Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #289 - Dragons of Tarkir, Part 2

Episode Date: December 18, 2015

Mark continues with part 2 of his six-part series on the design of Dragons of Tarkir.

I'm blowing up my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so last I talked to you, I'd begun beginning my series on the design of Dragons of Tarkir. Well, I today start talking about the cards. So the idea is, I told you a bunch of stuff about the set, about the design. One of the things I like to do is spend a bunch of podcasts talking about individual cards, and then through the individual cards sort of get at some other card design stories. Okay, so we start with A, and we start with the Acid Spewer Dragon, which costs 6 mana, 5 and a black. It is a 3-3 dragon. It's flying. It is Death Touch. And it has Megamorph for 5 black black.

Plus, when it is turned face up, you put a plus one plus one counter on each other dragon you control. So this was an uncommon cycle. So one of the tricky parts about doing a dragon set is making sure that you have enough dragons. And so the trick was, I mean, we knew we needed to make uncommon dragons, and so we made a conscious choice to make a cycle of uncommon dragons, a monocolor cycle in addition to a multicolor cycle. So we made two cycles that are uncommon. This monocolor, one of the things we wanted is we wanted it to be something which felt dragon-y and encouraged dragons, but was pretty simple and straightforward. Uh, so the idea of this cycle was, I think they're all 3-3, um, which is about the smallest.

One of the things we tried to figure out is how, I mean, we're not worried about how big a dragon can be. Dragons can get pretty big, but how small could a dragon be? That was one of our issues, which is, what, what is big enough to feel like a dragon can be. Dragons can get pretty big, but how small could a dragon be? That was one of our issues, which is, what is big enough to feel like a dragon? Because of flavor reasons, there aren't any baby dragons. There's no,

all the dragons are born out of Tempus, fully formed. So there's no little baby dragon. So we can't really have two two dragons. So we decided

that three three was, well, I think what we decided was four four was kind of the minimum. But this card, because you can megamorph it and turn it face-up, and it'll get a counter, it's like, well, most of the time this will be a 4-4. You really are encouraged to play this face-up.

I mean, not always. So, it costs 6 mana to play it face-up and be a 3-3. It costs 7 mana to unmorph it, but not only does it get bigger, it makes all your dragons bigger. So, it definitely encourages you to make it bigger, and we felt like with a straight face we could say, okay, this card doesn't, you know, this card

has the potential to be a 4-4. I think that's I think our guideline was it had at least the potential to be 4-4 or bigger, I think is where we drew the line. In retrospect, one of my big beliefs about the set is I think it's where we drew the line. In retrospect, one of my big beliefs about the set is I think we should have worked with the creative team to figure out a way to have more variety

of dragons. I think the fact that dragons must always fly, and we put restriction on size, made it hard to differentiate the dragons, because we need so many dragons. I mean, the set has over, I don't remember exactly how many dragons, but high 20s, low 30s, somewhere around there.

And the problem was, when all of them have to be 4'4 or bigger and flying, it's hard to differentiate from them. So I do wish we had allowed ourselves to make some smaller ones, and we, I don't know, it's tricky. Dragons are particularly tricky. Like, there are certain creature types where sometimes we'll make flying, sometimes we don't. We sort of moved away from making non-flying dragons, so it definitely was a challenge. I think

this cycle was kind of cool in a couple ways. One is it helped us intermix dragons, one of our main themes, with Megamorph, one of our main mechanics. It also allowed us to make a card that didn't require you to have dragons, but also encouraged you to have dragons. Like, one of the nice things about this

card was that if it was just by itself, it's a 3-3 that can become a 4-4, you'll play that, especially in Limited. But, having other dragons, you know, the reason you'll play one of these cards in more casual construction might be, I have a bunch

of dragons, and this card is much better in a deck with a lot of dragons, because it makes everything bigger. But anyway, I thought this cycle did a decent job of sort of... One of the things we wanted was to feel dragon-y, but Uncommon had to sort of take up space without taking up too much space, if you will, not taking up too much splash space. And so these cards are pretty functional and cool,

and they encourage a dragon theme without being super splashy, because we wanted the splashier ones to be higher rarity. Next, the Anok Artillerist. So the Anok are our dog people, or hound people, to use magic creatures. By the way, I don't know if people have ever heard this story, so I'll tell it real quick, which is

one of my great failings at magic is not winning the dog versus hound fight. Some reason, somewhere, we decided that dog creature types would be hound. I think there's some R&D people that loved hellhounds. They played some video game where they referred to dogs as hounds, probably because they were all actually hounds. And my problem is a hound is a kind of a dog.

Not all dogs are hounds. And my problem is, a hound is a kind of a dog. Not all dogs are hounds. So we make a lot of different kinds of dogs, not all of which are hounds. So having the creature of a hound is kind of silly, in my mind. So I have brought this up on numerous occasions and had what I call the dog fight. Try to get dog. We have cats. For a long time we didn't have cats. Finally I won the cat fight.

