Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #308 - Limited Edition, Part 2

Episode Date: February 26, 2016

Mark continues with part 2 of his six-part series on the design of Limited Edition (Alpha), Limited Edition (Beta), and Unlimited Edition.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today I'm continuing on with my talk all about limited edition. Alpha, beta, unlimited. Or actually, I guess limited. I'm not talking unlimited. Limited edition. So, mostly what you know is of alpha and beta. Although I guess there was a white border limited too. But, okay. I guess unlimited was limited, but just in a white border with a few tiny changes. We'll get to. So yeah, mostly, anyway, alpha, beta, unlimited is what I'm talking about. So let me, today I'm going to start getting to the cards and tell a bunch of stories all about sort of cards. Now be aware, because I'm talking about stuff that I did not do, a lot

of this is me extrapolating off stories I've heard and, you know, things that I, having been around people who were involved in hearing stories. So a lot of what I'm talking about today is not me doing it, but me hearing about other people doing it. So my level of detail at times will be a little more sometimes me guessing some things. Okay, we start with Ancestral Recall. A very famous card from the beginning of the game. It costs a single blue mana. It was an instant.

And I'm going to read you a few of these cards. I'm going to read you the actual text on the card just because it's fun. So it said, draw three cards or force opponent to draw three cards. Now in Oracle, it's target player draws three cards. But Alpha did not have... It wasn't that there wasn't targeting. The word target does, in fact, show up in Alpha. In some of the other cards, you'll see it.

But they weren't really consistent with using target. It was not a word... As a perfect example, like, this clearly is target player draws three cards. But the idea of target player... I'm not even sure if target player was verbiage used. They had target... No, no, no, they did. They did, because you could do damage to target creature or player, I think. I think. Well, we'll get to that.

But anyway, one of the things about early alpha is that they definitely were a lot looser in the terminology. That one of the things that would later happen in Magic is things that worked the same would be worded the same. That was not always true when the game first came out. The cards were clear. I mean, this card says what it does, and you can understand what it does. But it's not necessarily consistent. Okay, so Ancestral Recall is part of what is known as the Boon Cycle. So there are five cards in Alpha slash Beta that cost one mana of a color and generate an effect that has the number three in it. So I'll get to all of them

as we go through. But anyway, real quickly. So white is Healing Salve, blue is Ancestral Recall, black is Dark Ritual, red is Lightning Bolt, and green is Giant Growth. I think when Richard first made them

they were all the same rarity. I think they probably were all common. In fact, four of the five ended up common, so I'm pretty sure this was a common cycle. But what Richard realized was drawing three cards was a little better than getting mana or doing damage or getting bigger or healing or getting life. And so what happened was he started moving it up in rarity. Now, I've talked about this a bunch, that when Richard made the game,

the assumption he had was that this would be a game that sold normally. Not that this would be a blockbuster game that sold like it eventually did, but like, okay, how many people would buy this game and how much would they spend on it? And he assumed like, okay, assuming you spent so much on the game, this is what you would purchase. And he figured out kind of how many cards would be in circulation. And by moving something up in rarity, it just like, okay, assuming you spent so much on a game, this is what you would purchase. And he figured out kind of how many cards would be in circulation. And by moving something up in rarity, it just meant, okay, like he knew Ancestral Recall was better,

but how many Ancestral Recalls would somebody have was sort of the thought process. Like in a group of friends, one, maybe two, you know, you wouldn't have that many. And so, you know, if you only have one or two cards that are really good, it's not a problem. You know, no one's going to have all the broken cards in the same deck. Just, you know, the numbers wouldn't let that happen. But, once again, he's also assuming the game wasn't a runaway success. And he knew if that happened, like, there was going to be a problem. But it's like, wow, that's an awesome problem to have.

We'll solve that when we get there. And obviously, a problem he does have to solve eventually. Okay, next, animate artifact. we'll solve that when we get there. And obviously a problem he does have to solve eventually. Okay. Next. Animate artifact. So this is an artifact. It's an enchantment. In fact, it says enchant non-creature artifact.

Back in the day, enchantments didn't say enchantment on them. They said, auras at least, said enchantment, said enchant whatever they enchanted. And they're pretty, you'll see in a second.

They were pretty loose. They were verychant, whatever they enchanted. And they're pretty, you'll see in a second. They were pretty loose. They were very descriptive of what they enchanted. Later, we would go on to come up with auras and say enchantment. It would be an aura. And then what you could target would be, you know, enchant creature would be inside the rules text. But back in the day, this was all on the card type line. So enchant non-creature artifact.

