Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #336 - Top 10: Non-Evergreen Mechanics

Episode Date: June 3, 2016

Mark talks about his Top 10 favorite non-evergreen mechanics.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today is another top 10 episode. So I did one of these. It went over well. So I'm doing another one. So basically the idea is this is my opinion. Some of my little caveat of the top 10 is my opinion. They're subjective and makes it more fun. Today's topic is my top 10 favorite non-Evergreen mechanics. I will do a different podcast with the Evergreen mechanics, which I do like quite a bit, but today I'm talking non-Evergreen. So what does that mean? So let me clarify. First off, I am only doing mechanics, things that are keyword or ability words. I'm not doing things that what I consider

tools. Like I'm a big fan of hybrid and split cards. And there's things I like, but they're not really keywords or ability words. So today, my top ten mechanics are all keyword or ability words. Okay, and once again, subjective, my opinion. Number ten is infect. I really like infect. Infect is very controversial. I really like Infect.

Infect is very controversial. It is one of those mechanics that either, like, it is either beloved or what I like to say, hated. The players really, really enjoy it. And one of the things I like about it, the reason it's on my list, is that I like alternate win conditions. I like, one of the cool things about Magic is that you can win in ways that are different.

I'm also a big fan of milling, not that milling or taking cards to the top of the library and putting them in the graveyard. That's not really a keyword, but I do enjoy alternate win conditions. And in fact, it's one of the few keywords that comes with it in alternate win condition. I also love poison.

For those who don't know the story, I spent like 14 years getting Poison back into the game. So it was fun. Whenever I drafted Scars of Mirrodin, I always drafted a Poison deck. Always drafted a Poison deck. I had fun with it. I enjoy the mechanic.

I get that it's controversial. One of the things I like is I do like making mechanics that sort of... One of the things I'll talk about when I get to it in my 20 Lessons podcast is talking about how you really want to evoke strong responses out of people. And I feel like it does that. Some responses are negative, but that's okay. You know, you don't want all negative. But it evokes strong positive and negative. And it's something people talk about.

I like having mechanics that people sit up and go, oh, I have strong feelings about that mechanic. It also, the other reason it's here is I also really like Wither. And so kind of infect and secretly also Wither, because Wither is kind of buried into infect. I think the idea of replacing damage with minus one, minus one counters or replacing damage with poison is pretty cool. I like the fact that it allows poison to have gameplay that is, you can interact with it,

you know, that a giant growth means something, or, you know, trample means something, that you're trying to get damage through, and it matters how much damage you get through, that you need to do 10 damage. I think that's cool. I enjoy that. So anyway, number 10 is infect. Okay, number 9. Oh, wait, wait.

I should explain why infect is number 10 and not number 9 or 8 or 7. Infect has some developmental issues. The reason it might not come back is it is a very swinging mechanic. I think I like it for a lot of the people. I like it for a lot of the reason people love the mechanic. And the reason it's not as higher than 10 is for a lot of reason people dislike the mechanic.

So I feel like Infect is cool, but it sits at the top. You know, it just barely made my top 10 because it does have a few issues with it. It is swingy. It is hard to develop. It is... It can sort of run away with the game. So, I mean, it's something that, like, I think does cool things,

but it has a few strikes against it, which keeps it at number 10. Okay, number 9. Imprint. So, in fact, it was originally from Scars of Mirrodin Block. Imprint is originally from Mirrodin Block. So, oh, I should describe

what the mechanics do for those that might not know. Infect is a mechanic that says all my damage dealt to creatures is turned into minus 1, minus 1 counters. All my damage to players is turned into poison counters. A player loses the game if they ever have 10 or more poison counters. And other than a card in Homelands that's really bad,

we don't let you get rid of poison counters. So once you get them, you're just accumulating them. Imprint is a mechanic from Mirrodin that says, when you use this card, go get a card from somewhere. It tells you where to get the card. From your hand, from your graveyard, from somewhere. And then you exile that card. And then the imprinted card cares about what that card is.

