Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #42 - Mirage - Part 2

Episode Date: July 12, 2013

Mark Rosewater continues his three part series about Mirage.

Okay, I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, last week I started talking about the design of Mirage. But I didn't finish, so I'm going to continue talking about it. So for starters, I mangled the story last week, so I did a little research to have a better understanding of what the story was. I was in the ballpark, but I made a few mistakes. So, there were three different nations, and the three nations, remember there were three that were sort of in conflict? There were three nations, and the nations were the

Zulfarans, which were a military kingdom, the Femurif, which was a religious state, and the Sakata, which was a trading province. And they are, when the story begins, they're having squabbles amongst themselves. But a planeswalker named Teferi has been doing experiments and phased out the entire continent of Jamura,

which is where this takes place. And when the story begins, I think it has just come back, and that gets the attention of Kervak and Mangara, and Jor story begins, I think it's just come back, and that gets the attention of Kerouac and Mangara, and Jor-El, I think. And so what happens is Kerouac is the bad guy that comes and he kidnaps Mangara, and it's the Jormorans

trying to stop Kerouac. That's the main thrust of the plot. And so, essentially, they have to gather together and get the heroes together, and they end up using the Weatherlight Chip to travel there, but the, the main part of the story is trying to free Mangara from the Amber Prison. Um, but the, when I talked about the, the three different states, it wasn't the, last

time I was sort of implying that it was built around the mages, it wasn't. It was actually built around the, the areas, the, um, the different sections of Jamora, uh, the of Jamora, the different people. Anyway, what I want to do today is tell some card stories. And these are all over the board. These are, once again, a lot of my stories will be things that I was directly involved with because I know them. But I just want to talk about just a lot of different stories. Mostly I want to jump up to different cards

so I'm going to start with my favorite card in the set because it has a personal attachment so most people know my nickname is Morrow but not everyone might know why and Mirage is why we were making cards one day and we made a hole in Rare Green and I said oh I have a neat idea for a card So, there was a hole. We were making cards one day. We made a hole in rare green. And I said, oh, I have a neat idea for a card.

And basically, the idea I had was, it was a card that got bigger. It was as big as your hand. You know, star, star, star was your hand. And I liked it. Green has this flavor of growth and the idea of a lot of green creatures, you want to sort of start small, and they keep getting bigger over time. And so I thought it was a good fit for green. It's interesting the Maro ability makes sense in blue and green for different reasons. Like green plays into the growth aspect,

or blue plays into the knowledge aspect. So it's an ability we use in both. But anyway, Bill Rose was taking down notes. And so when he wrote the card down, I didn't have a name for it. And so he just wrote down M-A-R-O, which is what Bill used to do in our mail system was he would try to figure out the shortest number of letters that you had to type to get somebody's name to show up. And for me, if you typed M-A-R-O, I was the first name that showed up.

Because M-A is Mark, R-O is Rosewater. It's the first two letters of my first and last name. So the card came out, and then it just ended up becoming my nickname. So online I get called Morrow constantly, and that comes from this. It comes from this card.

I love the card Morrow. I'm a big fan of it. The artwork has an awesome story, too. So last week I talked about Sue Ann Harkey, the art director of Mirage. And she was at an art show, and she saw this picture that she loved. Now, be aware, this was a piece of art that the artist just made as a piece of art. It wasn't for magic. It's called the Green Man.

And she was captivated. She's like, this is awesome. So she bought the rights to the picture so Morrow is unique in that it's one of maybe the only one where the card wasn't made for magic an artist made a card and we bought the image now I later actually bought the photo

it's one of my four magic photos that I own, I'm sorry, four pieces of magic art I own Morrow I own Look at Me in the DCI I own Mize and I own Jester I'm sorry, four pieces of magic art. I own Morrow, I own Look at Me in the DCI, I own Mize, and I own Jester's Sombrero. So, anyway, they're all cards that have some personal attachment

to me, you know, I have some personal attachment too. So, and anyway, that's Morrow's story. Next we talk about Lion's Eye Diamond. Okay, so, Charlie Cattino, who I brought up before, was on the design team.