We got cats on cats. And I've just never been able to win the dog fight. And it baffles me because I feel like there's been numerous times where like, okay, I just need a majority of R&D to agree with me and I can win this. And it never happens. And I'm like, really? Really, R&D? So I blame video games.

I think hellhounds. I blame hellhounds. I think hellhounds are the cause of it. Anyway, let's talk about this card. So Anak Artillerist costs two and a green, 3 mana total for 4-1 Hound Archer. It has reach if it has a plus 1, plus 1 counter on it. So, this is playing into the green-white strategy. So remember, centered white, which is the Endurance Clan,

was the Abzan in Condor Dark here, and is the Dromoka Clan here. The Dromoka is the dragon. So anyway, one of the themes we had in both Bolster and in Outlast was it put plus one, plus one counters on things. And then there were cards that cared that you had plus one, plus one counters on it. So this is one of those cards. It has a defensive quality. It gets better if, well, I mean, it's a four one, so it's kind of aggressive, but it can get a defensive quality if it has a plus one, plus one counter on it.

Okay, next. Ambuscade Shaman. Two and a black, three mana total for a 2-2uscade Shaman. Two and a black, three mana total. For a 2-2 Orc Shaman, if a card name or another creature you control enters the battlefield, card name gets plus two, plus two until end of turn. So the idea is the Ambuscade Shaman gets better based on other creatures entering the battlefield.

So it gets plus two, plus two to end a turn. So it is a 2-2, so it becomes a 4-4. So the idea is, in a deck where you play a lot of creatures, this thing can get bigger. And there's certain combinations in this deck. There's certain ways to get token creatures, especially. So in certain deck combinations, this can become quite powerful. This is the kind of card, by the way, that I can tell was made because there's a deck archetype

in draft that they really wanted to make sure people pushed toward. Off the top of my head, I'm wondering which one this is. There was a black-white warrior theme. I'm wondering if warriors are the ones that make tokens. One of the problems for you guys, like, this set

you know, first, when you guys hear this, the set will be I mean, not the most recent block, because obviously Battle for Zendikar is out right now, if you listen to this, but the previous block, so it's like, not that long ago. Problem for me is I work two years in the future, so if something is like,

you know, I don't know, half a year old for you, it's two and a half years old for me, so I don't always remember the details year old for you, it's two and a half years old for me, so I don't always remember the details, but I think this was for the black-white deck. I can tell looking at it,

this was handmade, possibly by development, maybe by design, to help round out a theme in a deck archetype. It's the kind of card that it is. Now, it's a fun,

general card. It's the kind of card that you can play a lot of different decks and does neat things, but I can tell that it was made to fill a certain niche. Okay, next. Anafenza, Kintree Spirit.

So, white, white for a 2, 2 legendary creature, Spirit Soldier. Whenever, whenever, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when whenever somehow this is hard to say whenever another non-token creature you control enters the battlefield bolster one so the idea is whenever you play a creature but this one doesn't count token creatures you get a bolster one so it gets to make everything you keep making the smallest thing bigger

because of bolster so let's talk about this this was an interesting cycle that actually got me a lot of grief so this cycle was the previous Khan cycle. Why did this one give me so much grief? Because four of them were legendary creatures and one of them was a planeswalker. Narset became a planeswalker. We'll talk a little bit more when I get to Narset, but, but this cycle was one of those things that people didn't see as a cycle. They saw it as an incomplete cycle because there were four legendary creatures that were ally-colored, and there was one missing in blue

and white, because that's where Narset would have gone. And Narset was a blue-white planeswalker, but anyway, four did something and one didn't. It's a good example I always talk about how aesthetics, how you have to be very careful because people's desire for balance will override a lot of things.

And even though we did make a cycle that made sense, it in another way didn't feel right for a cycle. So whenever you kind of break patterns, players will chime in and we have to be very careful. Now, I do believe we broke it for an important reason here, but nonetheless, it did irk a lot of players. Let's talk a little bit about Anofenza. So one of the cool things we wanted to do in this timeline, so the idea is we had a set in which the last set is an alternate timeline. Things went differently. So one of the things we knew we wanted to do was we wanted to take each of the characters that were in the story and have them come back.

But things are a little differently now. So last time we met her, she was a battle-worn con, right? She ran her own team. Now, well, if you notice, she's dead. She's a spirit. Now she's not, even though she's died, Anne of Phan's a much always helps. So she's, even her spirit is helping. So even as a ghost, she's still helping the people.

But, in this timeline, things didn't fare quite as well for her. She's not leading her own clan. She is fallen victim. I don't remember exactly who killed her. Maybe Dromoka? I'm not sure who killed her.

