Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #293 - Dragons of Tarkir, Part 5

Episode Date: January 1, 2016

Mark continues with part 5 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 the drive to work. Okay, so I'm in the middle of talking all about Dragons of Tarkir. So last we left, I'd gotten up to O. Today I'm going to talk about Ojutai's Command. So it's another one of the Command Cycles. So it's two white blue, so four mana, one of which is white, one blue.

It's an instant, and you can choose to do two of the following. You can return a creature of a converted mana cost of two or less from the graveyard to the battlefield. You can gain four life. You can counter target spell, or you can draw a card. So this one is a very functional card. or you can draw a card. So this one is a very functional card. The fact that it lets you counter a spell makes this particularly good in a control deck,

and white-blue is good at doing control. And it just has a lot of flexibility. If you want to counter a spell and draw a card, you've got to be, I was going to say dismissed, but we just remade the card. I think, kind of send. You can counter a spell and gain life. You can reanimate something.

You can gain life and draw cards. Lots of choices. And it was suited to go pretty well in a control-ish white-blue deck. So, once again, the first two abilities are the white abilities. Returning a small creature from a graveyard to the battlefield and gaining four life. That's a white ability. Countering a spell and drawing cards are both blue abilities. So, you get to do white-blue things.

Next, Piddlest Horde. Okay, Piddlest Horde is two and a black, three mana total, one of which is black, for a 5-3 Orc Berserker. It has an upkeep cost, which means every upkeep you have to lose two, or not a cost, I guess, it doesn't go away. Every upkeep you lose two life. So it has something that affects you every turn. And it has dash, two, black, black.

Okay, this is a very cool dash creature. This is an example of a dash creature in which its dash cost is more expensive than its normal cost. So normally, I can play it for three mana, one of which has to be black. Or I can dash it for four mana, two of which have to be black. Or I can dash it for four mana, two of which have to be black. But why would I want to dash a card? And the answer is there's a very harsh upkeep. You have to pay two life. You lose two

life every upkeep. So if you dash the creature, then it's not around for the upkeep. But it requires you to keep playing it to keep it around. And if you ever want to not pay the dash cost, then you start incurring the cost of the upkeep. So it's a clever little card. And it's a good example of...

One of the things when you first find a mechanic is there's the obvious low-hanging fruit. I mean, the obvious low-hanging fruit with dash was I'm a creature, I'm slightly cheaper with dash, but the idea is do I want to earlier come in and be able to attack right away, but, you know, or do I want to have some permanence?

And maybe before I can play it permanently, I play it cheaper just to get in some damage if I don't have another thing to do. But as you start playing around with the mechanic, it's like, oh, well now we can start doing things like it has an enter the battlefield cost. Maybe your dash cost can be a little more expensive

because you want to repeat the enter the battlefield cost. This card is a good example of, oh, maybe there's a downside, and you want to circumvent the downside by using dash. It's a good example of how one of the neat things about doing card design is that you can take a basic premise and find a lot of different ways to make use of it. And so this is one of the ways that I thought was pretty clever was not the positive space of wanting to repeat it because you want to get something, but

the idea of I avoid something. That was pretty cool. Okay next, Pristine Skywise. That costs four white blue for a 6-4 dragon. It is flying. And whenever you cast a non-creature spell, you can untap it, and it gains color from the, it gains protection from the color of your choice. So once again, this is a white-blue dragon. It goes into a more control-less deck, and its ability is a protective ability.

So it has a non-creature, that's something that the Just Guy slash Ochatai carry all the way through, is that they very much care about non-creature spells. And this spell's kind of cool. It's a 6-4. So basically what it can do is, it allows you to both untap it and gain protection. Well, you can use it offensively to sort of give it vigilance and to make it harder to block, because if you have protection, you can't be blocked by creatures of that color.

Or, and this is the way it's probably used more often, it can be used defensively. Which means that it can be, you know, you can use it to block. That I untap it, I can block something, then clearly I'm giving protection from a color that I blocked. Anyway, like I said, the ongoing challenge of Dragon Stark here was finding different dragons,

giving them different feels, and making sure different color combinations would go in different decks and do different things. So this is a good example of, it requires a lot of non-creature spells. So like, you can't just go in any deck, but in the white-blue decks, it already has this sort of theme, it can reinforce that theme. And it's also the kind of card that you don't need a lot of creatures in this deck, this is the finishing creature.

