Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #243 - Avacyn Restored, Part 3

Episode Date: July 10, 2015

Mark continues with part 3 of his 4-part series on the design of Avacyn Restored.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so last couple podcasts I've been talking about Avacyn Restored, and I'm not done yet. So last I left we had gotten up to E. So we're going to start with E. Okay, so Emancipation Angel. So this costs one white white, so three mana total, two of which is white, for a 3- three angel that is flying and when it enters the battlefield, you return a permanent you control to your hand. So this is a little thing we do in white

sometimes in blue where the cost of playing something is you have to return something. But one of the things that's fun to do is make designs where there's a drawback but hey, the drawback can be, you know, used positively if you find ways to do it. And for example, in this set, there's a lot of comes-and-play triggers, there's soulbonds, there's a lot of ways to take advantage of things coming back into play.

And so this allows you to, for example, a real common thing you'll do is you'll play a soulbond early pairing something, a real common thing you'll do is you'll play a soul bond early, pairing something, and then when you play this card, you get to unsummon the soul bond and replay it, and then now rebond it to something else. Although I guess that's a poor example, because soul bond you can... Well, soul bond you could wait to do it until something else comes into play,

but if you've already bonded it with something, you could bounce it to rebond it. And like I said, there's a lot of enter the battlefield effects. There's a lot of different effects that are designed to really be useful to be able to bounce something. And so this is a drawback that is done in white and blue, which ironically are also the flickering colors. So white and blue definitely have a strong flickering

and bouncing sort of theme going on in this set. And in general, just more angels. One of the things we tried to do when we did the angels is we decided to try to get angels in all the different rarities. We took a different approach

with the dragons in Dragons of Tarkir, but we wanted to have common angels and uncommon angels and I think actually one of the things that made us change our mind

about dragons had a lot to do with how we did angels in Evas and Restored and that one of the things you want to be careful of is dragons had a lot to do with how we did angels in Evison Restored. And that one of the things you want to be careful of is when you're taking an iconic and trying to spread it out is you want it to still feel special. And it's tricky to make a common version

of it that still feels special yet feels common. And so we definitely made some, this one wasn't common, but we definitely made some common angels. Was this common? Maybe it was common. I don't remember. It could be common. It's a 3 Was this common? Maybe it was common. I don't remember. It could be common. It's a 3-3, so maybe it was common.

I didn't mark down rarity. Okay, next, Entreat the Angels. X, X, white, white, white. So it has two Xs in its mana cost, three white mana symbols. It's a sorcery, and you put X, 4, 4 white angel tokens, creature tokens, into play, and they are flying. They put them on the battlefield. And then Miracle, X, 4, 4 white angel tokens, creature tokens, into play and they are flying. They put them on the battlefield. And then miracle, X, white, white.

So it costs one less X and one less white. So the idea is, normally, let's say, for example, I have 8 mana, 3 of which is white. Well, if I have 8, or not 8 mana, sorry, 9 mana, 3 of which is white. That means I have 6 generic mana. I could spend 3 each for the Xs. So if I spend nine mana, I get to play three, four, four angels. Now let's say I have the same thing, but I miracle it out. So with the same nine mana, instead of making three angels, I'm making seven angels. So miracle really allows you to do a much bigger swing. And notice that it's an expel.

So late in the game, if you draw this late in the game, it could really turn the game around. That if you draw the Miracle and you need some help, all of a sudden you have seven 4-4 Flying Angels that really, really can help turn the game around. So this was one of the more popular Miracle cards. I mean, one of the stronger Miracle cards to boot. That correlation is probably very much on purpose.

But anyway, it was very popular. Also, it made angel tokens. I think we were, um, we knew we wanted to make some angel tokens, and I think originally they were making angels that were a little bit different, and then we decided to match it with the miracles, because it was kind of fun for the miracle to make angels.

Okay, next. Evernight Shade. So it costs three and a black. It's a one-one shade. For black, you can give it plus one, plus one until end of turn, and it has Undyne. So shades,

for those unfamiliar, are black creatures that always have the ability to pump them with black mana. Usually, shades start pretty small, but the fact that

you can pump them with, and you can pump them as many times as you want. It's not like a root wall or something you can pump once. You can pump as much black mana. And shades really, really encourage you to play mono black because the more black mana you have, the more powerful it can be.