And then it basically took an artifact that wasn't a creature and made it a creature. And so what it did is it animated it equal to its converted mana cost. It was power and touch equal to converted mana cost.

And it retained all its abilities. So whatever it did, it still did. What was wonky, by the way, is there was a rule when the game first started that said all artifacts tap and they shut off when tapped.

And so what happened was when you made continuous artifacts, so another thing I should, I think I brought it before, that artifacts fell into four categories. There were continuous artifacts that had an effect that always categories. There were continuous artifacts that had an effect that always happened. There were mono artifacts

that essentially had a tap in them, but they didn't say they had a tap that you could use once. There were artifact creatures, and then there were... What was the last one? There's continuous artifacts, mono artifacts,

artifact creatures. I'm missing one. I'll get to it. In fact, I'm sure I'm run into a card that is it. Anyway, this is also, you can see early on that Richard was definitely experimenting with the idea of card types morphing from one card type into another type.

This took an artifact and made it an artifact creature. I guess it didn't turn off its artifactness and in fact it kept all its artifact abilities. But it definitely was very quirky. And it was one of the cards when I first started playing that I really got drawn to because I loved, like,

what craziness could you do? What happened when I took an artifact that wasn't supposed to be a creature and made it into a creature and then did things to it that only you could do to creatures but it retained all its abilities. So you can definitely see that Richard was trying to sort of make open-ended stuff. And this is a really good example of an open-ended card that did a lot of weird and crazy things.

And that was all on purpose. Richard really wanted Magic to be a game where you were exploring the environment, and you were seeing what kind of crazy things you could do. Richard really had a lot of fun of just going, okay, I'm going to do this crazy thing, and I don't even know what necessarily people are going to do with it, but it should be fun, and let's let people have their fun. Okay, next, Animate Dead.

Animate Dead cost two mana, one and a black, and it said Enchant Dead Creature. That's what it said. It said Enchant Dead Creature. And what that meant was, you took a creature from the graveyard, and then you put this on it. And then it brought it out of the graveyard. It's funny, because in Future Sight, I made a card that enchanted

an instant or sorcery in the graveyard. And everybody was like, oh my, how could you do that? Oh, that's so crazy. But it's funny, this card brought, I mean, really what it did is, it took a creature from the graveyard and put it into play and put this enchantment on it. Oh, by the way, so it takes the creature card of any graveyard, put it in play, this enchantment goes on, it becomes an enchantment. And then

the creature gets minus one, minus zero. And then if you ever get rid of the aura, then it goes back in the graveyard. So sort of like this enchantment animates things, gives it a minus one to a power, because it's a zombie and it's a little weaker than it once was.

And if you ever get rid of the, what it said on the card is, if for any reason Anime Dead ever goes away, or the creature dies, then it goes to the graveyard. So, Anime Dead was definitely one of those cards that we sort of, it's a good example how, if you've ever seen the Oracle version of Animate Dead, it doesn't actually fit on a card. The text is too long. I mean, we joked about at one point making an Animate

Dead that was like all, like we've had all art cards, cards that are just art, making a card that's just rule stacks. Because I think it fits if you don't have pesky art getting in the way. But this was a much beloved card. It was a really flavorful card. And in fact, although it's a super wordy card, it is a very flavorful card.

It was not a card that caused a lot of confusion. And the only cause of confusion in that magic and weird interactions in this card function oddly. Like it was, in a lot of confusion. And the only cause of confusion in that magic can have weird interactions and this card function oddly. Like it was, in a lot of ways, it was an aura, but didn't say it was anything like an aura. It just sort of gave a lot of loose words

about, well, do this. A lot of early magic definitely sort of said, well, just do this. And then just assumed that this was intuitive and that you would do what makes sense. Okay, next. Ankh of Mishra. Cost two. It's a continuous artifact, which. Ankh of Mishra. Cost two.