If you can get this creature out and have a bunch of spells to protect it in your hand, this creature can go the distance. Okay, next, Profound Journey. Profound Journey is a sorcery. It costs 7 mana, 5 white white. Return target permanent from the graveyard to the battlefield. Rebound. So this card is interesting. Every once in a while what happens is, I'll get chatted by the developers across the way. The way we sit in the pit is the designers sit together

and then right across the way is the developers sit together. So we can, like literally my desk is butted up against Eric Lauer's desk. I'm the head designer, he's the head developer. So whenever developers have questions, they always come to me. And a very common question they'll ask me is color pie things. So the

big question about this card is, can white get back anything from the graveyard? And so we sort of went through, well, actually the question was, what color can get back anything from the graveyard? So we sort of examined it. We said, okay, white can get back creatures from the graveyard.

More often it gets back tiny creatures, but it has gotten back larger creatures before. We've definitely had angels and things that have gotten back creatures. It can get back enchantments. It can get back artifacts. It doesn't normally get back land, although land is probably the

least useful thing with this. Although technically it can get back land, it's not something you do very often. And then Planeswalker, we hadn't really defined what reanim And then Planeswalker, we hadn't really defined what reanimates the Planeswalker. So the question was, could this do it?

I'm like, well, if any color is going to do it, I guess white makes the most sense. It's the one that already can do, you know, three of the five things it needed to do. And, okay, I guess, I mean,

big question is whether, once you make a card like this did this define reanimating a planeswalker is that now a white thing or it's like well we let white

at this one card and later on if we make a clean reanimate spell maybe we put that in a different color I'm not sure I felt it was okay

in white for this particular card it is pushing things a little bit I mean it's a rare card and I mean it's what I call bending the color it's not really breaking it but it is definitely stretching things a little bit. I mean, it's a rare card. I mean, it's what I call bending the color pie.

It's not really breaking it, but it is definitely stretching things a little. But it's a pretty cool card. Okay, Quarcy Deceiver. So Quarcy Deceiver costs one and a blue, two mana total, one of which is blue. It's a 0-4 and Naga Wizard. You tap to add one colorless mana,

or one, yeah, one colorless mana, and you can use that mana to play a face-down creature, to play the mana cost to turn a face-down creature face-up, or to pay a morph cost. So some people are confused by those last two. Aren't those the same thing? Isn't a morph cost something that turns things face-up? And the answer is it is, but also we wanted to cover manifest, which also turns face cards face up, so we wanted to be clear

that you could turn manifest cards face up. So, and then we were unclear whether or not if we just said that it would clear that it meant morph, so we listed them all out. So essentially the idea is, one of the things we let blue do is blue has access to colorless mana that is used for very specific things,

usually in relationship with artifacts. That's the most common place we give Blue access to colorless mana. But colorless things, we're like, okay, you know, Blue messes around in the colorless space. Okay, yeah, we let it do artifacts. In a sense in which there's a colorless matters theme as far as mana because of the face.morph creature, it's like, oh, okay, we'll let blue do that.

A lot of people don't... It's funny, a lot of people don't think of blue as producing mana, but we do let it produce colorless mana. It's something that we don't do all the time, because we kind of need a set that... Access to colorless mana means something, so usually it shows up more often in artifact sets or colorless sets. But it is something we like to do.

Also, Naga, by the way. Well, I'm talking about a Naga. So one of the big complaints we got from Naga was, why wasn't it a snake? Nagas are snakes. I have a snake tribal. I have magic because all these cards that care about snakes.

Why wasn't it a snake? So one of the things in general that we tend to do is we try to figure out whether it makes more sense to use the generic pre-existing magic word or whether it's evocative enough that we want a new word. So it came up a lot. Like, for example, minotaur is a similar thing.

Do we use, like, cow warrior? Or do we just say minotaur? We tend to err toward the word when we think the word itself has some meaning. But I think Naga got into an interesting space that we hadn't really thought about before, which is Naga is a pretty cool word, but there's not a lot of cow tribal. I mean, I guess Magic has had a few cows, especially in the Unsets, but there's not a lot of cards that care about cow-ness, if you will. There actually are a number of cards that care about snake.

