Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #230 - Dark Ascension, Part 2

Episode Date: May 29, 2015

Mark continues with Part 2 of his 4-part series on the design of Dark Ascension.

I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. And man, I took my daughter to camp. It's spring break for me. Although for you guys, I'm sure it's later. Anyway, last we talked, I started talking about Dark Ascension. And I got to the cards, and as we left, I think we were in the seas. But we're not quite done. We have more seas to go. Okay, so time to talk about Curse of Bloodletting. So Curse of Bloodletting is 3RR. It's an enchant player.

It's an enchantment aura enchant player. So all the curses are enchantments, enchant players. And it says all damage to enchanted player is doubled. So it took the card Furnace of Wrath, and it said it's a curse in which damage to you is doubled. Furnace of Wrath doubled all damage from Tempest. So this is kind of a personalized Furnace of Wrath,

only against the enchanted person. And so, the, as I explained last time, that the curses were definitely something we had done. We were trying to get the flavor of horror, and so we went to the idea of people can get cursed.

We used enchantments. I explain all this in my Innistrad things. But anyway, one of the fun things of trying to find curses was trying to figure out something where, like, what is a neat negative you can give somebody? Normally when you make enchantments,

you make positive enchantments. They're good things for you. And these were fun because they were, like, strictly downside for your opponent. I mean, we definitely make enchantments that affect everybody the same way, and sometimes they're negative. And usually the idea is the person who plays them

is building their deck to deal with it. But here, it's like, okay, curses are just nothing but negative because it's just for your opponent. And they were definitely fun to make. I know we kept sort of thinking of different kinds of curses you can make just to differentiate them. Okay, so the next is Curse of Exhaustion,

which is two white-white enchant player, obviously. And it says, enchant player can cast more than one spell a turn. So this is Rule of Law. So Rule of Law is an enchantment, a normal magic enchantment that you can

play and just infect your opponent. I think it doesn't infect everybody or just your opponent. It might infect everybody. Everybody might only be able to cast one spell a turn. Anyway, this is a curse. Only affects your opponent. The unique thing about this is it's a white curse. As I explained, I think, during my Innistrad card talk, this was supposed to be a big deal that white got a curse.

It was supposed to be like, oh my god, the times are bad. You know, because one of the things we had tried to do really hard was to separate kind of the evilness in Innistrad so that white was kind of the bastion of the good holding out and that all the monsters and everything around were the other four colors. But because I didn't explain this well enough to Eric Lauer, he took away the green curse. The idea of curses in every color but white didn't get conveyed very well

since green didn't have a curse. So here I was trying to convey, like, the idea that white got a curse was supposed to be this very symbolic thing, and because of me not explaining the messaging properly, it ended up not being nearly as impactful as the intent was. Okay, next. Curse of Misfortunes. So four black, enchantment, aura, obviously enchant player. At the beginning of the upkeep, you tutor for a curse that that player doesn't have and attach it to them.

So one of the things we were trying to do is, in order for Curse to have a subtype, Mark Gottlieb was the rules manager at the time, he demanded that we cared about it. That in order to have a subtype, you had to have a mechanical reason for having it. It couldn't just be there for flavoring. There had to be a reason. So we made a card in Innistrad that did. We made a couple

of card cards here. One of the ideas we liked was the idea of making a fun, casual curse deck. And the idea of a curse deck is, well, you know what's fun to make a curse deck? Let's spread out the curses.

Let's make curses. You know, let's not keep doing the same curse as the person. A lot of times it wasn't even necessary. I mean, a few of them stack, but some of them,

like Curse of Exhaustion doesn't stack. They can cast one spell. Why do you want a second one? They can only cast one spell. So the idea of Cursed Miss Fortune was you put this in your curse deck, and then it allowed you,

once you got this out, to keep go getting other curses to put on them. That was the idea. And then the companion, Cursed of Thirst, for being an enchantment aura, enchantment player, beginning of upkeep, you do damage equal to the number of curses.

