Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #220 - Innistrad Cards, Part 4

Episode Date: April 24, 2015

Mark continues telling the stories behind the cards of Innistrad in part 4.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so recently I've been talking all about Innistrad and going through cards from Innistrad. Well, I got up to K last time, so I'm up to L actually this time. So we're going to continue on, and we're going to start today with Laboratory Maniac. Okay, so Laboratory Maniac costs two and a blue, three mana for a 2-2 Human Wizard. If you draw no cards, if you draw from your library and there's no card to draw,

you win the game. So normally, so when Richard Garfield first made Magic, he realized that what happens if nobody can do damage to the other player? You know, you have to have some sort of backup. What if no one's able to defeat the other player? And Richard's backup was, well, okay, someone's going to run out

of cards in the library. When that happens, they'll lose the game. So there's a rule in Magic which says, if you cannot draw the last card, if you go to draw a card and are unable to draw a card, you lose the game. Well, Magic's all about twisting its own rules. Laboratory Maniac says, well,

what if that wasn't so? What if instead of losing the game, you won the game? So this is an all-to-win card and a kind of fun one We actually don't do that many all-to-win creatures There's a few, but not a lot So this was kind of a rarity This card was definitely beloved by the people

It's not for everybody and not exactly the kind of card you draft all that often, but it's a fun deck to build around and a lot of people who built fun Laboratory Maniac decks. Okay, next. Liliana of the Veil.

One black black. She has a loyalty of three. Planeswalker, Liliana. For plus one, each player discards a card. For minus two, each player sacrifices a creature. And for minus six, your target

player divides all their permanents into two piles, and then that player sacks one of them. I'm sorry, you divide all the things into two piles, and then that player sacks one of them. So anyway, this definitely is Liliana being extra cruel. She has the chain veil here, and so

this is a very powerful card. We almost reprinted this card and then decided it was a little too strong for standard. At least it was too strong for the current standard. Maybe in the future sometime it won't be. So this shows up. Liliana was what we call the face of Innistrad. She was on the poster, on the box.

There's a great picture of her sitting on the throne, holding a skull or something. But clearly, somebody... And there's like a dead person behind her. No, not a skull. Is she holding the chainmail? Anyway, it's a very cool-looking Liliana pose. Anyway, Liliana was

one of the planeswalkers in the set, and so she got a very good card, which ended up being quite powerful. Next, Ludovic's test subject. One and a blue, so two mana for a 0-3 Lizard. It has Defender, and for one you, you can put a Hatchling

counter on it, and when there's five or more Hatchling counters, it transforms into Ludovic's Abomination. 13-13 Lizard Whoreore with trample. So the idea is, it's a little egg, and he's doing experiments, and eventually the egg hatches,

and oh, some crazy thing. So the card in design, by the way, was called Mutant Octopus. It was like test subject, and it turned into Mutant Octopus. I thought that was hilarious, because it had 13 tentacles. Crazy.

But anyway, the creative team shifted it around a little bit. They kept the general flavor of it. The flavor was one of the things you see on the blue cards, the blue transform cards, is that blue is kind of messing around in places it shouldn't be messing around. That's a theme of horror in blue

is there's this whole theme about humans messing around where it shouldn't be messing around. That's a theme of horror in Blue. There's this whole theme about, you know, humans messing around where they shouldn't be messing, and then the repercussions of that. And that's very Blue. Blue seeks information often at its own peril. And so this was just playing into that trope. Next, Lumbernaut. Lumbernaut's too green-green for a 1-1 treefolk.

It is hex-proof, and whenever a creature dies, it gets a plus one, plus one counter. So this ability first showed up actually in black in Arabian Nights, and it's something that we most often do in black. Green had a theme in this set about caring about the graveyard and being very death-centered. Morbid was one of the colors that that uh green you know green was in morbid sorry morbid was in green um so green had was very death

obsessed in this particular set and it uh both cared about things that died and it cared about things that had died meaning things in the graveyard so um anyway it seemed like a good fit and uh the little sapling tree folk that gets the nutrients from the dead body. Is that the flavor? Okay, next, Manor Gargoyle. So Manor Gargoyle is a 5-mana 4-4 artifact creature. It's a gargoyle. It has Defender, and it's indestructible while it has Defender.

