Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #388 - Urza's Destiny, Part 2

Episode Date: December 2, 2016

Part two (of four) of Mark's series on the design of Urza's Destiny.

I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. And I dropped my daughter off at her internship. Okay, so last time we talked, I started talking all about Urza's destiny. But I didn't finish. So today I will continue. So where did I leave off? I left off in C. So Covetous Dragon. So Covetous Dragon costs four and a red, so five total, one of which is red. It's a 6-5 dragon.

It flies, of course. And if you control no artifacts, you sacrifice it. So, this was part of a three-card cycle. I'll actually talk about all three of them as we get to them. This one cared about artifacts and wanted to have artifacts.

And I always talk about how the goal of Urza Saga was to be an enchantment block, yet it's always perceived as an artifact block. Well, here's one of the things contributing to that. This was really good in an artifact deck. In fact, so Kodish Dragon, the idea we played around with was we liked the idea of,

hey, you know, here's a dragon. He loves artifacts. He loves his artifacts around. He's happy. He's cheaper. But if you don't have artifacts, he goes away. So the famous story with Covetous Dragon took place at the 99 World Championship in Yokohama. So Marco Bloom, who probably is best known for being on Phoenix Foundation, which was, um, a pro tour team that involved, um, Kaibuda, Dirk Baberowski, and Marco Bloom.

And they won two years in a row. Um, and they were, like, the dominant team for a little while. Uh, they were all very good. Anyway, Marco Bloom, Blum was the German national champion in 1999 that is the same year by the way that Kai Buda would go on to win the

world championship Kai at the time by the way was somewhat unknown I mean he had done well in Europe at a lot of the European Grand Prix so the people that kind of were in the know were aware who he was but he was. But he was not yet, you know,

Kai Buda that he would later become when he won seven Pro Tours in a very short period of time. Anyway, so Marco Bloom was playing this very artifact-heavy deck. I think, in fact, Marco Bloom might have been playing the exact same deck that Kai Buda won the World Championship with that year. It was very similar.

Basically, it was an artifact-heavy deck that was mono-red. Mono-red with artifacts. And the idea was, the deck had so many artifacts that, like, by the time you could play a Covetous Dragon, of course you had artifacts. And there's a famous play that Marco...

Marco Bloom, by the way, before I talk about this play, very, very good player. I mean, he might have been the weakest player on Phoenix Foundation, but that's only because he was with two Hall of Famers, including one of the best people to ever play Magic. Not that Dirk was even a sludge there either. But anyway, so Marco is playing,

and he gets to the point where he can play his Covetous Dragon. Like, he draws it a little bit later, and he plays it. Normally in a deck, like, you're using artifacts to even play the Covetous Dragon. Like, he draws it a little bit later and he plays it. Normally in a deck, like, you're using artifacts to even play the Covetous Dragon. But he plays the Covetous Dragon

and then realizes he has no artifacts. Like, this is like the finals of the World Championship in one of the games. And, like, he plays his

Covetous Dragon only to discover that somehow, I mean, this deck always has artifacts in play. It's just the way the deck works. But through some quirk of fate, just somehow, I mean, this deck always has artifacts in play. It's just the way the deck works. But through some quirk of fate,

just somehow he managed to not draw artifacts and get enough mana and play Cuphead's Dragon, and it immediately died. And one of the things that's sucky, by the way, is it sucks when, like I said, Marco Bloom is an awesome, awesome player. German national champion. Multiple Pro Tour winner.