It's a continuous artifact, which means it's always on. It generates an effect. The Ankh of Mishra does two damage to anyone who puts a new land into play. So the idea is Ankh of Mishra was it punishes you

for playing lands. So you play an Ankh of Mishra and then every time someone would play a land, it would do two damage to them. I think Richard was definitely playing around with the idea of, let's have a lot of effects that generate a lot of different things. So this effect said, okay, hey, I get this out, and then

all of a sudden playing land is dangerous. Maybe I can restrict people from playing land. This also ended up playing well in a deck that destroyed land because if I'm constantly destroying your land then you're forced to put more land into play. The one funny

thing about Ankamishra that I will point out is that Ankamishra, one of the things that we would later go on to do is make a rule that said we are not going to show modern day religious symbols on magic cards. And just because we don't want to offend anybody. So when we redid Ankha Mishra in, I don't know, 5th edition, the artist had the

lovely, the following art description, which is a challenge for any artist. It's Ankha Mishra. Please don't show an Ankh. And so if you've ever seen Ankh Mishra, the later ones, how it's definitely a very weird, quirky card. It's because we were trying not to show the Ankh. We were trying not to show it because it is

still a religious symbol in parts of the world. And so, anyway, I always found that to be, I understand the reason behind it, but it is quirky. A poor artist that's like, do this, but don't do the one obvious thing you would need to do. Okay, next, Armageddon. So, three and a white. So, four mana, one of which is white.

Sorcery. All lands in play are destroyed. That is what the card said. All lands in play are destroyed. Didn't say destroy all lands. It said all... Later, the card would say destroy all lands. It said all... Later, the card would say destroy all lands.

But all lands in play are destroyed. Like I said, I'll read some of the text. I find the text an alpha kind of fun, alpha-beta fun, because it just...

It is written... I mean, once again, you understand what the card does. It's not consistent between cards, but you get what the card does.

Armageddon was a very potent card in the day. So much so that there's a whole series of different decks that are blank Ageddon. You know, there was Armageddon, Marogeddon, you know, just like something with Armageddon. Usually the

way Armageddon, the decks a lot of times were green-white. What they would do is they would play giant creatures and then just destroy all the lands. And so the idea is, I have bigger creatures than you because I ramped them out quicker, I'm playing green, and then I destroyed all the lands, and so you can't really answer my creatures because you have no land, and I just beat you up with my big creatures before you're able to get anything out, you know. because I ruin your land development

before you get to the point where you could play big creatures, I now push you way back before getting big creatures again. Okay, next. Bad Moon. Bad Moon's enchantment costs one and a black, two mana, one of which is black. It says all black creatures in play gain plus one, plus one. So back in the day, by the way,

the term battlefield didn't happen to Magic 2010. Things were just in play. That's how the terminology was originally. So this is interesting. One of the things that Alpha definitely did is Richard, when he made Alpha, I think in his head, I mean, he clearly, clearly had a philosophical idea

for what the color pie meant. And he definitely had certain ideas of what colors did. That is for sure. But he definitely was a little broader on what could do what. One of the things that he definitely was much more willing to spread among colors is just letting colors sort of grant creatures plus one plus one. Although I guess in Alpha, there was Crusade, which did it in white, and Badman, that did it in black.

Remember, by the way, in Alpha, it didn't make all your creatures, all your black creatures plus one plus one. It made all black creatures. So there definitely was a lot, this element of early magic where sometimes you'd have cards like, oh, let me figure out what the environment is. Maybe I don't want to play because maybe I'm helping my opponent more than I'm helping myself. Usually

you made a deck where it's going to help you more than your opponent, but in mirror matches and things sometimes you you've got weird situations where you didn't want to play cards because it would help them as much as you and maybe more than you. Badminton is a very, very popular card. This ability is no longer

We let black occasionally buff things. We let black buff black creature types, like you'll see vampire lords or zombie lords kind of thing. And we do let black temporarily pump its creatures, but usually plus one plus oh as opposed to plus

one plus one. And we have stuff like shades, where they're self-pumping, but this ability of just blanket giving all creatures, all black creatures plus one plus one, not really in black's color pie anymore. I guess there's things that are similar. I guess we let Black do stuff like this

if there's some pain along with it. So I can imagine you could have this kind of effect if there's a second rider that somehow punished you for doing it. Okay, next, Balance. Balance costs two mana, one and a white. Sorcery. So players with more lands in their hand have to get rid of lands

until they have an equal number of lands to the player with the least number of lands. And the same is true for cards in hand and for creatures. So for example, let's say I play balance and I have three lands in play and my opponent has five lands in play. Oh, my opponent has to sacrifice two lands. Then, in my hand, I have three cards, and my opponent has four cards. They'd have to discard a card. And then I have three creatures, and they have two creatures. Well, then I would have to sacrifice a creature. So balance was pretty potent, because it could be Armageddon, meaning it could destroy all the land. It could be a Mind Twist. It could destroy all the cards, and it could be Armageddon, meaning it could destroy all the land.