So the idea is these work together. What I do basically is I first get on Curse of Misfortunes, then I go get the Curse of Thirst, then I go get other curses, and meanwhile as you're getting more and more gummed up by curses, you're taking damage every turn from Curse of Thirst until you eventually die. That's kind of the master curse

plan. So I'm not sure if anyone's out there. Somebody must have made a curse deck. One of the things we try to do in all sets is we want to have different kinds of things you can do. I mean, we definitely think standard. We think about limited. We think about different formats. But one of the things we also think about

is what we call casual constructed, which is just, you know what? This will be fun for me and my friends. Is it going to see a tournament play? No. Is it going to be a major limited archetype? Not necessarily. But it's something that's fun.

In general, casual players tend to like, what can I do? Oh, here's a neat little theme, and here's some cards that go on the theme. Ooh, I can build this deck. And the curse is definitely, there was a curse deck theme, and here's some cards that go on the theme. Ooh, I can build this deck. And the Curses definitely, there was a Curse deck you could build. We gave you some tools, and Curse of Misfortunes and Curse of Thirst were definitely playing into that theme of here's some tools to build this deck.

And I know a lot of people, I know we brought Curses back in one of the Commander products, and people were very excited. So Curses definitely had an audience. There was definitely a casual audience that enjoyed Curses. Okay, next. Deadly Allure.

So it's a sorcery for single black. It says target creature gains death touch and must be blocked. And for flashback, it was green. So I explained once before, or last podcast, how Eric Lauer, as a means to start creating some archetypes between colors, made a cycle of flashback cards. And I think the way it worked is that one cycle went one way

and one cycle went the other way, I think, between Innistrad and Dark Ascension. The idea being that if Innistrad, for example, this is a black card that has a green flashback. That meant that Innistrad was the green card that had the black flashback. In fact, it's a very famous card,

but I'm blanking on the name. Was it Spider Spawning? I think it was Spider Spawning. Anyway, the idea was that we did one rotation in Innistrad to the opposite rotation in Dark Ascension, and definitely one of the things we tried to do is make sure that it

played into the themes that they were, you know, the decks were trying to do. So, one of the things about seeing them do is make sure that it played into the themes that the decks were trying to do. So one of the things about seeing them is that you see this card and go, oh, it goes in my green-black deck. Well, what is my green-black going to do? It's like, oh, this fits in the kind of deck that I want. Okay, next. Death's Caress. A sorcery for three black blacks or five mana for a sorcery. Destroy a target creature. And then, if it's human,

you gain life equal to its toughness. Okay, so now we start getting into another big theme of Dark Ascension, which is beat up on the humans! There is a flavor here of the monsters are rewarded for hurting the humans. Destroying humans is

good, sacrificing humans is good, just you know, causing death of humans in general is a good good. Sacrificing humans is good. Just, you know, causing death of humans in general is a good thing. Or just misfortune, I guess. And so the idea is that there definitely is this flavor of the humans are in trouble, and you see mechanically all these monsters and stuff are being rewarded for hurting the humans. And Duskcrest is a good example. And now, the idea, by the way, of Duskcrest, you play it in limited no matter what. It's a kill spell. But, you know, you're a little more inclined to want to kill humans with it. Not that you can't

kill other things than you do, but there's definitely that flavor in there of the idea of the humans are definitely something the monsters are going after. Okay, next. Deranged Outcast. One green for a 2-1 human rogue. For one green,

you could sac a human to put two plus one plus one counters on target creature. So, one of the things is that we definitely were trying... Human Tribal was a thing. White-green was where Human Tribal happened in Innistrad. So we were trying to continue that here, but we're trying to put

a little twist on it. Human tribal in this set, well, green might be sacrificing some humans, so this could go in your human deck, but it's used a little differently. One of the neat things about doing a second set is you take existing themes and you

can tweak them a little bit. Like, white and green is still a human deck. You can make a human deck and play with them, but when Dark Ascension is involved, all of a and you can tweak them a little bit. Like, white and green is still a human deck. You can make a human deck and play with them. But when Dark Ascension is involved, all of a sudden humans have a little bit of a different value than they did. There also, by the way, is a black-white deck that really preys on humans as well, because the vampires love to prey on the humans. But we did give tools to the green-white human deck.