And so we took something that wasn't snake, and there's a lot of people that, for example, I know have, like, Commander Snake decks and things, and I think the problem here was Naga is a cool word, but snakes do mean something. And so I think in the future, there's something for us to think about, which is, when choosing the words, how often does that word matter?

I will say, the more powerful the word is, the more evocative the word is, the more likely we're going to choose the word. I definitely, I mean, there was some talk of, should it be minotaur or should it be cow, and I'm like, it should be minotaur. Minotaurs are, you know, technically it's a bull man,

whatever, but, you know, cow warrior doesn't sound as cool as Minotaur warrior. So, anyway. It's possible with Naga we went the wrong way. I get a lot of complaints about it, and I see what people are saying is, hey, hey, hey, you have Snake Tribal

and there's a lot of Snake Tribal cards, and you know, it's, a lot of the colors are in the right place to help you with the snake tribal. Why, why could it be snakes? So, anyway, that is my Nagatak. Okay, next, Rakshasa, Gravecaller. Four to black for a 3-6 cat demon. It has exploit, and if you exploit, you put two 2-2 zombie tokens into the battlefield. They're black.

So the interesting thing about this is you have to sacrifice a creature with exploit, but it gets to become 2-2 zombies. So it's really a no-brainer. If you have anything that's smaller than a 2-2 or smaller, I'm just upgrading. I mean, I guess the 2-2 can have abilities, but assuming

you don't have abilities you care about. Anything 2-2 or smaller, you just get to upgrade into not just guess the 2-2 can have abilities but assuming you don't have abilities you care about anything 2-2 or smaller you just get to upgrade into not just a replacement 2-2 but another 2-2 and even if you have like a 3-3 some of the times you want 2-2-2s instead of a 3-3, not always but sometimes you do well so anyway, this is an interesting card

this is definitely an exploit card that makes it a little easier to exploit things one of the things in general that we were worried about about exploit Exploit is Exploit is a very spiky mechanic in that you have to be willing to sacrifice a creature to gain something. And we know a lot of players are not particularly fond of sacrificing things.

I don't want to lose my stuff. I like my stuff. Now the nice thing about Exploit is you're getting something for the sacrifice. So hopefully it's like, okay, well you're losing a creature but you're gaining something. This is the kind of card we made for the players that are a little more hesitant to use exploit, because this card says, look, I'm going to replace the thing you sacrificed,

and, and, I'm going to give you another creature. So if you use like a 1-1, you sacrifice, that 1-1 becomes a 2-2, that seems good, and, hey, I'll give you another 2-2. So this is a card with exploit that really sort of makes you feel not so bad about sacking a creature, because you're gaining creatures. Also, another funny story is, so

Rakshasa. I had a hard time saying that. The cat demons. It is a hard word to say. With over 16 months working on the set, I finally got to the point where I was able to say it without messing it up most of the time.

But, and the team, they thought it was really funny that I could not say the word. And so they would design, playtest names would include it all the time. Even on cards that weren't necessarily cat demons, you know, Rock Shasha's Bane or whatever. They would just use it whenever they could to try to get me to say it because they thought it was funny how hard a time I had saying it. whatever they could, to try to get me to say it, because they thought it was funny how hard a time I had saying it.

In fact, I think there's a video when I was doing Inside R&D for Kind of Tarkir, where I was messing up during the video, and I think they showed it. I think they showed me messing up a bunch of times. Anyway, so some of the games we play in R&D. Okay, next. Revealing Wind. It's a green instant. It costs two and a green, so three mana total, one of which is green. You prevent all creature damage, so it's a fog.

And then you get a look at any face-down attacking or blocking creature. So one of the things we find about doing Morph is some players really have fun sort of exploring Morph and trying to figure it out, and when do they play it, and how much mana do they have up. Other players, like, they don't know, and they don't feel that they can figure it out. And they're happier if we could just give them some tools to peek. So what we tend to do is we put the tools on cards that are a little weaker.

