Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #311 - Limited Edition, Part 4

Episode Date: March 4, 2016

Mark continues with part 4 of his six-part series on the design of Limited Edition (Alpha), Limited Edition (Beta), and Unlimited Edition.

I'm pulling away driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so recently, I've been talking all about limited edition. Or alpha, beta, which is limited and unlimited edition, which are all the same cards, mostly, as I've been talking about. But anyway, we're going through the cards. And last we left, how far did we get?

We got through F, so we're up to G. So Gauntlet of Might. So this is an artifact, a continuous artifact. It costs four mana. All red creatures get plus one, plus one. All mountains tap for an additional red mana. Now, once again, early alpha, Richard tended to make effects very global.

More often than not, like, so for example, this card rewarded red creatures. Maybe you had them, maybe your opponent had them, well obviously you had them because you're playing the card. But, you know, the card might be really, really good against some decks and not as good against other decks because they too had red creatures.

We definitely moved away from that. Not that we don't make effects that affect everybody, but our default is things usually affect your side of the board, and then we opt in. It's not kind of the default. I think a lot of Richard's stuff is a little more of the default. And the reason I think we made the fundamental change is

that players tended to assume that their positive effects affected them and that it's one thing when you do something that it's sort of altered the board altogether like oh the rule of the game is somehow different that feels like it should affect everybody you know i um you know normally you do a but now you do b well it kind of looks like you're changing the environment that's not that you affect everybody but i reward my guys feels more like, you know, it feels more like it's supposed to affect me and not affect everybody. This was one of my favorite cards way, way back in the day.

I actually built a deck with this card to see how much damage I could do in a single game. card to see how much damage I could do in a single game. One of the things I used to do, that Johnny and me, is I used to build decks with a goal in mind, with some purpose in mind. And so the goal of this deck, I mean, I wanted to win, but that wasn't really the point. The goal of this deck is to see how much damage I could do. And I would get out Gauntlet of Mights, and I would get out Mana Flares, and I would fork things, and I would just see how much, when my opponent lost, how much damage had I done. And so really the question is like in one giant burst, because back in the day, I think at this point in early, early in the day, I think you just lost when you lost, I think.

Now it's like you don't lose to the end of phase, but I believe for a while early on, just like if you lost mid something, you lost. The game was just over. And now there's chances to respond, so you don't quite lose quite as immediately as you did once upon a time. Okay.

Next is Giant Growth. This is the green boon. So this was for one green mana, instant, target creature gets plus three, plus three. So Giant Growth and Giant Spider, so let me talk about these two. Giant Spider is three and a green, so four mana, one of which is green,

summons spider, two, four, it has reach, although that was written out at the time. It said it can block as if it is flying or whatever. I didn't write down the actual text of this card. So the reason Giant Growth and Giant Spider are interesting is I wrote an article at one point where I took the core set. I think it was like, I don't know, 8th edition or something. And I made an article where I called Core Set Survivor.

So Survivor is a reality show, an American show, where people get sent to an island and have to survive, and they vote each other off. And in the end, there's one survivor who's the last person who's not voted off. And so we, I had realized that there were certain cards

that had been in every Core Set. And then every time we did a new Core Set, that list would shrink. Early on, there were 300 cards. And then the next set, actually, there were 290-some cards, obviously. And then the next set, revised,

when we changed the card pool, it's like, oh, well, not all the cards made it. Some of the cards got taken out. So that pool would shrink and shrink and shrink. So finally, I forget what set we got down to, but the final two cards in Core Set Survivor

were Giant Growth and Giant Spider. And there was a big question about which one we were very conscious of. We decided we could make a conscious effort that one of them would go. And in the end, Giant Spider won. No one saw that one of them would go. And in the end, giant spider won.

No one saw that one coming. Giant spider actually was the set. Giant growth didn't get used for a set. Giant spider got used. The thing we then did is the next set didn't have giant spider in it because we liked the message of

magic has continuity, but that we can exist without any one card. That magic can exist without, I mean, maybe it needs the basic lands, but that we can exist without any one card. That magic can exist without, I mean, maybe it needs the basic lands. But, you know, that magic, you know, the standard magic has, there's no one card that's always been in standard. And that standard is constantly in flux and changing.