He wasn't on the development team, but he was on the design team. And he was trying to make a bad card. Charlie loves making bad cards. And one of Charlie's beliefs is that, you know, the set has to have some bad cards. And Charlie was in the camp of,

well, you know, every set should have a few really bad cards. And so Charlie was trying to make a really bad card. So the card he made was, it's an artifact, it costs zero, and if you sacked it and sacked your entire hand,

you could get three colorless mana. So I saw this card, and I said, okay, Charlie, if you're going to make a bad lotus, you know, a bad black lotus, at least make a black lotus. So I convinced him to change it to be three mana of one color, like Black Lotus. So the idea is, okay, it's just a really bad Black Lotus.

Black Lotus did that and didn't make you discard your hand. Lion's Eye Diamond makes you discard your hand. And the interesting thing about Lion's Eye Diamond is that at first it was, I mean, we got angry mail, why'd you make this card? I mean, whenever we make a bad card, we'll get people got angry mail. Why'd you make this card? I mean, whenever we make a bad card, we'll get people like, why'd you make this card? But the funny thing is, it didn't turn out to be all that bad. In fact, I believe it is now restricted in vintage.

It's banned in Legacy. It is a powerful, powerful card. Because it turns out that getting a Lotus, even with discarding your hand, still can be very powerful. And so Charlie did not quite accomplish his task of making a very, very bad card. Speaking of very, very bad cards, another card to talk about. Horrible Hordes. So that's a 2-2 Rampage 1. Rampage, for those that might not know their legends,

was a mechanic that showed up in Legends that was actually evergreen for a little bit of while in Magic. What it meant was, if I was blocked, for every creature beyond the first creature blocking me, I got plus N plus N, where N is the Rampage N. So Rampage 1 means, so this is a 2-2 creature, that if you block me with more than one creature, it gets plus 1 plus 1 for each additional creature beyond the first. So one of the reasons we stopped doing Rampage, by the way,

is Rampage beyond the first thing is annoying. Because what it does, it says, I just don't matter almost all the time. You know, because opponents know it has the Rampage. So, you know, first of all, people do not block with multiple creatures all that much. I mean, it happens, but not as much as you think it does. And second, when they Rampage, you tend not to do that.

And this card was almost a joke because it's a 2-2. Like, a lot of the other Rampage cards are big, like, you know, 4-4, 5-5, where you kind of have to double block it to kill it. But a 2-2, a 2-2 can just be chumped by a 2-1, you know. And so the card was originally, I think, called Horrible Horrible Hordes. And then they dropped it to Horrible Hordes because Horrible Horrible didn't fit but the card was made to be bad

and the name was kind of like thumbing the nose at you like I'm a bad card but even the funny thing is even that card did see some play in Limited even as horrible as the Horrible Hordes were okay the next card Foratog

okay so Foratog. Okay, so, Foratog was just made by the Visions design team to be some kind of, you know, nature spirit or something. And I saw it, and I, in fact, the stats were, it was a 1-2,

and you sacrifice a force, and it got plus two, plus two, to end a turn. And I was like, hey, that's an A-tog. You know, it even had the one-two stats. It sacked something, it got plus two, plus two. You know, and I think originally it might have been,

it might have been G, G and tap, and I convinced him to sack a forest. Anyway, it was very, very close to Atog, and I'm like, a little side note. So Antiquities, up until I worked for Wizards, Antiquities was my favorite sack. I will talk about Antiquities one of these days.

I loved Antiquities. And I was a huge fan of Atog. Now, for those who don't know, when Antiquities first came out, Atog was a hated card. Hated card. People hated it. They didn't really understand it. Actually, it's a pretty powerful card, but people didn't get how powerful it was.