And, you know, the move he might be most remembered for is just a stupid, like, you know, like, his deck always had artifacts in play, so it's the kind of thing where you didn't even think about it. It wasn't like you had to be really careful about it. You always had artifacts in play. But this one time,

in this one match, in this one game, in this one championship, you know, world team championship, the Germans were playing the Americans. Who was the American champion? I know Z was on the team, but he wasn't the American champion. But anyway,

the Americans ended up beating the Germans. In fact, the funny thing was, the team championship was Germany versus America, and the individual championship was Germany versus America. Ca the individual championship was Germany versus America. Kai Buda was playing, I think, Mark Lapine of the United States. And Kai crushed Mark Lapine,

but the Americans managed to win in the team event. So, it was 1-1 for Germany and America in the finals that year. Anyway, Kavish Dragon went on to be a very popular creature. It's powerful. There were so many strong... Even though, for all our saying, we were trying to make it an enchantment block,

it will forever be remembered as the Artifact Cycle. And in Artifact, most of the broken cards... Or, not most. A lot of the broken cards in the block were either Artifacts themselves or interacted with Artifacts. So, anyway, Covenish Dragon ended up being quite the player. Next, Disappear. Two blue blue, so four

mana, two of which is blue. It's an enchantment. Enchant creature, specifically an aura. So for blue, one blue mana, you can return enchanted card name and this enchantment, Disappear, to owner's hands. So the idea was if I put this on my creature, then I've

now protected my creature, and I can use it to, for one mana, one blue mana, I can use it to bounce whatever I need to. But the enchantment itself also gets to come back. Now there's a couple different ways you can do this. A, you can put this on your opponent's creature

if you want. So essentially for three blue blue, you can, I'm A, you can put this on your opponent's creature if you want. So essentially, for three blue blue, you can... I'm sorry, for two blue blue blue, for five mana, three of which is blue, you can bounce

one of your opponent's creatures. Or you can put it on your own creature and then if something, if some shenanigans happen or something where it's about to die, you can use it to bounce.

Remember, I talked about this last time, that damage on the stack at the time existed because six edition rules. So there are some shenanigans you can do it to bounce. Remember, I talked about this last time, that damage on the stack at the time existed because of Sixth Edition rules. So there are some shenanigans you can do with that. One of the things you'll see, by the way, as the evolution as we go along is auras, creature enchantments especially.

Players, the average player, I'm not talking the top end player, the really established good player learns early that, oh, they're card disadvantaged, and so they're very hesitant to play creature enchantments. But, like, I used to do a thing called deck clinic, where I would, people would come to me and they would give me their deck, like at a convention or something, and I would look through it.

And one of the common things I would do when I would look at beginner's decks is say the following. I would say to them, you might want to have more creatures in your deck than creature enchantments. Creature enchantments are very, very popular with a less experienced player. They're fun. They're flavorful. They seem kind of powerful.

But that's because until you understand card disadvantage. The problem with an aura most of the time is, let's say I put it on my creature and you manage to destroy my creature, I've now lost not one card but two cards. And so for card advantage reasons, they've never been constructed particularly strong. Not that strong in limited, although slightly better in limited, just because creature removal is a little more infrequent.

But anyway, we're always on the lookout to try to figure out ways to sort of make auras that somehow don't lose you the card advantage. So this is one example of us trying to mess in that space a little bit, because if you normally, for example, let's say you just bounce the creature, well, then you lose the creature in jamming, and then it's not good card advantage. But anyway, I like this card. I think it was a... One of the things that's fun about doing your own set

when you're the only person designing the set is you can make a lot of cards that you think are entertaining. And this was a cutesy card. It didn't end up being particularly good. But I always appreciated kind of the... I don't know, the design of it. Next, Donate. Two and a blue sorcery.

So three mana total, one of which is blue. Target player gains control of a permanent new control. Okay, so there's a great story to this one. So, one of the things I used to do before I went to Wizards is I loved, I was a Johnny, and I loved making just weird, crazy, fun decks. And one of the things that I enjoyed,

one of the things I enjoyed, I made a deck that the whole idea of the deck was I would get into play things that were hard to maintain, that had weird upkeeps, or just things that were difficult to deal with. And then I would give them to my opponent. Like, for example, I would take

Force of Nature, for example. And Force of Nature says if you don't pay a whole bunch of green mana, it does 8 damage to you every turn. So what I would do to it is I would put a Spirit Link on it, which whenever it would do damage, I would gain life. So as long as it had Spirit Link on it,

