Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #364 - Urza's Legacy Part 1

Episode Date: September 9, 2016

Mark's first of a two-part series on the design of Urza's Legacy.

I'm pulling in my driveway. You all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so it's time for another design column, another design series. So last time we did this, I talked all about Urza's Saga. So we're going to move on to the next one in the block, Urza's Legacy. Okay, so Urza's Legacy was codenamed Guacamole. Now, if you happen to know that Urzaza Saga's codename was Armadillo,

and that Urza's destiny was Chimichanga, you're like, what? What's going on here? I don't understand these codenames. So early on, when I first got to Wizards, the codenames were named after sound files from Apple, because everybody at the time had a Mac at the office and whenever you named a folder if it had the same name as a sound file it would make that name when you opened it up. So like alliances was Quack and Mirage was Susumi. Anyway it would make it back in the day

you would have a file folder that would have the fold the set in it so you when you click in it to open it up to be able to work on it it would make a noise i get that entertain people um so we decided to start moving away from that so early on our early technology of naming was just to name them silly things so i tend to uh i think i was responsible for most of these code names. I just named them what I thought were silly words. I thought armadillo was a silly word. I thought guacamole. I love guacamole. That's an awesome, I mean,

I don't like the food guacamole, but I love the word guacamole. It's a fun word. But what happened was Urza's, so we call it, I was just naming them silly things. Armadillo, then guacamole. Then Urza's Destiny, I ended up calling it Chimichanga. And then Guacamole and Chimichanga seemed like a theme.

And we started getting this idea of theming block names. So you'll see, once we get to the next block, after Urza's Saga, which is Mercanian Masks, we started to do that. The sets started to have a theme to them. The Evolution codenames, I've done a whole podcast on this, took a while. But anyway, this was guacamole just because guacamole is an awesome word. Okay, so

Urza's Legacy. The design team for Urza's Legacy was Mike Elliott, who led the design, Bill Rose, and myself. It was the same design team that did Urza's Saga. The only difference is Urza's Saga, we gave credit to Richard because one of the mechanics in the set, Echo, Richard had designed during Tempest Design, and Mike used it. So Mike, we gave credit to Richard because he had made one

of the mechanics. Being that Echo was still in the set, probably should have still given Richard credit. I don't know why Richard's not officially given credit on the set. Echo's still in the set, and he still made Echo. I mean, he didn't make any of the individual cards, but he still made the mechanic. But anyway, officially speaking, Mike Elliott, Bill Rose, and me are the design team. The development team is Henry Stern, Mike, Bill, me, and William Jockish. So Henry led this design. At the time, the five of us were the Magic R&D, and all development teams were the five of us.

So this is back in the day where it wasn't who's on the development team. It was everybody in Magic R&D is on the development team. So I was both on the design's on the development team. It was everybody in Magic R&D is on the development team. So I was both on the design team and the development team. So early Magic, that happened a lot. I would both be on the design team and the development team because I was on all development teams and I was on a decent amount of design teams. Okay, so the mechanics in the set are the same mechanics that you saw in Urza's Saga. This is still at the point in time where what we would do is we'd have two keyword mechanics per block, and just we would evolve them as it went along. So

Cycling and Echo were the two named mechanics from Urza's Saga. Well, guess what? Urza's legacy continues. Well, now we mess around a little bit. We try some new things with it, but still, Cycling and Echo are the mechanics. Also, Free Spells and Sleeping Slash Growing Enchantments, which were also mechanical themes in the first set, also show up here. Once again, we hadn't yet got to the point where we started making up new things for small sets. We would evolve things. And as you'll see, we definitely have new mechanical elements, but they're not brand new mechanics.

They're twists on the old mechanics. So Urza's Legacy had 143 cards, 55 commons, 44 uncommons, 44 rares. Once again, for the newer players, this is before Mythic Rare existed. Mythic Rare wouldn't exist for many, many years. And 143 at the time was a very common small set size. For a lot of time, the small sets were 143.

That was very normal. The expansion symbol was a hammer, because Urza was building things. I'm not sure why it was a hammer. So the story, by the way, about this set, well, we'll get there in a second. A few other little tidbits, we'll get to the story. So this was the first set that had premium cards. Before that, Magic didn't have them. This was the first set where we introduced them. And this is the first time that monocolored lands, non-basic lands, got color in their text box. So if you tap just for green, you now would have a green text box. That's something we do normally now, but this is the first set we actually did it in.