And there's definitely cards that have been there a lot. And there's definitely cards that get reprinted that you've seen a lot. But, anyway, so Giant Growth and Giant Spider were the winners there. Giant Growth is definitely one of those cards on the cusp where in certain environments, Giant Growth can push things a little bit. I know when Infector was around, there were some concerns of, was Giant Growth a little too good? Normally it's okay. It's the kind of card we will print, but it is of the boons.

It's funny, of the boons. Ancestral Recall, clearly, clearly over the line. Dark Ritual is more than we will normally print. Lightning Bolt is more than we will normally print. Even Giant Growth in the right environment sometimes is a little aggressive. It depends on the environment. It's not that we'll never print Giant Growth, but

there are places in which we have to be careful with Giant Growth. Healing Sav's problem is more of a, we'll get to Healing Sav in a second. Healing Sav is more of a... We'll get to Healing Stab in a second. Healing Stab is more of a templating thing, meaning it's a modal card, and it kind of does a few things that we... If it would just gain life or

just prevent damage, it would have been a little cleaner. But anyway, I think I get there in a second. Okay, so next is Gloom. Gloom is two and a black for an enchantment. White spells cost three more to cast. Silica protection costs three more to use. Okay, so one of the things Richard did a lot of is what we call color hosers,

which is, okay, I'm going to show that this color hates that color by making a card that just punishes you for playing that color. Gloom is pretty famous because it really, really hosts white. It taxes... I'm sorry. Yeah, it's a black card that taxes white, which is funny because black... Early Magic, black did a bunch of taxing.

We eventually moved that to white. So this is an ability that hosts white with an ability that really is a white ability in the modern color pie. But it was also pretty brutal because on turn three, if I play this, it costs three extra mana. Even if you went first and you drop land every turn,

that means, okay, in your next turn, you can play one drops. And, like, Disenchant, which is a card you had to destroy this with, costs five mana because it's two plus three. So, like, if I play this on turn three, you know, if you went first and you drew a land and you had exactly what you needed, you know, in two turns you could dream of getting rid of this. And often, and you know,

the following turn you can play a second gloom. You're going to shut people out. One of the things that happened early on is the color hoses were just a little too loud. I think the thought at the time was Richard liked people diversifying a little bit, and so the idea was, well, if you play an all-white deck, gloom's going to be really hard to beat. You might want a second color, and I think Richard's thought at the time was

that one of the ways to address dealing with color hosers was to spread out to other colors, and that was another way. The game already, the mana system pushes you toward other colors because of functionality. You can't do everything in a singular color. And I think, I'm hypothesizing here,

I think one of the thoughts that Richard was going for is another way to push people into other colors was say, hey, you're very vulnerable if you just play a single color. And then the color hosers were definitely, I mean, it's something that we continued for a while, of making just really powerful color hosers. And eventually what we realized was it just really made it hard to play.

It really shut down strategies. It made it almost impossible to play monocolor. And it just, it really cut into a lot of different decks and made it hard to play certain kinds of decks. it really cut into a lot of different decks and made it hard to play certain kinds of decks. And in fact, it pushed a very... In the end, it pushed very narrow strategies because you had to be able to beat these things.

And so, you know, if you were playing white, you had to have answers to gloom. If you were playing black, you had to have an answer to karma. You had to figure out how to solve that problem. And it was very... It was hard to do. In fact, in some ways it did what Richard wanted of diversifying but it also cut down on archetypes

and it made less options available. Okay, next. Goblin King. One red red. Summon Goblin King. Goblins in play gain Mountain Walk and plus one plus one while Goblin King is in play. So this card was later ruled to not be a Goblin.

It says Summon Goblin King. It's ironic that we didn't just change it to Creature, Goblin, King, although I'm not sure King is supported anymore. It was supported early on. There's some early Kings. But anyway, it was later ruled that this wasn't a goblin, although it's counterintuitive to me, to the creative, since it clearly was a goblin in the picture. I think we made a decision that the three lords, or three

lords in Alpha, that none of them, we wanted to be consistent in how they worked. And so we ruled that they weren't the creature type they were, which is a little weird, because they, in two of the three cases, seemed like they were the creature types that they weren't the creature type they were, which is a little weird, because they, in two of the three cases, seemed like they were the creature types that they were the king of.