So, for example, one of my all-time favorite... What was Clone Machine actually called? Mirrodin. I'm blanking on the real name. We call it the Clone Machine in design. What you did is you got a creature card from your hand when you played it, and then you could keep making copies of that card from your hand. And the neat thing about Imprint was it allowed us to make cards we couldn't normally make. Like, you couldn't normally say, hey, here's an artifact,

just choose whatever creature you want and keep making that creature, just because the memory issues were too big. So what Imprint did that I liked a lot is that, okay, how can we get around that? And I said, okay, well, what if we use the card as a marker? Okay, I'll exile the card. I can see it. And the way people tend to do it is they put it with the... So it's

exiled, but it's sitting right on top of the thing to remind you what it makes. Anyway, I thought it was a pretty elegant design. There are definitely a few really, really cool cards we couldn't make otherwise. I mean, the thing I like about Imprint is it is a

very different way to think of magic. I enjoy... I like when magic is able to sort of defy expectations and sort of, you know, this is a card that would have been too complicated to do normally, but we figured out a way, or cards, we figured out a way to do them in a way

that, you know, you use the cards as a memory tool. And I thought that was clever. It definitely pushes the game in a different direction, a different kind of design. I really appreciate that. The reason it's number nine and not higher is it has limited design space.

Every time we've designed with it, we've made less cards than we thought we were going to make just because it's really hard to make. Also, it's a mechanic that's complex enough that we don't do a common, not a strike against it or anything. I think that's okay to have mechanics that... It's okay to have a mix of mechanics.

I think it's mechanics a little more on the complex side. Not crazy on the complex side, but a little bit more. Enough so that I wouldn't do it a common. But anyway, imprint is my number nine. Okay, next, number eight, convoke. So, convoke comes from Ravnica, the original Ravnica.

It was a Selesnya mechanic, and it allowed you to tap creatures to get mana to pay for the spell. Or I don't know, technically, I guess it reduced the cost of the spell, but for all intents and purposes what I'll let you do is a Convoke spell said, hey, I can tap my creatures just as I can tap my mana.

Creatures produce the color, one of the colors that they are. And colorless creatures can produce colorless. So one of the things that's definitely kind of cool is it was a cost reduction mechanic, but one that's actually fairly balanced. A lot of cost reduction mechanics have come out back to bite us in the butt. This one hasn't. It's actually a pretty well-balanced mechanic. It lets you do a lot of cool things.

And Richard Garfield designed this one, by the way. So Infect was designed by the Skarsgård and Mirrodin design team. So myself, Mark Gottlieb, Mark Globus, I can't remember all the people that were on it. Imprint was something I designed during Mirrodin. Convoke was something Richard Garfield designed during Ravnica. He actually designed it for the Boros clan, but I moved it to the Selesnian clan because I felt it...

I think he was trying to think like, oh, it's soldiers helping one another. And I'm like, oh, no, no, no. It's more like the collective helping one another. That I wanted Boros... I don't know if the mechanic I wasn't happy with, but it just felt more like a Selesnian mechanic. Obviously, we like Convoke.

It came back in a core set. Anyway, it's a Celestian mechanic. Obviously, we like Convoke. It came back in a core set. Anyway, it's a good, strong mechanic. Like on the Storm Scale, it's one of those three mechanics. I just know we'll do it again and again. It's a very solid mechanic. I like it. It's just a cool execution. It's one of those mechanics that kind of does something neat,

and it does something we do, but in a way that's kind of balanced and pretty flavorful. So I'm a big fan of Convoke. I like Convoke. Why is Convoke number eight and not lower down the list? We're starting to get to the point now where it's just things I like more. Convoke requires a lot of creatures, but magic requires a lot of creatures, so I don't know. I just think this is one of those things where it's not that I dislike Convoke. There's things I like a little bit more.

But Convoke, the other thing I should say is this list, if you ask me six months from now, I think a lot of the same cards would show up on the list, but it could be scrambled around a little bit. Maybe Convq is six next time I do this. Today it's eight, but it is a cool, clean mechanic. It is something that definitely, once again, a lot of mechanics I like allow you to really do something that's functional and interesting. And I like cost reduction. It's my one cost reduction mechanic on my top 10 list.

reduction. This is my one cost reduction mechanic on my top ten list. And I just like how it does it. Okay, number seven. Cycling. So this is also a Richard Garfield mechanic. He actually designed this in Tempest, but it didn't get into the game until Urza Saga. We actually both of the Urza Saga mechanics,

Cycling and Echo, Richard designed Cycling, Mike Elliott designed Echo. Both were in Tempest design, but we had so much stuff, we pushed them off. And then Mike, who was the lead designer of Urza, used them. Cycling is just one of the cleanest, simplest, like, the idea is really simple. Is sometimes you'd rather throw away this card and draw another card. And cycling just says, okay, you can do that.

