Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #377 - Top 20 Creatures

Episode Date: October 21, 2016

Mark talks about his 20 favorite creature types.

I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. And I took my daughter to work today. Okay. Today, I was going to do a top 10 list. But then I realized the topic I wanted to do required a top 20 list. So my first top 20 list. Normally I do a top 10, but I don't know. I decided that this was worthy of top 20. So I'm doing top 20 creature types. So these are my personal favorite

top 20 creature types. Now my first caveat I always say is, on a different day maybe the list will fall out a little differently. This is how it fell out today. So anyway, starting at number 20. Lurgoyf. So I just have a crazy fondness for Lergoif.

I'm not sure what it is. So the card first came out in Ice Age. It had my favorite flavor text. To date, of all the flavor texts I did not write, my favorite piece of flavor text that somebody else wrote was on Lergoif.

Akhan's Run. It's for Lergoif. Last Words of Safi... Safi Eric's daughter's last words, I believe, is the playbook text. That has inspired the card Safi Eric's daughter, inspired the card Akhan's Run.

I don't know if there's many more pieces of playbook text that have inspired multiple card designs by me. But anyway, the biggest problem with Lurgoyf is no one knows how to pronounce it.

In fact, I had this problem when I was in charge of Odyssey. I was doing names and flavor text which meant I actually did creature types.

And we had a cycle of cards inspired by Lurgoyf and the question was were they going to be creature type Lurgoyf or not? And I really,

I really had like this soul searching because the word no one knows how to pronounce it. It's just not a good word. I assume Scandinavians, it was a nice age. But there's a history with Lurgoif, and so I ended up calling them Lurgoifs.

But I was very torn. But anyway, at number 20, Akhan's Run, I've chosen the Lurgoif. Okay, number 19, Ninja. So Ninja's interesting in that we've only ever made like 10 ninjas. In fact, I think they're all in Betrayers of Kamigawa, and then we made a few in a plane chase or something. We made a few in a supplemental product, but that's it. That's our ninjas. And I believe every single ninja has ninjutsitsu. So one for one, I think it's a one for one. I believe it'll come a day. We'll find another place to do ninjas and not all ninjas will have ninjitsu, I do believe in the long run. I just, what's not to like about ninjas? They're sneaky and they're, I don't know, they're fun.

I like ninjas. Like one of the things you'll see today is I'm entertained by, I'm definitely entertained by sort of quirky creature types. There's some staple ones we'll get to, but you will see that I, like, ninjas just make me laugh. They're ninjas. I attack with my ninja. Doesn't that just sound cool? I block with my ninja.

Anyway, that sounds cool. So I hope one day, one day, I think we'll have more ninjas one day. If multiple planes could have knights, come on, multiple planes could have ninjas. Okay, at least that's number 18. Number 18 is cat. So I will let you know, in the cat versus dog person, I'm a cat person. I've actually owned a couple of cats in my life. Not a lot. I'm not giant on pets in general.

But in my youth, we adopted a cat that kind of came to our door that just, we fed it. What happened was it came to the door, my dad and I fed it. My mom's like, don't feed it, don't feed it. And then it kept coming back because we were feeding it. And then eventually, I don't know, it got cold out. We brought it inside, like we took it to the basement. But anyway, so I had a cat. And then when I first started dating my wife, Laura, she had a cat named Tabitha. And we had that cat for a while. Eventually, as the kids came along, we ended up giving the cat to somebody else,

but, uh, uh, the cat did not respond well. Um, yeah, when the twins came along, the cat was like, I'm not happy with all these babies here. And anyway, so we found her in a better home. Uh, I like cats, uh, as a creature type. I think they're fun. Um, I did a bunch of cats or a couple of cats in Innistrad and it went over really well. What most of we did and just cause the idea of a black cat is, you know, very horror based. And so,

and also like in the horror movies, you know, there's always that moment where like something's coming out. Oh, it's just the cat. And then you let your guard down. And then obviously the real thing comes two seconds later. But anyway, I like cats. And magic cats are not just cat, like meow meow cat. We also have a leonin, which are lions and stuff. I actually

like, the reason I wrote this down is because I really, really like the cat, the actual meow cat. But I do like the le Leonin. I think they're pretty cool. It's funny. Miri, who was one of the characters I made for the Wedlight Saga, was a cat warrior.

