Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #290 - Dragons of Tarkir, Part 3

Episode Date: December 25, 2015

Mark continues with part 3 of his six-part series on the design of Dragons of Tarkir.

I'm pulling my driveway, we all know what that means, it's time for another drive to work! Okay, so today I'm going to continue with my Tales of Dragons from Tarkir. So the last couple of podcasts I've been talking about the design, and I got into talking about cards. In fact, last podcast I got all the way to B. All the way to B. I didn't even finish B. But I started B. Oh, no, I finished B. Sorry.

I finished B, and now I'm up to C. Whole podcast, and I got all the way up to C. Okay. There's a lot of cool cards starting with C, so let's get going. Okay, so we're going to start with Circle of Elders. So that is a green card. It costs two green green. So four mana total.

Two versus green. It's a 2-4 human shaman. It has vigilance. And it has Formidable, tap for three colorless. Okay, so remember everybody that Formidable... Let's talk about Formidable a little bit. Formidable is a mechanic where if you have eight or more powers of creatures, you either gain an ability

or when you come into play, you gain the enter the battlefield effect, but you get some advantage for having that many. So this card cares about it in play. What that means is this card has an ability that it gains if it has

that. So it's something where the nice thing about formidable things that are on Permanence is that you might not have a power creature when you play it, but eventually you can. And this creature has two power. So on some level, it's Formidable, but two of the powers are already spoken for in this

card. So really, you need six other. That's an interesting thing with Formidable is if you put it on a creature, and you care about that creature being in play you get to count that creature toward the Formidable cost. So this card really means at some level Formidable, I need six others.

Which is a little way you can adjust Formidable. The other thing about this card is what it does is it says what would I want if I have a lot of creatures in play? And they're like, well how about the ability to play even more things? And so it definitely helps you ramp up. It's sort of like, as you get enough creatures,

this is the kind of card that gets you, once you get to the mid-game, it can help get you to the end-game. It's like, okay, I have enough creatures in play, now I can start playing even bigger and larger spells and creatures. Okay, next, Clone Legion. Seven, blue, blue. So nine mana total. It's a sorcery. For each creature target player controls, put a token copy of that creature onto the battlefield. So the idea is, this is a mythic card. So one of the things we do from time to time is,

I actually designed this card, and this is a good example of how we sometimes make mythics, which is, okay, I want to make an effect that's a normal magic effect, but I want to, you know, mythic it! How do I turn it up to 11, to use a Spinal Tap reference? How do I make it and make it as much as I possibly can? So it's like, okay, well, we have clones. Clones copy things. Well, how can I turn that up? And, like, okay, well, we have clones. Clones copy things. Well, how can I, how can I turn that up?

And like, what if I just clone everything? And so what we did is we made a target player. So there's two options here. Either I can, my opponent or one of my opponents

has a lot and I'm like, okay, I'm now going to have what they have. Or it could be I have a lot and I just want to double up what I have.

And so this card lets you do either thing. I mean, it costs nine mana, so it's a lot. But it's a pretty big, splashy effect. It's about as, you know, as cloning goes, I clone the team. It's pretty big. So it's a fun card. And for those that don't know, I love cloning things.

I love doubling things. I love cloning things. I love tokens. Anyway, it does all those things. I love cloning things. I love tokens. Anyway, it does all those things, and more. Okay, next. Collected Company. So this is an instant. It costs three and a green, four mana, one of which is green. Look at the top six cards of your library. Put up to two with CMC three or less onto the battlefield.

Put the rest on the bottom of the library and in the order. So this is an interesting card. So one of the things is, green has the ability to get cards from the library onto the battlefield. And in the past, we've done a lot of tutoring, but one of the things in general is R&D has become a little wary of tutoring.

The problem with tutoring is that it just recreates the game state. Like, one of the cool things about magic is you shuffle your deck. And, like, different things always happen, depending on what I draw. But with Tudors, what we found is, well, it doesn't matter.

Once you get the Tudor, you effectively always get the same thing. So that Tudor represents the same card a lot of the times. And so what would happen is people would play the card they need to make their deck work and then play Tudors. And then what happened was, between drawing the different Tudors and the card itself, like, it just guaranteed of you

drawing what you're going to do, and it made the gameplay more repetitive. Now, that consistency is probably good from a winning standpoint, because you want to get the card that's going to win the game for you, but from a gameplay, from a fun standpoint, it just makes more repetition of play. So, we still have tutoring, but we've really cut back on it. And this is a good example of the space we've been starting to play around with is instead of letting you have access to all the library, we let you have access to some of the library. So this card, for example, does two things. One is it says, okay, you get to look at the top

six cards in your library. That's the library you get to look at. Not all the library, not every card in the library, but top six cards. The second thing is we put a restriction on it so it can get two things, but they have to be smaller things, CMC three or less. Usually that's a restriction we tend to use more with white. White is the champion of small things. But the idea was, let's try that out here in green and see, you know, can we, I mean, green is allowed to get any creature, so it can get a subset of the creatures, but by letting it get small things, we could

let it get two. And I know this card has seen some play, and it's, you can do some fun things with the card. I think it's pretty cool. Even without tutoring, you still can make cards that people can play and construct it. It just changes things up a little bit. It creates a little bit more variety in it. Because what happens is, when you can draw it out of your library, what it says is, only play exactly what you need. Don't play anything else. Where if you have to draw it from the top of your library, what it says is, you want to play a lot of the thing you care about

so that you can guarantee that you have something there. But it requires you to sort of stretch a little bit. So like, when I play this card, I don't always know what I'm going to get, because I'm restricted to the top six cards, and to make sure that I have the top six cards, I play a variety of different things. So, it just leads to a little more interesting gameplay, a little more variety

in gameplay, and it leads to deck building that's a little less plan A, and it allows you to have a plan B and a plan C, which I think is cool. Okay, next. Commune with Lava. Not sure how one communes with Lava, but I guess

red mages will do their thing. Okay, so XRR, or X Red Red, so it's an X spell and it also requires two red. It's an instant. It says exile the top X cards of your library until the end of your next turn. You may play them. Okay, so one of the things that we've been looking for over the last couple years is

ways to help Red do more things. And one of the big things about Red is Red has a short-term view of life. And the problem was, from a gameplay standpoint, it's like, win now, win now, win now. And people are like, could we give a little more depth to red? You know, okay, we like red having its flavor, but is there ways to sort of stretch it a little bit? So one of the things we came up with, and this actually was based on some comments from my blog, from my blog-a-dog,

was talking about how we could expand upon red. And one of the ideas that we came across is, well, what if red gets to do what other colors get to do, but in a more short-term way, meaning it has to, its effect is a temporary effect, not a permanent effect. And so when we apply that to card drawing, it says, okay, well, what if red temporarily draws cards?

