Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #262 - Khans of Tarkir, Part 7

Episode Date: September 18, 2015

Mark concludes his seven-part series on the design of Khans of Tarkir.

I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. And I had to drop my daughter off at a doctor's appointment. But we're going to get a full podcast today. And we're going to finish the final Cons of Tarkir podcast. So, last time I left, I was in S. So we're going to get from S all the way to Z. And I do have a Z, so we're ending with Zergo. A little advanced preview there. Okay, so let's start talking.

Khamzat Tarkir, beginning with the letter S. Okay, Sagumalor. 4 GU, so 4 green blue, 6 mana for a 6-6 beast. And what does he do? He's got Trple, hexproof, and morph for five mana, three green blue. Okay, so one of the things is

the main archetypes obviously were the five clans, the five wedge colors, but one of the things that development wanted to do, design and development, was make sure that there were secondary draft strategies, and so the secondary draft strategies were the enemy colors. So the idea was, and I've talked about this in other podcasts, how the idea is start by drafting enemy colors,

and then you have the option to draft different wedges, and so you need to do that. And then that way you have your choices. But we wanted to make sure that the enemy colors, the draft things, there was opportunities that they did something. So that if you were in that territory, if you decided to do one of the enemy colors, the draft things, there was opportunities that they did something. So that if you were in that territory, if you decided to do one of the enemy colors, there was something that your draft was about. So green-blue, the theme picked for green-blue, was it was the colors that most cared about morph. Now, the morph mechanic showed up in

all five colors, in all five clans, but green and blue had more cards that cared about morph. In this particular case, it just gave you a very effective morph to play, the green-blue overlap card, but there are a lot of cards, and we'll get to some of them today, in which it just helps you play a heavier morph strategy. Okay, Sarkhan the Dragon Speaker, three red-red for Planeswalker, Sarkhan the Dragon Speaker. Three red red for Planeswalker. Sarkhan, obviously. Plus one until end of turn. He becomes a 4-4 dragon with Flying, Indestructible, and Haste. For minus three loyalty, you deal four damage to target creature.

And for minus six loyalty, you get an emblem that says at the beginning of your draw step, you draw two cards instead of one. But at the end of the turn, beginning of your end turn, end of your turn, you discard your hand. Beginning of the end step, you draw two cards instead of one, but at the end of the turn, beginning of your end turn, you discard your hand. Beginning of the end step, sorry. You discard your hand. So, Sarkir was interesting. So, one of the problems we had was, we wanted to introduce you to a world where

dragons were vitally important to the world, but there were no dragons. Like, it's kind of like a world that reveres dragons, except there's no dragons. And obviously it's kind of like a world that reveres dragons, except there's no dragons. And obviously we were working toward Dragons of Tarkir, we were working toward something that had lots of dragons in it, but the first set

didn't have dragons in it. There were literally no creature-type dragon. So one of the things was, was there any way to give you any dragon-ness in a set without dragons? And the answer was, aha, Sarkhan, as we learned from previous times, Sarkhan can turn into a dragon.

Although I will say, by the way, if you've ever seen the trailer for Khazad-Tarkir, you see all these people battling, and then Sarkhan's walking on the battlefield and he turns into a dragon, and he flies off. So the one thing that always bothered me about that is, as soon as he turns into a dragon, every single person fighting

would stop, turn toward him and go, oh my goodness, a dragon! Because there's no dragons. See, they're not amazed by the fact there's a dragon among them. Anyway, so one of the ideas was that we would use Sarkhan as a means to get you a dragon. Because he can turn into a

dragon. And it makes sense that he can and that, well, he's there, he's not dead, and so we did get a sneak a dragon, and sneakily get a dragon in. So Sarkhan can turn into a dragon. So what does he do? Well, he turns into a 4-4 dragon, that's about the size of a dragon.

Dragons are usually 4-4, 5-5, 6-6, but 4-4 seemed fine. We gave him flying, because all dragons have flying. We gave him haste, because we want him to be able to attack, because he only turns into a dragon that turn, so we want to make it clear that he can attack. There also needs some confusion. I mean, he's already in play,

so does it count that he's in play, but he's turning into a dragon? And we just said, okay, let's put haste on it, then there's no complication. Everyone will figure out that he can attack right away. Indestructible was, we don't want to make him too vulnerable. We don't want him to be like, okay, I become a dragon, and you're like, terror! And then he's dead. And when I say terror, I mean, whatever the kill card is.