It's more fun for sort of high level, limited play play if you're trying to figure out what's going on instead of just easily being able to look. So the cards we make where you can look tend to be a little, slightly on the weaker side, just because we know there's players that want to look, but the players that want to look and not figure it out tend to be a little less experienced. So to allow

the sort of higher end player in limited to figure it out, we don't give them easy spells to do that. There's good examples like Fog, three mana Fog, not the greatest spell. But, Fog is very popular

with a less experienced player and this is kind of like, to them, it's like, oh, I get a Fog, I love Fogs, and, oh, I get to see

what the things are. Okay, okay. And they'll put it in their deck. One of the things that's important, by the way, I should stress this, I talk about this all the time,

but, is, you have to design the game for lots of different kinds of players. There is a kind of player who this card is very comforting for, that they're excited to see this card, they want to play this card, and that just because this card is not the optimal play from a high level constructed, I'm sorry, a high level, You know, if you're trying to win the highest percentage of games possible. But the point is, that's not how everybody plays. Everybody's not trying to maximize every choice. They're trying to have fun and play a game and enjoy themselves,

and that we don't need to make every card for the highest-level tournament player. Not that we can't anyway, but there's also players that are just like, you know what, I like this effect. It makes me happy. That's okay. You know, part of designing a game is not optimizing all the time.

I mean, what you're trying to do is make every player have an experience that they enjoy. Some players enjoy maximizing and trying to do the best they can do and winning everything. That's the spikes of the world. But that's not every player. And so you don't need to maximize every card for the spikes in your game. You know, not every player is trying to shave the edge of everything. And making some cards that players will enjoy playing, even if it's not the right play from an optimal standpoint, that doesn't matter.

It's the right play for them. Are they having fun? You know, one thing to remember is winning is not the goal of the game. I mean, it's the goal. It's a goal. But the goal for a game designer is to make a game that your players enjoy playing and that them winning is not key necessarily to them enjoying it. So part of what you want to do is make sure you are making things that enhance the experience for them. And it's very easy to fall in the trap of thinking of,

oh, well, players play a certain way. play a certain way and you make all the cards for that style of player and the answer is no Magic has many ways to play it and many kinds of players who play it and so our job is not to keep making the same thing time and time again our job is to make different things

that make different kinds of players happy and this is a perfect card of which it'll get poo-pooed, people reviewing the set will say it's a bad card, you shouldn't play it, but there are a lot of players in which this is an awesome card for them. It makes them happy, it takes some tension they have, it relieves the tension, and it helps them

play the game the way they want to play it. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, that's an awesome thing. If you want to make a game, if you want to make a popular game, you need to make sure that all different styles of player are able to play the game the way they want to play the game, not the way you want them to play the game. Okay. Next, Risen Executioner.

Two black black for a 4-3 zombie warrior. It can't block. Other zombies you control get plus one plus one. And you may cast Risen from your you may cast a risen executioner from your graveyard but you have to pay one extra for every creature card in your graveyard um so the idea of this card is a couple things one is it's a zombie um helper and make sure your zombie's bigger zombie lowered um but also it's a kind of card that says okay i want to play this but i don't want to have a lot of creature

cards in my graveyard. And so the answer is, there's a bunch of different ways with zombies to eat things out of the graveyard. Also, remember, the Silmgar clan plays with the Soltai clan, so you have access to Delve, which also is a very easy way to get creature cards

out of your graveyard. So anyway, this is definitely the card that's meant for the Sultangar clan. You can mix it in, obviously, with the Sultai clan. It helps your zombies, but it requires a little bit of maneuvering around because to maximize this card, you need to make sure you have ways to get rid of your graveyard. But there's a bunch of ways to do that. There's even ways to do that that work with a zombie deck. So this does click into something that's already

pre-existing. Next, Ruthless Deathfang. Four blue black for a dragon. So it is a Sylvan Guard dragon, blue black. So six mana, one blue, one black, including one blue and one black. Six total. Flying. Whenever you sac a creature,

target opponent sacs a creature. Okay, so one of the things we wanted to do is make sure we made dragons in each color that reward you for the style of play you're playing. Well, one of the things Blue-Black, its mechanic, is exploit. So it is sacrificing a lot of creatures for advantage. Well, this card says, hey, if I'm sacking creatures already, why don't I take extra advantage of that? So this card does.

It says, okay, whenever I'm sacking a creature, and I have a deck where I'm going to sack creatures, my opponent has to sack a creature. So this becomes a creature kill spell, but only a creature kill spell when your deck is doing the thing that blue-black wants you to do, which is sacking a lot of things yourself. Next, Salt Road Ambushers. It's three and a green, so four mana total, one of which is green, for a 3-3 Hound Warrior. It's one of our dog people. Whenever another permanent turns face-up, if it's a creature, it gets two plus-one plus-one counters.

