Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #344 - Urza's Saga Part 4

Episode Date: July 1, 2016

Mark talks about the design of Urza's Saga in part four of a four-part series.

I'm pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so this is my fourth and I'm leaving my final podcast on Urza's Saga. So last I left, we were in the S's. I last talked about Sarasanctum. So it's time to talk about Shivangorge, another land, another part of the cycle. So once again, Serra Sanctum, Tolarian Academy, Phyrexian Tower, Shiv and Gorge, and Gaea's Cradle were all part of a cycle. Not the most clean cycle

and people always would confuse where the black and red one were. But this is the red one. This is the red part of the cycle. Like I said,

the black and red were a little looser than the green, white, and blue ones. So Shiv and Gorge is a land. You can tap to add a colorless mana. Or for two R and tap, you can deal one damage to each opponent.

This is probably the weakest of the five. I still think this one's all play too. But it definitely was, of the five, the weakest. The black and red in general were weaker than the, uh, ones that produced lots of man. That's a surprise, surprise. Um, and this one, I don't know my, my tournament history well enough to know whether this saw a tournament play. I believe it saw a little bit, but I'm not a hundred percent on that.

So, well, I'm good on history. I don't know all my, uh, pro tour tournament level history at times. Um, so people often ask, why? Why did we make a cycle where some of them seem so close to others? And so this was kind of a mistake. I do think the lesson from this cycle was when you get close, when certain cars are close enough, especially the high profile ones, the powerful ones, it turns out we couldn't have made a cycle out of these.

And so probably the correct answer was either to not make them seem like a cycle or to... The lesson is either if you're trying to make a cycle, differentiate them a little more so they feel less like a disconnected cycle. There's no way to make a black and red one that do what the white, blue, and green one do because at the time,

there were not even five permanent types you could care about. In theory, one could care about land, but that's probably even more broken. And then, that's it. You've run out of permanent types. Now, that said, you could have cared, I guess, you could have cared about other factors, although, once again,

probably the real brokenness is the first three, not making the last two match the first three. But the important lesson here is, and this is just the aesthetic lesson, which is if you have a cycle of cards, you want to make sure there's something about them that makes people understand. If mechanically you're a little disconnected, sometimes creatively we'll try to do a little bit. Our thought process was, oh, there's five legendary lands.

Each one has a different color manda symbol on it. You know, people will clearly see the difference. And when things clump together sometimes, like people were like, yeah, yeah, these are great. Where's the rest of the cycle? Even though they could see the cards, they're like, you didn't finish the cycle. So there's an important lesson there of understanding sort of how similar things are and how people perceive things. And one of my big, I mean, this is the point I hit time and time again, is your audience has expectations and you have to understand their expectations.

And they're going to see patterns and do things. And some of the time the patterns are things that you're not necessarily going to see ahead of time. This is the kind of pattern which you should recognize ahead of time. I mean, the real lesson, ironically, of all this is people want us to finish the pattern, and the real lesson is we probably shouldn't have even started the pattern.

All three of those lands were pretty broken. But anyway, the Shivan Gorge is kind of of the cycle is the tamest of the five. Okay, we move on to Shivan Hellkite. Five red red, seven mana, two of which was red, for a 5-5 dragon. It flies, and it has one and a red, so two mana.

Deal one damage to target creature or player. So this is the idea of a creature with flame breath that can strategically use its flame breath to take out things this card was actually pretty popular once again, this is a card that was more popular I mean, it was very unlimited, obviously I don't know if this saw constructive play but it was a very popular card

just because it was the idea of using fire breath to sort of do damage to things. This might have been the first time we did that. We've done a lot of fire breathing that enhances the creature. It makes the creature more dangerous and more powerful. But this creature sort of strategically and tactically used

its breath weapon. And it was pretty powerful. I mean, it's 7 mana. But when you got it out, it was pretty powerful. Especially like Unlimited. This was a really good card in Limited. It's interesting when we talk about cards that one of the things that is important is

we want to make sure that all the different kinds of players are happy. So one of the ways we look at that is the psychographics. Timmy, Tammy, Johnny, Jenny, Spike. So like the Timmy and Tammys of the world, the ones that want sort of, that want a visceral feel, that just want to have exciting

cards. This is the kind of, you know, this is a very, you know, Tammy-ish card. That it's very, it gets you excited. That it's just a big thing and it does a powerful effect and it's flavorful, you know, it really sort of, it's exciting. And then one of the things when we make cards is,

we want to make sure we make lots of different kinds of cards for lots of different kinds of players. And that, when I go back and I look at a set, like, I'm very happy when I look at Shiv and Hellkite, because, I don't know if it was a tournament level card or not, but it was a you know, it was a card that made a lot of people happy. It was a card that people opened

and got excited for. One of the things to remember that's very hard is that I think that if you are into magic and the way you know magic is you go online and you're with magic communities

and you see a lot, you get a little bit skewed on who the average magic player is just because what you are seeing is the invested magic player, meaning people who have chosen that they want to invest in magic so much that they want to really be involved in the community. And that is most of the people I interact with, because those are the invested players.

But one of the things to remember is there are a lot of players that are not invested, you know, that play and enjoy magic, but aren't part of the community necessarily, aren't part of the, you know, magic is something of their lives, but it's not probably, doesn't take as high a portion as the more enfranchised players. Like, one of the things I try to say to people is, like, when we sort of do wide, what we call sort of the deep

dive, where we try to find magic players that are more outside our realm. Like, normally when we do market surveys, we do it, like, on our website. That's already enfranchised players. They're coming to our website. When you actually talk about players that are a little more, that are Magic players but aren't as in franchise, what you start to realize is they just are way,

they know way less than you think Magic players would know because you're used to people who read what the pros have to say and understand what the top picks are and really have a sense of what the good cards are. For a lot of magic players, they don't interact with sort of social media necessarily about magic.