You can tell my old school stuff coming back when I use old names of cards that we haven't used in ages. Basically, we want him not to just simply die to creature kill. And so, we made him indestructible. So the idea is, he can turn into a dragon. This is his first ability. Well, the second ability is he can fling dragon fire at you. So he can damage a creature.

And finally, we wanted to give you something that sort of would help in a longer strategy. And if you can get to the emblem, it allows you to sort of draw extra cards. Now, in a very red way, red is not normally a card drawing color, but we're like, okay, well, the advantage here is he gets extra cards, but if he doesn't use them, he loses them, and so that plays into the immediacy of red.

If you notice, we've been doing a lot in the last couple years to give red more access to cards, but one of the things we've been doing is making sure that red has to use stuff right away. Yeah, red has access to cards, but not for a long game if he doesn't use them. And so this is a perfect example. Okay, you get two cards to turn. You get a Howling Mind in play just for you, but if you don't use them by the turn's end,

you lose them. And you can't hold on to things. So it really played into Sarkhan. Sarkhan's a very Red character. It played into that sense of he's, you know, seeking out knowledge, but he's a little reckless in how he does things. If you follow the story for the block,

he's kind of reckless. But, he definitely, anyway, I like this card a lot. I thought this card was pretty cool. One of the big questions, by the way, so when we first met Sarkhan in Shards of Alara, I believe, he was red-green,

and then we met him again in Zendikar, and he was black-red because he'd gone a little mad. Zendikar Black, I think he was in the final one. And then we were like, okay, well, what color should he be? Now, we knew we were doing Sarkhan now, we knew Sarkhan after the time change. So we were going back and forth to figure out, and we said, let's just start him pure. He's returned to his home. Tarkir is as red as he gets.

It's a very red-centered plane. Let's just have him go to his core. Because all our planeswalkers tend to have a core color. I mean, I guess some of them are pretty heavily two-color, but something like Sarkin's like, well, he floats around a little bit, he's core in red, but, you know, he dips in green, he dips in black, he'll later dip in blue, as we will see, but

right now, just core red, so that's what we did. Okay, next, Savage Knuckleblade. Green, blue, red, so it's a three-mana spell, 4-4 Ogre Warrior, so he has three activated abilities. For two and a green, blue, red, so it's a three mana spell, four, four, over warrior. So he has three activated abilities. For two and a green, he gets plus two, plus two until end of turn,

but he's only once per turn. What we know is the root wall ability. For two and a blue, so three mana including blue, you can return him to your hand. And for a single red mana, you can give him haste. So the idea here is, these abilities all sort of work in conjunction with each other, which is, okay, I can play him, I can make him haste. So the idea here is these abilities all sort of work in conjunction with each other, which is, okay, I can play him,

I can make him bigger, I can save him if need be, and I can give him haste. The haste is nice because if you bounce him to your hand, it allows you, like if you save him later in the game, you know, if you have green, blue, red, red, then you can attack with him right away. The other thing that's sort of cool

is that later in the game, not only can you give him haste, but you can attack with them right away. The other thing that's sort of cool is that later in the game, not only can you give them haste, but you can also pump them up. So, like, I might bounce them, and then later in the game, if I have let's see, I have two green, green, blue, red, red. So that is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Seven mana,

two green, two red, and a blue. I can put them back in play, have them be a 6-6 with haste. So these abilities all work together. It's pretty cool. I mean, obviously one ability, the first ability is a green ability, the second ability is a blue ability,

the third ability is a red ability. You're using activated to do that. So this is, I talk about this in my ongoing theme here of how one of the things about doing wedge is you do a lot of tri-color, tri-splitting your design into three parts or having three components of it to represent each of the things about doing wedge is you do a lot of tri-color, tri-splitting your design into three parts, you're having three components of it to represent each of the three colors. Now, once again, not every gold card represents all three colors.

Sometimes it represents the combination of the colors, sometimes it represents what the clan is about and really being very clan-ish, even though the mechanics aren't equally represented among the colors. But this is a good example of a card. Look, it is these three colors. Each color kind of contributes something that's unique to that color. Okay, Savage Punch. One green sorcery. Target creature you control

fights target creature you don't control. If you have Ferocious, it gets plus two, plus two. Your creature gets plus two, plus two. Okay. Okay, so clearly, clearly, this card has become much beloved. And not that it's not a good card,

not that fighting isn't good, not that fighting with ferocious plus two, plus two isn't fine, but what sets this card apart is the art. So, this is one of those cards. So one of the things that happens is when you work on a set, especially when you work in development, you know, the art goes out in waves. Usually there's two waves for a big set, and as things start coming in, if you work on a set, especially when you work in development, you know, uh, the art goes out in waves.