But it always shrinks back down, so it always has some vulnerability. So one of the tricks of playing shades is sometimes you leap mana back so you can protect it if someone tries to do something to it. If someone tries to bolt it, you have enough mana to protect it. But if you make it too big on your attack, then you make yourself more vulnerable. Undying is interesting just because it changes the base stats. And so it was sort of a cute way to do a shade, try to make a different undying creature. Shades are interesting, by the way, in that

there's only a handful of creature types that we pretty much one for one tie to a certain mechanic. And shades are tied to the black for plus one, plus one. Every once in a while, we'll do the black plus one, plus one and not make it a shade. But I don't think we ever make a shade without it being the black plus one, plus one. But anyway, there's certain things.

Specters, I mean, there's a few things where we tie Trolls Tent of Regeneration. There's a couple things that we tie mechanically to something pretty consistently. I guess Spiders usually have Reach, stuff like that. Okay, next. Falcon Wrath Exterminator. One and a red for a 1-1 Vampire

Archer. When combat... When Falcon Wrath Exterminator deals combat damage, you get a plus one, plus one counter. The Slith ability. All the Vampires have this in their stride. Or most of them do. And then for 2R, you get a plus one, plus one counter. The Slith ability, all the vampires have this in Innistrad, or most of them do. And then for 2R, you can deal damage to a target creature equal to the number of plus one, plus one counters on it. That's why he's

an archer, by the way. He's a vampire archer. That's the archer part. Anyway, the idea is that as you grow bigger, there's some other thing that cares about the size of you growing bigger. And so in this case, for example, until you hit once, you can't use the ability. But once you hit once, okay, now you have that sort of a team ability,

prodigal sorcerer, prodigal pyromancer type ability. But it doesn't require a tap. And then, as you get bigger and bigger, it just gets more... And the synergy also is, if I'm trying to hit you and you have things in the way, the more I'm able to clear the things out of the way to hit you again, it definitely propagates itself. Okay, next. Favorable Winds.

It's an enchantment for one blue, one and a blue, so two mana, one of which is blue. Creatures you control with flying get plus one, plus one. So this is kind of a lord, but instead of a lord for a creature type, it's for an ability, flying. This is something we do every once in a while, we don't do a lot of, but this is definitely a card saying, hey, I think white and blue had a flying strategy, and this was trying to sort of play into that, that if you're playing a white-blue flying strategy, this helps you. It also kind of can help a spirit deck. You've made a spirit deck. Almost all spirits

fly, or most white and blue spirits fly, especially in Innistrad. Okay, next. Fervent Kassar. Two and a red for a 2-1 human knight with haste and it enters the battlefield. Targeted creature can't block. So this is one of those cards it's very, very funny that when you ask me the kind

of designs that I'm proud of, I'm proudest of, this is the kind of card that as a designer, like, when you, I think this is the first time we did this, and this is a really neat design, where it has the panic ability as an ETB, so when it enters the battlefield, it keeps something from blocking, but then it itself can attack because it has haste, and so it has this nice little synergy that if your opponent just has one creature, you can play this out, prevent them from blocking, and hit them. And one of the things that, like I said, in design, whenever you can make a nice, cute, elegant design and you haven't made it before, that is like the greatest moments in design when you've just done magic design for a long

time, is finding the nice, simple things you haven't done yet. Because those are truly, is finding the nice, simple things you haven't done yet. Because those are truly, I mean, as time goes on, as we've made 15,000 cards, there is not a lot of nice, clean, elegant things out there. There's some, and when you make new mechanics, you get to carve new space. But finding, like, we could have made this card for the last 20 years, but we didn't,

or at the time it wasn't quite 20 years. But, you know, we could have made the card, but we hadn't. And go, wow, this is a really good card. So, you know, it's one of my favorite cards in the set just from a pure elegance of design standpoint. And obviously it's something we like enough that we have done a bunch of it since then. We really like it.

Okay, next. Flowering Lumberknot. Three and a green for five, five tree folk. And it cannot attack or block unless it is bonded. Bonded is what Soulbond does. Or, sorry, it's paired. I think it's paired. This is paired. So, the idea of this card was it is a soul bond enabler. Basically, this card is useless unless there's soul bond connected to it. But if soul bond is connected to it, it's a 4-mana 5-5. And if you're connected to it, okay, something about it is better because you get an ability for being paired.

