Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #277 - Fate Reforged, Part 4

Episode Date: November 6, 2015

Mark continues with part 4 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 today we continue on with Fate Reforged. So I've been talking all about Fate Reforged. Last I left, let's see, I got up to F. So I'm still in F. So we're going to start talking today about Feral Kruishak. So 4G, 5-4 Beast. That's it. One thing that's fun, by the way, is we need to make vanilla creatures.

You know, one of the things that we... I mean, it's something that we realized during New World Order. It's always sort of been true, is that you don't want every single card in play to make players go, okay, what does that do? Sometimes you just want some cards that do simple things. Vanilla cards are nice. They give you a little breather.

They do what they do. They can be very functional. And the trick for us is to figure out how to make vanilla things that really make sense. So we're in a world where we have a clan that's all about sort of power and being bigger. And like, okay, just making some bigger creatures will help. And just, we wanted to have some beasts. Like, one of the things that one of the flavors that the creative team was really interested in is the idea that once upon a time, there were all these

large creatures around, and that the dragons, when you let them exist, they eat a lot of those creatures. When you get to dragons of Tarkir, those big things aren't around anymore. The dragons kind of, as they proliferated, ate a lot of them. In fact, there's a few creatures, I know that the

creative team said, okay, they're not going to exist. When you get to Dragons of Tarkir, the dragons ate them all. For example, you see a lot of horses in Khans of Tarkir. I don't know how many horses you see in Dragons of Tarkir. I think the dragons like to eat horses. They like popcorn to dragons. They like them.

But anyway, just to sort of point out that, you know, we're always trying to find new and interesting ways to do vanilla creatures, and this is just a simple creature, but, you know, it fits in and it gets some tone to the story. Okay, next. Fierce Invocation. So it's a sorcery that costs four and a red, and what you

do is you manifest a creature, and you put two plus one plus one counters on it. So one of a sorcery that costs four and a red. And what you do is you manifest a creature and you put two plus one plus one counters on it. So one of the things that we were definitely trying to figure out is when we first did manifest and explore our design, the fear was, was there enough variety? I mean, you're making a two, two creature. How many times can you make a two, two creature? And so one of the ideas that we came across is the idea of, well, it doesn't always have to be a two, two creature. You know, what if when you make it, you know, you might pay more for it, but you've got to put some plus one plus one counters on it. So Fierce Invocation gets to make a 4-4 creature, not a 2-2 creature.

And I like, I definitely like how that played. The other interesting thing about Manifest that ended up playing out really well was it played super, super well with Jeskai. Because Jeskai had the prowess mechanic. The prowess mechanic really wants you to play non-creature spells. And the nice thing that manifests is often it's not on a creature. So this is a sorcery. So if you play this in your prowess deck, you get a trigger prowess.

Even though it's a creature. You can put this in your deck as a creature slot. It makes a creature. For all intents and purposes, it's creating a creature. So you don't have to deck as a creature slot. It makes a creature. For all intents and purposes, it's creating a creature. So you don't have to counter your spells. You get to counter your creatures. But for your prowess count, it does get a count as a non-creature. So I know one of the strategies in drafting in Fate Reforged

is to draft Jeskai and take as many manifest cards as you can in the Jeskai colors. And it allows you... So basically what you do is you take a lot of prowess creatures, a lot of manifest creatures in red, white, and blue, or some combination of red, white, and blue. And anyway, it was a very fun deck. When I played Paper Forge, it was one of my favorite decks to draft.

Okay, next. Flame Rush Rider. So Flame Rush Rider is a red creature, four and a red, five mana, for three, three human warrior. When it attacks, you in a red, five mana, for three, three human warrior. When it attacks, you put a copy, a clone, or a token copy, tapped and attacking, and then you exile it into combat. And it has dash two RR. So this is another example of a good dash creature that's using things a little different. So the idea is, whenever he attacks, he gets to copy something and make a temporary clone,

a clone token, when he attacks, so that every time he attacks, he gets to copy something and make a temporary clone, a clone token, when he attacks so that every time he attacks he gets to have extra damage. And the cool thing is that if you dash him, people aren't prepared for that. One of the things that's fun is sometimes giving something haste, the fun of the haste

is that they don't anticipate it coming. That this thing really can hit you pretty hard if you don't anticipate it. Once it's in play and your opponent knows about it, they don't anticipate it coming. That this thing really can hit you pretty hard if you don't anticipate it. Once it's in play and your opponent knows about it, they at least see it coming. But the neat thing about haste is you can sneak it in and they don't expect it. So this is a good example where haste is, you're paying for the surprise of haste. Not just that you get attacked earlier, which is part of it, but also that your opponent doesn't quite see what is coming.

you get attacked earlier, which is part of it, but also that your opponent doesn't quite see what is coming. Okay, so next is Flame Wave... I can't read my writing. Flame Wave... What is this? Phoenix. Flame Wave Phoenix.

