Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #232 - Dark Ascension, Part 4

Episode Date: June 5, 2015

Mark concludes his 4-part series on the design of Dark Ascension.

I'm pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so, on the last couple podcasts, I've been talking about Dark Ascension. And I got up to M, so I'm not done yet. So we start with Macaeus the Unhallowed. So he has three black, black, black. So six mana, three of which are black. A legendary creature, cleric, zombie. Zombie cleric. He's a 5-5 creature. A legendary creature, cleric, zombie. Zombie cleric. He's a 5-5 creature.

He has intimidate. And when a human deals damage to you, combat damage, or is this damage? When a human deals damage to you, destroy it. Other non-humans you control gain undying. So, gain plus one, plus one, and undying. So, the idea of this is, so, what we knew was, Macaeus, we wanted

Dark Ascension to be the humans at their darkest hour. So one of the ways to do that was we needed to give them a symbol of hope in the previous, at Indestrad, like the last symbol of hope they had. Avacyn was the main symbol of hope and she's disappeared. But they had one final, their leader,

you know, their leader of both the religion and of their society, so moral and civil leader, Macias. And what we wanted to do in the set is kill Macias, and he gets turned into a zombie. He himself becomes a monster. So it's like, when your last bastion of hope itself gets turned into a monster, like, can things be any darker? And we perfectly set it up so that chaos was introduced in Innistrad, and then we did a zombie version here.

And this version, we definitely did some fun stuff. You know, we gave an intimidate to sort of explain how scary it is. And then we did a no mercy, it was an enchantment from Ursa's Legacy, that we made a no mercy for humans. Like, any human that damages you, dead. And then we did No Mercy, it was an enchantment from Ursa's Legacy, that we made a No Mercy for humans. Like, any human that damages you, dead. And then, all your non-humans, all your monsters that aren't human,

get plus one, plus one, and then die, meaning not only are they bigger, but then they come back even bigger than that, because they die and come back with a plus one, plus one counter. Okay, next. Mondrinan Shaman. Three red for a 3-2 human werewolf shaman. And then it's a werewolf that turns into Talavar's Mage Hunter,

which is a 5-5 werewolf. And whenever an opponent casts a spell, it deals two damage to them. So this one was simple. One of the tricks about doing the werewolves is, because the werewolves all work the same, and they're red and green, so one of the issues is we want to have a lot of variety in how the werewolf works. You know, the werewolfves all working the same.

So what's going on here is we said, okay, this werewolf, it's pretty straightforward, just it has on the backside something that discourages you from playing two spells a turn. Now, I bet you can't, but oh, well, every time you play a spell, it does two damage to you. So it just does four damage. Just to turn it back from a werewolf to a human

will be four damage to you and so we thought that was kind of a cute take on the thing moonveiled dragon 3 RRR, 6 mana, 3 which is red for a 5-5 dragon it is flying and then it has fire breathing your team

for R, each creature you control gets plus 1 plus 0 so what it does is it it's fire-breathing, but not just fire-breathing for itself, fire-breathing for the whole team. Now, one of the big issues people brought up is, we were doing horror, and dragons aren't exactly gothic horror,

but people do love their dragons. And so, we decided that, we decided we'd have, yeah, I think Innistrad has a dragon, and Dark Ascension has a dragon, because, okay, there's dragons here. Next, Mystic Retrieval. A sorcery for three and a blue.

Return instant or sorcery card from your graveyard to your hand. Flashback to R. So this is one of those things where blue and red both have the ability to get back spells, instants and sorceries. Usually blue will get back instants, and red gets back sorceries, but each of them is allowed to get back spells, instants and sorceries. Usually, blue will get back instants and red gets back sorceries, but each of them is allowed to get back both.

And so, remember once again, this is the flashback cycle that would go in the opposite direction, where it's off-color flashback, but it's the reverse of what you saw in Innistrad. So Innistrad had a red spell with a blue flashback. This has a blue spell with a red flashback. Okay. Nibblis of the Urn.

1W for a 1-1 spirit that flies and when it attacks, it taps target creature. So one of the things that happened in Dark Ascension was, Innistrad did a really good job of giving an identity to the werewolves and the vampires and the zombies, but the spirits, we

didn't quite get as concrete. And so we definitely were messing around here with spirits being sort of... We were playing into ghost tropes and the idea of them being poltergeists and tricksters and they just kind of mess with you. And so you see that here, just the spirits of tapping things and locking things and just kind of meddling with things. And we liked the idea of the troublesome ghosts. Okay, Predator Ooze.

Green, green, green. Three mana for a 1-1 Ooze, which is indestructible. When it attacks, it gets a plus one, plus one counter. And whenever a creature that the card name damages dies, it gets a plus one, plus one counter. So this is a top-down card. You know what top-down card this is? Give me a second.

It's the Blob from a top-down card. You know what top-down card this is? Give me a second. It's the blob from a horror 50s movie. So the blob was this giant thing, I think it's from space in movies, that just eats things and gets bigger and bigger. And it's really hard to destroy. In fact, to get the blob, you have to freeze it, I believe, is how you destroy the blob. Anyway, so we wanted to make a blob.

