there's a lot of flavor to them in double-faced cards, so we definitely took advantage of some of it, because it's insanely flavorful. Next, Cloistrophobia is one blue blue for Enchantment Aura. It's an enchanted creature. When it enters the battlefield, you tap a creature, and then an enchanted creature does not untap.

So we had done these kind of spells. I don't think we had done one that tapped it when it came into play, which was what this does. I love the flavor of this card. It's a guy inside a... He's been trapped inside a coffin, but he's alive. And he's clawing at the coffin, and it's a

pretty, I don't know, potent image and card concept. And the idea of playing into a sense of fear of this creature is you use fear. The reason that the creature can't act is that it's so afraid that it's unable to act. I don't know, the flavor of that was pretty spot on.

One of the things that, this was a top-down set, and one of the things that I really, really appreciated was we were able to make simple things, and this is just a kind of spell that would go in any, this is not a particularly gothic horror-y spell. We locked down things, and Blue does. But I love the idea that we were able to find a gothic horror way to portray it. That's what was so neat to me, was that it felt like it belonged because it was flavored so well,

even though it was doing the basic effect that just almost any set would have. Okay, next. Cliff Top Retreat. It's a land. So this was a cycle of land. This is the first one alphabetically. So it enters the battlefield tapped,

unless you control a mountain or plains, and it taps for red or white. So the dual land cycles are not controlled by design. Dual land cycles are all about construction, especially standard. They're so, so important to finding how standard works that we leave it to development to pick. So development chose to put this in. Now if you notice, I have a theme in my set of allied color.

All the tribes are allied color. The set is strongly ally colored themed. Wait a minute, these are enemy colors. So I talked to Eric a little bit, and I said, you know, this is very, you know, I understand if we need them, we'll put them in the set, but I go, just be aware, it contradicts what my set is doing. So what I did out of a little... My little note, mostly to say that I didn't fit the set was,

I didn't actually put them in the design. What I did is I made a cycle of dual ends, and I put my dual ends in, and then I put a note that said, when this goes to development, here are the five cards you can take out to put in this land cycle, and then I put a note that said, when this goes to development, here are the five cards you can take out to put in this land cycle that development wants to put in. We did playtest, by the way, with these cards

to make sure that they worked with the design. Just in my official final handoff, they weren't in. My little note of, these don't really fit the design. Now, sometimes development needs stuff. That's okay. I get it. I don't think that the set was horribly hurt by having the stool land in. It contradicted the design a bit, but not to the point that it was particularly harmful. And I do think it definitely did some interesting things with the way people put stuff together.

So anyway, the funny note for me was just one of how I really, I don't know, my little note of rebellion there. Anyway, I am pulling into a parking space. That means we are wrapping up,

we're wrapping up, so obviously I have some more podcasts coming. I got to see, so I'm not quite done yet. But anyway, obviously as I pulled

into my parking space, that means this is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll talk to you guys next time.