Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #231 - Dark Ascension, Part 3

Episode Date: May 29, 2015

Mark continues with Part 3 of his 4-part series on the design of Dark Ascension.

I'm put on my driveway, we all know what that means, it's time for another drive to work! Okay, so it's the third part of me looking at Dark Ascension, the design of Dark Ascension. And so when last we left I think I got up through F, so today we're starting with G! And the first card is Gather the Townsfolk, which is a sorcery that costs one and a white, so two mana. You make two 1-1 human creature tokens, but it has the Fateful Hour ability. So the Fateful Hour ability says if you are at five or less life, instead of getting two tokens, you get five tokens. So the design of the Fateful Hour stuff, I can't think of the design name, something like Desperation or something.

I can't think of the design name. Something like Desperation or something. The idea was, in times of great desperation, when you're closest to loss, when you really got to buckle down, that you're able to sort of do things to help you. In the design of Fateful Hour, the idea was we want to give effects that would help you when you're on the verge of losing, not lose.

And so token making is a good example. Like, okay, I'm losing. Well, getting a bunch of tokens might help me. So on the fateful hour, it's like, well, one W, you get two tokens. That's fine. I mean, that's something we do all the time. And the idea is, okay, in special circumstances, you can up it. So, you know, early in the game, getting two tokens for two men is fair.

And late in the game, getting five tokens for two men is fair, and late in the game, getting five tokens for two men is really good. Okay, next. Jeralph's Messenger, BBB 3-2 Zombie, enters the battlefield tapped. When it enters the battlefield, opponent loses two life, and it has Undying.

So a couple things. First off, this is an Undying creature, so remember, Undying is, it comes back with a plus one, plus one counter. It's the opposite of persist. It's persist, but instead of minus one, minus one counters, it gets plus one, plus one counters. So it comes back stronger. And I talked about this earlier, that you kill the monster and you think it's dead. But oh no, it's not.

It comes back even stronger. It also has an enter the battlefield effect where the idea is when it enters the battlefield, they lose two life. So it dying and coming back also will trigger the enter the battlefield effect. So ETB effects, if you will, work really well with undying because they come back a second time.

So this card was definitely a lot of black in it. Black, black, black for a 3-2. And it's pretty good because it's a 3-2 that they lose two life and it good, because it's a 3-2 that they lose two life and it comes back, and it's a 4-3 where they lose two life. So it definitely is a very pretty aggressive card.

So real quickly, let's talk about the name, Jeralph's Messenger. So when Creative was writing the flavor text for Innishrod, one of the things you try to do is you want to have characters that can represent aspects of the set. And so the creative team came up with

Gisa and Jorolf, who were brother-sifter, and one of them, they were both necromancers, but one of them was a stitcher, and one of them was a normal necromancer, meaning one raised things from the dead, and one scientifically made things. And then,

the names showed up in Flavor Text and Innistrad. I think they showed up a little bit in names in Dark Ascension, but they never got cards. And what we've learned is every once in a while, players just attach to certain characters, and then they expect cards for the characters. And we didn't provide those, so we later ended up putting them in a while players just attach to certain characters and then they expect cards for the characters and we didn't provide those so we later ended up putting them in a commander product but it's one of those things where people always say why didn't you

clue you had a cool character why didn't he or she get a card and the answer a lot of times is um we don't always realize at the time we're making cards that those are going to be the popular characters in fact i don't even think, this card, remember, the way it works is we design cards. They then get developed.

Then late in development, long, long after design is done, they get names and flavor text. So, it is possible for, I mean, and we don't necessarily see the names and flavor text,

you know, the developers do, but in design, you're off designing other things. And so, it's not like we necessarily know. We go to a creative team

and say, who do you want? What legendary characters do you want? And they tell us. So sometimes, things will fall through the cracks

where they'll make something that's kind of cool, but not everything can be made into a legendary creature. And so, usually every block,

there's some character or a bunch of characters where people are like, wait, you didn't, I like so-and-so, where are they as a legendary creature? And so the good news is with supplemental products like commanders, it gives us a little bit of ability to sort of make some characters that we missed the first time through. Also, because we're starting