Well, what does that mean? How do you temporarily draw cards? And the answer was what we now refer to as impulsive draw, which is, well, what if red draws things, but it must play them right away? And so this card makes an X spell, an impulsive X spell draw card. But the problem is, if you use all your mana to get all the cards, then you don't have any time, you have no mana to play them. So this card does, it does something a little bit different for our Impulsive Draw Spells, which is it gives you one more turn.

It's not that you have to use it this turn, which is normally how we do it, but you have to use it by the end of next turn. And that's something a little bit different. So for those, so, in general, one of the reasons, by the way, we don't normally make it next turn, we make it this turn, is just the memory issues are easier when it's this turn.

We try, as a general rule of thumb, to be careful how often we make effects that don't have something to mark them. Like, an aura is fine, because you have the aura to mark it. You have the aura to tell you. But one of the things we want to be careful about is making sure that you have some record of knowing what you have to do if it goes beyond a turn. So normally when we create effects that don't have a marker, we limit it to a single turn. But this is a good example where you can't make an X spell. If I use all my mana to draw cards and I have none mana left, it's just not an interesting spell. So this particular spell, we made an exception. I think it's a rare card, so it's not something that you'll get super often in Limited. Okay, next.

Contradict. Three blue blue, instant. So it is a five mana spell, two of which are blue. Counter target spell, draw a card. Okay, so in the beginning, in Alpha, Richard made a card called Counterspell. So in, I think it's Tempest, I made a card called Dismiss, which was Counterspell, draw a card. So in Ice Age, the Ice Age designers came up with the idea of cantrips, which were cards in which you got to ride or draw a card. Now, in Ice Age, they made you wait a turn to get the card.

You eventually realized you could just draw the card right away. So one of the things we like to do is take iconic spells and make cantrips out of them. Dismiss was beautiful. It was a counterspell cantrip. But then we realized the counterspell was too strong, and counterspell became cancel. So instead of being blue-blue, it became one blue-blue. So three men instead of two.

But the problem was, Dismissed became a little bit too strong. So we kept saying that one day we should just make a new Dismissed. Like, embrace the fact that Counterspells are now Cancel, and make a Canceled Cantrip. And we talked about it for years of doing that, and finally, finally we did it. We finally just said, you know what? Dismissed is too strong.

Let's make a new Cantrip Counterspell, and let's make it a canceled cantrip. And that's kind of it. One of the things that's interesting, by the way, a little tidbit for you is when you see a card that has one name and it's a nice, simple name, usually that is a clue that we think this card has reprint potential. Because one of the reasons, in fact, I would argue the most, the resource we have the least amount of, of all the things we have, that we have limited resources, good, clean, clear names is probably the most limited resource.

And I felt this, you know, when I first was doing flavor text 20 years ago, when I first got the company, I was doing flavor text, I could feel the pinch 20 years ago and now it's 20 years later. So one of the things we do is when we make a spell that we have every confidence that we're going to reprint, like it's the kind of spell that like, look, this is the kind of spell we're going to bring back. We try to give it a nice, clean, simple name.

And so that's one of the things that we're doing. You can tell with this card is contradict. It's a nice, clean, simple name. So when is contradict. It's a nice, clean, simple name. So when you see a card with a nice, clean, simple name, odds are we believe there's potential to bring it back. Because in the past, in the early days, we wasted a lot of good names. You're like, Teleport is on a card that might have never been cast in all time.

And it's like that. There's just some classic names that are on really dudsy cards that are like oh that's really wasting the name so we're a lot more careful these days I mean not that we don't

make mistakes or not that we don't occasionally use a good name and then go oh we thought this was going to be something we'd reprint and it ends up not being

okay next Corpse Weft speaking of nice clean simple names Corpse Weft two black enchantment so three mana

one of which is black. For one black, so for two mana, one black. For two mana, one of which is black. So one and a black. You can exile one or more creature cards from your graveyard. And then you gotta put XX black zombie horde creature token onto the

battlefield, where X is twice the number of cards exiled this way. So the cool thing about this is that I spend one in a block, I exile any number of cards, I make this token. It's xx. So the first time I do it, let's say I exile two cards, I now have a 4-4 creature because x is double the number of cards I've done this way. The cool thing is the next time I make a creature, it counts all the cards. x is a variable. It's not locked. It's not that I get a

4-4 based on two cards I took this time. It just always looks at the cards and says, how many cards have been exiled this way? So the cool thing is over time, you can really build up a pretty big army with this. The other thing that's kind of interesting is you need to remove at least one card to make a token.

So there's an interesting balance of I can remove more cards to make bigger tokens, but if I do that, I just can make less counters. And because all of them are XX, you know, there's a nice thing of, do I want to get bigger faster, or do I want to sort of go slower, but have more bigger things? Anyway, it's a pretty cool card. Okay, next, Cunning Breeze Dancer. So, four white, blue. So, it's a gold card. Six mana, one white, one blue. It's a 4-4 dragon. It's got flying. And whenever you play a non-creature spell, it gets plus two, plus two

until end of turn. Okay, so all intents and purposes, this has prowess, prowess. We did not write that out because I assumed... I don't know, we thought we'd confuse people. I'm not sure. For all intents and purposes, this has double prowess. One of the things that we did is... Oh, I know why it's not written out, because there's no prowess in the set. That's why it's not written. That's why it's not prowess, prowess. So one of the things we did is we wanted to sort of carry over in the Ojitai clan, which was the cunning clan, which was a.k. is AKA the Jeskai clan from back in cons, of this idea of caring