Okay, the story. you now would have a green text box. That's something we do normally now, but this is the first set we actually did it in. Okay, the story, so for those who don't know, the Weatherlight Saga had started the block before, and then, well, the story Mike and I had planned took a big shift. And one of the biggest shifts about it was they decided to involve the past. Our version of the story, Urza didn't play a major role in the story, like he ends up playing in this story. So the idea was

they wanted to go to the past and do a prequel to sort of show all the involvement, how Urza was very involved in this whole thing. So this set, Urza's off trying to

solve a problem. I think he needs, in order to stop the Phyrexians, he needs a huge amount of energy. So he's trying to figure in order to stop the Phyrexians, he needs a huge amount of energy. So he's trying to figure out how to get the huge amount of energy. The answer is he collapses a plane, a plane known as Sera's Realm. And the whole story there. If you don't know much about the story, Urza's an interesting character. He clearly, clearly wants to stop the Phyrexians,

who are bad news, but he's willing to do just about anything to stop them. And so Urza takes on this quality of, while, you know, from a Machiavellian standpoint, he was trying to do something good, man, he does some bad things along the way to make the good thing happen. One of which is, in order to get the energy he needs,

he goes to S Sarah's realm. Sarah is dead at this point. It's run by a woman named, an angel named Radiant. And he basically says to them, okay guys, off the plane. I'm going to destroy the plane. And some of the angels, Radiant being one of them, says, no, no, this is our home. We're not going to leave. And Urza's like,

look, I'm going to destroy this plane. If you're on this plane, you'll be killed. So you might want to leave the plane. And they refuse to leave, but he ends up destroying it. So, you know, like I said, Urza does some questionable things in the goal, in a mighty noble goal, but he definitely does some questionable things along the way. The bigger part of the story, in my mind, is what happens on Teleria. So the Telerians are

messing around, Urza and are messing around with time travel. Karn was made out of silver, for example, because, and the means by which they figured out time travel, silver was the object that was unaffected by time travel. Anyway, there is an explosion, there's a time accident, creating

all these time bubbles, in which time moves at different speeds. Anyway, the book about this was called Time Streams. It's one of my favorite magic books. It's a really cool magic book. Oh, another interesting thing about this set. I'm trying to remember why this happened. I don't remember exactly. For some reason, I did the card concepting for this set. For those who don't know what card concepting is,

you get the card, you see what the card does mechanically, and then you have to write a description of what's going on in the art to explain what is happening. Usually after the card concept is written, the art director will go through it and tweak it to make sure that it's appropriate for the artist. But really a lot of what card concepting is, is writing the first draft version of the art description and just defining what it means. What is this spell and how are we going to represent it?

Back then when I did this, the art director didn't really change much. So for all intents and purposes, for Earth's Legacy, I wrote the card concepting art direction, or sorry, not art direction, art description. I mean, still art directed. I didn't art direct.

But I wrote the description of what the artist needed to draw. So we'll get to that. There's a few cards where I definitely you can see my hand. Unglued was the one other set where I did the concepting. But anyway, as far as a

non-Silver Border set, a Black Border set, this is the one set in Magic History where I did the card concepting, which will end up in a bunch more squirrels in art, as far as a non-Silver Border set, a Black Border set, this is the one set in Magic History where I did the card concepting, which will end up in a bunch more squirrels and art, as we will see. Okay, there were a couple new creatures introduced in the set. Beeble, Carrier, and Sponge were all introduced for the first time. None of those, we've used tons. Beeble was something that Jeff Miracola is an artist. We hired him to do a cover for The Duelist.

And when he did, he drew this, he drew a squee covered by the cute little pink furry things, which we ended up calling Beebles. And we decided we liked them and asked Jeff to put some in the set. And so this is our first ever Beeble. I'll get to the Beeble when I get to Card by Cards. But anyway, the Beeble when I get to card by cards. Anyway, the Beebles were cute in pink. The creative team decided they're a little goofy for Black Border

Magic. They still have showed up in Silver Border Magic, but they haven't been in Black Border Magic for a while. Carrier was a subtype for there were a bunch of Phyrexian creatures. I'll get to that. It's a cycle. It's a four card cycle, a four-card cycle, interestingly. And sponge was, I don't know, just...

