Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #275 - Fate Reforged, Part 3

Episode Date: October 30, 2015

Mark continues with part 3 of his five-part series on the design of Fate Reforged.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so we are in the middle of a Fate Reforged series, talking about the design of Fate Reforged. So I got to the point where I'm talking cards, so I'm going to tell some stories as I talk about cards. Okay, the next card is Break Through the Line. It's a red enchantment, costs one and an R. For one red mana, target creature with power two or less gains haste and can't be blocked. So one of the things we tend to do is we make mono-color cards that are kind of targeted for a particular strategy, but because they're mono-color, they can go another color. So for example, this card is meant as a Mardu card. I'm pretty sure

it is flavored and it's creative as a Mardu card. Mardu's the one that attacks with lots of small forces. So this card is most efficient there. But, one of the cool things about this is, like, for example, morph creatures are two. So this card happens to work with a morph creature.

You need enough mana because you need a red to activate this, and then you need the mana to unmorph it. Also works with manifest, obviously, just as well. So the idea is, it was sort of... It's focused for one particular play strategy, but there are others that can do that. So the neat thing about this card is it has some flexibility the way you play it. And so another trick that I've seen is in prowess decks is that you take a

prowess creature that's smaller, let it attack, and then you can cast some spells to make it bigger. It's versatile. It's the kind of card where it can be played in a lot of different ways, even though it was sort of designed and focused specifically for one thing, but we like having open-ended things so that

even if you're playing a Teemer deck or a Jeskai deck, any deck that has red in it, you can look and figure out ways that you could make use of it. Okay, next, Brutal Horde Chief. Three and a black, so four mana for a 3-3 Orc Warrior. Whenever a creature you control attacks, you drain the defending player for one, meaning they lose a life and you gain a life. And then for three, five mana, two of which is hybrid, so three, red or white, red or white, creatures your opponent control block

and you choose how they block. So the idea is, this goes in a deck that wants to attack. Notice it's black, red, and white. It's a Mardu card. It can go in a black deck. You don't necessarily... You don't need the red or white. I mean, the card actually does something cool unto itself, which is it drains your opponent for attacking. But, the nice thing is, if you have red or white, and once again, you don't need

red and white. You need red or white. You can control how things block. So you can make it very hard for your opponent to block your stuff. You either can set it up so you're killing their things. You can set it up so their big things are killing your small things while your bigger things are getting through. And so one of the things I explained is whenever we're doing a hybrid, we're always trying to find abilities that overlap between the two colors. And it can get tricky. I mean, this is a good example where we're stretching a little bit because red and white, they overlap in a few areas,

and they overlap especially like in creature abilities and stuff. They overlap a little bit more. They're both combat-oriented. But when you're trying to do some other stuff, it gets a little trickier. And here's us going, okay, well, what can red and white do?

And this ability isn't something we do very often. But if you go back and look in the past of sort of messing with blockers and who blocks what, it's something that white and red are the two that have dipped their toe in. So we said, okay, this isn't what we do very often, but, you know, it has a red and a white quality. Okay, we can do that. So this is a good example of, with hybrid, especially at rare hybrid, where you're kind of stretching a little bit, trying to find some unique things. Okay, next, Cache Defenses.

So it's a sorcery that costs two and a green, so a three mana sorcery, and it bolsters for three. So one of the things I like to say is that there are certain base effects that we like to do, and then we like to twist a little bit. So in some ways, this is...

This is kind of a giant growthy kind of thing. It's permanent, but you have less control. It's a sorcerer. It's not an instance. It's not a surprise thing. But green tends to have a lot of auras that buff and tends to have a lot of effects that buff creatures. And green

is the color that most often puts plus one, plus one counters on things. So, this is kind of like... Bolster makes a lot of sense in green, because green is the color that does this kind of thing. one counters on things. So this is kind of like, bolster makes a lot of sense in green because green is the color that does this kind of thing. But once again, bolster has this neat play of it kind of forces your hand. You don't have complete control where it's going to go. Now you do have some control because with bolster