And so what they have to go on is what they or their friends, who they play with, think are the good cards. And some of their friends, maybe one of the group, might read the internet. And so that information

can seep down. But one thing that's important is something like Ship and Hellkite, there are a lot of places where this was one of the best cards in the set, because it's just impressive looking. The average player does not have the ability

to look at mana costs and be able to gauge necessarily is what this card does a great value for its cost. Because a lot of games, especially kitchen table games, they just, people have a lower caliber of decks, meaning they aren't copying decks off the internet in which the pros have made them these fine-tuned machines.

And so what that means is, in general, in casual games, they're just a little bit slower, they're not quite as powerful. Just the ability to get out bigger things is a lot easier to do. You're dead less often earlier. And so something like this card that just, once it hits the board, has a very powerful effect is something that, in slower environments, is very powerful. And so it's very easy to sort of take... One of the things you have to remember is we are trying to make for all environments. We have to understand all environments. We can't just understand, okay, well, what's the top tier

card in the best tournament play? You also want to okay, well, what's the top-tier card in the best tournament play? You also want to go, okay, what's the card that's going to appeal to people and get people excited and get them to put it in their deck? And then depending on the environment, it might be a good card. Like, I would argue the Shinn Hellkite in a casual environment, or maybe even in a group environment, you know, definitely has some legs than a seven-mana creature would in a more

competitive tournament setting. And that's, it's something I always try to remember is that I'm not trying to make every card for every player. I'm not trying to make, you know, it's not like, okay, who's my player? And all the cards have to appeal to that player. I really don't care if any one player likes everything. I care that any one player loves something. It's okay, by the way, for people to hate things. That's okay. But as long as they love something, as long as there's things they love, as long as the game speaks to them,

and there's cards to get them excited and make them want to build decks. They don't need to use every card. That's not the way the game works. They need to use some cards. And so you want to make sure that every kind of player has cards to appeal to them. So I look at someone like Shivan Helkite, and I'm like, look, this card did a lot of really good work for a lot of players, and that's important. You know, this card was the most exciting card that some players opened.

There are people in which the card that are most proud of that they owned at the time was this card. And that is really crucial. That is important. That's one of the things that makes the game successful, is that there are different appealing cards for different players. Okay, next. Show and tell. So two and a blue for sorcery. Each player chooses an artifact, creature, or enchantment, or land,

so any permanent at the time, the playing blockers didn't exist yet, in hand and puts it onto the battlefield. So the idea here is everybody gets to play something for free, a permanent for free, puts it onto the battlefield. So you'll see a trend here I've been talking about in Ursa Saiga, which is, let's avoid costs, let's make it easier to get out things I'm not supposed to get out. Yet another card that does that. This is one of the ones that does this thing that says, oh, I'm going to be balancing,

because I'm going to let everybody do it. And this card can sometimes get you, but usually when you're using it in a deck, especially competitively, like, you're not going to use it until the thing you need to get out is really important. This is often used in combo decks to sort of make sure you get the pieces going.

And really what this card does is, if you have a combo, if I, for for three mana can get something out that's supposed to be a lot more mana and then once that thing is out I mean Young West Bargain is coming up at the end of this block it's a good example where it was a real expensive you know it was three black black black

like six mana three which is black but like once that card is out you start getting trade life for cards really powerful well if I can cast it instead of for three black, black, black for two blue, even if my opponent gets to play something, you know, often that's really, really, really powerful. The thing that's cute about this card, by the way, is one of the things that we do in a lot of the blue cards is we're showing the Tolarian Academy.

And so I know people't know if people appreciate the comedy in this is, the idea was it's show and tell of the Tolarian Academy. Well, at a magic school, you know, a place where the wizards are, like, they have a crazy show and tell and that's what the art is showing.

It's just like, kind of like, wizard show and tell and people have crazy things they're bringing. I always thought that art kind of funny. One of the things I find very interesting is I think there's a lot of comedy in all the colors. All the colors have elements which are comical. And I know sometimes we play more straight laced.

We don't do as much comedy. Like, you see a little bit of comedy more in red, right, because goblins and stuff. We tend to do sort of lowbrow goblin humor a lot more. But this is kind of a cutesy sort of like humor from perspective, which is like in this setting, you know, this is the norm. But it's kind of funny from our standpoint, you know. It's kind of funny like what is show and tell in a witch's thing. Anyway, if I was more in charge, I mean I'm not in charge of, if I had, you know, instead of being the designer, I was in charge of more creative concepts and things.

I would be a little bit more comedy. I think that we can handle to have a little more levity in the game. I'm not... It's still a serious game, but I don't know. I enjoy... I'm the guy that makes the onset, so obviously I enjoy a bit of levity. Anyway, show and tell. Another

card that helped break the environment. This is another card that showed up in powerful decks because it just allows you to circumvent costs. So this was yet another powerful versus saga card that kind of breaks the rules of magic. Okay. After Show and Tell is Sleeper Agent.

Okay, so Sleeper Agent is a 3-3 minion. It costs a single block mana. So 3-3 for one mana. But, your opponent does not enter the battlefield under your control. It enters the battlefield, you immediately give it to your opponent.

Why would you give your opponent a 3-3 creature? And the answer is at the beginning of upkeep, it does 2 damage. So the idea is, I'm giving my opponent for one mana, I'm giving my opponent a 3-3 creature, but my opponent has the downside that it does two damage to them every turn. So the idea is, they have a 3-3 creature, and if they can't deal with it, this 3-3 creature is going to kill them in 10 turns, but I'm also giving them something they can attack with. And if they attack with it,

and I kill it, then I get rid of the threat of what's doing damage to them. So it's sort of this calculated risk. I made this card just because I like the idea of, I don't know, just having different sort of calculations. So interesting, by the way, this is... I often talk about how we design for Tammy or Jenny. This is me designing for Spike in a way that you don't really think about. It's not that this card necessarily was a tournament-level card.

I think a lot of people confuse Spike-designed cards as being a tournament-level thing. That's not the case. I mean, Spikes like powerful cards, but the other thing that Spikes also enjoy is trying to gauge decisions. Spike's the one that really loves, okay, I can do this for that. Is that worth it? Are there situations where it's worth it?