But anyway, she died. She's a ghost. So one of the things that's neat is, just to show the characters in different ways. And, okay, last time we met her, she was alive, and now she's not. In this timeline, she became a helpful spirit, but a spirit. Okay, next, Ancestral Statue. It's an artifact for four. It's an artifact creature. It's a golem that's a 3-4.

And when it enters the battlefield, you return a non-land permanent you control. So one of the things that we do is we occasionally this mechanic first showed up in Plane Shift in the invasion block and it's what we in R&D call

gating. We don't actually give it a name that's a nickname, but what gating means is when I enter the battlefield, I am forced to take something else and return it to my hand. The most common place we tend to do it nowadays is in white, although you'll occasionally see it in blue, and green often does it as an upkeep effect, like every upkeep you have to do that. I think any color has access to it, and obviously we're doing an artifact here. One of the reasons this is helpful is

it's something that seems like a drawback that's really not as drawback-y, that's a new word, not as drawback-y as it actually appears, because a lot of times getting things back can be beneficial. For example, I was just talking about the Dremoka clan. Well, the Dremoka clan, they like to bolster things. And a lot of their bolster things are ETB effects.

So you can bounce back something that you could play to bolster. You could, in the Ojitai clan, like prowess, you could play a non-creature permanent, which you could bounce. Is this bounce creatures or permanents? Non-land permanents. So, yeah. So, you could play a permanent, and then you could bounce a non-land permanent that's a non-creature permanent for prowess purposes and trigger prowess twice. Silumgar has exploit.

I'm not quite... I mean, there's some ETB effects in every color combination. It's not as straight up there. Dash allows you to bounce back a creature so that you can replay for dash if you want to trigger its dash effects. And a Tarka... Both a Tarka and Silumgar, there's edge-of-the-battlefield effects. There's reasons you want to do it.

There's upgrades you want to do. Not quite as clean as the other ones, where this ties directly into their mechanic. The fact we did an artifact means we thought it was generally useful. Oh, the other thing you can do is you can take any morph things, or manifesting, because you're playing this with Fate Reforged, and you can bounce those back as well. Like, I can take something, I can unmorph it,

I can get to whatever the ability I get for unmorphing it is, I then can bounce it back to my hand, and I can do it again if I wanted to. Anyway, this is a support card. This is the kind of card where, if we put it in the set, we knew it was synergistic with other things going on in the set. One of the things you usually can tell with artifacts is the key thing to artifacts is, we don't get a lot of, unless it's an artifact-based set,

which most sets aren't, we have to pick and choose where our artifacts go. And so a lot of times what we want to do is say, hey, here's an effect we think most color combinations could use, and then sometimes we'll put it into an artifact. We have to cost it a little bit more than artifacts. We don't want to, you know, we don't want to usurp the colors that primarily do it, like white is the color that primarily does this. So this is not quite as good as white would get, but good enough, and especially for limited

where you care a little bit less about the rate of your card. This is something that has some value. Okay, next. Eroshin Sovereign. Five green, white. So seven mana, one green, one white for a 6-6 dragon. It's flying. And when it dies, you put it on the top or the bottom of a library.

This is a rare cycle. So we made a rare... So there is... Let's see if I remember correctly. I mentioned this last podcast. There are dragon lords, which is a mythic rare cycle. There were gold dragons.

That was a rare gold dragon. There were monocolored rares. So at rare, there was monocolored cycle dragons and were gold dragons that was a rare gold dragon. There were monocolored rares. So at rare there was monocolored cycle of dragons and gold cycle of dragons. Mythic rare, there's a gold cycle of dragons. And then uncommon, there also was a common and uncommon gold cycle of dragons. And then there

were some dragon matter cards, also uncommon. And there were the dragon lord monuments. We'll get to those. Anyway, this is a good example of a card where we were trying to find different ways to play with dragons, and this card is a dragon that in some ways has a more defensive quality to it.

I mean, it's a 6-6. It can attack. It's a 6-6 Flying Dragon, so, I mean, it is powerful for that reason. But its special ability beyond just being a giant dragon is it's hard to kill. And the reason we said top or bottom of library is basically look if it's valuable to you to keep this thing around

if you have the mana if you have the means to get it back out okay it goes to the top of your library guess what they can only get rid of it for a turn you can spend your next turn casting it and then you have it out again but if for any reason it's not beneficial if you have things you need at the top of your library

or let's say for some reason whatever you casted it, you don't have the means to cast it anymore, and so drawing it would be a dead card, you have the ability to put it at the bottom of the library. So we never want it going away. We want to make sure its ability is a positive ability. So if for some reason going to the top of your library is a negative thing, which can happen, you then have the option to go to the bottom. But this is a good example of trying to make the dragons different this is a defensive quality