to return to worlds, it also will give us some opportunity that if we go back to a world that if we miss something the first time around, we have the opportunity to do that. Okay, next. Jorolf's Mind Cruncher. So this is a four blue blue for a 5-5 zombie horror. When it enters the battlefield, target player mills five cards

and it is undying. So this is another enter the battlefield effect with undying. So the idea is it not only mills five, it kind of like, kind of the way it works is when you play it, it does something, and when it dies, it kind of does something. It's a lot how it plays out, because it dies and comes right back. So we often do creatures that have an effect that when it enters the battlefield,

it leaves the battlefield. So Undying with an ETB effect, ETBs enter the battlefield. It used to be, it's funny, a bunch of time, it used to be comes into play. So we used to call them CIP effects, because it comes into play.

And then we changed it to become enter the battlefield. It's another ETB effect. So anyway, magic slaying, changing with the times. Anyway, the Mindcrushers,

a 5-5 that mills 5, and then undying, it mills, well, still mills 5, but it becomes a 6-6. So it's a 5-5 that turns into a 6-6. So, one of the tricky things about making Undying is, um, you have to make a creature that becomes better. And that can be a tricky, a tricky thing, because you want to cost it so it looks exciting when you play it the first time, but the creature's only getting better. You have two creatures, essentially. You have this creature, when it dies, you have a second

creature, and the second creature's even better. Persist, you got a second creature, but it was slightly worse. So the better half was up front. This one, the worse half's up front, the better front's second. So one of the things we have sometimes with mechanics is a thing where the mechanic actually does something powerful, but what you

see at first glance seems less powerful, and so players have at first glance seems less powerful, and so players have to kind of understand all the things that are going into it. And one of the things that's tricky is, so there are mechanics that have good first impressions and bad first impressions. Good first impression means it looks on front like a really cool card, where bad first impression is like, well, you have to figure out why it's better than it might look. Now the funny thing is, players tend to like positive abilities versus negative abilities, but it is negative abilities that tend to make cards that look better. You know, if I have some drawback that you don't quite understand, well, on the surface,

it might look like a really strong card, where if I have a bonus, we have to cost it less because there is a bonus. So, it's funny because players like to have good first impression cards, but they like cards with more upside. Those two things kind of fight each other. Okay, next, Ghoul Tree. Seven and a green for a 10-10 zombie tree folk. And it costs one less for each creature card in your graveyard.

So the idea is the Ghoul Tree, zombie tree folk. I didn't know, this might be our first zombie tree folk. I don't know if we've done a lot of zombie tree folk. Anyway, the idea is green has this flavor in Innistrad block or Innistrad in Dark Ascension of caring about creature cards in the graveyard so the idea is more things die

the ghoul tree becomes cheaper and cheaper to cast you know, eight mana for a 10-10 a little, you know, it's a little expensive but, you know, I put some things out they die, well for 5G a 10-10, for 4G a 10-10, you know, it's a little expensive, but, you know, I put some things out, they die. Well, for 5G a 10-10, for 4G a 10-10, you know, four and a green for 10-10 is pretty good. So, the idea is you get out, do the thing you're trying to do, get creature cards in your graveyard, and then you get out at

10-10 pretty efficiently. Okay, next, Grafdigger's Cage. So, it's an artifact that costs one. It says creatures can't enter the battlefields from the graveyard or library, and players can't cast cards in the graveyard or library. So one of the things we like to do when we make a set is make sure that there are answers

to threats in the set. Like a set lets you do cool things, and like, okay, well, this gets out of hand. We need to have an answer. Now, it used to be, we used to put the answer in the set following the set. Like, well, here is a block and it does a cool thing, and the block after it

will have the answer just in case it gets out of control. What we learned is that's kind of dangerous, that things sometimes can spiral, and you want to have your answers quicker than the next block. So the thing we do now is we tend to put the answers within the same block. Usually it's at the tail end of the block, not always.