Can I build my deck so it's such a thing? That they like evaluations. They like sort of proving things and testing things. I mean, this card has a little bit of a Jenny quality in that you can try to figure out how best to use it. But it also has the Spike quality of understanding, like, in what place is the value correct? When do I want to make this trade?

And how do I do that? I think that one of the things that is interesting that when making cards is trying to sort of... There are players, and a lot of them fall in the spike category, that really enjoy trying to make interesting decisions about what is the correct play, how are things working, you know, and is this trade-off worth it, you know, and we make a lot of cards where it's like, okay, there's a trade-off, this is a trade-off that's worth it, and this card

was an interesting one, we tried to balance it to say, okay, there's times when you want to do this, there's times when you want to get it, and limited especially, this is a very interesting card in limited, where it's like, when do I want to do this? When do I want this in my deck? What kind of deck do I have to have where it's advantageous? And it's also the kind of card sometimes where I don't want to play it early. I don't want to play it where it's... Early, it's advantageous. I don't want somebody to have a 3-3.

But later, when there's a ground stall, when, okay, this could be a good finisher card sometimes. Where, like, this is what's going to defeat them. Because I can absorb... I have some creature that I can chump block, or I have a 2-4 something that can block this without dying. And we're at a parity where I need them to lose life. They're low enough that I

need them to lose life, and I can either stop the creature or maybe I can even take the hits from the creature because I'm ahead on life or whatever. Okay, next. Smokestack. Artifact. Costs 4. During your upkeep, you put a soot counter on it. And then during each player's upkeep, they sacrifice permanence equal to the number of soot counters.

So the idea essentially is... And the way this works is... I put a soot counter during my upkeep, but my opponent always is one ahead of me. So the first person to sacrifice something, I think, is my opponent always is one ahead of me. So the first person to sacrifice something, I think, is my opponent. I think that's how that works. But anyway, essentially the way this thing works is each player, I mean, my opponent sacrifices a permanent and I sacrifice a permanent. My opponent sacrifices two permanents and I sacrifice two permanents. So it's a

thing where it's just going to chew through your board. The idea is I put it in my deck where either I don't need to have things on the board, or I put it in my deck where I'm just going to have more things on the board than my opponent. Smokesack's another tournament card. It's an annoying card. It's not particularly a fun card, but it is a powerful card. And it was definitely used. Control decks like to use it as an answer to sort of just keep things off the board. Like, early magic, for example,

had a lot more decks that didn't require sort of presence on the battlefield, and this, and why, this is one of the cards that's a good example of why. There were a lot of cards in early magic that really punished you for having things on the battlefield, and spells were already stronger than the battlefield. There was already a leaning towards spells.

It took us a lot of years to get the permanents on the board and the spells you're in hand to have a more equal power level. And so, cards like Smokestack would just say, hey, stupid, why are you putting things on the battlefield? It just would decimate battlefields.

Plus, if you played in a control deck, stupid, why are you putting things on the battlefield? You know, it just would decimate battlefields. And, um, plus, if you played in a control deck, like, it was hard to have answers for because you would answer to their answers. You would put it out as a means to just destroy everything in play and usually your win conditions didn't necessarily involve having a partner in play if you were some sort of control deck. And so anyway, this is the kind of

card we don't tend to make, at least at this power level anymore. It is, it really is the kind of card we don't tend to make, at least at this power level anymore. It really is the kind of card that says, I'm just going to shut down this whole strategy of gameplay. Anyway, like I said, if you go back and look at Magic, I'm sure this card gets played in older formats. It's a very powerful card. It is not a particularly fun card, but it is a very potent and powerful card. Okay, Sneak Attack. Three and a red is an enchantment. It is not a particularly fun card, but it is a very potent and powerful card. Okay, Sneak Attack. Three and a red is an enchantment.

You can spend one red mana, and you get to put a creature card from your hand onto the battlefield. It has haste, although the card at the time, haste didn't exist as a named thing. At the time, it said, you know, ignore summoning sickness, what we said at the time. And then anyway, at end of turn, if you use this, if you put a creature on the battlefield time and then anyway at end of turn if you use this if you put a creature on the battlefield you sac it at end of turn so the idea is for one red mana you can use a creature card from your hand

for one turn you can attack with it you can use an ability whatever you can use it for one turn so the interesting thing was I made this this card was inspired

most people probably couldn't guess what inspired this card because it moved a bit from its inspiration so there's a card called Via Shino I think Sandstalker Most people probably couldn't guess what inspired this card, because it moved a bit from its inspiration. So there's a card called Viashino Sandstalker from Visions, I think. It was a 4-2 creature.

It costs one red red for a 4-2 creature that you can, when you plan to play as haste, you can attack, but then it goes back to your hand at end of turn. And I thought that was a cool card, so I decided to make a larger version of that, which was, what if all creatures did that? What if all creatures had haste when you played them, but they went back to your hand at end of turn?

And I played it, and it originally affected everybody. It was just one of those cards that ended up not being that fun. It sort of, when I was sort of complaining about Smokestack, it just kind of made it really hard to have permanence in play. So then I said, okay, let's not affect the opponent. Because what happened was, when you have something that is a positive for you, but a negative for your opponent,

usually we have to cost it as if it's a negative for your opponent. And really what I wanted to do is make something that you wanted to play with, not that we had a price because it was messing with your opponent. So then I changed it so it just affected you. But what I found was I had a couple problems. One was,

oh, the way it worked, by the way, not only did your creatures have haste, but they were cheaper. I think originally they were two cheaper, and then I tried

making three cheaper. The problem was, whatever I did, whatever I put the price point, like let's say I said it's two cheaper. So what happened was, you wanted a creature that at least costs three, because you wanted to get the benefit

of it being cheaper, but you wanted to play it every turn and keep bouncing it back to your hand. So you didn't want it to cost much more than that so that you can keep playing them. So it really encouraged you to play like three and four drops. And then when I changed it to three mana, three mana less, it made you play like four drops and five drops.