We were trying to make all... I was trying to do all the fanciful horror tropes, and it felt like, okay, you know, we got some oozes. How about a killer ooze? And so the idea is it just,

you can't stop it and it keeps, as you eat things, it gets bigger and bigger and as you chomp it, it just gets bigger. It just eats the thing you chomp with. And anyway,

I'm a big ooze fan for those that don't know my, my, my history with creature types. I really like oozes. Next, Pyreheart Wolf. 2R for a wolf, 1-1. When it attacks,

all your attacking creatures can only be blocked by two or more creatures. So this is an ability originally known as Goblin Wardrums. It's an ability R&D likes. It's just a different invasion ability that says, okay,

you can block me, but I'm a little more intimidating. I mean, block me, but I'm a little more intimidating. I mean, not intimidating, but I'm a little more threatening to you than average. And, like, you need a buddy to come block me. And so, and then this creature also has undying. So, like, it makes it harder for things to block. And if you happen to kill it, it gets to come back. And it's only a 1-1, but it gets to, you know,

so in order to block it, you have to have two things to block it, even though it's only a 1-1, but it gets, you know, so in order to block it, you have to have two things to block it, even though it's only a 1-1. You need to use up two blockers. And then when it dies, it comes back as a 2-2. Ravenous Demon. 3BB, 4-4 Demon. You can sac a human to transform it, but you can only do that as a

sorcery. And then it turns into Archdemon of Greed. 9-9 demon with flying trample, and has an upkeep of sacrifice to human, or it taps and deals 9 damage to you. So the flavor of this thing was a demon that had tasted human flesh.

That it said, mmm, and once a demon tastes human flesh, there's no going back. It's like the Lay's potato chips in the demon world. You can't have just one. And so the idea is it eats a human and goes, mmm, turns into a big demon and goes, must eat more humans. And if you ever run out of humans,

then it gets angry at you. You better keep it to humans. So the idea here is, okay, you can transform it whenever you want, but once you transform it, you are signing up for a little bargain which is you've got to keep feeding it humans because it likes humans. And if you don't feed it humans, it'll get mad. So feed it humans.

Next, Day of Revelation, 1W Instant, Destroy Target Enchantment, Flashback with a Green. Okay, so this is basically a Demystify. It destroys an enchantment. White and Green both get Destroy Enchantments, and so it's something that you could flashback, that White and Green could do. These flashback cards, like I said, they're a lot like trying to make hybrid cards. You're trying to make abilities that can overlap between the two colors. Now, we tend to allow you

to believe a little bit in the flashback color. Here, straightforward. White and green can just do this. But some of our others, well, it's a little more what the first color is, but it's allowable in the second color. Okay, next. Reap the Seagraph. The reason I'm going fast today, by the way, is I realize I have about one and a half

episodes worth of cards, and I'm like, okay. Getting through it today. I'm gonna try. Reap the Seagraph. It's a sorcery. Two and a B, two and a black, three mana. Put a 2-2 black zombie token on the battlefield. Flashback for you. Well, black and blue are the zombie colors, so the idea is make

a zombie, and then you can make another zombie. So this is costed... In Alpha, we had scathed zombies, and this is a scathed zombie. 2B for a 2-2. But, it's got the upside of, later on, assuming you're playing black-blue, you have access to a second zombie. And one of the

things we were trying to do in the zombie decks in general is make sure that you can keep refilling, because we wanted you to overwhelm with your zombies, and so there's a bunch of different things we were trying to do in the zombie decks in general is make sure that you can keep refilling because we wanted you to overwhelm with your zombies. And so there's a bunch of different tricks we used, but tokens was one of them, that I can make a token and later make another token. Okay, and Relentless Scabs, three blue blue, four four zombie. As an additional cost to cast it, you have to exile a creature card in your graveyard, and it has Undyne. So this is one of the scabs.

The scabs are the Frankenstein-like monsters that, for a lot of them, what we did is we made you actually you have to go get a dead body from the graveyard to make it. You want to make Frankenstein? Go dig up a dead body. This one's cute because it has Undying, which means that you need a body when you first cast it,

and you need a body when you dig it back up. And so it actually needs two bodies. You kind of get two creatures, but you need two bodies. And we thought, one of the fun things about Undying was trying to figure out cards that interacted with it in a cute way that did something that was different than you might anticipate.

Okay, next. Requiem Angel. So Requiem Angel is a 5-5 Angel for 5 W, so 6 mana. It has Flying, and whenever another non-spirit creature dies, put a 1-1 spirit token with flying onto the battlefield. So the idea of this card was, we had this little flavor of things dying into spirits.