Okay, so it's one red red for a 2-2 Phoenix. It is flying in haste, attacks each turn of Abel, then it had Ferocious, and what Ferocious says, if you have a creature of four or greater in play, you may pay Ard to return this to the battlefield. Okay, so at the beginning

of combat, you can do this. So the idea is, so this is a little tiny Phoenix. It flies, because it's a Phoenix. It has haste, so it can attack right away. And it must attack, so it's obliged to attack. But the cool thing about this is, it's a foenix. It has haste, so it can attack right away. And it must attack, so it's obliged to attack. But the cool thing about this is it's a ferocious phoenix, and it says, look, if I have a big enough

thing in play, I get to keep coming back. So, red has this quirky relationship with flying. It gets dragons, obviously it got dragons in the set, and it gets phoenixes. So, phoenixes are defined in a couple ways. One, they always fly, they're made of fire, that's why they're in red, because they're creatures made of fire.

And the most important thing is they're reborn! The phoenix keeps coming back. Often our phoenixes do damage, this one, I mean, does damage and then hits you, but other than that. But the neat thing about this is, it's a little smaller than most of our phoenixes, but the fact that it just constantly keeps coming back really makes it powerful in that it's hard to deal with. Because even if you kill it, it can just come back. And it's using ferocious. One of the things that's fun is to try to find different ways when you have triggers. Like, the neat thing here is it has a ferocious trigger, but it works in the graveyard.

That you can have something in play worth a power. And the neat thing is, let's say, for example, I get it, it dies, and I don't have anything. Well, at some point, I have a dream. At some point, I get out a creature that has four power or more, and then my Phoenix

starts coming back. One of the things is we didn't, so one of the things on recursive things is we don't like them blocking. So usually, if it's recursive,

we don't want you to just constantly block with it. So if you'll notice, what we did with this creature is we gave it haste and we gave it must attack. That means every time when I play it, I have no choice but to attack with it. So if you'll notice, what we did with this creature is we gave it haste and we gave it must attack. That means every time when I play it, I have no choice but to attack with it.

So I can't block with it. A little trick on our part. You'll notice that, by the way, creatures that continually come back from the graveyard, mostly, not 100%, but mostly, are hard to block with. Sometimes they say can't block. Sometimes they say must attack.

And in this case, we use the must attack. The thing that's in red, usually the separation between black and red is black has can't block and red has must attack. Over time, we've started to realize that can't block is a little more useful. So we've been toying with the idea of using can't block in other colors like red. Red will still be the must attack color, but sometimes a must attack doesn't always have the effect that you want and has a little less utility of camp block.

So anyway, a little hint into the future. Okay, Formless Nurturing. Three and a green, sorcery, manifest with a plus one, plus one counter. So I just talked about the red one. The reason I brought the green one up is when I get to Dragons of Tarkir, I'm going to talk about Smurf, an alternate morph mechanic, where you played a creature face down. You paid four, and you put a creature face down with a plus one, plus one counter.

So essentially, instead of paying three for a two-two, you're paying four for a three-three. I like Smurf a lot. 4 for a 3-3. I like Smurf a lot. We ended up not doing it. I'll talk about that in the Dragons of Tarkir podcast. But the reason I bring it up is that was inspired by this card. This was one of the first cards we made when we were trying to figure out ways to broaden out how to do Manifest. And it was this idea of using plus one, plus one counters to give it a different variance of, oh, look, I pay four to get a three, three. This card directly

inspired Smurf. The idea of using the same philosophy with Morph. It's, what if I could bring it in play? I could pay a little more, but it's a little bit bigger. How do I make it bigger? By using plus one, plus one counters. And the neat thing in both this card and Smurf was that when you

turn it face up, the counter stays so the fact that it has a counter has a utility beyond just making the initial thing bigger it makes the later thing bigger and that's pretty cool and by the way, as Megamorph was inspired by Smurf, you also could say that Megamorph was an evolution of Formless Nurturing okay, Friendly Fire it's three and a red for an instant by Smurf, you also could say that Megamorph was an evolution of Formless Nurturing. Friendly Fire. It's three and a red for an instant.