Usually there's two waves for a big set. And as things start coming in, if you're paying attention, first you can see sketches. Um, the artists have to, each artist has to do a sketch that comes in. Uh, and then the art team gives notes on the sketch if they, if they're happy or sad or, you know, things need to change. Sometimes it might be like, oh, you're using this armor from page 23. That's the wrong thing. You want the armor from page 22 or whatever.

Or sometimes it's just helping with composition. But anyway, they give the artist notes. The artist then does a final version of it and that comes in and that gets put in it gets scanned and put into Multiverse, our database. So you can go in our database and you can see things that have come in. You can see sketches that have come in. You can see

final art. And I remember when this one came in, because one of the things that I didn't realize when I was making is I don't know the creative elements. I roughly knew. I mean, I talked with the creative. They'd give me a general sense of what the clans were. So I knew them in a general sense, but I didn't see the execution. I didn't see the final art. So it's late in the process when the art comes in. So every once in a while I love this set so one of the responsibilities when you leave the set

is you have to go back when it's in development and peek in on it from time to time just make sure they're not drifting too far from your vision so at one point

I went back and I looked at it and it had art on it I hadn't seen art before and one of the things that I had not realized like I said I mentioned this once before

but it's very important for this particular card is the thing I had not realized until I I said, I mentioned this once before, but it's very important for this particular card, is the thing I'd not realized until I saw the art was I did understand the role that bears played in the Temur clan. That I knew that they were going to be, you know,

Cossack-y, that they were definitely going to be they're the ones in the more harsh climate. I knew the essence of the Temur, that they were the ones trying to be physically fit and survive the elements and that they were all about sort of physical perfection. So I knew the general gist of it so I can

design the clan, but I just didn't know some of the execution. And I had not seen this card. Like I said, had I seen a bunch of this stuff, I would have woven in a little bear tribal, probably a little bit of bear tribal in. I didn't understand bears were important, so I didn't do anything with it. And by

the time I understood, I made a note of development that I, I could see that bears would matter, but it was just a little bit too late in the process to really make bear tribal a thing. So anyway, one of the things people ask about is how we know when we have something that we think the audience is really going to respond to and the answer is we respond to it the second each person saw Savage Punch we knew we had something awesome if you notice for example

the very first time we showed off the art which was San Diego Comic Con we showed this art all of us who were on the panel were like of course we showed this art this is awesome art it went over really well people bonded with it automatically. And really, you know, we made sure in Dragon's Arc here to do the peril art, which we'll talk about in Dragon's Arc here. But anyway, we knew there was something special. You know, we set up.

So at the party, we do a PAX party where we introduce the set. And then you can take pictures. We made sure the picture was you could have you punching the bear. I mean, we understood this was something really cool and we did a lot to try to make sure that we could play up on it because it was really neat. And that, one of the neat things about doing the set

is trying to find these moments that you know people really connect to and then find ways to play off it. Okay, next, Skaldkin. Three blue for a 2-2 elemental. Flying, two hours sack. Do two damage to target creature or player. Once again, next. Skaldkin. 3 blue for a 2-2 elemental. Flying. 2-hour sac. Do 2 damage to target creature or player. Once again, this is blue-red.

That means it's both in soul tie and it's in teamer. In general, a 2-2 flying creature is pretty good. The fact that it also doubles its direct damage makes it very powerful. I mean, I'm being a little strong. It's a card worth playing. It's not super powerful, because

3 mana for a 2-2 is much stronger than four mana for a 2-2 flyer. But the fact that you got a 2-2 flyer and then you can use it for removal means that both Teemer and Jeskai would be interested in the card. Secret plans, green-blue enchantment. Face-down creatures get plus zero, plus one.

Permanency control, when they are turned face-up, you get to draw a card. So this is a good example of a green-blue card that's communicating the green-blue strategy, which is morph. Play morph. Get it? Face down, creatures get plus here, plus one.

When you turn a creature up, you get to draw a card. What much do you want to do with this card? Play a lot of morph creatures. So this is a very loud card that explains what the strategy is for green-blue. Okay, Seeker of the Way, 1w22 Human Warrior. Prowess and non-creature spells.

When you cast a non-creature spell, it gets a lifelink. So we did toy around with the idea of prowess being a trigger that could get additional things. So like, prowess most of the time means plus one, plus one, but hey, you can also get lifelink. So we try to do Prowess, lifelink, but as soon as we added a second thing, Prowess then had to spell out the plus one, plus one every time.