you can choose what order you play creatures in. You can make decisions based upon knowing that if I want a bolster, I have to figure out how I'm going to do things. And one of the things that's also fun sometimes is when you have multiple bolsters of different size, that sometimes you can use the small bolster to get the smallest thing out of the way. So the thing you really want can now affect, get the bigger bolster effect. I've seen that used a bunch of times. The other thing I like a lot, by the way, is I love when we can do cards

that are just like, you know, basically one word. This is like bolster, you know. Usually we need to use keywords to do that because if it's not a keyword, it's not defined. But it is fun when you have a keyword and you can just literally, the card, like, we have a bunch of cards in Magic where it's just like scry, bolster. You know, those cards are definitely cool. I guess they have to be a keyword action for that to work. We make those. Okay, next. Citadel Siege.

The Siege cycle is a cycle where you pick cons or dragons and there is a global enchantment effect and you pick which effect you get. So cons for this one, this is Citadel Siege costs two white white. It's an enchantment.

So when it enters the battlefield, you choose cons or dragons. If you choose cons, it says at the beginning of combat, put two plus one counters on target creature you control. If it's dragons, at the beginning of combat, tap target creature.

Okay. So one of the things is, this is cycled, what we decided was, cons were going to build you up, and dragons were going to tear down the opponent. We decided that one of the ways to sort of just give a flavor difference is

cons was more about, you know, building themselves up and getting tougher, and dragons is more about being negative toward your opponent. So what we did is, you look at the different effects, one of the effects is like, I'm helping myself, you know, the reason the enchantment is good for me is it makes me better. The other one says, the dragon side always says,

the reason this is good for me is because it knocks down my opponent in some way. Both of which help me. Me getting better helps me. Me hurting my opponent helps me. So in each case, it helps me, but it just has a slightly different flavor. The other thing this card did, not all of them do this, but I like it where we can, is there's parallel structure in the siege. What I mean by that is both of them are beginning of combat abilities.

So it's sort of like if you play Frontier Siege, you know to expect something to happen in the beginning of combat. If you have it in play, if your opponent has it in play, once you see it, you're like, okay, I know, even if I don't know what it does, I know beginning of combat is when I look to see. And I talk a lot about sort of just aesthetics in general. And so one of the things about aesthetics is parallel construction is very important.

And what it means is when you have two things, you want the two things to feel like they have a relationship to each other, that the cards feel nicer. When you have effect A and effect B and, like, they have nothing to do with each other, it just doesn't feel as good. It's sort of like, well, okay. Like, sometimes you can explain with flavor, but you want to connect them.

You want thing A and thing B to feel connected in some way. Now, this card has a lot going on. It clearly gives you different choices, but even then, you kind of like to have the choices feel connected to each other. That's just good card design. It's not always possible. I'm not saying 100%, but in general, when you can,

little things like them both happen in the beginning of combat, just creates a parallelness to them that just aesthetically feels nicer, and that's important. Okay, next, Cloud Form. So one blue blue, three mana for an enchantment. So, okay, so when it enters the battlefield, you manifest a card from the top of your library, and this becomes an aura and then attaches itself to it, and then the enchanted creature gets flying and hexproof. So there's a cycle of these. There's only three.

It's a Jeskai cycle. We've done a little bit of Concentrate Airblock between cons and fate. We would do cycles in which we were just cycling a particular clan, and so there's only three cards, meaning one color in the clan. So this card is Jeskai, so there's a red one, a white one, and a blue one. So they're a little tricky. What we want, we really like the idea of

manifesting and then putting an aura on the manifested creature. It turned out to be a lot trickier than we thought. I think the gameplay was fun, you know, but it definitely is wordy. It definitely is. The fact, for example, that it doesn't say aura on it. Like, it has to start as an enchantment and turn into

an aura, because it can't because, if I understand correctly, if it was an aura, until it resolves, you don't have the manifest creature. So if you just put it into play as a normal aura, you go, where's my target? Where's my creature? No creature? Okay, bye-bye.