It's a super versatile mechanic. It goes on lots of different cards. It's generally very useful. We've already put it in three different, or sorry, four different blocks. It first showed up in Birds of Saga. Then it showed up again in Onslaught.

Then it showed up again in Time Spiral. Then it showed up again in Shards of Alara. So cycling is definitely, in fact, of non-evergreen mechanics, it might have showed up more than any other mechanic. There's a few other ones fighting for that space, but I think cycling has the record, mostly because it started so early. But anyway, it's number seven on my list just because it is clean and useful and elegant and just a nice fine um i don't know like like one of the things that you look for like it's not super flavorful probably the reason it's seven and not slightly higher is there's not a lot of flavor to cycling it is pretty flavorless um we've talked about whether or not we wanted to

sort of give it a new name, but we didn't really know how to flavor it. I mean, cycling is definitely a more, you know, meta kind of name. But it is, that's the biggest trick against it, is it doesn't have a lot of flavor. I'm not really sure what the flavor is. We've talked about could it get flavor. We've talked about could it get flavor. But anyway, cycling in it, number seven. Okay, number six, Devotion. So Devotion was in Theros.

So Devotion was based off of Chroma, which was a mechanic in Eventide in the Lorwyn Shattermore block, in the Shattermore half. It was designed by Aaron Forsythe in, not Future Sight, in Fifth Dawn. He actually made a bunch of cards in Fifth Dawn because we were playing around with Sunburst, cared about mana cost. And so Aaron was like, oh, what are those other things that care about the mana? And so he came up with this, and I thought it was big enough that I didn't want to do it. Fifth Dawn couldn't really give it the space it deserved. So we teased it in Future Sight,

and then we ended up doing it in Eventide. And it went over, maybe it's a little unfair, but like a lead balloon. Okay, probably a little better than a lead balloon, because really, who would want a lead balloon? But it, I mean, a couple things. One is, we didn't execute it as cleanly as we one is we didn't execute it as cleanly as we could

we didn't make it as flavorful as we could and we just didn't make you know developmentally didn't make the cards particularly strong during Theros Design

Zach Hill one of my developers who was on my design team came up with the idea of bringing it back I really liked the idea I liked it playing a theme and what we did is we gave a strong flavor to it came up with the idea of bringing it back. I really liked the idea. I liked it playing a theme.

And what we did is we gave a strong flavor to it. Now it wasn't just generic look anywhere, alien look on the battlefield. Oh, so what devotion is, sorry. Devotion is it has an effect. But the way it determines the effect is it looks on the battlefield at all your permanents and counts up the number of colored mana symbols on all of your permanents. The original chroma would tell you where to look, and sometimes looked on the battlefield, but sometimes looked in the graveyard or looked

other places. To clean it up, we made a gesture battlefield, and then we gave it a sense of flavor. What did it represent? Well, it represented a sense of devotion. And we had the gods in Theros, and so it really represented sort of this allegiance to the gods. There were five monocolor gods, and you had allegiance to a god. Because, you know, if you were devotion to blue, well, you really cared about blue, so maybe you cared about the blue god who's really blue, and it had

a nice flavor to it. We also pushed the mechanic, so we made an actual term viable, and lo and behold, I mean, one of the things devotion's on the list, A, it's a really, I would say, number six, it's a good mechanic, so we made an actual term viable, and lo and behold, one of the things Devotion's on the list, number six, it's a good mechanic, but it also was a symbol that we could rediscover things. This was a good example of

we had a neat idea, we executed it poorly, the audience's reaction was kind of lukewarm, and we came back and said, you know what, this mechanic is worth more. We didn't do it right the first time. Let's see if we can do it again. And I'm very excited that we took a mechanic that was kind of like no one was that excited about it,

redid it, gave it some flavor, repurposed it, and all of a sudden it was one of the favorite mechanics from the set. And so, you know, it really went from a zero to a hero. So I like Devotion. The other thing I like about it is it really, I love mechanics that say, hey, here's something to care about you don't normally care about, but now you care about. Because one of the neat things about this is now you're going,

digging through your thing and saying, hey, do I have any creatures that have lots of colored mana in their costs? You don't normally do that, you know. I mean, if you're playing a mono-colored deck, sometimes you do just because there's more power there. But this is definitely a mechanic that says, hey, take a look at this. Care about this. And it just makes you look at your cards in a different way. Like in Limited, it was really cool

that we put some cards in that had double mana in their cost that most of the time was just a downside. But if you happen to have Devotion, it became an upside. And the fact that you can turn what's normally a downside into an upside, just a cool thing to do. In general, I like mechanics when they're able to do that.