Because if sometimes you got lifelink, well then we have to tell you when you get plus one, plus one. And we couldn't do it in a way where you always got plus one, plus one, and sometimes got an extra bonus, so we ended up having to write it out. I mean, for all intents and purposes, this card is Prowess, plus one, plus one, and got an extra bonus so we ended up having to write it out. I mean for all intents and purposes this card is prowess plus one plus one and lifelink but we had to write out the second part. We experimented with a lot of different ways to write it out but in the end it just wasn't clear or clean.

We also kind of figured out we liked prowess long term and we wanted to preserve it in the way we would use it moving forward and so the idea was okay we're just going to spell out other stuff. Sometimes in a vacuum it's very easy to go, wouldn't it be better

if it said this? And on this card, yes, it would be cleaner on this card. But you have to think of the interactions and the larger things going on and the idea of making one card cleaner and making a lot of other cards clunkier. Like, for example, just having to say plus one, plus one on every prowess card so that there's a few prowess cards that grant other things,

it's probably not a tradeoff you want to make when you could just write it out on the few things that give you other things and then keep it nice and clean on the commons, plus we wanted to make it evergreen. So, like I said, a lot of times you have to really consider the ramifications of what you're doing as far as not just the wording on any one card, but on all the cards that have to do the wording. Okay, next. Sidisi, Blood Tyrant.

One black, green, blue for 3-3 legendary creature, Naga Shaman. When she enters the battlefield or attacks, you mill three cards, meaning you take the top three cards of your library and put them in your graveyard. And whenever one or more creature cards are put into your graveyard, you get a 2-2 zombie. So what she does is, um, so this is the leader of the Sultai. She really enables graveyard

shenanigans, stuff like delve, or other one of the themes of the Sultai was they make use of the graveyard. So she enabled that, and she also got you zombies, which are good. So, you know, note, by the way,

she, the card, it's two abilities. It doesn't say mill creatures and then get zombies. It says mill cards, and then, hey, by the way, if you ever get creature cards into your graveyard from your library,

you get, and there's other ways to do that. Oh, I said, whenever one or more creature cards get put into a graveyard. Oh, she gets you two-two zombies. Oh, interesting. She gets you two-two zombies not just from milling, from anything. From things dying, you get two-two zombies. Is that right? I'm not sure.

I shorthand when I write things down. So I'm not sure whether they die and they get you the thing. I know when you mill, you get the creatures. Anyway, it's written as two different abilities so that if you could trigger the second thing, you don't need the first one.

The first thing will trigger the second thing, but that it triggers with other cards so it can combo with other cards. Okay, next. Siege Rhino. You guys probably heard of this one. White, black, green for a 4-5 Rhino with Trample.

And when it enters the battlefield, each opponent loses 3 life, and you gain 3 life. So this card was made just to be a good, potent card for Abzan. If you know anything about Constructed, you know it's really good. This is probably one of the most dominant cards in the format right now, and one of the things that really is putting Abzan on the map. I mean, there's other cards. Abzan has other pieces. This card, I don't know whether design made it and it got pushed in development, or it might have just been wholeheartedly made in development.

My guess is the latter, that development just wanted some aggressive cards to really push you toward playing certain color combinations. You note it also says each opponent, so that multiplayer play, it has a wider effect in multiplayer play. In general, when we can, we try to word things so that if they can matter slightly different in multiplayer play, they do.

I'm not sure how... This is strong in two-player play, so I've got to believe it's pretty strong in multiplayer play. I don't play a lot of multiplayer play, so I don't 100% know, but my gut is yes, it's pretty good in multiplayer play. In fact, my guess is it's really good in multiplayer play. Okay, let's move it on. Sing and Bell Strike. One blue enchantment, Aura.

When it enters the battlefield, tap Enchanted Creature. Enchanted Creature doesn't tap it as normal. Enchanted Creature has six on tap. So the idea is it's a lockdown card, but what we didn't want to do was necessarily lock down giant things. We wanted to lock down smaller things because we wanted Jeskai to be sort of a not super fast and not super slow, a little more mid-rangey, and we wanted to make sure that some of the slower decks had answers to some of the stuff.