Your target opponent reveals a card at random from their hand, and then it does X damage equal to their converted mana cost, or X is their converted mana cost, to that player and creature. I think the way it worked is you chose an opponent and one of their creatures, the way it worked is you chose a creature,

you chose an opponent and one of their creatures, and then they picked a card from their hand, and it did damage equal to CMC to the player and their creature. One of the things that we've been trying to do and figure out is how to let red be a little bit more random in a way that's not... I said that wrong.

How to make red chaotic in a way that's always just like, how to, oh, I said that wrong, how to make red chaotic in a way that's always just not, who knows what happens, um, so this is one, I was using randomness a little more straightforward, of the idea of, I'm not quite sure what's going to happen, um, usually later in the game, uh, unless your opponent has some sense this is coming, they don't have lands in their hand, so usually you get to do some damage if you do it, I mean, it costs four mana, so usually later in the game, and it definitely has potential to have big things happen. So it definitely is a kind of card where it has a lot of variance to it.

And it definitely is, it captures some of the chaotic sense. Okay, Frontier Siege. Okay, so I talked about the sieges last time. So the sieges are enchantments. So this one costs three and a green, so four mana. And when it comes into play, you choose cons or you choose dragons. So this one was a little tricky.

So the cons effect is, beginning of your main phase, you may add GG, so green, green, to your mana pool. So it produces mana for you. If you choose dragons, whenever a creature with flying enters the battlefield, you fight a creature you don't control. So the idea here is,

once again, cons is good for you, it produces mana, dragons is bad for your opponent, it fights with your opponent. The idea being is, the reason it says flying is, really what we wanted to say is dragons, but we were just trying to be a little bit more broad. If you want to combo, I mean, green itself, the flying creatures in say is dragons, but we were just trying to be a little bit more broad. If you want to combo,

I mean, green itself, the flying creatures in green is dragons, but if you want to combo it, we're allowing you to sort of combo with other colors to have a little more effect. So let's say you play

a green-blue deck, you might have other flying creatures. But the idea was, originally I think it just said dragons, and then we said, oh, let's broaden it

a little bit from dragons instead of flying creatures. In general, we're careful about, I mean, we like green having fight, and we do an ETB fight every once in a while. We're careful with it because we want to make sure that it feels more like it's not just

a creature that's going to come and play, kill a creature, and die. The fact that it said flying creatures and a lot of dragons in the set meant most of the time the dragon's going to gobble up and eat the little thing. And since you get to choose what creature,

you often will choose the thing that you can completely destroy without losing it in the fight because you get to pick the fight. The reason it says

opponent controls, so you'll notice more and more we will pick things where, like, if I'm going to fight something, odds are I want to

fight things on my opponent's side. There's not a lot of reason to fight on my side. When that comes up, one of the things we've been trying to figure out is for Magic Online, we're trying to reduce clicks. And the idea is, how often do you want to do that on yourself versus how often do you want to do it on your opponent?

This is a good example where, I'm not saying you never ever might come up with a reason to do it yourself, but you so, so much of the time you want to fight your opponent's creature that we decided that it just made it easier to do opponent's creature. So that's why it says opponent's creature. Okay, next, Frost Walker.

So Frost Walker is one blue for a 4-1 elemental whenever the target of a spell or ability sacrificed it. So we used to call this ability Skulking. It first showed up on a card called Skulking Ghost in black in... Where did Skulking Ghost show up? Skulking Ghost was... Legends? I don't know. Early, early Magic.

And, uh... Oh, no. Skulking Ghost? Maybe Skulking Ghost was Mirage. Anyway, relatively early Magic. We eventually moved the ability to blue. We liked the idea. I think originally it was sort of represented ghosts and like sort of a ghost. It's, it's incorporeal.

So like just all it takes is sort of throwing a little spell at ghosts and it dissipates the ghosts. I guess that was the idea. We ended up moving over to illusions mostly. Uh, so we had a core set where we introduced it in blue and it was mostly on illusions. The idea is I'm this big dangerous thing and I'm, I'm kind of kind of cheap to play uh because i'm really not what i appear to be i'm illusion uh and as long as you believe me i have power and and talking um but once you doubt it once you sort of question it it pops and the idea is once you target it oh you realize oh it's not

real um now this set didn't really have an illusion theme, so instead, the ability's now in blue, they had to come up with a different flavor for it. So the idea here is, it's an elemental made of frost. So the idea is super fragile. So the idea is, it has substance and it can harm you, but all you have to do to disrupt it is just throw some spell at it and it dissipates it. So I thought that was a cute, like,

in general we come up with flavors for a thing that we're trying to match, and then sometimes in worlds, we want to do that mechanic, but we don't have that flavor. So, like, really, we weren't doing a lot of illusions here, but, okay, the creative came up with a cute way to allow us to do that here in blue. On Tarkir.