So anyway, devotion is number six. It has my devotion. Okay, number five, transform. Okay, so first off, so transform is, it says, hey, take this card and flip it over to the other side. So Transform only goes on double-faced cards. So some people may say, double-faced cards? Wait, aren't those a tool, like hybrid and split cards?

And the answer is yes. Double-faced cards are a tool. But Transform is one way to make use of double-faced cards. Not the only way, by the way. It's the only way we've used so far. But double-faced cards actually have a lot of different potential. But one of the neat things they do, and this is why it transforms at number five, is the idea that I can change from one state into another state.

That's not new to Magic. Magic has done state transitions for a long time. What's new is it really opens up sort of a different way of looking at it like when we first made double-faced cards and you know made transform people were like like we're excited

but at the same time like what are you doing you can't do that that breaks a rule that's a rule you can't break and there were people at work who really felt

like we were breaking a rule that like we're just going too far but I love the idea of the exploration I mean one of the cool things about transform is that you get to at work, we really felt like we were breaking a rule that, like, we're just going too far. But I love the idea of the exploration. I mean, one of the cool things about Transform is that you get to have a creature, and then it gets to become a different creature. And you get to see what it looked like before, and you get to see what it looked like after. And that is just very compelling. And Transform leads to really fun, flavorful designs. You

know, it is one of those mechanics that just, like, it oozes flavor. It is hard to make a Transform card without... I mean, in fact, if you're not oozing flavor when you're making a Transform card, you are failing in some regard. Because Transform, it just oozes flavor. I like

the... I mean, one of the things that I guess I like most about Transform is that, technically speaking, by the way, it is a keyword action, but that is okay. It is a keyword. It's a keyword action. I don't know. I just, the thing that's really cool to me is I like when we're willing to sort of go to new and different places and the idea of, hey, turn this over. Go to the back. Is a pretty neat idea.

And it's led itself to such cool and interesting designs. I felt like I loved the designs in Innistrad and Dark Ascension. And then Shadows came along and did even some new stuff we haven't seen. And one of the things I realized as we play around with it is there's a lot of space. Not only does Double-Faced Cars have tons of space, Transform has a lot of space. So anyway, it is a very flexible mechanic. It is flavorful. It has a little eye-opening.

So for all those reasons, Transform at number five. Number four, Proliferate. This is also from Scars of Mirrodin. four, proliferate. This is also from Scars of Mirrodin. So proliferate says you may put a counter on any permanent or player that has a counter. So you can

if a creature has a plus one plus one counter, you can give it another one. If a creature has a minus one minus one counter, hopefully on your opponent, you can give it another one. If you have a charge counter on your artifact, you can get another one. If you have some sort of counter on your land, you can put another one on. If a player has a poison counter, you can give another poison counter.

You know, that it allows you... We first made it as a means by which to help with poison. I think originally what it did, when I made this mechanic in Skarsgård's Mirrodin, was it just said, okay, anything that has a minus one minus one counter gets another one.

Any player that has a poison gets another one. It just was spreading disease. And then Mark Globus said, why are we limiting ourselves? Why can't we just do all counters? And then I realized that we actually had other counters, because minus one minus one was only on the creatures. We had charge counters and stuff on our artifacts, and so

we realized that, yeah, no, no, no, that's a pretty cool thing that we can do. And so, I mean, one of the things for people that don't know, I love counters. I love tokens. I love, I mean, proliferate only does counters, but, you know, I'm the guy that made doubling season. You know, I love the idea of, I do like all the counter manipulation. And so it was just a neat mechanic. And it did something cool, which was very open-ended. One of the neat things about Proliferate is whenever we use mechanics, and we use mechanics for all sorts of different reasons,

Proliferate just goes, oh, thank you, another card I can use. So one of the things that's neat about Proliferate is it's a very open-ended mechanic, and I really appreciate the open-endedness. It's something that I like in mechanics. I'm a Johnny at heart. I like when I make a mechanic that says, okay, yeah, in this environment it does this, but in a different environment, you know, one of these days we'll find a way to bring proliferate back, because proliferate, like depending on the environment, can do radically

different things. We used it for the first time in a minus one, minus one environment. So it was all about sort of breaking things down. But imagine putting it in a plus one, plus one environment. It's building things up. So there's a lot of cool things you can do with it. Okay, number three is morph. So morph, once again, it's an emotional list.