there's nothing about this really other than helping you protect it it is not something that particularly is offensive in nature I mean it's offensive only and it's a 6-6 flyer but nothing else, extra abilities don't have any sort of offense to them, it's much more defensive okay next, Artful Maneuver

so it's an instant that costs one and a white, so two mana, one of which is white. Target creature gets plus two plus two until end of turn with rebound. Okay, so this is the perfect kind of card we made to play with prowess. So first off, it's an instant combat trick. Those are the best for prowess, because that means is when you're playing in combat, you don't know, you know, this is a perfect thing where, not only do you get to use it on, I mean, you can A, use it on a prowess creature to give it plus three, plus three,

or you can use it on a non-prowess creature to give it other, so you could boost some creature and give it a prowess creature. This is the kind of card where you can just completely change the balance of combat. Like, if you attack with two creatures, one of which has prowess, you can use this to save the

non-prowess creature and allow the prowess to save the prowess creature. Or, like I said, you can use this on a prowess creature and get a boost. Rebound's kind of nice because even though the combat trick only works once, meaning your opponent's only surprised once, you do get it a second time on the next turn.

It's not a surprise anymore. That's true for all the rebound cards, which is the first time, assuming it's an instant, I guess, the first time you kind of can surprise your opponent. Next time they see it coming, but it still means you get the bonus. You know, I still get to boost things. And so, anyway, this was definitely one of the reasons we made prowess was we were looking for cards that really could make use of prowess the first time and then have value coming back and this is a neat effect where yes it's great as an instant in the middle of combat but you know what as a for all intents of sorcery at the beginning of the turn it's still quite valuable just boosting your creature often

is very valuable um you know i can use it to boost whatever i have evasive on, I can boost the prowess creature because maybe plus three per three is enough that now it makes it something that my opponent doesn't want to block but it's a good example of a nice clean little thing so let's talk about rebound for a second rebound, one of the interesting things about rebound that I didn't talk about before was

rebound is from Rise of the Odrazi now the set, we knew this that right after us was Battle for Zendikar. We knew we were going back to Zendikar. So one of the things we had to figure out was, and the good news is, we had started, Dragons for Tarkir design overlapped Battle for Zendikar design. So one of the things we discussed in Battle for Zendikar is, we wanted to bring back a certain number of mechanics. Turns out Rebound was one of those mechanics

that was very functional from Zendikar block, but not very identifiable, meaning when you can only bring back a few mechanics, you want to bring back ones that really speak to what the world is about.

And Rebound was a tool to help the adventurers fight the Eldrazi in Rise of the Eldrazi, but it wasn't particularly iconic. So we decided that, you know what, it makes sense here. It's very valuable. We like bringing back mechanics where they can take on a new meaning.

Mixed with prowess, for example, Rebound just played really differently than it did when you had it in Rise of the Eldrazi, and it just wasn't iconic enough for Zendikar to be something we wanted to use for battle for Zendikar. I did have a talk with Gottlieb, the lead designer for Dragon. He and I talked a little bit just to make sure that Rebound wasn't... We knew it was a Rizal-Drazen mechanic, so we talked about it.

I signed off on it as the lead for Battle for Zendikar, saying, you know what, I'm pretty sure we don't want to use this mechanic, so feel free to use it. And it did a very good job. I think it was a very good returning mechanic. Okay, next, Assault Formation. It's an enchantment for one green, so one and a green, two mana. Creatures deal combat damage equal to their toughness.

And then it has two activated abilities. For a single green mana, a creature with Defender can attack. And the second activated ability is for two and a green mana, three total. A creature you control gets plus zero, plus one. So there's a bunch going on here. So if you guys remember Doran from Lorwyn Block, he was a three-color, in fact he was obzon colors, he was a tree folk that had this ability for the first time ever

to do damage equal to its toughness. And I think he was, was he a 0-5? I think he was a 0-5. So the idea was, even though he was a 0-5, he kind of functioned like a 5-5. He was actually very efficient. He saw some tournament play, saw a lot of casual play. And this ability of

using toughness as a way to fight was something that players responded well to. So one of the things, I've mentioned this before in podcasts, but whenever we make a card that's just iconic and people really like, whenever we finally decide to use that ability again, people always go, but no, no, you're making that one card less iconic. You know, that ability is that card.

Why are you doing that? Like a similar thing happened when we made the Changeling mechanic in Lorwyn, which is, it used to just be what was it called? Mistform Ultimis was a legendary creature that did it. Oh, you're making Mistform Ultimis less special. And the answer is, yeah,

I am always willing to make an individual card less special to make a new batch of cards. Magic's made 16,000 cards or something crazy so far, and we have a lot more coming. I don't have the luxury of saying, you know what, this ability that people really like, only one card will ever do that. No, no, no, no. If you are a card that's fun, I might give you a little space. I might let that card in standard be the only thing that does it, but eventually I'm going to come around and we're going to make use of it.