And then for 1 mana, until end of turn, it loses Defender and gains Flying. So the flavor of this is pretty cool. We're just trying to make a top-down gargoyle. Gargoyles made a lot of sense in a horror world. And so the idea is as long as it's a gargoyle well, you can't destroy it. It's pretty tough. But

it can animate itself and fly, but when it does that, it's not quite so tough anymore and you can destroy it. So it's a pretty cool card. Mayor of Aberbrook. Mayor of Aberbrook is one and a green for a 1-1 human advisor werewolf. Other humans get plus one, plus one. And then, when it transforms, because it's a werewolf, it becomes Halpak Alpha.

It becomes a 3-3 werewolf. All other werewolves and wolves get plus one, plus one. So the idea is, on one side, it makes humans better, and the other side, it makes werewolves and wolves get plus one plus one. So the idea is on one side it makes humans better and the other side it makes werewolves better. Luckily, because it's a werewolf, when you're humans or humans, it helps them. When you're werewolves or werewolves, it helps them. It's also an interesting card in a green-white deck because it's a human helper,

but every once in a while it turns into a werewolf and then it's not as useful. But I know a lot of people who ran it. So here's my favorite thing about the card is the implication here's the story implication for me so the mayor of Aberbrook is not a legendary creature. It's not like the mayor of Aberbrook

but what I like to believe is the people of Aberbrook keep getting into office people who are werewolves and so the mayor ofondbrook always turns out to be a werewolf. I'm sure someone runs on a campaign that says vote for me, I'm not

a werewolf. And they get elected and oh, werewolf again! And the people of Avondbrook are like, come on, we've got to stop electing werewolves. Now some of them I think it's comforting. Maybe they like it. It's just tradition. That's what I believe. All the mayors of Avondbrook are just it's comforting. Maybe they like it, but, you know, they're just, it's just tradition, you know. But anyway, that's what I believe.

It's all the mayors of Aberbrook are just, they're all werewolves. That's just what they are. And in fact, you know, I just think there's a good story about the town of Aberbrook. If I had more time to write, maybe I'd write a short story for Uncharted Realms about the town of Aberbrook and the many mayors. Okay, next. Mentor of the Meek. Two and a white for a two-two human soldier. Whenever a creature with power two or less

enters the battlefield, you may pay one, and if you do, draw a card. Okay, this gets brought up all the time when I talk about white being bad at card advantage, because this seems not bad at card advantage. This is us pushing the boundaries a little bit. I'm not crazy positive about this card. The one thing I do like is it is definitely

one of the problems in general with the weenie strategy is that weenie strategy runs out of weenies. And one of the things about white is the lack of card advantage, the reason we make sure that white's not particularly good at card advantage is white is the color of answers. It's got answers to everything. And if it can too easily get all its answers, then it'll be very hard to beat. But, there's a different part of white that's less controlling, that's

more about sort of a weenie rush. And we want weenie rushes to be able to sort of have some ability to not run out of steam. And so we keep trying to make cards that help the weenie rush strategy not run out of steam while not helping the controlling white deck get the cards it needs. And so that was what this card was trying to do. The only problem is there's a lot of defensive small creatures,

so you can make a defensive deck with small things and use them for the card advantage. So this card kind of drifted a little bit. It had good intentions. I know what it was trying to do. But anyway, that is Mentor of the Meek. Next, Macaeus for Lunark. So X, W, so X and a white for a 0, 0

creature, legendary creature, human cleric. When it enters the battlefield, you put X plus 1, plus 1 counters on it. You can tap you put X plus one, plus one counters on it. You can tap to put a plus one, plus one counter on Macias, or you can tap and remove a plus one, plus one counter, and when you do that, you put a plus one, plus one counter on all your other creatures. So Macias

the Lunarch was the leader of the humans. And we thought that was very important because we wanted to show the person who, like, things are bad, and here's the guy who who, like, things are bad, and here's the guy who's, like, holding them together. Like, humans are at their worst. Like, things are bad, you know.