And this card says, okay, anything that's not a spirit dies and becomes a spirit. So if you're a ghost, you can become a ghost. Now, one of the reasons for the non-spirit by the way is we didn't want to make infinite spirits, meaning the reason it says non-spirit is we don't want, once you make a spirit, we don't want the token dying and you get another token. Then you

would have infinite tokens and that could cause all sorts of problems. But we had two ways to do it. We could have said non-token, but we went with the flavor. I would say, well, we'll say non-spirit. Your spirits have said non-token, but we went with the flavor. I would say, well, what if we say non-spirit? Your spirits can't die and become spirits. That doesn't make any sense. So we went with a more flavorful way,

but execution-wise, in this kind of card, whenever something dies and makes a token, you have to make sure it doesn't loop on itself, meaning you can't let the tokens themselves get more tokens, or it becomes an endless loop, and there's these infinite combos you can do with it. Sanctuary Cat. W for a 1-2 Cat. This card was way more popular than I would have thought a vanilla 1-2 creature could be.

I think the lesson is people just like their cats, because both Black Cat and Sanctuary Cat were in the set. So Dark Ascension had a little mini cat theme. I know people really appreciated it and liked it. Cats will be back. We're trying to find a good set and we'll bring some cats back. It is clear that I think I made this joke last time. I made the joke.

I won't repeat myself. I know I do all the time. For those who listen to my podcast, if you want to know the real me, me telling the same story again and again because I forgot that I told you the story, that is me. You're getting to know the real me, me telling the same story again and again because I forgot that I told you the story, that is me. So you're getting to know the real me. Okay, saving grasp. Saving grasp is an instant that costs one blue.

You get a bounce target creature. So put target creature you control. Oh, I said it. You get a return target creature you control to your hand, or to owner's hand, I guess, if you somehow stole it. So return target creature you control to owner's hand. And then flashback W. So one of the overlaps here

is, flashback one white, is both blue and white have the ability to unsummon your own things. Blue can unsummon opponent's things, but white can only unsummon its own things. So this was a good overlap. The reason it's particularly good in this set is,

or it's good in a lot of sets, is one of the things about bunching your own things is A of the things about bouncing on things is, A, you can save them. This is instant, so you can save them. But also, there are a bunch of different things that have effects. For example, if you have an undying creature, especially one that might have an enter the battlefield effect, when you unsummit,

you get the enter the battlefield effect again, and you remove the counter so that it can die again if you want it to. Or you can just bounce the thing and enter the battlefield of the factory. There's a lot of things you can do besides saving your creatures. You also can redo things so that they work. You can take a morbid creature that you'd played normally, but didn't

have morbid at the time, wait for something to die, bounce it, and now you can play with morbid. There's a bunch of different things, and it plays nicely with different things in the set. Next, Scorned Villagers. So, Scorned Villagers costs one and a green. It's a 1-1 human werewolf, taps to add green, and it turns into a moon-scarred werewolf from a Scorned Werewolf, from a Scorned Villager into a moon-scarred werewolf, and becomes a 2-2 werewolf

with vigilance, and it taps to add green-green. So basically, it's a 1-1 that taps for green, that becomes a 2-2 vigilance that taps for green-green. So basically it's a 1-1 that taps for green that becomes a 2-2 Vigilance that taps for green green. Probably the cutest thing about this card was actually not something done by design, but something done by creative. So this card, one of the things we were looking for

is finding fun places to do tropes. And the design team very much tried to design to tropes. But the creative team was also looking for opportunities to do fun tropey things. And so they had fun with this werewolf. So this werewolf on the front is a girl with a red hood. She's a little red riding hood. And the twist here is in our mythology, little red riding hood, she too has a wolf that she is afraid of, except the wolf is her

she turns into the wolf, she's a werewolf and so it was our twist on the Little Red Riding Hood thing that was completely done by the creative team I don't know who did the concepting, but somebody did the concepting and said oh, this is a cute way we can do a werewolf and anyway, they came up with it and executed it and there's a good example, by the way, where design tries to get top-down

stuff and will design things that are meant to be top-down, but there's other opportunities by, for example, the creative team to find places where they can do that where it makes sense. Okay. Next. Seance. Two white white enchantment. At the beginning of your

upkeep, you can exile a target creature card from your graveyard. If you do, you put a token that's a copy, except that it's also a spirit. And then you exile at the beginning of your end step. Now, it's important to note these creatures don't have haste. A lot of people yelled at me. So this was one, remember I said, we did a little session of designing some top-down flavorful cards. We made this one. We

made the one about getting lost in the forest. What we're trying to do is just make some fun, build around the really top-down flavored cards. This one is, it's Sans. I'm pulling back a thing from the dead. So I get the token copy. It's like, it's dead. Oh, it's back from the dead. But it doesn't haste. I can't attack with it. What can I do? Why do I want to do this? So, this is a Johnny card. And the fact that it doesn't haste is important. A, white doesn't really grant haste, but B, this wasn't really meant to be an attacking

card. It wasn't like, I just keep pulling creatures from the graveyard to attack you with. Not that we can't make that card, but that wasn't with this card. This card was trying to do something more, because when I have a seance, you're immaterial. You're not, you know. You're giving me information or something. You're doing something, but you're not necessarily attacking. And so we didn't get this card...

The creatures didn't get haste specifically because we wanted you to sort of see what you can do with it. And I've seen a lot of very fun seance decks. It's definitely a card... I mean, it's not a tournament-level card, but it is a fun, build-around-me Johnny-ish card. And sets need all sorts of different cards, and it is a fun, build-around-me Johnny-ish card, and that sets need all sorts of different cards, and it's important.