And it was, I think it showed up, it was a common, and then it showed up in Revised, I think. And so, like, at one point in Magic, like, it was the most printed card in Magic. And so people somehow didn't like Atog. But I loved Atog. And so when I didn't like ATAG. But I loved ATAG. And so when I saw this chance to sort of

make a new ATAG, I was very excited. And I remember I had to sell it a little bit, but it wasn't that hard. They were like, oh, okay, yeah. You know, they too sort of had, you know, they had some appreciation for ATAG. And then once I did that, like, this set wheels in motion. As one of the themes today

is a bunch of cycles that start in Mirage that go bigger than Mirage. And so one of them was the A-Tog cycle. So what happened was we ended up making, in this set we made four Tog, which is a green A-Tog. There already was a red A-Tog. And then we made a blue A-Tog, Chrono-Tog in Visions. We made Necker-Tog, a black Aetog, in Weatherlight, and then in Tempest, we finished it off with Aura-Tog, a white Aetog, so we made a little Aetog cycle,

and that was pretty much my doing. People have their pet agendas, and I loved Aetogs, so I wanted to make sure that we had more A-Togs in the game, so I did do that. On my current list, it's figuring out how to get A-Togs back. They sort of drifted away, but I've not loved the loss of A-Togs.

Okay, speaking of cycles, I now need to talk about the Mega Mega Cycle. So the card here is Teferi's Isle. We used to make a lot of Gilgan's Isle jokes about that card. Here on Teferi's Isle. We used to make a lot of Gilgan's Isle jokes about that card. Here on Teferi's Isle. Anyway, so what happened was we had this card. So Teferi was a main character

and what happened was he had taken a big chunk of Jamora and phased it out. And so we loved the idea of a land that itself had phasing. But since the fairy was a blue mage, we were like, oh, well, she tapped for blue. But we had this dilemma.

That normally when we tap for a color, we make a cycle. And we didn't really want to or have room to make a full cycle, so we came up with this idea. We said, what if this was part of a cycle? Much like the Oratogs. But, we went a little further.

Not just a cycle. A mega, mega cycle. We decided to make a cycle larger than any cycle we'd ever made, or larger in time. So what happened was, Teferi's Isle shows up in the first set in Mirage Block. Then

in Stronghold, the second set in Tempest block, the next block, we made Volrath's Stronghold. So we made the black one. And then in the middle set, I'm sorry, in the third set in Urza's Saga, in Destiny, we made the green one. And then the next year was Mercadian Masks. And the second one, did we make the red one? And then in the first set in, what was after Mercadian Masks?

Invasion, we made like the white one. So like it was a cycle that took five years to make. It went first set, second set, third set, second set, first set. So we even did a little pattern. But anyway, that's the kind of dedication. So we even did a little pattern. But anyway, that's the kind of dedication, taking five years to finish a cycle. There was, I don't know, one of the things I enjoy is I like having larger patterns happen in Magic, and when I can, I try to do those. It's a little trickier nowadays than it was back

then, because back then, because it was the same group of people doing every set. Like, if we wanted to set something and four of us decided, well, we were the development team every set so we can make it happen. Now there's lots of different development teams, and so it's a little harder to have a single agenda go through. You've got to push a little harder to make that happen. Okay, next. Let me talk a little about my flavor text writing.

So there's two pieces of flavor text, three pieces of flavor text that I wrote for this set that I want to talk about. So first is, first I'll talk about the one that has lasted the longest. So what happened was, on this set, we got the art in earlier

than we nowadays do. I think the art came in, the way the art waves worked back then is we actually had the art in earlier than we nowadays do. I think the art came in, the way the art was worked back then is we actually had the art in earlier than we now do. And so when we were writing flavor text, I had the chance to look at the art to write the flavor text. And so we got the art

back for pacifism, which is this creature, this sort of mean-looking creature, but he has this kind of look on his face like, you know, he's been, he has a spell on him and now he's all pacified. And something about him, like, you know, he's been, uh, he has a spell on him, and now he's, he's all pacified. Um, and I did something about him, I don't know, I, I decided to give him a name, I think

I called him Grock, I think, uh, Grock, Grock. Um, and I, I had this little thing about how it's the first time he, uh, he, he, he had warm, warm fuzzies. Uh, anyways, a piece of Flavor Chex I wrote on a lark I thought was fun and it is just stuck around. Like, I don't know how many pieces of flavor text

I still have in, like, the core set, but so far, pacifism keeps sticking around. One of the random jokes in R&D is because

the card says, you know, for the first time is that every time we reprinted it, we should have said for the second time, for the third time.

But anyway, that's a piece of text that just somehow hit a third time. But anyway, as the pizza flavor text suggests, somehow I hit a note and stuck around. The second pizza flavor text was for Dwarven Miner. So, Passivism, by the way, for the first time in his life, Grack felt warm and fuzzy. Is that right?