So the interesting question here was, we knew we liked it. It was in green, white, and black as a gold card. And the question was, where does this ability want to be used? Is it something that wants to be used on gold cards? Is it a green, white, black thing? Is it a green, white thing? A white, black thing? A green, black thing?

Is it a green thing? A white thing? A black thing? So we kind of, we sort of said when we made this card, well, at least it's a green thing. We will let green occasionally do this. Maybe it's more than just a green thing. Maybe it's also a white thing. But we decided that it was a green thing, that green definitely is creatures that like to fight in interesting ways. Green also tends to be bigger, so it has a lot of toughness. It's not, it's not the color that tends to be bigger, so it has a lot of toughness. It's not the color that tends to have toughness over power. It's a color that tends to average them out,

where usually green is probably the most square-statted of colors, partly because it has a more range of creatures, that most creatures don't have a lot of 4-4s, 5-5s, 6-6s, 7-7s, but green can, especially at low rarities. So, um, so it worked well because green tends to have high toughness because it has big creatures. So it is a mechanic that rewards big, tough creatures.

Um, you might see the ability, we might end up also using the white because white tends to have high toughnesses without necessarily having high powers. Anyway, this ability is one of the ones where it has three abilities and it has, has an enchantment with two activated abilities. Both activated abilities definitely are beneficial to it. One is it lets walls, or not walls, it lets creatures with defender. Once upon a time those were walls.

It's not always walls these days. Defenders, the mechanic says you can't attack. And usually if you have defender, you tend to have a high tough, because the reason that you exist is you're good for blocking, because you can't attack. So it's quite often that things with Defender don't have high power. I mean, a lot of Defenders have zero or one power. So this letting them attack is nice, and then also there's synergy with creatures with Defender having high toughness. Second thing is you can boost creatures' toughness. Well, that's kind of cool here, because not only can you save things,

you can boost toughness for the reasons you always want to boost toughness, but this is sneakily and kind of cutesy, also a power boost, because any attacking creature is going to deal damage equal to toughness. So by increasing its toughness, you both make it tougher, but really you're also making it more powerful when it attacks. So that's us being cutesy. Okay, next. A Tarker Beastbreaker. So this is one in the

green, so two mana for a 2-2 human warrior. So a grizzly bear, but with upside. It's got Formidable. What that means is if you have a total of eight or more power, so this is the Tarka clan's creature ability. It's based off Ferocious. Ferocious said you have one creature and play with power four or more.

This says you have to have any number of creatures with power eight or more. So it plays nicely with Ferocious, but it also enables completely different decks. Ferocious really needed to have decks with one bigger creature, where a Formidable deck could have lots of little creatures. You can swarm with a Formidable deck. Anyway, if this thing, which is a Grizzly Bear, has Formidable, for four and a green,

so for five mana, one of which is green, you can get plus four, plus four, end of turn. It's not a Root Wall ability, so it's usable more than once. Root Wall can pump up only once. So we don't normally do that in green. Normally in green when we do power pumping, we do what we call the root wall ability,

which is it can only do it once. So it kind of has a built-in giant growth. If it's enough mana, we sometimes let you do it more than once just because the limitation is the amount of mana. Like, you have to have 10 mana before you can boost this twice. So, okay, in the late game, we'll let you have access to another boost. But most of the time, it's just plus 4, plus 4. So this is a good example. One of the things early Magic had the Grizzly Bear, which is a 1G 2-2,

which is what we R&D referred to, 1G 2-2s. This is one of those things we long ago said, you know what? We're allowed to observe this. Green gets a lot better than just a 1 green 2-2. But a 1 green 2-2 proves to be something that you will play, and so this is a fine card that early drop that's good enough to play, and then later in the game, bam, once you get to five mana, it's not a 2-2 anymore, it's a 6-6.

The other cool thing about it is, if you have the mana up, if I have five mana available and I attack with a 2-2, you really don't want to block it. So one of the abilities that's kind of neat is it also has the ability, assuming you have Formidable, that if I have 5 mana up, I kind of have an unblockable creature unless my opponent has a lot of way to block. Then I don't even need to spend it on it. And one of the cool abilities here is if I have 5 mana, the threat of it is enough for

me to attack with a 2-2 that my opponent probably isn't. I mean, they might get in the way because they want me to waste my mana and they're willing to chump block something to make me spend five mana. So they might chump block or something. But, anyway. Okay, next. A Tarka of Freed. So, it's a red creature. Three and a red. Four mana. For a 5-1

a Freed Shaman. It's got Megamorph. Two and a red, so three mana. And if you turn it face up, it deals one damage to target creature or player. So this is a good example of a creature