So previously, for example, I was talking about the 3G-2-2. So imagine I manage to play my 3G-2-2, or I play the Lumbernaut first, let's say, and the next turn I play that. Then all of a sudden, I have a 4-4 and a 7-7. That's a lot of two pretty hefty creatures for eight mana over two turns. So what we do is every once in a while, we like to make a card

that we call Floats, which says, I have a very specific purpose, I'm trying to enable a certain strategy, and so I will be so much more valuable to that strategy than other strategies that the people who need me will most likely get me. Now, people can hate this card, but this is not a card you're playing unless you have some soul bond in your deck. And so the idea is the person who prioritizes soul bond will take this higher.

Now, you want to be careful. If too many things float, then what happens is it gets segmented. Like everybody has their deck and only they want the cards for their deck and then you keep playing the same deck. So you want a lot of overlap. You want a lot of cards that different decks want so that there's different people fighting over different cards and that there's different strategies you can use. But you want a few floating cards just to help sort of convince people to try certain strategies because if people believe strategies are going to get

eaten up real quickly and they won't be able to get any cards for it, they're less encouraged to try to do it. So there's a balance you want to reach. The Gallows at Willow Hill. Okay, so this is an artifact that costs three. So it's three and tap. Tap three untapped humans you control,

and you get a destroy target creature. Its controller gets a one, one white spirit token, creature token, with flying. So the idea is, this was a top-down card. Creative wanted to have a gallows, I guess. And so we top-downed a gallows. And the idea is, well, you need to have a bunch of humans to sort of run the gallows.

That's why you need all the humans. And the idea is if the humans get together, they can exact justice, but they need to sort of get together to do that. And sort of playing into some of the themes, the idea is when you kill the thing, it becomes a spirit, and the opponent gets a little spirit in exchange.

This is one of those cards, by the way, we did a lot of top-down design in Innistrad and Dark Ascension, and by the time we got to Avacyn Restored, we had used up a lot of the tropes, plus we were sort of shifting out of the gothic core a little bit because, you know, it was becoming a little sunnier.

But we wanted to make sure that we had some top-down stuff. So this is one example of some top-down stuff we did. We were like, okay, you know, we had some top-down stuff. So this is one example of some top-down stuff we did. We're like, okay, we wanted some top-down of humans' retribution sort of things. And so Gallows made a lot of sense. Okay, next, Galvanic Alchemist. So two and a blue, three mana, one of which is blue, for a 1-4 human wizard. It has Soulbond, and when it pairs, it has two you untap this creature. So this was definitely a combo piece. So some of Soulbond

just made creatures better. It's like, pair it with creatures, pair it with your best creature, make your best creature better. Some of them, though, said, okay, I'm a little combo-ish. I allow you to reuse tap abilities. So what you want to do is you want to pair me to something with a tap ability. And this definitely was something

where, in Limited or even Fun Casual Constructed, you could use this card and come up with fun things to something with a tap ability. And this definitely was something where in limited or even fun casual constructed, you could use this card and come up with fun things to do with it. Okay, next. Gang of Devils. So Gang of Devils costs five and a red for a 3-3 Devil. And when it dies,

it deals three damage divided any way you want among any number of creatures or players. So it's kind of like an arc of lightning when it dies. And the idea is that this is a tough creature to deal with because it's a 3-3 creature. You don't want it to hit you. But if you kill it, it does a bunch of damage.

And notice that we like to tie... Whenever something does damage, we tend to tie it in some way so it's thematic. Here, if a damage is equal to power, that's a very normal thing for us to do. But the idea is, there's a bunch of devils, I guess three. Hopefully there's three in the art. And the idea

is, each of the devils has its last little moment if you manage to get rid of it. So if you get rid of the devils, each one gets its own little sting, and there's three of them. And so it gets to do the three damage. Okay, next, Ghost Form. Ghost Form is a sorcery, costs one blue. Up to two target creatures are unblockable this turn.

So we get into another theme of the set, which is part of showing teamwork was we did spells that affected two things. Sometimes more than two, but at least two. And the idea is I want to have an army I'm putting together, and then I have spells that help boost, that encourage me to play multiple creatures because I have multiple things.