But here's a good example where, okay, we're doing flashback and creatures catched at the graveyard. Okay, that can be problematic. Let's have an answer in case it really is problematic. And so, we put the answer in Dark Ascension. And that, it is important. One of the things to remember

about magic is that you want to make sure that you create threats, but you always have answers for the threats you create. Now, the threats and the answers don't always have to be obvious. You know, sometimes the answers to the threats can be a little more subtle, that players can have to seek out the answers. But sometimes, like this card, they can be pretty blunt. This one's a pretty blunt answer.

Not all our answers are blunt. We like to sort of, sometimes there's blunt answers, sometimes have some sneaky answers, but we definitely want to make sure there's answers. Okay, Gravecrawler. Black, single black, one mana for a 2-1 zombie. It can't block, and you can cast it from your grave if you control a zombie.

So I believe this card started in Innistrad. We designed it in Innistrad. It just got cut for numbers. We knew it was really good. I think maybe it got pushed back just because sometimes we like to make sure that there's good stuff in both sets. We wanted to kind of ramp up, I think, the

zombies a little bit, so I think they pushed it back to the second set. The reason it can't block, by the way, is if you can come back all the time, it makes you really defensive. I can chump you forever. We wanted it to be an aggressive card and not a defensive card. One of the flavors of zombies in general

is the zombies just keep coming after you. And so this card got made because we were trying to find different ways to go, how do we create an endless wave of zombies? That's what we wanted for the zombies. That, like, you can kill a zombie, there's just going to be more zombies. That's how zombies work. That, you know, the reason you lose to zombies is not because one or two zombies attack you.

It's because ten zombies attack you. Or twenty zombies attack you. Or just, they never stop attacking you. The zombies keep coming. So there's a lot of different ways to make that happen. But one of the ways is, how about a zombie that keeps coming back? You know, you kill it, but, ah, not dead yet. It's a zombie.

And this card ended up being really good. It definitely got played in the zombie deck. In fact, it got played in some decks other than zombie decks. Just because a 2-1 for B that keeps coming back, it's pretty strong. Okay, Grave Tiller. A Grave Tiller Worm. So it's 5 in the green for a 4-4 Worm. It's got Trample.

And then for Morbid, it comes in with 4 plus 1 plus 1 counters. So this is an example of one of the things when you make a mechanic is you have to figure out how much variance you want, which means is if I do the thing being asked of me versus not doing the thing, how much of a reward do I get? And what we tend to do is usually the first set gives you a slightly smaller reward and the second set will increase the variance a little bit just to sort of make the mechanic have a little more sort of aggression in the second set will increase the variance a little bit just to sort of make the mechanic have a little more

sort of aggression in the second set. So this is a good example where 5 in a green. So 6 mana for a 4-4 with trample, nothing special. That's not particularly good. But an 8-8 with trample is really good. And so the idea is this card really wants you to get something dead. Something should die. You're not going to play this card most of you to get something dead. You know, something should die.

You're not going to play this card most of the time unless something has died. And so you want to arrange, by the way, how much variance there is because you want some cards that you, more often than not, will just cast normally. But if the situation occurs, okay. And some cards that you won't normally cast, usually you'll wait for the situation. And some that are in the middle. You want to vary it. And this card is definitely on the side of, well, you really kind of want the morbid to

happen in order to cast this thing. Okay, next, Grim Flowering. Five and a green sorcery. Draw a card for each creature card in your graveyard. So one of the things is blue is number one in creature, except in card drawing. Green and black share number two. Black always says you have to spend some resource to get it. It's usually spending life or a second creature or something.

Green is just tied to creatures. Green can have aggressive card drawing, but it's tied to its creatures. You can't just in raw draw cards. I know Harmonize from Planar Chaos confuses everybody, but I think Planar Chaos confuses everybody. So green's card drawing is supposed to be tied to its creatures. This, being the graveyard set,

says, okay, green has a flavor of carrying creature cards in the graveyard. Okay, well, it makes a lot of sense to say in graveyard, now we have a card drawing card

that cares about not living creatures, but dead creatures. Which is a little bit different for green. I mean, it's still creature-oriented, but because there's ways

to get cards in a graveyard that you haven't even capped, green can do some, you know, mulch, green, but because there's ways to get cards in a graveyard that you haven't even cast, green can do some, you know, mulch. Green can do some shenanigans to get cards quicker than it normally could do. Because normally, you've got to, you know, green has, like, draw a card from a creature in play on the battlefield. And this you can manipulate a little easier

because getting stuff to your graveyard doesn't always require you casting it first, where being on the battlefield does. Okay. Next, Havengul Lich. So Havangul Lich is a gold card. It costs three blue-black for a 4-4 zombie wizard. For one, activate.

