Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #309 - Limited Edition, Part 3

Episode Date: February 26, 2016

Mark continues with part 3 of his six-part series on the design of Limited Edition (Alpha), Limited Edition (Beta), and Unlimited Edition.

I'm pulling up my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for him to drive to work. Okay. Today is the third part in us talking about, or me talking about, the limited edition. Alpha, Beta, Unlimited. Okay. So I'm talking card by cards. I'm up to C. And we got up to Circle of Protection Black. It's an enchantment costs one and a white and then for one mana I can prevent all damage from a black source. So there are five Circles of Protection

I should say. In Alpha there were four Circles of Protection and in Beta there were five. So the reason I listed Circle of Protection Black is it got left off the sheet. So what happened was early, Wizards early on was not super proficient at printing and made some mistakes. For example, there were two cards left off the Alpha Press Sheet, meaning they meant to have the cards. They had the art and the cards were supposed to be on the sheets, but just accidentally got left off.

And those two cards were Circle Protection Black and Volcanic Island. Both of which are part of Cycles, so they were very glaring in their omission. The funny thing is I remember when Alpha came out and there was no Circle Protection Black, because I played during Alpha, I thought that was, like, on purpose. Like, black is so evil

that you can't, that white can't stop black. Black is just too evil to protect against or something. Now, the volcanic island was a rare, and so, I mean, I think I'd seen one or two of the dual lands, but I know, I couldn't understand that there was one missing. I just didn't have enough cards to be able to see that. But the circle protections, they were common. You noticed it right away. And so, when beta came out, in fact, what beta did

is it corrected a bunch of mistakes. There were a lot of misprints on the alpha sheet. I'm going to talk about a bunch of them during this series of podcasts. But beta fixed a lot of the mistakes, not all the mistakes, but a lot of the mistakes, the blatant ones especially. And then

added in the two cards they got left out, which were Circle Protection Black and Volcanic Island, and then added a new piece of art for each of the five basic lands. I believe they did that because they wanted to say there was over 300 cards, and by adding those extra five arts, you got from 290-something to 300-something. But anyway, so if people ask you the difference between Alpha and Beta, there are five

cards that are in, or sorry, there are seven cards that are in Beta that aren't in Alpha, which is COP Black, people refer to Circle Protection as COP, but I've never heard that before. Circle Protection Black, Boketic Island, and then one new art of each of the basic lands. Okay, next.

Clockwork Beast. Cost six. It was an artifact creature. A 0-4 artifact creature. Although, I'll get to... It wasn't really a 0-4. Note, by the way, that the artifact creatures did not have a subtype. You did not have a creature

type if you were an artifact creature. You were just an artifact creature. We would later change that, but that would be years later. Now all creatures have to have a creature type. So whenever you make a token or wherever you have an artifact creature, whatever things before that didn't always label the creature now do in fact label the creature. Okay, anyway, this creature comes into play with seven plus one plus O counters. Yes, plus one plus O counters. We'll get to that in a second. Whenever you attack or block

with it, you remove a counter and then instead of untapping it, instead of untapping it, you may pay X and you may pay X and put X plus one plus zero counters on it. And it taps if it's untapped. So the act of refilling it either keeps it from untapping or taps it. So the idea essentially is I have a 7-4 creature. Every time I use it, it clicks down, which makes its power go down, and at some point

I can sort of take a turn off to refill it. Okay, so there's a whole bunch of things about this card. First off, it makes use of plus one, plus zero counters. Early Magic just went to town on the different kinds of counters that enhance things. Plus zero, plus one,

plus two, plus oh, plus two, plus one, plus one, plus two. plus 2, plus 1, plus 1, plus 2. All sorts of stuff would show up in early Magic. We now have decided that the staple counter is a plus 1, plus 1 counter, and then every once in a while we'll do a block that instead of plus 1, plus 1 counters, if we don't do them in that block, we'll have minus 1, minus 1 counters. But what we learned is having too many different counters that mean too many different things, we just want you to be able

to look at a card, especially in limited, and know what that card stats are. But, you know, if I, oh, I see a creature that has two counters on it, I can go, oh, oh,

those are plus one, plus one counters. Okay, I know what stats there are. Back when there was a time when just different things could have different counters, like, you know,

there was ways to put plus one, plus one counters on a Clockwork Beast. And so you have to remember, like, well, these counters are plus one, plus oh counters, and that counter to put plus one, plus one counters on a clockwork beast and so you have to remember like, well these counters are plus one, plus oh counters and that counter was a plus one, plus one counter and it just could get confusing. So this thing

definitely was the first of the clockwork creatures. This is something that we did for a little while. We haven't done a lot. The clockwork creatures all essentially got some kind of boost, plus one, plus oh, plus one, plus one some sort of counters that would tick off as they got used, and then usually there's a way to refill it back up. And the idea being, it was a Clockwork Beast, you know, it could run, but it would wind down, and then you had to wind it back up, and then it could run again. That was the flavor.