This was done in contrast to the loner mechanic where the creature has to be played by itself. So these cards say oh, I'm no useless if you're playing by myself. Now, loners in black and these were the other colors, so they're kept in separate colors,

but just kind of thematically to show the different sides. And then ghostly flicker, same kind of thing, two blue, so two and a blue, three mana for an instant, and you instant flicker up to two target artifacts, creatures, or lands. So it allows you to reset things, to save things, to re-trigger, enter the battlefield effects. Because you can do lands, you actually can get mana back out of this. Although that's, I mean, it allows you if you, it can allow your spells to only cost one mana if there's some reason you want to untap lands.

And sometimes lands can have things on them, and there's sometimes reasons. And I don't know how limited it works, but with mana-flat-ish effects also, it allows you to generate mana. Okay, Gisela, Blade of the Gold Knight. Four red, white, white for 5-5 Legendary Angel. So this is Blossom,

I believe, of the Powerpuff Girls. So she has flying, first strike, and then all damage she all damage you do by any of your sources is doubled. All damage done to you or any of your things is halved. And so the idea is she messes with damage.

And so she doubles your damage, and she halves your opponent's damage. One of the things that was fun, I believe I made this card, was I was trying to mess around with how to make a red angel, and I wanted an angel to be protective, but how does red get protective? And I came up with the idea that, well, if she doubles your damage, it would thematically make sense that she has the opponent's damage. Now, the red does not

traditionally have opponent's damage. It's not something red does a lot of. But like, well, it's a red-white card, so what we'll do is the red part gets to be the double damage, the white part gets to be the have thing, and they somatically tie to each other. So it feels like a red card, but it also has the white component. Obviously it's a red-white card, so

I liked the... it had a nice sort of mirroring to it. Okay, next. Golden Knight Commander. Not Good Knight. That's a book for little kids in... Little kids in Innistrad read Good Knight Commander. But anyway, Golden Knight Commander. That's a magic card. Three and a white for a 2-2 human cleric soldier. Whenever another creature enters the battlefield, all creatures you control get plus one, plus one to end the turn. So the idea is, every time you get a new reinforcement,

your whole company gets charged up. Yay, another person to help us! I'm going to fight a little bit harder. And so this is another card that just sort of says, hey, it plays into a white weenie type strategy. It's like, just play a lot of creatures and then attack with your creatures. And that really plays into that.

Okay, next, grave exchange. Four black black sorcery. You return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand. And then target player sacrifices a creature. So this is one of the things, sort of aesthetical thing, aesthetics that I like in design. Is the idea is, one creature is going to go from the graveyard out of the graveyard, and one creature is going to go into the graveyard. That you're rescuing one graveyard, you're rescuing one creature, and you're putting

another one there. And so the grave exchange is sort of like, you're exchanging. Instead of this creature in the graveyard, that creature will be in the graveyard. It's sort of the flavor going on. I think when we originally made this, it might have reanimated, because that is more of a direct parallel, but it's possible the development was just too strong, and they had to weaken it. That's my guess. Okay, next. Grizzlebrand.

The demon, legendary demon. So Grizzlebrand. Four. Black, black, black, black. So it's eight mana. We'll get to that in a second. Four generic, four black. Seven, seven, Legendary Demon. Flying, lifelink. Pay seven life. Draw seven cards.

So this card is very powerful. So powerful that, like, it's showing up in Legacy. Probably even Vintage. It's a very powerful card. Because the ability to draw seven cards for seven life is very powerful. Especially when it has lifelink, meaning every time it hits another player, for essentially

you can draw seven cards, because it gains you seven life. So every time you hit somebody, essentially you get to draw seven cards. If you don't want to gain life, you can just turn it into cards. But you don't even need to do that. You can just, the second you play it, draw the seven cards. So it's very valuable.

It has a nice little demon feel in that it doesn't let you do one for one. You sort of have to pay a lot of life, but you get a lot of cards. So one of the big controversies about this card is it's a 7-7 demon, that you pay seven life, you draw seven cards, and it's converted. Man, it costs is eight. So, this card was turned in at eight by design. It was not changed by development. This is not

development's fault. Development did not take a seven and turn it into an eight. I don't know why. I mean, the problem with why is, even with I mean, the card already has four black mana. It's not like you could add more black mana and really make it that much harder to cast. You're not really playing

Gristlebound outside of a mono-black deck, so five black, six black, whatever. At that point, it doesn't really matter, and so I think the card is strong enough it needed to cost eight mana and just couldn't cost seven. It's possible we figured that out during design and then just got turned over and development was like, yep, that's right. But anyway,

that is why. So aesthetics, by the way, I always talk about how important aesthetics are. The thing I find interesting is how players really, really bristle when aesthetics are off. And this card's like everything's a seven, but one thing, the amount of mail I've gotten, people are like, what's going on?