We had a card called, I think, Walking Sponge, and it was a sponge. Okay. Also, there were a couple cycles in the set. There was a Creature Land cycle. These are lands that had the ability to... They enter the battlefield tapped. You tap them for a color, and then you could spend some mana to turn them into a creature until end of turn. So the white one was called Forbidding Watchtower, the blue one was called Fairy Conclave, the

black one was called Spawning Pool, the red one was called Gitu Encampment, and the green one was called Treetop Village. This is an interesting cycle in the way I think all five of these cards have seen at least some tournament play. Treetop Village obviously being the most powerful of these five and ones that showed up the most. But Forbidden Watchtower and Fairy Conclave I think also showed up a decent amount. I know Spawning Pool and Gitchu Tiamin have shown up, not as much as the others. Also, there was a Sleeping Enchantment cycle where they were enchantments that you could sac at the beginning of your upkeep if

they met a certain event, a certain condition, and then they had a really big effect. I'll talk about one or two of these in card-by-cards. But the idea was, every turn was like, oh, do you want to set it off? Can you set it off? If you can, big effect. So you were trying to set up the effect, and then you could set it up. But your opponent, because it only happened at the beginning of upkeep,

had a turn try to stop you if they noticed that you had a condition which could set stop you if they noticed that you had a condition which could set it off. And finally, we had a vertical cycle. I just talked about this. The carriers, the Phyrexian carriers. So the idea of all of them was they either were 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, or 4, 4. You could sac them.

Did you spend mana or did you tap and sac? Hold on a second. Ba-ba-ba-ba. Did you spend mana or did you tap and sack? Hold on a second. Ba-ba-ba-ba. Did you spend mana? Hold on. Let me... I actually have these coming up. Oh, tap and sack.

So you tap and sack them to give minus N minus N, where N is the power of touchless as a creature. So the 1-1 give minus 4 minus 1, up to the 4-4, which gives minus 4 minus 4. The biggest one was called the Plaguelord. So it was Phyrexian, Denouncer, Debaser, Defiler, and Plaguelord. And

each one of them, I guess the vertical cycle was the 1-1, the 2-2, and the 3-3, but we did have a 4-4 that kind of played into this, that is similar. So a lot of it, I think of them as being a cycle of 4. I mean, it's a vertical cycle. What a vertical cycle means you have a common and uncommon and either a rare

or mythic rare. Mythic rare didn't exist yet so it's common, uncommon, rare. We sort of had a vertical cycle plus one extra. The one extra sort of does the next level so it's 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3. The other one does 4, 4. Now it has this extra ability so it's slightly different than the rest of the cycle. But anyway, on card by

card we'll eventually get there. So basically, the idea is we made Urza's Saga, and then we were off to make Urza's Legacy. For those who remember my Urza's Saga podcast, we had an enchantment sub-theme that got glossed over. Remember, by the way, when we made this set, we didn't yet know it had anything to do with Urza. What happened was we were making the Weatherlight Saga, and when we made this set, in the original pitch that Michael and I gave, the first set took place in Tempest,

the second took place in Mercadia, although a radically different Mercadia. It was still a city. In our version of it, it was a city plane, but other than that, I mean, other than it was a city plane, radically different from what Mercadia ended up to be. And in our original story, the third block was back in Dominaria.

But anyway, it got deviated. So when we were making the set, we were assuming we were making a Mercadia set, not making a Urza back in Dominaria set. So this definitely changed things up. And one of the big problems was that, well, there was a big disconnect, you'll see. We were trying to make, we mechanically made the set. We weren't trying to flavorfully match things. I mean, clearly, when we'd make cards,

at the time was, Pete Ventures was in charge of what we called continuity, but now we call it creative. And Pete was trying to figure out moments of the story that could be reflected. I guess I did the card concept for this. So yeah, what I did is once we had cards, I knew the story and then I would try to match as much as I could story moments on the cards.

