Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #259 - Khans of Tarkir, Part 5

Episode Date: September 4, 2015

Mark continues with part 4 of his seven-part series on the design of Khans of Tarkir.

I'm pulling up my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so the last four podcasts have been all about Khans of Tarkir, but I'm not yet done. I'm up to E. Okay, so we start today with a Freet Weapon Master. So before I even tell you what the card is, I'm talking about a Freet for a second. So when Magic, in the early days, Alpha came out, and the first expansion was called Arabian Knights. And Arabian Knights had Jinns and Afreets in it.

Although I guess there was Mahamodi, Jinn, and Alpha. But Afreets, for the first time, showed up in Arabian Knights. And players really liked Afreets. But it's something that we hadn't done a lot of recently, and when we went back, or went to Tarkir for the first time, one of the things that we're always on the lookout for is what creature types maybe can we do that we haven't done a lot of recently, and when we went back, or went to Tarkir for the first time, one of the things that we're always on the lookout for is

what creature types maybe can we do that we haven't done for a while? And the creative team said, you know what? You know what might be cool to do with Jeskai? A Fritz. And so a Fritz came back. So we get a Fritz again. Okay. Now back to our Fritz weapon master.

Three blue, red, white. So it's a Jeskai card. So six mana, including one blue, one red, one white. It's a four, three of Freak Monk. A lot of monks in the Jeskai. And it has First Strike, and when it's turned face up, or it enters the battlefield, another creature gets plus three, plus oh until end of turn. And it has morph to blue, red, white.

So it costs six mana to cast. It costs five mana to morph, or un-morph, whatever the correct term is. And so one of the cool things about the card was, it does something. You can straight up play it and do the boost. You can play it and un-morph it to do the boost to turn it face up. So the idea is

that it kind of, it can do its thing either way. And the thing that's neat about it is it itself has first strike. So the trick you can do if it's morphed is you can attack with it. If they block it and you have the mana to turn it up all of a sudden your 4-3 first striking efreet turns into a 7-3 first striking of free. So if you have

the mana, this thing can kill most things. There's not a lot of things with toughness greater than 7, so, um, anyway, this is definitely a neat card. One of the things we were trying to do with the Jeskai was we wanted them to be tricky. So, one of the things you'll notice is we put morph

in all the colors. So all the wedges get morphed. But we try to make sure that each one, the way it morphed and what it did, would play into that style. And so this one definitely is tricky. It's like, all of a sudden, I'm fighting this 2-2 face-down thing,

and bam! It's a 7-3 first striker. Okay, that's kind of a big surprise and can win combats and stuff. So we definitely wanted the Jeskai to have some of that feel of, you know, they're constantly surprising you, and Morph plays into that pretty well. But it's...

I'll be clear. Of all the clans, my favorite was the Jets guy. I just liked all the kung fu Shaolin monk stuff, and it just was neat. I liked the way it played. I enjoyed Prowess a lot. So anyway, I really, really like how... I mean, when I would play,

I usually would... I'd start drafting Izzet, red, blue, and then I'd either go... Usually I would take white if I could and go to Jeskai. If not, then I would take green and go to Teemer. But anyway, if you ever draft against me in Conjuring Tarkir, now you know.

Okay, Embodiment of Spring. It costs one blue mana, single blue mana, for a 0-3 elemental. For one and a green, so two mana, tap, sac. You can go to your library, get a basic land, and put it into play tapped. What we call rampant growthing, based on the card Rampant Growth. So the idea here is we wanted to make sure, we were trying to encourage you to draft enemy colors

first, to think in terms of enemy color into a wedge. So what we did is we put cards in the set that encourage that. So this obviously is a blue-green card. You're not really going to play this card unless you're playing blue and green. But if you're playing blue and green, it's a pretty good card. It helps you fix your mana, it playing blue and green, it's a pretty good card. You know, it helps you fix your mana,

it's good offensive early, you know, it's a 0-3 so it can block face-down morphs. So, you know, anyway, one of the things that's very important when you're building your set is, you want to make sure that your set gives clues to the players what they're supposed to do with it.

And that's not just seal, that's also draft, that, you know, part of getting people to think in terms of, let's start with enemy color, is give them the tools. So you'll notice, there are no cards, I mean there's lands, but there's no non-lands that are optimized by having exactly

two allied colors. If it's two colors, it's enemy, if it's you know, it's three colors beyond that. So if you've ever seen two colors that are optimized with two colors, they're always enemy in this set. If it's, you know, it's three colors beyond that. So if you ever seen two colors that are optimized with two colors, they're always enemy in this set. And once again, I talked about this once before, but just to remind people, this is another big reason that the last set ended up not being enemy, because so much of the set had to push toward enemy to get you to draft correctly that we were kind of pushing in that direction already. We wanted the last set to push in a different direction.