But luckily, there's one man who's there trying to hold them all together. And the reason that's so important is, in the next set, Dark Ascension, we needed to take the humans down a peg. We needed things to get even worse. So, you gotta give them somebody to help them in the first set, so you could take them away in the second set. We'll get to Macias. We haven't seen the last of Macias.

But it was very important to sort of set up Macias as being the religious leader of the humans so that we could do something with them in Dark Ascension, which we'll see. Next, Mere Mad Phantasm. Isn't that hard to say? Mere Mad Phantasm.

It's three blue blue, five mana for a five one spirit with flying, and it has a very quirky ability. So what it does is you spend one and a blue, two mana, you then shuffle Mere Mad Phantasm into your library. You then reveal cards from the top of the library until you reveal it, and then you put all cards revealed into the graveyard and Mere Mad Phantasm back in play. So the idea is you can't kill Mere

Mad Phantasm assuming you have two mana up, but instead of it dying, it mills some amount of your library. So this card was made by Richard Garfield. Richard Garfield was on the Industri Design team, and this was kind of a cool card. The idea was it is a phantasm that trying to kill it drives you mad. I'm sorry, your opponent trying to kill it drives you mad, and so it's a dangerous creature because, well, what if it gets shuffled near the bottom?

Now, obviously, if you have four of them in your deck, it lessens how many, you mad. And so it's a dangerous creature because, well, what if it gets shuffled near the bottom? Now, obviously, if you have four of them in your deck, it lessens how many, you know, the more I have in my deck, the less down deep I have to go to find one. So the deck does want you to play four of them. But anyway, it's sort of a fun card, and it definitely it creates a lot of suspense. I mean, your opponent does try to kill it, because

every time they kill it, they mill you for some amount. And so, anyway, it's definitely a cool and interesting card. Moan of the Unhallowed. So, Moan of the Unhallowed is a sorcery for two black black, four mana. You put two 2-2 black zombie creature tokens into play, and you flashback for five black black. So, originally, by the way, making zombie tokens and then flashing back was a big schtick in black. We did a vertical cycle, so there was a common and uncommon, a rare and a mythic rare. The mythic rare being Army of the Damned.

And what happened was the developers found there was just a little too much card advantage in black, and so they went from four down to two. And so there weren't quite as many. The reason I liked it was I was trying to sort of get this overwhelming zombie horde, overwhelm you sort of thing, and I just felt they did a good job of sort of making the zombie per card ratio. It wasn't one zombie per card. It was multiple zombies per card that helped you sort of build a horde.

Next, Moon Mist. Moon Mist is an instant for one and a green. You transform all humans and then you fog everything but werewolves and wolves. So the idea is, this was meant to be, it's a fog variant, but it was meant to be a fog variant to help your werewolves.

And the idea was, if I have a whole bunch of humans, instead of skipping, not playing anything, I can play this. This will transform them. Now, notice it transformed all humans. We talked about transforming all werewolves and decided that, you know, there are a lot of humans. In fact, a lot of the idea of the double-faced cards is we were trying to show off dark transformation, and usually on the first side is the innocent. So often on the front side is humans. Not always, but often it's humans. So by transferring humans, you transform

most of the things. Not everything, but most of the things. And then it has a little extra bonus for werewolves, which is, oh, it fogs everything but the werewolves, so your werewolves can do extra damage. So it's really, really good. It also allows you with your humans to make humans a little bit scary for playing green, that if I have a bunch of human

werewolves and I attack, my opponent knows that Moon Mist could happen. If I attack with a whole bunch of humans and you block with everybody and then I Moon Mist, it is a slaughter. So it's something to be afraid of. Next, Morkrut Banshee. Three black black, five mana for a four

