Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #221 - Innistrad Cards, Part 5

Episode Date: April 24, 2015

Mark concludes his 5-part series on the cards of Innistrad.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so the last four podcasts I've been talking all about Innistrad. Today, I believe, is going to be the final Innistrad podcast. Because I'm hoping it's going to be. I think it's going to be. I have a lot to do and not a lot of time, so we'll get to it. Okay, Reckless Waif is a 1-1 human rogue werewolf for a single red mana, and it turns into a 3-2 werewolf. One of the things we tried to do when we made the werewolves is fill what we call a curve, which is you want to make sure when you give players a deck that there's things to play at all the different mana costs.

So with the werewolf deck, we were very conscious of saying, okay, is there a 1-drop, is there a 2-drop, is there a 3-drop? And the idea is if you play red-green, which is where all the werewolves lie, we made sure that we hit things at all the different things. So this is the one drop. This is the one drop. It's a one-one, but hey, one of the really nice things about this thing is on turn one, if I play it,

my opponent might not have a turn one drop. If they don't, bam! All of a sudden, it's a three-two. So this thing has the ability. The Werewolf deck is not necessarily a fast deck, it's a little more mid-range, but cards like this allow it at times to become very fast. Like if you

get some waves early and your opponent can't play spells, waves can do a lot of damage very quickly. Rooftop Storm, 5-U enchantment. You may pay 0 to cast a zombie. So what that means is zombies are free. So the idea of this spell was it's expensive,

but if you play it, then it doesn't cost anything to play zombies. And so the idea is Rooftop Storm, we're doing a little Frankenstein nod here, but the idea is if you're a scientist or a wizard and you're working in your lab, and then if you're making your zombies, well, this will help you make zombies for free. It's a combo card with zombies. It's expensive, so zombies are never meant to be a rush.

But the idea is, zombies are meant to allow you to swarm your opponent with zombies. So this card allows you to do that in a slightly different way. And there's some fun combos that you can do with Rooftop Storm. Swarm. Storm. Eh, not swarm. Storm. Not Swarm. Storm. Okay, next. Runic Repetition. So it's a sorcery for two and a blue. Return exiled card with flashback to your hand. Okay.

I do not like this card. I did not make this card. This card was not in my design. This card was added in development. My belief on the exile zone is the exile zone is meant for things to go away. Um, I don't want you being able to get back things from your exile. When things go to your exile zone, they should stay in your exile zone.

You should not be able to get things back from your own exile zone. Anyway, uh, what color would this be if we did it? I'm not going to give it a color. Is this a blue thing? Nah, it's not a blue thing. It's supposed to be a nobody thing. So anyway, um, I mean not going to give it a color. Is this a blue thing? Nah, it's not supposed to be a blue thing. It's supposed to be a nobody thing. So, anyway. I mean, this ability does limit itself. The whole point of this is to allow you to get

an extra boost off your flashback cards. I understand the intent. I wish there was word in such a way that instead of exiling your flashback cards, they did something different. I don't know. I wish there was a way in which it helps you with flashback to get more uses out of flashback

without getting things back from the exile zone. Only because I don't like things coming back from the exile zone. From your exile zone. Anyway. Okay. Screeching Bat. Screeching Bat is two and a black for a 2-2 bat. The beginning of upkeep.

For two black, black, you can tap it and transform it into a Stalking Vampire, which is a 5-5 Vampire. So this one, all of our double-faced cards are definitely doing this transformational thing. And this was one, most of them are innocent on one side and sort of not so innocent on the other side. This is one in which both sides are the monster, essentially. The idea we're playing into is just that vampires can turn into bats. You've seen that if you've ever watched some vampire flicks. And so this is just a vampire that can turn into a bat. Well, why would you want to turn into a bat?