And so the idea here is it locks it down, that some of the slower decks had answers to some of the stuff. And so the idea here is it locks it down, but eventually your opponent will get to the point where they'll get access to the thing again. And so late game, this card's just not nearly as powerful as his early game. But early game, before they have six mana, you're just locking down the creature. So it was a neat way to sort of make a card that fills one role

but give a weakness to it so it doesn't cause a problem on the other side. And we do that a lot sometimes where we're like, okay, in order to make the card function the way we want, there's a weakness built into it so that, oh, okay, I can lock you down but later you have a way to break out of it. I like how this card plays. Smoketeller, one green

for a 2-2 Human Shaman. For one blue, look at Face Down Creature. This is green-blue. It's funny. Green-blue strategy is you play Morph. This particular card is good when your opponent plays Morph because you are allowed to look at your Face Down Creatures. So this is allowing you to peek.

I think it's just playing into the idea that green-blue has sort of an affinity. Blue is all about illusion, and green is all about reality. So it's kind of like blue can look through illusions because they're the ones that make illusions

and green because they're based in reality have the ability to sort of see through illusions so the fact that green and blue are the ones that do that thematically is kind of neat one of the things that's cool

is that enemy colors sometimes have certain similarities you know even though they're enemies there's certain areas where they have similarities I think that's kind of cool.

Sorin, Solemn Visitor. Two white-black for a Planeswalker, a Sorin, obviously. Plus one until the end of next turn. Your creatures get plus one, plus one, plus O in lifelink. Minus two loyalty. Put a 2-2 black vampire token into play with flying. Minus six, you get an emblem

at the beginning of each opponent's upkeep. That player sacrifices a creature. So the idea here is that I'm making my little, you get an emblem. At the beginning of each opponent's upkeep, that player sacrifices a creature. So the idea here is that I'm making my little, you know, Sorin's king of the vampires, I'm making my little vampire army, I can buff my vampires, and then eventually,

I can start weaning out your creatures so that my vampires can get through. One of the things that's interesting is we knew there was a Sarkhan story, and we were trying to figure out we like to make sure we bring back other planeswalkers and really what we wanted to do was we wanted to be setting up the next story

make sure that our stories link together and we knew we were going to Zendikar so we wanted so Sorin shows up to find Ugin because they haven't seen each other obviously in quite a while to go uh oh look the Eldrazi have escaped. We have a problem.

And Ugin, not there. He finds Sarkhan, and Sarkhan tells him, I think he tells him that Ugin's dead, because Ugin is dead, but not dead for long. So, yeah, obviously as the story progresses, the return of Ugin is a big, big part of the story, and we wanted it to have a ramification

beyond just the set. So obviously, the Eldrazi getting out, Ugin and Sorin and Nihiri were the three that imprisoned them. Ugin was going to play a role in that story. I don't want to get too much into that story upcoming, but the resurrection of Ugin is an important part. It has a component in the story to come.

So all of Sorkin's journey in raising Ugin and changing Tarkir is not just... I mean, we didn't want to change everything with the time shenanigans, but we didn't want it to have impact in the story. So Ugin not being dead becomes important. Obviously, you'll see it down the road. Soltai Ascendancy, black, green, blue for an enchantment. Beginning of your upkeep, look at the top two cards of your library. You can put any number of them in your graveyard

and then put the rest back on top of your library in any order. Okay, so this is a Sultai card. So what it wants to do is, it's doing something neat. Black and green are the graveyard colors. Black and blue are the library colors. So is there a way to sort of get the sneakiness of Sultai and the Sultai

also, the Sultai make use of the library, they make use of the graveyard, they're all about information and they make use of the dead. So it's like, oh, this is a kind of cool thing. You get up front the sort of information brokering of the Sultai along with their, you know, playing nicely with the dead. They both

help you with your library and set up your graveyard. So they kind of do, they connect two different components, which is kind of neat, because it's kind of like Golgari meets Dimir. And when they get together, you see those two things work in conjunction. So this card, it's pretty clever in how it works. Surak

Dragonclaw. Two green, blue, red for a 6-6 legendary creature, human warrior. So he has Flash. He has Can't Be Countered. Creatures you control, Can't Be Countered. And other creatures you control have Trample. So for starters, we just wanted him to be a badass. I mean, you know, he punches bears, right?

So we wanted him to be big. So for starters, he's five mana for six six. That's pretty good. Can't be countered. So can't be countered is interesting. It's primary in red and green, and it's secondary or tertiary in blue. So, oh, those are the three colors that can't be countered. Perfect.