You may cast target creature cards from any graveyard, and when cast, card name gains all activated abilities. So the idea is this lich allows you to cast things from your graveyard. It can cast dead things and bring them back. And then, not only does it let you cast them, but this card gains those any activated abilities. So whenever I make a card like this, people always ask, well, why can't I just get any abilities? Why just activated abilities? And the answer to that is a rules thing, which is there are a lot of different kinds of abilities,

and gaining activated abilities causes some confusion. For example, a very common thing to do on a creature is have an ability that defines its power toughness. Well, it's tricky if a card grants the ability to define power toughness when it already has power toughness. So these are some things that become problematic. So what we do is when you grant abilities, we tend to grant you activated abilities. You can copy activated abilities. It's a lot trickier.

Normally, by the way, if we want to get creature keywords, what you'll notice is we list them. We list them out. That's why, you know, when there's a... I forget the name of it, but some creature card in Ooze that copies abilities out of the graveyard, it lists them by name. It can't just say activate any ability.

It has to say, oh, well, if they have flying or first rank, it lists them out and goes, you can gain those abilities. So if you're not doing activated abilities, you have to list what you want specifically to be able to get them. This card came about... We've been trying to do a card that lets you cast creature cards out of your graveyard in this set

in this block I think the idea was we wanted something we liked the idea of it gaining abilities of dead things but we needed a way to define which stuff it got

so we're like okay well what if we put the casting creatures out of your graveyard on this card and then there's this neat side effect now this does have some memory issues

where you cast it and you have to remember that it has those abilities. We're careful how many of these we do, just because you have to remember okay, I've pulled out five creatures, and so these are all the abilities I have. And the creatures you pull out might be dead, so you know, this card definitely has some memory issues. It's a cool card.

And we like having some cool cards like this, but there is clearly a memory issue you have to keep in mind. Okay, Haven Ghoul Runebinder. Runebinder, sorry, Runebinder. Two blue blue, four mana for a 2-2 human wizard. For two you tap, exile

a creature card in your graveyard, put a 2-2 black zombie onto the battlefield, and then put a plus one plus one counter on each zombie you control. So the idea of this thing is it's able to so blue does the Frankenstein style zombies. Zombies in which

it's using the dead, repurposing the dead. So you have to have a creature card in your graveyard to be able to repurpose. You need to dig up your dead body to use your science on. And then the cool thing about this is every time you get a zombie, it not only improves that zombie,

so it's not, really you're not making a 2-2, you're making a 3-3, because it automatically gets a plus and plus counter. But then it takes every other zombie you have and makes them bigger. So as you dig up things, your army gets stronger and stronger. And so one of the things, remember,

that we like with the zombie deck is that it grows over time. That the zombie deck isn't fast, but that it grows in power, and that it slowly overwhelms your opponent. And this ability is kind of a cool way to do that. And it's both flavorful, and it's just

neat. It's a blue way to sort of build up your zombies over time. The Hell Vault. So the Hell Vault is a legendary artifact, costs three. For one in tap, exile target creature you control. For seven in tap, exile target creature you don't control. And then when the Hell Vault is put into the graveyard from the battlefield, return all creatures exiled by it back to play.