Well, for starters, you start as a bat. Turning into a vampire is the first thing you have to do. But bats can fly, so they have evasion. So the idea is, do I want to have, it's a 2-2 evasive creature or a 5-5 ground creature? And the nice thing about it is, hey, sometimes you want a bigger creature, 5-5 is better. But sometimes the ground's all gummed up, you know what's better? It's a 2-2 flying creature. And so it's kind of neat. Now, this is one of the weird things. We decided to do sun and moon on sun for the front side and moon for the back side, probably to play up with the innocent versus not so innocent. Problem with this card is this card, both sides take place at night. In fact, the front side of

the card, which has the bat on it, both of them are silhouetted into the moon. It's like it's the sun side of the card, except there's a moon pictured in it. It's a fine trivia question, which is, what sun side pictures a moon? The answer is Screeching Bat. Okay, next, Selhoff Occultist is 2U for a 2-3 human rogue. And if it or another creature dies, target player mills one. So the idea of this card is, we like making mill decks, this is a different kind of mill deck, it's a mill deck where you need creatures, actually I made a card way long ago, back

in Tempest, called Altar of Dementia, where it required you having creatures in a mill deck, because it used to be, what a mill deck used to be long ago, was a deck in which you had no creatures, and it was usually a control deck, and then the win condition was, I mill you out. And so I keep you from doing anything, and I mill you out. And we've started making more and more mill cards over the years, and say, you know what, let's mix things up a bit. The harsh control where I mill you out, okay, we've done it, let's try some other stuff. And this card definitely says, okay, let's play with creatures, and the neat thing about this is

target player mills. So you can put it in your own deck and do fun mill strategies with your own deck, or I can turn an offensive on my opponent if I need to. And so it's neat that this card can do a bunch of different things, because this is a set in which sometimes you want to mill yourself and sometimes you want to mill yourself,

and sometimes you want to mill your opponent. Okay, Sharpened Pitchfork. It's an artifact equipment. It costs two mana. Equipped creature has first strike, and, if human, plus one, plus one. Also, it's equip one. So one of the things we did,

white has already had a... White is the color that likes equipment, because white's the army color that, you know, they like having their weapons. But we decided that the humans, we needed to give the humans some advantage here. And so in horror films, the source of our inspiration, humans often tend to fend off with whatever is at hand. So all the equipment in Innistrad, the rule was it had to have some other purpose, meaning it functionally had to do something, and the idea was the person when in trouble would make use of it. And then humans, we decided, you know what?

Humans are, if you watch the horror movies, they're king of making weapons out of whatever is at hand. And so we put the little riders. So a whole bunch of the equipment has a bonus if you're human. And just a little extra thing to give a little flavor to the set. Sharpened Pitchfork, by the way, was one of the ones,

if you've ever seen any Frankenstein movies, you know that the peasants always come with sharpened pitchforks and torches. So the set has, of course, sharpened pitchforks and torches. So there's definitely a lot. There's a lot of nods we did, and sharpened pitchforks is one of them. As soon as we kind of knew what we were doing, it's like, you know,

hey, well, the humans are going to have sharpened pitchforks and torches. That's just what they have. Okay, next is Scob Ruinator. Scob Ruinator costs one blue blue for a 5-6. You heard me. A 5-6. It heard me. A 5-6. It's a zombie whore. And you have an additional cost of exiling three creature cards from your graveyard.

It is flying and it can be cast from the grave. So what this was is we wanted it to be a very scary zombie. Now the scabs, remember, are the blue zombies, which are the Franken-style zombies, which are the scientists of this world, the wizards, have used their magic to stitch together dead body parts, and they've made a monster. Well, this one, you need a lot of dead body parts. That's why you need an exile of three creature cards. But, you know what? If your opponent destroys it, well, if you get some more body parts, you can fix it.

And so you can keep playing it again and again. And so this definitely plays into the more blue zombie strategy, where you're trying to mill yourself and get stuff in your graveyard. There really is a difference between, there's a blue zombie strategy, a black zombie strategy, and kind of a blue-black zombie strategy. I was very happy that

there's a couple different ways to play zombies. They're all sort of slow-controlling, overwhelming things, but they play out a little differently. And the blue ones using resource of the graveyard, or the black one tends to just bringing zombies back. So they're a little bit different. I mean, they're both similarly flavored to zombies, but they're a little bit different.

Okay, next. Skirstag Cultist. Two red red for two two human shaman. Red and tap and sack. Your creature deals two damage to creature or player. So the idea here is... Oh, I'm sorry. Two tap, sack a creature. Not necessarily this creature.

