Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #249 - Evergreen Keywords

Episode Date: July 31, 2015

Mark talks about the history of evergreen keywords

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so not too long ago for me, but probably a bit longer for you guys, I wrote an article called Evergreen Eggs and Ham, where I went through all the core sets and talked about the addition and removal of different evergreen keyword abilities and actions. So today I'm going to sort of do the podcast version of that article. I'll be able to give you some extra info because a podcast allows that. And I forgot one, which I will correct a mistake I made in the original article. It was a small mistake, but I did make a mistake.

Okay, number one. So let's start with alpha. Oh, well, actually, let's start with what is the difference between a keyword ability and a keyword action. So a keyword ability is a thing. It is usually something that is on a spell, usually a permanent, not necessarily always a permanent. I think you can have abilities on non-permanents, but mostly, pretty much for the purposes of these stories, most of them go on creatures. I think you can have abilities on non-permanence, but mostly, pretty much for the purposes of these stories, most of them go on creatures.

And then keyword actions, so keyword abilities are nouns. Keyword abilities are verbs. So they're things that you do, and they're different game terms. So what I want to do today is I'm going to go through each of the core sets and talk about how whatever green ability or action got added or subtracted. I'm only going to talk about the relevant ones. If nothing got added or subtracted, I'll skip it. But I'm going to talk about all the different ability

words and different keyword abilities and keyword actions that have been evergreen in Magic. There's a lot of them. But I will cover them all today, I hope. Okay. So, in Alpha, a lot of things were added. One, two, three, four.

There were six keyword abilities added. And one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. There were 11. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. I think 11 added. Okay. So, let's start from the beginning. Banding.

Okay, so banding. I did an entire podcast on banding. So if you really want to know more about banding, Richard liked the idea, especially in white, of a means by which little things could come together to help fight big things. And so he made banding mostly as the flavor of white is all about lots of little creatures that band together.

And so Richard wanted to capture that. Banding was, I think, mostly in white. There was one rare green card in Alpha, but it was mostly a white thing. First strike. So Richard also wanted to show the idea of things that were good fighters that either had some sort of speed or agility or some sort of ranged weapon, and that was First Strike. First Strike in Alpha showed up in white and black, I believe.

White Knight and Black Knight, I think, had First Strike. Eventually, it would drift over to red, become a white-red ability, but in the early days, mostly knights had it, so it was in white and black. Next is flying. Flying was probably the most, like, the game needed evasion. What kind of evasion could you have? Oh, some things can fly, and things on the ground would probably not be able to block things that can fly. So it was just a very natural evolution, and flying was, of all the ability keyboards added, the one used the most,

still the one we use the most today. It's just a very flexible, easy ability to use. In fact, flying is the... When I talk about vanilla where there's no keywords, we almost consider French vanilla flying like... It's almost like almost vanilla. It's that close to being vanilla. We use it enough and it's pretty simple

that it is the closest thing we have to vanilla in the French vanilla space. Landwalk. Well, Richard wanted to make sure there was enough evasion. So Landwalk keyed off particular land. So I think the first set actually had every single Landwalk. Alpha had every single Landwalk but Plainswalk. So it had forest walk and mountain

walk and swamp walk and island walk. He used island walk, by the way, to also sort of flavor things that were water bound. So things that sort of could swim through water. You know, if you had water, you couldn't catch them. They'd swim through your water or whatever. Next, protection. Protection was... I'm trying to remember if it was just in white. For sure it was in white in Alpha. Protection was a means by which you got protected. The funny thing about protection

is the rules of protection in the early days were really fuzzy. For example, in Alpha, at the time, or actually, sorry, in Beta, Circle Protection in Black was accidentally left on alpha, but was put into... was put into...

Oh, actually, not Circle Protection Black. All you need is Circle Protection... Well, the idea is having a black creature in protection from white. I guess... Oh, right, right. Sorry. Black Knight had protection from white, so there was at least a black creature with protection. Okay, so if you had Black Knight in protection from white so there was at least a black creature with protection okay so if you had

Black Knight with protection from white and you cast Wrath of God that destroyed all creatures in Alpha it didn't destroy the Black Knight because the way protection originally worked was nothing of that color can affect this in any way it was kind of vague, we're just like

I wrath, well it can't affect me and there were weird things like balance had this weird thing, what they used to call semi-targeted, where balance knew it was there for counting, but couldn't destroy it. Anyway, protection in 6th edition rules would finally get hammered out. But anyway, it was there to represent sort of, you know, that you can't be harmed by certain things.

And trample. That's the last keyword ability. Trample, obviously, I'm big enough that even if you sort of get something in my way, I will trample over you. Trample is interesting, by the way. One of the things people don't really think about is the word chosen for abilities. One of the things we like is we like the keyword abilities to be nouns because you gain the abilities and you have the abilities. It's funny, I think a lot of people, when you use a word enough, you stop thinking about

it, but trample is not actually a noun. You don't have the ability of trample. I mean, we think of it as a noun because it's a keyboard ability, but it's actually a verb, and so anyway, that's one of those ones like flying, if we had to start all over again, would probably be flight.