And it's got a megamorph of three green-green. So this is a 3-3 creature that you can megamorph into being a 4-4 creature. And then once it's face up it rewards other cards. So I talked about how we made a blue green deck that really rewards you for morph. And this is definitely an example of that. Of a card that says, hey, play a lot

of morph cards in your deck. I'll reward you. The reason it says, by the way, creature is there are ways to turn things face up that aren't creatures. For example, back in FutureSight, we made a few cards that were face-down cards that

morph that weren't creatures. And so I think there's a bunch of other ways to get things face-down that aren't creatures, so this just sort of emphasizes that if it's a creature, it gets 2++ counters. This also, by the way, interestingly, it plays well on a morph deck. It also plays nicely. There's cards in Dromaca or Abzan that reward you for having plus one plus one counters.

So this card also allows you to sort of crisscross those strategies where you can have cards that care about plus and bonus counters and play with more things than when they turn, or more for Mega Morph or Manifest, than when they turn face up, they can get counters. And so it allows you to take two different strategies and sort of link them together. We've got these linking cards that are pretty important where you say, oh, I have two strategies. So what I'm going to do is make sure that my two strategies can interlink with each other. So if I play this card, it can take strategy A and strategy B, and now both of them go on the same deck. Okay, next.

Salt Road Quartermasters. Two and a green for a 1-1 Human Soldier. It enters the battlefield with two plus one plus one counters, so it's really a 3-3. For two and a green, you can remove a plus one plus one counter to put a plus one plus one counter on target creature. Hey! It's a spike! So spikes were this card that I made.

There was one of them in Tempest, and most of them were in Stronghold. They were creatures that came into play with plus one plus one counters, and then you could spend mana to move them to other creatures. Spikes were a little bit cheaper to move, but that ability definitely was a little on the strong side.

So it's a Spike. It's not called a Spike. It's not a Spike creature type. But basically, it comes with plus one plus one counters, and it can move them. Now, this particular card doesn't have tons. It only gets two plus one, plus one counters. But there's a lot of ways in the set, especially with Bolster, by the way. One of the neat things about this card is you can move the counters.

It becomes a 1-1, and then you can... It's the lowest toughness creature. You get a Bolster onto it. So this is kind of cool. Did I say lowest toughness? It's Bolster, lowest power, lowest toughness. I'm blinking right it. So this is kind of cool. Did I say the lowest toughness? It's both the lowest powers and the lowest toughness. I'm blinking right now. It's one or the other. But if it's a 1-1, it's both.

Anyway, I'm forgetting. Next. Sarkhan Unbroken. Two green, blue, red. So it's five mana. One of which is green, one of which is blue, one of which is red. It's a Planeswalker, obviously. So plus one, you get to draw a card and add one mana of any color to your mana pool.

For minus two, loyal... Oh, I didn't write... I have a bad habit of not writing starting loyalties when I write Planeswalkers. I don't remember starting loyalties. I think... Uh... He costs five. He's got a minus eight loyalty. I'm guessing he's four or five. I'm sorry. I have a bad habit of not writing loyalty down.

Anyway, plus one, draw a card, add one mana of any color. Minus two, you get a four, four red dragon token with flying. Minus eight, you can search your library for any number of dragons and put them onto the battlefield. So the idea essentially is he's king of the dragons. So one of the things we knew about Sarkhan was we knew we wanted a before and after. That he's going to arrive there, he's going to go back in time, and he's going to radically change things.

We decided to start him as a monocolor planeswalker. We wanted to get a sense that he didn't quite fit in. It was a wedge world, and so we didn't give him wedge colors. And the idea is once he goes through all the things and he kind of finds himself, ironically, he becomes a wedge creature, even though the world is no longer wedge. And the idea is he's messing with time. He already in the past

had had red and green in him. He gained some blue because he's messing with time. Blue is all about perfection. He was trying to perfect his world. Anyway, there's also this idea that he really always identified with the Temur and so in the end he ends up sort of Temur, and there's a little bit of savagery to him, and, you know, Sarkhan sort of remade the world, and the world is in a lot of ways worse

off, but Sarkhan likes it better. In the actual trope of the storytelling time, when the person who changes time comes back, usually they're unhappy with the world they changed to, that they made the world worse, and it's like a tragedy. The twist we had here is Sarkin makes the world worse, except it isn't worse for him. He likes the dragons. And so,

anyway, this was our card. We knew we were going to do one in the first set and one in the third set to sort of mirror each other. That was always the plan. Okay, next. Sarkin's Triumph. It's an instant that costs two and a red, so one, three total, but one of mirror each other. That was always the plan. Okay, next, Sarkin's Triumph. It's an instant that costs two and a red, so three total, but one of which is red. It lets you search your library for a dragon card and then put it in your hand and shuffle your library.