You can sack this creature, but sack a creature. And the idea is there was a sacrifice theme that went on in red and black. And the idea is red and black, you know, there's a lot of cult activities going on. And the idea is, red and black, there's a lot of cult activities going on, and some people like to sacrifice things, and so there's a little bit of sacrifice theme going on that you can build. And this is definitely one of those cards that just adds a lot of flavor,

and there's a sort of deck strategy that you can build with it, so, you know, kind of fun. Skursdag High Priest. One black for a 1-2 human cleric it has morbid and it's morbid ability is tap two untapped creatures

to put a 5-5 demon token onto the battlefield and the idea here is I'm the High Priest first off I need someone to have died because I'm a cultist and I need to have some cult followers, so I need to tap some creatures. So it's like,

the high priest has to get some followers, but once he gets some followers and gets a dead body, you know, you can summon the demon. And this is another one of the morbid things that weren't morbid when you played it, they were morbid when you activated it. That I can't activate it unless this is true. Most of the morbid stuff, especially

lower rarities, had to do with enter the battlefield, just like check at the time you do something. But we had a few at higher rarities that could do this. Next, Slayer of the Wicked. 3W for a 2-2 human soldier. When it enters the battlefield, you destroy a target vampire, werewolf, or zombie. So one of the tropes we played up a lot,

and there's a bunch of cards that do this trope, is the idea of the Monster Hunter, Van Helsing type thing. And soes we played up a lot, and there's a bunch of cards that do this trope, is the idea of the monster hunter, Van Helsing type thing. And so we definitely played up that. And the way I've talked about before, the way we decided, when we wanted to talk about monsters, either we said non-human, or we said vampire, werewolf, or zombie. And this one, because it's destroying, white does not proactively destroy very often.

Normally it's reactively destroying but it's like okay if you are a monster I can kill a monster so if you're a vampire or a werewolf or a zombie this card was really interesting in limited just because sometimes it matters whether you're a monster sometimes it matters if you're not and if you're white it's sort of like

this guy can hold off now he's not good against other humans he's not good against spirits there's a lot of threats in Innistrad he can't answer. But he does answer the major monster threats. Snapcapture Mage. One and a blue for a 2-1 human wizard. It has Flash. When it enters the battlefield,

target instant or sorcery in your graveyard. Gains Flashback equal to its mana cost until end of turn. So this card was made by Tiago Chan. The winner of the last Invitational. The one that took place at Essen in Germany. Essen Spiel, which is the largest game convention in the world. So what happened was Tiago won. He turned in a card that wasn't usable.

And then the Invitational got canceled. And I think I was in denial. This card took forever to get made. I'm the cause. Why? Because I was dragging my feet a little bit. I think in my head, I kind of felt like maybe I could get the Invitational started up again. And maybe if I took a little bit of time, then by the time this came out, then I could start an Invitational up, and it would feel like, you know, I don't know. Or maybe I was like, if I don't make this card yet, the Invitational isn't over.

For some reason, I just dragged my feet on getting this card out. It eventually got made. I know that Zach Dolan worked with Tiago to get a card they liked. My one contribution to the card was, originally it allowed you to cast a spell out of your graveyard, and I said, hey, we have flashback. Let's just use that technology.

So my big contribution to the card is just instead of just casting a card out of your graveyard, it gives a flashback to instant or sorcerer out of your graveyard. Pretty minor. It worked mostly the same. It just made use of a mechanic that we had in the set. The one thing I

wish I had done, looking back, is I wish when Tiago turned it in, I wish I had asked him if he would have minded us doing this in red. I think this card would have been a little more interesting in red and given red a little more to do in some older formats and it kind of needs it in some regard. So

Flash is not quite red. Maybe, I mean, every color gets Flash in a pinch, so maybe, maybe this card could just exist in red. Maybe it is, has haste and it's a little bit different. I'm not sure, uh, but anyway, I, one of these days, if we're going to do a card like this again, I'd rather do it in red than blue, so. Okay, Spectral Flight, 1U, Enchantment Aura. Enchantment creature gets plus 2, plus 2, and flying. This card was pushed by development. I think the card existed. We...

This card was something like I'm a Ghost or something with a design name. Ooh, I'm a Ghost! And it was just meant to be something to boost. Blue and white had this flying thing, so the idea of giving them aggressive flying aura felt good. Development made it a little more aggressive

than we expected. This thing actually showed up constructed, so it is a very aggressive aura. Spectral Rider, WW22 Spirit Knight with Intimidate. So one of the things when we made Intimidate, so we used to have the keyword fear, which only went on black creatures, because it specifically said,

I can only be blacked by artifact creatures and black creatures. And Intimidate sort of took fear and just broadened it out it specifically said, I can only be black by artifact creatures and black creatures. And intimidate sort of took fear and just broadened it out. It said, I can only be black by artifact creatures and creatures that match a color with me. And so in Innistrad, we said, you know what? There's a lot of things that are scary and fear makes people afraid of them.