So the interesting thing about Clockwork Beast, I think I've mentioned this once before, but since we're going through Alpha, Clockwork Beast was one of the most popular at the time. Like, there were certain cards at the time that you could not trade for. No one would trade you the card. Like, the card was so desirable that nobody would trade it to you. You had to open it. Like, I talked about this, that Clockwork Beast was one of those cards. And the funny thing is, there were cards out there like Black Lotus

and the Moxes and things that you could kind of trade for in the early days. Like, those weren't the hot cards. Clockwork Beast was the hot card. One of the things to remember about Alpha, which is very interesting, is right now there are experienced players and inexperienced players.

When Alpha came out, everybody was an inexperienced player. So, sort of, the players at large would misunderstand things. It wasn't like, oh, just the newer players would, you know. There are definitely certain things we've learned that, like, less experienced players think are more powerful than they are and get really attracted to, and they learn they aren't as good. Early Magic, everybody was like that,

and so there are cards like Clockwork Beast that really are not particularly good cards, but just in people's minds, they thought they were really good, they seemed better than they were, and anyway, Clockwork Beast was just this super popular card once upon a time. Okay, Clone. Clone costs

three and a blue, four mana total, one of which is blue. Summon, Clone. Remember, these are back in the day, they were summoned creatures. And it was a star, star. So what a clone did is when it entered the battlefield, you picked a creature in play and then it became a

copy of that creature. This was a very, very popular creature early on, but it definitely was one of those cards. One of the things that happened in early Alpha, i've explained is they kind of just made cool cards and then like oh like i think richard richard is a big fan of people figuring out what to do and so richard would make cards that were just cool and flavorful and i don't think richard really worried so much about like like his thought process because once again,

the game becomes a different thing when it hits the level that it did. When it's just like, here's the game and you and your friends play, Richard's like, look, you'll figure it out. Okay, this creature becomes other creatures. What does that mean? Well, it copies them, you know.

And it turns out the clone was very complicated. In fact, for a while, we stopped, we didn't make clone fraud. Like, uh, the Suvin, uh, not the Suvin D complicated. In fact, for a while, we stopped, we didn't make clones for a while. Like, uh, the Suvin, uh, not the Suvin Duplicator, I'm sorry, um, from Urza's Saga, I'm looking on the card, Morphling. Morphling was us

bringing back clone. We were going to bring clone back, and then the rules team decided that just they couldn't make clone work. And so we ended up changing it and became Morphling. Um, so clone was one of those cards that like for... It's very complicated. And the clone rules, the copy rules, very complicated. But it's a fun card.

It's always been a very popular card. And I remember one of the reasons that I played blue pretty early on was not because of the card drawing, not because of Time Walker and Special Recall. It was because of Clone and Vesuvian Doppelganger.

I just loved copying things. I thought that was really cool. Okay, next. Contract from Below. So it's a sorcery for a single black mana. You discard your hand and draw eight cards,

and then you add the first card to your ante. So remember, when Limited Edition came out, there was ante. And ante was you drew eight cards, and I'm not sure whether it was your first card or your eighth card, but

one of the cards originally, like, you would always ante a card. And the idea was, and I talked about how this came from Richard's Love of Marbles, was that you would ante up the card. I talked about this in the first, okay, I believe I talked about this in the first series. But anyway, this is an ante card. And this is a pretty broken bust.

In fact, if you ask me what is the most broken card in Magic, the most powerful card in Magic, my answer is, assuming you are playing with all the rules, it is this card. I mean, this assumes you're playing with anti. This card is banned in most formats because there is no anti. But in any format that allows

this card to be played, this is a busted, busted card. Basically, the card is for one mana, I get to refill my hand. I get to basically draw up to seven cards and it costs me a single mana

yeah yeah yeah I have to anti a card if I don't lose the game it doesn't matter and so that card is super powerful it actually was one of the reasons that helped black so for those that have never played anti

if you play with anti and are allowed to use anti that helps black get... So, for those who have never played ante, if you play with ante and are allowed to use ante cards, black ends up being king of ante. Black has a bunch of different cards that allow you to mess around with ante. This is by far... This is a strong, quite no question asked. But there are other also powerful black cards for ante. And so, when you are playing ante,

I mean, I guess one would argue if you're playing for ante, you want to play the most powerful deck. So then you're playing blue. But if you are playing with cards that manipulate the ante, black had the best ones. I'm not sure if that's thematic to black. Black is the one most willing to mess with the ante?