So anyway, I then changed it to say, well three mana less, it made me play like four drops and five drops. So anyway, I then changed it to say, well, what if there's just a lump sum of mana you paid? And I think for a while it was one and a red. And then eventually I said, well, it's too good. If you got to keep replaying them, it ended up being too good. So what instead of replaying them is I just, you got to use it once and then went to the graveyard. And that was a little better. It was a little weaker so we could drop it down to just a red mana to activate.

And here's an interesting thing about this card was, this card wasn't made during Urza's Saga. This card was made during Tempest. I designed this card during Tempest, and then it just was we ran out of space. I crammed a lot into Tempest design and I didn't have room for this card.

And so I ended up resubmitting it during Urza's Saiga. So this is one of those interesting cards that actually wasn't designed for Urza's Saiga originally, but ended up in Urza's Saiga. Okay, next. Soul Sculptor. Two and a W for a 1-1 human. Originally it was a Townsfolk, not a human. One and a white and tap.

Target creature becomes an enchantment and loses all abilities until a player casts a creature spell so this idea of this thing is it turns things into an enchantment until somebody comes along and sort of plays a creature and kind of turns it back into a creature technically I guess this didn't keep it from being a creature

but it basically couldn't do anything I believe is how it worked this is just a weird card I like cards like this because it's just weird and quirky and doing something strange I like occasionally doing things like what does that mean? why would you want to do that? so I appreciated that

Stern Proctor, blue blue, 1-2 wizard when it enters the battlefield you can bounce an artifact or an enchantment. This is... We made something... Because there were a lot of artifacts and enchantments. In fact, I think we originally bounced enchantments because it was an enchantment-themed thing. And then there were enough artifacts that mattered.

We changed to artifact or enchantment. The funny thing about this card was... For some reason, Henry Stern did not like this card. And so we made fun of it. One of the things we do in R&D is we'll often name cards after the player who doesn't like them or the person on the team that doesn't like them. We used to do that.

So this card for a long time was Stern something. And then we actually named the card with Stern in it as a little joke. Back in the days we did sort of vanity jokes. Stern Proctor is a reference to Henry Stern for those who don't know, because he didn't like this card Stroke of Genius, X2U

target player draws X cards this is one of those things so my contribution to this card was originally it said you draw X cards, and I said I like targeted draw, because I do and I appreciate the fact that I like the idea that in a multiplayer game you can let someone else draw cards, or in a two player game

maybe I mill out my opponent. Turns out being an X spell meant that a lot of the times you milled out your opponent. This card, because what this card did was it allowed a control deck to draw cards, which is what a control deck wanted to do. And then when it got late enough in the game, when you had enough mana, you could just win with it.

And so it took away that pesky need of control decks to actually have to play a card to kill their opponent. Like this card already wanted to go in your deck because you already wanted to draw cards and the fact that you could use it as a mill meant, okay, yay, I don't even have to waste a card on my kill spell. This card already goes in my deck and can be

my kill spell. So this, we did a lot in this set to really make control good. This is one of the cards that really, really helped control. Next, Telepathy costs a single blue. set to really make control good. This is one of the cards that really, really helped control. Next, Telepathy. It costs a single blue. It's an enchantment. Opponents play with their hand revealed. So we had a card...

What was the card called? What's the card called? There's a card in Alpha that let you look at your opponent's hand. But the way it works is an artifact. You tapped it every turn. Is it Library of Leng? There's a card that lets you... Oh, sorry.

Glasses of Urza. It's Glasses of Urza. It lets you look at your opponent's hand. You can tap it every turn. What we found was it was just annoying to, like, every turn make you show a hand. So people liked Urza's Glasses,

but we decided we'd redo it a little bit. First, I put it in blue, which is where it belongs, really. It's, you know, decided we'd redo it a little bit first I put it in blue which is where it belongs really it's you know reading minds is more of a blue thing I gave it a nice

flavorful name telepathy made it an enchantment since it's in blue not an artifact and then we made you play through hand reveal

so it's just the information is there we tend to avoid these kind of effects now just because they really slow down gameplay that like hidden information like essentially hidden information makes for

a more fun game we do peaks and things where you temporarily see information but we've stopped having something where you constantly see information just because we think it sort of makes the game less fun temporal aperture it's an artifact that costs two five and tap, shuffle your library

and then your top card is revealed and you can play that card Aperture. It's an artifact that costs two. Five and tap. Shuffle your library. And then your top card is revealed. And you can play that card for as long as it's your top card for free. So this was inspired by a Dungeon and Dragons item. Can you name what inspired this item? This was Wand of Wonder. So there's this thing in Dungeon and Dragons, a wand, that every time you use it, it does something different. And you don't know what it's going to do.

You roll a 20-sided die. And often people will customize it. There was a wand of wonders that came in the book, like if you did the Player's Handbook in Dungeon Dragons. But it was very common. People would make their own version of it. And in fact, the way it would work is, you, the player who owned it,

didn't even know all the effects in it. And so every time you'd use it, your Dungeon Master would roll and tell you what happened. And so you would try to figure out over time what are all the effects my Wand of Wonder can do. So anyway, I wanted to make a Wand of Wonder. It ended up not being called Wand of Wonder because we tried to be careful not to cross the streams

too much. And Wand of Wonder is super iconic to Dungeons & Dragons. But anyway, it became... I don't think it was creative. I mean, it became... I don't think this creative... I mean, it would have been nice if it was a wand. I think it could have been a wand if it was a wand of wonder.

But anyway, this definitely ended up having a flavor that's a little weird. They were trying to get a sense that Urza was doing time experiments. That's where this comes from. So this is representing his time experiments. Time Spiral, 4 Blue Blue Sorcery.

This basically is the card Time Twister from Alpha, although it exiles itself, something that Time Twister should have done. So it exiles itself, and then you take your hand in your graveyard and shuffle it into your library, and you draw 7 new cards. But you also untap 6 lands. So this does something Time Twister doesn't do, which is it Time Twisters and then gives you mana to cast your spells. So it's really, really potent.