So this card was completely a top-down. So one of the things that the creative team had come up with is they needed a story to explain, well, in the third act, how exactly, what's the savior of humanity? And the answer is an angel named Avacyn. And with Avacyn comes a whole bunch of angels. So what happened is Avacyn originally built the Hell Vault, I believe, or someone built the Hell Vault. But Avacyn used it to get rid of all the demons. There were a lot of demons,

and Avacyn was trying to rid the world of what it saw as the evil of the world, which were demons. But along the way, I'm not sure whether the demons stuck the angels in there, or Avacyn saw some of her angels were going astray. Avacyn started going a little nutty and started, I think, putting her own angels in. I Avacyn saw some of her angels were going astray. Avacyn started going a little nutty and started, I think, putting her own angels in. I'm not sure. Anyway, it

was full of angels and demons. And the biggest, baddest demon, which Avacyn was trying to stop, a demon named Grizzlebrand, which you guys will hear about when we get to Avacyn Restored. You should know, probably. It's a pretty popular card. And when Avacyn went to get Grizzlebrand into the Hellult, he trapped her with him. He took her with him. And so Avacyn got caught in the Hellvault. Well, Avacyn was the thing... Avacyn had been created by Sorin

because Sorin realized that the vampires would die out if they ate up all their food source for the humans. And so in order to sort of keep the humans around, he made Avacyn his protector for the humans. Ironically, his larger goal wasn't really helping the humans. His larger goal was making sure that humans stuck around as a viable food source for the vampires. But he did, for his own reasons, bring the savior to the humans. And when Avacyn goes away, things get pretty dark. A lot of Avacyn's magic

was helping fuel the weapons of the humans, and so things were looking pretty dark. And we knew the Hellvault was a major player in the third set. In fact, the pre-release of the third set has to do with this whole opening the Hellvault, if those were around, remember that. Then when I get to Avacyn Restore, I'll talk about that.

But anyway, we needed the Hell Vault to show up here because the Hell Vault was important in the third part of the story. And so, you know, Chekhov's gone. Like,

if you're going to see something in the third act, I mean, usually introduced in the first act, but we introduced it in the second act just because

we wanted to make sure you saw it right before it happened. So anyway, we introduced the Hell Vault. The Hell Vault specifically did something top-down,

which was you could trap things in it. And we knew it was going to get open when it opened everything traction was going to spill out we pretty much just made something we decided what we're going to do is for practical purposes is make it so that it exile your stuff uh cheaply and your opponent's stuff more expensively the reason being you're only going to exile your stuff when it's just about to die where your opponent's stuff you would use as removal so So we made it expensive, so the Hell Vault is expensive removal, but if you ever want to sort of save your own things,

things you know are going to die, you can do that and use the Hell Vault as a means to sort of bring them back later. Okay, next. The other thing about the Hell Vault that's cool is, is you trap different things. If you trap your stuff in, you kind of want to sacrifice it later on. You want to get it in the graveyard so you can bring back all your creatures. But if you trap your opponent's stuff in it, you kind of don't want. So there's

a neat tension there depending on how do you want to use it. Okay, Hingeland Hermit. 1R for 2-1 human werewolf. So he's a werewolf, which means if at any point no spells get cast at the beginning of the next turn, it flips. When he flips, he goes from a 2-1 to a 3-2

werewolf who must be blocked if able. And the idea is, this is definitely one of those werewolves where I talk about aesthetics in werewolves, that its power is one greater than its toughness. So when it converts, it stays power one greater than toughness. So it feels like it's the same werewolf. And then red has an ability. Red and green both have the ability of must be blocked.

Green has straight-up lure, which means everything must block me. But both red and green can do, I must be blocked by something. My opponent chooses what? Something has to block me. Not everything, but something has to block me. And the idea was, some of our werewolves get to be pretty big. This one is definitely one where it's small, it's cheap. But we want you to have a curve of werewolves.

So this is one of the cheaper werewolves where you can get out in turn 2 and sometimes by the way you get in turn 2 they don't have a play in turn 2 bam all of a sudden you have a turn 3 play and you know 3-2 must block can eat up a lot of little things I mean at some point they'll get us big enough to defeat it but it can do some damage pretty early

next hunt master of the fells 2 red greens multicolored card for four mana. You get a 2-2 human werewolf. When it enters the battlefield or is transformed into a werewolf, you get a 2-2... Oh, sorry. When it enters the battlefield or you're transformed into the human side,

you get a 2-2 green werewolf, and you gain two life. And then, it's a werewolf, so when no spells are cast beginning of the next turn, it turns into Ravager of the Fells, which is a 4-4 werewolf with trample. And when you transform into this side, you do two damage to an opponent and two damage to a creature.