And go away. Which obviously was not the point of the card, so we had to word it creature? No creature. Okay, bye-bye. And go away. Which obviously was not the point of the card. So we had to word it a little bit differently. This is a good example, by the way, of something that seems simple. Seems like, oh, yeah, just manifest the card and put this horror on it. Then when you actually try to template it, it gets a lot muckier. So one of the things, this is a good poster child for in design. You want to make sure you talk with the rules people, you talk with editing, that you get a general sense of how templatable is this?

Because sometimes you have effects that seem really simple, that when you actually try to write it on a magic card, it's a lot more problematic than you would think. This is a good example. In the end, we decided to keep them. They're a little on the ugly side. I think they're clear enough what they do, but it is not, it is definitely a card you've kind of got to read more than once. That's one of the things I always know is when we have a problem card is if a player reads it and goes, okay, I've got to read that again, usually that's a sign that we're really messing with the line, not over the line. Okay, next. Crucible of the Spirit Dragon. It's a land.

Tap, add one colorless. Or, you can spend one and tap it, and you can put a storage counter on it. And then if you do that, then the third ability is tap, remove X storage counters. You can add X amount of mana of any combination of colors, but you can only use it

to cast or activate dragons. So the idea of this card is this is where Sarkhan went to find Ugin, and helped heal him so that Ugin didn't die. And we wanted to help enable dragons.

We knew we had a dragon deck coming up, a dragon set coming up, so this card was helping enable that. I mean, we knew there were some dragons in this set, so clearly you could play with this set. I'm wondering, I talked the last time how one of the problems we had two times ago,

the first podcast of the series, of how one of the problems, like 2020 hindsight, is that there was a little bit too much dragons in Fableforge that is undercutting the excitedness of dragons in Dragon's Dark here. This is the kind of card that maybe, maybe this should have been, well,

I understand why it's here. This card's here because it represents something that wasn't in the future. It's in the past. So maybe this card needed to be in Fableforge because what it represents was not in Dragon's Dark here. But we did have to be careful how many dragon-y things we did. We get to do some, but we definitely were getting careful

not to cross the line. Okay, Crux of Fate. I talked about this card in the first podcast, but I'm going to talk about it again because it's such an awesome card. Three black black is a sorcery, and you choose one. Destroy all dragons, or destroy all non-dragons. So one of the cool things about this card

is we like the idea of choice. We like the idea of this moment. So there's this big moment that goes on where we wanted to see the fight between Bolas and Ugin. I think, in fact, by the way, that this might be the only card in the set where you actually see Nicole Bolas.

He has a very small part. He has an important part, but a very small part in this set. He has to kill Ugin, or at least mortally wound Ugin, and Ugin's got to get saved. And so we wind up cool cards. So this was a card, usually we have what we call a Day Zero preview. We don't always do it, but a Day Zero preview is a preview card that's before normal previews that

usually people don't expect. And the idea is sometimes it's on the website, sometimes it's at a panel somewhere. It's just kind of, you weren't expecting this, and bam! And when we do a day zero card, a preview card, we want it to be something, because

usually it's going to be apart from the normal previews. It's not like, here's a preview card, and then tomorrow you'll get another preview card. You get one and we really want it to last for a little while. So what we want to do is get something that's symptomatic of what the set is about. So for example, when we did Magic Origins, we showed off Liliana, which was one of the double-faced planeswalkers. Like, bam! That's what the set's about. It's about origin stories and who they were and how they became planeswalkers. It encompasses everything the set's about. It's about origin stories and who they were and how they became Planeswalker. It encompasses everything the set was in a single card.

So this card, Crux of Fate, was that card. Aaron actually went down to Australia, for PAX Australia, and he previewed I think the first time people saw anything from the set was from this panel and he showed Crux of Fate. It's the very first thing he showed. And it's cool.

I mean, it's a neat card. It's a powerful card. It has the choice flavor into it. It has a story in it. It's just one of those cards where all the pieces come together. And, I mean, not every card in the set is going to do that.