Let's use intimidate a little more. So this might be the only white card with intimidate. I mean, there's a card way, way back when that essentially has intimidate, but it doesn't have intimidate a little more so this is might be the only white card with intimidate I mean there's a card way way back when that essentially has intimidate but it doesn't have intimidate written on it way back in the day

where someone was just doing fear but for white it's one of the inspirations for intimidate so anyway suspected rider was just meant to be kind of a

hey I'm a scary you know I'm I don't think it was headless but a headless horseman kind of thing but with a head a head full horseman spider spawning, but with a head. A head full horseman.

Spider spawning. Sorcery. Four and a green. So five mana. Make a one-two spider token with reach equal to the cards in your graveyard. And you can flashback it for six and a black. So this card was doing all sorts of good work. It's the green-black flashback crossover card.

It also was a limited archetype. It was designed to give you something to do with black and green. So black and green both have a graveyard-centric, if you ever played Golgari, you know, the black and green are the graveyard callers. So green cared about the graveyard, black cared about the graveyard. Both green and black had some means to get things into the graveyard. And this definitely was a card that sort of played into that deck of get a lot of things in your graveyard and then make

a lot of spiders. There's a big debate, by the way. Originally, the spiders didn't have reach, and then we're like, oh, spiders need to have reach. Or in green, spiders tend to have reach, so we ended up putting reach on it. But anyway, it's definitely a...

I think this card, by the way, in design was called Arachnophobia, based on the movie about all the spiders everywhere. Okay, next. Splinter Fright. Two and a green for Star, Star Elemental, Trample. Its power and toughness are equal to creature cards in your graveyard. In the beginning

of your upkeep, you mill two cards. So this is a Lurgoyf. Lurgoyf was a creature that first appeared in Ice Age. Lurgoif was star, star plus one, and it was equal to the number of creature cards in all graveyards. And so this was meant to be a sort of cleaned up modern Lurgoif. Now, it's a little cheaper. It doesn't have star plus one, and it only counts your graveyard.

It doesn't count both graveyards. Because green's big thing is wanting your graveyard to be full. Black cares a little more about your opponent's graveyard being full, because black likes killing things. Green doesn't kill things at the rate black does.

Next, Stitcher's Apprentice. One and a blue, two mana, for one, two homunculus. For one blue tap, put a two, two homunculus onto the battlefield, a token, and then sacrifice a creature. So a lot of people are like, what's going on?

And this card can do a bunch of different things. The reason this card was made originally, I made this card because I wanted to trigger Morbid. And the idea here was, in a vacuum, even if you have no creatures, this card triggers Morbid. But, a little confusing to people, so we changed it up a little bit. So now it's like, oh, well, I make a creature, and then I have to sacrifice a creature. Now let's say I have a 1-1. Well, I can make a 2-2 and then sacrifice a 1-1. So this card also allows you to

upgrade smaller creatures into 2-2s. So the card has a functionality beyond just triggering Morbid. But it's fine. I've definitely had the thing where I make the token and sacrifice the token I'm making just so I can trigger my Morbid, because it's the smallest creature I got. Sturmgeist, three blue blue,

star star spirit, flying, power and toughness equal to cards in hand, and if you deal combat damage, draw. So this is the Morrow ability. So the Morrow ability is in blue and green. This one is done in blue, obviously. So this is a thing that cares about how big your hand is, and it gives you a way to fill your hand up

by doing damage so this is a Maro that can grow usually Maros are flavored a little bit differently blue blue has less green is the color of variants that can get bigger with time where blue cares about cards in hand

so they sort of overlap in the Morrow area. Okay, Thraben Sentry. 3-W-2-2 human soldier with Vigilance. When creature you control dies, transform, and it turns into a 5-4 human soldier with Trample. Okay, of all the double-faced cards in the set, this is the one that upsets me the most. Why?