This is one of the most powerful of the three spells, of the three mechanic. And this card was banned eventually because it was really good. In fact, I think it's still restricted in Vintage and Legacy. Well, banned in Legacy

and restricted in Vintage. I think, I think, I'm not sure. I'm not up to date on the native Banned and Restricted list. Tolarian Academy. This is the blue one on the cycle. So tap, add blue, equals the number of artifacts you control. Interestingly, when this card was made, it added one.

It added a colorless mana for each. And I was trying to make the cycle, so I changed to blue because I realized we were really close to having a cycle. Because, like, Gaea's Cradle tapped for green at the time. And so I was like, oh, well, and I think Sarah's same to this one. Like, oh, you know,

we can make this card to be red, and we made it with the cycle, and so if we do that, we make this blue mana, and then it'll finish up the cycle. So I took that card that was really broken and made it even more broken. One of my many development contributions to the set. This was a super, super

powerful card. It is probably the most powerful land we've ever made, just because it allows you in turn one to get huge amounts of mana, especially in older formats. Vintage, which has moxes. It's like, play mox, mox, mox, and all of a sudden this land now taps for three. And I haven't even played anything yet.

But anyway, super powerful, and obviously it was a really strong tournament card. Urza's Armor, it costs six. It's an artifact. You prevent one damage from any source that deals damage to you. So that is, you are wearing armor. You're wearing Urza's armor. And so it prevents the first damage.

This card, there's a deck where you would play it with Pestilence, and Pestilence is something that does one damage to you and all creatures. And the idea was you would get out Creature Protection from Black, so something that couldn't be hurt by the Pestilence, and then you put this on, and the way Pestilence worked was you would activate it one shot at a time, so each one was a separate source.

So Urza's armor would prevent the one damage and only did one damage. And so it allowed you to have a pestilence to basically do as much damage as you wanted to. You'd have a creature that stayed in play that you couldn't kill. So you could kill all their creatures and you could basically kill them with it. So I don't know whether

or not, I don't think that ever was tournament level. I mean, only because there was so much powerful broken stuff that that's not how people were using Urza Saga. But it was, I know, a fun casual deck. Or casual deck, I'm not sure how fun it was. I guess it was fun. Next, Vial of Requiem. Two black black enchantment.

During an upkeep, put a verse counter on it. And one black sack. Destroy up to X non-black, non-artifact creatures, and they can't regenerate. Or not artifact, just non-black, non-black creatures. So this is a good example of the growing enchantments. The idea here is essentially, I spend four mana,

two black, black, and then in my next upkeep, if I want to spend one black, I could kill one non-black creature. But if I wait another turn, I could kill two. Then I could kill three. So the idea with this card was you wanted to play it as early as you could and then just sit on it and don't use it until later in the game. And then, if you waited a little while, you just could kill so many things with it.

Okay. Voltaic Key. So Voltaic Key is an artifact. It costs one. One and tap, and you can untap target artifact. This was another really powerful card because there were a lot of powerful things you could do. There are a number of artifacts that tap for three, you know,

colorless or something, and you can untap those. Plus, some of the things that tap for three colorless were really potent, and so... They're really potent things, and so you would want to... Not only could you untap them to get more mana out of them but it was also a way sometimes to circumvent the damage of them being tapped if you needed to so Voltea Key

that was one of the cards that I made that I wasn't I really was not trying to make a powerful broken card I was just trying to make a fun I don't know. One of those things where I... A lot of times in design, we're not thinking about the ramifications necessarily.

Like, I'm not a developer. I'm not... Although, ironically, at the time, I was a developer, but I wasn't particularly strong as a developer. Power level tournament play wasn't really my thing. And I was just trying to make a cool, fun card.

But one of the interesting things I talked about was how we wanted to make an enchantment block, right? That we put all these enchantments in it. But then we made things like Tolerant Academy that tapped mana for how many artifacts you had.

And Voltaic Key that untapped artifacts. Like, there were a lot of really powerful cards that either were artifacts or played with artifacts. And so, that was one of, I mean, called the artifact block too that didn't

help but uh one of the things about really people thinking this as being an artifact block was there just were some really powerful cards that interacted with artifacts and voltaic key was one of those so i mean it definitely... It's funny, because there's a lot of times where I will make what I consider to be a very innocuous little card, where I wasn't thinking of the ramifications. I was just a designer trying to explore design space. Rashad and Port is another one from Acadian Mass,

where I was just trying to come up with a card that had a little tiny effect that you could put on a card that tapped for colorless mana, and tapping the land seemed like a little tiny effect, and I just didn't see the ramification of how powerful that was. So, Viltac Key is another one where I was honestly just trying to design some cute little, you know. I mean, I think, obviously, if you realize how strong, I mean, not only did I undervalue how strong this was, the whole development team undervalued,

because it cost one. Like, if we understood, like, the value of it, it could have cost a lot more than one if you realized all the utility it had. But anyway, a lot of people, by the way, believe the name Voltaic. Voltaic actually is a real word in English. It's an actual word

that means... What does it mean? I looked this up the other day. I don't know what it means. I looked this up the other day. I don't know what it means. I looked this up and I forgot. I was going to... I looked it up so I could mention this here, but it was a couple days ago because I looked it up at the beginning of the first podcast.

I've been doing these podcasts a couple days in a row. But anyway, Voltaic Key is a powerful tournament card that I think is restricted in Vintage. That's a sign that you have a powerful card when in Vintage you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. You can have one of those. I know we might have unbanned it. Did we unbanned it? Did we restrict it? I don't know. It was restricted

for a while. It may or may not still be restricted. It's a powerful card. Waylay. So Waylay is an instant that costs two and a white, so three mana. You put three 2-2 night creature tokens onto the battlefield, and then you exile them at end of turn. So this is one of those cards, the story of this card is,

wow, magic can do strange and different things, and this is really a card where we didn't understand the ramifications when we made this card. So the idea of the card is, it's a white card. It's like, hey, I can get six power worth of defenders to sort of fight the good fight. Hey, woo-hoo, hey, come on, knights. I need you to waylay my opponent's attacking creatures and surprise them and hopefully kill some of them, you know. Or whatever.