Okay, next is Ghastly Conscription. Five, black, black. It's a sorcery. You exile all the creature cards from target player's graveyard, and then you manifest them. You shuffle them and manifest them. The opponent knows... Normally when you manifest, you're not sure what you're going to get.

You're not sure. A lot of times manifesting is off the top of the library. So this is a little bit different. So this is kind of a reanimation spell, but it requires you to jump through a little hoop first, which is all your creatures come back as 2-2, and you have to cast them and turn them into the thing they are.

One of the fun things about this is because you shuffle them, your opponent doesn't know what they are. Unlike most manifests, like I have a face-down creature. Is it a land? Is it a morph creature? Is it just a creature?

What is it? With this, you know what they are. You can look at them. Okay, I see the eight creatures that you're taking. And you can choose target players. So if your opponent has better stuff, you can take their stuff. So your opponent gets to see what it is. So the fun of it is they don't know. They know what you have to choose from. So if I take eight creatures, they know the eight creatures you have, but they don't know which one is which creature. And it's a very fun card. It's expensive, obviously, because it's a pretty good ability.

But it's a neat, neat card. I really like how it plays. And I like, there's a lot of coolness of the interplay of trying to figure out, like, based on how your opponent acts, like, oh, they're a little more hesitant with that one. Is that a bigger creature? You know, anyway, you can do neat tricks. And one of the

things I like a lot is magic has a lot of opportunity for bluffing. And this is a good card where a lot of times the way to get your opponent to believe something is just to act

as if it were true. That if you take a creature and you act, if you just assume and pretend like if this was this creature face down, here's how I act with it

and act that way, a lot of times your opponent goes, oh, why is he being so confident with that creature, hesitant with that creature? And we'll start making assumptions as if you were acting the way you would act if they were really that. Now, once again, if the opponent can read you and figure out your bluffing, they can call your bluff.

But this is the kind of card where you can do some fun bluffing. And I, one of the things I've learned about Magic is how much at the high level of play that there is just trying to read the opponent and figure out what they're doing and not doing. And, you know, there's a lot of skill that can be gained of learning when you kind of can push things. Like when your opponent kind of has to assume, your opponent will so get destroyed by you bluffing that they kind of have to assume you're not bluffing, that it's great opportunities for you to bluff when it's really not in their advantage to call your bluff. But anyway, enough on bluffing.

Next, Goblin Boom Keg. So it's an artifact that costs four. At the beginning of your upkeep, you sacrifice it, and then when it goes to the graveyard from play, it does three damage to a creature or player. So this card is interesting in that it's not just a lightning bolt. It doesn't

just do three damage to a creature or player. You have to put it into play. You have to wait for another upkeep. So you have to wait for your upkeep. So let's say you play it on your main phase. You have to wait most of a turn, you know, most of three, through the rest of your turn, your opponent's turn, or opponent's turn if you're playing multiplayer, back to your upkeep. And there's opportunities.

They can deal with it. They can destroy it. But it does allow you to, like, it is pretty valuable. It's called a sending deck and play it. Anyway, it's an interesting card. It definitely does things that are neat. The other cool thing about it is it doesn't, it'll sacrifice itself if you wait a whole turn, but if you have some other way to sacrifice it, you both will get the sacrifice

ability out of it because it's a thing you can sacrifice and you don't care to keep it, and you get the ability because all it requires is it going to the graveyard. It doesn't require it sacking itself, you can sack it. So it definitely is one of those cards that like can have a lot of uses if you can figure out a way to use it. Okay, next, Goblin Heelcutter. So Goblin Heelcutter costs three and a red for a 3-2 creature. It's a Goblin Berserker. So when it attacks, target creature can't block.

And it has dash two red. So this is another creature where the surprise value has a little bit of what's going on in the dash. The neat thing about it is that when I attack, my opponent can't block with something. So not only is haste cool because they don't predict the creature coming, but I get, like let's say I have a bunch of creatures I can attack with. They only have one creature back. This really has a lot of nice surprise value. So, this is definitely a card where sometimes you dash it, not even to get it a turn earlier, although you get that as a side effect,

but it's like, oh, wow, my opponent isn't seeing this coming. I really enjoyed how Dash played. Dash is one of those mechanics where it is no question it's coming back. No question my mind is returning. In fact, Bolster, I like both Dash and Bolster, which got introduced in the set. So the three new mechanics were Manifest, Dash, Bolster. All three were pretty popular.