Just not the tools you had in Innistrad. And that's one of the fun things, by the way, about trying to do an expansion to an existing product in a block is that you can take existing themes and existing decks that exist and then add a few things that stay in the theme that go in the deck but just start shifting the deck in a slightly different direction. Because one of the goals is, if you've drafted Innistrad for many months

and now Dark Ascension comes out, we want it to fit into what you've drafted Innistrad for many months and now Dark Ascension comes out, we want it to fit into what you're doing. We want it to be part of Dark Ascension. Sorry, part of Innistrad. But we also want to sort of give you some new things

so that the deck you've been playing is not quite the same deck. It's a little bit different. Sometimes it can change a lot more based on new mechanics and things.

But also sometimes it's similar, it's just smaller twists. Okay, next. Diagraph Captain. So that's one blue black. It's a gold card. It's a multicolor card.

It's a 2-2. So it is a human rogue. I'm sorry, not a human rogue. It's a zombie soldier. It's a zombie soldier with death touch. Your other zombies get plus one plus one. And whenever another zombie you control dies, target opponent loses one life.

Okay, so let's talk about the captains, although only three of the four are called captains. So we decided we wanted the monsters to have lords, not the humans, because the humans were the ones in trouble, so they didn't get lord. So this is another cycle where there's four of them, and we leave one out. The funny thing is we ended up putting a human lord

in Avacyn Restored, but I think it's in mono-white. And so people felt like we'd never give them the white-green human lord. And so all these people were like, you have to go back

to Innistrad so you can make the white-green human lord. So that's one of the cards that people feel we left out. Anyway, one of the things with this cycle of lords

was we were trying to say, okay, so we made them so they all pumped. They're gold cards. They're in the two colors that the tribes are in. They gave all of them plus one, plus one. And they did something that fit in the style of play. Well, zombies is an attrition deck where I'm just throwing zombies at you,

and you're killing them, and I'm going to overwhelm you. I'm going to swarm you with the zombies. But a lot of zombies die. So if every zombie that dies did one to the opponent, oh, that's really helping get you there. Because the zombie deck is zombies are constantly dying. Zombies are not, they tend to be small you know, the zombie deck just keeps pumping out more zombies. But your opponent is just killing them left and right. So this sort of plays in and says, oh this is a pretty good ability to have for a zombie deck because of the way the zombie deck plays.

So one of the things about this cycle, by the way, is we stuck them in uncommon. I mean, I stuck them in uncommon. Tom Pilly, who was the developer, I think kept them in uncommon. The idea originally was we really wanted them to be a limited thing. Turned out they were so good that they warped limited a little bit that when you opened up one of them, you really,

the goal of tribal in the whole block was meant to be that you were never on rails, meaning you never had to draft the tribe. That you could, you could opt in to draft the tribe if you wanted to, but you didn't feel forced to.

And the problem with the cycle of the captains is when you open one in your pack, it's really strong, and so you really encourage to take it. And once you took it, it really puts you on the path of doing that tribe and it's a little more in rails than we meant. I think Tom and I agreed after the fact that probably rare would have been better for this.

So it happened and limited a little less every once in a while, but not quite as often as it happened in the current draft. Okay, next. Divination. Two-use sorcery. Draw two cards. This is the Tom Lepilli special. I think Divination is in just about every

set that Tom developed, I believe. I said, by the way, last time that this was Tom's, or, yeah, last time, last podcast, that this was Tom's first lead. Little incorrect. I believe this was Tom's first expansion lead. He had led one or two core sets. So this wasn't his first lead ever,

but it was his first lead with an expansion. Anyway, Tom loved having divination in the sets. I will bring up that my pet peeve with divination is I think the card draw is supposed to be targeted. I wrote a whole article about this. I believe that a target player draws two cards is not something that confuses people too much, just like deal damage to a target player. Yes, you could choose me to damage myself or choose my opponent to draw cards,

but most of the time you don't want to do that. I think the player understands, oh, I want to draw the cards. Why would my opponent draw the cards? But it allows you to deck your opponent and do cute things where making your opponent draw every once in a while matters. Anyway, it's up to me! Card drove and targeted, but it is not.