It'd be the noun version. I understand flying's a gerund, so it's sneakily kind of a noun. Um, but anyway, uh, those are the keyword abilities. Let's talk about the keyword actions. First, ante. So ante, I don't know, maybe one day we'll do a whole podcast on ante. Ante was, when Richard started the game, I've talked about this, that he really wanted to make sure there was flow because he didn't expect people to have as many cards as they ended up having.

And ante meant there was flow between games so the cards were changing hands so that just the environment kept changing as people's decks were sort of forced to change was the idea. Ante was not well received. Not at all well received. In fact, I remember when I was like

learning how to play the guy who I was learning how to play, the guy who was teaching me how to play goes, okay, we're not playing for ante. He's teaching me how to play. I don't even know what ante is, but we're not doing it. And early, early Magic, you would sit down and go, okay, we're not playing for ante. Very few people played for ante. Now, I did have a friend who had a store

who we used to go play at a store, and once a month would be ante night. We'd have to play ante. And I had this little black deck that was using all the black ante cards that was this very powerful deck that just didn't have all that much I could lose in it. So if I lost an ante, it wasn't super dramatic. Okay, next, cast.

This is a funny one, because cast... Well, we'll get to it. So cast, basically when you cast a spell, things that refer to when you cast a spell. Counter. Counter meant, like, I counter a spell. You know, to stop spells. I mean, Richard liked the idea of there being interplay

and that I could stop what you were doing, so the idea of counter spells came up. Destroy, where you had to get rid of things, so destroy was there very early. Discard. Discard, the idea of making you take a card from your hand and discard it was early. There was a lot of vague terminologies

in what destroy and discard. I think Alpha even had a few references where you were discarding something, meaning destroy it rather than discard it. But anyway, eventually destroy would mean take it from the battlefield and put it into the graveyard, where discard would mean take take from the battlefield and put it into the graveyard where discard would mean take it from the hand and put it into the graveyard. Okay, play. Originally

the battlefield was not called the battlefield. It was, well actually, you would play, you would put things into play and you would play spells. You would play land. I guess this is a keyword action, so this is not talking about the noun of the battlefield. That wasn't a keyword action. So this is like playing a spell, play a land. I guess this is a keyword action, so this is not talking about the noun of the battlefield. That wasn't a keyword action.

So this is like playing a spell, play a land. Cast and play were both used very early on, and later on they would clarify a little more what they meant. Regenerate. A lot of people think of this as being a keyword ability, but it's actually a keyword action. I mean, it was an ability in an early game, but still, it wasn't that... The creature had

the ability to regenerate. It didn't have regeneration, technically. But anyway, I'm splitting hairs. Regenerate was the idea of this idea that I can heal from things, or I can come back from the dead. In black, the idea was you kill a dead thing and it just comes back to life again. And in green was it healed real

quick. So black had regenerating skeletons, where green had regener like, regenerating trolls. So they were slightly different. Next, search. Well, if you wanted to go into your library and find a particular card, you had to search your library. So this is a way to let you be able to go find that.

I think the only thing you search is the library. Next, shuffle. Well, if you were going to mess with your library, we had to make sure it got randomized again. So whenever you searched, you would shuffle. Well, if you were going to mess with your library, we had to make sure it got randomized again. So whenever you search, you would shuffle. One of my ideas, which has never caught on, is the idea that shuffling should not actually be a game term, but be a rules term.

What that means is you say, whenever you go into your library, you know, whenever you search your library, the game just makes you shuffle. So we don't write it on the cards. It's just, searching the library comes with it in the rules, shuffle your library. But anyway, I can't convince people to do that, because they're worried that since we said it on

some cards, we don't say it on others, they'll go, oh, I guess I don't have to shuffle. Finally, two words, but they're related, tap and untap. So this is something that started in the beginning of the game. Note, the tap symbol did not start in alpha. The tap symbol didn't start for a little bit. But the idea of tap this or untap this.

In fact, there was no there was no tap symbol so early magic would literally tell you to tap it. Like as a costume say tap this creature

or whatever. The only exception was in artifacts there were different kind of artifacts and one artifact which was a mono artifact by default had a tap

even though there wasn't a tap symbol on it. One of the things you'll find when you look at early magic, I mean, magic has awesome things. Richard did, out of the gate, you know, hit so many things correctly, but there are a lot of little tiny things that we would clean up over the years, and a lot of it was just making things a little cleaner and clearer and having everything work the same way. Okay, so now we get to revised.

So in revised, we add two things. First, we added bury. So bury means destroy and you cannot regenerate. For some reason, we really loved hosing regenerate. I guess terror did it. Somehow it felt like it was just the thing blocked it and killed it, and then you couldn't regenerate. And so we made a word for it, which was

bury, which means to destroy and not be able to regenerate. It's kind of surprising we made a keyword out of it. I'm kind of surprised we did it that many times that we needed to keyword it, but we didn't. And the other thing that got added was sacrifice. So both bury and sacrifice obviously are keyword actions. There were no keyword abilities

added. Sacrifice, the funny thing is, Alpha has the card Sacrifice, yet the term Sacrifice wasn't in Alpha. Didn't show up to Revised. They definitely, like, they would just spell it out, you know, put a creature you have in play into the graveyard,

but the actual term Sacrifice wouldn't come to later. It became important because we use it as a cost. It's something that it became a little more formalized, which was good. Okay, nothing got removed from Revise. Let's get to 5th edition. Two things got added. One was Land Home.