about non-creatures getting played. And so there's a bunch of cards in the set that say whenever you play a non-creature spell, blah. This spell obviously is doing that. I think the reason we did plus two plus two, so it's like not quite prowess, although it's double prowess essentially. And one of the things we wanted to do with the gold cards

is the gold cards are supposed to sort of play in the strategy that you're trying to do. And we wanted to make a cycle of gold dragons. These are uncommon. And so this card is definitely trying to sort of say, okay, you want to play a white-blue deck? Well, let me give you some hints on the kind of white-blue deck you want,

while at the same time being a dragon. We normally make uncommon gold cards that help give you draft archetypes. The challenge this time is they're dragons. And sometimes that is hard, because sometimes, like, this is an archetype about not playing too many creatures. Well, but we have to make it on a creature, so. But anyway, I think it's a cool card, and it's a nice, it's a very different dragon. One of the things, one of our challenges

of the set was, we're giving you a lot of 4-4 to 6-6 dragons, I mean, or 4-4 plus dragons, flying creatures. And so they, in a lot of ways, there are a lot of similarity to them, and we want to make sure that different dragons would encourage different kinds of decks. That we didn't want all the dragons

just making you play the exact kind of deck and just swapping what the dragon is. And so Cunning Breeze Dancer really says, okay, no, no, no, I'm not like a lot of other dragon decks. I want a very specific thing. And hey, if you play a bunch of non-creature spells, I could be your win condition. You don't need a lot of me to be able to win with,

and especially if you're playing spells, I can get pretty big pretty fast, you know, like all, for example, let's say, um, earlier I talked about, or previous, I talked about the plus two, plus two rebound spell, like, okay, I, if I play that on my creature, for two turns in a row, it's an eight, eight, well, that's pretty, that's pretty, um, pretty daunting, right, uh? I have an 8-8 flyer for two turns in a row. So anyway, it's definitely a little more control-ish kind of dragon, which is pretty cool. Okay, next, Damanable Pact. X, black, black.

So it's an X spell with two black mana. It's a sorcery. It says target player draws X cards and loses X life. So this card is unique in not unique, there's other cards that can do it, but it belongs to a special subgroup of cards, which is it's a card capable of killing

a player in two different ways. And for style points, you can do it at the same time. So the idea of the spell is it's an X spell. You can use it on yourself. It's a for all intents and purposes, it's a draw spell. It's a draw X spell. But, because it's black, A, it requires

some life payment to get the cards, which is normal for black. But B, it doesn't say U. It says target player, which means is, if my opponent is low enough on life or on cards in the library, I can use this as a means to kill them. And like I said, for extra style points, I can use this as a means to kill them. And like I said, for extra style points,

I can use this as a means to kill them in two different ways at the same time, which is fun. I've actually managed one time to kill somebody three ways in one game at one moment. During Scars of Mirrodin draft, I managed to kill somebody with damage and poison and deck deck them all in one turn. That's a fine feat of mine, because it's hard to win much more than three different ways. It's possible, but hard.

Okay, next, Dance of the Skywise. It's an instant for one and a blue, two mana, one of which is blue. Until end of turn, target creature is a dragon illusion with base 4-4 power, loses all abilities, and becomes and gains flying. So the idea is, for the turn, I overwrite any creature and instead of what it normally is, it becomes a 4-4 flying creature. This is blue, has the ability to change

shapes of things. We talk about using base power. One of the things that got really confusing is what overwrote what. And so now we use the term base power and toughness, which means imagine the card, instead of the number that's there, this number was there. And then you can apply whatever you need to apply it. And that concept was a little easier for people to understand

because you didn't really need to know layers. A lot of stuff previously, when we would change things, you had to sort of know what effects happen when to know how big it was. And now it's like, okay, we're changing the base power toughness. That means, see that number written on the card? Just imagine this was written on the card. And then apply anything else you would apply, like normal. And it's become easier for people to grok.

So this kind of effect is fun, but it can be pretty confusing. This is also interesting in that this effect is, I can, if I need to, use it on my opponent, and for some reason I can't kill the thing, but I could kill a 4-4 flyer. It's a little more dangerous because the dragon's a lot bigger. I mean, more often I think you'll use this on your guy to save your guy, or pump

your guy, or get extra damage in or whatever. But anyway, it's a nice flavorful spell. Okay, next. Deathbringer. So, Okay, next, next, Deathbringer. So, uh, Deathbringer, sorry, Deathbringer Regent. Five black black for a five six dragon. It is flying, and then it enters the battlefield. If it's cast from your hand, and you have five or more other creatures on the battlefield,

you destroy all other creatures. Okay, so this is part of the rare cycle. We have a rare cycle of monocolored dragons, I think called the regents, meaning that they're like, I don't know, major commanders under the dragon lord. And so the thing with this spell

is we, or the cycle is, we really wanted to make sure that we had just individual cool monocolored dragons. So this guy is pretty neat. What he says is essentially is, when I come into play, I'm a personal wrath. Not personal wrath.

I'm a wrath that destroys everything but me. But because that's so powerful, there's a couple little riders on it to make sure that it keeps it in check. Number one is, it says, you have to cast it. So you can't just reanimate it or get it into play temporarily. You have to actually cast it from your hand. Meaning you've got to pay the seven mana.

Second thing is, there has to be five or other creatures in play, meaning if there's too few creatures on the board, it won't work. So what you have to do is wait to cast this until you have enough creatures between you and your opponent. Now the good news is, once you have seven mana, the game's far enough along, there's a pretty good chance this is true. So while this is a restriction, it's more for a constructed, I think, is why the restriction is there, to make sure that it's not too overwhelming in constructed.

Okay. Next, Deathmist Raptor. Okay. So this is one green green for a 3-3 Lizard Beast. So it's three mana, two which is green. It's got Death Touch. Permits you control turn face... Whenever a permit you control is turned face up,

you get to return this card from the graveyard, and you can return it either face up or face down, and it's got Megamorph, four, and a green. So five mana total, one of which is green. So the idea of this is a 3-3, and that it's got Megamorph, so you can play it face down, but you could play it face up on turn three when you get it. And the idea is when this thing dies, you're going to have the ability to bring this thing back.