You know, that the audience objectively sees it as a mistake. You have made a mistake. Clearly it's a mistake. Not even like, why'd you do it? It's more like, you made a mistake. I've gotten a lot of letters like that. And one of the things I explain is, aesthetics are important, but in the end, gameplay is

going to trump everything. If the card's broken at the wrong cost, we're not going to cost it at the wrong cost, just for aesthetics. And that was going on with the Gristle brand. Okay, next. Harvester of Souls. So four black black for five five demon. It is death touch. Whenever another non-token

creature dies, you may draw a card. So there's definitely some suffering toward drawing cards here. Death touch is not so much. It's more for flavor. It's a five five demon. It's not like it can't kill most things. Occasionally it matters, but it's more there

for flavor. We wanted our demons to feel demon-y, and so sometimes just adding a word that doesn't take a lot of space, but adds some flavor to it, like, oh, Harvester of Souls, he's deadly. It says non-token creature, by the way, because it's just broken tokens. Whenever we say non-token, there's usually a developmental slash design reason why tokens would cause a problem. That's why we say non-token.

It's not really a flavor thing. Tokens are creatures as much as anything. If a demon wants to eat somebody, I mean, tokens are flavor-wise just as much creature as anybody else. Okay, Havangul Vampire. Three and a red, so four mana for a 2-2 vampire. Whenever it deals combat damage, you get a plus one, plus one counter. Whenever another creature dies, you get a plus one, plus one counter. So this is interesting.

It has the slith ability that many of the vampires have. It also has... So in Arabian Nights, in black... What was the name of this creature? I'm blanking on his name. El Hajjaj. There was a creature who, whenever something died, it got a plus one, plus one counter.

And it's an ability we've mostly done in black. Because vampires were a black-red thing, I think we decided it was okay here to bleed just a little bit. Normally this ability is done in black. We have done a cycle of it. In Shards of Lara we did a cycle. Or not a cycle. In Grixis, three of the cards in Grixis

did it. So Red's done this once before. So, I mean, it's a stretch, but it's not a... I mean, it's something we do on occasion, although it's much more black ability. Okay, next. Herald of War. Hey, Herald. Herald of War. Three white, white, three, three angel.

It's flying. When it attacks, it gets a plus and plus one counter. And then angel and human spells cost one less for each plus and plus one counter on this. So you'll see there's another thing we play around a little bit here. It's the idea of building up counters and caring how many counters there are. And once again, you'll notice a lot of times where we have human tribal, we'll add in angel tribal. and once again, you'll notice a lot of times where we have human tribal, we'll add in angel tribal there's some angel tribal

sitting by itself, but a lot of the angel tribal is connected to the human tribal to try to play on the idea that they're on the same side, that the angel and humans are working together, that they're a team holy justicar holy justicar, Batman three and a white for a 2-1 human cleric

two white tap, tap target creature if it's a zombie, you exile it. So that is us doing clerics straight out of Dungeons & Dragons. Turn undead, I believe is the spell. So one of the things clerics are supposed to be good at is dealing with the undead. And we're playing in that trope space. We're like, okay, why don't we have

a cleric that can turn the undead? So that's what's going on here, which is, essentially it taps things, but if it's a zombie, sorry zombie, bye-bye. Homicidal Seclusion. So it's an enchantment for four and a black. If you have exactly one creature in play,

that creature gets plus three, plus one, and lifelink. So this card can be pretty potent in the right place. Turned out that the loaner strategy was difficult to do in limited, not impossible, or I guess in draft. Not impossible, but definitely hard to do. But cards like this really made it worth your while.

If you can get a homicidal seclusion out, wow, it really said, okay, let's play one creature for a while and see what we can do. Because your opponent has to deal with the creature. It's like, I put it out, I have a giant, powerful, you know, even a 1-1 turns into a 4-2, a 4-2 lifelinker, your opponent can't just not, they can't just ignore that. You know, they have to deal with it. And most creatures are going to die to a 4-2 lifelinker, right?