four spirit, and then it is morbid when it enters the battlefield if a creature has died this turn, target creature gets minus four, minus four. So the idea is this card usually gets to kill something, but something has to have died first. And so this is another card that really can make dying scary

because the last thing you want is like you chump lock something, and then out of nowhere it's like, ba-da! And it kills one of your creatures. Not a lot of banshees. I was happy to see a banshee. We tried to definitely, we had focused on the major tribes, but we tried to have, you know, make sure the other monsters sort of could peek in a little bit

so there's a chance of getting to see a banshee. Okay, mulch. Mulch is a sorcery for one in the green. You reveal the top four cards of your library. All lands go to your hand, and the rest goes to the graveyard. So green had this care about graveyard flavor. You reveal the top four cards of your library. All lands go to your hand, and the rest goes to graveyard. So green had this care about graveyard flavor. So we found a reprint that got cards into your graveyard.

And the neat thing about it is that this is a good example where, in magic, for example, I don't mean Magic the Gathering. I mean, in my youth, for those who don't know, I used to be a magician. I used to do kids' parties and stuff. And one of the tricks you learn when being a magician is about misdirection. You want to make people look not where, whatever the shenanigans are, you don't want them looking where you're doing something that you're not wanting them to see. So a lot of magic is about misdirection.

You could say that about magic, too. But anyway, so one of the things about this card is this card does a very good job of misdirecting because the focus on the card, which is what the card was designed for in the first place, is, hey, it means to get land, and land is good, and green gets land, and so it becomes this very flavorful land card.

But the real function of the card was getting things into your graveyard, at least in this environment. Not that the land didn't hurt, not that you didn't use it to get land, but it's funny that there are often times when you would mulch and you're like no land, no land, no land. Which is not what you did with previous mulches

in other formats. So I like the fact that it did something kind of cool but the cool thing it did and the thing it worked with in this environment was a little bit hidden. It didn't seem like the purpose of the card, even though oftentimes it was. Next, Nevermore. One white white for an enchantment. As it enters the battlefield, you name a card,

and the named cards can't be cast. So you might recognize this card previously as Meddling Mage. So Meddling Mage was Chris Bakula's Invitational card. So Chris, when he won, he won the Invitational in Kuala Lumpur, he made a card he called the Meddler. And the Meddler, I think you named a card and then you could sacrifice

it to counter the card. So it's like, I named something, and then if you ever played that, I could sacrifice a creature to counter that thing. And he has a mono-blue card. And then we went back to Chris and said, okay, two things. One, we want to make this a multicolored card because it's a multicolored set because it was in Invasion.

And two, so suddenly mono blue became white blue. And two, why do you have to sacrifice a creature? Why can't you just name a spell? And you know what? They can't play that spell. Name a spell, can't be played. And I remember getting Chris on the phone and walking Chris through

because Chris's original card was, I think getting Chris on the phone and walking Chris through because Chris's original card was, I think the stats were the same, but it was a more expensive mono blue card and we made it a cheaper multicolor card that you didn't have to sacrifice. And so we made the card significantly better. I remember talking to Chris going, is that okay? And Chris going, that sounds

awesome. We can print that. You can print that. I think that was Chris's words. I gave him the card. He goes, you can print that? And I go, yeah. Development says we can. And Chris goes, okay. I'm on board. And Chris is definitely... One of the things that's very interesting is

I've had interesting conversations with Chris about Meddling Mage. How I think Chris has told me that of all the things he ever won in magic, it's the thing that like when the dust settles, when he looks back on his Magic career, that it's the thing that actually ended up meaning the most to him. You know, and that, I mean, money is nice,

and money buys you things, and it's fun to get prized in that, but that this was the one chance where he sort of became part of the game. And Magic's been a huge part of his life. It means a lot to him. And winning this prize meant that of became part of the game. And magic's been a huge part of his life. It means a lot to him. And winning this prize meant that he was part of the game. That, you know, from the end of time, Meddling Mage will always be part of magic. You know, and that in some ways, there's a little

tiny bit of immortality in the cards. And Chris really enjoyed that. Anyway, never more. We like the card. Meddling Mage is a good card. It's funny, by the way, whenever we take a card that people really love, and then we eventually make a new card out of it and do other mechanics, I always get people complaining.