So I lost that fight. Okay, next. Drogskull Captain. One white-blue, 2-2 spirit soldier. It does flying. Other spirits have plus one, plus one, and hexproof. Okay, so like I said, all the captains, actually, I explained a little poorly how they worked.

All of them were, I think, three mana, one CD, meaning one color mana of one, and then the second color mana of the other color. All of them were soldiers. They were the right creature type of soldiers. All of them had a keyword. So, the zombie had Death Touch,

the drug school captain, which is the spirit, has flying because of the spirit. And this one is tricky. All of them granted plus one, plus one to the creatures and then did something else. This one grants a keyword,

which is hexproof. So it's just included on one line. But it's two abilities. It grants plus one, plus one and it grants hexproof since Innistrad we backed a little bit away from how aggressive we are

with hexproof this is definitely one of those being a little more aggressive with hexproof than we would nowadays because once I get this out you know I mean

given it says other spirits you can't target this so there's a way to deal with it but if you get two of them out though they protect each other and then yes you know it becomes very hard to deal with it. But if you get two of them out, though, they protect each other. And then, yes, you know, it becomes very hard to deal with. Okay, next.

Drog Skull Reaver. Five white blue for three five spirit. It is flying, double strike, and lifelink. And whenever you gain life, draw a card. Okay, so this card is definitely doing some fun things. Triggered card drawing is normally a blue thing. But life gain is normally a white thing. Okay, well, here's kind of a neat thing.

What if we mix them up so that the life gain triggered the card drawing? And there's a neat thing here where the creature has flying, obviously, for invasion. It's making it easier to hit your opponent. It has lifelink, so every time it hits them, you get to draw a card because it's gaining life. Notice every batch of life gained, not every individual single life you gain. So if you gain three life, you get one card and three cards.

But this picture is double strike, and double strike is very synergistic because instead of gaining one batch of life, you gain two batches of life. Because with double strike, you hit during first strike damage, you gain some life, so you would get a card. And then during normal damage, you would do some more damage, gain of life, you gain two batches of life. Because with Double Strike, you hit, during first strike damage, you gain some life. So you would get a card.

And then during normal damage, you would do some more damage, gain some life, and draw another card. So this card definitely has a lot of pieces all working together. This is a very Melvin-y card, or Mel-ish card, in that it has a lot of pieces that work together. Like Flying and Double Strike, oh, well, Double Strike's good on Invasion. Well, Double Strike and Lifelink, well, Lifelink cares about damage, and Double Strike doubles the damage.

That's good. Lifelink and Flying, well, Invasion works well with Lifelink. Oh, you know, Card Drunk based on Lifelink. Well, that's good. But Double Strike means that you get two batches, so you get to draw two cards. So, like, it all works together. It's a very clean card,

and all the different abilities kind of come together to create something that's a little better than the sum of the parts. Okay, next. Dungeon Geist. Two blue blue spirit, three three. When it enters the battlefield, tap and lock down a target creature.

And then as long as it stays in play, that creature is locked down and it is flying. So the idea is... So one of the... Let me talk about spirits a little bit. Is in the first set, we gave... Werewolves had a very strong identity. They were these weaker creatures that when the moon came out, all turned, and all of a sudden, bam, you had giant werewolves. Vampires were fast and blood hungry, and they were the speedy droop, and they were just

eating, and they had a slith ability, and they were, you know, they were very aggressive in draining your blood where it could. And then we had zombies. Zombies were black and blue and slow and plodding. And it sort of slowly overwhelmed you with its wave of zombies. Spirits had a little more of an identity problem. Innistrad had a little bit of a flavor of humans dying into spirits. But what did spirits do?

So Dark Ascension spent a little more time trying to give some identity to spirits. And we definitely played up a little more of their tricksterist sort of quality to them. And that they're manipulating and messing with you. I mean, they already had a flying strategy. They were the flying colors. But you see things like Dungeon Geist where they start messing with you a little more. They start sort of interacting with you. And there's a lot more ghost tropes.