So this was also in Alpha on Sea Serpent. And the idea with Land Home was there were creatures usually in blue. Usually Island Home was the most common, although there was a forest home creature, at least one. What it meant was if you had island home, for example, A, you could not be blocked if your opponent had,

I'm sorry, you could only attack if your opponent had islands, and this creature would sacrifice if you don't have islands. So the flavor was it was a water-bound creature, a sea serpent, right? And that, well, if you don't have islands. So the flavor was, it was a water-bound creature, a sea serpent, right? In that, well, if you don't have islands, it can't survive. It needs water to survive in. And if they don't have islands, well, it can't attack them unless it can swim there. And so the idea was, there's this weird restriction. It was flavorful, but the gameplay was not particularly good.

Because, A, you had weird things where it's stone rain, you're one thing, and then your creature dies, and it had this extra weakness to it, and then only being able to attack your opponent had the right thing. You know, I don't know. It's not that we, it was, it's not the kind of thing we couldn't occasionally do, but having a keyword would seem a bit much.

Anyway, but we added it. You'll see later we remove it. But anyway, we added it. Land home got added. And like land walk, it was land home, which meant fill in any land type you want. You know, you could make island home or swamp home or forest

home. I think island home and forest home were the only two we ever used, I think. Finally, next is the one I forgot in my article. We actually added rampage as an evergreen mechanic for a short time. Rampage for the first time showed up in Legends. And what Rampage said was,

whenever you are blocked by more than one creature, for each additional creature that blocks you, the creature gets plus one, plus one. So the idea was, if you had a Rampage creature, it was hard to multiply block them. The problem was, in Rampage, this is the only time Rampage shows up is in 5th edition and then it's removed

right away. The problem was it was so limiting. Just people do not block with more than one creature all that often. So right off the bat it had an ability

that doesn't happen that often. And one of the things we realized if we're going to do Rampage again the way I would do Rampage is just it gets

plus one, plus one for every blocker. Oh, it gets plus one, plus one for the first blocker, so it always matters in blocking, but A, it becomes extra hard to multi-block. Anyway, how I would do Rampage if we brought Rampage back. Okay, now

we get to 6th edition. 6th edition is when the 6th edition rules happened, so a lot of change happened during this. So for those that are unaware, the 6th edition rules were a major overhaul of the rules. In fact, the rules pretty much early on in Magic were a lot of case-by-case bases, a lot of band-aids, and we said,

okay, we've got to smooth this out. We've got to make the rules all work the same. And so 6th edition introduced concepts like the stack to Magic, last in, first out, and a lot of, like, it cleaned up how things work, how protection worked, and things like that. It did a lot of important work cleaning things up.

Okay, so four things got added. One, ability, and three, actions. Okay, so haste got added. So haste was in alpha. There's a card called Nether Shadow that's black, actually, that could come back from the graveyard and could attack the turn you came into play. So it could attack right away. Haste is something that we pretty much, like, we were using it kind of like an evergreen keyword.

It was being put on cards all the time. I think originally it would say, you know, card name is unaffected by summoning sickness. I think that's how we said it originally. But the term summoning sickness kind of went away, so then we said it can attack or use abilities if a turn is played. Anyway, we said, you know what, we use this all the time, we should just make a keyword out of it. So, I forget. The article I talked about, what is the first core set to have the ability.

So, the ability was added somewhere around 6th edition. So, 6th edition rules were Mirage era. So, I'm not sure if it got, it might have just got added during the 6th edition. So 6th edition rules were Mirage era, so... It might have just got added during the 6th edition rules. I'm not sure, but it's somewhere around there. Okay. Activate got added, so the idea that when you used an ability on a creature, that was an activated ability and you would activate it.

I think the term activated abilities might have pre-existed, but the idea of activate happened here. It's possible this is also where the term activated abilities came from. But anyway, all of a sudden you could activate something. That was now a verb in the game. Exchange. This was an ability that preexisted the word. Juxtapose showed up in Legends, for example.

But, I think, yeah, juxtapose was Legends, I'm pretty sure. Anyway, the idea was exchange just means that I have something and you have something, and we trade them. Usually you tend to exchange the same card type, not necessarily, but usually it would be like you and target player exchange a creature or something like that. Or that might be targeted for the creatures. But anyway, exchange came in. And the last one was reveal.

So the idea was if I, one of the things we want to differentiate is the difference between Look and Reveal. So Look just means you look at the top card of your library. Reveal means you have to show it to everybody else. Interestingly, Look is not considered a keyword action. It's considered English.