They're like, you made that first card less special. Like, I know when I did the Changeling ability. They're like, but now Mistform Ultimis isn't as special. And the thing I have to say is, look, my job is to make lots and lots of cards. I do not have the luxury of going, here's a cool, awesome card. Let's never do that again. If I make a cool, awesome card and players love it, I'm going to do it again. I mean, maybe I'll wait a little bit of time. It might not happen right away, but if I'm capable of doing it again, if people love it and it's just fun, I will do it again. That is how it works. I find things people

like and I do more of them. I do not go, oh, it's special. Let's never do that again. So, and then it comes up time and time again. Like we didn't do Can't Be Countered for a long time because we didn't want to make the card for Tempest. I'm blinking my name. That's called Griswizo. I'm blinking the actual name. But we didn't want to make that.

All this time in history of like, let's not make things less special. I'm like, no, let's make cool cards. Cool cards beats less special. Okay, next, Knight, let's make cool cards. Cool cards beats less special. Okay, next, Knight Revelers. Knight Revelers cost four and a red, so five mana for a 4-4 vampire, and they have haste if the opponent controls any humans.

So one of the things we liked a lot about getting vampires into red, because vampires are traditionally in black, was part of what we wanted is, if you're going to put them in red, let's get them a little more impulsive, a little more bloodthirsty, a little more reckless.

You know, black vampires, you know, you see like Count Dracula and a lot of the, you know, can be very, I mean, they make a lot of sense in black. They're parasitic. You know, they definitely, they feed off things. Vampires are very, very good black creatures. But if you get to red, it's like, well, we've got to play up the impulsiveness of red. And so let's have a little more impulsive vampires when you get to red, it's like, well, we've got to play up the impulsiveness of red. And so let's have a little

more impulsive vampires when we get to red. And so I love the idea that these vampires just want to feed. And the idea is they see humans like, we're off. They're off. We're going to go get those humans. And so the idea that you have haste if your opponent has humans I thought was flavorfully pretty cool.

And it played pretty neat, too. It definitely was sort of some vampire hosing human card, which was kind of cool. Okay, speaking of vampires, we've come to Olivia Voldaren. So she is two black-red for a 3-3 legendary creature. She's a vampire. She's got flying. For one and a red, she can deal one damage to target creature. That creature becomes a vampire permanently.

And you get to put a plus one, plus one counter on Olivia. For three black, black, she can gain control of target vampire for as long as she's in play. Okay, so this card started as Count Dracula. That was the name in playtests. And what we wanted was Lord of the Vampires.

And so we're like, what does Lord of the Vampires do? And we're like, well, they turn things into vampires. They kill a lot of humans. They turn a lot of humans, or some humans, and they control the vampires. So we're like, okay, we wanted to have two abilities. We wanted a black ability and a red ability that somehow played into this. I'm like, well, okay.

I love the idea that the vampire host feeds. And is there a way? Because when a vampire feeds, the idea is if they drink all your blood, you're dead. If they drink most of your blood, but not all your blood, they can turn you and make you become a vampire. So wouldn't it be cool if the Lord of the Vampires could turn people into vampires? That sounds pretty cool. So the idea is we gave it

an ability. So we decided that what we wanted to do is that it could damage creatures, but it could choose to either kill them or leave them alive. So it turned them into vampires. And then the other ability was, okay, well, what if it can control vampires? Now, we went back and forth. Black could have drained things,

and then red could have temporarily stolen them. But we liked the idea that the queen of vampires, or lord of vampires, would permanently steal them. And black does have stealing secondarily? Tertiary? I guess it's tertiary. Black doesn't steal a lot. It steals a little bit. And we liked the idea of red doing damage. So it's like, oh, well, you could choose. You know, she can kill