Well, we'll get to Lord Atlantis soon enough, and Lord Atlantis also really did feel like a merfolk. It's got a picture, and it looks like a merfolk. But Goblin King was another... One of the things that Richard definitely did, which is very interesting, is there weren't a lot of goblins in Alpha. You know, Goblin King existed. I think there was

Mons Goblin Raiders, which was a single red 1-1 goblin, vanilla goblin. You know, it didn't do anything. And there's Goblin Balloon Brigade, Goblin Balloon Brigade, which was a red, a 1-1 for a single red mana that you could activate

with red to give flying. Not particularly a red ability, but-1 for a single red mana that you could activate with red to give flying. Not particularly a red ability, but alpha pushed things a little bit. And then you had Goblin King, so really it had two 1-drops. You know, it didn't really, but what Richard realized, and this is proof of very true, is linear cards, cards that say, hey, you want to do this thing. And remember, when the game first came out, there was no card restrictions. You weren't limited to a certain number of cards. And so what Richard wanted to say is, hey, you want to do this thing. And remember, when the game first came out, there was no card restrictions. You weren't limited to a certain number of cards. And so what Richard wanted to say is,

hey, here's a fun card. Hey, you know these goblins that you probably don't have anything else to do with? Well, put a bunch of goblin kings in a deck and a bunch of goblins, and now you have a deck. And so Goblin King was a pretty popular card for all the lords, all the early lords

were very popular one of the things we picked up pretty quickly is the popularity of tribal mechanics and you can see in early Magic there's a little dabbling the toe is dipped in the pool

but there's not a lot of support But there's not a lot of support. There's not a lot of goblins. I mean, with the four of restriction, you can't even play a goblin deck really until at least a year later. You know, there's just a while before there's enough goblins that you can, you can in a four of environment play, you know, all your creatures being goblins and have enough creatures that could possibly make it even have a chance. And even then, remember, you're playing

red 1-1s, you know, one mana 1-1, so it wasn't even a strong deck, but people really, really liked it, and I think that was very instructional. A lot of what Alpha did is Richard did a lot of sampling. I mean, one of Richard's ideas was he wanted a world exploration, so he made lots and lots of cards.

Something that Alpha did really well is he made a lot of cards that just pushed in different directions. So you had a lot of different kind of decks you could build. That was, I mean, true, the core of Magic. But Magic now has, you know, 13,000, 14,000 cards. You know, we can take current sets and push more directly in a direction and have those sets add those cards. We can take current sets and push more directly in a direction and have those sets add those cards. Because there's so many cards from the past that you can use that we don't, you know, we can dedicate our energies in giving you stuff for the newer strategies,

knowing that there's lots of stuff for the older strategies out there. There's a lot of things you can do when you have 13,000 plus cards. But Richard did not. There were 200 and whatever cards. This is what you had to work with. And so he definitely went out of his way to make cards to sort of push in different directions. But the success of Goblin King really was something that put tribal on the map

and really made us think about tribal. And I know when I pushed the tribal theme in Onslaught, for example, which is the first set, to have a really, really strong tribal theme. A lot of my impetus was watching people play goblin decks and things like that. Okay, next, Granite Gargoyle. Granite Gargoyle is two and a red,

so three mana, one of which is red, summon Gargoyle, flying. It's a 2-2, and it has what we now call fire breathing, which is red. For every red mana you spend, you get plus one, plus zero until end of turn. Now, interesting, in the same set was

Grey Ogre, which was also a 2-2 Summon Ogre, Vanilla 2-2. So, for two and a red mana at common, you can get a 2-2 Ogre. At Granite Gargoyle, I think it was Rare. At Rare, you could get a 2-2 Ogre. At Granite Gargoyle, I think it was Rare. At Rare, you could get a 2-2 Flyer with Fire Breathing. So one of the things Richard definitely introduced is the idea of strictly betters.

People sometimes go, oh my god, I can't believe you made a card. This card is strictly worse than this other card. And you're like, well, we've been doing that since Alpha. In fact, there was a card in Uncommon called Sedge Troll, which was two and a red for two, two, that had a black activation.

Oh, no, not Sedge Troll. Sedge Troll. There's a two, two for two and a red that you can, for one black, you can regenerate the creature. Is that right?