So you have to figure out... I don't have a very term for this. I should come up with a term for this. But there's an important name for me for a card that just kind of embodies the set. You need at least one because you want to sort of start off your previews with it. Normally you have more than one, but normally there's like one focal card. I'll call it a focal card, which it's just every aspect of the set is kind of all looping through it.

And it's a really, really good sort of lead-off because it shows so much about what you're trying to do. And this card does that. This card's like, you know what this set's about? It's about a time in the past where an important decision has to be made. Now, a bunch of people complain that in the actual decision being made, it is not dragons or no dragons. It's dragons or no. Keeping the dragons around doesn't necessarily kill everything else,

although the dragons do kill a lot of things. But one of the things that you want a lot of times in design is you want clean templates that hit the general flavor. You don't have to hit 100%. You want to get in the ballpark to get the general sense. You get into trouble when you try to exactly match flavor exactly. I talk all the time about how, you know, a sword should only be held by a creature that has a hand.

Why should an elephant get a sword? But the game is better that any creature can actually equip something. And so, you know, you design it so it makes flavor sense most of the time, but trying to match it perfectly for flavor, at the sake of gameplay, causes you problems. It's not good to do. Okay. Oops.

What happened? Oh. One second. Okay. One of the things about driving in traffic is you have to... I will be safe and then I will continue with my podcasting. Okay. Next is Cunning Strike.

So Cunning Strike costs three blue and red. It's an instant. It deals two damage to target creature and two damage to that creature's controller. And then you draw a card. So this is a good example of just trying to... We had a cycle of enemy cards, one cycle,

just to... When you drafted with a con to help push you toward the con drafting style. We knew that when you got to, they'd be less useful when you got to, there's a name of the set, when you got to Dragons of Tarkir. Dragons of Tarkir allows you to draft shards secondarily. So the one thing I think about doing enemy here is,

dragons, first off, you draft ally colors, but the backup is to drop shards, shards being a color and it's two allies. So if you draft the black shard, for example, this card can be played. So it does have a small role when you get to Dragon's Arch Kiir, but less. This card was definitely made more to help you play

Conjurer's Arch Kiir with Fate Reforged. So what we did is, once again, Fate of Reforge was designed so we wanted the set to play well with both sets on either side because it's being drafted with both Khans of Tarkir and Dragons of Tarkir. Some cards lean more toward Khans, some lean more toward Dragons. We tried to make sure that everything does something. Like, the difference between a three-color wedge card and an enemy card is there was a strategy to draft shards in dragons. So a blue-red card does have a place. The problem with a wedge card is you just can't draft a wedge.

It's really, really hard to draft a wedge. So we didn't want to give you a card that really was completely dead. So the enemy ones helped you with cons and had a role in dragons that the three colors would not. Anyway, this is just a good functional card. One of the things we like with Just Guy is giving Just Guy sort of good combat-y trick cards that allow you to sort of do prowess tricks and things. And this is a pretty good card.

This is a great prowess enabler. It really does nice things and helps you, you know, it really can help you win, or help you kill things that you normally couldn't kill and then do some extra damage and get extra damage with prowess.

Like, if you can set up a lot of times, a simple little spell like this can completely wreck combat. A combat that looks, all of a sudden, looks decent, bam,

you know, you can just, out of nowhere, kill this thing and your things get bigger, get a couple of prowess creatures and you can draw a card. Anyway. It is a very, it was a very good spell. Okay.

Dagatar, the Adamant. So he costs three and a white. He's a 0-6 legendary creature, human warrior, with Vigilance, but he enters the battlefield with four plus one, plus one counters, and then for one and two hybrid mammoths, so one black or green, black or green,

you can move a plus one, plus one counter from him to target creature. Okay, so... This is white, black, green means it's Abzan. He's meant to be more defensive. There's a theme in Abzan, a plus one, plus one counter in matter.