We realized when I started doing Dark Ascension that because there were so many balls in the air, I kind of had let spirits drop a little bit, and I wanted to do some more tropes with them. So Dark Ascension has a lot more ghost tropes, if you will. Okay, Elbrus, the Binding Blade, a legendary artifact for seven. Equipped creature gets plus one, plus all. Equip one to equip. for seven. Equipped creature gets plus one plus all. Equip one to equip. And when equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, unequip it and then transform it. And when it transforms, it becomes Weissengar Unbound, a 13-13 demon with flying, intimidate, trample. And whenever a player loses the game, I think, I didn't write this down, but I think when it loses the game

to this creature, I think it maybe just loses the game. Actually, it might just be when they lose the game. But anyway, it gets 13 plus one plus one counters. So every time a player loses, this is meant... And this was kind of controversial, because this mechanic means nothing in a two-player game. Why do I care if my creature gets bigger when I kill you? You're dead. The game's over. So this is an interesting

card where we clearly put a dynamic on that was meant for multiplayer. And clearly, I mean, oftentimes we do things for multiplayer, but we hide it. Meaning that well, you can play the card in two-player. It's not as good in two-player, but it's playable. This card really has an ability that doesn't mean anything in two-player play.

I mean, not that you won't play the card. The rest of the card is fine. It's a 13-13 flying, crazy, intimidating trample creature. So the fun thing of this is the idea that the demon's been trapped inside the blade, but when the blade knows blood, then the demon comes out.

I forget who my team came up with this. This is turned in. I thought this was super flavorful, told a neat story. We hadn't done... All our double-faced cards were creatures or one Planeswalker. This was an artifact that turned into a creature.

There's a big debate. Actually, I don't even know the answer whether this is allowed to be a commander. I think it doesn't start as a legendary creature, so it can't, but I'm not sure. But anyway, also, it's 1313. We have our 13 theme. So, um... Anyway, this card is just doing a lot of fun things.

I think it's super flavorful. It's expensive to get out, but the idea is once I get it out, okay, don't let that blade hit you. And I've seen players do some crazy things to prevent the blade from hitting them. And it's just kind of neat. One of the neat things about double-faced cards in general is

you can tell very cool stories. One of the problems that happens all the time, and this is something that Jeremy, our art director, talks about is

it is very hard when you have one static single image to tell a story because you have to pick a point in time to tell the story. And if you want

a cool before and after or a cool metamorphosis, it's tough because you don't get to see, you got either you see before you see after. Maybe, maybe you see mid change, but that's often hard to show and it doesn't necessarily convey what's going on. So it's tricky with a singular image to tell a story. We get to double-faced cards, it gets two pictures. You can clearly tell a story. And one of the fun things about our double-faced cards was most of them really do tell a story. And they have a neat story to tell. You know?

I mean, it might just be something as simple as, like, here's a shepherd supposed to watch the sheep, and uh-oh, the shepherd's a werewolf, so he eats his own sheep, you know? Stuff like that. It's a cute little story that's just a little tiny touch. You know? Or just like with Elbrus the Binding Blade,

it's like, here's his blade, there's a demon trapped inside, and once it knows blood, or just like with, um, Elbrus the Binding Blade. It's like, here's his blade, there's a demon trapped inside, and once it knows blood, the demon gets released, and... Yeah, I don't know, I think that's really cool. One of the reasons I'm a huge fan of double-faced guards. Okay. Moving on. Next is Faceless Looting.

So Faceless Looting is a sorcery that costs R, one mana you draw two cards and then you discard two cards and you can flash it back for two and a red so we decided at one point that we wanted red's always had issues of what extra things it can do

in the color pie for a long time it just had the least number of things it could do with the smallest piece of the color pie and so one of the things that we were talking about is how looting made a lot of sense in red. Looting is the other spell color. Now what would happen is we'd eventually realize that we wanted to differentiate red from blue. And that we ended up doing what we call rummaging. Where red now, it discards before it draws. It's a little more reckless than blue.