So the idea is, when you become the human side, you get a 2-2 wolf and you gain two life. And when it goes to the werewolf side, you do two to a creature and you, your opponent loses two life. So it's kind of mirwolf side you do two to a creature and your opponent loses two life. So it's kind of mirrored where on the one side you gain two life and on the other side they lose two life.

And then on one side you get two amount of damage on your side and on the other you do two damage to their side. So it's trying to be reflexive there. It was made to be a werewolf that you wanted to transform normally the way werewolves tended to work is you transform them, you turn them into werewolves and you want them to stay werewolves this one's a little tricky where kind of the way to use this one

is you kind of wanted to go back from human to werewolf side not that you couldn't put it out, transform and do stuff if you just played it, you got a 2-2 wolf, gained 2 life, transformed it once, did 2 damage to them, and probably killed the creature by shocking something. And then you do have a big 4-4 werewolf.

But if your opponent's managed to turn it back, this is definitely a nice answer that gives you something for getting it turned back. Okay, next. Immerwolf. One red-green for a 2-2 wolf. It's got Intimidate. Other wolves and werewolves you control get plus one, plus one. Non-human werewolves can't

transform. So what it did was, this is one of the cycle of what we call the captains, although this was not a captain, only because it couldn't be a werewolf because it needed, it wasn't double-faced. So we made it a wolf because

what we did is, because werewolves had to be double-faced cards and we didn't have enough of them, we fleshed out that tribe with wolves. So there were werewolves and wolves, and all the things that tended to help werewolves helped wolves. So this was the wolf captain, except it's not technically a captain because wolves can't be captains.

But it did do what the other ones did, which is add a keyword as intimidate. And then it grants plus one plus one. And the second thing it grants is

it keeps werewolves from turning back into wolves. I'm sorry, into humans. That non-human werewolves can't transform. So what that means

is the reason it says non-human werewolves is you want yourhuman werewolves is you want your human werewolves to transform those are the human side but if you are a werewolf and not human anymore you don't transform so the idea is get it out

and all your werewolves get not stuck because you want them to be there but can't be turned back and when you have inner wolf in play your werewolves will stay werewolves and won't become human again okay next increasing confusion it's a sorcery plus x and a blue wolf in play, your werewolves will stay werewolves and won't become human again. Okay, next. Increasing confusion. It's a sorcery. It has

X and a blue. Target creature mills the top X card. So mills means put the top X cards of the library into the graveyard. And then if you cast it from the graveyard, instead of milling X cards, they mill twice of X. And it has a flashback of XU. So this was a cycle

of what we call the increasing cycle. So there's increasing devotion, ambition, vengeance, and savagery as well as increasing confusion. There was one in each color, and what they did is they all did something, and if you flashed them back, they did double the effect. So the idea is this was a tweak on flashback, which was you would do something, and then if you could flash it back,

you got twice the effect. It was more powerful when you flashed it back. And we were just messing around, trying different things, and so it was like the idea that normally when you flash something back, the better value is up front, and the lesser value is on the flashback. And so we were just messing around,

like, you know, what if you could do something, but when you flash it back, it just was just messing around, like, you know, what if you could do something, but when you flashback, it just was even better than the first time you did it. Anyway, it was a fun little cycle. Next, Jar of Eyeballs. So Jar of Eyeballs costs three. It's an artifact. So Jar of Eyeballs, by the

way, was 100% what we call top-down design. I gave my... Jen Helen was the creative representative on both Innistrad and Dark Ascension, and the homework I would give her is give me good names for cards from the set. Just give me good flavorful names. And then what we would do is we would design them in the meetings. So one of those names was Jar of Eyeballs. We wrote them down and we just top-down design. So what does Jar of Eyeballs do? So when a creature you control dies, put two eyeball