And how do you bring it back? By turning other things face up. So this is a card that wants to be played with other Megamorphs and Morphs and Manifest cards. You want things that have face down cards because that's how this thing comes back. The cool thing also is even if you just have four copies of this card, this card will bring itself back because it has Megamorph. But anyway, we definitely tried to make some cards

that encourage you to play other face-down cards. I think Blue-Green was the archetype, was the face-down archetype in Dragon's Ark here. So he definitely made some cards to encourage you. I think this is a rare card, but if you happen to get this early in a draft pick, it does encourage a certain style of drafting. And even in Constructed,

it definitely says, hey, there's a reason to play a bunch of morph or megamorph cards together. Or manifest, of course. Okay, next. Den Protector. One and a green, two mana. One of which is green. Two, one, human warrior. Creatures with power less can't block Den Protector. It's got

Megamorph, one and a green. And whenever you turn a face up, you get a regrowth of card. Meaning you get to take a card from your graveyard and put it into your hand. So this card is pretty potent. For starters, it is a card that if you're trying to play a more aggressive deck, at turn 2, you're going to have a 2-power creature.

Not quite Grizzly Bear, and that is not a 1G2-2, but it has some other really strong abilities, so that's okay. For starters, it can't be blocked by anything that is equal to its power or less. Creature with power less than it. So as a 2-1, it can't be blocked by any 1-1 creature. Or any 1-power creature. And being it's got a 1 toughness, that's pretty relevant. Meaning it doesn't want to trade with something that's smaller than it.

So it doesn't have to. The other nice thing about this ability is it plays nicely with Megamorph. Because if you Megamorph because if you Megamorph the card, instead of being a 2-1 it's a 3-2, now power 2 or less can block it. So when it Megamorphs it just, it's one of those cards that has

an ability that cares about its power which plays nicely with Megamorph. That's one of the things when designing Megamorph that we have to be conscious of is because Megamorph changes the power, we have some space where we can care about power, and that way when we reference power, it matters whether you have

megamorphed it or not. And once again, it's kind of neat that sometimes you'll draw the card, I mean, this card is cheap, but sometimes you'll draw a megamorph when you can just cast it normally, and there's a reason to megamorph it,

and that's true even here. Even though it is a two-mana card, you might want to save mana to the third turn. Save it to the third turn so that you can play it face-down. Okay, next, Descent of Dragons. Descent of Dragons is four red reds. It's a six-mana

two, which is red. Sorcery. Destroy any number of creatures and then replace each one with a four-four flying dragon. It's a creature token. two of which is red, sorcery, destroy any number of creatures, and then replace each one with a 4-4 flying dragon. It's a creature token. This card is quirky. It's quirky in red. Basically what it's trying to do is turn anything into a dragon,

or turn any number of things you want into a dragon. It's weird. Normally the space is where we go in blue. It's not traditionally a red card. Uh, whenever we've let red mess around with polymorphing, it's usually temporary. Uh, we haven't done much of that. We actually really haven't done much of that. But, uh, the, the, I think this card, um,

is messing around with the idea that it's turning things into dragons and turning things into dragons is a really red thing. I think that's why it's here. Um, it's a good example of trying to use the dragon flavor to sort of let red dip its toe in some place that doesn't do all that much. I think red is, I do think red has done this before. I think red has made things

into dragons before. So it's, I think there's precedence there. But anyway, it's a quirky card in that. Really kind of a blue card dressed up in red. I mean, there's a fine discussion about whether or not red should do more temporary, sort of, you know, become something temporarily. Should red be messing in that space? Especially if it's an unknown thing.

Like, I talk about polymorphic, I talk about, like, should red sort of, it's going to turn into something, what's it going to turn into? But, anyway. Next, display of dominance. One and a green. Instant. Choose one. You can destroy a blue or black non-creature permanent, or permanents you control can't be the target of blue

or black spells that opponent controls until end of turn. Okay, so you have two options. One is it's a bramble crush, but only for blue and black non-creature permanents. So it can destroy everything but creatures, which green can do. Or, it can be used to protect your creatures.

So this is very interesting. It has like an aggressive or it can be very defensive. So it can be offensive or defensive. Whether you want to destroy your opponent's thing, or whether you want to protect your thing. So it's kind of cool. This is part

of a cycle. There's a color hosing cycle. One of the things that we don't do a lot of anymore. When Magic first started, you go look at Alpha, the enemies was very prevalent in the set. Like, who liked who and disliked who, especially who disliked who, was very free. There's a lot of color hosing in Alpha.

I am this color. I hate my enemy, or I hate both my enemies. Alpha usually hated one enemy at a time, but Simpsons, we've done a lot of hating both enemies. But anyway, we've dialed back on that. We definitely don't make as many color-hating cards as we used to. But we decided to make a cycle in the set. I think this got put in during development.

I don't think design made this. Anything else to say about this card? We'll talk about the cycle. It is a pretty clean card in giving you sort of options of how best to make use of a color hoser. So anyway, I'm sitting in traffic for some reason. Normally when I drive to work,

it just smoothly goes along. So I don't know what's going on. But anyway, as we say, more traffic for me means more content for you. And I've got more cards to talk about, so we're in good shape. Okay, next. Draconic Roar. So Draconic Roar is a red instant.

Costs two mana, one of which is red. So one and a red. As an additional cost, you may reveal a dragon card from your hand you get to deal three damage to target creature and if you reveal the dragon card you get to also do three damage to that creature's

controller. Okay, so this card is playing around another space which is we wind up a dragon theme but the issue is we didn't want to have a lot of low rarity dragons. So how do we do that? Well one of the things is, like I always like to say, if your theme's not a common, it's not your theme.

We needed to have some ways of common to care about dragons. Like I said, with design hand-in-the-set over, we did have one dragon. When I get to that dragon, I'll talk about it. We did have one common dragon. It ended up becoming uncommon, but, you know, I'll talk about that card when I get to it. But anyway, this is a good example of having some cards that care about dragons.