Because we thought it would be kind of cool to have a cat warrior. Turns out the other people did not particularly like her, which is why she died. But that's a story for another time. Okay. Number 17. Phoenix. A bird made of fire. How is that not cool? How is a bird made of fire not cool? Phoenix is in a really weird place because it's in red because it kind of has to be in red. Like what other color has a bird made of

fire? But the quirky thing about it is red really doesn't have creatures that come back from the dead. It's not really a red thing. Black does it all the time. Green does it some. We even let white do it a little bit. But it's not really a red thing. But like phoenixes made so much sense in red. Another thing is red is not really a flying color. I mean we put put dragons in red, so. But we just sort of said, well, phoenixes, like, how do you not put phoenixes in red? So, just for phoenixes and dragons, I guess, well, flying,

so red can have a big flyer in a dragon or a phoenix. And red doesn't normally bring creatures back from the graveyard, but okay, phoenixes it can. So, like, we made a lot of exceptions just to stick the phoenix into red. So, um, but it's kind of cool. I mean, one of the things we tried to do, it is one of the creature types that has a very specific sort of mechanical tie.

Like, a lot of creature types can do a lot of different things. But Phoenixes, like, they're going to fly. They're going to die and probably do some kind of damage. And you're going to be able to get them back. That, you know, all Phoenixes kind of fall in that camp. And we don't do a lot of phoenixes. We do them maybe once a block or so. If phoenixes make sense in the world we're in,

we do them like once a block, maybe once a year. But I like phoenixes. Phoenixes are fun. Okay, number 16, tree folk. Ies are fun. Okay, number 16. Treefolk. I like treefolk. Treefolk, so one of the things I learned from numerous art directors is that treefolk are really hard to draw.

That it is, that drawing sort of a, it's a tree, but it's alive. And just making that look really cool is tricky. Not impossible, obviously we've done it, but it is tricky. We did try for a while to make Treefolk the green iconic,

but it just never really stuck. I mean, people ask all the time. I have people that are big fans of Treefolk. Like, why can't Treefolk be the green iconic? It's a tree. But a combination of just,

it's hard to make them cool looking, and we tried them for a while, and it just, the audience was never really like, oh, yay, another Treefolk. I mean, Treefolk has their fans. I'm one of their fans.

I put it at number 16. But anyway, when Richard first made the Treefolks, by the way, actually in pre-alpha, in original playtesting, they were called Ents, named after what they're called in Tolkien. But we ended up changing it over to tree folk, and that's what they are. And anyway, I like tree folk. Okay, number 15.

Number 15 is Vampire. Vampire has an interesting history in magic in that for a while, we were soul-searching over what Black's Iconic is. Is Black's Iconic the vampire, or Black's Iconic the demon? And they both were cool, and people really liked both of them. We ended up deciding to make Vampire a more characteristic race, which meant, rather than being a rare thing you see once in a while at higher rarities,

it's something you can see in smaller sizes more often. Now, once again, Black is the embarrassment of riches because it has two characteristic races. We have zombies and we have vampires. But what we've learned is not every world wants vampires and not every world wants zombies, so it gives us the ability to mix it up a little bit. But the audience, vampires are pretty popular, and they're kind of neat, the other thing about vampires is they have a lot of flexibility they can fly, they don't have to fly, they can get bigger, they don't have to get bigger you can actually make pretty small vampires but you can make big vampires

and they actually have a decent amount of range, like what's acceptable for a vampire is, there's a lot of different things I enjoyed in Innistrad making red vampires. I believe it'll come a day where we do psionic vampires in blue. I think that's just something that, like, we need to find the right world

where that makes sense. But I really, I really like psionic vampires that, like, suck out people's memories. I think that's kind of cool. Got to find a world for that, but I think it's cool. But anyway, yeah, vampires, yes, they

are, I don't know, a good solid creature. And they are mostly characteristic, but we can still occasionally make the big splashy rare out of them too. So, anyway, they're very versatile vampires. Number 14, Wizard. Hey,

it's a game called Magic. How about the creatures that make magic? Um, Wizard's just a good staple. I was happy when we did, um, when I've done head-to-heads with Wizards that Wizards have done well. Um, yeah, I don't know. I just, like, uh, the nice thing about Wizards also is they can go in all the colors. So, like, every once in a while we'll try to do cycles of things in which we want to line up the cycles. And there's a few creature types that we can run through all five colors, but not tons.