But the cards weren't made top down. It was more like, oh, we made this card. Oh, let's see, where in the story could I reflect that? And so I did work hard when I did card concepting to match this. So those are some story moments we'll mention. And once again, the Phyrexian invasion. Oh, after the Telerin has the accident, the time accident, turns out that the Phyrexians were there about to invade,

and they got caught in a time bubble. Anyway, it's actually a pretty cool story. Time streams, like I said, it's one of my favorite novels. If you want to go back and read an old magic novel, Brothers War is really, really good. Time Streams is another one I really like. That's just kind of a cool story. Okay, so the same team made this.

It was Mike and me and Bill. Really, we just continued, like I said, we continued on. So let me get to the card by card stuff because there's a lot of exciting a lot of the stories come on a card by card basis for example we start with Avalanche Riders so three and a red four mana total for a 2-2 human nomad

it is haste and it's echo so echo means what is echo? I'll get to echo in a second and when you enter the battlefield, you destroy target land. Okay, so what Echo was, for those who don't remember, Echo says when you play this, on the turn after you play it, so you pay some amount of mana,

and then Echo means on your second turn that this is in play, you have to pay its cost again. We would later change Echo in Time Spiral to write the cost out so that you could have an Echo cost that's different than the original cost. In the original Urza Saga block, we didn't do that.

Echo just meant pay the cost again. So Avalanche Riders costs three and a red, so its Echo cost is three and a red. Now it says in Gatherer, Echo three R, because we just went back and wrote the same number. But in all the Urza Saga cards, it's the exact same number. We messed around in Time Spiral with changing that, but we didn't do that in Urza Saga block at all.

Okay, so this card was the first ever made Magic Invitational card. Although, interestingly, it was the second winner. So let me explain what happened. The very first Invitational was won by Ulla Rade from Sweden. Ulla gave me a bunch of very jokey cards. He had one called World of Bums, where the card was an Enchant World that didn't do anything. And we weren't supporting Enchant Worlds anymore,

so the card literally didn't do anything. So, and I kept saying, Ulla, give me a real card, and he never did. And so I never ended up making a card. We'll get back to that in a second. So, Darwin Castle wins the second Invitational. So the first Invitational was held in Hong Kong, won by Ule. Second was in Rio, won by Darwin Castle. Darwin, by the way, was really sick.

I did a whole podcast on the Rio. I've done a whole series of podcasts on the Invitationals, which are a lot of fun if you've never listened to them. I explained during the Invitational in Rio, Darwin got really, really sick. I mean, he would take off time during games to go throw up. He was deathly ill.

But he managed to win, despite being very ill. And as soon as he won, he handed me his card. So the card he gave me didn't have Echo in it. I believe what he gave me was a haste creature that entered the battlefield and destroyed the land. So basically what I did was...

Or did it have haste? It might not have had haste. I think what he gave me was a creature that entered the battlefield and destroyed the land. I think that's what he gave me. So at the time it was a comes-and-play effect. Now it's an enter-the-battlefield effect. So anyway, we ended up adding Echo to it.

Essentially, I think he gave us, I think what he gave us, I think, was a 4-mana 2-2 to enter the battlefield. I think he gave us 3R2-2 when it enters the battlefield, destroy target land.

And we're like, well, that's a little too strong. So we added Echo to it, but gave it Haste. So it could attack right away, but you had to pay the second turn. But the fact that you could attack right away and destroy the land meant a lot of times it's like destroy the land, get in two damage, and sometimes

you made the Echo cost, and sometimes you didn't. So, also, I was doing the card concept, you remember. So I said, I took a picture of Darwin and I sent it to the artist and I said, hey, look, this is this nomad character. Can you make him look like this? So originally, the idea of doing the card,

it was never sort of said that we would have the face of the person in it. That wasn't actually ever promised. But as I was the person doing the card, it was never sort of said that we would have the face of the person in it. That wasn't actually ever promised. But as I was the person doing the card concepting, I'm like, that'd be kind of cool. So I just did it. I didn't even ask anybody. I just did it. And it ended up kind of becoming

a thing. It ended up sort of making the precedent that all other cards, all the other invitational cards, had a... The person whose card it was appeared in the art. Not always as the creature. The next one would be Mike Long would be being attacked by the creature because Rootwater Thief was a merfolk and he was human. So he was being

attacked by the Rootwater Thief rather than being the Rootwater Thief. Anyway, what happened with Ule was we went on to start making invitations. I came up with this surprise and then Ule didn't do it and then like, oh, okay. I thought it was a cool prize. But Darwin was really excited.