Okay, empty the pits. X, X, B, B, B, B. So that's two X's, four black mana, instant, delve, put X, two, two black zombie tokens onto the battlefield, tapped. So one of the things we like to do with zombies, you saw this in Innistrad, we continued here, is you know what zombies do? You know what makes zombies threatening? There's lots of zombies. Zombies,

one of the things about zombies, I talked about this when I did my Innistrad podcast, but one of the things about zombies I think is cool is the average person can beat a zombie. If you were faced with a zombie, they're slow, they're dumb, any person can beat one zombie. It's not that particular zombie.

I mean, they might surprise you, I guess. But if you know they're coming, an average human can probably beat a zombie, assuming you have a weapon of some kind. Because they're not... Unto themselves, they're not particularly threatening. I mean, they bite you, you become a zombie. So they're dangerous. But they're slow and dumb.

The thing that makes zombies scary is that they travel in packs. That there's not just one zombie, there's lots of zombies. And that one thing we like to do is we like making lots of zombies, especially 2-2s. Zombies tend to be 2-2s. We make zombie tokens the vast, vast majority of the time, they're 2-2s. In this case, also, by the way, it puts them in a play tapped. A, to sort of not use it too defensively,

and B, just to get across that they're slow. You know, zombies, they amble. They're not exactly fast creatures. And so, anyway, that's why we... And this is a fun card. One of the neat things about doing delve is having delve in which there's no upper limit. It's an X spell.

Like, late in the game, if you have lots of cards in your graveyard, the neat thing essentially is for every two cards in your graveyard that you throw away, I mean, once you've paid the black, for every two cards in your graveyard that you get rid of, you get another zombie. So you get to turn any two cards in your graveyard to a zombie. I mean, you have to do it

all at once, but you can do that as many times as you want. Anyway, this was definitely made to be one of the sexier delve cards, and it was pretty cool, and it also really played in the Soltai. The Soltai had this whole death theme going, and they had these zombies and stuff, so it all kind of came together to make a pretty cool package. Okay, next, End Hostilities. Three white, white sorcery. Destroy all creatures and all permanents attached to creatures.

So not only did it destroy creatures which most wrath of godlike effects do but it also destroyed all I mean normally orbs are destroyed because once the creature

goes away they go away but this also destroys equipment. Just a little extra bonus. Equipment sometimes can be hard to deal with so this is sort of like well I want to get rid

of everything and if you're holding something, I get rid of that too. I will notice this set does something that's a little different, is we have two Wrath of God effects. I tried to put Doom Blast last time, and we have End Hostility, so normally we don't tend to do two mass creature kills in the same set,

but it's a war-torn world filled with warlords, and, okay, there's a little more destruction than normal. And by the way, we were trying to get the feel of a very violent environment where things are constantly fighting. It's why there's a focus on creature combat. It's why there's just a little bit more destruction

and at the higher levels, a little more wider destruction. It's a dangerous place. The dragons are dead because the people that, you know, the dragons are dead because the people that remain are dangerous, dangerous people, and that we really wanted to get across of... Because one of the things that's important is you needed to get the sense that Sarkhan would go, wow, this...

Can we do better than the world we have? Now, it turns out, he makes things worse. But in true time travel trope form, he starts with a place that's not in great shape, so he thinks like, well, what can I have to lose? Look how bad this world is, you know. It can only get better. That's not always true, but

that's what he thinks. You need your protagonist to go, there's a reason I'm going to change things, because I can change things for the better. He also loves dragons, so there's that played into it. Okay, next. Feed the clan. One green instant.

Gain five life. If ferocious, you gain ten life. So one of the things about the Temur clan, so this is Temur, ferocious is Temur, is Temur is what we call a mid-range deck, which is... I have bigger things than you. It takes a little longer to get them out, but once I get them out, I can start really attacking with bigger things,

and hopefully, the way our game's going to work is, I'm always slightly ahead of you. I always have slightly bigger things than you do. And the idea is, traditionally, mid-range is good against aggro because I'm not so slow that I can't get things out to stop your things and my things are

bigger than yours. And then when I start attacking the trade-offs for you are really bad. But in general, midrange is bad against control because you give control time to set up. You know, aggro, aggressive decks, don't let control time to set up and that's why normally aggressive decks can be controlled.