And wizards is one of them. Humans we can run through, and wizards we can run through. But anyway, I like wizards. Wizards are definitely, like, the other thing about wizards is you tend to do, they tend to be smaller, but you can do more activated abilities or tap abilities. I guess taps are activated abilities, but

you can do different activated abilities with them, and, you know, it's more, like, it's not that they're great at fighting, it's that they can do things, and I think that's kind of cool. Number 13, fairy. So remember in Magic, by the way, we spell it a little quirky. It's not F-A-I-R-Y as you would normally see like in a fairy tale.

It's F-A-E-R-I-E. I'm not sure where that comes from. It's sort of the fancy. It's kind of like, you know, theater. You can spell E-R or R-E. I feel like we're doing the theater spelling of fairy. I like fairies. I was one of the people that pushed hard to get them into Lorwyn.

I think fairies are cool. I personally like... Magic's take on fairies, which I like a lot, is that they're a little more on the crueler side. That the fairies are kind of mischievous and mean. And not particularly... Like, in fairy tales, a lot of times, there are... I mean, I guess there's a mix.

There's mean and nice ones. We don't do a lot of nice fairies, per se, in Magic. But I like fairies. I mean, fairies have to always fly. I mean, they don't have to always fly because we think people perceive them as flying, so we always have them flying. But I don't know. I like them.

It's one of those creature types that I think we should do more than we do. Not that we need to do them in volume. Not that, like, every set has to have a tribal fairy component. But I just think we could have more individual fairies. I know there's people that really want us to get fairies into green. But really, not being the flying color makes fairies tricky to do. So we shifted them in blue long ago. Really, they're a blue-black thing now.

Oh, real quickly, why don't I talk about this, what colors they are while I'm doing this. So Lurgoif, by the way, we've done Lurgoif in all the colors. Really, it's black and green are the two colors that really make most sense for Lurgoif. Those are the colors that care about the graveyard,

and Lurgoif, the flavor of Lurgoif really is they care about what's in the graveyard. Ninjas have been black and blue. I can imagine red ninjas. That seems like it could be. Cats are often white and black. Sometimes we have cats in green, especially like jungle cats in green. And we've done cats in red. We've done mountain type cats in red. I've done mountain-type cats in red. I guess not a lot of blue cats is really the answer. Phoenixes are almost exclusively red.

Treefolk are almost exclusively green. I think we've done one or two in black, but mostly they're a green thing. Vampires are primary in black. We've done them in red and Innistrad. We've definitely done black and blue ones on like Ravnica although not any mono blue but black and blue

we've done. Wizards are all five colors. You can see wizards in any color you want. Fairies are mostly blue and black these days.

I guess that's a number 12. So number 12 is goblins. Who's not to like goblins? Goblins are fun and goofy. I like some humor in my magic and goblins are definitely's not to like goblins? Goblins are fun and goofy. I like some humor in my magic,

and goblins are definitely one of the most humorous things we do. Goblins just lead to a lot of fun, quirky, neat stuff. And goblins are primary in red. We have done goblins in black. We've done goblins in green. We have done goblins in black. We've done goblins in green. We've done goblins in blue in Mercadian masks,

although I would argue that that was probably a mistake. Smart goblins. Goblins are not meant to be smart. I was not a big fan of that choice in Mercadian masks. I like my goblins not so bright. And they're fine. I don't know. I like the goblin sensibility we've come up with in magic, which I like my goblins not so bright. And they're fun. The goblin sensibility we've come up with in Magic, which I like a lot,

is that their number one competitive advantage is they breed often and fast. And that there's always lots of goblins around. So they can try things and they have room for experimentation because most of their experiments don't go particularly well for them.