Manifest was the most popular, with Dash being second. Although Promise, by the way, I think was the highest rated clan mechanic. It's funny, by the way, because we do two waves of each set, or two waves of the big set and one wave of the small set. Maybe two waves.

So we get your opinion on what you think of things. And the very first wave of Kansansar Kyr, Prowess was the lowest rated clan mechanic. And by the final wave of Fate Reforged, it was the highest rated clan mechanic. So it really grew on people, which is cool. Which is good, because we made it evergreen.

Okay, next. Grim Contest. So Grim Contest is a multicolored card that costs one black green. It's an instant. And two creatures fight. Creature you control and creature you don't control fight. But instead of normal fight, it's based on toughness.

And so, I think, what was the name of this card? It had some cute name like, what do you call the, I'm blanking on this now, the big guys that try to force each other off the mat. I'm blanking on it. See, if you're at home, we can fill in the thing. You guys know what I'm talking about. Anyway, it was blah fighting was the name of the card. I'm picturing it in my head, but I'm blanking on the name.

When I write, I get to look it up. But when I'm in the car driving, I do not. So you guys at home can fill in the blank. Okay, Grimm Contest was, there was a theme of caring about toughness in Abzan and also black-green. I guess technically it was a black-green theme that made sense in Abzan.

So the idea, if you drafted black-green, it was more about toughness. If you drafted Abzan, it was a component of it because black and green are in it. One of the things they wanted to do in Fate Reforged draft, when you played it with Khan's Tarkir, was have a primary wedge strategy

and a backup enemy color strategy, which is what Khan's was doing. So each of the enemy colors had a strategy. The black-green strategy was a toughness matter strategy. When you see, we'll talk about different toughness cards, black and green have it. The way you can tell that this is one of the major themes is there's a gold card that's really cementing the theme to help communicate it to you.

Something we'll be doing a lot more of is just having, usually a gold card is uncommon. It's just clear in the message of what the clan is trying to do. The archetype of the two-color combination trying to do. So when you draft it in your opening, let's say an opening booster, you take it. Oh, I see what I'm doing. It helps guide you in that direction. Okay, next. Harsh Sustenance is another gold card. One white-black instant. Deal damage to creature or player and gain X life.

Deal X damage to target creature or player and gain X life for X is the number of creatures you control. So white-black was messing around with, I think, life gain, that it was sort of draining out your opponent, and it cared about having creatures. So this is a good example where it's basically a drain, although you can target creatures or players, it's a drain that you can focus,

but it's more effective the more creatures you have. And I think the idea was white-black fits into both Abzan and into Mardu. Just like Grim Contest was black-green, that fit into Sultai and fit into Abzan. And so the idea is that

the card worked well in both those clans. Harsh Substance works well both in Mardu, that has a lot of small creatures, and in Abzan, that also can make a lot of stalemates, so it gets a lot of creatures. But if you're going to do White Black by itself, this is a theme that you could play into. Okay, Hero's Blade is an artifact and equipment that costs two. Equipped creature gets plus three, plus two, and it costs four to equip. But whenever a legendary creature comes onto the play play you can equip it to it for free

it snaps on so the idea was this is a blade so I think the idea was that the first set cons had the had the cons in it favorite forge had the proto cons in it and had the dragons in it. Fate Warforged had the proto-cons in it

and had the dragons. And Dragon Star Cure had the dragons. So Fate Warforged, because we wanted to have the proto-cons and introduce the dragons, it had 10 legendary cards in a small set. That's a lot of legendary cards. So I think they decided to make a card to go with it

saying, hey, we're a little bit legendaryary-heavy based on the needs of the set. Hey, let's give you a Legendary Matters card. Something that, if you're building a deck around Legends, you can use. It's a card that you can use anyway, plus three, plus two for equipped four, unlimited, something you might play anyway. But, if you have a bunch of Legendary creatures, it obviously

definitely is better. Okay, next, Humble Defector. So, one in a red for a 2-1 human rogue. Tap, draw two cards, and then target opponent gains control. You can only activate it on your turn. So this is one of those cards, one of the things we're always trying to find.