counters on card name. Three tap, remove all eyeball counters. Look at the X top cards of your library, where X equals the number of eyeball counters. Put one in your hand and the rest in the bottom of your library in any order. So it lets you essentially impulse. It lets you look through X cards in your library

and pick the best one. So it lets you sort of tutor, but from within the select group of cards. And the idea is, as you kill things, you're collecting eyeballs. I know, I know, I got a lot of, uh, this is the card I previewed on my Twitter, and people were like, the flavor's wrong! If you

kill a cyclops, you should get one eye counter, and if you kill, you know, uh, something with two heads, you get four eye counters. I'm like, well, well, that's, that's, uh, sometimes flavor has to be, uh, shortened a little bit. Most things have two eyes, so we get you two eyeball counters. I'm like, well, well, that's, that's, uh, sometimes flavor has to be, uh, shortened a little bit. Most things have two eyes, so we get you two eyeball counters. Um, I have a lot of people write to me saying, wait a minute, what happens when this non-two-eyed

thing? And I'm like, okay, sometimes we just have to write it simply and get the general gist of the flavor. So it's two eyes. Next, Keswick Recluse, two green green for two, three spider. It has reach and death touch so this is what we call a French Vanilla so a French Vanilla is a card that has nothing but creature keyword abilities usually they're the evergreen creature keywords

and green has both reach and has death touch interestingly we don't put them on cards together all that much we did here, but it's something we do sparingly. But we do from time to time. One of the things that you want to

make sure is, you want to have a lot of cool flavorful things that are new to the set. But you also want to have just some things that are using some base resources available. The idea of a nasty spider made a lot of sense in this environment.

It matched the flavor. But not every card is supposed to go, what? You don't want to tax your player with every card they look at. It's why we have

vanilla creatures and French vanilla creatures and just simple sorceries and instants. You want some of the cards to go, okay, I got it. I know what this thing does. Next, Lamb Holt Elder.

It's two and a green for one, two human werewolf. And when it turns into a werewolf, it becomes Silverpelt Werewolf, which is a 4-5 werewolf. And when it deals combat damage, draw a card. So remember when I talked about variance, of how you want to stretch your variance?

So here's a good example of a high variance card. So a three mana for a 1-2 card. That is junky. Junky, junky, junky. You would never play three mana for a 1-2. But That is junky. Junky, junky, junky. You would never play three mana for a one-two. But what happens when it turns into a werewolf? It becomes a four-five werewolf that every time it damages your opponent, you draw a card. Would you pay three mana for that?

Absolutely! You wouldn't blink to do that. So the idea is, here's a card that's very vulnerable in its human phase. And by the way, note, by the way, one of the things, I think the flavor of this is it's a... I think when we made the card, it was like Librarian was our design name. Because they like to read the books and become the werewolf. Ah, and then they gain knowledge and things. Anyway.

But this is a good example of a card that has a high variance where, you know, one of the funs of the card is getting it out and protecting it. because it's really weak until it turns into a werewolf. But once it becomes a werewolf, look out. It's a dangerous werewolf. It's a very powerful werewolf. Okay. Next, Lingering Souls. Two white sorcery. Put two 1-1 white spirit creature tokens with flying into play. Flashback 1B. So this might be the strongest card in the set. It's up there. It was a staple in Constructed. I think they were really aggressive. One of the things that Tom

Lapilli was the head developer, he really was trying to make sure that the white-black deck could be something that would play in Constructed. And as they say, mission accomplished. White-black I put on the map, and this card really, really was a big part of it. And the funny thing is, making two 1-1

Flyers for three mana is good. It's not amazing, but it's okay. But being able to make two more for two mana, one in black, is really good. And so, in general, this card, on some level, I mean, you could break it up over turns, but for five mana, you got four 1-1 Flying Creatures.

You needed to play two different colors to get this, but it's pretty potent. It ended up being a very, very powerful card. I think when you ask Tom about this at, it's the one card developmentally, he's like, oh, I probably cost it incorrect. That it was probably a little bit too good. How are we doing on time?