This card's playtest name was Draconic Tutor. There's those that got mad at us that we didn't keep that name. If I was in charge of naming, it would have been called Draconic Tutor I think that actually was a cutesy name that we could have kept but I think they were trying to tie in to Sarkin one of the things is there's not lots

of opportunities to make nice clean simple cards that tie into the character and Sarkin's main character so I get it, I get it but just for those that have made the joke of Draconic Tutor, that was the playtest name and for a while, might have been

the, I don't know, it was always the playtest name and I actually thought there was a good chance that it might actually end up being the name. Okay, next. Savage Ventman, Ventmaw. Four red, green, so six mana, one of which is red, one of which is green, for four, four dragon.

It is flying. And when it attacks, it adds RRR, red, red, red, green, green, green, to your mana pool. And that mana doesn't go away until end of turn. So it doesn't clear through combat. So this is a card that is a mana enabler. And it goes in the clan that really wants to cast a lot of bigger creatures.

A Tarka or a Temur is the ferocious, formidable clan. They like having lots of things in play, especially a lot of big things in play. And so this just enables you to get out your dragon and he enables you to play other big, giant things. Which is what Red Green likes to do.

Next, Scale Blessing. Scale Blessing is an instant, costs three and a white, so four mana total, one of which is white. You bolster one, and then you put a plus one, plus one counter on every creature that has a plus one, plus one counter. So once again, one of the themes

in Dromica slash Abzan is plus one, plus one counters mattering. So this is a perfect example where I get a bolster. And a bare minimum is bolster two, because obviously the thing I'm bolstering is going to get a counter.

But if I have more things, if I've been doing other bolstering or outcasting or just through other means, if I have other cards that plus one, plus one counters, all of a sudden, this just rewarded him.

For example, I tried plus one E earlier that came into play with two plus one, plus one counters, and it just rewarded them. For example, I talked about it earlier, that came into play with two plus and plus encounters, and it can move them. So imagine you take this and you move it to a creature, and then you cast this, you boost to a third creature, then three creatures get boosted. And that's just a combination of two cards

plus another creature. Okay, next. Scion of Ugin. Scion of Ugin. Six colorless mana. Or, I'm sorry, six... I always confuse thegin. Six Cullis mana. I'm sorry, six... I always confuse the two. Six generic mana. It's a 4-4 Dragon Spirit.

It is Cullis. And it's flying. So this is the card we made to be a common. This was the card the design made to say we need a common dragon. If your theme's not a common, it's not your theme. We wanted a common dragon. We made a common. This was the card that the design made to say, we need a common dragon. If your theme's not a common, it's not your theme.

We wanted a common dragon, we made a common dragon. We talked with creative and figured out what we could do to have one singular dragon. Like, okay, what if we make it,

we talked about making an artifact dragon, but that made no sense. There's not a lot of artifact dragons in the set. So we said, okay, instead of artifact,

what if it's colorless, it's a spirit, it's a dragon spirit, or is it a dragon spirit? It's a dragon. I mean, it's one of Ugin's spawn sort of things. So we said, okay, instead of artifact, what if it's colorless, it's a spirit, it's a dragon spirit, or is it a dragon spirit? It's a dragon. I mean, it's one of Ugin's spawn sort of things. And so we're like, okay, it's tied to Ugin. Ugin's a colorless dragon. It's colorless so that we could only have one at common, but it helps the Azphan because any color

could play it. And then it turned out to be a little bit too good, and it got moved up to uncommon in development. Not so happy about that. I mean, there are a lot of cares about dragon things at Common. I just really wanted a creature-type dragon at Common. I was kind of sad

to see this go. I actually wish it would have been massaged to maybe be slightly worse, but still been at Common. But anyway, they made the choice to move it to Uncommon. I guess, a choice to live with. So, anyway, I am now at work. Actually, well,

let me do a few more. I'm going to finish off this page just because I, well, I'm trying to figure, one of the hard parts when I do multiple things is next time it's going to be my last podcast and I'm already, I'm in the S's and I want to make sure that I leave enough cards for me to be able to finish off with. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to I'm going to finish off this. I have a few left to do. I'm going to quickly finish off this page. I actually didn't have much traffic

today. So I'm going to finish off this page today and then next time I'll start with I'm not going to finish S. So I will have the rest of S to do. So let me quickly finish off this page. I only have a few cards left, so I will finish this off. Okay. Next.