Number 11, elemental. This is another five-color one, all the colors of elementals. It's kind of a catch-all for us of things made out of whatever. It's become a running joke that we've really stretched the definition of elemental. That, you know, early on, it's like, oh, I'm made of wood

or I'm made of earth or fire. And then it's like, I'm made of time. It gets a little more esoteric. But I do like elementals. They are a great catch-all. When I make a car that's in a weird shape or something, it's like I could always fall back on elemental if I don't know what else it could be. But I do like the elementals.

They look cool. And I like the idea of, it seems very magic to have creatures made out of things. And made out of substances and stuff. And there's some cool things you can do with it. And I don't know. I like elementals. Okay. Now we get to my top ten.

At number ten. Werewolves. I was very, very proud of the werewolf mechanic in Innistrad. I mean, I was the person behind it. But we really wanted to find a cool way to do them, and it really turned out neat in that werewolves come with this little game, and it's like, I'm going to play some humans, but guess what? They might become werewolves. Watch out. And it just puts my opponent on edge from square one, and it creates a little game you play

with werewolves. I think it's cool. Werewolves are red and green in Innistrad. Before that, we made a few black ones. So people ask, will we ever make werewolves that are just one-sided again? The answer is maybe in the right world, you know, if there's a world where it makes sense. They were so popular in Innistrad that it's funny. Like, we were so successful with them, and they were so flavorful the Innistrad that it's funny.

We were so successful with them and they were so flavorful, it becomes tricky. We paint ourselves in a little bit of a corner, which is like anything less than the most awesome version we can do. People go, oh, that's not as awesome as werewolves. So it's tricky. Obviously, I doubt we've seen the last Innistrad.

Innistrad's a little too popular to never see again. And I feel like when you visit Innistrad, you've got to have werewolves. So there's a a little too popular to never see again, and I feel like when you visit Innistrad, you gotta have werewolves, so there's a quite good chance that we'll see werewolves in their Innistradian form again. I just like werewolves because they're, I mean,

I don't know, I guess that there's something fun about them, like, I like them sort of historically, you know, in stories. It's neat, the idea that, like, you know, it's man that sometimes becomes a monster, but, you know, in stories, it's neat the idea that, like, you know, it's man that sometimes becomes a monster, but, you know, he's sort of, he can't control the transformation, and that's, I don't know, there's neat storytelling. Okay, number nine, Scarecrow. So, I like artifact creatures, so this is, I have a couple artifact creatures, or I have

two, this is, I have two artifact creatures that are listed here. Juggernaut almost made my list. It was on the short version. Didn't quite make my list. But I do have a fondness for Juggernaut. I guess I have a fondness for the card Juggernaut, which happens to have the creature type Juggernaut. So anyway, Juggernaut was on my short list. It didn't make it.

But anyway, Scarecrow is... I just like some of the fun stuff we've done with Scarecrow. I think Scarecrows have they they are weird in that they are endearing like maybe because of wizard of oz like sort of like you kind of want to root for the scarecrow but the same sense they can be very scary obviously so um i think they're a neat creature type for for artifacts um in innishrod i was going to do a big scarecrowrow tribal thing, but we didn't have the space for it, so there's a few of them there, but we didn't really put any tribal support. Someplace somewhere, there'll be some place where, like, Scarecrow tribal support will

make sense, and I'll do it, and I think it's a cool thing to do. So Scarecrows, by the way, are exclusively artifact creatures, not really in any color. So Scarecrows, by the way, are exclusively artifact creatures, not really in any color. But anyway, I don't know, I think they're kind of a neat... They're a neat thing that clearly wants to be an artifact creature, but it has a lot of different ways you can go with it. Number eight, Ataug. This was my favorite creature, my first favorite creature of magic was the Ataug. Uh, in fact, on the old, uh, on the old bulletin boards, before I became Marrow, uh, I went

by Ataug, my little, uh, um, anyway, I, I am responsible for making, other than the very first Ataug, which I did not make, obviously. I wasn't even at Wizards yet. I am responsible. Let's see. The four A-Tog I didn't make, but I turned it from a not-an-A-Tog into an A-Tog. I then made all the A-Togs to finish off that cycle. I made the A-Togs, the multicolored A-Togs and the A-Tog-A-Togs. So I've made the vast, vast majority of A-Togs. I'm a big A-Tog fan. A-Togs have some issues, and they're not, mechanically speaking, they kind of

have to eat things and the normal nature is you don't pay for them to eat things, which makes them, mechanically they have some issues, but they're near and dear to my heart. I do love my little anagram goat. That's where 8 dog comes from, by the way. It's an anagram goat because he ate everything was the idea. So he's like a goat. For those that don't know, that is where the name came from. Okay, number seven. Illusion.