things doing one art and ping things. She can kill things. But sometimes she doesn't want to kill them. So this card worked out really, really well. In fact, we do a thing called a rare pull, which is inside R&D, any person who works at Wizards who's interested in any investment in fact, we do a thing called a rare poll, which is inside R&D. Any person who works at Wizards who's interested, who has any investment in magic, we

send out this thing. You rate what you think of all the cards, and it gives us a sense of how people, you know, first impressions of the cards, since we've been working on them so long. We need fresh eyes to look at them. And rare polls are a very good sense of just what excites players. And this card won the rare pull, people loved this card

now the funny thing is, Gottlieb and I had big fights about this card because there's a bunch of things that go on here there's some memory issues, it permanently turns into vampires and you steal things forever he really argued that we should change it I liked it a lot, it won the pull. I'm like, I'm not changing it. It wasn't the rare pull. I think it's a cool card. And it ended up being very, very

popular. People, I know a lot of people use it as a commander. And the creative team did something really neat, which I like a lot, is we just gave them a contract. They're like, it's Lord of the Vampires. And they said, you know what would be cool? Let's have a female Lord of the Vampires. And we're like, that is pretty cool. And so we got Olivia. And she worked out great. She's one of those cards that, like, all the Vampires. And we're like, that is pretty cool. And so we got Olivia, and she worked out great.

She's one of those cards that, like, all the pieces came together and just, bam, she was just really cool. Next, One-Eyed Scarecrow. So it's an artifact creature that costs three. It's a scarecrow. It's got Defender, and then creatures with flying controlled by other players get minus one, minus zero. So one of the things I had originally planned to do was to make

scarecrows a supported race like a tribal race in the set because i'm like oh well what is scary and like oh scarecrows has a nice sort of you know horror vibe to them um but what i found was once we like early on it's like oh we're gonna vampires and werewolves and zombies and oh maybe we'll have some scarecrows but once i I started figuring out that there was the tribes matched to ally color pairs, I realized that there's this nice orderly thing we were doing where there were five supported tribes. So I'm like, oh, trying to do a 6-1 kind of breaks the symmetry of everything. So we pulled back. And this was my favorite of the scarecrow cards we'd made.

Because, see, it scares crows, right? It scares flyers. The reason flyers have a minus one is they're intimidated by the Scarecrow. So it's us sort of doing a Scarecrow that was acting like a Scarecrow, which I thought was pretty cute. Okay, Parallel Lives. Three green for an enchantment. And it says whenever you make tokens,

however you make them, it just doubles your tokens. So what happened was I made a card in Invasion, Invasion? No, Ravnica, called Doubling Season. And I love doubling things. I'm a big fan of doubling things. I, if you

go through Magic and find cards that double things, I made a lot of them. And so I just made a card. And the funny thing is, from time to time, one of the perks of being a designer is, I mean, my job is to make cards for every player, and I do. But every once in a while, you just make a card for yourself. You're like, you know what, I love this card.

And the idea is, look, there's other players like me. If I'm making a card that I would love, other players will love it too. Now, you've got to be careful. You can't make every card for you. But every once in a while, hey, part of the it's good to be king. Every once in a while when you're making a set, hey, you can make a card that you really care about and that you personally think was fun. And so Dublin Season was as personal

as I get. I mean, Dublin Season was like, I, this card sounds awesome to me. I would love this card. I don't know how many other people would love this card, but somebody will, and I love it. And you know what? I get to treat myself every once in a while. You know, one of the perks of making magic is

I get to make some cards for me. And so this card was made for me. Made for me. The funny thing was, it turns out, it was made for a lot of people. It became insanely popular. It was really, really, really popular. It kind of blew me away.

Because I really made it as this kind of selfish is the wrong word. But I made it for me. I really made a card that I would love. And it touched my heart how many people loved Dublin Season. It might be my favorite card I've ever made. I really love Dublin Season. But here's the problem. After Dublin Season, we eventually made Planeswalkers.