Once again, one of the tricky things in hybrid is trying to find, this is another little bit of a stretch, where basically as counters you can move them. Green normally moves counters. Black will do this thing where it will move counters

from one person and add them to another on the flavor of i'm draining you normally when we do in black it's often i'm stealing my opponent's counters like my opponent loses the plus one counter and i gain one just normally how black does it but like okay we allow black to move them a little bit we'll stretch a little bit here um hybrid does force us to bend a little bit we don't break things but we bend the color pile a little bit with hybrid it's why by the way doing a lot of hybrid causes problems. I've talked about this with Shadow more, is that you just run out

of actual overlap, and you start sort of getting creative, and it starts bending, and if you're not careful, you start breaking the color pie, which we don't want to do. But this is a good example of a card where it's generally useful. It just allows you to sort of you can move this at any

time, so it allows you to mess up combat and stuff. And because the possible counters have an obz on matter, you often can move a counter and grant an ability, which can be very powerful. Okay, next. Destructor Dragon. Four green greens, so six mana, two of which is

green, for a 4-4 dragon. It is flying, and when it dies you destroy target non-creature permanent. So we made an uncommon cycle of dragons. Those dragons are all, I think, 4-4 flyers for 6 that have a death trigger, that when they die, they do something,

and something in color for what they are. I think they all tend to be destructive. So one of the notes, I talked about this with the original Siege, is we were trying to make the dragons more destructive. Not that the Khans didn't have a destructive quality to them, but they were a little more constructive than the dragons.

That when you compare the Khans world to the dragon world, that the dragon world is just a lot more in disarray. That dragons care less. That they're just more destructive by nature. And that if they destroy things, ah, they destroy them. So we were trying to get the sense of dragons being more destructive.

So we went back to Dragon's Tark here. And just, it was, everything was more destroyed. Like, oh, of course, dragons are more destructive, right? We wanted to sort of capture that flavor. So I should point out, this is a monocolor green flyer. So the thing about flying in green, people, I talk to this all the time, is green is by far the fifth in flying. It is supposed to be the worst in flying.

It doesn't mean that green never, ever, ever gets flying because green is, flying is so endemic to the game and things like dragons, there's things that pop up like this where once in a blue moon, we want to be able to give green flying, something that green does on rare occasions. But it's supposed to be a rare occasion we have to be very careful

uh the green flies are not supposed to be you know tournament heavy cards um that's why like a hornet queen i like issues with it's like it's kind of flew i mean i flew for flavor reasons but it just was this really dominating tournament altering card in a color that isn't really supposed to be about flying. Green is supposed to be good at stopping flying. It has reach and has answers to flying, but it's not supposed to fly itself all that much. But if we're going to make an exception,

the idea of we want to cycle out dragons and set all about, or block all about dragons, I do feel like this is the place to do it. And there's a mono-green one here, and there's a mono-green one in Dragon's Ark here. I'm okay with that. I'm okay with it occasionally when it's a mono green one here and there's a mono green one in Dragon's Dark here. I'm okay with that. I'm okay with it occasionally when it's super in flavor doing it. But it really supposed to be, you have to be careful at the power level and you have to be careful how often you do it. So I'm not, I'm not actually anti-destructor dragon. It serves a purpose. Hornet Queen really was a one

isolated card in the middle of vacuum that caused all sorts of issues and constructed and wasn't doing anything other than, hey, let's reprint this card. And yeah, I know people love the card because people love bendy cards and they let you do things you don't normally get to do. But the color pie is the way it is because colors aren't supposed to do certain things. And when you let colors do things they're not supposed to do, it just makes it that much easier. Like, there's thin lines separating the color pie.

We want to make sure each color has an identity and you want to go there. And if you bleed over, at's thin lines separating the color pie, and we want to make sure each color has an identity, and you want to go there. And if you bleed over, at some point you break the color pie, and it's a very important thing not to break. Next, Dragon Bell Monk. So two and a white for a 2-2 Human Monk. It's got Vigilance and Prowess. The reason I want to point this out is that's a clean, simple card.