So if it turns your 1-1s into things that kill most creatures, and if they don't block it, just gets you, you know, tons of life, it really makes things threatening. And so the loner strategy, the key to making it work, is making you want to be aggressive with it so your opponent goes, okay, I have to deal with this. And if they kill it, then you get to play your next creature because you're hoarding creatures to try to only have one at a time.

Okay, next, Hound of Gristlebrand. Two red red for a 2-2 elemental hound. It's got double strike and undying so one of the things you always want to do with undying creatures is you want to make it relevant that comes back with a plus one plus one counter so what you want to do there is make things where power matters

or toughness matters, power matters easier to do so double strike is a nice clean simple way it's a keyword ability that doesn't take up much space that very much cares about power. And so this creature, for example, normally can do up to four damage if unblocked. But once it comes back from Undying,

now it does six damage. So Double Strike and Undying make a nice combo. Next, Human Frailty. Black instant. You destroy target human. So one of the things you want to do is find the right place for things. There's a strong human-centric thing going on here.

Humans are particularly well. You want to make sure that the other decks have some answers to this. Black, we say, okay, black does hate humans. It's flavorful, you know. And the monsters can still get rid of all human. Maybe they'll have trouble getting rid of all the humans. So this was a nice, simple little card that we can make. In this particular set, where there were so many humans,

and the humans were so strong, it was a nice little card we can make. One of the goals I talk about this all the time is, you want to be able to make cards that you can make here that you can't normally make in a normal set. And that would be tricky to make that in a normal set. Usually there's not enough humans probably to warrant it. Or the theme of humans

is not strong enough. But in this set, it's all about humans. Human tribal is very strong. And there's a lot of humans. So it really, it's a card that can be made here that's very flavorful.

And that's the ideal, that's the kind of card you really like to have. It's like, it's hard to put it elsewhere. It's really easy to put it here. Okay, let's put it here. Next, Infinite Reflection.

Five and a blue for an enchant aura. When you enchant this, all other non-token creatures you control become a copy of enchanted creature. And that's true. And when things come into play, they also become copies of it. So when you play it, it makes everything, and then when things come in, they also copy.

It says non-tokens because tokens would break it. The idea is you can just turn everything into, you know, pick your best creature and turn everything into that creature. That is the flavor of this. And it's pretty cool. As a man who loves cloning,

this is the kind of card that I enjoy making. I'm not sure I made it, by the way. It's the kind of card I very, very well could have made. It's the kind of card that... I definitely have made cards like this in the past. And there's a good chance I made it, by the way. It's the kind of card I very, very well could have made. It's the kind of card that... I definitely have made cards like this in the past. And there's a good chance I made this card. I was on the team.

But I don't... By the way, when I say I think I made this card, isn't that people... Like, I make a lot of cards. I make a lot of cards. And so I know the kind of cards I like to make. And even if I remember making the card, sometimes I made the card, it went in a different set,

never got made, and somebody different made this card. Like Bisho Menace, the Cone of Creatures, makes a 1-1, a 2-2, a 3-3. Perfect example where I made the card, I tried to get it in, I tried to get it in multiple times, and when it finally got in, I didn't even make it that time. So, this is the kind of card

I could have made, I probably made, but I don't definitively remember. Next, Joint Assault. It's an instant for one green. Target creature gets plus two, plus two. If paired, the other creature also gets plus two, plus two. So the idea is, this is a card that you might play. It's a giant growth. It's a little weaker than giant growth. But, if you happen to have Soulbind in your deck, if you have a paired creature, it's better.

It does four damage rather than two. So this is kind of like Flowering Lumberknot, but not quite as... Like, it'll float a little bit because this card's more valuable to a Soulbond person, but it's not useless to someone who's not playing. You know, other people will take this card. Giant Growth is valuable. And so, you know, if you're playing things, you've got to take this a little bit early because eventually it will get taken by somebody else. But maybe you prioritize it. You know, to you it's plus four, plus four, so got to take this a little bit early, because eventually it will get taken by somebody else, but maybe you prioritize it.