Anyway, there's little rock, paper, scissors going here. But anyway, a life gain spell kind of does some nice things for us. It helps. One of the things on midrange is you want to be able to survive, and you want to make sure that you're not taken out by the quick decks, and so giving a few tools like that helps. Okay, next, Fire Hoof Cavalry. So it's for one white, it's a 1-1 Human Berserker. a few tools like that helps. Okay, next. Firehoof Cavalry.

So it's a... For one white, it's a 1-1 Human Berserker. For 3R, 3 and a red activation, it gets plus 2, plus 0, and trample to end a turn. So the idea is, this is a Mardu card. So what you want is... It's a Mardu card, although you can

also put it into a Jeskai deck. Because white and red are in both Mardu card, although you can also put it into a Jeskai deck. Because white and red are in both Mardu and Jeskai. The idea here is, I have a creature that's small and cheap in the beginning. I get it out, you know, it's a one drop 1-1. And traditionally those aren't particularly powerful. But later game, if I

have the mana, this little 1-1 turns into a 3-1 trampler, which is a little more potent. And this is another card where we have the off-color activations and the enemy color to sort of encourage you to say, okay, hey, maybe you want to play white-1 Trampler, a little more potent. And this is another card where we have the off-color activations and the enemy color to sort of encourage you to say, okay, hey, maybe you want to play white-red. And once again, it doesn't completely convince you. This card's a little bit more of a Mardu card

than it's a Jeskai card. And it's flavored as a Mardu card. But you can play it in the Jeskai deck. Okay, next. Flying Crane Technique. We'll figure out what clan that is by its name three blue red white so it's a just guy card

so three generic blue red white the just guy colors it's an instant untap all creatures you control they gain flying and double strike

till end of turn so I believe this card in playtest was called everybody's kung fu fighting because remember prowess is called kung fu

in in design. And this is just like, okay, you know, people are flying in the air and hi-ya, cha-cha, all sorts of stuff going on. Okay, that's my poor imitation of lots of kung fu happening. Anyway, this is definitely a very powerful card, and if you're playing Jeskai, this is the kind of card that when you see this in a pack, especially if you see it later in a pack, you're really happy. Because A, it's good. And B, if you get it a little bit later, that means no one else is drafting Jeskai, which is always good for you. Although usually someone's drafting Jeskai, because Jeskai's good.

Okay, next. Frontier Beovac. It's a land. Enters the battlefield tapped. Tapped for green, blue, or red. Okay, next. Frontier Beovac. It's a land. Enters the battlefield tapped. Taps for green, blue, or red. Okay, so I told the story very first day, or not very first day.

Once we knew we were doing Wedge, the very next meeting after we knew that, I had the thing where I said, okay, let's write down everything people would expect to show up in the set. So one of the things was the tap lands,

the tri-lands. So we in Shards of Alara made the allied, sorry, the sh-Lands. So we in Shards of Alara made the allied, sorry, the Shard version, which is come play Tap and tap for, you know, C, D, or F. Or C, D, or E, it's Shards.

C, D, or E. So three in a row. So, you know, Vinaya one tapped for green, white, or red. And so the idea was, okay, this seems like an obvious thing to do one of the things we did is we looked at everything we did in the shard set

and said, well what would people expect? we did it for shards, we should do it for wedge this was definitely one of them there's a big talk at the time about what lands we wanted we know we wanted the fetch lands we were talking about getting the common gain life lands, we were like, okay maybe these make sense in uncommon.

Something that they can show up in limited and help in limited. But also be something that, you know, there is some desire for these. So you want to be careful where you put things. We put the common ones in common, so there's stuff that's fixed around common. And then we put these in uncommon. Make them a little more special, but something that still could affect and have an impact on limited. Okay, next. Ghostfire Blade.

One for an artifact equipment. Equipped creature gets plus two, plus two. Equipped three, but they equip for two less if it's a colorless creature. So the idea is it's equipped three, but if you're colorless, it's equipped one, which makes it much better.