Okay, well, I just got to work, but I'm going to go through a few more cards here, just because I have a... I'm going to finish off this page. So, Lost in the Woods, three green, green enchantment. Whenever a creature attacks you or your planeswalker, you may reveal the top card of your library. If it's a forest, remove that creature from combat.

Any revealed cards, put them on the bottom of your library. This was a top-down card. We were worried at the end that we were a little light on top-down cards because we'd really just hit the ball out of the park in Innistrad.

And Dark Ascension was a little light, mostly because we had done so much of that in Innistrad that Tom, at the end, felt that we needed a little bit more. And what he wanted was

some quirky top-down stuff that was just kind of like weird, but fit this world. So we made a couple cards. In fact, the two cards I think we made in this session was Lost in the Woods and Seance. We might have made one or two others, but we were just trying to make something that was kind of quirky. We wanted a few cards that you couldn't make

anywhere but here. And this card is just a very quirky kind of top-down flavor card on this green defensive card that's all about getting lost in the woods, which is a trope in horror. Next, Loyal Cathar. So Loyal Cathar is for white-white, so two mana, is a

2-2 human soldier with Vigilance, and when it dies, you transform it. It becomes Unhallowed Cathar, which is a 2-1 zombie soldier that can't block. So remember I said we had a little cycle of humans that died into monsters? The idea, just trying to show how bad it was for humans, we wanted to have a human double-faced card in each of the four. We wanted, I mean, werewolves was easy, because werewolves are already human that turn into werewolves.

But we wanted a human that turned into a vampire, a human that turned into a zombie, a human that turned into a spirit. So this is the zombie. And this one is pretty straightforward. It's like, I'm my thing, I die, I come into a zombie, a human that turned into a spirit. So this is the zombie. And this one is pretty straightforward. It's like, I'm my thing, I die, I come back a zombie. And we decided to make it a little weaker. So it has 2-2 vigilance on one side, it comes back 2-1 can't block. So once again, trying to mirror things a little bit,

like 2-2 vigilance means I'm extra able to block, and then 2-1 can't block, I can't, you know, it goes from being more able to block to less able to block. then 2-1 can't block, I can't, you know, like, it goes from being more able to block to less able to block, so kind of that mirror. And the idea was a 2-2 Vigilance for WW is pretty good, you know what I'm saying? It's not amazing, but it is definitely, like,

you're getting a decent amount of value, and the fact that it dies into another creature, a 2-1 creature, you know, is decent. Okay. Last card of the day. Markov Blademaster. One red red for a 1-1 vampire warrior with double strike and a slith ability. Slith ability is whenever I deal combat damage to an opponent, I get a plus one plus one counter. So we were trying to make, we were trying to make a more juiced up vampire. So double strike and the slith ability go really well together

because it hits the, it hits them twice. The double strike not only hits them, but hits them at two different times. You do one source of damage during your main phase, one during first strike damage, and then one during your main damage. So the idea is, I have a one run vampire. If I'm able to hit you, let's say I get this thing out, it immediately becomes

a 3-3. And then, remember it has double strike, so when it first attacks you, it does two damage. It becomes a 3-3. And then, remember it has double strike, so when it first attacks you, it does 2 damage, becomes a 3-3. Now it does 6 damage and becomes a 6-6. Then it does 12 damage and becomes a 12-12.

So every time it hits you, is that right? It's a 1-1 hits you and does 2 damage, and then gets 2 counters, becomes a 3-3. And then it hits you for 6 damage, oh, becomes, gets 2 counters, becomes a 3-3, and then it hits you for 6 damage, oh, gets 2 more counters, it becomes a 5-5. And then it hits you for 10 damage, and becomes

a 7-7. Sorry, I said that wrong. But anyway, it was definitely a very juicy card that sort of, like, you know, if you could get this out and get it through, and you only need to get it through once or twice before it became a really dangerous card. Okay, so we've gotten up to M. Next time we'll start with McKay S.E. Unhallowed, which is an awesome card. But anyway, I'm now parked in my parking spot, so we all know what

that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic, and I'll talk to you next time.