I'm not sure. But black had the strongest ante cards. Okay, next, copy artifact. One and a blue for an enchantment. Select an artifact from the battlefield, and this becomes a copy of it. This card was weird in that it wasn't an artifact. We would later make an artifact that did this, which was just a lot cleaner and clearer.

So this card was an enchantment, yet it almost instantaneously became an artifact and not an enchantment. And so this card was very confusing, because you had something sitting on the battlefield that said enchantment on it that, for all intents and purposes, was never really an enchantment on the battlefield. And that was confusing. And this card definitely caused a lot

of... So we eventually made an artifact version called Sculpting Steel, which just wasn't a cleaner version. It's like, I'm an artifact, I can be any artifact. You understand I'm an artifact. I'm at all made an artifact version called Sculpting Steel, which just was a cleaner version. Like, I'm an artifact, I can be any artifact. You understand I'm an artifact. I'm at all times an artifact. But anyway, now that said, I love copy artifacts. Another reason I played blue, I love copy effects.

And so I played copy artifacts. There are a lot of powerful artifacts in Alpha. We'll get to some of them. But the ability to copy artifacts is pretty potent. There's a lot of very powerful artifacts. Okay, next, Counterspell. Blue, blue, so two mana, both of which are blue. It's an interrupt.

Remember, back in the day, there were seven card types, and Planeswalkers didn't exist, and Planeswalker's Place was interrupt. I guess right now, technically, there's eight card types, because Tribal still exists as a card type, but seven that are supported. Okay, so this spell counters target spell.

This is the original counter spell. This is where counter spell gets its name. And so what most people don't realize is in alpha, counter spell actually wasn't common. It was uncommon. There were ways that counter spells were common, but the cleanest version actually wasn't common I assume it was done for

I'm not sure why it was done I mean, Counterspell is pretty powerful maybe it was done for power reasons we eventually stuck it back down to common because the thought was look, it's the most basic version of it why is the most basic version at uncommon? so, Counterspell is one of those cards that got printed

at a rarity different than where most of the time it got printed. Interestingly, if we ever brought Counterspell back, I doubt it would be a common only cause it's very powerful. It's above the line of where we do Counterspells. It is interesting that

sometimes when you have a name, like name they refer to it as Counterspell this is THE Counterspell but then Counterspell because we decided they were too good and we sort of pulled back a little bit and made Cancel kind of the default Counterspell fell by the wayside okay, Cyclopean Tomb

4 mana for a mono artifact so mono means you had to tap so 2 and tap. Turn a non-swamp into a swamp. It says mark change with tokens. And then you remove one token each upkeep. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. That's a mono artifact?

You remove one token each. Okay, mana had a tap in it. It's a mono artifact. That's interesting. It says, maybe I wrote it, maybe it was a multi. Oh, that had a tap in it. It's a mono artifact. That's interesting. It says, maybe I wrote it, maybe it was a multi. Oh,

that's a different, by the way. I remember, and the first thing, there's mono artifacts, there's multi artifacts, there's continuous artifacts, and artifact creatures.

This must be a multi artifact. I must have written this down wrong. So, the idea is, for every two mana you spend, you get to turn something into a swamp, but,

every turn, one of them comes something into a swamp, but every turn, one of them comes back. And so what you're trying to do is spend enough mana to make enough of their stuff swamps that you can keep it swamp. And by turning it swamps, you make them so they only tap for black mana. This card is famous in alpha because it got printed without a mana cost. I think eventually what happened was, there was just a Rada saying it was supposed to be four. Technically speaking, you couldn't cast the alpha version, because it doesn't have a mana cost,

and you can't cast a card without a mana cost. I'm not sure what happens if you actually have an alpha version, whether or not it has a Rada that you can play it for four, or whether you technically can't play it. I mean, it had a Rada that you could play it for four for a long time. I guess that's what's going on. I don't know. There's not a lot of them out there. But anyway, it's a pretty cool misprint, in that

there's not a lot of Magic cards that we intended to have a mana cost that just don't have a mana cost. This is the kind of thing we moved away from just because it really just was a device to color screw the opponent because, you know, you just turn all their lands into swamp and they weren't playing

black. They could play their artifacts, but they couldn't play their spells and just it became, black already had the best land destruction spell because synco only cost two mana, where ice storm and stone rain cost three. Okay, next, Dark Ritual.