that gives you some choices. So for four mana, I can just play a 5-1 or Freak. If I'm at the point where I have the four mana, I don't need to play it face down. But here's where Megamorph makes things a little more interesting. If I play it face down, instead of being a 5-1, it becomes a 6-2. And when I turn it face up, I get to do a damage to something. So there's reasons why, when you get this card after you have four mana,

that you still might want to play it face down. It's a little bit different than Morph. I mean, Morph did have an un-morphing trigger so even if it didn't get the plus one plus one counter maybe maybe if the one damage was important to you you consider it um but being a 6-2 is a pretty it's significant versus a 5-1 there's you know one ones can't kill it now it just makes it slightly harder to kill um anyway i just want the the megamorph, although there's all sorts of issues with it,

as I said in my first podcast, the name's a little silly, and it wasn't as much a divergence as Manifest was from Morph, and I think players, we set up an expectation because we had three different sort of variants of it. The idea was that

the third one would be equidistant as the second one. We were off on that a little bit. But nonetheless, I will say this about Megamorph. It's a good mechanic. It's functional. It plays well. We've seen a lot of Megamorph in constructed play. While it might have missed the mark

a little perception-wise, it actually did a good job functionally. It is, I think, a very good mechanic. The name's a little on thewise, it actually did a good job functionally. It is, I think, a very good mechanic. The name's a little on the silly side, although we didn't need morph in the name, so I'm not sure

if you're going to name it with morph in the name. It's going to be something morph, and that something's going to mean big. So if it's not megamorph, you know,

I don't know. I'm not sure we can name this functionally in a way that we need to name it so you understand what it does without it being a little silly sounding because you need morph in the name

and blink morph in which blink means big just sounds kind of like the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers or something. I don't know. I think it's a hard thing to do. Okay, a Tarka Monument. This is an artifact that costs three. You can tap for red or green and for four red

and green, six mana total, one of each of red or green, and for four red and green, six mana total, one of each of red and green, it becomes a four, four red and green flying dragon until end of turn. Okay, so this is a cycle. This is an uncommon cycle. The monuments were all, we needed to have color fixing, because it's an ally color set. So we made some stones. So the idea is, for three mana, you have a stone

that you can tap for red or green. That's a little weak. You can maybe play it. But what we do is sort of give you a little oomph to play it and help play into

the dragon theme. We said, okay, well, guess what? Once you get to enough mana, six mana, and the cycle's all the same. They all cost three. They all cost six mana.

Four generic, and then C and D, one of each of the colors that it's part of whatever it taps for and so it's a kind of way to sort of make a card that fits the dragon theme, that gets us our

mana rocks that we need and it's also creatively it was tied to this monument to the dragon lord so it had all these pieces that worked really well I was very happy how it came together. One of the tricks about the dragons that was finding different ways to make dragons matter.

And this was pretty cool. This was a pretty cool way to make dragons matter. Okay, next. Atarka's Command. Red, green for an instant. Choose two of the following four. Opponents can't gain life this turn. Deal three damage to each opponent

put a land card from your hand onto the battlefield or creatures you control get plus 1 plus 1 and reach the end of turn first off you'll notice of the 4 abilities the first 2 are red abilities the second 2 are green abilities so the idea is this is a cycle this was rare I believe

the idea of the commands was we cycle. This was rare, I believe. The idea of the commands was, we had done the commands in Lorwyn. They were the brainchild of Aaron Forsythe. Aaron loves modal cards. And so he decided to make a, I think they were called super charms in Lorwyn, where instead of making one choice out of three options, you got two choices out of four options. The commands were very, very popular. When we were making Concept Arc here, we tried making

clan commands, and they, oh no, we weren't making clan commands. At the time, we were making, what are those called? The CDDE ones. I'm blicking on them, but anyway, we decided

that commands made a lot of sense in two-color world. And it's nice and clean. Maybe cons did mess around. I take that back. Cons might have messed around with commands. I think in cons we tried... Did we do commands? I know we made them

and we made them so they did one of each of the side ones and two of the center one. Here's where my memory's going to fail me. Did we actually end up making commands in... No, we... I think we made charms and not commands. That's what we ended up doing. Anyway, we did make commands in Dragon's Dark here,

and the idea is they are all relatively cheap. Well, I think that varies. I think this is the cheapest one. I think other ones are not quite as cheap. But you get two options and the idea is the options all have nice synergies with each other so that, you know, I could

do sweet to each opponent and keep them from being able to gain life so I can, you know, keep them down or I could boost something and then do damage to my opponent, do extra damage. I mean, you can mix and match them however you want. One thing's a command. And the way they all worked is, because it was a two-color card,

two was from the first color, and two was from the second color. I think, was there any other... No. Okay. Next, Avatar of the Resolute. Green, green for a 3-2 Avatar. It had Reach and reach and trample when it enters the battlefield you put a plus one plus one counter on for each creature you controlled

with a plus one plus one counter on it so this is a creature um that got better it's sort of a creature that says hey i want you to play with the mechanic which is bolster and maybe you could also play outlast which is you know in this clan well. And as you get more plus one, plus one counters, I just get bigger based on that. And so the idea is in a deck, in a constructed deck, you know what, just build a deck of lots of creatures that get bigger, or lots of ways to get bigger, and then this thing can start getting pretty huge. Like I said, it only costs two mana, so like a 3-2 for green-green, not too bad. And it has region trample, so that's pretty cool.