One of the reasons that the psychic graphics exist in the first place is we want people to understand that there's lots of different types of players, and the job of us as design is to not just make one group happy, it's to make every group happy. We want every set to have something for every player, and it's not that every player has to like every card. There's, I got a lot of hate mail on this card because they're like, man, if this had just given the creatures haste,

it would have been awesome. I'm like, well, that's not what this card was. It wasn't an attacking card. It wasn't like every creature in your graveyard gets to attack one more time. That wasn't what this card was. And I'm not saying we wouldn't maybe one day make that card, it's possible,

but this card was trying to do something top-down and fun and was meant to be a Johnny Builder on, which I think it did a good job of being. Next, Secret of the Dead. 2U for an enchantment, 3 mana. Whenever you cast a creature card from your graveyard, draw a card. So this is another Build-A-Round card. The idea here

is mostly it's meant for flashback. There's a few things you can cast out of your graveyard that aren't flashback in this deck, but mostly this is a flashback enabler. It's like, okay, get this enchantment out, and then every time you cast a flashback spell, the flashback portion of it, you get to draw a card. And so it definitely...

One of the things about flashback is flashback doesn't necessarily... what I call a linear mechanic. It's not a mechanic that says to you necessarily that you need to play a lot of them. But there are things you do sometimes where you set yourself up for flashback that then say, hey, I do want to play a bunch of them together. And so there definitely is, there definitely is, we want, even on mechanics that aren't linear, we still want

to occasionally give you reasons to want to put them in one deck. And like flashbacks, flashbacks are the kind of mechanic that you could just literally have one Flashback card in your deck and it works just fine and does what you need and it's functional and you can use it. But we wanted the opportunity to also give you the ability to have more than one. Okay, next. Shriek Geist. Shriek Geist is 1U for 1-1

Spirit, and it has Flying, and when it deals combat damage, it mills two cards. And by mill, I mean takes the top two cards of the target player's library and puts it into the graveyard. And it does that to the damaged player. So the idea is I'm a 1-1 Flyer, and every time I hit you, I mill two cards. One of the things we had is because there were milling strategies that we definitely wanted decks.

Some of the decks wanted to mill yourself. Some decks wanted to mill your opponent. This is one of the cards that can go in decks. Some of the decks want to mill yourself. Some decks want to mill your opponent. This is one of the cards that can go in a milling deck if you want to mill out your opponent. This one doesn't actually let you mill yourself. You can only mill the damage player. So this really goes into a deck that's trying to mill out the opponent. And once again, we like the spirits doing kind of small mischievous things,

which I think this fits the bill. Okay, next, Sightless Ghoul. Three and a black for a 2-2 zombie soldier. It can't block and it has undying. So this is one of the earliest undying creatures we made. So it's 3B for a 2-2, dies into a 3-3. Okay, that's pretty good. You know, getting a 2-2 that dies into a 3-3.

It's hard to sort of judge. Because when you look out front, 3B for 2-2 is not particularly good. 2B for 2-2 is not particularly good 2B for 2-2 is not particularly good but you're not just getting a 2-2 you're getting a 3-3 when it dies now the funny thing is the reason it can't block is one of the problems we first made on dying

was it ended up being this very defensive mechanic that's like I put a 2-2 to block you with if you know I'll trade with you now I have a 3-3 to block with you to block you with and so one of the things we said is we want to make sure that this wasn't too defensive

the point of undying was it I have scary monsters don't attack it was I have scary monsters who and they're attacking the reason undying is good is because if you die you get a comeback and so one of the tricks

was trying to find ways to keep you from being too defensive with your undying creatures. Well, one of the ways, and this is something black does, is block has can't block. By the way, for those aspiring designers out there, a little thing. Remember, black and red, the way we split the difference is black has can't block, and red normally has must attack. It is something that from time to time, we'll find reasons where one might do the other, but usually when we go,

that black's more of the camp black, and red's more of the must attack. Okay, next is Skur's Dag Flyer. One black for a 1-1 human cleric. A cleric, not clerk. Human cleric. He has 3B attack, sack a human, destroy a target creature.

Okay, so he does something cool. First off, he's a human. So he's a 3B 1-1 human destroy target creature okay so he does something cool first off he's a human so he's a 3B1-1 I'm sorry he's a 1B1-1 that for 3 and a black you can tap

and sacrifice himself to kill something so in a vacuum you would play him in limited regardless because just the ability for him to be a terror you would use

but he's better than that if you can accumulate humans and one of the big strategies in Dark Ascension was we wanted you to make a black-white human deck that you could draft. And the reason you wanted a black-white human deck was because black really likes sacrificing humans. And so it's sort of like, gather the humans and then sacrifice them. Now, there is a white-green deck that's more of a go-wide human deck.