So this card was made to play nicely with morph. Face-down creatures. One of the qualities of face-down creatures is they're colorless, it's equipped one, which makes it much better. So this card was made to play nicely with Morph. Face-down creatures, one of the qualities of face-down creatures is they're colorless. So this card was meant to play with them, to give you a little sort of thing to want to play things on things that are face-down. It also has a little bit of a nod toward

Ugin, because Tarkir is Ugin's homeworld, and Ugin was the creator of Ghostfire magic. If you guys remember the card Ghostfire from Future Sight, it references Ugin in its flavor text, and so we've always known that Ghostfire and Ugin are a little bit connected to each other. Or, well, actually,

Cullousness and Ugin are connected to each other. Okay. Okay. Next. Goblin slide. Two and a red, enchantment. Whenever you cast a non-creature spell, you may pay one for a 1-1 red goblin token with haste.

So one of the things we did in Jeskai was we had prowess, and we liked having a bunch of prowess-related things that sort of said, you know what? You already want to cast nine creature spells because you get rewarded for prowess. Well, let's have some other things that also reward you. I think at first this one didn't require mana,

and then just it was so efficient that we said, okay, you know, you want the goblin, you gotta pay for the goblin, so your spell costs one more, essentially, to get the goblin. But we gave them haste to the point that when you play the spell, you can attack right away with the creatures. So it allowed you to get damage in very quickly.

Okay, next. Grim Haruspex. That's a hard one to say. Grim Haruspex. Two black for a 3-2 human wizard. It's got morph black, and whenever another non-token creature you control dies, draw a card

okay, so the idea of this is sometimes I like to do morph things like, ah, I'm going to change the state you are not aware of what's going on so when you block morph, I can change things and all of a sudden, you weren't accounting for this so the idea here is I can attack, maybe I set up an attack where

there's going to be a lot of trade-offs or you attack me and I'm like, okay, there's going to be a lot of trade-offs where, you know, or you attack me and I'm like, okay, I'm going to block all sorts of creatures and just lots of things are going to die. This card lets you sort of do that and then survive out of it because you get to draw cards for all the creatures that die. Also, it's a very cheap morph cost.

It's very cheap to un-morph. The reason, by the way, it says non-token, usually when we say non-token, the vast, vast majority of times it's a power level issue because it's a lot easier and cheaper to get tokens into play. And so the ability to change tokens,

which themselves don't cost a card usually, into a card is just a little bit too powerful. So we had to restrict it to non-token. But as a general rule of thumb, if you're ever wondering, have you ever seen the words non-token? The two to restrict it to non-token. But as a general rule of thumb, if you're ever wondering, if you ever see the words non-token, the two reasons it'll say non-token, one is power level, and the second is

to avoid infinite loops or things. Sometimes the cards that make tokens care when things die, and if it cares about tokens, then it would just endlessly loop. Okay, next. Herald of Anafenza. Single white mana for a 1-2 human soldier. It is outlast

2 and a white, meaning you could tap it and spend 2 and a white to put a plus 1 plus 1 counter on it. Whenever you activate the outlast ability, put a 1-1 white warrior creature token under the battlefield. So the idea is that not only do you

outlast, but it makes a 1-1 creature in a boot. So this card, like, not only is it itself getting stronger, but it's bringing some troops along. And so this was a very potent card, a card that actually saw a bunch of play. And one of the strongest outlast cards because not only is your creature beefing up, but you're going wide while going tall,

which is pretty cool. Okay, next. High Sentinels of Arishin? I do not have pronunciation for that. Okay, three and a white for a 3-4 bird soldier. It has flying, and it gets plus one, plus one

for each other creature you control with a plus one, plus one counter on it. And for three and a white, you can put a plus one, plus one counter on something. And for three and a white, you can put a plus one, plus one counter on something. So this card is pretty cool. For starters, it's a 3-4 flyer. So Aven was something we put in the Jeskai. We had a lot of fun.

There's a lot of, between Orcs and Avens and Afreeds, there's a lot of stuff you haven't seen in a little while in the set. We also did the dog people that we've been talking about doing forever, the Anax. So we had a lot of fun choices of picking some cool creature types. For some reason, the Anax. So there's a lot, we had a lot of fun choices of picking some cool creature types.

For some reason, the Jeskai in particular had a lot of cool creature types. But anyway, Avon was back in the Jeskai. Avon are birds. Birds and magic fly now after some there's a famous card in the dark called Whippoorwool, where you see a bird in flight, in mid-flight, except it doesn't

fly. And so one of the things we realize is, barring a few exceptions, there's a few iconic birds that don't fly, and those we might not make fly, meaning if we made a penguin or an ostrich or something that, like, iconically doesn't fly and it's known that it doesn't fly, possibly make a bird that doesn't fly.