It could be a Mind Twist. It could destroy all the cards. And it could be a Wrath of God. It could destroy all the creatures. The card ended up being the most popular in control decks, meaning there were decks that often didn't play creatures. So for two mana, it was automatically a Wrath of God.

I didn't have any creatures. So any creatures you have would be destroyed. It often could act as a mind twist or something and make you discard cards because I can manipulate, you know, I would watch how many cards are in your hand versus me. And if I know this is coming up, I might

be playing cards, getting them out of my hand, knowing I make you discard cards. And often this was played in decks where you had the ability to sacrifice land. So the And often, this was played in decks where you had the ability to sacrifice land. So the real dangers, this would happen

once Ice Age comes out, but Ice Age had a card called Zern Orb that allowed you to sacrifice land to gain three life. There also was a card called Dark Heart of the Wood

in the Dark that was black-green that did the same thing. But I think you gained two life. Oh, I'm sorry. Xur and Orb, you gained two life. And Dark Heart of the Wood, you gained three life.

But Dark Heart of the Wood, you had a cast, it was an enchantment, where Xur and Orb was an artifact that you played for zero. But anyway, one of the really dangerous things you can do eventually

when you can combine it is I can sacrifice all my land, gain life usually, and then also sort of, I can Armageddon you. So I could sacrifice all my land, gain life usually, and then also sort of arm, I could Armageddon you. So I could Armageddon you and Wrath of God you, and sometimes make you discard cards all in one swoop.

This was a really powerful card. This card would later go on to get restricted, still is restricted in stuff like Vintage. It is just, and for two mana this card just does so many crazy things. Like the fact that if you have no creatures in your deck that that for two mana, it's just a Wrath of God. I mean, Wrath of God's already really good. A Wrath of God destroys all creatures.

Um, so this was definitely a very potent card. It took a while for people to understand how good this card was. This card got reprinted. Like, there are really powerful cards that were in Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, and you never saw them again. Balance showed up, not just in Revised, but I think maybe even 4th Edition. It lasted way, way, way longer than it should, just because it took

people a long time to realize the potency of how powerful it was. Because the card had a downside, or potentially had a downside. Like, you know, a lot of times, you would win on two of the three things, but you would lose on one of them. And so people are like, I don't know if I want to play this. I might lose creatures or lands.

And like, one of the things you have to understand is when it affects everybody, but you get to cast it, you get to choose. And so this is the kind of card that you're just not casting if it's going to be detrimental to you and could be horribly detrimental to your opponent. Okay, next. Berserk. Costs one green mana. It's an instant. So until end of turn, target creature's power is doubled, and they gain trample.

And then if they attack, you destroy them in end of turn. It cannot be cast after attackers are declared. So, originally, the idea of berserk was I could double the creature's power and give a trample, but then the creature's going to die.

Um, and this could be used on your opponent's creatures. So, I could use it on my creatures, make my creatures super big. I could use my opponent's creature to say, oh, well this turn you're a big threat, but that means after this turn you'll be dead. Um, I remember Berserk fondly because back in the day there was a time when Legends came out where really you weren't supposed to play creatures. It was just so detrimental playing creatures.

And so no one did. The default way standard was played was mostly creatureless decks. And I said, no, no! We should be playing creatures! So I made a weenie blue-green deck. And the deck would just overrun you. Mostly what it did is it would play creatures. And usually one of the creatures I would buff up through a bunch of different means.

Giant growth, unstable mutations and such. And then I would berserk it. So I'd make it big and then I would berserk it. Maybe I'd berserk a second time because I could regrow the Berserk. Berserk eventually got restricted. I could only have one in the deck. But I also had a regrowth that let me get things back. So sometimes I would Berserk, regrow the Berserk, Berserk again.

And the fun thing about it is, you know, I could, like, here's a very common thing in my deck. I'd have a Bird of Paradise. We'll get to that in a second. Zero-one creature. My opponent, you know, turn one, play Bird of Paradise. My opponent's like, okay. And then turn two is like, Unstable Mutation, Giant Growth.

Now it's a 6-7 creature. I would Berserk it, making it a 12-power creature and then regrow the Berserk and make it a 24-power creature, attack and kill them on turn two. Welcome to old-school magic. Okay, next.