I'm tickled. I really like the idea, especially because this is magic, that I cast things and as long as you believe them, they can hurt you. I really like the mechanic on the illusions that if they're targeted, they're sacrificed. So the idea, or I'm not sure whether they're destroyed or sacrificed,

but anyway, they go away. The idea is as soon as you sort of try to prove it's there, you know, it's like you try to poke it, you're like, hey, wait a minute, this isn't real. But as long as you think it's real, it can affect you. I think that's kind of a cool thing. I really have been wanting to do more with Jace and illusions. It clearly is in this power set.

I've made illusion maker Jace, but it's never quite made the light of day yet. But I do like Jace and illusions. I will get there eventually. Number six, Saproling. So Saproling is a creature type that only exists on tokens. I actually tried to once make a card that was a Saperling, and Brady Downer, who was the creative director at the time, convinced me not to do it.

That it was kind of cool to have Saperling be a token thing. So I think instead it was a card that, instead of being a 1-1, I think it made a token. Instead of being a 1-1, I think it made a token. So saplings are one of the few, sort of, like Lurgoyf and Ataugs, are really a magic-only thing. I don't think saplings exist anywhere but magic. And just the idea of plant-based creatures is kind of cool. I think it's kind of neat that, you know, how does...

Saplings are mostly green. I think you've seen them... Black might have messed with them a little bit, but mostly they're a green thing. And they represent sort of plant beings, like artificial life, but artificial life as, but it's a plant. Oh, you know what I didn't write on here? Which actually, had I thought of it, might have made my top 20, is homunculus. I do like homunculus. I, when I did my search, I did not see homunculus. So, okay, homunculus did make my top 20

only because I forgot about homunculus. But I do, I'm a homunculus. So as an honorary top 20, I'll say homunculus. But anyway, sapperlings, I just have fun. I love tokens. And so I have a fondness for sapperlings. And the kind of creature based the plant based artificial creature

is cool. Number five Myr originally in Myrden I was going to use gnomes because that was one of the artifact creature types and Brady was like gnomes shouldn't be artifact creatures I don't know why

I'll make you a new artifact creature and he made Myr. And Myr's so cute. I'm trying to convince the creative team that Myr can transcend Myrden. They're a cute little thing. And the multiverse has goblins show up everywhere. Why can't Myr show up in more places? But anyway, the Myr are so cute.

And I like artifact reachers. And anyway, I just... The Myr are endearing to me. You'll find as we get down to the bottom of the list, there's things that are endearing to me that are near my top. Number four, squirrel! If it was up to me, there would be more squirrels in Magic. In fact, I am responsible for a huge portion of squirrels. Not just squirrels as a creature type squirrel,

because Odyssey, I'm the one that put squirrels in Odyssey, for example, but also just like showing up in art. Like I did the card concepts for Ursa's Legacy and like Might of Oaks with a giant squirrel, that's mine. I'm like, we're going to show a giant squirrel. So I've not, I mean, there's tons of squirrels that Magic has made, or there's a lot, not tons, there's a bunch of squirrels. I didn't make all of them, but I was responsible for a decent amount of them. And I've definitely been one of the biggest squirrel advocates

in R&D. The problem is the creative team disagrees with me and believes that it's a little off brand, that they're a little, they don't quite get the, I guess they feel they're a little too silly. I'm not sure. Anyway. I know we occasionally do squirrels in supplemental products, but we don't really tend to do them in normal boosters. But anyway, I haven't given up the fight. Go squirrel. Number three.

Shapeshifter. Ah, I love my clones and my things that change shape. So I think the reason I love Shapeshifter is I just story-wise I love it. Mechanically I love it. It's just kind of neat to have things that change shape. So I think the reason I love Shapeshifter is I just, story-wise I love it, mechanically I love it. It's just, it's kind of neat to have things that can change their shape and be different things.