And how do you care about dragons? You care about them being in your hand. Why is that so important? Because dragons tend to be big, expensive creatures. If you only could care about them once they're in play, that's hard to do sometimes. And there are a few cards that care about them being in play. We have the cycle of uncommons that put plus or minus counters on the ones that are in play. So there are definitely ones that can care about them being in play. We have the cycle of uncommons that put plus or minus counters on the ones that are in play. So there are definitely ones that can care about it being in play. These care about you having in your hand, which

is pretty cool. One thing we've learned over the years is the cost of revealing something really feels to players like this free cost. Like, I had it in my hand anyway. But it actually means something. It does require you to have the dragons in your deck, requires you to have drawn the dragons. So it is a neat way to sort of say, hey, it's relevant and important that you have dragons. So, anyway, and this spell. So one of the things we wanted is, we wanted to make sure that the Rider was valuable to you, but not so valuable that you couldn't play it without dragons. Because the problem is,

your add spend to dragons is only going to be so high. There's only so many dragons you can play in any one deck. I mean, maybe a constructed where you can make sure you can get them out. But like in limited, look, you're going to have a creature ramp, you're going to want to have some cheaper stuff. Yeah, your higher up stuff gets to be dragons, but how many dragons do you get to have? So this spell is nice in that, yeah, you want to play this spell. You're going to kill a creature. This is just a spell you want to play. Two mana, three damage to a creature, you're going to play. But it sort

of says, okay, well, hey, the more dragons you play, the better off this spell will be. So it allows you to either play a lot of dragons and say, okay, I'm pretty confident it'll happen, or play fewer dragons and go, okay, it's not always going to happen, but man, you know, it's a card I want to play anyway, and there's a neat upside if I happen to have a dragon. Okay, next, Dragon Hunter. So a card with dragon in its name, it's white. That doesn't happen a lot. I guess, wait, wait, dragons, but this is an anti-dragon card. So Dragon Hunter is white, 2-1, human warrior. It has protection from dragons, and it can block dragons if it had reach. So one of the things we were trying to do is make sure we hit some of the dragon tropes.

One of my actual complaints about the set is, I think because of some of the decisions we made for story purposes, we didn't get as many dragon tropes as we normally get, and I wish we had access to a little more dragon tropes. But anyway, one of the dragon tropes is the dragon hunter. It's like the person who hunts and kills dragons. And how do you do that? It's kind of tricky. So, first off, we gain protection from dragons, so dragons can't kill him.

And the next thing we did is we gave him a reach. Now, White normally... So Reach is a long-winded green ability. We've dabbled with it being secondary in White. I think we recently decided to make it secondary in Red rather than secondary in White. So it's a little bit different from... It's a little bit different.

But anyway, I think we decided to do it here because we needed... Like, you can't have a Dragon Hunter really wanted to be a white card and you know dragons are based in red it's red's enemy white just seems like the kind of color

that would be like I'm against dragons dragons are this chaotic evil that must be purged and so I've become the Dragon Hunter that just felt super white also since this time I announced when Magic Origins came out

that we've kind of downgraded protection, so this is one of the... This is a card with protection. You'll occasionally think of things with protection, so it's not that you couldn't see a card like this again, you might, but protection is going to be used a lot fewer and farther between, so... So anyway, that is Dragon Hunter.

Okay, next, Dragon Tempest. You get a lot of cards with Dragon in their name. Okay, so this is an enchantment. It says, creatures with flying enter the battlefield with haste until end of turn. And dragons, whenever a dragon you control enters the battlefield, you get to deal X damage to target creature or player where X is the number of dragons you control. Well, I just talked about how not all things can care about dragons being in play,

but this one can. In fact, this is meant to be a deck that says, okay, you want to play a dragon deck? You want to fill your deck with dragons? Okay, I'm going to enable dragons. And it does it in a couple ways. Number one is it gives them all haste, so it makes all your dragons have haste.

The reason it does it until end of turn is it's just cleaner to not have to remember it, because if it ever changes ownership and it has haste, you have to remember that this thing has haste. And so what we do is we said, okay, look, all you really care about is your dragons having haste the turn

you play them. And if you ever somehow lose it and get it back, it still has flying, it'll still have haste as long as it's out. So we just do an end of turn, so for memory issues, if somehow this thing is here and grants you a creature and then it goes away, it's cleaner and clearer that it's only when it's in play will you have haste the turn you play them,

or the first turn they have them. Although I guess it's true. I guess if I steal it back, this trigger won't happen. It only happens when I enter the battlefield. If I flicker or I do something else, it will count it. Okay, next. Anytime you play a dragon, anytime a dragon you control enters the battlefield, it deals X. So the neat thing about this is, the first dragon does something, because it's a dragon. It gets to count itself. So the first dragon gets to do one damage,

and then each dragon, provided the dragons stick around, gets to go up and up and do more and more damage. And in a set that cares about dragons, remember there's ways to turn things into dragons. There's artifacts that temporarily become dragons.

You know, there's a bunch of different ways to up your dragon count so that when your dragon comes into play you can have even more dragons requires a lot of mana although dragons in general require a lot of mana I'm sitting still on the freeway

I got two more pages of cards hopefully this two more pages gets us to work that's how much time I have so far so I'm normally I would already be at work instead I am sitting in traffic but like I said

more traffic, more content okay, next we get to the oh, the dragon lords, okay, so now we're going to talk about the five dragon lords, okay, we start with dragon lord Atarka he's five red green, so seven men in total one of which is red, one of which is green he's an 8-8 legendary

creature, Elder Dragon. We'll get back to that in a second. He is flying, he is trample, and when you enter the battlefield he deals five damage, divided any way you want between creatures or planeswalkers and opponent controls.