I didn't care if it damaged me because it would do 8 damage to me, but I'd gain 8 life, whatever, it'd cancel out. But then if I ever gave it to my opponent, if they couldn't pay for it, which often was hard if they weren't paying green, because it required a whole bunch

of green mana, it would not only do 8 damage to them, I would also gain 8 life. So anyway, I made a whole deck of stuff like this where I would just get out things that you wouldn't normally want to have, and I would give it to my opponent. And at the time,

I think there were two ways to do that. There was a card called Juxtapose in Legends that allowed you to exchange, I'm not sure if it was a creature for a creature. It might have been a creature or an artifact for a creature or an artifact. But at least it was creature for creature. I used to exchange creatures. And then there was an artifact called

Gauntlet of Might, I think. Gauntlet of, no, Gauntlet of Chaos. Gauntlet of Chaos. And that also allowed you to exchange things. So anyway, but one of the things was the only way to do it was I always had to take something. So I had to exchange things. I wanted to give you my thing, but I had to take one of your things. And one of my problems I'd run into was this was during an era where people didn't play creatures all that much.

Because, you know, just legends had a bunch of, like, the abyss and it had a bunch of cards that really made it disadvantageous to play creatures. And so one of the things about the environment at the time was people didn't always play creatures. So one of my problems in this deck was I wanted to exchange, I wanted to give you a dangerous creature, but the problem was I had to exchange it. So I had to figure out some way to give you a creature, which wasn't really easy at the time. And so what I really wanted is I just wanted to give you my creature. Why must I take a creature? Can I not just give you a creature? So when I got into R&D, I said, you know what? Here's a card that I always wanted.

I was with John, and he goes, this is a fun card. And my thought of the process was, you know, hey, what danger could this do? It's a pretty goofy card, and my deck was never a top-tier deck or anything. So I'm like, okay, so I made Donate, thinking this is a goofy card. This is the kind of card that people have fun with and Johnny's can go to town, but you know, it's not a major player. You're never going to see it in a tournament, you know, it's not a major player. You're never going to see it like in a tournament, you know, a major tournament.

Okay, flash forward. So I'm not sure of the format at the time. I think it was before Legacy, there was a format called 1.5. I don't know whether this was extended or proto-Legacy or whatever, but there was a format in which there was a thing called the Trix deck. Why the Trix deck, real quickly? Once upon a time, somebody made a deck which recursed something.

Basically, they had something that did damage whenever you played a creature, and they were cursed a shield sphere or an ornithopter or something like that. And the idea is they would keep playing the same zero-drop creature, but every time they played it, it would do one damage to the opponent. So it allowed them, when they got out, I forgot the enchantment that got it back to you, but it was a

three-card combo in which you could do infinite damage to your opponent, basically, by playing a zero-drop creature that does one damage based on the enchantment, and then this other enchantment, when the creature would die, instead of it dying, it went back to your hand. I'm blanking on the names of the pieces of this. But anyway, the deck was called Fruity Pebbles. I don't know why they called it Fruity Pebbles, but they did.

And then somebody made a version of it, but I think it had necro in it, so it had black in it. So they called it Cocoa Pebbles. And anyway, that set off a whole thing for a while where all the decks in, I think it was extended, were named after cereals. It was a thing. So anyway, somebody made a deck. So they figured out that you take the card Illusions of Grandeur. So Illusions of Grandeur, card illusions of grandeur so illusions of grandeur which has a cute little bunny on it so illusions of grandeur what it does is it you play it and it gives you 20 life and then it has a cumulative upkeep which gets harder and harder to pay and then at some point if you can't pay it anymore then it goes away and when it goes away you lose 20 life so the idea was while i can keep this thing in play, I'm more powerful than I seem.

It's sort of the flavor of it. But, so here's where Donate comes in, where Donate proved to be very effective. So I play Illusion of the Granger, I get 20 life. Now I donate it to my opponent. So now my opponent is in a bad situation.