And from a story-stunk standpoint, I'm always fascinated by Shapeshifters. So anyway, I like Shapeshifters. There will come a place and a time, it's one of the things where we haven't really done a lot of Shapeshifter Tribal, but I would love to find the world where Shapeshifter Tribal really makes sense, and I would do it in a heartbeat, because I think Shapeshifters are cool. Number two, Oozes. I like Oozes. Okay, this should be nothing new if you follow me at all.

I'm a big Ooze fan, and I have made a lot of oozes in my day in fact if you play an ooze deck I have made a lot of oozes in your deck I need to find the right place for an ooze lord I think I should have done it in Gatecrash that would have been the perfect place it had Simic in it like what's better than Simic for a place for an ooze lord

so I gotta find a place I will find a home for it at some point. I really do want an Ooze Lord in Magic. I think Oozes are just a lot of fun. I don't know why. I'm not sure what about them. They get to be chaotic and silly, and you can do a lot of weird things with them.

Maybe I just attached with a blob from early in my youth. I don't know. I'm just a big fan of Oozes. I don't know why. I don't know why I like oozes so much. I really, really like oozes as a creature type. And I try to make sure to,

wherever I can, not every set has oozes, but I try to put oozes in where the world makes sense. Okay, and the number one creature type. The number, or my favorite creature type. Not, once again,

this is my favorite. It has nothing to do, there's an awesome creature type. Just because I don't name it doesn't mean it's not an awesome creature type. I'm just naming my favorites it doesn't mean it's not an awesome creature type. I'm just naming my favorites. So my favorite creature type is...

See, you should know this, by the way, if you know anything about me. Is zombie! I love zombies. I don't know what it is. It's funny. All the way back in Tempest, like, the very first competitive zombies

I had made just because I was so excited to make zombies. In fact, in Tempest Block, I made two one-drop, two-one zombies, or two-two zombies, that ended up making a... I mean, I didn't make hatred, but ended up making a deck. So, I mean, I didn't completely feel this, but I made the zombies that went in it, and they're definitely... the very first deck that ever had zombies in it competitively was, I think, based on some zombies that I made. So, um, I also wrote a very funny article once talking about, uh, the premise of it. The article is called ICC dead people. And the premise of the

article is that each creature type has a representative that stays in contact with us to sort of talk about how they feel their race is being represented, their race or class. And so the one I'm... It's a series of letters from Gark, who is a zombie. And he's the head of the zombie union or whatever. And so he writes to me. The premise is he originally wrote to Richard,

and then when I started, I took over, and he would write to me. And it really was me just going set by set of how good it was for zombies, of how happy or sad Gark was of the zombies. It is a pretty fun article if you've never read it. It's called ICC Dead People. CC as in carbon copy.

CC colon. But anyway, I love zombies, obviously. It's funny if you can tell here maybe why I made Innistrad. Zombies and werewolves and vampires are all on my list, on love zombies, obviously. It's funny if you can tell here maybe why I made Innistrad. Zombies and werewolves and vampires are all on my list, on my top 20 list. So, I don't know. It's fun. I love graveyard stuff.

I love coming back from the graveyard. I think zombies is playing in flavor space and mechanical space that I enjoy. The funny thing, by the way, here's the interesting thing, is while I'm fascinated by the horror genre, I'm not a giant horror fan. I don't really like watching things and getting scared, because I'm very jumpy, for those who don't know. But my wife makes fun of me. I'm so easy with watching movies.

And she's like, come on, that was a cat. But anyway, but something about, I mean, archetypically, I guess I like horror as a writer. Like, I don't like scary things but I do like some neat stories with horror

and zombies are kind of cool I love The Walking Dead zombies so um I would argue that it's not I mean it's a horror

and that it has zombies but uh it's more than just sort of a horror film a horror TV show um but anyway so that my friends

let's recap my top 20 so this is my top 20 creature types. So number 21, honorary mention, because I forgot it and I feel bad. It probably would have made the top 20, is homunculus, which is so cute. I like them. They're very cute and artificial

creatures. Number 20 was lurgoyf. Oh, wait a minute. Before I jump into my top 20, I forgot to do the coloring for them. Scarecrow was Artifact. Atog can be any color. Illusions mostly are blue. I think they

might have bled into black once or twice, but they're blue. Sapperlings are almost primarily green. I think black's done once or twice. Mirror Artifact creatures. Squirrels are green. Shapeshifters. You see a shapeshifter show up in other... It's primary blue. Black occasionally does some shapeshifting.