There are a lot of different formats that magic gets played in, and that when magic was created, it was definitely created to sort of match a certain tone. A lot of the archetypes were built around two-player play. So when you get into something like multiplayer, Red has had a little bit of an identity crisis. In two-player play, Red is about aggression. Red is about beating you very fast. But that style of play is a lot harder to play with in multiplayer

because if you use all your resources to kill one player, well, guess what? You have a whole bunch of players left, where in a two player game you win the game. So one of the things we've been looking for is to find more tools for multiplayer play. And this card is definitely us attempting to do this. The idea that I can use it for card advantage

with something red needs, but in a way that's not straight up card advantage. And what this card does is, in a two-player game, it just says that my opponent and I go back and forth drawing cards. So I get to go first, so I get a card draw first. But the idea essentially is,

I draw two, you draw two. I mean, as long as you want to continue this, we each let the other draw two. And one person can stop any time they want, but obviously they're losing on cards by doing so. In multiplayer, this card has a political aspect because you get to choose who it goes to. Everyone who's an opponent. So like in Two-Headed Giant, you can't give it to your teammate. But in any sort of free-for-all or commander game where everybody's technically my opponent,

I can definitely play games in which I can do political things. And I can go, hey, if you're nice to me, I'll be nice to you, and you can use it as a means to sort of do politics. So, this is definitely a card which is, had more an eye toward multiplayer formats. Not that you can't play in two-player play, it can work. And it's a little quirky, and it's red getting card advantage, which red doesn't normally do. The argument sort of supported it was the idea that, well, my opponent's also getting card advantage, so like, I'm sort of

everybody's kind of getting card advantage, and so it's not just me getting card advantage. So, it's a bend, but we decided an acceptable bend. Okay, next, Hungering Yeti. Four and a red for a 4-4 Yeti. If you have a green or black, sorry, a green or blue permanent in play,

you may play this creature as if it had flash. So once again, this is the cycle of creatures who gain abilities if you have the proper color. In this cycle, the ability you gain is not something the creature naturally does. So flash is centered in blue and

green all the colors actually can have flash if uh it's like tertiary and the other colors um but they tend to get it when they have an etb effect or edge of the battlefield effect or something that really needs it to be flashed so it's used very infrequently um so normally just a vanilla 4-4 would not have flash in red but Blue and Green both have Flash as a primary slash secondary thing. So anyway, it's a good example of reaching to other colors to be able to get something they can

do that you can't. Also, I'm always happy to see more Yetis in Magic. Okay, Jet Sky Infiltrator. Two and a Blue for 2-3 Human Monk. This card can't be blocked as long as you don't control another creature. So if it's the only creature you have, it's unblockable. And then whenever it does combat damage to you,

you take this card and the top card of your library, and you manifest both of them. Meaning, you take them, you shuffle them, and put them face down. So the cool thing about this is, your opponent knows that every time this creature damages you, you have the ability to manifest another creature, plus manifest this. So you play a little shell game, if you will.

My opponent knows, okay, one of those things I've got to be careful not to let through. The other, probably, odds are is a 2-2 and can't turn into anything else, because in your deck you're going to have 40% land, you're going to have a bunch of spells, usually less than half your deck is creatures.

So if you manifest the card, odds are it's more likely not a creature than it is a creature. So usually it's just a 2-2, but you've got to be careful, because if this creature gets through and one of the manifest creatures is the Jeska Infiltrator, it just can make another manifest

creature. And eventually, some of those manifest creatures will turn into other creatures. Anyway, this was a fun card. It definitely was a little complex, had a lot of words on it. But it's one of those cards that we played with and really, really liked how it played. There's a lot of pressure when we make cards. One of our metrics that we use

is how many words appear on a card. And the reason... I never really talked about metrics. The idea of metrics is we want things that we can easily count to give us a general sense of how the set is doing. It's not that the metric controls the decision on any one card, but it does say to us, hey, if we're at a certain word count that kind of says, oh, you're getting a little complicated,

you need to look at the set. And so whenever we have really wordy cards, we look at them and go, okay, this is driving up our word count. Is it worth it? Does it make sense? And this is a good example of a card like, you know, it's wordy, but wow, we really like it. We can't have infinite wordy cards. Or when I say wordy, the other thing I also mean is just complex.

Like it's tiny print, you've got to read it. What does it do? This is a card that you have to read sometimes more than once to understand. Like I said, that's the little red flag of you can't have a lot of those cards. But we really, really like the gameplay of this card. So we said, you know what? We're going to keep it.