That's an awesome little card there. And the fact that we made a whole set of cons, and then we still had tons of nice, simple card. That's an awesome little card there. And the fact that we had made a whole set of cons and then we had still had tons of nice, simple cards left was one of the things that convinced us that it could be evergreen. That there's just a lot of nice little combinations. That Prowse really links with so many different things. There's so many different ways

to just do cool little things with it. Now this card, I'm glad we did here, because Prowse is primary blue, secondary red, and tertiary white, but we don't do white very often, so this kind of thing. Vigilance is not in blue or red, so I'm glad we did it here.

Okay, next, Dragon Rage. Two red instant. You add R to your mana pool for each attacking creature you control, and then all your creatures gain fire breathing. So what that means is Add R to your mana pool for each attacking creature you control, and then all your creatures gain Fire Breathing. So what that means is all your creatures can spend one red mana to get plus one, plus zero until end of turn. So we call it Fire Breathing.

Fire Breathing existed as a card in Alpha called Fire Breathing. And then like Shiv and Dragon, the dragons early on had Fire Breathing. So anyway, it doesn't always represent Fire Breathing. And then, like, Shivan Dragon, the dragons early on had Fire Breathing. So anyway, it doesn't always represent Fire Breathing. In fact, I don't think even in this card it represents Fire Breathing. I think it represents aggression. And it's sort of like, I can fuel my guys up and then I can make them more aggressive.

But it's pretty cool. Essentially what it's doing is you get to plus X plus O your team where X is the amount of attacking creatures, but you can choose when and where to stack it. It's not like every... Sometimes when you card deck, all your attacking creatures get plus 1 plus O. This can do that, but it can do a lot more.

For example, let's say I have one creature that has evasion. Well, I can stack it all on the creature that has evasion. What if I say I have some combats where a couple creatures need to be bigger to help win a combat, or not win it, but destroy the opponent's creature. So this kind of does, it's kind of a booster, but in a way that gives you more flexibility. Okay, next. Dragon Scale General. So three and a white for a 2-3 human warrior.

At the beginning of your end step, you bolster X, where X is the number of tapped creatures you control. So this card is kind of cool. What it says is, I want to be attacking. The more I'm attacking, the bigger my things will get. And the nice thing is, as I bolster things, it makes it easier and easier to attack with things.

I mean, a lot of different decks can use this. This is particularly useful in Mardu, I think, because Mardu has so many small creatures that this thing rewards you for having lots of attackers, more so than one or two big attackers. But this is a nice use of Bolster also. I like the fact that we use Bolster to work on different kinds of gameplay. For example, Bolster happens... I mean, I'm sure this card is flavored as Abzan

because that's the clan that's using it. But it's neat that we can make a card that's flavored in Abzan that really has a lot of use in a different clan, which is Mardu. And even just anybody with white can make use of this card. It does some cool stuff. Okay. Next, Dramoka, the Eternal. Three green, white for a 5-5 legendary dragon.

It is flying, and dragons you control, whenever a dragon you control attacks, it gets bolstered too. So once again, this is a rare cycle. It's legendary. These are the dragons that will become the dragon lords in Dragons of Tarkir. And they all have a trigger when you have a dragon that attacks. So when this attacks, he's a dragon, he triggers. The thing I liked about this trigger was

all of them essentially had an attack trigger, but it was a little broader than just themselves. It says, hey, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm a dragon. When I attack, I do something. But if you have more dragons, I like dragons, you can do that. Once again, this is another example where we had more dragon tribal. I mean, the nice thing when you play Fate Reforged with dragons, dragons really

really mattered, and Fate Reforged helped dragons mattering. And when you played it with cons, they mattered a little bit, but not nearly as much. That part I liked. But it did... Part of trying to make Fate play well with dragons was doing a bunch of dragon enabling, and there's a weird economy fate play well with dragons was doing a bunch of dragon enabling,

and there's a weird dichotomy between playing well with dragons and undercutting the theme to make the theme of dragons feel a little less special. So there was a line to be drawn there. I think we went a little too far over, and not greatly over, but a little bit. Like I said,

because maybe I get rid of the uncommon dragons. I think I probably keep these. At rare, it just has less impact and limited, and I do like the fact that when you play with them with the dragons

from Dragons of Arkyr, that they just play nicely together. I think that's pretty cool. The other thing about Dromoka, by the way, is every time I see a name, I want to do, like,

Dromoka Almond Fudge. Did I do a comic with that? I feel like that's the ice cream flavor that Dromolka loves. Okay, next. Ethereal Ambush. So three green and a blue. So this is one of the enemy color cards.