Morph has its share of issues. It is a complex mechanic. It is a somewhat confusing mechanic. But if you get past that, it is just a very cool... It's one of the coolest mechanics we've ever made. In some way, I don't know how easily we'd make it today. It'd be tough. But I feel like it's sort of grandfathered in as something Magic has done

to make it a little easier to do it again. sort of grandfathered in, is this something magic has done to make it a little easier to do it again? But it really shows kind of what magic is capable of. So it came about, it was designed by the rules team, of all things. Proliferate came about because they were trying to figure out how to make illusionary mask and camouflage work. And those were cards that Richard had made in Alpha that turned cards face down. But what did it mean that cards were face down?

And both those cards were kind of vague on what that meant. And so finally, the rules team came up with the idea of, what if we just define the qualities of a face down card? The reason they defined it as a 1-1. And what happened was they showed it to Bill Rose. He was not particularly interested in it. Showed it to Mike Elliott. He wasn't interested in it. So they showed it to me. I was

interested in it. And so I worked with him to sort of improve it and I suggested instead of being a 2-mana 1-1, it was a 3-mana 2-2. And then I made a bunch of decks out of it. In fact, I also came up with the idea of doing morph triggers, and then

I made a deck with a bunch of morph cards. I made two decks with morph cards. And then I played it with all of R&D, one by one. And slowly getting people to see the potential of what the mechanic could do. And that really won everybody over, and we decided to make it. The other thing I like is I like bluffing.

It is probably the best bluffing mechanic we've ever made. It's sort of like, okay, I have a 2-2, but we all know it's not really a 2-2. Is it a 1-1? Is it a 5-5? What is it? And the more mana I have, the more options available. I like the fact that you can sort of like... One of the things we worked in is if you have enough mana tapped, if you don't have enough mana untapped, your opponent knows it's not a particularly dangerous threat.

Once you have five mana, it could be anything, and they really have to be careful. And so it is very neat. One of the cool things about it, by the way, is people talk about playing Morph sometimes off-color, which is, I have a Mor a morph creature and I play it.

And they're like, well, it's just a gray ogre. It's three mana, two, two. And I always say, no, no, no, it's more than that. Because a gray ogre, if you pay three mana, get a two, two, that's it. Your opponent knows what that is. The thing about having a morph creature is your opponent doesn't know.

And even if you can't turn to face up, you know that, they don't know that. And so, I mean, even a face down, off color morph has potential, even though it doesn't really have potential, it has potential. And so, for example, you can attack with that, especially if you have mana up, because your opponent's like, okay, they got mana up,

I should be afraid of it, maybe I won't block it. And a gray ogre can never do that. If they have a 3-3 and you have a gray ogre, you're never attacking without a trick. But if they have a 3-3 and you have a face-down morph creature,

you could attack, depending on how you read the situation. But anyway, morph is definitely a very cool and a very exciting mechanic. Oh, oh, stop. Once again. What morph does, for those who don't know, is you can take the card,

you can spend three mana, you can play it face down as a colorless 2-2 creature with no creature type, and then for the morph cost of the creature, if you pay the morph cost at any time, it turns face up and comes that creature. It doesn't even use a stack, so you can't even respond to un-morphing. Or

morphing, I don't know. I'm never sure what the correct verb is for turning it face up. Okay, that is number three. Number two, landfall. So this is a mechanic from Zendikar. It was designed by me and my team. So what happened was we wanted to make land mechanics. We tried different things. One of the mechanics we tried required you... The cost of using it was not playing a land that turn.