He definitely wanted it. And so once Darwin's card got made and a few other people's cards got made, Ule came back to me. Once, like, we had Avalanche Rider. I think we had Avalanche Riders and Rootwater Thief, which was Mike Long's, and Crispicula's, which was Meddling Mage. I think he came back to me, or he definitely came back to me. I think that's when he came back to me, after Meddling Mage, and said, you know what?

I won this. I didn't realize it. It was an awesome prize. I didn't realize it. Could I please get my card? And I said, I had one caveat. I said, yeah, definitely. You earned your card.

You didn't have your card. My only caveat is, the card needs to look like you when you won. Because when he came to me, he had been in the army, and he had shaved his head. But Ule, when he won, early Ule, had long, long, flowing blonde hair. And Ula, when he came to get the card, had a crew cut, basically.

And so I said, look, I want the card to reflect you as you won, not as you look now. And he said, sure. So he ended up making Sylvan Safekeeper. Which, I mean, it's awesome tournament play. The card just was one of those things where it was a pretty powerful card. It just didn't quite match the metagame at the time, and so it didn't see as much play as it probably deserved to, but it's a pretty cool card. But anyway, Avalanche Riders is in Urza's Legacy, the very first published magic invitational card. Next, Bouncing Beebles. So this is another example where I was... there's

definitely a bunch of things that happened because I was the card consummate person. I chose to make this a Beeble, and it started down the path of making Beebles hard to block. So Bouncing Beebles, two and a blue for a 2-2, and it can't be blocked if the opponent controls an artifact. Once again, this is one of those things where, over time, we definitely, like, for a set that was trying to be about enchantments, we kept having little things that pointed toward artifacts,

and a lot of our broken cards were artifacts. So one of the reasons this did not go down in time is being the enchantment set, even though it had a lot of enchantment set qualities. Anyway, I liked the Beebles. So I was the editor-in-chief of the Duelist. I was the one, I think, that commissioned or said that I wanted Squeak on the cover.

And then Jeff Minicola drew Squeak covered by these little pink things that were really cute. And so I ended up asking him, hey, can we use Jeff Minicola and make more of these things, which we ended up calling Beebles. I don't know whether I termed the name Beebles. I might have termed the name Beebles. I'm not sure. But anyway, I'm pretty sure that they're on this card

because I concepted them as being Beebles. Okay, next, Cloud of Fairies. One and a blue for a 1-1 fairy with flying. When it enters the battlefield, you want to tap up to two lands. It's got the free mechanic, and it has cycling, too. So the idea essentially is it's a little flyer that has the free mechanic, and if you want to, you can cycle it. The untapped mechanic, so the free mechanic,

the idea of the way the free mechanic works is when you play the free mechanic, as it enters the battlefield, it untaps lands equal to its converted mana cost. So if it costs two, in the case of this, it untapped to two lands. lands equal to its converted mana cost. So if it costs two, in the case of this, it untapped to two lands. What we found was, because of other things

going on Urza Saga, usually with the free mechanic, you would untap lands but end up netting more mana than you spent. So let's say you spent two mana for this. We had things like Tolarian Academy that you could tap. It added blue mana to your mana pool for every artifact you had,

or Gaea's Cradle for every creature you had, or Serra's Sanctum for every enchantment you had. Well, stuff like that in the environment, when you've got to untap something, you often are untapping way more than you spent. So a lot of times the free mechanics were not only free, they were netting you mana. They were making you mana. How much does the Cloud of Fairies cost to play?

Oh, you get four mana or something, you know. And so when you were gaining mana these were very powerful. And Cloud of Fairies, the fact that it could cycle, meaning if somehow you didn't have the means to net the mana, you could cycle it away. Or if you needed the card, you could cycle it away.

But, you know, once you had started getting set up and you had some of these powerful lands to produce a lot of mana, you could use it to generate mana. Cloud of Fairies, by the way, the collective for fairies, we made up. One of the fun things that I had back when I was doing names, I mean, not just me, all the people, is we had fun taking fantasy things and then coming up with a collective name for them.

Crash of Rhinos, for example, preexisted. We didn't come up with Crash of Rhinos. But Cloud of Fairies, there was no collective for fairies. In fact, the guy who does, what's his name? The guy who does Actors Workshop. What is his name? The host of Actors Workshop. I'm going to blink on his name. He wrote a book called, I think, An Exploration of Larks, which was a book that just, he made up names. He made up collective names for animals. Just made a book and did it.