But this was a little bit different, and we were trying to play into the trouble that the humans are getting into. So there's a lot of flavor of one of the human decks in Dark Ascension was eating humans. Okay, next. Sorin, Lord

of Innistrad. So two white-black. He's a planeswalker. His first minus one ability is put a 1-1 black vampire token with lifelink onto the battlefield. His second ability, which is minus two, is get an emblem which says creatures you control all get plus one plus oh. And his ultimate, which is minus six loyalty, is destroy up to three target creatures you control. Sorry, destroy up to three target creatures and or other planeswalkers. And then each creature you kill, you return to play under your control. Sorry. Destroy up to three target creatures and or other planeswalkers.

And then each creature you kill, you return to play under your control. So essentially what it is is Black's version of a control magic. And he can steal creatures and planeswalkers. We have to do it the Black way. The Black way is kill it and then reanimate it. So we do it the Black way. But yeah, he's a vampire. He can lure you. He can get you into his direction.

So the idea is he makes vampires, which are good for sort of protecting him early on. He can then pump those vampires up with his emblem. And eventually, if he gets enough loyalty, he can start stealing things and use them against you. He was sworn with the face of the set. What that means is whenever we do a set, there's always somebody on the packaging,

and there's what we call the key art, which when we first sell the set, we show you that image. Like, we showed you this image when we had the, at Comic-Con, San Diego Comic-Con, when we first talked about Innistrad at the panel. At the end, we showed the name and the key art for Dark Ascension, which showed Sorin. He's wiping, like, the blood off a blade, which makes me always go, what's he doing with a blade? He's a vampire. He needs a blade? He should be, like,

wiping off his teeth or something. Anyway. It's an awesome picture, but I never understood the blade. Okay, next. Soul Caesar. Three blue blue for a 1-3 spirit that's flying, and when it deals combat damage to an opponent, it gets to transform, and then it becomes

a control magic, essentially. It becomes an enchantment, an enchanted creature, that you control and enchant the creature. So what happens is, I hit my opponent, then I turn into it, and then I can steal one of his creatures. I make an aura that goes on one of his creatures. So once again, Dark Ascension was trying to do new things with double-faced cards. The idea was, well, what if

we made a double-faced card that wasn't a creature on both sides? Obviously, the set's messing around. We always had artifacts and other stuff. But this was us messing with enchantment. And we liked the idea

of, oh, well, if there's a ghost, that it can possess other creatures. That's the flavor we were going for. Remember, the double-faced cards usually are us playing

into different tropes. So this trope is the idea of possession, of a ghost that takes over and possesses a creature. So the idea is, once the ghost gets over and gets near you and gets near your takes over and possesses a creature. So the idea is once the ghost gets over and gets near you

and gets near your creatures, it can possess a creature. And I thought it was a pretty cool card. Next, Stormbind Geist. One blue blue for two-two spirit, which has flying, but it can only block creatures with flying. It's what we call high flying. It's undying. So this is another example of we don't want creatures to block. How else can we make a creature with Undyne that can't block?

Well, high flying, which means you can only block flyers. Okay, well, he can't be too defensive. And also he's a 1-1, so in the air, not particularly good blocking in flying. And he can't block anything but flyers. So you're more in kind to want to attack with him. Okay, next, Strangleroot Geist. A lot of Geists. Green, green for 2-1 Spirit.

It's got Haste and Undying. So one of the tricks is usually when you see a green creature with Haste, odds are the developers think this card has a good chance of seeing Constructed play. This one did. And the reason for that is Haste is primary in red,

secondary in black, and tertiary in green. And what that means is it most often shows up in red. For a lot of design and limited reasons, we need black to be secondary in haste. But development needs green to occasionally have haste for constructed. So the deal we struck was, okay, we're going to make black the secondary color so in limited we can do what we need to do in limited, which is more of a design-oriented thing.

And then for constructed, which is a little more development, they have the ability on a few key green cards to put haste on it. So because they're not allowed to use haste very much, they tend to save it. So when you see a green creature with haste, odds are development thinks that creature has potential. Not that every, by the way, development thinking it'll say constructed means there's a chance. They do the best they can to figure out the environment,

but if they can completely figure it out, the public would figure it out overnight. So they make an environment that they have a sense of without completely cracking. Because if they could crack it, you could crack it, and they don't want to make an environment that in, you know, one day everyone figures out the answers. Next, Dromkirk Captain. One black red for a 2-2 vampire soldier with first strike. Other vampires get plus one plus one in first strike.

So this is the captain, the uncommon cycle of lords for the four monster tribes. Other than the emerald wolf, which is a wolf, the other three are captains. So what they do is they're all 2-2. They grant plus one, plus one to all the other of its type and then ability.