Also, he keeps other things from being countered. So he's kind of a leader. He's got flash, so he can surprise you, and he can be blocking, and he can do sort of cool things. And he gives all the other creatures trample, which is kind of encouraging them to attack. Play a lot of other big, beefy creatures, because that's what you should be doing in Timur, and then attack with them. And so he's just there to be a good body that you want to play with, that just is a good leader that sort of enables and gives you other things to help your creatures.

Okay, suspension field. One and a white enchantment. When it enters the battlefield, exile a creature with toughness three or greater. And then as long as... Exiles it as long as it's in play. So it's an Oblivion Ring, but it's an Oblivion Ring for bigger creatures.

And the idea is that I can't get you if you're in your morph state. If you're tiny, I can't get you. But if you later turn into something bigger, I can't get you if you're in your morph state. If you're tiny, I can't get you, but if you later turn into something bigger, I can. And so, one of the neat tricks of this is that it, once again, it matters

about some subset without the whole subset. One of the things we're finding more and more is having answers to not everything actually makes, especially in limited, slightly more fun gameplay. It's like, oh, I have some answers, but do my answers match up with what I need to? It's kind of neat going, okay, I've got to save this. Well, this can answer that problem, but not that problem.

Let me save this other one for the other problem I know is coming up. Swift Kick, three and a red, instant. Target creature you control gets plus one, plus zero until end of turn, and fights target creature you don't control. So this is a red card. It's Jet Sky flavored. But one of the things to remember is fighting, while primary in green, is secondary in red.

It's something you get to see from time to time in red. So this is another thing that gives a little boost, and then fights. I just wanted to sort of mention that it is a red thing. It's something that red gets to see.

Temur Ascendancy. Green, blue, red enchantment. Creatures in control of haste. Creatures for higher power when they enter the battlefield, you get to draw a card. So this is going, hey, what does Teemo want? Teemo wants you to play big creatures. I'll reward you for playing big

creatures in two ways. One, you get to attack with them, although you can attack with any creature which is good. And second is, you get a card. It turns every big creature, four power or more, into a cantrip. Well, that's really valuable. Okay, it just plays right into what we want. Tomb of the Spirit Dragon. It's a land.

You tap to add one color to your mana pool. Two tap, gain one life for each colorless creature you control. So, we knew we needed to make reference to Ugin. Obviously, Sarkans go back to save Ugin. Well, this is where Ugin's body rests. Right now, he's dead, obviously. Ugin, surprise, surprise. So, one thing that people keep

asking me, I thought you said dead is dead. What is this bringing back dead creatures? And my answer is, up until this story, you didn't know the fate of Ugin. You had no idea. Bolas had claimed that he had killed him, but it's Bolas, you can't trust Bolas, so you really didn't know what went on.

You knew Bolas wanted you to believe he killed them, but you weren't quite sure. Did he kill him? Did he not kill him? You didn't know. So I felt like it wasn't until the story we even told you he was dead, and then we immediately hinted something was going to happen.

So it wasn't like he died in some instrumental part of the story and it served his purpose, and now we're undoing all that work. He wasn't dead until the story started, for all intents and purposes. You know, it wasn't until the story began that we told you he was dead. And then if you couldn't sense something was going to

happen immediately, in the context of Arcadia, you were not reading the signals because we were very clear, you know, the time travel story, I mean, we hinted pretty heavily that it was forecast, it was foreshadowed, sorry, foreshadowed pretty heavily. Anyway, we wanted to make a place where his body rested,

we wanted to have some affinity with colorless things, because Ugin has affinity with colorless things. We had more from this set, so it all played together nicely. Trail of Mystery, one green enchantment. Whenever a face-down creature enters the battlefield, you may search your library for a basic land and put it into your hand. Permits you control when they are turned face-up, get plus two, plus

two to end of turn. I said green and blue had a theme of playing nice with morph. This is a good example. It's I said green and blue had a theme of playing nice with morph. This is a good example. It's not in green and blue. This is just in green. But this is definitely, if you get this card early and says, okay, you can build a deck. Put a lot of morph creatures in your deck. It's both going to enable

you to get more colors. This is why this is mono-green, so it can enable you to play sort of a more multi-color version of a morph deck. Okay, this card, when you play morph creatures, you can go get the colors you need to un-morph them, and then it helps you when you un-morph them. So this really says, hey, let's try playing a multicolor morph deck. I mean, green, already the color that helps you play other colors,

and I'm specifically, with this card, doing that enabling, and we wanted this card to kind of enable a four or five color morph deck. Treasure Cruise. Seven and a blue, so eight mana for a sorcery. Delve, so you can remove cards from your graveyard and make it one cheaper. Draw three cards.