Blue sort of thinks things through. It draws cards, it can think what it wants and then get rid of it. Red has to kind of throw something away before he knows what it's getting. And one of the things that's important is, when we have colors that do similar things, we do want to make them function just a little bit differently so that different colors have different flavors

in how you play them. And we like the flavors to play up into the philosophy of what the color is. Now, the reason I bring this all up is, Faithless Looting is in this small window where we figured out we wanted to start doing looting in red, but we hadn't yet figured out the rummaging technology. So this is red doing straight

up normal, what I would call blue looting, as opposed to rummaging, which is red looting. But anyway, this is, I think, the first card where we're like, you know what? Maybe we should be putting looting in red. And this was us dipping our toe into that pond,

if you will. Obviously, it's going over really well. Rummaging's just a standard part of red now, and so you see it all the time. But back in the day, this is the first really use of us doing it. This is kind of for those that like their history, this was, I mean, this is the first really use of us doing it. This is kind of, for those that like their history, this is us sort of bringing looting to red.

Okay, let's see. Next. Okay, next we have Falcon Wrath Aristocrat. Two black red. It's a 4-1 vampire. It's flying in haste. You can sacrifice a creature to make it indestructible to end of turn. But if it's a human creature, it gets plus one, plus one.

So this is another fun card. The idea essentially is it's a vampire that can fly. It's 4-1. It's 4-1 haste. And it's hard to kill because you can sacrifice creatures to save it, to make it indestructible to the end of the turn. And the neat thing about this is the vampire, well, he needs to survive. He'll eat what he can eat, but you know what? He loves

humans. They're yummy. Us humans are tasty to the vampires. And so, if you sacrifice a human to it... So this is another example of just making... We really wanted to reinforce mechanically the idea of the humans in great jeopardy. And so, all these

things sort of wanting to kill or eat the humans definitely plays into that. Next, Falcon Wrath Torturer. Two and a black, so three mana for two, one vampire. You can sac a creature to give it flying to end of turn. But if it's a human, it gets a plus and plus one counter. So you can see this again. The idea that if they feed on humans, they get bigger beyond just getting the ability. And so eating a creature gives you a temporary ability.

Eating a human has a permanent ability that goes along with it. Feed the pack, five green enchantment. At the beginning of your end step, you may sacrifice a non-token creature. If you do, you get X, two, two green wolf tokens, where X is equal to the toughness of the sacrificed creature. So this is one of those Johnny cards

where you're like, okay, well, what can I do with this? I can sacrifice creatures and make more creatures. Now, it says non-token because we don't want you sacrificing the wolves to get more wolves. We don't want to say, once I have a wolf, then I can sacrifice the wolves to get two wolves. We want to say, you get the wolves, but you have to get real, you know,

not token creatures to be able to get the wolves from. And the idea, by the way, is one of the things that we're definitely trying to do, and this was made to go into werewolf. I mean, it makes wolves, there's a trick. So there's a lot of cards that care about wolves, so it makes wolves. But the second thing is, it allows you, if you need to, to turn in werewolves. If you get your werewolf to the bigger side side and then you turn them over, then you get

all these wolves and the moon's not going to bother you anymore. They're not going to turn back to pesky humans. You've turned your werewolf to a whole bunch of wolves and then you can attack with the wolves. Next. Fiend of the Shadows. So Fiend of the Shadows is a 3-3 vampire wizard with flying. Whenever you deal combat damage

to a player, you exile a card from their hand and then you can a card from their hand, and then you can play it from exile. And, because we love humans here, you can sacrifice a human to regenerate. So this one's a little different. It just has an extra ability if you have humans. If you don't have humans, you can't use that ability.

Although its first ability of, because it's a flyer and hits you, you get essentially steel cards that you get to cast. So in some ways the way to think of it is, it's kind of like a control magic for the hand. Control magic is, I can kill your creatures, but if I steal your creature, you both don't have it and I gain it. And so this is kind of a control magic for the hand that I'm stealing. One of the tricks, by the way, we've learned is, so word of command was the first spell ever to try to cast spells out of your opponent's hand. And it had a lot of problems because I go to do it

and you cast an instant in response to me casting it so this is sort of like I'm nabbing a card and then once I've nabbed it it's in exile, you have no more access to it but now I can cast it so we've learned a little bit how to do those kind of steel spell effects okay

fires of undeath to our instant deal 2 damage to target creature or player Okay. Fires of Undeath. Two are instant. Deal two damage to target creature or player. Flashback. Five and a black. So six mana for the flashback. So it's a three mana instant in red that you can flashback for six mana in black.