And the idea that it can keep getting bigger based on how many other things you have, meant this thing could be... Well, once again, it locks when it comes into play. So one of the things we could have done is made it a star-star or star plus three or whatever. But this is a little easier sometimes. We say, you know what?

When it comes into play, figure out what you need to do. It does mean it's a cheap creature that you don't always want to play on turn two. Although at GG for 3-2, it also has... I mean, this is the kind of card I talked earlier about wanting to bounce things. This is the perfect kind of card where you want to play on turn two,

be aggressive, and then once I get a little bit later, I'm happy to bounce it back to my hand because I can replay it and make it much, much bigger. So that's the kind of card that really plays into that. But anyway, this was... We really were trying hard in the clan to play, to want to grow over time because that's one of the things that the clan all about endurance had a lot of flavor of. I sit there and get bigger and bigger.

But the neat thing about this card is you can play it in a beatdown deck. You can play it in a red-green that's trying to be more aggressive. So the card has a lot of flexibility in how it can be played, which is pretty cool. Okay, next. Aven Sunstriker. So Aven Sunstriker costs 3 mana, 1 white, white. So 3 mana, 2 picture, white. For a 1-1 bird warrior.

It is flying and double strike. And it is megamorph 4, white. Okay, here's another good example of a megamorph card. Okay, so the idea is for 3 mana. So I could play this cheaper. Well, I could play this face down as a 2-2 for 3 mana, or I can play it face up as a 1-1 flying double strike creature. So the neat thing is, I can do 2 damage on the ground,

or I can do 2 damage in the air, essentially, because it's double strike. But, and this is the nice thing, if I play it face down, and then at 5 mana play it face up, it gets a plus 1, plus one counter, but because it is double strike for all intents and purposes, it goes from doing 2 damage to doing 4 damage. So that is very effective. This card also works really well in the Dremoka clan because Dremoka has bolster, and this is a 1-1 creature, meaning when you bolster, as long as this creature is in play, the first time you bolster, you get a a 1-1 creature, meaning when you bolster, as long as this creature's in play,

the first time you bolster, you get a bolster onto this creature, and this creature, because of Double Strike, really uses plus-unplus encounters more effectively than most. So there's a lot of fun plays where I play this up purposely, I then bolster, and I get to put it on this creature, and now all of a sudden, you know, Bolster 2

or Bolster 3 starts making this pretty formidable. Like, imagine having a, even a Bolster 2 or Bolster 3 starts making this pretty formidable. Like, imagine having a, even a Bolster 2 makes this a 3-3 Flying Devil Striker. It does 6 damage a turn. That's pretty efficient. It's also an Aven. We brought the Aven back. The Aven first showed up in Odyssey, it said

I did, because I was trying to just not do the normal creature types, and so we invented a bunch of new creature types. So we made some bird people. So it's fun. The events have really caught on, so it's cool to see. Okay, I'm close to work, but not there yet.

So we get to B. I've often finished my first card run-through for a set when I do design stuff, and I never get past A, so I got to B. Although I am not getting out of B. Beltol Dragon. Five and a blue for a 3-3 Dragon, Flying Hexproof, Megamorph, 5 blue-blue,

and when it turns face-up, you get a plus-unplus counter on each other dragon you control. I talked about the black part of the cycle. This is the blue part. One of the things that's quirky about doing cycles, monocolor cycles, is that dragons don't normally exist outside of red. We made a conscious decision to be a dragon set that we're going to push into all five colors. Dragons is the only really iconic that we occasionally do in all the colors. And the reason for that is dragons are just so popular.

So every once in a while in Mirage, in Invasion, we will make monocolored dragon cycles. And this is actually... Invasion, okay, Invasion, they weren't monocolor dragon cycles. But anyway, we make cycles of dragons in different sets. Okay, I mean, infrequently, but we do. And obviously in a dragon, if you're willing to ever do it, you do it in the dragon set, so we did.