And a lot of that, just people started using those terms. So we kind of did our version of it. And Cloud Affairs. I thought Cloud Affairs was pretty cool. I thought that was a neat collective name. But anyway, we didn't copy that from anywhere. We made it up. So if you ever see it used anywhere else,

that's Magic's doing. Okay, next, crop rotation. Cause green for an instant. As an additional cost, you stack a land, and then you search your library for a land and put it on the battlefield. So essentially what it does is it turns any one land into another land.

But it allows you, it's, later in the set, I'll get across tinker. This is like tinkering for land. It's like you have to give up a land to go get a land. But any land. But it allows you, it's, later in the set I'll get across Tinker. This is like tinkering for land. It's like you have to give up a land to go get a land. But any land. So the reason this was really powerful was we had things like Tolarian Academy and Gaea's Cradle and Serra Sanctum. And you could just go, oh, rather than this forest, I'd rather have a Gaea's Cradle. It allowed you to go get the things that were really powerful. So this card is very good. Crop Rotation, interestingly,

was actually the playtest name for Harrow. Harrow was a card in Tempest where you would sacrifice two lands to go get three. And that was a very powerful card. We had called that Crop Rotation. For some reason they changed the name and this card ended up getting called Crop Rotation,

which is funny because it was a playtest name on a different card. But anyway, it's a very powerful card, and actually, to this day, I believe, still sees play.

Okay, next, Defense Grid. Defense Grid's an artifact that costs two. Spells cost three more, except on its controller's turn. So the idea is, it was a,

we wanted to have some defensive stuff. Back in the day, we did a lot more mega disruption of the opponent. We still do some disruption, obviously, but not to the level we did before. And this thing was like, stop doing things on my turn. I do things, you don't do things. But rather than prevent you from doing things, it just makes it more expensive.

So it doesn't say you can't do things, it just makes it more expensive. So it doesn't say you can't do things. It just costs three more. So it's very good at fighting counter spells or fighting things that traditionally are done by your opponent on your turn. And once again, one of the major stories going on is the Telerian Academy having to defend itself against the Phyrexians. And so, I think the defense grid was represented the defense grid of the Talarian Academy, I think is what that is. Okay, next. Delusions of Mediocrity.

Three and a blue for an enchantment. When it enters the battlefield, you gain ten life. When it leaves the battlefield, you lose ten life. So, there's a card called Delusions of Grandeur that was in Ice Age, I believe, that did this but for 20 life. And that, combined with a card that would come out in

Urza's Destiny, which I'll get to in my next design talk, called Donate, ended up being very powerful. And this is a smaller version of that. I think we liked illusion of grandeur, but felt it was a little too big of an effect. So we made delusions of mediocrity. So a little bit of something blue does not do. Blue does not do life gain.

It's temporary life gain. It's kind of illusionary as a flavor. But it's still something you don't see blue doing very much. Okay, next. Deranged Hermit. One green green for a 1-1 elf. It is echo of... Deranged Hermit must cost three green green

because it's echo of three green green. I must have written down the cost wrong. Yeah, it makes sense. It's three green green. That makes a lot of sense. And it's echo of three green green. And it's enter the battlefield battlefield you make four one one squirrel tokens and all squirrels

get plus one plus one. So essentially it's a one one and it essentially makes four two twos. And if you have other elf if you have other deranged hermits in play

they're you know like let's say I have my second this is my second play and it made four one one you know if I play a second one now I have in play

8-3-3 squirrels and 2-1-1 elves. So this card, the reason it has squirrels is my doing. During Mirage, I originally tried to get some squirrels in the game. What was it called?

Waiting in the Weeds. And the story there is the art director drew an art description that said you can't see them, you see their eyes hiding in the darkness. But then the artist actually drew these cat creatures, so we had to change it. We had to actually make it not squirrels.