Is that sure the right? I might be naming the wrong card. But anyway, there was a common in which there was an uncommon strictly better, and then a rare strictly better than that. And I think Richard was really

trying to say, hey, we'll have strictly betters. And Richard did it within the same set, you know, between rarities. We're a little more cautious about that. We tend not to make strictly betters within the same set. Like,ities. We're a little more cautious about that. We tend not to make

strictly betters within the same set. Like if we make a 2R 2-2, then we usually don't make a 2R 2-2 just with more abilities. We might make a 2R

better than a 2-2, meaning we'll definitely make cards that are better than cards, but not strictly better. This is a case where other than caring about the creature type

and neither Ogren or Gargo had any support, it's like, it's just, I'm adding abilities. It's just basically better. And while we do that between sets, Richard did it in sets. I think he was trying to educate people and saying,

this is just something that will happen. Speaking of Vanillas, another very popular Vanilla. Oh, Grey Ogre, by the way, is very famous because it became an R&D. It cemented in R&D the term for a 2R22. So when we talk in R&D about making a gray ogre, we mean a 2R22 that usually does something. Because 2R22 is a little below the curve. And grizzly bear.

Or actually, technically, it was grizzly bears, which is plural. So one in a green man and two two mana total, one which is green. Summon Bears for 2-2. We also turn to a 1G 2-2, one and a green, so one green 2-2 as a Bear and a 2R 2-2 as a Ogre, Gray Ogre. There's just some certain cards that become iconic, I guess, for purposes of R&D. They're just like, when we're talking about it, like we, we so often do a 1G22 and a 2R22 that we just have words to go, oh, it's one of those.

And it happened to be the vanilla creatures from Alpha. Uh, Grizzly Bears, one of the things I want to point out, because one of my pet peeves of Alpha is it's called Grizzly Bears, plural. There is both one in the art, there's not even multiple in the art, and I don't know if you know anything about Grizzly Bears, but if a 1-1 is kind of a human, like, like I, you know, Ben Willis Hero, or some sort of like, I'm a, I'm a hero, I'm a human hero, okay, I'm trained, I'm, you know, I know what I'm doing, but I, I'm a 1-1, and it's like, okay, two humans in the peak of their physical

you know, two humans that are well-versed in the ability to fighting and whatever two of them cannot take a grizzly bear. I don't know if people know what a grizzly bear is, but grizzly bears are pretty tough. So it's funny, we have since like I know in Kansatarkir, we made some 4-4 bears and people

were all, oh my goodness, how dare the bears be 4-4? Bears are 2-2. my goodness, how dare the bears be 4-4? Bears are 2-2. But it's like, really bears? I mean, I know sometimes the power toughness system, you know, it's not, there's some odd matchup just because it's not as fine-tuned as a system could be for granularity. But by any stretch of the imagination, if we're actually trying to match what grizzly bears do, they're not 2-2.

They're more 4-4, if you ask me. Okay, Healing Sav, we now get to the white version of the boon. So Healing Sav costs a single white mana, so all the boons cost a single colored mana, and it is the only modal boon. So what it can do is it can either gain you three life or prevent three damage. I think the reason it can do is it can either gain you three life or prevent three damage. I think the reason it was modal is that one mana gained three life just wasn't particularly good.

And so Richard, I think, was just trying to make it a little bit more useful. So the idea was I heal and, okay, there's a couple different ways to heal. I could take you, you're sick and I can heal you and get you better. Or you're about to be damaged and I can heal you right away. Healing salve is the weakest of the five boons. It's something that we stopped doing at Common

mostly because we didn't like the modal thing at Common being too different. We don't mind modal in which destroy this or destroy that, but it's two very different effects. And the effects are related thematically, but I definitely, it's often caused confusion. That players, for example, will think they're gaining three life.

Anyway, they'll confuse things in combat sometimes. Okay, next, Hill Giant, speaking of vanilla creatures. Hill Giant is another creature. Funny that they're all very close alphabetically. It's another creature. When we talk about a 3R33, we call that a Hill Giant. So, Summon Giant.

3R33. It's definitely... It's interesting. Richard decided to put Giants... I guess he put them in a couple different colors, but this was the first Giant, and it was in red. I think we'd put a lot of giants in red. They have a nice red sensibility, and, yeah, sure, they live in the mountains.

It makes sense. Next, continuing our vanilla talk here, Hurloon Minotaur. One red red, so three mana, two of which is red, for a 2-3 Minotaur. So the interesting story, known as Hurley, he became the unofficial, or somewhat official, Wizards of the Coast mascot.