They now have an enchantment that is a cumulative upkeep with blue in it so if they're not even playing blue it's super hard for them to upkeep they now gotta do

they now gotta pay cumulative upkeep oh for those who don't know what cumulative upkeep is so this was introduced in Ice Age cumulative upkeep gives you a cost

let's say the cost is blue a single blue mana the first turn the upkeep is just a single blue mana but the next turn now it's double it's two blue mana then it's three blue mana then it's four blue mana. The first turn, the upkeep is just a single blue mana. But the next turn, now it's double. It's two blue mana. Then it's three blue mana.

Then it's four blue mana. It just keeps... You have to pay the cost multiple times depending on what number of turns it is. So cube of upkeep just gets harder and harder to pay. So I give you Illusion of the Grandeur, which I think the cube of upkeep was a single blue mana. If you don't pay it, it will go away.

When it goes away, you, the controller of the Illusion of Grandeur, lose 20 life, which usually was enough to kill you. So the idea was, I get out Illusion of Grandeur, which, by the way, can help protect me against you as you're trying to defeat me. Once I get my donate, I donate it to you, and usually it'll kill you unto itself, but hey, maybe I have a disenchanter. have some means to destroy it which will immediately kill you and

the deck was called Trix because it was tricky and it was it became really popular and so donate went from being this haha goofy card to being a like top tier tournament card and I said I vowed that we made a mistake because one of the problems was if if you can just easily give away things that are dangerous it's harder for us to make cards that kind of are dangerous to you um and so i said we shouldn't make those anymore and then in uh eldritch moon we made harmless offering which is our red donate so um we'll see what happens uh The developers said last time we didn't, like in Urza's

Destiny, we didn't really test for it. It ended up being broken. I mean, there were a lot bigger problems, I guess, in Urza's Saga Block than donate, but this time around they claimed they tested it, so we'll see. Okay, next. Elvish Piper. Elvish Piper is three and a green for a 1-1

elf shaman. For green and tap put a creature card from your hand onto the battlefield. So this was the first card essentially from Unglute. Unglute had a card called Timmy Power Gamer. He basically did this. I think the numbers were not quite as good as this.

And we decided at some point that we could just make Timmy Power Gamer in Blackboard because it was Silverboard originally some point that we could just make Timmy not only could we make Timmy the Power Gamer in Blackboard because it was in Silverboard originally but that we could we could do it

with better numbers so and the funny thing was that I'm not even sure if Unglute came out before I made it before Earth is Destiny

but I'm not sure if it came out it came out around this time they were close to each other in fact I think it came out before Earth is Destiny but anyway it's one of those examples of a of around this time. They were close to each other. In fact, I think it came out before Urza's Destiny. But anyway,

it's one of those examples of a silver border card inspired a black border card. Okay, Emperor Crocodile. Three and a green, so it's four mana total. One of which is green for a 5-5 Crocodile. And if you control no other creatures, sacrifice Emperor Crocodile.

So this is, I said before, that Covetous Dragon was part of a cycle. So this was a three-card style. Here's something you don't see often. Although there's, we do this occasionally. It's a cycle in which there's a number of them. There weren't five, though. There just were as many as it made sense to make. And at the time, there were only four permanent types.

Planeswalkers would come later. But there was lands, there was creatures, there were enchantments, there was artifacts. So what we did is we made three creatures that cared about having a particular permanent in play. We didn't do land, because obviously having land in play was not much of a problem. So Emperor Crocodile required other creatures in play. If it was ever the only creature in play, you had to sacrifice it. Covetous Dragon did artifacts. We'll come up to another one later that does enchantments.

I think Emperor Crocodile saw a little bit of play. Not as much as Covetous Dragon. But I do believe it saw a little bit of tournament play. This is a big crocodile. Somehow it's funny if little bit of tournament play. This is a big crocodile.

Somehow it's funny, if you look at the crocodiles in Magic, they tend to be pretty big. We like to think of crocodiles as like, yeah, I can take on a hill giant, no problem. It's an emperor crocodile. Okay, next. Eradicate two black black. It's a sorcery.

So four mana, two which is black. Exile target non-black creature. Then search the graveyard, hand, and library and exile all copies. And then you shuffle your libraries and you look at the library. So eradicate was part of a five card cycle. The idea was I destroy something or counter something. I get rid of something. Blue did spells with quash.