So anyway, I really wanted to get squirrels in the game. Finally, I was doing a set where I was concepting things, and by concepting them, I got to choose creature types. So I chose to make them squirrel tokens and I chose to show the elf A big fan of squirrels. The card is quite funny. It's just an elf overrun with all these squirrels

This card ended up being a really powerful card. In fact, Aaron Forsythe, my boss, the senior director of Magic R&D When he made the US.S. national team, which would go on, that team would go on to be the world winning team, he did it on the back of this card, Duran Sharmit. And so Aaron has a big, a lot of fondness for Duran Sharmit,

as do I, just because it was the first, might not be the first squirrel card, but it was the first major squirrel card, like first really competitive squirrel card. But anyway, that was Duran Tremendous. It was pretty cool. Next, Engineer Plague. Two and a block for an enchantment.

As it enters the battlefield, you name a creature type, and then all creatures of the chosen type get minus one, minus one. I think I made this as an answer to some of the weenie decks that were being made. Ended up being a bit harsh, especially against something like goblins because red does not have an easy answer to enchantments and goblins tend to be small.

So this was a very harsh thing against goblins. But anyway, I made this because I wanted to have some answers to tribal stuff. Interestingly, it's funny because tribal, the next block, or sorry, two blocks later, after Urza Saga, no, no, no, three blocks later, after Urza Saga would be McCain and Mask, after McCain and Mask would be Invasion, after Invasion would be Odyssey, after Odyssey would be Onflat. So many blocks away, we would actually do our first big tribal block.

So here's me hosing tribes before we really push tribes. But I noticed that a lot of people were playing tribal decks. I noticed people playing tribal decks, and I liked having answers to things. So I made an answer to tribal decks. It's funny, we really hadn't pushed tribal decks yet, so I'm not sure why I made such a harsh answer. It's a very strong card. But anyway, Engineer Plague. Okay, next, Erase. So Erase is a simple card. It's an instant that costs single white mana, and you get to destroy target enchantment. I'm not sure whether it came first Erase or Demystify.

I think Erase came first. I think this might have been the first time we did this. It's a nice, clean, simple card. White gets to destroy something. The reason I brought it up actually had nothing to do with this set. It's just a funny story. I was making Unglued, and there was a card where the way we had concepted it, I had concepted it, you saw an eraser actually erasing it.

It destroyed something. And the way it got destroyed was there literally was an eraser erasing it. So I named it Erase. And then someone had gone through the file and made a note. They said, oh, you can't call this card Erase. We already have an Erase, or the legacy has it Erase. And then someone had gone through the file and made a note. They said, oh, you can't call this card Erase. We already have an Erase. Urza's Legacy has an Erase. So I changed the name.

So the official name of the card is now Erase, in parentheses, not the Urza's Legacy one, which, by the way, was a way funnier name than Erase. So Urza's Legacy and this card is the only card I believe that is referenced in the in the card name

it's the only expansion and only card well not the might not be the only card only expansion for sure that's referenced in the card name in which it's referring

to the expansion it's italicized it means the expansion but anyway it's this is the Erase mentioned in Erase, not the Urza's Legacy one. This is the Urza's Legacy one. Okay, next, Fairy Conclave.

So this is one of the lands I talked about before. Enters the battlefield, tap. Tap to add blue to your mana pool. And for one and a blue, it became a 2-1 fairy with flying until end of turn. So the idea of these cards, the reason they were so powerful was you could put it in your deck and then, like, for example, at the time, blue had a lot of control decks that played very little permanents. What they would do is they were called draw-go decks.

What you would do is you would play mostly just counterspells and card drawing. On your turn, the reason it's called draw-go is you would just draw just counter spells and card drawing. On your turn, the reason it's called draw go is you would just draw your card and say go. You almost never do anything on your turn. I mean, you would play land and things, but usually most of your spells were done on your opponent's turn, usually at instant speed. One of the reasons that Fairy Conclave became very popular was it was something you could put in your draw go deck that needed you to not have to play creatures in it. But before Fairy Conclave, you would put in like one go deck that needed you to not have to play creatures in it. But before Fairy Conclave, you would put in like one

blue creature just so you had some win condition. But the nice thing about this card was, it was a land, it provided blue mana for you, and once you had control of the game, you could use it to win with. But it was a nice clean, you know, it was basically a land that turned into a win condition, so it

didn't even, like, it provided blue mana, so you didn't even have to waste any, you know, you could use it to get the blue mana out of, and then later in the game, once the game's completely under your control, okay, turn into fairy and hit them a bunch of times and defeat them. But, anyway, it ended up being a very popular card for that.