And then the way we tend to do it is it has first strike and grants first strike. It could just say all vampires have first strike, but then people got confused. It's easier to say he has first strike, he gives all other creatures first strike, plus he wasn't going to pump himself. So anyway, very commonly when we do lords and stuff, if we want them to grant the ability, we just give it to them,

and then they grant it. It flavor-wise works a little better. Like I'm first strike, and thus I grant First Strike to other things. And it causes a little less confusion, so you know what things do. Okay, next, Sudden Disappearance. It's a sorcery, five and a white. Exile all non-land permanents, target player controls, and then turn them to the battlefield under owner's control

at the beginning of the next end step. So this is Mass Flicker. I originally made this card for Zendikar. It was really good in Zendikar, just because Zendikar had all sorts of enter the battlefield triggers. Originally in Zendikar, by the way, it could hit land, which was important, because returning land means you could do all sorts of fun landfall tricks. Anyway, I guess in the end, when they made the card, it used to be cheaper. I think in design, it got kicked out of Zen

the card. I kept putting it in other sets. I put it in Dark Ascension. I think I originally made it like 3W, then development had to go to 4W, then it had to go to 5W, then they had to take off land, because flickering the land got you back mana that you could spend on the next turn. So anyway, the thing that's

sort of fun about the card is, and this is why I like flicker effects, is it does a lot of neat things. I can flicker my opponents, and the reason it's still end of turn is I can flicker my opponent's stuff to get rid of it, so I can attack, or I can stop them from attacking, but I can also use it on my own stuff if I have combinations I want to set up,

if I have ETB, you know, enter the battlefield effects and stuff. So it's a neat card that can do a lot of different things. I mean, I first made Flickering in Urza's Destiny. I originally made it as a vertical cycle. It got knocked down to one card. But it's definitely an ability that I'm a big fan of, and if you see the sets I make, I definitely try to put it where I can.

Okay, next. Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. One white for 2-1. Legendary creature, human soldier. She's got first strike and non-creature spells cost one more to cast. So she was, we make legendary creatures. For a long time we made

legendary creatures that were just kind of big. More Timmy friendly. And what we realized was, you know what? Spikes also like to play legendary creatures. It's fun. They too can get into the story. This is the hero of Thraben. I want to play Thalia. And what we realized was, you know what? Spikes also like to play legendary creatures. It's fun. They too can get into the story. This is the hero of Thraben. I want to play Thalia. And so they made it

an aggressive creature, the kind that you want to play in a deck. And they took advantage of the fact that it was legendary to make a card that they could push a little bit and know that you can't have

multiples of this in play. This card would get pretty mean if you could get multiples in play. If I get four Thalias in play and every nine creatures spell costs four more to cast, that would be pretty problematic. And so the fact that it's being a legend,

they took advantage of that to sort of craft a card they didn't want you to have more than one of. Okay, Thraben Doomsayer. One white white for a 2-2 human cleric. Tapped, put a 1-1 white human token on the battlefield. And Faithful Hour is other creatures you control get plus 2, plus 2. So the idea is this thing makes a little army of creatures.

And it's an hour of need. When things are... Oh, Hour of Need. That might have been the name. Hour of Need, but Faithful Hour, the design name might have been Hour of Need. Anyway. Hour of Need, but Faithful Hour, the design name might have been Hour of Need. Anyway, so the idea was I'm building my little army of human soldiers,

or they're human, they're not soldiers, but my little army of humans, and like, oh, at our darkest hour, at the Faithful Hour, all of a sudden, this little army of one-ones becomes three-threes. And so, once again, remember, the idea of Faithful Hour was to give you something that was useful, and that when you got near death, that it really helped you keep you from dying. And turning all your creatures into, you know, plus two, plus two, especially when you've been pumping them out with this creature,

really allows you to sort of get a line of defense that maybe you didn't have up to that point. Tracker's Instincts. Sorcery. One green, so two mana. You reveal the top cards of your library you put a card in your hand and put the rest

in the graveyard by the way put a creature card in your hand and put the rest in the graveyard flashback to you so this is a good example

where the way we overlap we do this a lot in hybrid where one color does the ability wider than the other so we do the narrower version since both colors can do the narrower version green is colors can do the narrower version.

Green is allowed to look at the top card bars and get a creature card. Blue can get any card. Blue can just impulse, and blue can go search the top of the library and do whatever it wants. But green can only usually get creatures or land, traditionally. And so, by making a creature card, okay, green can do that, and it's a subset of blue, so blue can do that.

That's a common way to do that kind of effect. Tragic slip, instant. Target creature gets minus one, minus one until end of turn, but for Morbid, it gets minus 13, minus 13. So interesting, originally this card was actually minus one, minus one, and at Morbid, it just destroyed it. It was just a terror effect. But for Aesthetics, and Aesthetics is important. One of these days, I'll do a podcast on Aesthetics. Aesthetics is very important. I like the idea that it opts to the effect. And I understood thematically that minus one, minus one versus a kill, they're very connected.

But we said, okay, let's just, instead of being a kill spell, make it minus N, minus N, and make it a number big enough that, look, it's going to kill almost everything. And then we realized we had a 13 theme. Awesome, okay. So instead of being destroy dark creature, make it minus 13, minus 13. It turned out, by the Okay, so instead of being a destructive creature, make it minus 13, minus 13. It turned out, by the way, that that mattered.