If I tell you to look at a card, well, look at it. But Reveal is a game action, which means you must look at a card, well, look at it. But reveal is a game action, which means you must show it to everybody else. The English word look means that's one of the things that can get confusing sometimes is there's some words that aren't technically keywords, keyword actions,

because they're just English words. But the difference between look and reveal is look, well, look, what do you do when you look in English? You take your eyes and you look at it. Reveal, though, had a more gameplay, like reveal meaning he had to show every other person in the game as game relevant. So that became a keyword action. Okay, a bunch of things got removed. First, banding got removed.

I've talked about this in my podcast on banding. It was just too complicated. There were just too many pieces to it. It worked different on attack than defense. It was just an ability that people did not understand. We removed it. Next, land home. We're like, what were we thinking? Why did we keyword this? It just didn't go in enough things to be worth the keyword. It wasn't that we could never, ever put that on a card, but we'd rather write it out than keyword it. It just wasn't worth the space of a keyword. You know, we only get so many keywords,

and it's not something we use much. Next. So protection and trample, I'll put a little asterisk there. It wasn't that they were removed from the game. They were removed from the core set. We didn't put protection or trample in the core set for a little while. We were trying to simplify the core set, make it easier to learn. For many, many years, the core set was our, or for most of the years of the core set, it was the route for, we wanted

beginners to learn. And so we did a lot of things to make it simpler. And so one of the things we tried right here was removing protection and trample. Next, Barry went away. And the reason was we were just hosing regeneration for no reason. Like, why do we do that? We're just adding extra words. Why can't you regenerate? That's the whole point of regenerate, so you can live through things. So we stopped writing out. And we're like, if we're not going to write it out, why have the word Barry? So we retired Barry. The weird thing about Barry is I get letters all the time going,

if you're going to bring Barry back. I'm like, we don't even use that phrase anymore. We don't destroy things without regenerating. We barely ever do that. So I'm not sure why people want us to keyword it when we don't even use that expression. Finally, cast went away. You no longer cast a spell. You played

a spell. They were trying to line up some of the things, and so they were trying to sort of you played a lane, you played a spell, they were trying to line that all up, so cast went away. Cast lovers do not fear. Cast will come back. We'll get to it. Okay, 8th edition. Fear got added.

So fear was another... It was an ability that showed up in alpha on the card fear. And basically what it said is, I'm scary. You cannot be blocked by black or artifact creatures. I'm sorry, you cannot be blocked except by black or artifact creatures. The idea is, I'm super scary

and, well, black things are they're used to scary things, and artifacts, they don't have too many emotions anyway, so black and artifact creatures could block you, but nobody else could. And nothing got removed in 8th edition. Okay, we get to 9th edition. 9th edition added a whole bunch of stuff. First, we added Defender.

So what happened was in Champions of Kamigawa, we decided to change Legend from a creature type for creatures to a super type. It was already a super type for non-creatures, so A we lined it up and B we didn't like having creature types that had baggage, rules baggage, and Legend had rules baggage, so in making the super type, we lined it up with everything else and we removed baggage. But there was one other creature type that had rules baggage, which was wall.

Wall at the time meant it couldn't attack. So what we did is, we made a keyword called defender. Defender said you can't attack. Made sure that every wall had defender. So we don't make walls that don't have defender. So every wall has defender. So even with the old cards, you see wall, there's no defender on it. You know as a blink statement,

walls can attack. And so we didn't change the function of any of see wall, there's no defender on it. You know as a blink statement, walls can attack. And so we didn't change the function of any of the walls. We just eroded them and then added defender. But it allowed us to now put defender on things that weren't walls. And it also meant the creature keywords carried no rules weight anymore. I mean,

it was a marker of things cared about them, but it didn't mean, oh, like one of the problems would be things that would grant, that would change card types, that when you could do legends or do wall,

you could physically, like, you could keep things from attacking or kill things by giving a legend and stuff like that. And so we got rid

of all that. Next, enchant. So another thing 9th edition cleared up is for the longest time, an enchantment didn't say enchantment on its creature type line if it was a local enchantment.

It would say enchant whatever was enchanting, enchant creature or whatever. And so what we did is we said, you know what? That's crazy. All card tapes should say what they are. Creature had the same problem. For a long time, it was summon whatever. We eventually changed that to creature.

And so we did, we said, okay, it's going to say enchantment. If it's local, we'll say aura, if it's an aura. So we'll say enchantment aura. And then we made, we said, okay, it's going to say enchantment. If it's local, we'll say aura. If it's an aura, so we'll say enchantment aura. And then we made a new keyword, essentially, which is enchant whatever, and we moved it from the car type line into the rules text box. So if you enchant creatures, not in the rules text, you say enchant creatures.

This is one of the few things where we, this added some words, but it was important because we wanted people to understand, to not get confused that local auras that were enchantments, things that affected enchantments affected them.