So this was one of the boons. So I talked about Ancestral Recall. This is the black boon. So for one black mana, it's an interrupt. It adds black, black, black. So three black mana to your mana pool. So back in the day, black was the color of short-term mana production, which we've shifted to red.

What happened was we had this big meeting many years ago where we realized that the color was imbalanced, that certain colors just had more of the color pie. So what we did is we shifted some stuff around, and we ended up taking short-term mana production out of black and stuck it mostly in red. Black can still do a little bit of pay life to get mana, so it's a little bit of mana production out of black and stuck it mostly in red. Black can still do a little bit of pay life to get mana, so it's a little bit of mana production. But the ritual-type things have now moved to red.

One of the things in general is we have found this kind of effect to be a little too powerful. It's funny, of all the boons, how many of them are above the line of what we'd print today? We would not make a dark... Even in red, we would not make a dark ritual today, just a little too strong.

In fact, it's funny, there's a card called Hypnotic Specter that costs one black black for a 2-2 flyer. The winner hit the opponent, they had to discard a random card. And there's a lot of people, like, the ability to dark ritual out of Hypnotic Specter, that card was so disruptive that all

these people assumed that Hypnotic Specter was a troublesome card. But we later rep assumed that Hypnotic Specter was a troublesome card. But we later reprinted Hypnotic Specter and realized that it wasn't Hypnotic Specter that was the problem. It was having Hypnotic Specter on turn one. Dark Ritual was the problem. Dark Ritual, by the way, got reprinted a whole bunch of sets, including a lot of block sets, because it took us a while to realize how really good Dark Ritual was. Okay, Demonic Attorney.

Here's another black ante card. One black, black, three mana, two witches, black. It's a sorcery. The opponent must either concede the game or both players ante again. So this is modeled after a doubling cube in Backgammon. backgammon. So the idea is at any time I can when the game starts either player can double

the value of the game. Let's say the game is worth one point. Either player can say, okay, this game is now worth two points. The opponent can either concede the game and say, no, no, it's only worth one, but I concede. Or go, okay, now it's worth two points. And in a

doubling cube, whoever doubles, the other person now has to die, and now they have the ability to double again. It's a very interesting game mechanic. Richard, as a fan of games, was well aware of it. I think Demonic Turning was his version of an anti-doubling cube. Not exactly a doubling cube, but it's similar. Demonic Tutor. One and a black for a sorcery. You search the library for any card and put it in your hand and shuffle your library. So this was one of the really strong cards that showed up

in Alpha. Once again, this card would be reprinted in a bunch of core sets. I think it was all the way through 4th edition, I think. There's some powerful cards that showed up for a bunch of sets. Now, Demonic Tutor wasn't as powerful as Black Lotus or anything, but still a pretty potent card.

The ability to go get whatever you want for two mana is really good. And it's especially good in formats where you're restricted, where you only have one copy of a card. In Vintage, we do this thing where instead of banning cards, because it's the format where you get to play all the cards, most of the cards are where instead of banning cards, because it's the format where you get to play all the cards, most of the cards are restricted instead of banned. And Demonic Tutor is particularly good

when I only have one of them in my deck to go get the one I need. Dingus Egg. Dingus Egg costs four. It's a continuous artifact. Whenever anyone loses land, Dingus Egg deals two damage to that player for each land lost.

So this card's interesting. It's one of the cards, when we first had a restricted list, this card was on the restricted list. And the reason was, interestingly, land destruction was really good. And a lot of land destruction decks would use this card as their kill card. Because, like, I'm going to keep you from playing any land, so I'm going to keep destroying your land,

and, well, if I just dedicate my deck to doing that, these cards will just kill you. And so, you know, you're going to have trouble, you're going to have trouble because I'm going to kill all your land. I don't have to kill you quickly. I just get one or two of these out, keep destroying your land, and then you lose. It is funny that Dingus Egg got restricted because Dingus Egg wasn't really the problem. This is a good example of the early organized play, the DCI early on, where people that were not as invested in the tournament scene

and did not understand magic at a higher level. And so some of the early decisions were just a misunderstanding. Like, yeah, I mean, yes, land destruction decks were a problem. Yes, this card was often used as a kill spell in the land destruction decks, but it wasn't really the problem. If you get rid of Dingus Egg, there's other ways to win with a land destruction deck when my opponent can't play any land. Dingus Egg didn't really keep them from playing land.