And this is a good example where if you notice, the way the cycle works is they always have flying because, of course, they're a dragon. The one thing I did notice is each one of them has a keyword that is key to that color. So the black one had I think death touch. This one has hexproof which is pretty valuable by the way. A flying creature in fact a decently big flying creature with hexproof can be quite valuable. The one reason it was a little less problematic is there were so many dragons that the idea that I have nothing in the air and limited to block

with is not as big a concern as it would normally be, just because there's less access to a lot more dragons. So we were allowed... Normally we're very careful about what hexproof we put on evasion, but we decided this one was something in this environment that the environment could handle. Okay, Blessed

Reincarnation. Three blue instant. Exile target creature card and opponent controls. Then that opponent reveals cards from the top of the library until they reveal a creature card. They then put that creature on the battlefield and shuffle the rest of their cards revealed into the library. And it says rebound.

So this, for all intents and purposes, is polymorph. It's a rebound polymorph. It's only usable on your opponent's creature, so you can't polymorph your own creature. But what it says is, I can trade in something that is my opponent's, that I'm more, I'd rather have a random

creature out of their deck than that creature. I mean, you have to be careful where you use it, and obviously it's got rebounds, so you use it twice. Because this thing can back backfire you. This is a set full of dragons. I could get rid of something that I think is a problem and get an even bigger problem, so it has some risks to it.

Behind the scenes, by the way, there's been a lot of talk about whether or not this kind of ability makes more sense in red than blue because it has a very chaotic nature to it that you don't know what you're going to get and that the argument is that blue is the smart color that kind of plots and plans and doesn't leave things up to choice, where red is kind of like,

oh, I don't want this dragon, or I don't want this card, I'll take whatever else I get. I'd rather roll the dice. Red's more likely to roll the dice. So, anyway, it's been an interesting discussion. I mean, we like blue being the color that transforms things, but we like red also having a chaotic feel. So anyway, there's not a lot of talk about where this effect is supposed to go.

Okay, next, Blood Chin Fanatic. One black black for 3-3 Orc Warrior. For one and a black, sack another warrior, so it cannot sack itself. And then target player loses X life, and you gain X life, so it drains for X, where X is equal to the Sacrificed Creature's power. Okay, so this was specifically made for an Uckertide. This one I know. The white-black deck had

a warrior theme. One of the things we decided we wanted to do was we like having some sort of tribal theme. We decided that warrior was what it was going to be. The funny thing, which is a little quirky, is it ended up being pushed to white-black. Now, warriors make sense in this world. Everybody being a warrior makes

a lot of sense. The problem is normally, white and blue have soldiers, red and green have warriors, and black kind of splits the difference. So it's a little quirky having warrior matters in white and black, only because traditionally, a lot of the warriors aren't in white. White is the soldier color,

not the warrior color. It's fine in Clan Warlord World. That makes sense. Or Dragon Warlord World. But it normally makes less sense. Normally there's a lot more armies and stuff. So there's more soldiers. So anything... This was made as a means to say,

hey, if you get this pick early, this card loudly says, you want to draft? Warriors. And so this is one of our build around me uncommons. I think it's an uncommon. Feels like an uncommon. It could be a rare. I think it's an uncommon. But the idea is you get this card early, and it

really encourages you to start drafting warriors. Now, there are warriors in colors other than white and black. I think the way we did it is the rewards were in white and black. So you can combine this with other colors. Um, but it does encourage, there was a white black warrior deck where all the cards that cared about warriors were in white and black. And so if you wanted to maximize caring, then you ended up being in white and black.

And that was one of the draft archetypes that we'd built into the set. Okay. Next, um, is Boltwing Marauder. Three black black, five four dragon. It is flying. Whenever another creature you control enters the battlefield, target creature gets plus two plus oh

until end of turn. So this is a dragon. So this is black and red. Kolaghan is the speed clan, was Mardu in Constant Dark here. And so this is definitely pushing you toward a more aggressive strategy. And you can tell the reason this was stuck in black is red always has an aggressive strategy. So if you're trying to put an aggressive red-black deck, one of the tricks is push in the area where you don't normally push, meaning red's going to always have those things anyway, but if

black and red have them, then wow, you really get encouraged to be black and red for aggression. And one of the things is when we make decks and do archetypes, you have to be careful where the colors push you. Normally black-red is more of a controlling color and less of a speed color, and so if you want black and red to be fast, you have to make sure that you are pushing in that direction. Now red normally has those things, black a little less. So the key a lot of times to making black and red aggression

is making black cards that has an aggressive attack quality to it. And that's what Blood Chin Fanatic is doing. I'm sorry, not Blood Chin Fanatic, Bolt Wing Marauder. But anyway, I'm now at work, and this is my last B, so I'll pick up next time, starting with

C. But anyway, I hope you guys are enjoying hearing all about Dragon's Tarkir. I'm having fun talking to you, and I see that we had some traffic today, so you got some extra time today. Anyway, I'm now in my parking space, so we all know what that means. 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.