It's just like I have six power of surprise blockers. That's how the card was made. That was the point behind the card, you know. And then it turned out that, oh, there's this neat trick you could do because it's an until end of turn effect. But if you waited for the trigger of until end turn effect and then cast the card,

essentially what you could do is you could get them into play at the end of a turn and they didn't go away to the beginning of the next turn. But what did that mean? Now that meant that, for example, if you did it at the end of your opponent's turn, you could get six power of creatures in play on your turn that started in play on your turn, meaning you could attack with them. But the goal of this card was not to give you six power of attackers.

The goal of this card was to give you six powers of blockers. It was costed to be a blocking defensive card. The idea was, okay, it's good. I can get some creatures. Maybe I could, they all could band together and block a really big creature, or maybe they could block a bunch of small creatures, or maybe they could chomp or whatever. It was designed to kill

a creature or two, but it wasn't designed to do damage to your opponent, because it was only something you could do when you blocked. That was the way it was designed. So, when the waylay trick happened it's like oh that wasn't our intent and even to this day uh we we we call it the waylay window or we've always been trying to figure out how to fix it because really the intent of a card like this is we don't want you attacking on the next turn i know some people think it's cool that you can exploit the system and then do things you're not supposed to do but the problem for us

is like we just want this car to be something you know I mean we can write words to try to do it now but it requires us adding extra words. One second by the way

we're going to do something we've never done before which is I'm not quite done yet and I'm really close to being done but I'm at my daughter's school so I wish my daughter goodbye.

Have a good day Rachel. But I'm going to continue until we actually get to work. Normally when I get to Rachel's school is when I stop because I normally see her off. But I need to finish this today. So Rachel's going to be kind and let me finish my podcast. Thank you, Rachel. Have a good day.

Okay, so we're going to continue to work. I don't normally do this. I'm not planning to do this as an ongoing thing. I like my podcast in general being 30 to 40 minutes i don't want to be much longer but occasionally i traffic or something i run a little longer and i'm in w so i'm not i don't have a whole other podcast of content to do so i'm going to finish i'm gonna you're gonna drive me all the way to work it actually takes me about um 50 55 minutes to drive to work now

because my daughter's school is past where I work. I have to go down to her school, and I drive back to work. So I have a longer commute now. And traditionally, I like keeping my podcasts on the shorter end. I want my drive to work to be about your drive to work or close to your drive to work or maybe your drive back and home if you have a shorter drive. But anyway, I'm so close to finishing.

My point on Waylay is that there are cards that exploit, that take advantage of exploits in the system. And some of those are okay. The things that we don't like is, I don't like when players, like, if you're a new player and you go to a tournament and someone does something and your reaction isn't, cool, that's a neat trick, but are you lying to me?

Are you just pulling the wool over my eyes? Meaning, are you doing something that's so non-intuitive that people's first impression is that you're not supposed to be able to do it? I don't really like stuff like that, and this really falls in that camp. Damage in the stack had a lot of that too, where it's like, you would block my creature, and then I would somehow bounce my creature or something like, oh no, it still does damage.

Yeah, but it's not there. Yeah! It still does damage. Red is non-intuitive. The way they trick to me is super non-intuitive. We now have technology to word cards like waylay, so you can't take advantage of that trick

I would love to figure out a way in the rules to get rid of of that it's just a very non-intuitive part of the rules that lead to

once again I don't like I don't like magic being that the player that understands the exploit and the rules better can win

because they can do stuff that the other players just don't even understand or make sense to them so anyway my belief on that. Western Paladin, two black, black for a 3-3 knight. Black, black, tap, destroy target white creature. So this is the companion to Eastern Paladin.

So we had made Northern Paladin, or Richard made it in Alpha. Then we made Southern Paladin. I forget where we made Southern Paladin, but we made it in some expert set. And then we decided to round it out with Eastern and Western Paladin. This is my belief of why we did this, by the way, for a little side note, is at the time,

the only way to get something into a core set was it had to first exist in a normal Magic set. With Magic 2010, we started making new content in core sets. Before that, we didn't. So my best guess is, the reason we made this is not that we really wanted it to be a thing, you know, in, I mean, I guess we said

it's Dominarian, Northern, Southern, Peridot, Dominarian, but the real issue was we wanted to get this in the core sets, my guess. I believe we wanted to have all four of them in the core set. In order to do that, we needed to get it in the set first. So that's why Eastern and Western Paladin are in Urza's Saga, is we needed to make sure that we could get them into the core set.

I mean, I'm knowing how things work, and I'm pretty sure that is why Eastern and Western Paladin were here. But anyway, moving on. Whetstone. So Whetstone is an artifact that costs three, and you spend three mana,

and then each player mills two cards, or takes a touch of cards from the library and puts it in their graveyard. That's what mills is. Millstone is the first card that did the effect, so it's called mill. Whetstone is a millstone variant. The thing I liked about it, I think I made this card.

Either I made this card, or Elliot made this card. I really, really like millstone, so I made a lot of millstone variants. Not 100% sure I made this one. I know I like making millstone variants, so there's a good chance I made it. But Elliot could have made this card, too. One of us made it. The idea of this card was instead of being something that just mills your opponent,

it lets you be more aggressive, but you also got milled. So it made you have to sort of deal with the fact that you got milled. Now, the good thing is, if you build a deck around it, you could take advantage of the fact. Like, there are ways that milling can be a positive thing. So we were trying to make something that said, okay, we're going to let you be more aggressive, but you have to worry about the milling, and you have to, you know, maybe you can take advantage of it or do something with it. I think Witchstone's kind of a fun card.

You'll notice early on, because of Millstone, that, like, once Millstone established that this is the kind of mill effect, we try to do things that kind of felt like a Millstone, so like a Witchstone. Anyway, I find that funny. Next, Wild Dogs. So it costs green for a 2-1. They're hounds. During your upkeep, they go to the player with more life. And they have cycling, too. So this is, so there's

a card called Gosbon Ogre that was in Alpha, I think? No, no, not Alpha. Was in Arabian Nights, I think? I think? So anyway, the way Gosbon Ogre worked is...