Green did artifacts red did land and white did enchantments is my guess I believe is what it was black did creatures obviously the idea was this was inspired by this card lobotomy that I made in um tempest and lobotomy was a spell in which

I looked at your hand took a card out of your hand and then basically got rid of all the other copies of the card. That I sort of, I read, you no longer know how to cast this spell was the idea. That's the flavor that I've lobotomy'd you. So the idea here was

something that sort of kind of punished you for playing duplicates of things. And so in Eradicate, sort of, it both killed something and then lobotomied you, was the idea. And I liked it. I liked lobotomy quite a bit.

I was inspired, so I made a full cycle here. Eradicate saw some tournament play. One of the good things about it was that if you were ever facing something where you had a key component, like in order to make it work, there was a combo deck, or there's just some card that was really, really important to the deck,

this really hammered those kind of decks. Because not only did you get rid of one copy, you got rid of all the copies. And then it became hard for them to do the thing they needed to do. But anyway, I like to eradicate. The funny thing was originally, the problem I ran into was that there are only four permanent types at the time. I mean, no planeswalkers. So like, okay, I destroy lands,

I destroy creatures, I destroy enchantments, I destroy artifacts. Uh-oh, how do I make a cycle? And we then realized that the thing we were missing was instance and sorceries. Oh, but if I made a counterspell

that counters instance and sorceries, then I could also use that. So now all the card types were covered. So also at the time, the interrupts had gone away because 6th edition had just happened, so no more interrupts. So yeah, Squash, it must have just been Instants and Sorceries. Okay, next, False Prophet. So False Prophet costs 4 mana, 2 white white so two uh generic and two white um and it is a

two two human cleric and when it dies you exile all creatures so it's a wrath a death trigger wrath of god essentially although it exiles rather than um i think at the time we were messing around with trying to shorten some of the stuff, and basically saying you couldn't regenerate just took more space than saying, okay, we didn't have the term exile at the time. At the time, you removed it from the game. But anyway, this is another example of a pretty solid card. This card saw some play in tournaments.

And the idea essentially is, okay, I have a creature, but when I need the creature to be a Wrath of God, it turns into a Wrath of God. Now, I need a means to sacrifice it or get rid of it, but that's not that hard to get. So False Prophet was sort of Wrath of God on a stick. In fact, a Wrath of God that could attack you until the point at which you had card disadvantage. And the other cool thing about it was, so let's say I got to a situation where I was in trouble. Well, now I can use this as a blocker, and, like, if you attack me,

the threat is I block with it, have it die, and then all your creatures die. So it also was a real good... It was a real good thing to prevent the opponent from wanting to attack. So False Prophet did good work. Just threatening what he was going to do often was enough to do the thing he needed to do.

And once again, like I said, we're playing into the death trigger space. I mean, one of the things you'll point out as you go through a set like this is a lot of what happens is, I mean, especially in the olden days, was I really had a theme, I was playing up the theme,

and I would hit the theme a lot. There weren't tons of death triggers at the time, by the way. Not like there were a lot of death triggers in Magic. This set introduced a lot of, I don't. Not like there were a lot of death triggers in Magic. This set introduced a lot. I don't know how many there were prior to this set, but this set might have doubled the number, or maybe more than that. It introduced a lot of effects.

And so I was also interested in saying, what are basic effects that we've never done as a death trigger? So, I mean, False Potion is a good example. Okay, next. Fledgling. Fledgling. Fledgling Osprey. So it costs a single blue mana.

It's a 1-1 bird. And it's enchanted. It has flying. So Arabian Knights had a card called Flying Men, which was a 1-1 flyer for a single blue mana. Because the original alpha had Scribd Sprites, was a 1-1 flyer for a single green mana. And at some point, we decided that was too good,

that you couldn't have a 1-1 for one drop that flew. And so this was me, I really like Flying Men. This was me trying to make a Flying Men-like card. It's way, obviously, way weaker than Flying Men.