They were enchantments. Next, equip. So another thing that happened prior to 9th edition was mirrored in. So Chems Kamigawa added defender. Mirrored in added equipment, which we brought into prior to 9th edition was Myrden. So Chenska Magawa added Defender. Myrden added Equipment, which we brought into the

core set. And so Equip became an evergreen keyword. So Equip is just how you get equipment onto a creature. Next, Protection and Trample. We said, you know what? We can have them in the core set. We'll just put them in higher rarities. We won't put them at low rarities. So it hopefully won't be the first thing a beginner sees,

but eventually if they get enough cards, they'll eventually see it. You know, cards with higher rarities, you don't see as often. So the chance of it being the first time somebody sees it was always a lot less. Next, Vigilance. So Vigilance goes all the way back to Alpha.

Sarah Angel had Vigilance, but it was spelled out. And finally, we're like, you know what? We use this all the time. We should just keyword it. We were using it constantly and so we keyworded it. Next is Attach. This is the one keyword action. Everything else we added was a keyword ability, but this was a

keyword action. Attach was what auras and equipment do. We needed a verb to say, okay, it's not on a creature. I'm putting it on a creature. I am doing what to the creature? What am I doing? And we liked the idea of having a similar word.

So both equipment and auras are attached to the respective use of the creatures. You still equip equipment and you enchant enchantments, but when you talk about the act of it going on, it's attached. You attach it. And 9th edition removed no keywords, no keyword actions or abilities. Okay, so now we go to 10th edition. So 10th edition added four keywords. First it added Flash. This got added in during Time Spiral because we had a time theme. My goal, by the way, during Time Spiral was

to... I was trying to make Instant a super type. And I did not have a lot of success. I really tried to say, okay, let's just be radical. Let's move Instant. Sorcerers will become Instant Sorceries. But I was just a little too late. There's a little too much too many cards

that would say things that didn't quite mean what they said, but yet worked in the rules. So we didn't change it. But what we did instead was we created a keyword. This keyword can go on any permanent type. So you can put Flash onto Enchantments onto, I guess you can't put them on land, but you can put them on any other island for a minute. The reason you can put flash onto enchantments, onto, well, I guess you can't put them on land,

but you can put them on any other, not on land for a minute. The reason you can't put flash on land is you are not allowed to play land on your opponent's turn, and I guess you could put flash on land, but it wouldn't allow you to play it during your opponent's turn, and we believe that's so non-intuitive that we decided not to put flash

on lands. Maybe there's another reason not to put flash on lands, That's the big one I know. But you can put on creatures, on enchantments, on artifacts. We don't have the space to put it on planeswalkers, but in theory you can put it on planeswalkers if there's rules, text, place to put it. Okay, next.

Life link. Okay, so the next three, there were four keywords added in FutureSight in future shifted cards, because we knew they were keywords we wanted to add. So I decided to do them, put them as future shifted cards, and then, ha-ha, soon one day you would see these keywords, and then they would show

up. And three of the four show up in 10th edition. One doesn't show up until the next course. I'll get to that in a moment. First up is Lifelink. Lifelink first showed up... Oh, Flash, by the way. I forgot about this. Flash first showed up, I think, in maybe the

Alliances, is my guess? On Benelish Hero? It's possible it's earlier than that. It wasn't in Alpha, but there... The first card that did it, I think, was in White. It was a Knight that just popped into play. I think that was Alliances. Like Benelish Knight or something.

But anyway, it was an ability we started using more and more. Especially as we started doing more into the battlefield. In fact, there's certain end of the battlefield that you needed to do because essentially they're instant, so you would put them on with Flash. Okay, Lifelink. The earliest version of Lifelink.

Well, there's a card called El Hajaj that was in Arabian Nights, the first expansion that was probably the closest thing we have to Lifelink. Although the thing that really put it on the map, ironically, was not that card, even though it essentially is Lifelink, was there was a card in Legends called Spirit Link, which was an aura, which granted this ability a similar. The only difference between this and...

The difference between Spirit Link and Lifelink is Spirit Link, if you equipped a creature, you, the person who owned the enchantment, would gain the life. So if I put it on my creature, it would work very much like Life Link. I put it on my opponent's creature, it essentially negated their damage.

They do damage, I gain life. Essentially, I would equal out, so I wouldn't die. I would gain life at the same time they're doing damage, and wouldn't take damage. That's why, by the way, Life Link is not called Spirit Link because Spirit Link and Life Link are slightly different. That's why the card Spirit Link doesn't have Life Link on it. It's slightly different.

Okay, next is Reach. Reach is the ability to block flyers. This also goes back to Alpha. Giant Spider was in Alpha. This is an ability... The reason we keyworded this, interestingly enough, was A, we used it a decent amount, but B,

the rules team was trying to figure out how to write reminder text for flying, and what they realized was, if the ability to block flyers had a keyword, it allowed them to much simpler,

to say this creature may only be blocked by flying creatures, with creatures with flying and reach. Without it, you can only block a creature with flying or creatures that are able to block flyers. It was very awkward. Because then you're like, I don't get it. What other creatures, like,

you didn't realize necessarily that there was reach creatures. And so it's like, aren't flyers the one that can block flyers? It's confusing. But when you say, oh, can only be blocked my creatures with Flying and Reach, it's very clean. So in Future Sight, three of the keywords got added because I wanted them for design reasons. Reach got added more for rules reasons.