Like, when I first came to Wizards of the Coast, there were three jean jackets, or three t-shirts, sorry. There were three t-shirts that they sold that you could buy that had Magic the Gathering art on it. And let's see if I can remember them.

There was Vesuvian Doppelganger, there was Armageddon Clock, and there was Nightmare, I believe. Those were the three shirts you can buy. But there was a Secret Fourth shirt that only employees had

and that had a Herloon Minotaur on it, which I eventually, eventually when I came to work for Wizards got. Also at one point we made jean jackets. Wizards of the Coast jean jackets.

These black jean jackets. And who was on the back? Herloon Minotaur. The funny thing was, there were people who worked in the company who didn't really play Magic, who, because we had put a lot of energy as a company on it,

thought that the players were as fond of it as we were. Because Wizards, I mean, it had a beautiful picture by Anson Maddox. It was very pretty. But it was a weak card. You know, one red red for two, three. And Alpha had weak creatures. In the context of weak creatures that were Alpha, it was weak.

Like, it was weak when things were weak, when creatures were weak. And so what happened was that the people in the building who didn't understand magic really had a false sense of what people thought of Herlu and Minotaur. In fact, there was a famous, famous ad that

I don't think, hopefully it didn't run, it might have run. It was 5th edition and they were trying to talk about, there was a shake-up in 5th edition. So they had Sarah Angel write a letter to the Hurling Minotaur like, Dear Hurly, I have to go do other stuff

but as I leave you behind, hold the fort and fight the good fight or something like that. And I remember in the meeting saying to them, I go, okay, let me just translate this into player ease for you, how the players will read this. Because Sarah Angel was a much beloved card. So I said, it's, hey, guess what?

The card you love, we consider too good. And the card that we think you like, that you don't like, that really sucks, is staying. So the card that's good is leaving,'t like that really sucks is staying. So the card that's good is leaving and the card that sucks is staying. That's not a really strong message. By this set, the good cards are going, but the bad cards are staying. Anyway, I think I convinced them to change that ad.

I hope I did. Okay. Next. Icy Manipulator. Four for a mono artifact. For one and tap. Once again, mono, it didn't say tap on it, but it did tap. One and tap.

Tap a land, a creature, or an artifact. This is one of those cards that in the day was a little bit more powerful for a couple reasons. One is there's a rule when magic started that artifacts shut off when tapped. And that costs all sorts. So there's a card called Winner Orb, for example. Winner Orb said only one land untaps each turn. So when the Winner Orb

was untapped, it would slow people down and really slow down the mana. Like if you tap to do something, you know, I tap four mana to cast something, well my next turn only one mana it taps. So it takes me four turns to get all my mana back. So it really, really slows down. It was very good in decks that were

controlling and just trying to slow the pace of your opponent playing things. So Icy Manipulator with Winter Orb is like, oh, what I do is I make it work on your turn, and at the end of your turn, I tap it, so for my turn, it's shut off, and then all my stuff untaps. And so Icy, in the day,

was a bit powerful because of the interaction with that rule. During the 6th edition rules, I lobbied hard to get rid of that rule, because R&D was constantly forgetting about it, and making broken cards and broken things. Also, it's hard to make artifacts when any artifact could be shut off. It really

is tricky. So it's funny that Ice Manipulator, it had this flavor early on as being a really powerful card. In retrospect, in the right circumstances, it could be powerful. And definitely with this rule I'm talking about, there were decks where you would play like Winter Orb that was good. But I think it had a little higher... One of my themes here about looking back at the early days is how the general thought of cards

was a little warped by the inexperience of the audience. And that there were cards that were really, really powerful that players... Like Black Lotus, which by a modern sensibility is crazy powerful. There were a lot of people like, well, yeah by a modern sensibility is crazy powerful. There are a lot of people who are like, well, I know it's okay. It's not a bad card. But you're like, no, it's a great card.

No, I wouldn't call it a great card. You have to sacrifice it. You only use it once. It's just funny how having inexperienced players, everybody being inexperienced, just caused some interesting warping of what was considered to be good and bad. Okay, next, Illusionary Mask.

It costs two. And then you can spend X. Oh, it's a... I didn't write this, but I believe it's a multi-artifact. You can spend X, and then you can cast a card in your hand face down as...