But as a general thought, if birds have wings and they can fly, the assumption is when you see them in the art that they fly. And so we've really learned not to make non-flying birds. So the Aven pretty much all fly. Now this card also does a neat thing where it gets bigger based on counters, and then we gave it an ability to ensure that you can get counters.

Now the neat thing is, this wants to go in a deck, I assume an Abzan deck, that already has lots of plus and plus one counters, so it's getting a bonus without you having to do anything outside of what you normally would do. But it comes with an ability to say, well, just in case. And one of the reasons we do that, let me explain this real quick, is sometimes we make cards that depend upon other things in the set, but it's also nice if cards can stand

on their own. So by putting the second building in this card, you don't ever need another card. This card can do a thing it needs to do by itself, and it's definitely playable. It's more synergistic if you combine it with other things, but it's not required. So it is nice to do that a lot, where you can make it so the card can stand on its own.

Not to say we don't make cards that don't stand on their own. We will make cards that say, okay, this is thing A, you need thing B. Until you get thing B, thing A is not going to be optimized. But we're careful about how much we do that. Okay, next. Highland game. A highland game.

One and a green for a 2-1 elk. When it dies, you gain two life. Okay. Can you name, a little trivia question, this card started as something we've been asked to make a whole bunch of times, and I finally said, you know what, I'm just going to make it. What was this card's playtest name? And the playtest name was, I think it was Greater Tarpon.

So this is a bigger Tarpon. So Tarpon is an Ice Age creature that, for one green mana, is a 1-1 that when it dies you get one life. And so we were trying to make a bigger tarpon. So it was supposed to be 2 mana, 2-2. When it dies you gain 2 life. That's what it got turned in in design. In development they're like, oh

this is a little good. One mana for 1-1 gain 1 life. When you double everything it gets a little too good. So it ended up becoming a 2-1. So for those that wanted your giant tarpon, this is the closest you're going to get. I tried, and it's pretty close, just not exact.

Okay, next, Hooded Hydra. X green green for a 0-0 snake hydra. It enters the battlefield with X plus one plus one counters. X isn't the cost. And when it dies, for each plus one plus one counter on it, you get to make a 1-1 snake.

A 1-1 green snake token. And the card has morph. It's three green greens, so five mana for a morph. And if you turn it face up, it gets five plus one plus one counters on it. So this is an interesting card. So first off,

Creative came up with the idea of having hydras in this world look like snakes. So the hooded hydra is, it's all the snake heads are cobra heads, but it's a hydra. It's pretty cool. And then the idea in this card is, it's an X spell, but if you play it morph, it's not an X spell. It's locked in. So if you play it face down as a morph, for five mana, you can have a 5-5 creature.

Once again, it's not just a 5-5 creature. This creature dies into snakes. So your opponent has this tough job of, do you want to deal with this big thing? Or do you want to kill it and then you have to deal with the same amount of damage just broken into smaller pieces, into 1-1s. So this card is pretty

potent because let's say I have a 5-5 and I attack. We've got to deal with my 5-5 and assuming you trade to deal with my 5-5 now I have 5-1-1s. And depending on the circumstance, the 5-1-1s might be better than the 5-5, depending on, you know, what's going on. Okay, next.

Hooting Mandrills. 4-4, ape, and it's got trample and delve. So this is a 4-4 trampling creature with delve. Oh, I didn't write the cost down. I didn't write the mana cost down. So this is a 4-4 trampling creature with Delve. Oh, I didn't write the cost down. I didn't write the mana cost down.

My guess is, because it's a 4-4 creature, this thing costs 7 or 8 mana, it must cost. Because normally if you would make a 4-4 trampling creature, that's the kind of thing we would do, I don't know, 4G, 3G, 4G, somewhere around there. Probably 3G is too cheap. So like 4G.

And then you have to add in a couple mana because you have Delve. So my guess is this thing is 7 or 8 mana. My guess is it's 7G. That's my guess. But I'm guessing it could be 6G. So I apologize. I did not write down the cost of this.