Okay, next. Coleon, the Storm Fury. So this is the black-red dragon. Three black-red. Five mana for a four-five flying dragon. All dragons fly. Or most dragons fly. Dragons you control, whenever dragon you control attacks, all your creatures get plus one plus oh, and it has dash three black red. So this cycle is pretty tight,

except that this one got dash, and all the other dragons in the cycle I think are flying, and whenever a dragon you control attacks do something, this one also gained dash, so breaking the cycle a little bit, although I think what they wanted to do is on the two dragons introduced, the two new keywords, which were bolster and dash, they wanted to get bolster and dash on the card,

so that as we introduced the mechanics, they showed up on their dragon, so that's what they did. Speaking of dragons, Lightning Shrieker, 4R for a 5-5 dragon, common, Flying Trample Haste at the end step, shuffled into your library. So the idea of this card is we wanted to do a common dragon. For those who have read my State of the Union, State of Design column, we also wanted to get a common in Dragon's Ark here. We ended up back in push-up to uncommon.

I wish this had now been there. But anyway, this was the perfect answer for a common dragon. And that really, on some level, it's a spell. It's a spell that does five damage to the opponent. It's arc lightning. It's a very flavorful arc lightning. Not 100% arc lightning. My opponent can block with it. There's dragon triggers.

You know, there's things that care about dragons. So it's not... There's things that care about Dragons. It's a little bit more than Arc Lightning, but it is a very flavorful Arc Lightning that mechanically ties in the set. But it makes sense as a common in the sense that I do five to you and then it goes away. Shuffling the library means, yeah, maybe I can draw it again, but whatever.

It becomes another spell. This is really clever. I, in retrospect, wish Dragon Stark here had... I don't know. I really wanted dragons to have a common dragon. I wanted the set to have a lower Asphodel dragon, so I think this card was in the wrong set, but I like the design a lot.

It's a really good way to make a common dragon. And the card just did a lot of good things. Just having a dragon that you can reveal from your hand as a dragon, or when you attack with it, it counts all the things that trigger dragon lot of good things. Just having a dragon that you can reveal from your hand as a dragon or when you attack with it it counts all the things that trigger dragon attacks, it counts. It just does all those positive pro-dragon things, yet really just

it's a lightning... I said it earlier, the spell I meant. It does five damage to the opponent. It's an axe. It's a... Not a lightning axe. Okay.

One of the things that horribly frustrates me is I have a pretty good memory, and I can remember things like the top eight of who was in the first worlds, but somehow with card names, I have trouble... It's lightning axe? I did lightning axe. Okay, I'm going to say lightning axe.

Okay, next. Mor to say Lightning Axe. Okay, next. Moraine River Prowler. 2U for a 2-1 human rogue. It can't block or be blocked. And if you have a black or green creature, sorry, black or green permanent in play,

you can cast it from the graveyard. So that's an ability that we use in black and green. A little more black than green, but black and green can both get creature cards back from the graveyard. So that's an ability that we use in Black and Green. A little bit more Black than Green, but Black and Green can both get creature cards back from the graveyard. So both of them are allowed to casting it out of your graveyard for all intents and purposes is returning it to your hand

and saying you must play it this turn. So that is something that Black and Green can essentially do. So we made this a Black or Green thing. Next! Mardu Scout. Red red 3-1 Goblin Scout dash 1-R so this is another clever way to use dash

in which in order to get a 3-1 1-R is too cheap for a 3-1 you have to pay R-R for a 3-1 but the idea is well you can dash it for 1-R so the cost is R-R and for a three one. But the idea is, well, you can dash it for one R. So the cost is

RR, and this is one R. So the idea is sometimes you'll dash it because you don't have the second red mana. It's a different thing. I take that back, but I think you can't get a vanilla RR three one. I do believe you can get that. Not with haste, though. So the cool thing about this is the dash helps you do some mana fixing sometimes.

Sometimes it's like, okay, I'm playing, let's say, a three-color deck. Having red-red on your second turn on the three-color deck is pretty hard. So dash can say, hey, there's a way to use this until you get the second red mana. So that's another way to use dash. Okay, next, Mastery of the Unseen. One and a white enchantment. Permanence you control, or whenever a permanent you control turns face up, you gain one life equal to the number of creatures you have.

So whenever you turn a creature face up, you gain X life or X of the number of creatures you have. The card also, and that card by itself will be fine, but we want to make sure that you can make this happen. So it has a second ability, which is pretty powerful, which is three and a white manifest the top card of your library. So the cool thing about this is it keeps making, like in a vacuum without any other help, and there's plenty of other things to help you, in a vacuum it's like, okay,

I make manifest creatures, every creature I make is going to be a 2-2, some of them, some portion of them, 40-50% about, is going to be a creature so I can turn it face up. Every time that happens, I'm going to gain life, and even if I only have this card in play, it's generating creatures. So it's a neat way to sort of

generate an army and get life I know I've seen some decks use this there are even some decks that use this without a lot of creatures because the idea is oh no no no I'm taking it back you have to have creatures you have to turn face up

I've seen decks use this in which it has other ways to turn face up but mostly there will be creatures only barring some future site stuff mostly ways to turn things up, but mostly there will be creatures because only, barring some future site stuff, mostly things that turn face up are creatures.