Okay, the final one was Shroud. So Shroud was also introduced in Future Sight on a future shift card. So Shroud means this creature cannot be targeted by anybody. Not by you, not by your opponent, not by anybody. The problem we have with Shroud, and by the way, when I first submitted Shroud, I really, really wanted Shroud to be called untargetable. My thought process was people already had to learn the word target, Untargetable. My thought process was people already had to learn the word target,

which, by the way, is not a keyword action because it is an adjective. It's a target creature. So I'm not sure what it is, but it's not. There's a bunch of words that get used, like dies and things that are not keyword abilities and not keyword actions. They are vocabulary, but I was just doing evergreen stuff, evergreen keywords and actions. So anyway, there are some things like target that exist. Anyway, I wanted to call Shroud untargetable because I thought it was, it wasn't, you didn't have to learn a new vocabulary word. You already had to know the word target.

And untargetable means, well, I guess I can't target it. I lost that fight, and so it didn't end up being called untargetable. Shroud, which I think might have hurt matters a little bit, because one of Shroud's problems was people kept acting as if it were Hexbrook. We'll get to that in a second, but anyway, Shroud. So Flash, Lifelink, Reach, and Shroud got added, which gets us to

Magic 2010. Okay. Deathtouch got added. This is the fourth one from Future Sight. Deathtouch, it kind of goes back to Alpha. Alpha had Cockatrice and Thicket Basilisk, which are not 100% Death Touch, but are very, very similar. They both had riders on them, so they couldn't affect walls.

But essentially, they did what Death Touch is. They damage something, and they destroy it. There were a lot of different versions. One of the reasons I really wanted to make Death Touch into they damage something and they destroy it. There were a lot of different versions. One of the reasons I really wanted to make Death Touch into a keyboard ability is we kept doing things

like it, but kept doing them differently. Like this one damages and kills it. This one, if not blocked, kills it.

Or this one, if blocked, kills it. This one, you know, there's lots of different ways it would work.

And so by keyboarding we lined them all up. And one of the things about making things with keywords is you just use it more. And so I like the ability. I think Death Touch is fun It does some cool work.

So anyway, it got in. Next, in Magic 2010. Magic 2010 was another rules update. Not as big as 6th edition, but significant. It, uh, damage got removed from the stack. Um, 6th edition put damage on the stack. Uh, 2010 took damage off the stack. Um, it added the, like,

words Battlefield and Exile. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm jumping ahead of myself. We'll get to Exile in a second. Anyway, it brought two things. So anyway, it did Exile. So Exile used to say remove from the game. And the problem was things that you remove from the game,

sometimes they're in hiatus. They were going to come back. Remove from the game when things will come back to the game is a misnomer. That's not remove from the game. It's still relevant in the game when things will come back to the game is a misnomer that's not removed from the game it's still relevant in the game so we changed to exile

which was a little clearer what it did was one word instead of three or sorry roof of the game instead of four and it was just

a cleaner example to do that cast had gotten we had removed cast during six edition rules we were finding as having play meaning tuning things was causing problems,

and so we brought cast back. You cast spells. You don't play spells, you cast spells. You can't, you play lands and you cast spells. If you do something that allows you to do either, you say play. So play can reference casting, but only in the larger context when you're talking about everything. If you're just talking about spells, you cast spells. And then the one thing removed from Edge 2010 was fear.

Its replacement, ironically, didn't show up yet. It will be coming up soon. But it didn't show up for a little bit. I'm not quite sure why it took... It shows up in 2014. I'm not sure why it took four years before it shows up. But anyway, fear went away. The problem with fear was we were trying to,

we like having use of our keywords in more than just one color. Fear was really locked in black. It didn't make any sense for other colors to not be black except by black and artifact creatures. So we removed fear knowing we were going to replace it, and we'll get to that in a second. Magic 2012. We added hexproof.

We removed shroud. So the people so there are people out there who really do not like Hexproof interestingly there are people that really do like Hexproof just

the more enfranchised players I think are a little more grumbly about Hexproof what we find is people who are a little less enfranchised who are a little not enfranchised

a little less experienced really really like Hexproof because it's very sad for them when you kill their creatures. It's like, you can't kill my creature. I get to have my creature.

You must fight my creature. And both Shroud and Hexproof, the whole idea behind them was just, you have to deal with them with creatures and not with spells

was the idea. But anyway, what happened was enough people were playing Shroud as if it were Hexproof. We said, okay, people just don't seem to think you're... The idea that you would hose yourself with Shroud, that you would make something that you couldn't target your own things.

So anyway, we moved to Hexproof, took out Shroud. We made some mistakes with Hexproof early on. We put it on some cards, like Invisible Stalker from Innistrad that were not fun. We learned that combining, um, putting it on, uh, things that combine with Evasion was very frustrating because the whole idea of Hexproof is, well, you got to block it with your creatures, and if you can't, then what do I do? I can't block it. I can't hit it.

So, um, we've definitely been a little more careful how we use Hexproof. Okay, Magic 2014. Uh, so this one's a weird one. It's the first core set to have Double Strike. Double Strike actually got introduced back in Legions, I believe.