Because they're all built around tropes, horror tropes. And this horror trope got changed during development because it was too close to another card. But I was mad because I wish the other card got changed and not the double-faced card that's the trope. What this card was supposed to be on the front, was a concerned citizens that are worried, and then on the back side, someone dies, and they turn into a crazy mob. This was supposed to be the mob, where, like, the villagers turn into the mob, the angry mob, and so the front was, like, concerned villagers, you know, they have vigilance, they're looking out, and then the back, they get mad, instead of interest, now they have trample. And they got turned into like a soldier, but, like, that isn't

a trope. So, this is the only double-faced card, because the only one that got changed, that isn't doing a, uh, horror trope. So, um, not that the card doesn't tell a little bit of story, it's just not a trope. It's a story, he's a sentry, someone dies, now he's active, he has to go fight whatever. It's not that there's not a cohesive

story being told, it's just not a trope. It's not that there's not a cohesive story being told. It's just not a trope. It's not a horror trope, which was there. Okay, next. Tormented Pariah. 3R for a 3-2 human warrior. It's a werewolf. And then it turns into a rampaging werewolf. 6-4. So a lot of werewolves, we did this aesthetic thing where

we connected the power and the toughness on both sides. A lot of them got changed during development, because development will override stuff when they're trying to fix things. Having a balanced card sometimes will override some aesthetic stuff. But this card, it has it. 3-2 doubles into a 6-4.

Okay, travel preparations. One green sorcery. Put a plus one plus one counter on up to two creatures. Flashback, one W, so two mana. So this is the green-white crossover flashback card. So basically what it's trying to do is, the humans are all about getting stronger and bigger over time. This is putting counters on things with a green-white legs counter. So the green-white card. Now, once again, this is the kind of card where you don't

have to have white to play it. You don't have to have green technically to play it, but you probably want green with this card. But it's definitely better when you get the second boost of it. Tree of Redemption. Three green for a plant, 0-13 with Defender. Tap, exchange your life total with card named Toughness. This card was not made by design. This card was made in development, I think through hole filling. It is a weird card. I remember when I was asked about this card, it is not particularly trope-y. There's not a lot of, like, there's no, like, remember the story where

this happened? But it was weird and quirky, and it played into the themes of the set, and it was kind of fun. You definitely like having a few cards where you read it for the first time, and you're like, really? And this was one of those. I thought it was a fun card. It was not particularly trope-y.

But it had a little bit of, like, there's a tree of life. It was kind of trope-adjacent, if not exactly on the trope. So it was definitely cool, though. Trepanation Blade. So this is an artifact equipment for three. When a quip creature attacks, defending player reveals cards from the top of their library until they reveal a land.

And then a quip creature gets plus one, plus zero for each revealed card. Those cards all go to the graveyard. So the idea is, at worst, it's plus one, plus zero when it attacks. It could be as high as whatever. I've got this card as high as, I think, plus ten. Anyway,

this card was created by Richard Garfield, and it was called Chainsaw. This was Chainsaw. In fact, I still call it Chainsaw when I play it. Chainsaw is, though, not super fantasy. I actually changed it during design because I knew we'd never get Chainsaw through to something like, what was it called?

Like spinning blades or something. Something in which I changed it to a name that sounded like maybe something we'd make, and, like, imagine it was more, you know, gas-powered or something, something along the line that we would do, or steam-powered. Something that, some kind of shenanigan that we would do in a real artifact that kind of had the idea of rotating blades, if not exactly a chainsaw. But anyway, a trepanation blade is some kind of curved blade that is designed to do

extra damage when it goes in. They were trying to get something that they thought had some sort of spiritual connection to a chainsaw. Without me telling people, I just don't know. You'll see it. It's kind of tough. Although, I guess the thing does do damage by going and rotating things. The creative team was trying hard

to find a gothic horror version of a chainsaw. Okay. Ulvenald Mystics are two green green 3-3 that turn into 5-5, werewolves that turn into 5-5 regenerators that a green can regenerate. This is another one where I think

in the original we tried to do 3-3 and 6-6 and 6-6 was just a little too powerful so we weren't able to do it. But anyway, it turned out to be very interesting. I like that werewolf. Unbreathing Hoar. Two block for 0-0 zombie. It enters the battlefield with a plus one plus one counter for every zombie you control