In two big cases it matters. One is, it matters for regeneration, because you can't regenerate off your toughness being zero or below. The second is, it's an answer for indestructible, because indestructible can keep it from being destroyed by destruction effects, but I believe when you lower a creature down to zero,

that doesn't save it. I don't believe Indestructibility will save it when it's zero to zero. Okay, next, Undying Evil. It's an instant for a single black. Target creature gets undying until end of turn. So this was our way of doing a cutesy kind of reanimation spell. And it's a cutesy reanimation spell that actually makes the creature a little bit stronger.

So really what it does is it regenerates the creature and puts a plus and minus one counter on it. But technically it gives it undying, so it gets to go away. It means that if there's any battlefield effects or death triggers, those all trigger. But anyway, it's a cutesy way to do a black regeneration. And whenever you can find a spell that can only be made in the set you're making it, undying only existed in this set.

There might have been a little tiny bit in Avacyn's story. But anyway, this is not an effect we could do any year. It's an effect we could do right here and now. And doing stuff like that is pretty important. Okay, Vault of the Archangel. It's a land. It taps for one. And then for two white, black,

you can tap it. A creature you control has Death Touch and Lifeling until end of turn. So here's something funny. Death Touch and Lifeling don't particularly have any real synergy with each other.

Death Touch wants to go on small things because it kills it no matter what. Lifeling wants to go on big things because it cares about all the power. But one has the word death in it and one has the word life in it. And we have found it tickles players to no end. They like those two abilities, not mechanically, but flavorfully, just somehow make people happy.

And death touches, I touch it, I kill. Lifelink, I sort of suck things out of you. Or in black, at least it can be. So anyway, it thematically goes together flavor-wise, the words kind of link up. It mechanically doesn't make a lot of sense, but it makes players happy, so sometimes you do things that make players happy,

even if mechanically it doesn't make as much sense. Okay, Vorapede. Vorapede is a green creature, 5-4 insect, for 2 green, green, green. So it's 5 mana, 3 of which are green. It has vigilance, trample, and undying. So it's five mana, three of which are green. It has vigilance, trample, and undying.

So it's just a big undying monster. And the nice thing about trample is that when it comes back with plus one plus counter, having trample on it means something nice. It also has vigilance. It's just us mixing matches and doing some cool things. Green is secondary in vigilance, so it's fun when we can find places to get green vigilance. Puttingilance on a big creature is pretty powerful

because it means you can attack with it and still have it back to block, which makes it pretty potent. And this is a 5-4 that turns into a 6-5 when it comes back, so it's pretty potent. Okay, next, Wild Hunger. It's an instant, 2 green, 3 mana. Target creature gets plus 3, plus 1, and it's trampled to end a turn. Flashback, 3 red. Another example where we want green and red to overlap, red does power pumping, but it does power over toughness usually.

It doesn't do square stats like giant growth and green does. And tramples both a red ability and a green ability. So by going plus three, plus one, okay, we tweaked it a little bit. Green tends to be more plus three, plus three, but red, so to try to make it feel a little bit more red, because green is a little more trampled than red, and green does giant growth a little more. Green tends to be more plus three plus three, but red, so to try to make it feel a little bit more red, because green is a little more trampled than red, and green does giant growth a little more than red, so we definitely made a reddish effect in Stuck in Green.

Okay. Almost to work, and I'm almost done, which is good. I'm in W. Wolf, Bidden, Captive. So that's a human for G for a one-one human, and it's essentially what we all call Root Wall. So for 1 and a green, you can give it plus 2, plus 2 until end of turn. But you can only use the ability once per turn.

Kind of has a built-in giant growth, this idea of Root Wall. The idea, the original Root Wall was it could blow itself up and make itself bigger. But we put this ability now on different types of things. Anyway, it's a werewolf, a human werewolf. Turns into a straight-up werewolf called Krallon Horde Killer, which is a 2-2, but for 3 and a green,

it gets plus 4, plus 4, once again, once per turn. So it's a 1-1 that for 1G gets plus 2, plus 2, that turns into 2-2. For 3G, it gets plus 4, plus 4. So everything doubles. So it goes from a 1-1 to a 2-2,

goes from 1G to 3G, so from 2 mana to 4 mana, goes from plus 2, plus 2 to plus 4, plus 4. So that, you can tell, that's the card of to 3G. So from 2 mana to 4 mana goes from plus 2 to plus 4, plus 4. So that, you can tell, that's a card that's designed, designed, the numbers all worked out, development plays like, okay, numbers work. Because development tries to keep the aesthetics when they can.

The rule is when balance will trump aesthetics. That they will change numbers. Gristleband is a good example where it really wants to be a 7, but 7 was too good, so it had to be an 8. And there's definitely examples, although I use that example all the time.

I think design actually turned it into an 8, by the way. I should not blame development on that one. I think design actually turned it into an 8. But anyway, it's an example where everything's a 7 and it's an 8, and the aesthetic's a little off. But sometimes for balance, it needs to be that way. Wolf Hunter's Quiver.

Artifact equipment for one. Equipped creature has tap, deal one damage to target creature or player, and it also has tap, deal three damage to target werewolf. Equipped for five. So this is repeatable. This is sort of a little team equipment,

you know, like Prodigal Sorcerer or Prodigal Pyromancer, where you can sort of put it on, and it's a bow and arrow, and you can just shoot bows and arrows. But it's not just any of it. It's a Wolf Hunter's Quiver, which means it's tipped in silver. Why is that important?