But anyway, one of the things that was cool when we got to do Delve and Soul Tie was we had never made green delve cards before we hadn't made a lot of black or blue ones either

but at least we made some and so it was neat just to make a big creature like because this thing can come out pretty cheaply

if you delve it and so you know 4-4 trampler if you have the means to get out quickly could be good so

but the nice thing about delve is you don't have to worry about things coming out super quickly, usually too early in the game, because it takes a little while to get things in your graveyard. So it allows you to make a creature

that you can cast really cheap, because you're not going to play it. It's very hard to play on a turn one. Not impossible. Okay, Howl of the Horde. Sorcery for two and a red. When you cast it, the next instant of sorcery you cast are copied. And then it's got raid and it says if they've attacked this turn, instead of copying it once

you copy it twice. Now this card was fun basically what I wanted to do was make a fork a spell that copies spells that had raid the tricky part is it is hard to make an instant with raid in fact we mostly avoided it because it just causes complications it is hard to make an instant with Raid. In fact, we mostly avoided it because it just causes complications. Because when you want to cast it,

it's easy to miss the window where you're past the point where it can work. Because Raid looks at a very specific point. Anyway, instants definitely cause some complications because people could play them and not quite be at the right time when they play them. So anyway,

so we made a fork, but we made it in sorcery version. So instead of doing it after you cast a spell, as fork normally works, you do it ahead of time knowing that

the next instant or sorcery play, that's going to get forked. And then the raid got you to copy it. Okay, next. Ice Feather Aven. Green and a blue for a 2-2 bird shaman.

It's got flying. It's got morph one green blue, and when you turn it face up, you get a return target creature to the hands, and you unsummon creature. This is interesting, and its morph cost is more expensive than its mana cost.

So the idea essentially is, do I just want to have a 2-2 flyer for two mana? Or, once I get to three mana, I can play it face down, and then the reward, it costs more to get it, but I get to bounce something, which would be effective. So it really gives you a bunch of different ways to play the card, which is pretty cool. So one of the questions I get is, it's a flying 2-2 that bounces things. Where's the green? And the answer is, blue would not get a two mana 2-2 flyer. What often happens for green in multicolor cards is green gives you some body.

So the fact that it's 2-2 for two mana, it's because green's in it that you can do that. You would not be able to make a 1-U 2-2 in blue. That's not something we would normally do. Okay, next. Icy Blast. X in a blue, so X spell with one blue. Instant, tap X creatures, but if ferocious, they don't untap. So what it does is it turns a tap into what we call freeze.

So freeze is when you tap something and it doesn't untap during the next untap step. So the idea here is it's a tapping spell, but it's ferocious. So if you have something big enough, then you get to freeze everything. And the idea is tapping is useful, freezing is more happy. So if you have it on the right deck, sometimes you'll use it to tap, but normally you'll wait, and a lot of times you want to wait so you can get it while you can freeze them. One of the things that's tricky for ferocious is there are certain kinds of spells that are what we call upgrade spells, which is they do something, and then if you meet some condition,

which is usually the mechanic, they get to be stronger. And those are a little tricky because there's a limited number of effects that you can do where it's like do thing A, and thing B is A+. So tap into freeze is a common one we do. So we did it here. Next, incremental growth. Three green green sorcery. You put one plus one plus counter on one creature

two plus one plus counters on a second creature and three plus one plus counters on a third creature so this thing is a beating in limited, it's really really good in limited and this thing first came about, we did we made a card way back when called

cone of flame that did one damage two damage and three damage to 2 damage, and 3 damage to 3 different targets. And then that led to, it wasn't called Cone of Creatures, Beast of Menace. Which you made a 1, 1, a 2, 2, and a 3, 3. And then, I think Beast of Menace, this card is a repeat.

This was made before. I forget whether 1 plus 1, 2 plus 1, 3 plus 1 was before 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3. I'm not sure what order they came in. But anyway, this was cone of plus 1 plus 1 counters, just like there was cone of creatures. And this was, we brought this back to this. We knew that we wanted plus 1 plus 1 counters to matter, especially in green.

Green was the one making plus 1 plus 1 counters, or the one doing it the most. White was obviously doing it some, and glass was doing it. But anyway, it seemed like a good reprint, so we brought it back. Next, Ivory Tusk Forest. Two white, black, green. So it is a Abzan card.

So two generic mana and then Abzan, white, black, green. For a 5-7 elephant, very big elephant. The Abzan had elephants. You untap each creature you control with a plus one plus one counter during each player's untap step so the cool thing about this card is that

while this is in play everything with counters on it untaps not just during your untap but during everybody's untap and so the neat thing there is it allows you to outlast your things faster because normally I can outlast it on my turn and I have to wait to unt normally, I can outlast it on my turn, and I have to wait to untap before I can outlast it again.