and every zombie in your graveyard. And if dealt damage, instead of dying, you just remove one plus one plus one counter to stop all the damage. So the idea is, this is, basically this is supposed to be your finisher card for your zombie deck. It's like, once I hit you with tons and tons and tons of zombies, then this thing comes out, it's giant

because I have all these zombies that are dead or are living, and then it's really hard to kill, and so this definitely represented yet another sort of zombie horde all in one card. At one point it counted just zombies in play, and we decided that we really needed to count zombies in graveyard. A, for flavor, and B, just because what we want to do,

the idea of a zombie deck is you don't care that you're losing zombies. You're just wearing them down with your zombies, much like a true zombie in horror movies, that the zombies wear you down. You can't care about losing any one zombie. So this card does a good thing of saying, whatever, your zombies die, I don't care. When I come out, for every zombie that you have, living or dead, that's one more hit I get.

One more damage you have to do before I'm dead. And the more zombies you have, the bigger it is, the harder it is to deal with. Unburial Rites is a sorcery for four black, five mana. Put a creature card from the graveyard onto the battlefield. Flashback, three and a white. So black and white both have reanimation. Black is primary, white is secondary. Often we limit white to reanimating smaller creatures,

but every once in a while, in fact, way back in Alpha, it gets to reanimate larger things from time to time. And so we definitely put it here. It's on the flashback side, so it's a little harder to use in white. But the idea is a black-white deck definitely can make use of that. Unruly mob, 1w, 1run human. Whenever another creature dies, it gets a plus one, plus one counter. So we made two angry mobs,

and then I think they got rid of the wrong angry mob. I would have much, much rather this card change into something else. Or this card be the defensive guard or whatever. Because all the double-faced cards were playing directly into tropes. So that's why the other card changed. If I understood what was going on before it was too late, I would have strongly recommended killing this card. In fact, if I had known what would have happened,

I would never have made this card Angry Mob. I thought it was okay to have multiple Angry Mobs, because White can have a lot of Angry Mobs, I thought, but anyway. Urgent Exorcism. 1 W, instant, 2 mana. Destroy target spirit or an enchantment. From time to time, I want to make sure that every set has cards that just, you can only

make in that set. This is a card that's really flavorful, but only makes sense here. It's not something you can do in a normal set, so I was happy to have it happen. Victim of the Night. Black Black instant. Destroy target, Non-Vampire, Werewolf, or Zombie. Well, one of the funs of having white kill them is having black not kill them. And so there definitely was a schism between sometimes you wanted monsters and sometimes you didn't. Sometimes it was in your favor and sometimes it wasn't.

So sometimes having a vampire, werewolf, or zombie was good, like this card couldn't kill it, and sometimes it was bad, because other cards, like in white, could. Village Cannibals. Two black for a 2-2 human. Whenever another human dies, it gets a plus one, plus one counter. So this one wins for what I think

is the creepiest art in the set, which is just a bunch of people standing over you, the viewer POV of these people standing over you, and you get the sense that you're kind of sick, and they're just waiting for you to die. This card would be very, very important. It would fuel the black white deck come Dark Ascension.

One of the things we like to do when we get the expansion is we shift things up a little bit. When I get to Dark Ascension Dark Ascension, sorry. When I get to Dark Ascension design, I'll talk about it, but the Village Cannibals was a very, very important card of defining a deck to come later.

Village Ironsmith is a 1R1-1 human werewolf with First Strike that turns into a 3-1 werewolf with First Strike. So, one of the things we definitely played around with is a couple different ways to get werewolves. The interesting thing about this

werewolf is he doesn't get any tougher, but because he has first strike, getting bigger makes him much more powerful. So he's not a 3-3, so he's just as easily, if you're appointed as direct damage or something, to get rid of, but in combat he gets much, much harder, because a 1-1 first striker is much easier to deal with than a

3-1 first striker. And one of the things we try to do with the werewolves is definitely, they all get better. You want to make them werewolves, and they're always problematic once you make them werewolves. But we want to shake it up a little bit so there's just some different flavor of how you're doing it. Okay, next. Village of Estowal.

Two green for a 2-3. Human werewolf turns into a 4-6. Huzzah! Another one that stayed, where it doubles. So we had a 3-2 that became a 6-4. We have a 2-3 that becomes a 4-6. One's in white, one's in green. Whenever you can do a little mirroring, that's always fun. Walking Corpse.