It's a sorcery, so it's not exactly Ancestral Recall because it's not instant, but it is close. It is us doing, we love to tease old cards, probably old popular powerful cards, that says, okay, in the right scenario,

if you have seven cards in your graveyard, this thing is very similar to Ancestral Recall. We knew when we made this card that there was some chance it would be powerful in older formats. We thought it would be okay in standard. It's proven to be okay in standard. It was problematic in older formats, but like I said, we let the older formats take care of themselves.

We're not going to let the future be held hostage to the past. You know, this card was fine for standard, so we knew the older formats would deal with it, and obviously they have. Okay, next. Ugin's Nexus. It's an artifact.

Legendary artifact. If a player would begin an extra turn, skip that turn instead. If card name would be put into a graveyard from the battlefield, instead exile and take an extra turn. So the idea is, if you have any way to, you've got to get this in play, if you can kill it, you get an extra turn.

So it's a time walk, but it comes with a baggage of you have to get rid of it. And the reason the first line is on there is to keep shenanigans from happening. We didn't want to get it in the graveyard, immediately bring it back into play, and then go, ha-ha, I get an extra turn, and I can keep doing this. So the idea is, if you're going to...

The thing is, you have to get it to the graveyard, so we can't exile because it's going to the graveyard. So we needed something else built in that said, okay, you can't just recurse this thing. So anyway, that was put in to try to keep some shenanigans from happening. This, by the way, is the time travel device. It's a time travel story. Sarkhan has

to go back in time. We knew when we started our design, we had, we said, legendary artifact, time travel device, right? And so this is the time travel device. This is how Sarkhan gets back in time. Unyielding Krumar, three black for a 3-3 Orc Warrior.

For one W, for one and a white, it gains first strike till end of turn. So this is black and white. It goes both in Mardu and it goes in Abzan. So these are the crossovers, by the way, that are tricky because Mardu is the fastest deck we have and Abzan is the slowest deck we have.

How do you make cards that go both in the fastest deck and the slowest deck? Well, First Strike is another example. I talked before about how, you know, we were able to use Death Touch to be both aggressive and defensive. First Strike can be both aggressive and defensive. If I want to be offensive, well, through the First Strike, it's hard to block. Maybe you let that thing through, but if I'm playing defensively, okay, it really keeps other things from blocking. So it definitely is a card that has the ability to be both aggressive or defensive.

Okay, next. Utter End. Two white, black, instant. Destroy target non-land permanent. So way back when in Arabian Nights, we made a green card called Desert Twister to destroy target I said card, but it meant permanent. Green is not really supposed to do that.

Green is not supposed to destroy creatures straight up. So the idea is, okay, it's not a single color thing. It's a nice, clean effect. One... We should have cards that say destroy target permanent. This is non-land, as in not mess with land. But we should have cards that can say destroy target permanent. But the answer is no monocolor card can do that.

And that's okay. There's a fact that every ability does not need to fall neatly into one of the five colors. And this is a good example of an ability that we've said, okay, it needs to have two colors. White, black can do it, and we sometimes let black, green do it. And the idea is, when between the two colors, they can destroy every card type, like, okay, they can do that. And black has problems with...

Black can destroy everything but enchantments and artifacts. White and green can both destroy enchantments and artifacts. So if you take black and combine it with white or combine it with green, it can destroy every permanent type. Okay, Villainous Wealth. X, black, green, blue, sorcery. Target opponent mills X cards, meaning they put X cards from the top of the library

into the graveyard. I'm sorry, target opponent. And then you may play any spell with Converter Mana cost X or less without paying its Mana cost. So what happens is, I mill you.

The more cards I mill, the higher the X is, the more things I can cast. So you definitely kind of want to do this later if you can, because if I only mill three cards, then I can only play cards that are, you know, Converter of Mana costs three or less.

But if I mill you for nine cards, I can play everything in nine or less. It's probably everything that I mill. You know, I mean, minus, I guess, I guess you don't play lands because they're not spells. But, anyway, it's a cool card. It's Soltai. It definitely is taking advantage of,

I'm using your resources against you. That's very Soltai. I'm messing with the graveyard, although it's your graveyard. That's very Sultai. It definitely is taking advantage of, I'm using your resources against you. That's very Sultai. I'm messing with the graveyard, although it's your graveyard. That's very Sultai. So this card does a lot of neat things to get a very Sultai feel to it, which I'm happy with. Okay, next. Warden of the Eye.