To you, it's plus four, plus four, so you might take it a little bit earlier. Okay, Kessig Malcontents. Two and a red for a 3-1 human warrior. When it enters the battlefield, you do damage to target player equal to the number of humans you control. So one of the things we tried really hard to do was we wanted to do a lot of human tribal, and we wanted the human tribal to be different

in different color combinations. So one of the things that red does is red is playing a very aggressive dex where it uses humans to help it win faster. And so in red, one of the reasons you want to spill out lots of little tiny humans is red can punish people.

Red tends to do aggressive punishing. Damage is a very good red way. So the idea is, in a human dex with red-white, you are going for aggro. You're trying to do aggressive punishing. Damage is a very good red way. So the idea is, in a human deck with red-white, you are going for aggro. You're trying to finish them off. And this is a perfect kind of spell. It's like, oh, I got them pretty low. I have a lot of humans in play. Oh, this could be the finisher card. So this definitely

is trying to encourage you to play a more aggro human strategy if you're going to go... When I say red-white, red-white is the most obvious place to go. It could be red with another color. Just white has... Red and white tend to pair up to make aggro. And white has lots of small, tiny creatures, which play well with the spell.

So this, I think, spell really is made to try and encourage you to play red-white. Next, Killing Wave, XB Sorcery. For each creature, its controller must either pay X life or sacrifice it. So this is kind of a big black kill spell, but with an out. The idea here is, once again, of playing into the loner strategy. If I have just one creature,

well, maybe I'm willing to pay, you know, I'm willing to pay my life to save that one creature. Where if my opponent has lots of little creatures, wow, it's not particularly easy for them, it's not worth it while saving anything. So this is a good example of a spell that, like, plays into the black theme and against the enemy theme, which in this case is everybody else.

And it's pretty flavorful. Okay, next, Lightning Prowess. It's aura, two and a red, three mana, for an enchantment that's an aura, enchanted creature has haste, and has the prodigal pyromancer ability, tap, deal one damage to creature or player. And so the idea is just mixing and matching.

We've done, you know, red gives haste on auras, red gives the prodigal pyromancer on auras. Just kind of combine them, make something a little bit different. One of the things that we're always trying to do is just mix and match things and make combinations we've never made before. I don't think we'd ever made this combination before, which is why we made it now. Okay, next. Lunar Mystic.

So Lunar Mystic is a blue spell. It costs two blue blue. And it is... What is it? Hold on one second. It is a 2-2 human wizard. Hold on one second. It is a 2-2 human wizard.

When you cast an instant spell, you may pay one to draw an extra card, or to draw a card. So the idea is that it turns all my instants into cantrips for one. One of the themes, I think of blue-red is my guess, that there was an instant sorcery theme of trying to encourage you to play instants and sorcery. This particular card encourages you to play instants,

not sorcery necessarily. But we like mixing it up and making different cards. In a limited deck, this can go in an instant sorcery deck. But in a constructed, you can actually build directly around instance

and not necessarily do sorceries. Okay, next. We get up to M. I've just pulled into work. So maybe I will stop for today since for some reason I will stop for today. For some reason, I like breaking up letters. It's the aesthetic of me, of the cleanness.

So when we pick up next time, we'll get to M. So obviously, we're chugging through. We started today at E. We got all the way through L. So each time, I'm doing more letters than the time before. One of the things you find very interesting, by the way, is the alphabet is not equal. If you actually look at magic sets, it is not like halfway through the alphabet. You're halfway through the cards.

The early letters tend to get a little more representation. Some of the later letters just there's a lot less Q's and X's and Z's and things at the end of the alphabet. So the end of the alphabet is not quite weighted equal to the beginning of the alphabet.

Which is my way of saying that I think I'm about half done, maybe slightly more than half done. My predictions will have probably two more podcasts, maybe three. But we shall see. Anyway, I hope you guys are enjoying the Avacyn Restored walkthrough and talk about all the different cards. It was a fun design, and it's neat looking back. I forgot how much we played up the two sides,

the loner strategy versus the team strategy. We clearly did it. And it's fun when you look back on sets sometimes that you have themes that are really strong. And at the time, you made them strong. And you sort of forgot about how strong you made them. And then when you're digging in deep, you're like, wow, it's really here. Oh, yeah, it's screaming from the rooftops.

I've forgotten how strong. I mean, normally we do that. With time, things fade. So anyway, I am now 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. I'll see you guys next time.