If they needed a land, they'd play the land. It just was a way to kill them. So Dingus Egg kind of took the fall really when it wasn't the problem child of the deck by far. Like, I find it funny that, like, you know, the deck has a two mana spell that can destroy land. That's not the problem. Ding Zay's little artifact, it deals damage when you lose a land. Okay, next.

Disenchant. Disenchant costs one and a white, two mana, one of which is white. Instant. Uh, it said target enchantment or artifact must be discarded. So once again, a couple things. We now, now it would say destroy target artifact or enchantment.

For those that don't know, when we list card types we put them alphabetically. This one, the alpha card actually puts enchantment first, but we now would say artifact or enchantment because it's alphabetical. So for example, artifact or creature, creature or enchantment. Creature orchantment because it's alphabetical so for example artifact or creature creature or enchantment creature or planeswalker it's alphabetical must be discarded

is how they used to say sometimes they would use it in place of destroy sometimes they would use it in place of must be sacrificed this is a destroy effect good example of how they just had a lot of cards that worked really similar but like some cards would say destroy and this card says discard and just it has a lot of different words that mean

like this card was supposed to mean the same thing as destroy target artifact or enchantment yet it had different words and what we found is players assume when the words are different that it works differently my other card says destroy well this must not be destroy it would say destroy if it was destroy. And that was one of the problems of, I think, the biggest problem of limited edition was each card in a vacuum tells you what it did, but when you start

comparing to each other, it would be confusing, because the terminology would not quite be the same. Okay, next. Elvish Archers. One and a green for a 2-1 elf. It's elves on the card. We don't do plural anymore. We tend to do singular.

Even if the card has plural on its name, we tend to do singular now. Because elves and elf were the same. Like, if I gave plus one, plus one to an elf, I gave plus one, plus one to elves, but it just caused confusion. Anyway, the creature has first strike. First off, this card was printed in alpha.

Instead of being a 2-1 First Striker, it was a 1-2 First Striker. The other thing that's interesting about this card is First Strike, that's not a green thing. So what Richard did in the first set is he would take abilities that were not supposed to be in the color and he would do them, but then do them at rare.

So a 2-1 First Striker in white would just be a common card. But in green, the color that didn't get first strike, it was a rare card. You also see a Timberwolves with a Bander in green. And banding wasn't a green thing. So, Richard likes to play around with the idea of

I'm going to do things that you're not supposed to do and then I'll stick them in a higher rarity to demonstrate you're not supposed to do them. We definitely have things that are tertiary now. But if you're not a first rank in color, you just don't tend to get first rank. Green's not a first rank color. Well, it doesn't get first rank.

Not it gets it at higher rarities. It just doesn't get first rank. Fast Bond. This is an enchantment that costs a single green mana. It says, play as many lands as you want. Lose one life for each land past the first.

So the idea here was that it allowed you to play extra land, but it punished you. So this card was problematic, and most of the reason is early Magic, a lot of the mistakes

that were made developmentally, I would say, is Richard liked breaking rules, so he gave you all, so Richard would allow you to break whatever rule, and he would just find a rule and go, okay, let's break that rule, and he'd give it a cost to it, but sometimes the cost didn't really line up. So for example, this thing says, okay, you can develop your mana faster than you normally could. You can play as many lands as you want on a turn.

So this card, a lot of times on turn one, if I had a bunch of land in my hand, I'd play this and play all the land I got. And usually there are other ways to get extra lands, and the ability to play them all at once was just pretty broken. Paying one life just didn't offset it. It just didn't offset me jumping multiple turns in mana.

Normally, I'm not supposed to have three mana until the third turn, assuming I had three in my opening hand. And this card says nope! For two life, you can have it two turns early. Well, that's pretty potent. Having mana two turns early is well worth paying the one life. So the card ended up

being really, really good. Okay, next. Fireball. So Fireball was probably the most complex common card. I think it was common. I think it was common. It might have been uncommon. I think it was common. So it was an X spell.

So what it said is... So it had it, by the way, it had Fireball, Just Spin, deal X damage to target creature or player. You know, X and a red. deal X damage to a creature or player, what Blaze ended up being, it would have been the perfect card. In fact, it would have been a card you would see a silver print all the time, because it just, like, the Fireball, the flavor of Fireball is so awesome, and it's the kind of creative that you just want to do, who doesn't want a Fireball?