It was a mechanic that was suggested for the very first You Make the Card for Mr. Babycakes, Forgotten Ancient. But the problem was, the person that suggested it was green. Green's not a first-strike color, so it definitely is a double-strike color. But we loved the idea so much that we then took it and we used it in the next set we had access to,

which I think was Legions. And so Legions has double-strike. And it's an ability we've been using ever since. This just happened to be the first core set that uses it, so I introduced it here. Indestructible! So Indestructible first showed up in Dark Steel, and originally it was just a word like in English, but people kept thinking that it was

a keyword, and there were some subtle differences between being a keyword and not, so we finally just made it a keyword because everybody assumed it was a keyword. Next, Intimidate. So this was a replacement for Fear. The idea was it was pretty much Fear, except it. So this was a replacement for fear. The idea was, it was pretty much fear, except it was fear that was specific for color. So if you went on whatever color you were on, you could only be blacked by things of your color or artifact creatures. In retrospect, by the way, we should have made it colorless creatures,

because people got really confused by colorless things that weren't artifact creatures, and they got confused by artifact creatures that were colored. So we should have, in retrospect, said, you can only be blocked by things of your color and colorless creatures. Fight is the one keyword action added in 2014. So fight was an action that said, my creature and your creature kind of get into combat. It's not technically combat, but I do damage to them equal to my power.

They do damage to me equal to their power. And then if we have damage, you know, we get killed. Interestingly, certain keywords work in fight. Certain keywords don't work in fight. That's caused a little bit of confusion. Like something like lifelink does count, but first strike doesn't. Okay. And fight, by the way, first got introduced, I believe, in Innistrad, I think, is where First Strike introduced.

Okay. And finally, we get to Magic Origins. This was the big news of the whole article. In fact, the funny thing is, we had sample decks that were going to be released, and we wanted to let the audience know there were changes in the keywords before. We wanted us to tell them before it became public through another means. And so, in fact, the reason I wrote this article is to explain

what I'm just about to explain. Okay, so, three things came in, menace, prowess, and scry. The first two were abilities, the third was action. And three things left, intimidate, landlock, and protection. So, some of these get tied together. So first of all,

Intimidate, the problem with Intimidate was it didn't work well in sets that had a strong colorless theme, like when Artifacts mattered, for example. It confused people. Then when you put on Artifact, people kind of got confused how it worked. When it had a lot of colors, it was confusing. Or not confusing, it was just really weak.

If I have a three-colored creature and I put Intimidate on it, well, what can't block it? especially in a set with lots of multicolored cards? So we kept not using Intimidate, and development didn't like it because it had this weird thing where the variance between how good it was could be useless to be crazy good, and they didn't like that much of a swing in the keywords. So we wanted to get rid of Intimidate. We were looking to find a different kind of evasion thing,

but something that wasn't, it wasn't like on or off, it wasn't like amazing or bad. It was just any deck, it would make sense in any deck. And the Goblin Wardrums, the ability to first show up in the dark, is something that we use from time to time. And we realized, you know what, maybe we can use this a little bit more. It's actually a pretty cool ability. We want to use it mostly in black and red. It makes sense

there. It has the same flavor that Fear and Intimidate do. It's just like, oh, wow, you're so scary. I'm not going to block you alone. I better go get a buddy. And so we added Menace. In fact, we were originally going to add Menace in Dragons. In fact, there's four of them in Dragons.

But we realized it was cleaner to have the corset where we introduce terms. And so we saved it and we just wrote them out in Dragons of Tarkir. I think there's four of them in dragons. But we realized it was cleaner to have the corset where we introduced terms and so we saved it and we just wrote them out in dragons of dark heroes. I think there were four of them. Okay, next. Landwalk had the same problem Intimidate did. The variance is just too high. It's either like I'm useless

or wow, you have trouble dealing with me. And so both Intimidate and Landwalk development had been unhappy with. They'd been using less and less. And so we're likeidate and Landwalk Development have been unhappy with. They've been using less and less. And so we're like, okay, let's just get rid of them as evergreen keywords. Prowess got added because we've been looking

for another ability for Blue. One of Blue's problems is most of its keyword abilities are all about, you can't block me. I have flying, and I have island walk, and I have unblockability and not technically a keyword. So one of the, and we added Flash in one proof, and it had

Flash in hex proof, but none of them are really relevant in combat, and we wanted blue to have a keyword that can mean something in combat. And we looked and we looked and we looked and we looked. Meanwhile, by the way, blue also had no overlap with red. And when we do things like hybrid stuff, it was problematic. So,

anyway, we ended up making this mechanic for Kanta Tarkir, which was in blue and red and white. And at some point, we're all like, this is a really fun mechanic. It's really interesting. It's got a lot of depth. You can do a lot of cards with it. And it's kind of neat, because it relies on non-creature spells. It's something that blue and

red have the least number of creature spells. And we're like, oh wow, we could just make this evergreen and put it in blue and second, you know, primary blue, secondary red, and wow, that solves all our problems that we've been trying to solve for years and years and years. The funny story about this is I'm very honest on my blog talking about things

we're looking for. You know, I've been talking for years about how we're looking for a creature keyword for blue. And I mentioned a long time ago that certain color combinations don't have an overlap. And so one of the things on blogs that they've been looking for all the time was, oh, is there a creature combat-related keyword that blue could have, that red could have? And wow, two birds, one stone. So when prize came along, people were like, wait a minute. And obviously we had seen the solution earlier.