Because werewolves do not like silver. That's how you kill a werewolf. And so what we decided was it didn't necessarily just out and out kill werewolves, but it did more damage to them. It did three damage to them. And a lot of werewolves can be killed by three damage. And so the idea was if you have this quiver and your opponent has a werewolf, you're much better suited to be able to deal with the werewolves.

This is another card, by the way, that I think started in Innistrad that we knew we wanted to have silver arrows to fight the werewolves and just on space got pushed out, so I added in Dark Ascension. Working back-to-back, when I'm the person who's handing off, there's a lot of cards that we did in design that showed up here because I was doing the lead of both sets, so when I pushed it off from the one set, I was the person who knew I wanted to do it and made sure it got in.

Okay, next. Rack with Madness. So Rack with Madness is a 3R sorcery. Target creature deals damage to itself equal to its power. And so the neat thing about this is it's very good at creatures in which power is greater than toughness or power is equal

to toughness, but it doesn't kill things in which power is lower than toughness. power is equal to toughness, but it doesn't kill things in which power is lower than toughness. So it's very good at killing more aggressive things and harder to kill defensive things. It's a neat kind of spell. I definitely like it. Next, Young Wolf. So Young Wolf was, for a single green mana, was a 1-1 wolf

with Undying. Pretty simple. One of the things that's fun when you do a mechanic like Undying is you're always looking for lots of different things. And from the spectrum, you want the bottom of the spectrum, which is very, very simple,

up to more complex. And this is an example of, you know what? It's a nice, simple card. You can't get more simple than that. G for a 1-1 has Undying. You know, it dies into a 2-2. And G for a 1-1, okay, that's not particularly strong. But G for a 2-1 hasn't died. It dies into a 2-2. And G for a 1-1, okay, that's not particularly strong.

But G for a 2-2 is strong, and this 1-1 becomes a 2-2, so that's a pretty good card. And it definitely was made... I think this was made with... I think development definitely made this card thinking that it would seek constructed play, which I'm not an expert on this, but I'm pretty sure it did. I believe it did seek constructed play.

And we made it a wolf so that it could go into the werewolf deck. So that was all that we thought together. The werewolf deck really did want to have some low drops in it. And there's only so many werewolves that we could make that were one drop. So we made some wolves that could help supplement. Okay, finally, the final card, which is an awesome card. Actually, one of my favorite cards in this set. Zombie Apocalypse.

Three black, black, black sorcery. Return all zombie cards from your graveyard to your battlefield. Then destroy all humans. So this only brings back your zombies, but it kills all humans in play. I think it also kills your humans, although, hopefully building a zombie deck, you haven't put a lot of humans in your zombie deck. And so what happened was, originally, this was actually not one card, but

two. I had made a card called Zombie Apocalypse that returned all your zombies, because, once again, one of the strategies of the zombie deck was it wants to overwhelm you. Well, a good way to do that is what if I brought back every zombie you've killed this game, and they all come and attack you now? That's probably going to overwhelm you. And then

we made a separate card called something like Death to the Humans or something that killed all the humans. And when we turned over the design, they were both in design. And the development came to me one day and said, why do you think we combined those? Instead of being two separate cards, we just, the zombie apocalypse

not only brought back all the zombies, but killed all the humans. And I'm like, that, my friends, is a thing of beauty. So anyway, I gave my blessing and made, like I said, one of my favorite cards in the set. Zombie apocalypse. Whew! Luckily, I had a long ride in today.

I knew I had a lot to get done, because I didn't have enough to do two podcasts, and I knew I had to get aggressive to get in one, but I did it! Got to Z to the zombie apocalypse. I had a lot to get done because I didn't have enough to do two podcasts and I knew I had to get aggressive to get in one, but I did it. Got back, got to Z, to the zombie apocalypse. And so that, my friends, in four podcasts

is everything I have to say about Dark Ascension. Like I said, so far, you know, it was the, it's the first winter set I'd ever done.

I hadn't done a lot of second sets. I didn't even tie. I hadn't done a lot of, the second sets at all, small sets that follow big sets. And it was kind of neat. In some way, Absinthe Restored sort of resets things. So in the little block that was Innistrad,

I did both pieces of it, just like I'd done both pieces of Shadowmoor. So that was kind of cool, and I had a lot of fun with Dark Ascension. Like I said, it was a challenging set to do. I was really, really busy at the time. The Great Dinosaur 2 was going on, and it was a challenging set to do. I was really, really busy at the time. The Great Designers Search 2 was going on

and it was a crazy time for me. But I'm glad that I did it. I'm really happy with how the set came out. I think that Innistrad and Dark Ascension together are a really cool environment for drafting

and do a lot of fun stuff. So anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed my jaunt through Dark Ascension. And not next time, but the next set I get to is I will be talking about Avacyn Restored.

But anyway, I'm now parked in my parking space, 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.

See you guys next time.