So the flavor text for Dwarven Miner was, Fetch the pest fetch the pest ridder paka, we've got dwarves in the rutabaga um, and that, I was so tickled by that flavor text, just the idea that like, you know, in Gmora

like, the dwarves are kind of like, you know pests, like, oh you better go get the exterminator we got dwarves in the rutabaga again and I just somehow this one tickled me to no end and I got in a big fight with our editor a woman named Darla

because she kept wanting to change little words you know like instead of I think I had we have dwarves in the rutabaga and she wanted to say dwarves like beneath the rutabaga and I'm like no that blows the rhythm of the joke. And so, like, I really love this piece of flavor text,

and, like, I had this drag-out fight with Darla about whether or not it should be in or beneath or neether. Anyway, the third piece of flavor text I wrote might possibly be the greatest flavor text I've ever written for a card called Reparations. So what happened was, back in the day, this is my youngin' days when I was a single man, and pretty much I lived at Wizards. I mean, I didn't technically live, I had an apartment, but other than sleeping, I was at Wizards all day long. I mean, the way it worked is, I'd get to work,

I'd work all day, at nighttime, all of us would go out to eat. In fact, the way it worked is, I'd get to work, I'd work all day, at night time, all of us would go out to eat. In fact, one of the stories is, when I first started dating Laura, she's over at my apartment, and she goes to the cabinet to get something to eat, because she's hungry,

and she opens up, and there's nothing. She opens the fridge, there's nothing. There's literally no food in my house. She's like, where's your food?

And I'm like, oh yeah, I don't eat here. Because back in the day, I already ate out every meal, which probably wasn't healthy to think for, but we ate out every meal. And so I never ate at home. In fact, I was barely at home.

So anyway, I was at work late one night. And I mean late, you know, 2, 3, 4 in the morning. And I'm working on some flavor text because I was a diehard working machine. We also goofed around and played games. I mean, it wasn't just work, and we had fun. And work was fun. So anyway, it was late at night, and we had just gotten some new art in. I was going to some flavor tracks.

So I got the art for reparations. And I'm like, what in the world is this art? And it was this couple, a dark-skinned couple with robes. And there's a white man that's, like, looks like a priest's character, and he's handing them this bag that looks like, you know, it has gold or something in it, and in the background, you can see flames, like, like, like, you know, like, things are on fire, and I'm like, what, what in the world is going on here?

And so, I'm punchy, punchy tired. So I write the flavor text, sorry I burned down your village, here's some gold. And I really, really, I wrote it because Michael, so Michael Ryan, who was at the time an editor for Magic, he and I would later go on to be the people who did or started doing the Weatherlight Saga. He and I were the ones that pitched the Weatherlight Saga. I forget to tell that story.

But Michael and I are up late working on flavor text. And I'm just, I think I was trying to make Michael laugh. I don't even think I was serious. I don't think that I was like trying to make flavor text as much as I was trying to make Michael laugh. And I showed this to him and he started giggling. And I started giggling. And we laughed, and we laughed, and we laughed. And I'm like, I'm turning that in. And then they used it. As whatever was my witness, when I saw that Ashley was chosen, I was flabbergasted. Because I thought it was funny, but I'm like, like, you know, I just didn't think it would be picked.

So anyway, it's one of my, my, my, the ones I've written is one of my favorites. I mean, I like Dwarven Miner, and there's a few others I've written. I wrote one I like a lot about, but not in Mirage, about the advantages of using zombies as fun. I wrote a couple ones for, what's her name? Jai Bowerd. I wrote a bunch

of Jai Bowerd ones that I liked a lot. You know, fighting fire with fire. Anyway. Okay. On to the next card. Let's see. How about Brushwag? Well, this one's funny. I know we got Brushwag

from the design team. And the interesting thing about Brushwag is somehow, I mean, we decided just to give it a name, and then just it's creature type voice up to name. Somehow, just the whole package of Brushwag, there are fans of Brushwag. I get letters that say, when are you making more Brushwag?