Well, cast it face down, and then whenever it assigns or deals damage, you turn it face up. And you can only use this ability as a sorcery. It's only on your turn. So the idea was, I had to spend X mana. I could put any creature that was X mana or less, convert a mana cost of X or less from my hand into play.

Now, originally, it just was unknown. And the way Illusionary used the mask was weird. So let's say I play it, and then I cast Terror on it. So Terror destroys target non-black, non-artifact creature. The way back in the day you would play it is you would look at the card, and you'd go, yeah, my creature doesn't die. Not, here's what my creature is. Just my creature.

So you're like, oh, okay, I guess it's a black or an artifact creature. Like, you would just have to kind of, like, figure it out because, you know, and all the person who owned it would do is just, when you interacted with it, would just have to say, did it do something? You know, if you killed it,

it goes, okay, you killed it. And then I think when we went to the graveyard, you'd see it. But anyway, it caused all sorts of rules headaches, because this is an undefined thing. There also was a card called Camouflage that did something similar, where you could sort of turn things face down. And so Camouflage and Illusionary Mask needed answers, and they never really worked in the rules. But as I said once again, Richard was very fond of making cards that just did cool, fun, neat things. And as far as he was concerned, people could argue it out at home.

When you're playing your games, you know, use common sense. And if a rules issue comes up, we'll figure it out. But as Magic got big and there were tournaments and people were playing cards, you know, we made a rules team and decided we wanted the rules to be a little more concrete and a little less fuzzy. And this card was a doozy of a problem. It really played around in space that the game did not normally play around in. But then the rules team came up with a brilliant solution. What if when a card's face down, we just define it?

We define it as something. And then if any card turns the card face down, well, until it is turned face up, that's the definition of what it was. Because this card was really weird in that it did have a power and toughness, just it was undefined and the opponent didn't know it

and couldn't react to it. So, here's, I Lightning Bolt it. Okay. I guess it doesn't have toughness three or less or has protection from red or has some ability to heal, or, who knows?

Why didn't it die? I don't know why it didn't die. So anyway, for those that know their history, the solution to Illusionary Mask originally was to make a face-down creature a 1-1. That was the original solution. And then the rules team said, you know, with this technology, we can make a mechanic that allows you to play

cards face down and then using the ability you could then at your leisure spending a certain amount of mana turn it face up yes

this became morph this is what led to morph I told this story during my onslaught podcast but the real quick version is the rules team really loved this idea

they went to Bill and Bill wasn't excited by it. They went to Mike Elliott. Mike Elliott wasn't excited by it. So they eventually came to me.

I was excited by it. And so what I did was first off, I worked with them. I convinced them to make some changes from a 1-1 to 2-2 because I think

originally it was like two mana for a 1-1 but no one would ever play that unless the creature was really, really good. So I convinced them to change it to a

three mana 2-2. That 2-2 had a little more, you know, it was a great ogre, had a little more heft to it. And creatures, remember, were a bit weaker back in the day. And then I made a whole bunch of cards and playtested with it. I came up with the idea of having revealing triggers. I messed around with it, and then I designed a bunch of cards and then I made a deck, two decks actually, and then I played people with the

two decks and just give a chance for people to see it. And if people played more, if they really really liked it and ended up going into Onslaught, we needed a mechanic so it filled the gap. Okay next, Instill Energy. So Instill Energy is a green enchant creature. You could untap the creature, the enchanted creature, both during untap, so it untapped as normal, and then one other time during your turn. Also, the creature that was enchanted by this was allowed to attack the turn this was played on it. So it had a limited haste. You couldn't use

activated abilities. But this is one of the earliest versions of giving a creature sort of a pseudo haste. In Alpha, this was the closest it came, I think.

There's a creature, there's Nether Shadow that had haste, meaning when it came into play it could attack the turn it came into play. But even then, I mean, it had haste.

It was able to do anything you could do if it had haste. It doesn't have any tap abilities on it. And I think early haste was mostly thought about you could attack the turn you were played. Later it was like, oh, well, if you had haste, you could tap the turn you were played as well. But anyway, and still energy was pretty famous for doing a lot of crazy, just a lot of crazy combos. I talked earlier, in an earlier podcast, about how I've been Karina at the World Championships in 95.