So this is one of the cards that crosses over. One of the things that's tricky when you're trying to do a flashback is a lot like doing a hybrid. You're trying to get an effect that makes sense in both colors. The idea, by the way, is, which is a little bit different from hybrid, when you're doing an effect for

flashback, it's more important that it fits in the main color, and that the flashback color needs to fit, but if you're forcing it a little bit more, that's more acceptable. In a hybrid card, because it can just, like, you're not going to play this card in a deck that just has black. I mean,

very rarely are you going to go, I'm just going to play Fires of Undeath in a black deck, somehow discard it, and then play for 5B. It's just not worth it. You really need to play this in a red-black deck. What that means is, look, you're playing red, the black thing can lean a little bit more toward red. Where in hybrid, if it's a

black-red hybrid, well, if you just have mono-red, you don't need any swamps. So if you're doing things, or vice versa, if you have black swamps, you don't need any red. You need no mountains. So you don't want to do something in mono-black that's kind of leaning toward red. We don't tend to do that in hybrid.

We try not to. I know in Shadowmoor we made so many hybrid cards that we bled a little more than we meant to. Okay. So Black doesn't... Black... The only way Black does damage, by the way, is through draining.

So if this card did two damage to a target creature or a player and you gain two life, that is exactly how Black would do it. People are like, well, Black... Yeah, normally Black gets the life off. That's normally how Black does it. But it can do damage to creatures or players. It has a spell that does it.

We're taking the life part off, but it's not as if it's something that black just can't do. It's just we're taking the rider off. The flavor's off, but this is a black flashback on a red card, so that was okay. Okay, next. Flayer of the Hatebound.

That's an awesome name. Five and a red, six mana for a 4-2 devil with Undying. Whenever a card name or another creature returns from your graveyard to the battlefield, you deal damage equal to the power to target a creature or player. So this thing is pretty cool. So the idea is it's a 4-2. So when it comes into play, it gets to do four damage. Oh, no, it returns from grave, so it doesn't do that when you prefer to play it.

So you play it as a 4-2. It dies. It's got Undying, so it comes back as a 5-3. So when it comes back, it does 5 damage to a creature or player. And the neat thing we did on this card is sometimes the card just references itself. It could have said, when I come from the graveyard to play, I do damage. But no, no, no. It said, when any creature you control comes to the graveyard to play. So this card you can build around. You can do some neat things with.

So clearly it works with itself. That's normally the trick is. We make sure the card works with itself so you can, like in limited, play it by itself. But if you have a deck built around it, or even in draft, you start taking other cards, all of a sudden, cards can somehow come back from the graveyard. Obviously Undying is the thing this can play with, but there's a bunch of different ways to get creatures back from the graveyard in this set. I'll talk about a few of them upcoming,

or maybe not this podcast, but in future podcasts. Anyway, the other thing about Undying was we wanted to make sure that when, at least at higher rarities, that when the things came back from Undying, the fact that it got a little bit bigger meant something, so we definitely played around with stuff like Power Matters and things like that.

So this is a good example where Flare of the Hapon makes use of that technology. Okay, so I actually got here early because my So this is a good example where Flare the Hapon makes use of that technology. Okay. So I actually got here early because my daughter's camp was a little closer than home. But I've been sitting in the parking... If you were astute, you could have heard me put on my parking brake. I've been sitting in my spot. But I've just got to the half hour mark.

So I want to make sure I got you a full ride to work worth of info. So I got up to F. So I got a few more podcasts probably on Dark Ascension. But it's fun. I like looking back and seeing kind of what we did and how we did it. And I got a few more podcasts probably on Dark Ascension. But it's fun. I like looking back and seeing kind of what we did and how we did it. And hope you guys are enjoying it. But I am in my parking space and I've been for a while now. So we know what that means.

It means it's the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So I'll see you guys next time.