And the thing that I don't know, by the way, about Brushwag is, so you've seen it, there's like, this looks like this giant tumbleweed, and then there's this cat. Now, the question is, is the cat part of the brush wag, and then, like, he has this, like, porcupine-like middle part? Or is the brush wag eating the cat, and the cat is the victim of the brush wag? I have no idea. I don't know. I don't know. But anyway,

maybe one day we'll make it into the Brunchwag. It is a card that I get a lot of attention for, but really is a silly card that is not particularly powerful. Okay, next. Skulking Ghost. Okay, so another thing the Mirage did is it introduced a bunch of things that went on to be like just things magic did. And the funny thing about Skulking Ghost is that the idea was, the card was made is, it's this ghost. And like the second you sort of even approach the ghost, you know, it's ephemeral, right? And so the funny thing is, R&D started calling that ability Skulking. And I think we made like Skulking Cyclops. And the hilarious part is

the skulking wasn't the mechanic. The ghost wasn't the mechanic. Like, the ghost disappears because it's so ephemeral. The skulking was just

an adjective for the ghost. But we started calling it skulking. In fact, we still do. It's the nickname in R&D for that ability. Now, what's happened is originally it was in black

because it started in black. And at one point we said, you know, this makes a lot more sense for illusions, right? That you make an illusion and then as soon as you once someone questions the illusion, then it pops. You know, it has reality

until someone questions it and then it goes away. And so we've kind of shifted it over to blue. Blue needed it. So instead of skulking now, it's sometimes called skulking, but it's the illusion ability. Another ability that started in this thing was stalking tiger. We still refer to that ability as stalking.

What stalking tiger is, is you must be, you can only be blocked, sorry. You can only be blocked by one creature. It's something we put on green. So usually it goes on bigger creatures and says, hey, only one thing can block me. And so, uh, it becomes hard to deal with if it's on the bigger side because, well, only bigger things can block it. Small things can just chomp it because you can't double block it. Um, and Skulking, by the way, I like way better than Rampage because it has a similar impact, but it's just simpler.

It's easier to grok. Um, we do occasionally do New Rampage, by the way. We don't call it New Rampage, but where everything gets the bonus, but that's not something we do tons of. Okay, next. Let me talk about art. So there are a couple cards in the set. So Sue Ann Harkey, who was the

art director, was an amazing art director in the sense that she got wonderful artists. They drew amazing paintings. I mean, this is just as a... If you wanted to put the art up in a mean, this is just as a, if you wanted to put the art up in a museum, you know, this set has a very cool feel to it. It had a lot of the African background.

It was very neat. And she found a lot of artists that went on to be staple magic artists. Sue Ann Harkey was an awesome, awesome, awesome art director. But one small problem with Sue Ann was she didn't know magic. She did not know magic. And so what happened was that we would do things

and we would get art back that didn't work with what the card did. So I'm going to talk about a couple examples of that. The first is Goblin Scouts. So that card in the design file was Dwarven Scouts. Now, the card right now makes 1-1 Mountain Walkers, but originally it made 1-2 Dwarves. And the problem was we got the card back,

and we're like, those aren't Dwarves. Those are Goblins maybe trying to dress up like Dwarves. They look like Goblins. They do not look at all like Dwarves. And like I said, Sue Ann was not super familiar with fantasy. She came from a background of fine art. And so she didn't really get distinguished between, oh, this is a goblin or not a dwarf.

And so it didn't look like a dwarf. And so we had to change the card. Another card we made is Sunweb. So Sunweb originally was not supposed to be able to block I think white creatures and then we got back the art and it's a giant white dragon in a net

you know and visually speaking I understand that a dragon doesn't necessarily have to be a white creature but you don't want something that's just all white especially in a set that had a white dragon. Like, so we changed it so it couldn't block small things.

Like, oh, well, that's a white thing. Like, the card that can't block white things can't be shown blocking a white thing in the art. So we changed it so it could not block smaller things, because the smaller things sneak through the web, is the idea. The other one was waiting in the

weeds. So, I'm a squirrel lover. Hopefully that won't be taken out of context. I'm a big fan of squirrels. In fact, when we get to Urza's Legacy, we'll talk about how I did the card concepting, and you might notice a lot of squirrels in Urza's Legacy. I also picked the creature type for Odyssey, of which is squirrels. So anyway,

but anyway, I was gung-ho to get squirrels into Magic. They did not exist yet in Magic. So this is cards that made these tokens, and I'm like, oh, this could be squirrels. This could be squirrels. And so I talked to the other R&D people, and I'm like, here's our chance, guys. We can make squirrels. And they're like, well, I'm like, guys, guys, guys, squirrels.