One black for a 2-2. Okay. If I told you that this card was... No card caused more arguments in R&D during Innistrad design and development than this card. And the big question is, we had never before made one black 2-2 vanilla in black. We'd never done a grizzly bear

in black before. And there's a lot of debate, like, was black supposed to do it? Clearly, green is the best at, green and white are the two best creature colors, and they both get it. And it's like, oh, can black do this? And there's a big, big debate. Now, once we've crossed the Rubicon, black does it all the time, now And it's like, oh, can black do this? And there's a big, big debate. Now, once we've crossed the Rubicon,

black does it all the time. Now it's now just, yeah, black can do it. But it's a big deal at the time. Like I said, if you asked me the card that got the most discussions in Innistrad,

that probably had the most arguments, I don't know if you'd pick the 2-2 vanilla creature. Okay, next. Witchbane Orb. Four mana for an artifact. Enters the battlefield, destroys all curses on you.

So we made this card because it was flavorful. The idea of the amulet protects you from curses. The problem was, curses just weren't a big enough thing to warrant, like, hosing them. So, I mean, I guess if your friend at the kitchen table just loves making curse decks, and you're sick and tired of the curse decks. Oh, I keep losing the curse deck. This is an answer to it, but I kind of, I mean, I like the flavor of the card, but I don't tend to like making answers to things that kind of aren't particularly all that threatening, threatful, like curses just aren't that powerful that it really needs the card to hose them.

That said, it's pretty flavorful. Okay, next, Wooden Stake. An artifact creature that costs two. The creature gets plus one, plus zero. If it gets in a fight with a vampire, it kills the vampire. And that vampire cannot be regenerated. Equip one.

So, we knew we were going to do Wooden Stake. We said we wanted to make equipment for Innistrad. Wooden Stake was on the list. In fact, it almost made itself. Like, what is a Wooden Stake going to do? Well, clearly, clearly, clearly, it's killing vampires. That's why we made wooden stake going to do? Well, clearly, clearly, clearly it's killing vampires. That's why we made it in the first place. And, okay, a little tiny boost, so there's a reason to put

it on your thing. Plus one plus O, so, you know, it's even more offensive than defensive. And so, it's one of those cards, like, sometimes you struggle to make a card. Sometimes it's like, what exactly does this do? And sometimes it's like, it just makes itself. And this is one of those cards.

Okay, which leads us to our final card. And I'm happy because I'm driving up to Wizards as we speak. I had a lot to get through today. And that's why I was, if you noticed,

I kept the pace up because I had a lot of cards to get through. I knew today was the final day. And I didn't want to leave any card out. So we get to the final card. Wreath of Geist.

For some reason, it's hard to say. Wreath of Geist is an enchantment, an aura, for green. Enchant creature goes plus X plus X, where X is the number of cards in your graveyard. So this is kind of a make-me-a-lurgoif,

a card that turns you into a lurgoif, or turns you into Innistrad's version of lurgoif, which is plus X plus X and only cares about your graveyard. So this is a green aura that matches the creature, which says, okay, hey, one of the reasons you want dead things into your thing is because it just makes you stronger, and this was in order to do that. So that was pretty fun.

Whew! Okay, with that said, I have gotten through all the cards of Innistrad. So my final thing is, I have made a lot of magic sets. I'm proud of a lot of magic sets. But if I think I, you say to me, okay, in all honesty, what is the best set you've ever made, purely from just quality standpoint,

like you have to pick one as the best set you've ever done. Probably it's Innistrad. I mean, there's other sets near and dear to my heart. But I think just objectively from what will stand the test of time is this being an awesome, awesome set. I believe the Innistrad. And it's funny, like I said. I spent some time

I really had a fight to convince them that Gothic Horror was going to be a fun thing to do. And you have to actually think what's the name of the vampire movie? I blinked for my brain because I don't remember it. But Jacob and Edward and Bella, Twilight.

The success of Twilight, which got Hollywood to just start doing a lot more horror. There was a big rise in horror. And it was that swelling of pop culture horror that allowed me to go to the powers that be and said, come on, look how much people like horror out in the real world, that got them to go, okay, I guess we'll make a horror set. So if you've always cursed Twilight under your breath, there's one good thing Twilight did, which is help get us in this ride. But anyway, I am in my parking space, so we all know what that means.

That means it's time for me to end 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.