And what we found was it was just very frustrating because people were sort of mana hosing themselves to use their cards. And then we decided, what if we turned it on its ear? One, instead of rewarding you for not playing mana, you know, playing a land, we reward you for playing a land. And one thing about Landfall that really opened my eyes

is the idea of, you know, play in the space that the players want to do. You know, reward the player for doing something they already want to be doing. That just makes the player feel so good. And one other thing about Landfall, there's a moment in playtesting when

you feel something and you're like, I'm on to something. This is something we have to replicate. This feeling we have to replicate. And the thing with Landfall, that Landfall did so well, was I was playing one game in playtesting, and it was later

in the game, and I was like, I needed the land to trigger my landfall. I'm like, come on land, come on land. And I pause for a minute, and I'm like, how often in the late game are you wishing a land is on the top of your deck? That is not a normal experience. That is kind of cool. So one of the things I really liked about landfall was how it just sort of made you care about something.

Like, landfall works in any deck. You can throw one landfall card in any deck because every deck, barring weird dredge decks or something, every deck uses land. And so every deck can make use of landfall. And you could build around it and have more ways to get land in play,

searching for land and stuff. Or you could throw one in your deck and it'll play just fine that way as well. We made it a little too aggressive in the original Zendikar. But, for example, when we went back to Zendikar, we knew that one of the things we had to do, we had to do was landfall. Very, very popular with the players. had to do. We had to do with Landfall.

Very, very popular with the players. Anyway, the reason I put it in my number two is just it's it is just a really cool, fun, flavorful mechanic that really taught me something. I mean, also, some of the ones in the top are things where I was personally involved. I mean, it's a subjective list.

I started by saying it was a subjective list. It is subjective. I do like how Landfall plays. I mean, there's some issues with Landfall. It can get very aggressive. Because you play lands in your turn, it is more an aggressive mechanic. It more makes you want to do things you didn't want to attack with.

I don't think that's a negative. I actually think sort of encouraging attacking is a relatively good thing, so I like that. Okay, so at number two, Landfall. Okay, number one, with a bullet, Flashback. So Flashback is a mechanic I made in Odyssey, the original Graveyard set.

We had messed around with Graveyard a little before. Weatherlight messed around with Graveyard a little before Weatherlight messed around with Graveyard a bunch but the first block that was all about had a theme of the Graveyard was Odyssey and one of the mechanics

was Flashback inspired for those who never heard this story I used to be the head judge for the feature match area at the Pro Tours so I would watch

a lot of feature matches and one of the little things I would do when I was watching really boring matches is I would come up with some feature matches. And one of the little things I would do when I was watching really boring matches is I would come up with some condition I could give to the loser that would be a challenge for the winner.

And one of the conditions I came up with is players could cast Instants and Sorcerers out of their graveyard. They could cast it a second time. And it just kind of stuck with me. That's kind of a cool ability. And so when we were in the graveyard, I'm like, oh, okay,

why don't we do this? Here's this mechanic. And I didn't know at the time if it could support enough cards. It turns out, yes, yes it can. So Flashback is one of these just really meaty... It's the kind of mechanic

that design loves and development loves. There's a lot of space. There's a lot of mechanic that design loves and development loves. There's a lot of space. There's a lot of cool things you can do with it. And it just does really good things. It lets you sink mana into it. It lets you get access to extra cards. You know, it does a lot of neat things that development

wants. And there's just a lot of cool things you can do with it in design. So, you know, and the basic thing is pretty simple. It's just like do a spell and get it back. But, you can do a lot of fun things with it. Like, you can do within a design. The basic thing is pretty simple. Just do a spell and get it back. But you can do a lot of fun things with it. You can do off-color. I cast it for blue

but then cast it a second time for white. You can do things where it sort of has a multi-color flavor to it because the second time you use it, you have to be in a different color. You can do costs other than mana costs. There's other costs we've played around with where to get it the second time, you it, you have to be in a different color. You can do costs other than mana costs. There's other costs we've played around with where to get it the second time, you've got to do something different.

You definitely can mess around with, sometimes we've done stuff where the cheap one is the flashback cost. It's all about, can I get this in my graveyard? It's a little more expensive up front, but if I get it in my graveyard some other means, I can get a cheaper card. That's another fun thing with flashback is there's this whole strategy where you're dumping cards in your graveyard and the cards in your graveyard are equity and in some ways it's like drawing cards because you can play the cards

flashback also has kind of a cool name a lot of mechanics like this in the early days really were kind of flavorless you look at like you know cycling and kicker A lot of mechanics like this in the early days really were kind of flavorless. You look at, like, you know, cycling and kicker and just had a lot of sort of metafunctional names, but not really flavorful names. And flashback's actually a pretty flavorful name. You know, you're remembering things.