So I cared. They didn't. So we made a squirrel. I mean, they didn't dislike squirrels. I think I convinced them squirrels were awesome. But I got them to go along. So we made the squirrels. And then the art description for this thing was all these creatures are

hidden in the bush. You can't even see where they are. You just can see the reflection of their eye, their irises or whatever, their eyes. So we're like, okay. And we get the art back and it has these cats in it. Like, the artist put the creatures in it. Like, you weren't supposed to see the creatures. And we're like, oh, hey, I guess they're cats.

And I had to change it until, like, Waiting in the Weeds was supposed to be the first squirrel card in Magic. And it was not. I would later get squirrels in. But that always made me sad, because that was a great chance to have the squirrels that we so much beloved. Another thing to talk about when we're talking about art is that

this is not something we do at all anymore but back then one of the things that would happen a lot is we would get art in and the art doesn't quite match the card we had. And so what we used to do is we'd have meetings where we'd lay out all the art and then we'd have all the cards and we'd assign them one for one. So the first we used to do is we'd have meetings where we'd lay out all the art, and then we'd have all the cards, and we'd assign them one for one.

So the first thing we'd do is like, here's art that has to go with this card. This shows this thing, that's this. The only card this could be on. But what we'd end up with is we'd have about 30 or 40 pieces that were a little ambiguous exactly what they were. And then we would try to mix and match stuff

to make all the art fit. Because sometimes the art that came back didn't quite work for the card we had made, but we were able to sort of shift things around. Now, like I said, that does not happen anymore. But back in the day, back in the time of Mirage, that very much was. And we made 20,

30 swaps in art. And like I said, it stemmed from Sue Ann would make gorgeous things, but not all of them quite lined up. And so we fixed it by sort of shifting things around. You know, sometimes we would move mechanics. Okay. Next. As we're talking about swapping.

Let me talk about Gibbering Hyenas and Matenda Lion. Okay. So, Gibbering Hyenas is a 3-2 for 2G, I think, that can't block Black Creatures. And Matenda Lion was a G-2-1 that your opponent can pay blue to stop it. Now, originally, those were swapped. Originally, Matenda Lion was a G-2-1 that couldn't be blocked by Black. I'm sorry, that can't block black creatures.

But the idea was, it's a 2-1. Who's blocking? You're going to attack with it. But it turned out, at the time, we were afraid. Now, obviously, the creature curve has improved much over the years. But at the time of Mirage, it was thought that Green couldn't have a G2-1.

That was slightly too good. Which is funny, because White got a W2-1, but it was thought that somehow couldn't have a G2-1, that it was slightly too good. Which is funny, because White got a W2-1, but it was thought that somehow Green couldn't do that. And obviously, as recent sets have shown, a G can get a 2-1. In fact, it can get a hybrid and have an ability on top of it. But at the time, it couldn't, and so we swapped those two cards around.

And I think it's funny, because I think that Pretend the Lion that we thought it was going to be this really powerful card and then the last minute we had to switch it and it ended up being something that like more of a footnote than a card that really defined something at the time but when we were there we really thought it was going to be something that was going to be

a little bigger next, Onyaro Beasting My Bane! My Bane! So this card and a little bigger. Next, Onyaro Beasting. My bane! My bane! So, this card... I'm not sure what card has caused me more frustration

in all of magic. Probably it's Desert Twister, which when I get to Arabian Nights I'll talk about. But anyway, this might be...