It's the same thing we saw, all of you saw. And so you were really excited to tell me on my blog that you solved the problem. This was the solution. But I couldn't talk about it. I knew we had done it, you know. And so ever since Khan, people were like, we've done it, we've solved the problem. And I'm like, yeah, I know that.

It's coming, it's coming. So anyway, it are like, we've done it. We've solved the problem. And I'm like, yeah, I know that. It's coming. It's coming. So anyway, it's funny. A lot of people. So a lot of you figured out the same thing we figured out. I think it's pretty clear. And a good sign there was the right thing to do. So many people, obviously, were able to look and figure it out.

Okay, finally, we got protection leaving Scry coming. Let me talk about protection leaving first. So protection, it leaving, scry coming. Let me talk about protection leaving first. So protection, it's not completely gone. It's moved to what I call a deciduous, which is my term for any set is allowed to have it.

It's not restricted to sets, but we don't use it a lot. Hybrid is a good example. Minus one, minus one counter is another example. There are things that we like, we use every once in a while. Actually, minus one, minus one counter, I guess, is quirky that when you use minus one use every once in a while. Actually, minus one minus one counter,

I guess, is quirky that when you use minus one counter, you can't use plus one plus one counter. So, there's a little extra baggage to that one. But like, hybrid's a good example of, any set that needs hybrid can have hybrid. It doesn't have to be a special hybrid set, but we don't, hybrid isn't in every set. Protection's going to go to that route. When we really need it, it's something that we're going to use if we

really need it, but it is confusing. Protection actually is four different abilities. It's a lot like banding in that most people don't completely get all the abilities how it works, and it's very confusing when you teach people. So originally we were going to remove it completely, and then we said,

well, okay, we won't completely remove it. It does something very special that maybe occasionally we might need. Okay, we'll make it something that on rare occasion we will use. So it's no longer evergreen, but it is now in the gray deciduous area. Okay, finally, we added scry, the one keyword action we added. So one of the things we're always trying to do is have what we call card flow,

is make sure that you have access to the cards, that you're getting to see different cards. The reason card flow is important is we do have access to the cards, that you're getting to see different cards. The reason card flow is important is we do a lot of neat things in Magic where you want cards to interact. And in order to make that happen, you have to make sure there's some flow to what's going on. And so normally we try to sort of put a mechanic in the set that has some card flow to it. But the problem is there's just not that many really strong, nice, elegant card flow mechanics. And we eventually said, you know what? Why don't we just take one of them and make it evergreen so that we have access to it?

That we don't have to always find and add a card flow mechanic. That we just have this thing we can use when we need it. And Scry was the go-to. We kept adding Scry. Like, Scry, I think, got added to three or four sets. It just kept getting added. We're like, oh, we need a card flow mechanic. We need something elegant.

Like Theros. Theros in design, we didn't have it. Development got it. Oh, Theros has all these neat interactions, but they're not quite happening. We need some more card flow. What can we do? Well, Greeks preordained everything and had omens.

Okay, Scry seems like it fits, and we added Scry. And Scry just kept getting added because it just did such good things and so the idea was, okay, why keep beating around the bush and always have to reinvent the wheel?

Wow, it's flavorful, it's cool, it works well, people like it, it does everything we need to do, let's just make it evergreen. So we made Scry evergreen. And that, my faithful listeners,

is all the different keywords. We've, our evergreen keyword And that, my faithful listeners, is all the different keywords we've, or evergreen keyword abilities and actions we've subtracted and added. Oh, the one caveat that I also didn't mention, I had mis-rampaged my original article. The other thing I missed is cumulative upkeep was never in the core set, but

we did for a while treat cumulative upkeep like an evergreen mechanic, meaning it was in some basic set. So that's another thing you could count as for a short period upkeep like an evergreen mechanic, meaning it was in some basic set. That's another thing you could count as for a short period of time as an evergreen mechanic. Cumulative upkeep was, you must pay this thing on the first turn and then pay it again, but

you pay, like I just said, it's cumulative upkeep black mana. On the first turn you play one black mana. Second turn you play two black mana. Then you play three black mana. It kept going up. So the idea was, you'd put on something that you didn't want to stick around forever. Eventually, you wouldn't be able to upkeep it. The card Stasis, which was an alpha,

didn't technically have it, but kind of default because it didn't let things untap, had it. And then there was a card in Raven Knights that essentially was cumulative upkeep. I'm blanking on the name, but essentially was cumulative Upkeep. And then

it was actually a named thing in Ice Age. Okay. That, my friends, is all there is to say, I think, about keywords. That's all there is to say today. At least, I am parked. And now that I'm in my parking space, we all know what that means. It means this is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic,

it's time for me to be making magic. Thanks for joining me today, guys.