Not quite as popular as Tree Top Village, but it's number two, I think, in the cycle, although Forbidden Watchtower's also seeing a decent amount of play. Okay, next, Frantic Search. So, Frantic Search is an instant that costs three mana, one of which is blue. So, it's two and a blue. You draw two cards, and then you discard two cards. And then, because it's a free spell, you untap three lands.

So, it's a filtering card. So, basically, what it lets you do is it lets you draw two, discard two. So, it's filtering. But, because it's a free spell, because basically what it lets you do is it lets you draw two, discard two. So it's filtering. But because it's a free spell, because it essentially can net you mana, which free spells tended to do in this environment,

it was very popular because it not only allowed you to go up in mana, but it helped optimize your card. You know, like, if a lot of what you wanted is you need a key card to make your deck work,

well, this was a nice smoothing card. And because you were, like, the free spells that were in mono blue, in fact, this was a nice smoothing card. And because you were, like, the Free Spells that were in Mono Blue, in fact, all the Free Spells were in Mono Blue. I think Blue, it was a Blue mechanic. Played really nicely with Tolarian Academy and a lot of the,

there were a bunch of broken Blue cards in Urza's Saga. So this just played nicely with that. And was a very popular card. Next, Gitu Slinger. So G2 Slinger is two and a red for a 2-2 Human Nomad. It has Echo, so you have to pay two and a red on the second turn, or sacrifice it.

And when it enters the battlefield, you do two damage to target a creature or player. So when it enters the battlefield, basically this card is Shock. So the idea is that you can play it, and it is... The neat thing about Echo, one of the things that made Echo work well was that you got enough out of the card that you didn't always have to pay for the Echo. You did, if you didn't need to, if you were able to, you did. I mean,

this was a three mana 2-2, not too bad. In fact, you could shock something right away, meant that at bare minimum minimum I got to shock something and I got a body to block with. That's the other thing about Echo is your opponent was discouraged from attacking because if you could block with the creature, let's say they attacked and you could trade with their creature, you didn't have to pay the Echo and you got the full value

out of the card. So anyway, Gifu Slinger was definitely one of those cards that had a lot of value to it, that sort of showed how Echo worked in its past, where it sort of gave you a lot of value up front. But, if you had Mana, hey, you know, three Mana for two, two,

not too bad if I have nothing else to do with Mana. If I have something else to do with Mana, maybe I spend it on that. Final card of the day is Giant Cockroach. Three and a black for an insect. Four, two. So this card, one of the things is this is the first time we ever made this combination, the four, two.

I'm not sure why it was a giant insect. That I don't know. But one thing that's kind of cool is, especially in the early days, it was kind of neat to just make brand new vanillas you'd never made we still get to do that occasionally now but now it's I mean

they're very weird vanillas we've done all the obvious vanillas but this was a nice clean simple vanilla and this is the kind of thing we use a lot you see this card it's not always giant cockroach but it is a fun card and it is a nice clean you know

the fact that it's 4-2 means you know it could kill fun card, and it is a nice, clean, you know... The fact that it's 4-2 means, you know, it could kill a lot of things. It's fragile. Usually it'll die. But it's good at winning, and it's good at destroying the thing it fights. And at 4-mana, it's a pretty decent thing. So, anyway, we made it up to Giant Cockroach. So, obviously, I will continue on. I have a bunch more cards to talk about.

But Urza's Legacy is a very... not quite as powerful as Urza's Saga. But, actually, I will continue on. I have a bunch more cards to talk about. But Urza's Legacy is a very... Not quite as powerful as Urza's Saga. But actually, I take that back. I think if you look at percentage of cards, this might have a higher percentage of powerful cards. Urza's Saga has a few cards that are more powerful, but it also has a lot more chaff and it's bigger. So Urza's Legacy might have more power per ratio per card, even though the highs, you know, it

doesn't have quite as powerful. It doesn't have really really one powerful card, which I'll talk about next time, called Memory Jar, that we had an emergency ban, but we'll talk about that in the next podcast. But anyway, I hope you guys are enjoying hearing all about Urza's Legacy. Lots of fun to talk about, and I have a few more podcasts to do that.

But anyway, I'm now in my parking space. We all know what that means. It means this is the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time.