And since then, we've realized that, you know, blue and white can do that. You know, I mean, green shouldn't do it. But blue and white can have a one-drop,

you know, one-drop, one-one flyer. So this is a good example. It's funny how if you look at the evolution of magic, early magic really, the spells were really, really strong and the creatures were relatively pretty weak. And a lot of the history of magic is us going, oh, these spells are a little too strong. Not still too strong. Nope, still too strong. And creatures, these are too weak. Not still too weak. It took us a long time to get equilibrium.

I think my guess is, because they were repetitive damage, I think Richard overestimated how powerful they were, and so one of the things that's true is that early magic, you know, there was amazing design

that went on in early magic, but real modern development didn't happen for a while. And, you know, until you understand the system, it's very, very hard, by the way. Like, right now, we have a development team that, like, are pro tour players that have been playing Magic for 20 years, that, you know, like, and we understand

the nature of how Magic works. And even now, with all that history and all that knowledge and all that experience, it's still really, really, really hard to balance magic. So we'll give Richard a break. He was working with a system that he was just guessing at. So that's why. The other thing was, he was trying to definitely make it exciting, and I think that it took us a little time to understand quite

how, where the right level of spells and creatures needed to be. Next, Flicker! Ooh, Flicker. So Flicker costs one and a W, so two mana, one which is white, sorcery, exile target, non-token permanent, then return to the battlefield under owner's control. Why do we say

non-token? I guess we were afraid they would just destroy tokens. So this was, I designed this they would just destroy tokens. So this was I designed this to be a vertical cycle. So originally Flickr was an instant. I don't think it had the token rider and it was at common. What happened was I turned over a vertical

cycle and then the development team I don't know, they were worried about it or something. They ended up making one of them, taking my common, turning it into a sorcery, adding, they were worried about it or something. They ended up making one of them, taking my comment, turning it into a sorcery, adding the writer about tokens and putting it at rare.

And so, so this is an effect I really love. This is, like, what happened was, okay, so the history of flickers.

So, when I first got to Wizards, the first set I ever worked on was Alliances. The second set I ever worked on was Mirage. And I was on the development team. And one of the things is they introduced an ability

called Phasing. And what Phasing did was, a creature with Phasing, every other turn would go away, and then be away for a turn. So the idea is, beginning of your upkeep, if it was in play, it would phase out. If it was out of play, it would phase in and essentially at haste. So, on the turns

that it phased in, you could attack with it. And the idea was you paid for a rat, you know, you paid cheaply for the creature, but you got it half the time was the idea. So anyway, while I was working on Mirage development, I

did a lot of designing. I did a lot of hole filling and stuff. And one of the ideas that I really liked that ended up being on a couple of cards was making creatures that could phase themselves. Meaning that phasing wasn't just, I'm there half the time. It also was a means of protecting yourself. So if you had phasing, if you had activated phasing, the idea is, okay, what happens is if you ever try to deal with me, I can phase myself out, and then I come back next turn. And I really, really like that execution of phasing, the idea that I can... And also, by the way, there's a card called Oubliette from Arabian Nights.

And what Oubliette was, is you put a creature in jail, essentially. And so the idea was, when you put it in jail, it locked it away, but when you ever took it out of Oubliette, it came back, and it triggered as if it were being cast again. Same with if you phase something out. It didn't trigger Lee's play effects at the time. Or it didn't. I mean, phasing doesn't do that. But anyway, when you brought it back, it did trigger Enter the Battlefield effects.

So anyway, I just was very entertained by this. And so I decided, what if I just made an effect that lets you do that in anything? Okay, it did trigger enter the battlefield effect. So, anyway, I just was very entertained by this, and so I decided, what if I just made an effect that lets you do that in anything? Okay, it goes away. This flicker was an immediate flicker. And I remember when I first made it, I called it Tabula Rasa. I think I

put it in blue, and then I realized I liked the Enchant Me theme in blue, so I made that the blue vertical cycle but I ended up moving Flickr to white. Flickr has always kind of been a whiter blue thing. They're the two colors that make the most sense and obviously the colors we do the ability in. Anyway, I love flickering and obviously it's become a core part of Magic. This was the first time it ever showed up but it was something that I really enjoyed

and so and the one thing about flickering is that it works so well with so many different things that it's so easy to go, well, we'll put some flickering in the set, because it just combos with the set. It combos with everything. I was going to say, it's the Ginsu knife that you guys have known. Most of you probably don't know what the Ginsu knife is. It's a commercial from long ago about a knife that did 8,000 different things. Anyway, I'm showing my age.