Green occasionally does some shapeshifting. And I think we've done cycles of things. Shapeshifters I think have shown up in every color, but not normally a red or white thing. And mostly it's a blue thing. Oozes show up in green and black and red. I don't know if we made a blue or white ooze,

but red, green, and black all have oozes. And zombies show up in black. They showed up in blue and Innistrad because they were like Frankenstein-style zombies. Pieces put together from the dead, made by science. Okay, so now let's recap. So number 21, honor I'd mentioned that I forgot to mention, was Homunculus. Number 20 was Lurgoif, Akhan's Run.

Number 19 was the ninja, the sneaky ninja. Number 8 was the cat. And I like all cats, but I particularly like the meow cats. Number 17 was the pho And I like all cats, but I particularly like the meow cats. Number 17 was the phoenix. The firebird. That is oddly in red, but I guess makes sense in red. 16 is the tree folk. The creature type that doesn't...

that very divides people. The people that love tree folk really like them, and the ones that don't are like, eh. Number 15, vampires. Number 14, wizards. Ooh, cool wizards. Number 15, vampires. Number 14, wizards. Ooh, cool wizards. Number 13, fairies. I will find a place in...

Fairies should come back, I hope. We haven't seen fairies in a little bit, I think. But I'm hoping to find a place for them. I like fairies. Number 12, goblins. I do believe, by the way, we don't do goblin enough. We do goblin all the time

and I love goblins. Number 11, elementals, which are just cool and everywhere. Number 10 are werewolves. Arr, werewolves. Number 9 are scarecrow. That's because you're looking for a home, by the way. I think there's some place we can blow out scarecrows. Number 8 is a tog.

One day, a tog. We'll find a way to get you back in a way you're not problematic. Number seven, illusions. I would love to do that. Illusions is another thing that I would love, like, thematically,

some set to really play around with illusions. I think illusions are really cool. Number six, saplings. We keep finding places for saplings. Number five, mirror. I will find mirror. I want to find mirror home

outside of Mirrodin. I think there must be a way. Number five, mirror. I will find mirror. I want to find mirror home outside of Mirrodin. I think there must be a way. Number four, squirrels. Oh. Okay, I've not given up the fight for squirrels, but I'm not winning that fight. Number three, shapeshifters. We will keep having shapeshifters.

Like I said, shapeshifters is a place that it's possible we could blow that out somewhere, some world where shapeshifters mean something more, although we have to find a way to do it that somewhere in some world where shapeshifters mean something more although we have to find a way to do it that's simplistic and not

because shapeshifting can be kind of complex number two oozes and my promise to find an ooze lord I will I gotta figure out

where we're going where there oozes that make sense to have an ooze lord but we will find an ooze lord and number one zombies

brains we do zombies all the time. We love zombies, so of the stuff in my top 20 list, it's funny, some of the ones in my top 20 list, like like Lurgoyf and Atog and Squirrels are definitely

stuff that aren't that easy to do. And there's some like, you know, Goblins and Wizards and we do all the time, and zombies, but anyway, guys, that was my top 20 favorite creature lists, so I'm sure, by the way, so things that were, that didn't quite make it, things that were on my short list, rogues almost made it, I mentioned that juggernaut almost made it, I mentioned that Juggernaut almost made it.

I feel bad about forgetting about Humunculus. I'm a big fan. Oh, my favorite creature type that no longer exists is Minion. I was very sad when we got rid of Minion. If we can possibly, if the stars align, maybe I'll see if I can get Minion to come back. I also really liked Town Folk, which is another one we got rid of that I like. But anyway, guys, that... Someone up here as I'm driving into work.

That is my recap. So hopefully, guys, you enjoyed it. One of the things I've learned is that creature types are this thing that everybody seems to love, but everybody loves a different one. That's one of the neat things about them. That's why I like changing it up and always doing lots of cool and different things. But anyways, thank you guys so much

for joining me, but I'm now in my parking space. So we all know that means that means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. See you guys next time.