And Dublin Season plus Planeswalkers is bonkers. So I tried to bring back Dublin Season in Zendikar. Because it plays really nice in Zendikar. Zendikar has all sorts of tokens and counters. And anyway, I was told I couldn't do it. Development took it out. It was in the design file. Development took it out.

And they said that Dublin Season and Planeswalkers just can't coexist, at least in Standard. So what happened was I realized that if I wanted to have effects like this in Standard, I needed to sort of break it up. And so this is me doing,

I mean, I don't even know if I made this card. Someone else might have made this card. But R&D has decided that we want to bring Dublin Season back, but in pieces. Not all of Dublin Season. So this card cares for tokens. That does an any interact with Planeswalker. Minimal any interact with Planeswalker. Some Planeswalkers make tokens.

So anyway, and this is just us, hey, have fun. This is taking a piece of Dublin Season and bringing it back. Okay, next. Passed in Flames. It's a sorcery for 300 red, 4 mana. Instant or sorcery in your grave gains flashback.

Oh, it turns an instant or sorcery in your grave to, it gains flashback equal to its converted mana cost. I'm sorry, to its mana cost. And then you can flashback equal to its converted mana cost, I'm sorry, to its mana cost. And then you can flashback it for 4R.

So Red has this little theme that's picked up in Odyssey, I think, where Red can grant flashback to things in graveyards.

We were just trying to give Red something to do in Odyssey. Flashback was a thing. I just, at the time, it was called

Recoup, I think. Anyway, I put this ability in Red just to give Red a little something to do in the time it was called recoup I think. Anyway I put this ability in Red just to give Red a little something to do in the graveyard. Red doesn't have a lot it can do in the graveyard. And so we did an odyssey and like hey flashback was back. We're like well we didn't read

an odyssey why not continue it. So Red got it back and we as we did an odyssey recoup had flashback. This was definitely us sort of doing a new version of Recoup, a little more expensive. I think Recoup is probably a little too cheap. Prey upon.

Sorcery for green. Target creature you control. Fight target creature you do not control. So one of the things that Innistrad did is Innistrad introduced fight. So fight was something that we had bandied around of we had creatures where you do damage to that creature

and they do damage to you. The flavor was pretty straightforward. It was like these two creatures are fighting. And so we finally said, you know what? If we just call it fight, it might actually make it easier to understand what's going on. Sometimes you can not only lose words but actually increase

helping your players understand something. And so fight was one of those things where you're like, oh, well you do damage, this creature does damage to the other creature equal to its power, and that creature does damage to this creature equal to its power, and the players would go, what does that mean?

Literally I would teach people, they'd go, well, they fight. And I'm like, why am I saying this in 20 words when I can say it in one word that would be clearer than the 20 words? And one of the things about adding vocabulary is I'm all for adding vocabulary when the vocabulary plays upon something the audience already knows

and makes it easier to learn. And fight is definitely one of those things. Like if I say two creatures fight, look, magic has a fighting mechanic. It understands how creatures have combat. So when I say they fight, and now, there's a couple rules about fight. There's a few abilities, like first strike, that don't actually play, which can be a little bit confusing.

Um, but anyway, uh, prey upon was us. So one of the reasons, by the way, we created fight was we had the following problem. Green is supposed to be bad at... Well, Green's issue was supposed to be that Green does not kill creatures except with creatures. And so the way we used to deal with it is Green had lure and Green had all these different things that... It had the larger creatures and it's like, hey, you know,

I'm so big you have to block me, or I make you block me. And the problem was Green was having trouble dealing with creatures that weren't in combat. And there was provoke and lure and a few things that sort of forced them into combat, but if they had capabilities they could prevent even blocking. So, we tried to come up

with a mechanic that felt Green that allowed Green to answer the problem of, because creatures are so much an important part of Limited, how do I address when I have problems? I said, okay, how about something where you're using your creatures to defeat the other creature? Because the idea of green is, if you have no creatures in your deck, you