Oh, Birds of Paradise. I led the segue right into that. So Birds of Paradise is a 0-1 bird. It costs one green mana. It is flying, and you can tap it to add any color of magic. My story about Birds of Paradise, I'm going to try to give you some alpha stories where I can, is the art for this card was not actually made for Bird of Paradise.

The art for this card was made for Tropical Island, the blue-green dual land. The problem was the artist put this bird very focal in the picture, and it was just pulling everybody's attention. If you notice in the background, there's a tropical island. That's what he was drawing. But he just put this bird in the picture, and the bird was this pretty bird and colorful,

and everyone's eyes kept getting drawn to the bird. And people just kept missing, like, the island. Like, one of the things about art is you want to make sure the focal point of your art is the thing the card is. And the bird was pulling focus. So Richard said, okay, fine, I'll just make a card for the bird.

And so Bird of Paradise wasn't originally in the set. And Richard just made a card to go with it. He said, okay, fine, I'll just make a card for the bird. And so Bird of Paradise wasn't originally in the set. And Richard just made a card to go with it. He said, okay, what should this bird do? And then came up with this idea of, he already had a Land of War Elf

in the set, but he's like, oh, what if I Land of War Elf at rare, but I could have for any color. And it wasn't as common as an Elf, and instead of being a 1-1,

it's a 0-1, but it could fly. It had to fly because it's a bird, and it's shown flying in the art. Although early Magic, we wouldn't always have birds shown flying in the art actually fly. But that's a different set. Okay, next, Black Knight.

Black, Black, Summon Knight. Once again, the idea of creature hyphen subtype didn't happen until later, until, I think, 6th edition. So early on, it would just say summon. So this was a creature knight. But creature cards originally didn't tell you they were creature cards on the card. So when it said destroy target creature,

you just had to know what a creature card was. It never said on the card creature. Now it says card type creature on it, so you know it's a creature. It's a 2-2 creature, protection from white, and first strike. So I wonder with this card, because one of the things that Richard really, really liked, and this is a good

poster child of this, is mirrored cards. He really liked that. So black knight and white knight. And I think that Richard loved the idea of the duality of sort of one of the ways to show contrast between colors is show how they're similar but different. And then the white and black knight, I think Richard really liked the idea of

here's a white knight and he's fighting for truth and justice. And here's a black knight and he's out to do ill will. And the idea that they're mirrored, that the colors kind of have similar, that the enemies could have similar strengths to each other, but in a mirrored sort of way. And then the white knight is exactly the same as black knight, except it has protection from black instead of protection from white. The other fun thing about protection from white is, when Alpha came out, the rules for protection were

it cannot be affected by a card of that color. And that was very loose. So, for example, Black Knight, originally when the game came out, Wrath of God didn't get rid of it. Wrath of God goes, I destroy all creatures. And Black Knight goes, aha! I thumb my nose at you, you white card.

I refuse to budge. And anyway, it was definitely, it was pretty cool. Okay, next. Black Lotus. Oh, this is, remember I said there were, oh no, this is a mono artifact. What am I forgetting?

There's mono, continuous, artifact creature, and I'll get there, I'll get there. Whenever I'm missing something, I just imagine all the people listening to the podcast like yelling out the answer, and I can't hear you. So anyway, Black Lotus zero frame, mono artifact

which meant that you can only use it once. It had a tap in it essentially. This one also says add three mana of any color, then discard this card. They use discard to mean get rid of things

in play in addition to discarding cards from your hand. I mean, that's a funny thing. Sometimes it said destroy, and sometimes it said discard. I think what Richard did, if I remember correctly, is destroy flavorfully meant something is forcing it to go away,

where discard is you, the player who has it, is opting to make it go away. And eventually we decide, we change discard when you're doing it to sacrifice rather than discard. Although the funny thing is I do think the word sacrifice shows up in this set on a few cards. So like I said, there's a lot of effects that were similar that weren't using the same verbiage that would change later on. Anyway, oh, this card also told you that tapping it could be done at the speed of an interrupt.

So remember when Alpha came out, the card types were artifacts, creatures, enchantments, instant sorcery, and land, and interrupt. There were seven card types. As there are now, except interrupt got replaced by planeswalker. Interrupt went on types. As there are now, except interrupt got replaced by planeswalker.

Interrupt went on things. The way the timing used to work was a little different. We didn't have the stack. There wasn't last and first out. And interrupts could be cast. There were times when you cast instance and times when you cast interrupts where you couldn't cast instance. So interrupts kind of had this truly, truly anytime. I could cast this anytime. Where instance were like, I can cast it most times, but not 100% anytime.