Secure the Waste. XW, Instant. Put X11 White Warrior creature tokens on the battlefield. So the funny thing with this card is it's just a token maker where it makes X tokens for X as an instant speed. We've never made this card. This is one of those cards that you make and you're like, you have to look in the file and make sure you haven't made it, but we hadn't, so this is a pretty cool

card. And it really, it's usable in all the strategies that have white. Mardu's probably the one that uses it the best, but it also can be very defensive, like Abzan, or Jeskai loves it because it's a creature maker

that it's a non-creature spell. So anyway, all the white clans like it. Next, self-inflicted wound, one black sorcery. So two mana, one of which is black. Target opponent sacrifices a green or white creature, and if they do, they lose two life. This is the cycle of color hosers. What does black do?

It makes white and green have to sacrifice creatures. There's some potent creatures in the metagame at the time that making them sacrifice was... that's why I think it's sacrifice rather than destroy. I believe that there's some stuff they wanted to worry about in the metagame, and so they fine-tuned it in development to make sure it matched the metagame.

Servant of the Scale. It's a human soldier. It costs a single green for a 0-0, though it enters with a plus one, plus one counter, so really a 1-1. When it dies, you put X plus one, plus one counters on target creature, each with a counter on this. So this is a little build me thing.

It's like, okay, I'm a little 1-1. You could bolster me. You could help me with Outlast. Oh, no, I don't have Outlast, but you can bolster me. Or there's other ways to stick plus one, plus one counters on me. And then when I die, you get them all back. So this is a cutesy card of

it wants plus and plus encounters, and then you can be aggressive with it because if it dies, you get to keep the encounters and go somewhere else. Okay, Shaman of the Forgotten Waste. Two and a green for two, three human shaman. Tap, add two mana of any combination,

but you can only use it to cast creatures. And then it's got Formidable, nine green, green, eleven mana, two of which is green tap all players lives become equal to the number of creatures they control so this is a pretty potent card

so this card, first of all in the early game just helps you get things out because you can use mana to cast creatures but in the late game, if you've done your job and played a lot of creatures and I'm bored full of creatures you get a reset life total to a number of creatures so hopefully what happens is

you get a reset hopefully you have a lot of creatures in play and you can reset it to a high number and your opponent has less and you get reset it to a lower number finally the last card of today and then we'll continue on to next time Shorecrasher Elemental

blue blue blue for 3-3 Elemental pretty good right there. In a mono-blue deck. For blue, you can exile it and return it to face down. So you can sort of save it. Because if you exile it, anything that targets it will get lost. Because it loses any targets when it goes away and comes back.

So this allows you to save it. But in saving, you make it a 2-2 creature. For 1 mana, you can give it plus 1, minus 1. Or give it minus 1, plus 1. Till end of turn. This is sort of what you use on shapeshifters. Morphling famously used this. So it makes things bigger or smaller.

It's a 3-3. You get to make it a 4-4 if it has Megamorph. So Megamorph for four and a blue. So for five mana, one which is blue, you can Megamorph it. That way it's a 4-4. If it's a 4-4, you can make it up to a 7-1 and down to a 1-7. So it can run the game, or up to actually a 0-8.

You can go from a 7-1, you have to at least one toughness or you die, a 7-1 up to a 0-8. So depending if you have enough mana, you can really make a lot of different sizes. And as long as you have a single blue, if it ever is in danger of being destroyed, you can exile it, turning it face down to save it. Now then you have to megamorph it again, so you have to go through the cost of getting it back up. But it allows you to save it and then you have to megamorph it again so you have to go through the cost of getting it back up but it allows you

to save it so that's a pretty cool spell okay guys it's pretty clear I'm up to S so I believe I have one more

podcast so join me next time when I shall do so but anyway I am 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