It's funny, I... Oh, anyway. Okay, so let me talk about the Elder Dragons. funny, I... Oh, anyway. Okay, so let me talk about the Elder Dragons. So back in Legends, there were five dragons that were so old that they were called the Elder Dragon Legends. Nicole Bull is probably the most famous of them. But anyway, it's become kind of a mythos of magic,

the Elder Dragons. The commander format when it started was called Elder Dragon Highlander, EDH. So originally, when the format first started, you only had the access of five commanders, which was one of the five Elder Dragons, is how it started. And pretty quickly, like,

oh, okay, whatever, any Legend creature is fine. But anyway, I think Doug was in charge of doing card types for the set, and it just dawned on him that we know these dragons are like 1,300 years old. In fact, they're, you know, whatever. They're a bunch older than that, but they've

been around for a long time, and he's like, you know what? Elder Dragons is a cool thing. Why don't we just make these guys Elder Dragons? Who's to say we can't have more Elder Dragons? And so he made them Elder Dragons. It's funny. I don't we just make these guys Elder Dragons? Who's to say we can't have more Elder Dragons? And so he made them Elder Dragons. It's funny, I don't know. We have a lot of books written, and so some or something talked about

what exactly an Elder Dragon is, and I'm not sure if when he made these, Doug followed those exact rules. But we finally decided that, okay, those are maybe how Elder Dragons are named on Dominaria. It's a Tarkir. You know what?

You're really, really old. You know, we... The Elder Dragon is something that we could share. It's fun. It was a nice Easter egg sort of thing for those that knew it. But anyway, I think it was kind of cool.

So one of the questions I get with this guy is he's a dragon, so he gets flying. Red can have access to trample. And his ability is a pretty red ability that you get to divide damage when it comes into play. One of the things that's important to remember is when you're making gold cards, is a lot of times, you

are trying to make cards that like, we're doing factions here. This is the leader of the faction. We are trying to get the essence of the faction. Mostly when we do gold cards, we try to make sure we make a nod so the card isn't just a mono-colored card. The answer here is, look, it is, I mean, Trample is slightly more of a green thing than a red thing. This is the leader of the red-green clan. He's doing things that's pretty

cool. We're trying to capture what Dragonlord of Tarka is like and that sometimes we're making gold cards and there's factions we just try to capture the faction. This is a Tarka. Because if you're a slave too much to saying, oh I must have enough red and enough green, sometimes you make a card that like technically follows the rules but is a less cool card.

And so we tried with the Dragonlord to really embody what the Dragonlord was and what they were trying to do. And so, it is true you could admit this card is a minor red card, but I think that it is a good job of being what a Tarka wanted to be and being the kind of, you know, does the things that the Tarka deck would want to do. Okay, next. Dragon Lord Dremoka.

Four green, white, six mana total, one green and one white, five seven legendary creature, Elder Dragon. It can't be countered. It's flying. It is lifelink. An opponent can't cast spells during your turn. So Dremoka definitely is playing a more defensive game. In fact, a lot of his abilities are defensive.

You can't counter me. You can't play spells on my turn, so you can't kill me with instant tricks on my turn in the middle of combat. If I'm blocking, you can do them. Can't do it when I'm attacking. We also wanted to mix

up the size of them. For example, notice that Atarka was 8'8". It's big, beefy, you know. In fact, uh, one of the cutesy things I forgot to mention about Atarka is Atarka's ability is formidable. Well, guess what? When Atarka's around, things are formidable. Because he himself has 8 power worth.

Uh, that was done very specifically. Um, Draglon Jamolka, 5'7". A little more defensive. It's the endurance clan. So, you know, it's got a 7 more defensive. It's the endurance plan, so, you know, it's got a seven toughness. It's definitely able to survive stuff, and then it just has a bunch of abilities that help it. In addition, we also gave it lifelink, so not only is it defensive, but it also helps defend you, the player, helps protect you. That lifelink's a good thing to make it harder for your opponent to be able to get rid of you.

Anything else about Dremoka? I don't know. Okay, let's move on. Dragon Lord Kolakon. Four black, red, so six mana total. One black, one red. Six, four. Legendary creature.

Elder dragon. It's got flying. It's got haste. Other creatures you control have haste. And when another opponent casts a creature or a planeswalker with the same name as one in their graveyard, that player loses 10 life. Bum-bum-bum! Okay, so Kolaghan does a couple things.

One is, for starters, he's a 6-mana 6-4 dragon that is flying in haste. That in a vacuum, by the way, is not too bad. And the fact that he gives all your other creatures haste is pretty valuable. His last ability was trying to punish you. He's trying to punish the opponent for being too consistent. I felt like it was a very flavorful ability. The problem we ran into was the following problem, which is whenever we make a legendary creature, that means that the commander format can use it.

And this card has an ability that doesn't apply to the commander format because it's a singleton format. It's like, I'll punish you when you do something that's impossible to do in the commander format. do in the commander format. So one of the complaints we got about this card was that how dare we make a legendary creature that had a component that wasn't playable for commander. And the answer there is basically the following, which is

look, we can't not every, like we understand that legendary creatures are played in the commander format, and we are conscious of the commander format when understand that legendary creatures are played in the commander format, and we are conscious of the commander format when we make legendary creatures. But we cannot make 100% of all legendary creatures just for the commander format. This was a cool card that was flavorful, has a lot of play in constructed,

a little bit in limited, much more constructed. But anyway, we thought it was a cool card with a cool ability. We're not going to shy away from making cool cards, you know. We make a lot of legendary creatures, and this card, even without that ability, probably still is playable in Commander. A 6-5 flying haste guy that gives all you guys haste

is pretty good, especially if you can keep bringing him back because he's your Commander. So anyway, I think the answer to that is just we can't let any format dictate all the cards of a subset. We can't say, every legendary creature must be 100% the best it can be in Commander, because there's cool cards, and legendary creatures are not solely the domain of Commander. It's a component of Commander, and we think about Commander when we make legendary creatures,

but there's other, there are other things we are doing with legendary creatures, and that commander format is one of them. It is not the only thing. Okay, next, Dragonlord Ojitai. Three white-blue for a 5-4 legendary creature. Elder dragon, of course. It's got flying. It is hex-proof if untapped, and whenever it deals combat damage, you reveal the top

three cards of your library, and put one in hand and the rest of the bottom library in any order. Okay, so Ojitai is the cunning clan. So how do we play into that? Well, it does a couple things. First off, it can fly. It has an interesting hexproof ability. One of the problems we've found is that hexproof is very

problematic when put on with evasive creatures, because normally the way you deal with a hexproof creature is with other creatures. You block it. But if I have evasion, I'm hard to block, and I'm hard to deal with, you know, it's hard to get rid of me with spells, and so it really becomes a problem

area. And so, the, so we've been goofing around trying hexproof variants we're trying one of

them here it's kind of neat it says look as long as you're sitting here and not causing problems for me or being defensive