And so, anyway, Black Lotus, for those that are unaware, is pretty one of the iconic for like most broken Magic card ever made. iconic for like most broken magic card ever made um it is definitely it definitely has a place as kind of like the the pinnacle of magic cards of just like this is the definitive like from alpha like if you were going to open up a pack of alpha black lotus is i mean i've watched videos of people opening up you know alpha packs or beta packs and pulling a Black Lotus. And, like, it is a reverent moment when they pull it from the pack. And their hands shake with their gloves as they're touching an actual Alpha. You know, it's an exciting card. It's a powerful card. It's restricted, obviously, in older formats.

And the reason it's so, so good, and a lot of people didn't understand. It took a while to understand how good this card was, believe it or not. And the reason is that it just circumvents mana costs. That's the thing that gets you in trouble the easiest in magic, is circumventing mana costs. And what Black Lotus says is, I just can cast things three turns, or not even three turns, because lands aren't equal to turns.

Because yes, your first few turns you have lands, but then sometimes you get your fourth land, and it might take two or three three turns, because lands aren't equal to turns. Because yes, your first few turns you have lands, but then sometimes you get your fourth land, it might take two or three more turns, and your fifth land more than that. And so this card at times can jump you many, many, many turns and let things come out way faster than they're supposed to. And forgetting things like moxes that also add to this problem. I remember, for example, in the Invitational,

it was the one in Sydney where John Finkel was playing Ben Rubin in the finals. And John Finkel was playing Zach Dolan's deck from the very first Pro Tour. And on turn one, he just went Land, Lotus, Serra Angel, 4-4 Vigilance Flyer. And it's not that Serra Angel is a particularly powerful card or a particularly dangerous card, but, like, his opponent couldn't do anything. Like, he was trying to figure out how quickly he could destroy the Serra Angel, and he finally figured out, like, on a perfect draw, perfect draw, I think on turn four he could destroy

it. Like, you know, and that's the potency of Black Lotus is it takes a card that's, like, not even necessarily a super powerful card, but something that, like, if you can't answer it, just will kill you. So, Black Lotus, very powerful. Okay,

from Black Lotus to Black Vise. So Black Vise costs one. It's a continuous artifact. I'm just telling you what it was. Obviously, in normal magic, it's just an artifact. I just like telling you what it was called when the game first came out. So if an opponent has more than

four cards during their upkeep, it does one damage to that player for each card they have beyond four. So the idea was this punished people for having cards in their hand. The reason this card was so dangerous is early Magic gave you so many ways to disrupt people, land destruction being the easiest, that one of the things you would do is you'd play Black Vise,

just do things to keep people from playing cards for a couple turns, and the Black Vise would just kill them. In fact, I had one game that, um, a little story, just because it's a fun story. So I used to play in this card shop, uh, back when I lived in Los Angeles, and I had this game. There's somebody who I would

face in the shop from time to time, and for some reason, I always got very lucky against them. I always, I, I mean, not that I wasn't a skilled player, but they were a skilled player, and I just, I always beat them, and for whatever reason, that really started getting on their nerves, and I don't know. Partly it was because I always beat them. Partly was, they just weren't fans of me. I'm not sure what I did for this, but they did not like me, and whenever they would play me, they'd put a little grumpy face. And for some reason, they just, I don't know.

I don't know why. Um, it did not help that I always won when we played. But anyway, so we play a game. I open it up. Um, and this was back in the day where the way mulligans worked was, um, if you had all land or no land, I think you could shuffle. And so I had no land. So I show I have no land. And so I get to pick seven new cards.

And I do. And I get no land again. But I'm not allowed to shuffle anymore. There's no... The modern Mulligan stuff would come later, not back in the day. So I now have no... Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

I get one land. I get one land. I understand my story. I got one land, but only one land. And the only thing I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I get one land. I get one land. I understand my story. I got one land, but only one land. And the only thing I'm able to play, on my first turn, I play Black Vise. I have one land. I play Black Vise.

Nothing else in my hand I can play. Everything else in my hand requires at least a second mana. I never draw the second mana. Never draw it. And then I go on to win the game because he dies to Black Vise. Now, that did not make him like me anymore,

but that's like, just as matching, which I couldn't do anything. I literally wasn't able to play a card other than a turn one Black Vise. It's all I could play, and I won the game. That's the power of Black Vise.