It's an instant. You manifest the top two cards of your library. So not one but two. So manifest, by the way, proved to be a very versatile mechanic. There are a lot of little things, because at first you're like, when you first look at it, it's like, oh, it just makes tokens for all intents and purposes. It just makes tutus. Now, the tutus could turn into things, so that's

why it's cool. But how many times can you make a tutu? Well, one of the examples is, you make more than one. Do you make two tutus? And this is also an instant, so you can use it defensively. So this is a pretty cool card. I definitely like this card. And, like I said, it fits into our enemy caller theme, our enemy caller cycle. Next, Fascination, X, blue, blue. It's a sorcery. Either all players, or each player, draws

X cards, or each player mills X cards. Once again, mills means take the top X cards in your library and put it into your graveyard. This card's a lot of fun. I like the fact that it, once again, parallel construction, where, like, X cards are going to leave the top of your library, and they're going to go to another zone. Are they going to go to your hand? Are they going to go to all players' hands?

Or are they going to go to all players' graveyards? And that's pretty cool. It's pretty much like, you know, where are the cards from the library going? So it has a nice, it is just very, very clean. It also has an X in it. While I'm not a big fan of X at common, I am a big fan of X.

I know X at times can confuse people, but X really also, people get excited by X, and the reason is, when you look at a card you want to imagine potential. And this is one of the things we've learned about doing design, is people always see the largest potential.

Whenever you do a card, they assume okay, I'll do whatever, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll make a deck that does whatever it needs to do. Oh, look what I can do! And this card has big dreams. You know, you can draw a huge number of cards, you can mill a huge number of cards. That X's a huge number of cards. That Xs do this nice thing. I mean, Fireball had the thing going back all the way back to Alpha, which is, I had a dream. I had a dream that I could shoot you with a really

big Fireball. And that's a lot of fun. So I'm, well, I tend to want to keep X out of common. That's just me trying to make sure common stays a little simpler. That's not that I don't like X. I actually love X. X is a big fan. I'm a big fan of X. And I've made many, many X spells over the year because it is fun to have that flexibility and to have the dream,

to imagine what you could do. That's pretty cool. Okay. So I'm driving to work, so I will do one last card, and then I will call it a day for today. So Fearsome Awakening. So it's a sorcery that costs four and a black. I'm driving to work, so I will do one last card and then I will call it a day for today. So Fearsome Awakening.

So it's a sorcery that costs four and a black. And you get to animate a creature card from your graveyard. Which means you take a creature card in your graveyard and you put it into play, put it into the battlefield. And if it's a dragon, it gets two plus one plus one counters. So one of the things about designing for a long time is you have,

you just learn staple effects. So this is a good example where if I want to do a card in black that has a rider, reanimation's very clean. You reanimate it, and then you boost it in some way, plus one plus one counters being the biggest way to boost it, but there are some other ways. And so this was very clean.

It's like, okay, we want you to play dragons. We want to have just a little bit of a dragon rider. And like, okay, reanimating things is good. Reanimating dragons is even better. This is a well we go to all the time, but I feel like it works. I'm not against using things that work. So there's certain things that

you will see we keep going back to. You don't need to reinvent the wheel when the wheel's doing its job. So I like reanimation spells. We have to do, we tend to do reanimation spell, usually in uncommon, sometimes at rare, and most sets.

And so like, hey, it's a nice place to have a rider. So anyway, we finished there. So tomorrow, so I'm in the middle of that. So we have probably a few more, a few more podcasts to do. But anyway,

I hope you guys are enjoying hearing all about Favorite Forge. It was a fun set to do and it's fun talking about. But I'm in my parking space, so we all know what that means. We know it means it's the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic.

I'll see you guys next time.