I can't stop you but when you try to get in and do damage to me okay that's the open of a window where I maybe

can deal with you and because it has a combat damage like okay you're going to kind of want to attack with this thing. The neat thing about the combat trigger is

it could have just been drawing a card, but you know what? This is a specialist in Dragonlord. It's a little better than that, and he's smart. So we wanted to add a little cunning to it. So the idea is, he gets to draw a card, but he gets the impulse for the card. He gets to look at three cards and pick the one he wants most. I mean,

one of the things that's neat is when you're trying to sort of capture the essence of something, like cunning, pulse for the card. He gets to look at three cards and pick the one he wants most. I mean, Oji... One of the things that's neat is when you're trying to capture the essence of it, like cunning, giving the player a little bit of decision does a lot way to help feeling the sense of cunning across. And it was important that we wanted Oji Tai to definitely

have that sense. Okay, next. Dragon Lord Silumgar. Four blue, black, so it's six mana, one of which is blue, one of which is black. Three, five legendary creature, Elder Dragon. He has flying, he has death touch, one of the reasons he can be

a little bit smaller. When he enters the battlefield, you gain control of target creature or planeswalker as long as he's on the battlefield. So he gets to steal something. This is the ruthless clan. The sneaky ruthless clan. Well, stealing things is pretty powerful. And if you notice, by the way,

not all of them do this, but all the ones that care about creatures also care about planeswalker. Dragon and Tarka can do damage not just to creatures, but also to planeswalkers. Dragon Lord Kulaghan cares about replication not just to creatures, but about planeswalkers so three of the five sort of reference both creatures and planeswalkers

there's a little nod to the cycle something doing a little bit different, feeling a little more special these are mythics so the other thing that this can do besides stealing things is it has death touch and so it's a little deadlier, it's a little smaller the funny thing is when this card came, and so it's a little deadlier, it's a little smaller.

The funny thing is when this card came out, so this card was all the rage when it premiered, but it had nothing to do with the card power or the card ability. So in the picture, you see that Silumgar is wearing a necklace that has what looks like some sort of mummified body on it. And if you look closely at the clothing, a bunch of people correctly identified that... What was his name? During Fate Reforged, we made sort of clan leaders,

and one of the clan leaders... Oh, I'm blanking on his name now. Anyway, one of the clan leaders, the clan leaders of the Proto-Soltai clan, yeah, Proto-Soltai clan, which was a ruthless clan, he was dressed in the same clothing and is like, oh, is this him?

And we're like, yes, it is. It is him. And so the idea of Shilamgar wearing the former leader of his clan as jewelry, not as an everyday thing, as an occasional, like, you know, when you want to dress up and look nicer. He knew he was having art done for the card, so he wanted to look his best. So he pulled out his good jewelry.

But anyway, that got a... I know our social media people made up necklaces. There's some event right around there. So they went to the event and they made little, um, I'm blanking on his name, but little necklaces of him. So anyway, it's pretty cute. Um, okay. So, um, Silmar, like I said, it's a control card.

Um, it's why it's a little bit smaller because you have to be able to deal with him to get your thing back. But, uh, anyway, I, uh, the thing I liked about the Dragonlords, real quickly here, is that I think the Dragonlords did a good job of being kind of cool, fun, splashy cards. Each one of them really went in a different kind of deck, and

they encouraged you to build a specific kind of deck. There definitely was a sort of strategy to building it. Um, and I think that was pretty cool. Um, why am I in all this traffic today? It's funny, as I'm talking to you, I actually have an important 10 o'clock meeting. I left today at 9 o'clock. I have an important 10 o'clock meeting that I really can't be late for. And when I'm recording my podcast, I can't use the phone because I have to turn off the phone

so that no one calls me in the middle of a podcast. And because when someone calls, the recording stops. And so I don't know if I've ever told that story, but I was doing my very first podcast ever. I was testing, like, could this be the kind of thing that, you know, I can make a podcast? So I was doing a test to see if I could do the podcast. And, like, I'm, like, halfway to work, and I'm, like, I'm in the rhythm, and I'm doing real cool stuff, and'm like, oh, this is working. And then my wife calls me and says, uh, you know, do we need butter?

I don't know what the call was for, but, um, something, which is some simple question. They're like, I could have turned it off. She could have asked me later, but she had no idea. Like I, I, now she knows I do, I do my podcasting, so she's aware of it. But back in the time, I've just kind of testing the waters. And so anyway, so the very first podcast I ever do, it interrupted. And then I realized that, oh, I got to turn on the, you know, I got to turn off my phone. You know, I got to turn on the airline setting so that no one can call me.

But it also means that while I'm doing this, I can't call out either. And so I'm watching the clock. In nine minutes, my meeting starts. And I can't tell you why it's so important, but it's a very important meeting. And so I do not want to be late. But traffic started moving, so I'm hoping... Anyway, we shall see.

I also have the dual problem of I prepared stuff for today and I basically made enough for, you know, almost two podcasts worth of material. And we're coming up on almost being two podcasts long. So anyway, we'll keep going. Dragon Lord Servant. One in a red, one three Goblin Shaman. Dragon spells you cast cost one less.

So this is another card that helps you play a dragon deck. And it helps you in a way that's a very important way to help you, which is it helps you actually get the dragons out so one of the tricky things is green can produce mana but red red doesn't really, I mean red does instant mana so maybe we could have gone there

but one of the things we could do is red can make things cheaper we let any color make things cheaper and so one of the ways to help you is to say, okay, I'm a little 1-3 guy and I just make all your dragons cheaper. And if you get a bunch of me out, I can, I mean, it can only reduce the colorlessness, but, you know, if you want to look at something like the Dragon Lords I just talked about, you know, all of them have colorless mana. They all have at least three or four, I think, color, yeah, at least three colorless mana, three generic mana, sorry, sorry.