You know, the graveyard is where things go when they're no longer around. For creatures, it's the great, you know, it's literally the graveyard. They're dead and buried. But for spells, it's kind of like spells that have been forgotten. It sort of goes off into the nether void. It's the idea that I kind of remember the thing I once knew. The flavor is pretty cool. And so I enjoyed that.

So Flashback originally showed up in Odyssey. It then came back in Time Spiral. And then it came back again in Innistrad. Most people consider Innistrad to be the best limited environment of all time. I think part of that is Flashback. I think Flashback makes for a really fun limited environment. It adds a lot of depth. It's something that we talk about lenticular design, which means things that

are on the surface pretty straightforward, but have more strategic depth to them than you first realize. And flashback is one of those mechanics where on the surface, okay, I get it. I can cast it and cast it again. It's pretty straightforward. But the strategic flexibility of knowing when and how and where to use it. And it's just one of those things that adds a lot of depth to it. And so, anyway, flashback is my number one mechanic. So I'm almost to my daughter's school today. So let's recap our top ten. Okay, at number ten, from Scars of Mirrodin, we had infect.

Showing that poison. Me showing a little poison love. Number nine from Mirrodin was Imprint. Imprint was a mechanic that allowed you to exile a card, and then you can somehow use that. Most of the Imprint spells, by the way, that were the best imprint spells, tend to let you do multiple times. It was a very fun copying mechanic, where you were copying a spell or a permanent or something.

At number eight is Convoke, from original Ravnica, the one off-Celesnia mechanic. Really did a neat thing and allowed you to sort of... It's the one... It's the one damage... Not damage. Cost reduction spell that really is pretty balanced and does cool things.

Number seven, cycling from Urza's Saga. A very high utility, just generally useful mechanic. Number six, devotion from Theros. The mechanic that showed you, you can try again. That if at first you don't succeed, wait, wait, don't give up. Try, try again. And it's

also a sign of how the right mechanic in the right place with the right flavor can just do a lot of good work. Number five is transform from Innistrad. It goes on double-faced cards, and things turn from one thing into another. It really shows how you can do cool, flavorful things

that are really sort of eye-opening. Number four is Proliferate. Proliferate was from Scars of Mirrodin. It lets you show that you can make Johnny mechanics that definitely are very open-ended, that you can do cool things with. to show that you can make Johnny mechanics that definitely are very open-ended, that you can do cool things with.

Number three is Morph, originally from Onslaught. A mechanic that says, hey, you know, you can really explore a deep and different space. That, you know, the rules team can come up with a mechanic, because there's weird rules interactions

that you can use. Number two is Landfall from Zendikar Block. Landfall really taught me an important lesson of, hey, let players do things they want to do. Reward them for doing things they want to do. It definitely helped sell the idea of a land-based set. It really helped put Zendikar on the map, and it was very popular. And number one, Flashback.

Originally from Odyssey. And it was redone a couple times. So Flashback, oh, I didn't explain Flashback. Flashback is you cast a spell and then you can pay mana to cast it out of your graveyard. Anyway, it is just

of all the mechanics that I've done and worked with, I don't know. It's just my personal favorite. I made it. I'm sure that's something to do with it. But it's just a nice, cool, clean, plays well, easy design, easy development mechanic. And it's funny. I feel like every other block, it feels like something, hey, maybe we can do flashback here.

Development's always saying, oh, can we add flashback? Could flashback go here? Because it's just such a cool mechanic. And it's very popular with the players. So a mechanic that does its job, it's flavorful, and both the players and the people making the game love that's a sign of a good mechanic.

So that, my friends, is my top ten non-evergreen mechanics. I hope you enjoyed this top ten 10 episode um like i said one of these days i will do top 10 um evergreen mechanics yeah top 10 evergreen mechanics but anyway i'm now pulling up to my daughter's school so we all know what that means means it's the end of my drive to work so instead of making magic sorry instead of talking magic it's time for me to be making magic so i'll see you guys next time bye