But here's what the card actually does, is you can divide the damage any way you want, but for every target beyond the first, you must pay one. So what that means is if I want to do damage to one target, I just spend X and do X. So essentially, it can just be Blaze. I can't just spend, you know, let's say I have

four mana available. I can take that four mana, do four damage to target creature or player. Easy. Now, let's say I want to hit more than one creature. Okay, if that's the case, then it's X and R. So, if I have four mana, and I have the, I can do three damage, sorry, to creature or player, because I have to spend one on the red mana. Let's say I have four mana, and I want to hit more than one creature. Okay, well, I have to spend one for the red. I have to spend one to hit a second creature, leaving me two damage left.

I have two targets, I have two damage. Okay, each get damage one. So for four mana, I can do one damage to two creatures, to a creature and a player, to two players in a multiplayer game. So the idea is you can add targets, but it requires more mana. So if I have lots and lots and lots of mana, I can hit lots and lots and lots of targets.

But it definitely got confusing. Also, I think you round the damage, meaning... I'm not sure, can you... Actually, now that I'm talking about the card, it's how complex it is. Like, I've played this card many times. I'm trying to think. I think that you have to have the damage be roughly the same between

things. Meaning, I don't think you can go okay, five to this, one to that. I don't think it lets you do that. But anyway, it's an iconic card. We definitely brought it back. At one point, for example, to try to template it, there's a template and there's a version that was printed, I think, that actually uses X and Y, which was

even more confusing. Okay. Let's see if I can get through F before I get... I'm almost at work. Fork. Red, red instant. You could double an instant or sorcery. And the copy was the same, except it was red.

And you can choose new targets. So this is another popular card of mine. I love copying. So this is sort of copying a spell. It's interesting that Richard put this spell in red because all the other copying is in blue. And for a while, we actually changed this effect to blue, and then finally said, you know what?

Red needs stuff. Both blue and red can do it now, but we definitely let red have access to it. Um, anyway, this was a fun card. The, uh, I know there was some confusion originally about this card because, um, if you wanted... Anyway, there's some timing things that happened early on that caused confusion for this card. Um, but anyway, it was a fun card. It was a very popular card. People really liked it, and it is...

The idea was that in red, you're more likely to use it to double your own stuff. Although you were allowed to occasionally use it to be tricky, to mess with your opponent's stuff, and red likes to mess with your opponent's stuff. But flavor-wise, that was fine. Okay, the final F. Fungusaur. Three and a green. Four mana total.

One which is green. It's a Fungusaur. Two, two. Whenever it's damaged but not destroyed, put a plus one, plus one counter on it. So this card has an interesting history in that... So the idea is, whenever it's damaged but doesn't die, it gets bigger.

And for a while... That's what Alpha said. For a while, they changed it so that it got the countered end of turn. I don't know why they made that change.

It's a functional change. It makes the card weaker. And I know at one point I convinced, during one of the core sets, we were bringing back Fungasaur, and I convinced him just to put it back to its normal functionality, and we did, and so now Fungasaur works the way he did in Alpha, so he's an interesting card in that he got functional routed change, it got printed in print with functional routed change, and then it got put back to its original in print. And so I like Fungusaur. Fungusaur was

one of my favorite cards when I first started playing. My first deck was a green deck because I opened a Crawl Worm and how do you not play a Crawl Worm if you open a Crawl Worm? My Fungusaur story is my dad, I got my dad in the game and I bought him a whole bunch of alpha packs, like sealed

alpha packs, and when he opened them up, he opened up a Mox Emerald. And I'd never seen a Mox Emerald before. And I actually didn't even think it was good. I spent a lot of time going, why is this better than a Force? I didn't quite get the, you can play it, you know, on a turn without restriction to land. And anyway, I decided to trade my dad for it, mostly because I didn't own it. I was just trying to get as many different cards

and I was collecting them. And I gave my dad my extra fungosaur. And I, at the time, felt like wow, I was being really generous because I was giving him a fungosaur, which I really liked for this card that I wasn't even convinced was better than a forest. Turned out to be a pretty good trade.

I don't feel bad in the sense that my dad was very, very good about giving me cards that I wanted, and I honestly didn't realize how good the card was. Also, I've been pretty good with my dad in Magic over the years, so I can live with the trade, even though at the time, looking back

on it, it's a crazy trade. Okay, I got through F, but I'm now at work. I'm now in my parking spot. So we're going to continue on. I'll still do some more podcasts, but this is fun. I like talking about Alpha. But anyway, I'm in my parking spot, so we all know what that means.

It means it's my 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 soon.