This card also would get restricted. In fact, it was Black Vice going away that really made Black Vice was a thing holding Necro in check for those that know anything about the history of magic. Necropotence came out. Necropotence allows you to trade cards for life. It was really powerful.

The Summer of 95 is what we call the Black Summer as Necro just took over. It was probably the first card... Well, there's some early alpha stuff, but it was the first time that one card just dominated the metagame, and everything shifted around that card. And the reason

that card actually took a while, because it originally came out in the summer of 94. It wasn't until the summer of 95 that it really took off. And the reason was that Black Vise, four Black Vises being in the environment, really made it hard for necropotence to take off. A little side tribute there. Okay, next.

Blue Elemental Blast. So it goes one blue. It's an interrupt. The card said, counters a red spell being cast, or destroys a red card in play. That's what it said. So it's a modal card.

Nowadays we'd say choose one. And it would do one of two things. It could either counter a red spell or, that's fine, or destroy a red permanent. And there was a mirror of this card called Red Elemental Blast, which could counter a blue spell or destroy a blue permanent. So the problem with this card is, countering a red spell, awesome, blue can do that.

Destroying a red permanent, blue is not supposed to destroy a permanent. It's not something blue is supposed to do. So, Richard had this idea that when fighting an enemy, you could take your enemy's abilities to use against them. So the idea was red could use counter spells against blue,

and blue could use destruction against red. Now, it's weird that there were things in blue that red wasn't supposed to be able to destroy like blue enchantments. When I get to red

I'll talk about that. This card was very iconic, very powerful, still played in vintage tournaments. One of the quirky things about this card was it was an interrupt.

So the reason it was an interrupt is one of its modes was a counter spell, and back in the day, if you weren't an interrupt, you couldn't be a counter spell. It wouldn't work. But it also had a destruction effect. So it had an effect that didn't, that normally would just be an instant, but because part of it, one of the modes had to be an interrupt, the card was an interrupt.

So this would do really weird things. So here's the weirdest thing is, let's say my opponent had a red spell, a red permanent that I could tap to do one damage. Like orcish artillery could tap to do damage, to do damage to a target and to the controller. But whatever. Let's say it wanted to do its damage.

If you use blue mental blast on on that red creature after they tapped it because it was an interrupt it would destroy the creature before the effect happened. And so you would have things like, okay, I tapped to do damage. You go, haha! Blue Mental Blast. No you don't. And that was very non-intuitive how the rest

of the game worked. Because if I cast a spell at you unless you countered it, the spell still happened. But effects of permanents work differently. Anyway, it was definitely confusing. Okay, I'm almost to work.

Next is Bog Wraith. So Bog Wraith was three and a black, four mana, one which was black. Summon Wraith. It was a 3-3 with Swamp Walk. I bring this one up because this one has a special little piece of trivia, which is this was the card that was on the cover of the Alpha Rulebook. So I talked a little bit about the Alpha Rulebook.

The Alpha Rulebook, if you've never had it, it's online. You can go look it up. One of the things that's fun is watching them try their hardest to explain stuff in early Magic when there just was not all the terminology, all the rule structure

was not in place, the infrastructure was not in place. And so they tried their best and I also think that one of the things that Richard really believed is Richard's a big fan

of games creating discussion and that one of the things that Richard enjoys is that he's like, you know what? If things come up and you don't know what happens, figure it out. That part of the fun for him of Magic was like, weird things would happen? Okay, hey, talk amongst yourselves and as a group, figure out what happens. Which works fine in a very casual setting. But when you start getting into any sort of tournament setting, or even when you have people

that meet each other that don't know each other, having the rules be sort of lax causes problems. So later we would go on to tighten the rules up a lot and definitely make the rules more concrete and tight so that you can know what happens when things go on. But anyway, I would read it.

It also, by the way, starts with a short story about two wizards, two planeswalkers fighting. Uh, a short story written by Richard himself. Um, and, uh, Wurzel and, Wurzel and Thorol? Um, we have tried over the years to make, uh, those guys cards. Um, but, uh, it's just, they, they take place in mythology so long ago and I don't know. There's a lot of fun Easter egg of trying to do that

but most people would have no idea if I named the Wurzel. I don't think I have a person who goes, oh, Wurzel. Okay, next. Braingeyser. So Braingeyser is an X spell. So X, blue, blue. So it costs X plus 2 blue mana sorcery

and what it said on the card was draw X cards or force opponent to draw X cards. So basically, it's exactly like Essential Recall. One of the things that Richard definitely played around with in early Alpha was the idea of messing with X spells. He was a math professor. I think that Richard

really liked the idea of variables and the idea that, you know, sometimes it locked in what you could do, but sometimes you had control of what it was. And that you could definitely... That you had some ability to sort of create effects in which they were... You had some ability to control how big the effect was.