Okay, the next is Gamekeeper. So Gamekeeper is three and a green, four mana, one of which is green, two, two elf. When it dies, you reveal the top card of your library until you reveal a creature, and then you put it on the battlefield. So the weird thing is, when I originally made this cycle, this was exactly like Academy Rector. Originally what it did is when it died, you went and searched for a creature and then brought it into play. Interestingly, the development team thought that

was overpowered, and so they changed it to just go from top of library. But they didn't change Academy Rector. Anyway, I'm not sure quite what's going on there. But originally this was made to be part of the cycle of Academy Rector. Just the trick is it got...

Not all of the cycles got changed, so... Quirkily, it was this thing where I made a cycle, they all worked the same, and then in development

they changed one of them but not the other. I don't know. Anyway. But that, my friends, is Gamekeeper. Okay, next. Goblin Gardener.

So three and a red for a 2-1 Goblin. When it dies, destroy target land. So this was a death trigger stone rain, essentially, and I don't know. It entertained me much. The other thing I love about the Goblin Gardener, this is just a flavor thing, is I love the idea that it's a thing that destroys land. So it's a goblin,

so you label it as the opposite. Like, oh, I'm a gardener, but I'm a goblin, so it means it's not good things for your land. We had an ongoing theme for a while. The goblins just were super destructive. We always would name them as if they were trying to be the person who helped it, and then always destroyed it.

So I thought that's funny. Goblin Marshall. Four red red for a... So six mana, two wishes red for a 3-3 Goblin Warrior. It is Echo of four red red. So by the way, Echo... For all of Urza Saga,

the way Echo worked is you had to re... On the second turn... The second upkeep... So the first upkeep, the creature was in play. You had to pay its mana cost again, or else it went away.

You sacrificed it. Later in Time Spiral, we would retroactively do Echo, so it would list what the Echo cost was, allowing us to do Echo costs that weren't the same as the original cost. So retroactively in Oracle, now all of the Urza Saiga ones just have an Echo cost, which was their

casting cost. So this- or their mana cost. So anyway, anyway, so when Goblin Marshal either enters the battlefield or dies, you make two 1-1 Goblin creature tokens. So the fun thing about this was, if you decide to play this and have it go away right away, you can get four Gobblins right away,

or you can get two goblins now, pay it to keep around a creature, keep around your three-three creature, and then later get the two-one-ones. And so there also were other shenanigans that you could do with Echo, by the way. If you had sack costs, for example, remember the last time I talked about

the creature that you could sacrifice to throw something? Well, one of the fun things you could do was you would put the Echo Cost on the stack, and then you could sacrifice the creature. So you could both, like, let's say I have Goblin Marshal. I could play it. For six men, I play it, I get two 1-1s. I'm able to throw it to do three damage, and then when it dies, I I get two 1-1s. I'm able to throw it to do three damage, and then when it dies, I get two more 1-1s.

That was the kind of thing that, if you could find a way to use it, if you're going to sacrifice it, it allows you to sacrifice a creature and get the value of the sacrifice. So anyway, that's another thing you'll notice, is there's a little bit of a theme of sacrifice in it, because another thing you can do with echo creatures is use them for some,

use their body before you've paid them for the second time. Okay. How are we doing on time? Oh, we are good. We are good. So I'm going to I'm going to stop right here. So anyway, that is part two of Urza's Destiny. I hope you guys are enjoying it.

We've got a whole bunch more to talk about. I have a lot of more fun cards. But anyway, I'm at work. So I'm in my parking space. So we all know what that means. It means this is the end of my drive to work. But instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So I'll see you guys next time.