should have a real hard time getting rid of creatures. Your answer to creatures is creatures. But fight was a nice way to make, you know, if they have a big creature, if your creature's not bigger than their creature, you can't deal with it. And so it really much played into green's strength and green's flavor. And fight definitely shored up an area we were trying to shore up, but

in a way that is green. And that's one of the things a lot of times when people see a hole, because there's holes in colors, where there's functionally it needs something, but the color is supposed to have an inherent weakness. And the idea is, how do you stay true to the weakness and true to the color,

but allow the color to have access to things it might need? And fight was a real good example of green having some answers to creatures, but in a way that was true to what green was. That green still has this vulnerability that if its creatures aren't as big as your creatures, you know, a fight will not solve the time

if the creature you need to kill is the biggest thing on the board. Okay. Some almost to work here. I'll do one or two more. Rakish Air. Two and a red. It's a 2-2 vampire. Whenever a vampire you control deals combat damage,

it gets a plus one, plus one counter. So this took the slith ability that we'd given to the vampires and just said, hey, all your vampires have this ability. The neat thing is, I believe it's stacked, so if your creature already did this, it's stacked so you would get two counters instead of one. And so this really was one of the cards that said, hey, play a Vampire deck.

We definitely wanted cards, we put them at a little higher rarity, they were mostly at uncommon and up. There's a few at common, but most of the cards like this were at uncommon and up, where it says, hey, if you get me early in a draft, I will tell you one of the options you could do is you can now go draft a Vampire deck. And we were

trying to differentiate from Lorewyn where you're kind of on rails, like, better pick a tribe and pick it early, and then that's what you're doing with that tribe. Where the idea was in a draft, you could opt into drafting a tribal deck, but you weren't forced to draft a tribal deck. I mean, I guess if you opened up a really good

tribal card, there's some pressure to go, ooh, do I want to do that? But it wasn't something that you always had to do. That Innistrad drafts, it was a component, but you weren't forced to do tribal drafting. It wasn't something you were required to do. Okay. Rally the Peasants. Two and a white, it's an instant.

Creatures you control get plus two, plus oh until end of turn. And then a flashback for two and a red. So this is definitely, this is one of the crossover flashbacks where it's in one color and you flashback in a different color. Both white and red can pump the team. The white-red strategy

here, and white-red usually is sort of a goal-wide attack strategy, so this card definitely plays into that strategy. The thing of all the crossover flashback cards is they want you that if you're playing these two colors that this ability really goes well with those two colors. Now you're going to play it twice but it fits in the style of the deck. And white red really has this... so one of the tricky parts about making these cards were you wanted an ability that

both the two colors could do because it had to be playable by the color and played into the theme of how those colors played in this environment. And Rally of the Peasants is a really good example of how to do that. Okay, one last card, and then we'll call it a day. Reaper from the Abyss. Three black, black, black for a 6-6 demon with flying and a head morbid,

which is at the end of every turn, if a creature died this turn, you got to destroy a non-demon creature. A couple of neat things here. First off, it does a very common 666 joke we do on demons. Three black, black, black, it costs six mana to cast, and it's a 666 demon, so we often like doing 666

sign of the devil and stuff. Also, we did a trick that we started a while back where demons destroy non-demons. And so the idea is it can't destroy itself. If you eventually get into trouble, like, I don't want to have this around anymore. Like, if you kill everything of your opponents, it'll start killing your stuff,

and there's nothing left to kill. And so it definitely has a demon quality there. Usually your opponent has stuff, so you kill your opponent's stuff. So most of the time it's pretty good. The other thing this did that's different from most morbid is most morbid when you played it when you cast it or entered the battlefield meaning it happened once this is a card that happened

all the time this is obviously a higher rarity card but this happened every single turn or could happen every single turn so that was a little bit different from the other morbid guys okay I'm up through M so I look at what I have left here, and I've got

a bunch left to do. But anyway, I'm up to M. Next, no, I'm up to R. Hopefully, we have one or two podcasts left, but I will try to finish up the Innistrad. So, obviously, this is not the last Innistrad, but I have parked my car. So we all know what that means.

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 see you guys next time