It did what this card did. It was a G2-2 for a single green mana 2-2, and it just went... During upkeep, it went to the player that had the most life. So the idea is that the card would trade back and forth. And it was a pretty powerful card. So Wild Dogs was us basically making a new Godspot Ogre. We made it a little weaker because 2-2 was pretty strong.

But we gave it or maybe we made it weaker because it had cycling. So it's like, the thing about cycling this is why, this to me is a good cycling card which is, early in the game, if you draw it in your opening hand, it's really good. Especially when it's, you know, 20-20 and turn one I play it and I start getting ahead with you

because I'm hitting you with it, and then the chance of me keeping is much higher. But if I draw this late in the game, and I'm behind on life, like if I draw this card and like, wow, it's not going to have much board presence anyway, because it's a 2-1, and my opponent's ahead of me on life, well, I don't want this card, you know. So this is the kind of card that can be

really valuable sometimes in the game, and really not valuable at other times. So cycling is ideal kind of card that can be really valuable sometimes in the game, and really not valuable at other times. So cycling is ideal for this card. This was actually a really good cycling card. So this card saw play in a deck called Stompy, which was a mono green deck. Stompy

had some high finishes. I know, for example, that in the top four at Worlds 97, I know, for example, which I'm pretty four at Worlds 97, I know, for example, which I'm pretty sure would have had this card. Oh, no, this is 98, so it would not have had this card. But anyway, this was a... Stomp It was a really aggressive mono green deck.

And it made use of basically lots of... Green had the best creatures for value. Back in the day, it also had the best weenies for value. It doesn't anymore. White has that now. But anyway, and it had giant gross and stuff like that. Okay, next. Wildfire. Four red red sorcery.

Each player sacks four lands, and this card deals four damage to all creatures. So the idea of this was a board sweeper in red. Armageddon. For a long time, white had really been the color that sort of destroyed lands. Red had stone rains and things, but its land destruction could be in deck form, but it didn't have single spells that would do widespread. And the idea here is, okay, I can just do a huge amount of effects.

I'm not killing all the lands, I'm only doing four. I'm not killing all the creatures, I'm only doing four damage I'm not killing all the creatures. I'm only doing four damage. But I'm really shrinking how much lands we have in play, and I'm really shrinking the number of creatures we have in play. So Wildfire is one of those cards that we made and ended up getting rotated into the core set, and actually was in a bunch of different core sets.

This card actually also showed up in some competitive decks. It ended up being initially played in there were a lot of land destruction decks that happened around this time because, like I talked about Raze earlier, there were a lot of very aggressive

land destruction cards and Wildfire was really good where if I get in a situation where I get ahead of my opponent because I'm playing land destruction effects, this sometimes was a great finisher where I've been keeping them down on land. You know, they've been getting through with land because I wasn't able to destroy every single piece of land,

but I kept them low. And then I'm going to be able to build my land up where they have not built their land up because I've been destroying their land. So when we get to six mana where I can cast this, usually they don't have that big of creatures because I've been keeping their lands down and probably they have four or less land. So the idea

here is that you can this was a really good card because the kind of deck sometimes that would play the land destruction needed an end game and the end game was okay, you've built a little bit of something you have some creatures, but this would wipe out all your land and all your creatures.

But not all my land, not my all creatures, because I'm ahead of you. And I probably have a dragon at this point that's bigger than four and stuff. Next, Wizard Mentor. So two in a blue. It's a 2-2 Wizard. You tap to return Wizard Mentor

and target creature to owner's hand. So this is an interesting card. So when Urza Saga came out, so sixth edition came out, I believe, in between Urza's Legacy and Urza's Destiny. I believe.

The reason I say that is 6th edition introduced 6th edition rules, which was a major change, the biggest change magic's ever had in the rules. It introduced the stack. It introduced, it. It introduced...

It got rid of interops. A lot of things, modern-day things, that you might not even realize Magic wasn't always that way came from 6th edition rules. And so one of the things the 6th edition rules introduced, which would later take away by Magic 2010 rules, was what we call damage on the stack,

which was we introduced the idea on the stack, and in order to be consistent, damage damage on the stack, which was we introduced the idea on the stack, and in order to be consistent, damage also used the stack. So what that meant was that when my creature got in combat, I would put damage on the stack much like I do any spell or effect, and then once damage was on the stack,

if something happened to my creature, if I sacrificed it for effect, if I bounced it or whatever, once the damage was on the stack, the creature didn't need to be there anymore, which made Wizard Mentor very powerful. So when we made the card, six edition rules weren't done yet.

And I don't think we were really thinking about six edition rules. We should have been. But I don't think we vetted all the cards quite as much for six edition rules as we should have. And so what happened was Wizard Mentor went from being an okay card

to being a really good card, especially Unlimited. Because the damage on the stack, it allowed me to do damage with... Like on blocking, for example, I could do damage with Wizard and Mentor. I could do damage with something else. And then I could bounce both of them, and so they both could do their damage,

yet not be there to take their damage. And anyway, so it's a good example how you have to be careful of being aware of how your rules work, because a change in your rules really can change the power level of your cards, and that's a good example where Wizard Mentor, like once again, this wasn't really a constructed thing, it was a limited thing, but

it went from being, you know, an okay limited card to being a really, really powerful limited card. Okay, next. Worship. So Worship is an enchantment. It costs three and a white. It says damage that would get you below one doesn't if you have a creature. So the idea of Worship was

as long as I have a creature in play, I can't lose the game. We would later make Platinum Angel in Mirrodin, which basically is kind of said, well, you can't lose the game while I'm out. This is kind of the precursor to Platinum Angel. Basically, the idea here...

I mean, you could... You had some more answers. I mean, if you got rid of the worship... For example, once you... I mean, if worship is in play, you can never go below one. If you got rid of worship, then you for example, if Worship was in play, you could never go below 1. If you got rid of Worship, then you had to do the final point of damage. Or you could also get rid of all the creatures,

and then Worship wouldn't protect them, and then you could do damage below 1. So Worship was an interesting card. It definitely was another card to start a tournament play. The one nice thing about Worship was that it encouraged you to at least have some creatures. It didn't end up encouraging you to have lots of creatures. Uh, and usually what would happen is some of the control decks that played it would just have a few, a few hard to kill creatures.