So I cannot do it more than once per cycle of turns. But this card says, no, no, no, if I get this in play, you can do that. It also allows you to be defensive as well. Not only does it allow you to I mean,

it does a couple things. A, it allows you to either double outlast or allows you to attack with your outlast and still be able to use them for outlasting purposes. And it allows you if you can get plus and plus counters on other things such as incremental growth that I just talked about then it also allows you to sort of turn

things into vigilant creatures. They can attack but still be there to block. Okay, Jeering Instigator. One and a red for a 2-1 Goblin Rogue. It is morphed to R. And when you turn to face up, you threaten something, a.k.a. you untap it,

it gains haste, and you steal for the turn, so you can attack with it. One of the neat things here is, one of the things that morph does well, you especially see this in Mardu. So I talked about how we use morph in different clans

to play up what they wanted. So I talked earlier about how Jeskai had a lot of surprise to it. In combat, things could happen. Well, what we did in Mardu was we made the upfront cheap. So the idea is, if you get this early, you can just play it as an aggressive early creature.

If you get it a little bit later, you can morph it. You can play it face down, and then it has added value because there's morphing available to it. But the idea is, on the first couple turns, you know, on turn one or turn two, we give you cheap things that you can play. So you can put this in your deck, and like, if you need it, you know, because you want, in an aggressive weenie deck, you want to curve out. On turn one, you want to play something. On turn it, you know, because you want, in an aggressive weenie deck, you want to curve out. On turn one, you want to play something. On turn two, you want to play something. On turn three, you want to play something every turn.

So having some cheap creatures lets you do that, and so we use the morph creatures in Jeskai, not in Jeskai, in Mardu, to mostly give you cheap things that you use the morph to give you more choices later on when you don't need the cheap things anymore. Okay, Jeskai Ascendancy. Blue, red, white. So three mana, one of each color of Jeskai. It's an enchantment.

Whenever you cast a non-creature spell, all your creatures get plus one, plus one until end of turn, and untap those creatures. So one of the questions about this card is why didn't we just grant all your creatures prowess there was a reason and it was a good

reason but not a reason I know here's my guess is well my guess is either the rules don't play nice or the wording you have to do to do it is a little wonky I am sure there's a reason I mean I know there's a reason.

The reason it just doesn't say prowess was it caused some wonkiness somewhere, either in templating or in the rules, and it just wasn't worth it, so we wrote it out. I am pretty sure that is what happened. So did I talk about the Ascendancies, by the way,

were, I think I talked about this early on, that I think they were the Empires, and the Empires didn't work out, but Eric really liked the idea of just doing really nice, flavorful, simple enchantments that did cool things that you'd want to play that played into the clan and what the clan did.

So this is a good example where it says, okay, prowess is a thing. You're already playing non-creature spells. This will enhance that. Also untaps them so you can use it defensively and do sneaky things. Like I said, Jeskai is the sneaky clan. So anyway, you can do lots of fun things. Okay, next.

Jeskai Elder. So Jeskai Elder is a one and a blue, two mana, one blue, for a one to a human monk. It's got prowess. And whenever it deals combat damage to the opponent, you get to draw a card and a blue, two mana, one blue, for a one-two human monk. It's got prowess, and whenever it deals combat damage to the opponent, you get to draw a card and discard a card. You get a loot. So one thing that's neat is, often when you have creatures

that have combat abilities, sometimes it's hard to get them through. It's tricky sometimes because if I have a one-two creature, you're like, oh, I can block and kill it. But with prowess on it, you don't quite know, and it's kind of nice because it has, especially if you have mana up, like, your opponent doesn't quite know what you're capable of, and so it becomes much scarier. That's one of the neat things that prowess did is, whenever you have an unknown, Morph does this as well,

whenever you have an unknown, there's value because the opponent doesn't know, and so the unknown is scary, and they'll react differently. Like, if they knew what you could do, they would know what they need to do and they would definitively act. But when they don't know and there's possibilities of things outside their control, people tend to be a little more conservative.

And so things like prowess and morph, you can be a little more aggressive attacking with them because people are less likely to block them. Next, Kiru Dreadman. Four black for four four zombie crocodile defender. One green sack another creature. You gain life equal to the toughness of the sack creature. So the reason this exists was black green

for all the archetypes, they wanted to make sure there's some theme going in them. So there's a theme for all the wedge colors and there's a theme for all the enemy colors. So that if you wanted to draft, the idea is primarily you should draft a wedge color, you could fall back to drafting an enemy color, enemy pair color.