So I guess you're not really putting this in a creature list deck. In limited sometimes you could use this as a means to just generate a lot of tokens, but still,

some will be creatures which will turn face up. Okay, next is Merciless Executioner. So Merciless Executioner costs two and a black for 3-1. It's an orc warrior. When you enter the battlefield, when it enters the battlefield, each player sacrifices a creature. So the idea here is Mardu and Black-White definitely both have this idea of just getting more creatures in your opponent.

Mardu and Black-White definitely both have this idea of just getting more creatures than your opponent. And so this card says, hey, if I just have more creatures, especially more small creatures, where I'm more willing, if you have a little more larger strategy, say a Teemer or somebody that has a little less smaller creatures and more bigger creatures, you just can make good trades. We're like, well, yeah, I've got to lose a creature, but I've just got smaller, dinkier creatures than you do. And this creature itself is a 3-1, so sometimes the best thing you do is... This card sometimes functions as make target player sacrifice a creature,

because this is the creature you sacrifice if it's your worst creature. It's a 3-1. Often you'll have smaller than that, but sometimes it's the creature you sacrifice. Okay, next. Mob Rule. So Mob Rule is a sorcery.

It costs four red red. It's a choose card. Like I said, one of the themes of the set. So you can choose to gain control of all creatures with power four or greater or all creatures with power three or less. And then you get them for the turn. It steals them from the turn. The cool thing about this card is it has a lot of utility, meaning you can steal anything. You can't steal everything, but you can steal anything.

And that is pretty cool. And the idea is sometimes your opponent just has an army of lots of little things anything. Can't steal everything, but can steal anything. And that is pretty cool. And the idea is sometimes your opponent just has an army of lots of little things, or sometimes your opponent has a few big creatures, and then this can deal with either of those depending on what it is. The hardest time is when your opponent has a mix of things, in which it's got some small things

and some large things, but not enough of a swing that it's quite as beneficial. But sometimes your opponent has like three dragons in play, and you're like, I know my choice. Monastery Monks. Two and a white for a 2-2 human monk with prowess. And whenever you cast a non-creature spell

you put a 1-1 white monk creature token in play with prowess. So this is one of the things we started doing here. I guess we started doing Consentark here. We did a little bit more here. And we do a lot of it, or a bunch we started doing Cons of Tarkir we did a little bit more here and we do a lot of it in or a bunch of it in Dragons of Tarkir

which is essentially prowess triggers that aren't actually prowess triggers prowess only gives a creature plus one plus one so anytime we want

to do something else other than plus one plus one what we need to do is write it out so it literally says when you request a non-creature spell

we had goofed around the idea of prowess saying I'm doing more than just plus around the idea of prowess saying, of doing more than just plus one, plus one, saying prowess and have other abilities, but it ended up being cleaner just to be plus one, plus one, which I'm glad we did because we were able to evergreen it. But this is a good example of something where it just did something cool.

The idea that I can keep making a whole army of things. Every time I cast a non-creature, I get one more, and then all my guys care about the non-creature. So this card worked really well in a deck that was a little heavier than non-creatures because it's generated creatures. Okay, finally, my last spell for today. I want to finish with Ms and then call it a podcast.

Monastery Siege. So this is the blue siege. It costs two and a blue, three mana. For cons, at the beginning of your draw, you get to loot, meaning you get to draw an additional card and then discard a card. And then for dragon, if you chose dragons, spells targeting you or permanents you control

cost two more. Something we do occasionally in blue, just sort of protecting your creatures. But it's not that your opponent can't do things to them. It's just harder to do things to them. But anyway, this is another siege. Once again, remember, cons do positive things. Dragons do good things for you. Dragons do negative things for the opponent.

And so, this is kind of neat in that it is spell-based in both and it's either I'm getting spells or I'm making your spells harder to cast. But it definitely, once again, it has some sort of parallelism to it, which I like. But anyway, I'm done with M. So cast. But once again, it has some sort of parallelism to it, which I like. But anyway, I'm done with M. So obviously we'll have at least one more podcast. I'm not sure whether it's one or two more, but I'm chugging

along. I hope you guys are enjoying hearing about Fate Reforged. And I see by my time I had some extra traffic today. So anyway, a little bonus extra content for you today on Fate Reforged. But I'm in my parking space. 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.