Uh, or things they could protect easily. Um, but anyway, that is worship. Okay, Yawgmoth's Will. Two in a black. Until end of turn, you may play cards out of your graveyard. As if they're in your hand, I think is what it said. So the interesting story about this card was, Mike, Elliot, and I both designed this card independently.

The big difference is Mike made it in black, and I made it in green. Mike, I guess, was thinking, Oh, your casting spells out of the graveyard. Ooh, that's a black thing messing with the graveyard. And I was like, green is the color of regrowth. Essentially, this is letting you regrow cards with the limitation that you must play at this turn. And so each of us, and we turned it in, and then Mike sort of melded them together. He was the lead designer of the set, so he chose to make it black rather than being green.

Anyway, this card is... How best to explain this? I once asked the pit, what was the most broken card that we had ever made in Magic? And they said, Contract from Below. And I said, okay, how about the most broken card that didn't involve Anti?

And they chose Yawgmoth's Will. This card in Nevada... I mean, this card requires support to This card in Nevada, I mean, this card requires support to be crazy, crazy, crazy good, but it works really well with a lot of things that already are pretty powerful. The fact that it's in black and that it's in the same color as Dark Ritual makes it super powerful,

because a lot of times you would cast Dark Ritual to play this thing, and then I, not only do I have it, but I now like I have three black mana assuming I have one other mana it allows me to play this and still have a floating black mana to play the Dark Ritual again, to get more mana, you know.

So Yawgmoth's Will is restricted now in Vintage and is banned in Legacy, so it sees plenty of play in vintage, although it's restricted. And it is a super, super powerful card.

It's a fun card. I mean, people often ask me when it was broken cards, do I regret making the broken card? I'm like, well, I regret, like, as the developer on the set, not costing it better. I don't regret, as a designer, making the card. There's some effects that are inherently broken. I don't regret, as a designer, making the card. There's some effects that are inherently broken.

I don't think there's an effect that's inherently broken, but I think it needs to cost a lot more, and it is just way, way too cheap. Maybe, maybe, by the nature of how this works, any cost would still be broken. I don't know, but I don't know. I feel like there's a cost at which it's not as broken as this current version

is. Okay, the final card to talk about today, which it's not as broken as this current version is. Okay, the final card to talk about today, and it's two cards, but they combine. Zephyr and Zephyr's Embrace. So Zephyr is a... What is Zephyr? Zephyr is a 4UU 3-4

that has Flying and has the equivalent of Shroud. I mean, it has Shroud. We didn't have Shroud at the time, so it was written out. And then Zepheth's Embrace is 2UU Enchant Aura that gives you plus 2 plus 2

flying and Shroud. So let me explain. There's a funny story here. So this cycle, we call it the Make Me Cycle. So it's like, make me a Shivan, make me a Sarah,

make me a Sengur. And the idea essentially is, okay, well, this is going to make, this is going to, hey, there's an iconic creature in white, which is a singer. And the idea essentially is, okay, well, this is going to, hey, there's an iconic creature in white, which is a Sarah Angel. And so it is flying, and it has vigilance, although once again, not spelled out at the time,

spelled out at the time, wasn't keyboarded yet. So we're like, oh, you can be like a Sarah. We'll make you bigger. They all were plus two, plus two. And then they granted you two abilities that were key to the iconic creature in question. Like, okay, well we'll give you flying and um

we will give you flying and um, vigilance. You know, plus two plus two, flying and vigilance to be like a Sarah. Or we will give you flying and fire breathing to be like a Shivan. Or we will give you, you know we will, you know, flying and the Sanger ability. We will match things so that it, um makes you into an iconic large creature.

But we ran into a problem with blue. We didn't have an iconic creature. What we needed was a creature that had two abilities that we could grant to you. And blue just didn't have that creature. And so we were stuck because we really liked the cycle. Like, make you a Sarah, make you a singer, make you a Shivan. I remember what the green one was, but we had an answer for the green one. So the blue one, we cheated. We liked the cycle so much we cheated. What we did is we basically make a card called, we ended up calling, make it

a Zephyd. What's a Zephyd? Well, conveniently, this set has a Zephyd. And so we made the creature in this set so that we can make an iconic creature for Blue that you could then make. So, like, the Blue one, we cheated a bit. The Blue one literally existed so that, because they all were embraces, so it was like

Sarah's embrace, Singer's embrace. We needed something that we could reference. So Zephyd existed in the set just so we could say, hey, I'm like, um, um, that. And that something that we could reference. So Zephyr existed in the set just so we could say, hey, I'm like, um, um, that. And that is how Zephyr and Zephyr's and Brace got in the set. Or Zephyr exists because we needed to make Zephyr's and Brace, so we made Zephyr. Um, but

anyway, I made it from, uh, from A all the way to Z, to Zephyr. So that, my friends, in four, uh, hopeful, nice, easy podcasts was Urza's Saga. So the plan is, I mean, I'm going to do some other podcasts, but the next design one I do will be on Urza's Legacy,

and the one after that will be on Urza's, I'm sorry, will be on Urza's Legacy, and the one after that will be on Urza's Destiny. So I'm making my way through the Urza block. It gets a little less broken as we go along, although all three sets are pretty broken. But anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed my trip

through Urza Saga. It's fun. I really do enjoy going back to these sets that I haven't worked on in ages. Like I said, this is a set that I developed badly. So anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed the Urza Saga podcast. But I'm now actually at work. Sometimes when I drop Rachel off, I say I'm at work because that's my closing

thing when I'm actually at Rachel's. But now I'm actually at work and actually in my parking space off, I say I'm at work because that's my closing thing when I'm actually at Rachel's. But now I'm actually at work and actually in my parking space. So we all know what that means. It means this is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. Thank you guys, and I'll see you next time.