And we wanted to make sure that all the colors, or all the archetypes, had a draft strategy to them. We spent a lot of time working on the five clans, those had a very strong feel. But it's important that each of the enemy color pairs had a feel as well. So one of the Black Green's thing was

care about toughness. If you notice the word toughness shows up a lot, and it always shows up in Black and Green cards, that's one of the things that Black and Green did, was it had this theme of really caring about toughness. So it wanted to get big things into play. It played nicely with Delve. It played nicely with Ferocious. Because Delve allowed you to get

cheap creatures in a little cheaper Ferocious already encouraged you to play bigger creatures and so it was just playing around in space that those colors had spells that wanted to do that so innocuously they said okay well we want to get a reward, let's make a reward

for toughness matters, it's a black card with a green activation and they did the thing that I just like, and this is the one okay, well, we want to get a reward. Let's make a reward for toughness matters. It's a black card with a green activation. And they did the thing that I dislike. And this is the one card I really, really, really tried to change. I also tried to change the red card that had looting. But at least I recognized there that blue looting was an upgrade. It was a small upgrade, but it was an upgrade. And so the card here is,

oh, look, you can sacrifice a creature in green to gain life equal to its toughness. Do you know what color also does that? Black! So once again, it's a black card with an off-color activation to do something that just you could do in black. And that is a loss of opportunity. It's like, well, it just happened to be a black activation.

Why a green activation? And I came up with a couple alternatives to it. The problem was they really, really wanted toughness to matter, and this card was just playing really well. And while Eric completely understood my issue, he agreed with me that it was not as elegant as it could be, but it just played so well. Then in the end, he's like, okay, look, I get it's not the best design in the world.

You know, it had a few issues with it, but it's just playing really, really well. And it's not out of color pie. Green can do that. It's more of a design thing than it's a few issues with it, but it's just playing really, really well. And it's not out of color pie. Green can do that. It's not, it's more of a design thing than it's a color pie thing. I mean, you know, black and green don't do that. The card does exist and can be in color pie.

So anyway, it stayed, but it's one of my bigger frustrations of, in fact, probably, well, it's the one I most try to change. I will leave it at that. Okay. So, okay, let me finish off K for today I'm almost done here

but I'm going to finish off K real quickly so Kiru Lichlord three black, green, blue for four, four zombie wizard at the beginning of your upkeep you pay two and a black to return a random creature card from your graveyard

to the battlefield against flying, trample, and haste and then you exile at the beginning of your next end step, or if it would leave play. So the idea is you get to temporarily get creatures out of your graveyard. Notice they gain Flying, Trample, Haste. It's a black, green, blue card. Flying is blue, Trample is green, Haste is black.

So the idea is you get one keyword from each of the colors. So try to make it feel like it's black, green, blue. The funny thing is, it's now messing in space that we're contemplating. Maybe it's something Red also wants to mess in, of like temporary animation. So anyway, it's a fun card. It's playing to lich space, because it's a, you know, it's a lich zombie wizard. So anyway, I thought this was a fun card, and there already is a pretty strong theme of using the graveyard and of dead things in Solteye, so it fit in really

well. Finally, the last K. Kintree Invocation. Black-green sorcery for an XX black and green token. It's a spirit warrior token. And X is equal to the greatest toughness among your creatures. So I just talked about a moment ago of how there's a

theme in black and green of toughness. Well, here's another one. So the idea is it makes a token, a Black and Green Spirit Warrior token, happens to be a warrior because there's a warrior matter scene going on, and it cares about toughness. And note, the number changes. If I have a 1-1 in play, it's a 1-1. As soon as I play a 2-3, now it's a 3-3. If I play a 4-6, it's a 6-6. So it keeps changing based on what it is. It does mean your opponent can manipulate a little bit by killing your biggest thing, and then it shrinks. So, there's some combat things you can do. We have to be careful when you have this creature, that if your opponent

kills the toughest thing, then this thing will go down in toughness and can die. So, you've got to be careful with that. Okay, we had a little bit of traffic today, and I wanted to get through K. But that, my friends, is... Well, that's the end of today. We're not done yet. Obviously, I only got to K. I'm going to chug along through here. But anyway, I hope you guys are

enjoying hearing all about Cons of Tarkir. It's fun to talk about. But I'm in my parking space. We all know what that means. We mean that's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So I'll see you guys next time for more Cons of Tarkir!