And so you get a bunch of these out, it really does help play things. Okay, next. Dramoka Dunecafter. It's a zero two for a single white human wizard. For one tap, one and a white tap, tap target creature without flying. So one of the tricky things about doing a set is you have to sort of, especially for a limited, think about what you're doing,

and one of the ways to play up your theme is to be careful about the things that are anti-your theme. So for example, one of the things going on here is we like to have tappers in white, but wow, tappers, if I spend all this mana, I get a giant dragon, and then for like one or two mana, you can just tap it down every turn,

wow, that really hosts dragons. So we said, okay, we're going to have a tapper in the set, but what we're going to do is make the tapper not be able to tap dragons. So we said it can only tap non-flying creatures, because pretty much all the flying creatures are dragons. We could have said can't tap dragons, but we decided to be

a little more looser in it but most of the time the flyers are dragons but anyway part of making a set work is being very conscious of what's being built around it okay next

Dramoka's command it's a green white instant you choose to so it commands these are the we did a cycle of ally commands so choose to prevent all damage.

Target internet sorcery would deal this turn. Tiger player sacks an enchantment. Put a plus one, plus one counter on target creature. Or target creature you control fights target creature you don't control. So once again, the first two abilities are white. Second two abilities are green. It's funny, normally when they do that, they match the mana cost. Which means normally

on this card, you would think that green would come first, then white. My guess is that there was some order that you wanted to do the effects in, so they put them in that order. The way it works on a command is, if you choose two things, you literally do the thing that's higher up, is what you do. So, anyway, I'm sure there's an ordering with why they went white, green, center, green, white. Okay. Next, Elusive Spellfist. So Elusive Spellfist

is one and a blue, two mana, one is blue, one, three, human, monk. Whenever you cast a non-creature spell, it gets plus one, plus oh, and unblockable to end a turn. I assume the reason it said plus one, plus oh, and not plus one, plus one is so it wouldn't exactly have prowess. It also gains unblockable, which is kind of neat. So the idea is it's a one, three that becomes a two, three unblockable when you play a non-creature spell. So in

a deck that has sort of a controlling aspect, has a lot of non-creature spells, it's nice because this thing can help get damage in. Okay, next. Encase an Ice. It's an aura. One in a blue. Flash. Enchant red or green creature. When you enter the battlefield, it taps the creature, and then that creature doesn't untap. So it's a dehydration variant for red or green spells.

It's part of the color hosing cycle. Well, red or green has a lot of creatures. Blue needs answers to those creatures. And so one of the things is color hosers usually are good answers. Well, red or green has a lot of creatures. Blue needs answers to those creatures. And so one of the things is color hodgers usually are good answers. Well, in this set, red and green have a lot of dangerous things, including dragons, so this sort of locks them down. So it both taps and locks them down.

It's vulnerable to some sort of removal, so it's actually slightly better against red than green, because red cannot remove auras as easily as green can remove auras. But it's still valuable against both of them. Okay next, Enduring Scale Lord. Four green white for four four dragon. It is flying, and if one or more plus one plus one counters are put on another creature you control, then you put a plus one plus one counter on this. So the idea of this card is, it's a dragon, I mean, it starts as a decent-sized dragon. It's 4-4. But every time you bolster,

every time you outlast, every time you do anything that gets a counter, this gets bigger and bigger. And so it's kind of a dragon that cares about counters. So once again, we're trying to make dragons that go in different style of decks. In Limited, look, this is good enough. You'll play a 4-4

flyer, and probably you have some ways to get plus and plus encounters. You have some bolsters, you have some Outlast, probably. But in a deck dedicated to it, you can make sure. The neat thing is it looks at the number of different creatures, so really what you want is a deck that makes sure a lot of different creatures get a plus and plus encounter.

Okay, Epic Confrontation. One green sorcery. One colorless, one generic, and a green. So target creature you control gets plus one, plus two to land a turn. And it fights target creature you don't control. So this is just the fight spell. The cool thing about this is the picture. So we had a spell, which I think was a fight spell in Khan's Tarkir.

Oh, no, no, it was a giant girth. Anyway, it was a spell to help you win fights. And it showed Surak punching a bear. And so I said on this card, we had three options. We wanted to make reference to it. So the options were we could see a

bear punching Surak. We could see Surak punching a dragon. Or we could see a dragon punching Surak. So dragon, or we could see a dragon punching Surak. So we decided that we liked, I mean, obviously the dragons are winning now, so we wanted the dragons involved, so no bear. Let's see a dragon. We definitely wanted a dragon involved. But we liked the idea of the parallelism, so instead of watching Surak get punched by somebody, what if he's punching, but this is a dragon this time?

Sarek's a badass. Before, he was a badass in a world without dragons, so he was punching bears. Now he's a badass in a world with dragons. You know what? He's punching dragons. Okay. Next, Flatten.

Three bleed instant. Tark creature gets minus four, minus four until end of turn. So you can tell by the name, Flatten, it's a nice, simple effect. We've never done before. We gave it a nice, simple name so we could use it. It's a nice, clean kill spell for black. Finally, Foe, Razor, Regent.

Five, green, green, seven mana, two of which is green. A four, five dragon that's flying. When it enters the battlefield, you fight a creature you don't control. And then whenever a creature you control fights a creature you don't control, at the end of the turn it gets two plus one plus one counters. So this wants to go on a deck with lots of fighting. Luckily, it's going to fight, so when it comes into play it's going to fight, and then at the end of the turn, go from a four five to become a six seven.

So at bare minimum, it's a six seven flyer. But if you have, you know, this is in green, you have the ability to fight, so as long as you have other fighting, then you can, uh, you can do that. Okay, guys, I'm going to do something I've never done before, which is it is almost 10 o'clock and I have a very important meeting. So I actually have to make a call and I ran out of cards I had to talk about. So we're going to do something I've never done before, which is I'm driving on the freeway. You all know what that means. You don't because I've never done this before, but it means this

is my end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be calling my meeting and telling them I'm running late. But anyway, thanks for joining me for the special almost hour-long show. I'll see you next time for more Dragons of Dark Air. Bye-bye.