And I think Richard was definitely a big fan of X spells. Interestingly, ever since Wizards started, they had a customer service department, and so they would log questions that they get asked about Magic Cards. X spells have proven to be a very common question, and so it is my practice, not the practice of all the designers or developers,

to try to keep X spells out of common. I really do not put them there. You'll notice some show up in common because there are other people who disagree with that philosophy, but I will never, in my my designs put X spells in common I find them to be I like them and I put them in uncommon

higher rarities but I don't put them in common okay next channel another restricted card so channel was green and green for sorcery and said until end of turn you may add a colorless mana tree and mana pool at the cost of one life and you can do that as many times as you wanted.

The famous, famous story about this card was, there's a guy named Ivan Carina who made the top eight at the very I'm sorry, at the second of the 1995 World Championship. We had a limited pool, and because there was a lot of

concern about seals at the time, and we weren't really drafting yet, what we did is we gave everybody just a lot of cards. And so one of the things that Ivan opened up was a card called, what was it called? Was it Fruxicolossus? There's a card in which it was a 9-9 creature, I believe. And in order to untap it, you had to pay, you had to pay, what did you had to pay, you had to pay,

what did you have to pay, nine life or something? You had to, it was very hard to untap it. It was very, it didn't untap unless you did something. And he opened up,

he opened up the Colossus. He opened up a card that I will get to eventually, probably get to, called Instill Energy. And he opened up a card that I will get to eventually, probably get to, called Instill Energy, and he opened up a channel. And so what that allowed him to do was on turn two, on many of his games, if he had these cards in his hand,

he would go turn two, play channel, pay nine life to get a, or whatever it costs to pay the Phyrexian Colossus, put it in play, put Instill Energy on it, which allowed it to give it haste, essentially, allowed it to attack right away, and every turn allowed you to untap it. So essentially, it's like, turn one, I hit you for nine.

Turn two, I hit you for nine. Do you have an answer yet? And there were some artifact destruction spells that were cheap, but still, one of the reasons I think that Ivan made top eight was he did really, really well in his limited portion. And part of it was some of the combinations. Channel, like I said, it's a restricted card. It is very powerful for two mana to be able to get lots of mana.

And you're paying life, but if I can kill you, it doesn't really matter if I'm using my life. It's a resource, and if my resource allows me to quickly kill you, hey, I will. Okay, the last card I'm going to talk about today is Chaos Orb. So Chaos Orb costs two. It's a mono artifact, which means you can, you have to tap to use it. One, flip onto the playing area from a height of one foot or more.

It must turn completely over once, and any card it touches and the Chaos Orb is destroyed. So the idea was, and this is one of the, probably the wackiest card in Alpha on some level. The idea Richard had is, okay, you flip this card, and then it falls, and anything it hits, it destroys. If it hits your stuff, it destroys your stuff. And Richard was trying, like, okay, it's got to be at least a foot above, it's got

to flip completely. You know, he was trying to make it so that, like, there was enough to it that you couldn't just easily do what you did. The problem was people would practice with this card. And it turned out to be, once you practiced with it and got good at this, it just allowed you for two mana, or three mana because one activation, to destroy multiple cards. to destroy multiple cards. And eventually what it did was it forced people in tournaments to have to spread their cards far apart, which made it hard to run tournaments because people were taking larger and larger play spaces to play.

And eventually we said, it's okay, the intent of this wasn't to make this a game of physical dexterity and make people have to do crazy things. People would tape cards to sides of things. Anyway, it's causing a lot of craziness in tournaments, so it ended up getting, um, actually banned. It's one of the cards. Not a lot of cards banned

in Vintage. But there's a few we call dexterity cards. This is one of them, and it is banned. Okay, I got all the way to the beginning of C. So I got a few more podcasts, but, um, and I have some traffic, so I got a little extra time today. So I hope you guys enjoyed my first walkthrough alpha, beta, unlimited.

And anyway, I will continue on. But I'm in my parking space. So we all know what that means. It means the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.