Just used Colossus and Sardia to do crazy, crazy things. Oh, it was Colossus and Sardia. I now realize that I think I called it Frex and Colossus. It was Colossus and Sardia. But anyway, and still energy was part of that thing that allowed him to... Colossus Asardia you have to pay 9 mana, I think, to untap it, but Instill Energy lets you untap it for free.

And it also lets you attack the turn you play it, and channel lodge you get it out. It's a good combo. Next, JMD Tome. 4 mana mana artifact for 4 untap draw card. So this one, one of the things that Richard did when he made Magic was he liked making little Easter eggs about people he knew.

And so if you've ever heard the story, and I told it in the very first of this podcast series, about him coming to Seattle to try to sell Robo Rally to Wizards of the Coast, he came with his friend, Mike Davis, who actually is J, Mike's his middle name, so his full name is J. Mike Davis. I don't know what the J stands for. But anyway, so JMD Tome is J. Michael Davis' Tome.

It was a nod to his friend. There's a bunch of different tomes, by the way. J. Lem Tome was J.L.M. or Joel L. Mick. We made MSC Tome. MSC is Michael Scott Elliott, Mike Elliott. So we've made a bunch of tomes over the years that are sort of

rewarding different R&D folk. So, anyway, JMD Tome was the first one to do that. This was also a card that I think in the early days there were not tons and tons of ways to repeatedly draw cards and so this card got used in the early days not because it was a great card

but it really was the best card that did it at the time and definitely went in control decks early on Juggernaut 4 Artifact Creature 5-3 must attack each turn if able, and can't be blocked by walls. So this is one of those things where you see... Richard definitely enjoyed his Trinket Text.

It can't be blocked by walls. I mean, it wasn't completely Trinket Text. There were a decent number of walls, and this was the flavor of, you know, he kind of busts through walls, so... Juggernaut was another very popular early card. Unlike some of the other ones like Clockwork Beast, it actually was a little bit more powerful in the early days.

Creatures were just not quite as good. And four mana for a 5-3. The Muzzle Attack drawback wasn't particularly bad. Most decks wanted to play it. Usually if you wanted to play it, the goal of your deck was attacking every turn. So the drawback wasn't too big a deal. Walls actually did matter because walls were used sometimes in defensive decks. They were the best creatures for defensive.

So it actually ended up helping aggressive decks or mid-range-y aggressive decks, obviously it's a four mana card, that wanted to have some issues against control. It also was comboed with invisibility, which was an enchantment that kept you from being blocked by anything but

walls. And so when you put invisibility on it, they sort of fix the gap. Like, you know, he can be blocked by anything but walls. Invisibility lets you be blocked by anything but walls. I'm sorry. He can be blocked by everything. Only walls can block him. Did I say that backwards? I'm sorry. He can't

be blocked by walls. And the only thing that can block invisibility is walls, so you combine them, and then all of a sudden you have a creature that's truly unblockable. That was the first truly unblockable creature in Magic was a Juggernaut with invisibility on it. Okay. So I'm almost at work. So my last card for today is Karma.

I talked about Gloom earlier. Karma was kind of the mirror. I mean, not complete mirror, but it was a white enchantment. It cost two white white, so it was four mana, two of which was white. And it said each, at the beginning of each player's turn,

they took one damage for each swamp they had. And so that is pretty vicious. So if you're playing mono black, let's say you're playing a mono black deck. So I, you know, turn four, for example, I've had a swamp every turn. Then my opponent plays karma.

Like, okay, now my next turn I take four damage. And I'm going to take four damage every turn. And it's an enchantment. And black doesn't have a lot of answers to enchantments. You know, and now obviously you could drain the opponent. You could try, and there's ways to get life. Black has some life gains. But just, that's a could drain the opponent. You could try, and there's ways to get life, like get some life gains. But Jess,

that's a beating. We're losing four life every single turn. And so anyway, it's a good example of just how the color hoses were just aggressive

and stuff at the time. But anyway, obviously we'll continue on. I only got to K. Hope you guys are enjoying hearing all about Alpha Beta Unlimited. But, I'm in my parking space. So we all know what that means. It means it's the end I only got to K. Hope you guys are enjoying hearing all about Alpha Beta Unlimited. But,

I'm in my parking space. So we all know what that means. That means it's 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.