So this is a Jeskai card. Two blue, red, white. So two plus the Jeskai colors for five mana. For three, three, Djinn Wizard. When it enters the battlefield, you return a non-creature non-land card from the graveyard to the hand. So one of the things we wanted to do is

Jeskai has promised it cares about non-creature spells. So he said, okay, let's let you get back non-creature spells. Not sure why we added non-land. My guess is there was a development reason for non-land. Non-creature was we wanted you to get back the spells you're going to get. Maybe we just wanted to focus on getting back spells.

But anyway, this was a good card, and definitely we were trying to find ways to promote prowess, and this was one of the ways to do that. Winterflame, one blue-red instant. Choose one or both. Tap target creature. Deal two damage to target creature. So this is cool. This is one of those things where it's a blue-red card. It's a

little more what we call a Chinese menu card, where it's like, do a blue effect or do a red effect. The thing that ties them together is the idea that they both happen to creatures, and you can essentially sort of choose what you want to do, and you can do them to the creatures. It's a little more, it's not as clean as some other blue-red cards. I mean, the one or both is kind of cute. I like that. The fact that both of them are affecting creatures definitely gives it a little bit of a bond together. So I feel like we did a decent job of kind of making it feel cohesive.

Blue-red, by the way, is both Jeskai and Temur. Once again, tapping creatures and destroying creatures, you're more than happy to play this in both decks. Witness of the Ages. Six mana, four artifact creature. It's a Golem. Morph five. We decided we wanted to have one Morph creature that just anybody could play it. They really needed a Morph creature. It's

designed such that it's not particularly good, but it's kind of made to be a 23rd card. If you need it, it's there. It helps people fill out their decks a little bit. We have three colors, so sometimes you can have some problems. It's just a way to fill out decks a little bit

and give you a tool if you need it. Finally, the final card, Zurgle Helmsmasher. Two, red, white, black. Obviously, he is Mardu, as he leads the Mardu. Seven, two, Orc Warrior. He has haste. He attacks each combat if able. He's indestructible on your turn.

And whenever a creature damaged by Zergo dies, you put a plus one, plus one counter on him. So he's pretty cool. Basically what he says is, okay, he can attack right away. He's got haste. He's indestructible on your turn. So when you attack, he's indestructible. He can't be destroyed on your turn. And he has to attack. So it's like, he can attack, but he can't be destroyed.

So you're just... Zergo is super, super aggressive. He's Mardu. We wanted him to be very aggressive. We made him indestructible on your turn, so you want to attack with him and don't feel bad attacking with him, but your opponent had a means to deal with him.

They can deal with him on your turn, so he's not totally indestructible, but he definitely... And if you chump him, because he's 7'2", he's pretty big, if he destroys anything, he has the singer vampire ability, which is, every time he destroys something, he gets stronger. So the idea is, I have

a 7-2 attacking you, you're gonna have to block pretty soon, you're not gonna be able to take hits of 7 that easily, and every time you block him, he's just getting bigger, because he's indestructible, you're not gonna destroy him that way, and he just gets bigger and bigger, and you gotta draw an answer to him, but, we gave the vulnerability the window that on your turn, you can deal with him, so, and you've got to draw an answer to him, but we gave the vulnerability the window that on your turn you can deal with him, so he's not impossible to deal with,

but he was flavorful, and he, I don't know, I really liked how he came out. Whew! Okay. And that, in, what was it, eight podcasts, is all I have to say about Counter-Turk here. So I, let me end by saying that I was really happy with how the set came out. I know going in, there were a lot of tasks at hand. There was a lot of pressure early on to try

to figure out what the identity for the set was, and I was really happy we came across with such a strong identity. It is kind of funny that walking in, the worry I had was that the ending set was this dragon set, and people love dragons, and I'm like, how am I going to live up to the dragon set? And I feel in some ways, I did such a good job that the dragon set had this dragon set. People love dragons. I'm like, how am I going to live up to the dragon set? And I feel in some ways I did such a good job

that the dragon set had problems because he didn't have to live up to this set. So I'm very proud of the work we did on Constantin Cure. The whole design team, the creative team, the development team, everybody was on their A game. And I really think it's one of the sets that will stand the test of time of just being an amazing set.

So anyway, thanks for listening to me ramble on for 8-Hole Podcasts all about this set. Not right away, but the next time I do a design podcast, I will move on to the next set in the block, which is Fate Reforged. So anyway, thank you for listening, but I'm now in my parking space, and we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work.

So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. See you guys next time.