This is up there. Because somehow this established that, like, oh, green can do direct damage because bees are green. In fact, Aaron Forsythe, if you ever get a chance

to spell-sling against him, he has a duel deck that he has made that's a special duel deck that he made just for spell-slinging, and it's called Birds vs. Bees. And he always likes to show it to me because he knows it riles me that bees

I think bees have been misappropriated in magic. And somehow they're used to allow green to have direct damage when it should not have direct damage! That is wrong. I mean, well, it can hit flyers, whatever, but anyway, a narrow bee sting is one of those cards that

I didn't like at the time. I tried to stop it. That's, by the way, one of the most frustrating things about magic is when you see something and you go, this is wrong. I need to stop this. And you fight to stop it. And you fight to stop it. And you fight to stop it. And you cannot.

And you just cannot convince enough other people that it needs to be stopped. And then it happens. And then the next time, people are like, oh, we've done it. And you're like, no! Aye, aye, aye. So, somehow, bees. Bees will be the death of me. I don't mean literally, hopefully.

Morrow attacked by bees. But, uh, holy moly. In fact, it's funny, because when I get signed, people send cards for me to sign. and the number one card people ask me to sign is Maro, the one named after me from Mirage, number two is Look at Me on the DCI, I did the art for it, I'm the artist

and number three is Hornet Sting, Hornet Sting, like isn't that just cruel, I mean like do you go to like Bill Buckner and like here's the ball that went through your legs that lost the World Series. Could you sign this, please?

Maybe someone did that. I have no idea. But anyway, oh, by the way, Mark Rosewater making a sports reference that's actually somewhat minute and detailed. So just a little side note is, when I was in college, I've never really been into sports.

I went to Boston University. I was there in the summer of what is it, 88? 87, 88. And I got into baseball because it was Boston playing New York and they were playing at Fenway Park right down the street because I lived right near there.

And literally when people had home runs, I could hear them screaming. And so I said, okay, I got really into it because a lot of people from New York in the school. And like that was I got my dreams crushed and, like, okay, why am I paying attention to sports? So, anyway, sports had a chance, and it crushed my dreams, and so I moved on. So, let's see, what other cards can we talk about? Raging Spirit. Let me talk about Raging Spirit.

What can Mark possibly say about a hill giant, 3R33, that for two mana can make itself coalesce? That card screwed me over. That's what I can talk about. So, back in the day, I used to make a puzzle column called Magic of the Puzzling. And

basically, I would make puzzles in which you had to solve them. Modern day Duels of the Planeswalkers has something similar. I basically have chess puzzles. Like, the game's in play, and here's what goes on, and here's what you have, and here's what you have to play, and win this turn, or do something with different goals. Usually it's win this turn.

So anyway, I had a puzzle that I had made. I had made a book of puzzles. The puzzles were very, very popular. So before I came out to Wizards, I actually made a puzzle book. And I made 50 puzzles for the book, but in the end, we decided to make the book be 25 puzzles. So I had 25 puzzles that I had already made. So I decided I wanted to use these puzzles. So I thought I'd repurpose them in the Duelist. But because there were new sets coming out, I would try to redress them and add things that had to do with the current set to make them feel current. So one of the things I did is I had

a hill giant in my puzzle, so I swapped the hill giant for for Bajin Spirit. And I said, okay, whatever, it is a hill giant, it can turn itself colorless. And the fact that it could turn itself colorless broke the puzzle. In fact,

I think it might be the first puzzle where, like, I had to make an apology going, oh, the puzzle. In fact, I think it might be the first puzzle where, like, I had to make an apology going, oh, the puzzle doesn't work. Because I changed the hill giant for Raging Spirit. That card broke my puzzle! Anyway, that's my little memory of that card. I'm sure other people are like,

I won limited with it all the time, or whatever, but to me, it's a card mirage, or one of the cards mirage. I hold my vendetta, you know, whatever. 18 years later, crush that card. Anyway, I see Wizards coming up in my front range, so I look at my list. I have lots more cards to talk about,

so I am not yet done. I'm going to spend another, at least one more, probably just one more. I don't have that much more. I have enough to talk for another car ride in. But anyway, I hope you guys are enjoying my glance through Mirage.

I'm trying something a little new in that I'm trying this idea of spending some time where I go through cards, where I actually talk about individual card stories. I do that in my column whenever sets comes out, and people like them. And so I thought it might be fun to do that. Anyway, I'm experimenting with this, so give me some feedback what you think.

But anyway, now it's time for me to go to work. So thank you all for listening, and it's time to go make the magic.