Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #51 - Scars of Mirrodin - Part 4

Episode Date: September 7, 2013

Mark wraps up his discussions around Scars of Mirrodin with part four about the set.

Okay, I'm pulling out my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, over the last three weeks, I've talked about Scars of Mirrodin. But, I'm not done yet. Last week I started talking about, the first two weeks I talked about the sad and how it got made. Last week I was telling stories about cards, but I did not finish. In fact, I got up to Mindslaver, which is in the middle of the alphabet. So today is M to Z today. So the first one I'm going to talk about today is Molder Beast.

So one of the interesting, tricky things about any block is that there's some theme to the block, and that means you kind of got to shift and make all the colors care about that theme. Now, the funny thing is, some themes, all the colors have a natural fit, but some themes, it's a little trickier. So when we went to Mirrodin originally, the question was, what does green do? Well, now, clearly green,

if you understand the blue-green conflict, it's sort of a nature-nurture conflict, blue is all about the tabula rasa, that you could become whatever you want to be, and it very much embraces technology. And artifacts and magic really represents technology. Green does not like technology. Green

keeps technology away from me. And so green's hatred of artifact comes from its core conflict with blue. And so green is king of artifact destruction. So, we go to artifact world. What does that mean? Okay, green destroys things, but it needs to have a little more identity than that.

On top of that, in Skarsgården, a lot of green's identity was tied up in the Phyrexians. Because we made the conclusion that green and black make the most logical place for the Phyrexians to get a hold. Because philosophically, green and black are the colors that the Phyrexians to get a hold, because philosophically, green and black are the colors that the Phyrexians have the closest identification with. And so, but some of the set had to be Mirren. You know, we had 80% of the set was Mirren, so some of the green cards had to be Mirren. So we had to get an identity for Mirren, and so one of the things we played around with, and Molden Beast obviously did this, is having green cared about artifacts that had been destroyed.

It plays up a reoccurring theme of green. The green likes kind of the contents of the graveyard. It also likes to destroy artifacts. So caring about artifacts that have been destroyed thematically made sense. And so anyway, that's a little theme we put in. Molderbeast was a good example of that. So next, Mox Opal. Okay, so,

one day I'm in the hall and I pass one of the brand managers and they say, oh, so we hear we're going back to Mirrodin. I go, yeah. They go, does that mean new Mox?

And I'm like, I guess, sure. So, you know, I went back to my team and I go, okay, brand wants a Mox. And we're like, okay, we're going back. It's Artifact World.

I did kind of feel like Mox is our special thing in Magic. In fact, let me talk about this real quickly. One of my big beliefs is I believe in the power of words. I'm a word guy. And one of the things that Magic has done a little bit, I would like to see us do more, is invest words with power. And what I mean by that is I kind of like when you open up a card and you know nothing about it and you see a word in the title, you get excited. Oh my God, this,

this word is in the title. You know, I think that's very potent. And part of doing that is being very careful on how you use that word so that you can, you know, because obviously you can waste a word. You can have a word and it's on some awesome cards and then put it on some weak cards and all of a sudden the word loses its power. So one of the words in magic that still very much has power is mox. And that is because we've kept a tight rein on what it means to be a mox. So in order to be a mox, a couple things. Starters, you're an artifact.

You cost zero, you produce mana. Those are usually the things for mox. Now, one of the interesting, one of the challenging things in general doing a mocks is that the original mocks were, as we call in R&D, baroken. And we have to sort of,

it is hard for you to have zero mana for an artifact that produces mana and have that be fair. And so when Bran asked for a mocks, I kind of knew I was signing up for something that maybe we couldn't do, but I was up for the challenge. In fact, by the way, a little trivia here.

The designer of Mox Opal was... Dun-dun-dun-dun! Scott Johns. Who is Scott Johns? For those that do not know, Aaron Forsythe was the very first editor of MagicTheEther.com, and when Aaron came over to R&D, Scott Johns ended up becoming the editor.

And Scott Johns is famous for a couple things. The thing that I think he's most famous for is, for those that know the Magic Hall of Fame, Scott has five Pro Tour Top 8s. Every other person on the planet who has five Pro Tour Top 8s and is eligible for the Hall of Fame is in the Pro Tour Hall of Fame. Scott is the only one who is not, which is crazy in my mind. On top of that, Scott has had huge contributions to the game.

Not only did he work on our website, but he worked on other websites and did a lot to advance sort of the field of reporting and the field of covering Magic. It boggles my mind that Scott is not in the Hall of Fame, especially since once again, let me state this. Every other person

on the planet qualified who has five top eights. Like, in my mind, maybe you're just automatically supposed to get any of your five top eights. I mean, and it's crazy that every other one's been voted in, so clearly there's some message of, like, that seems to be a watermark. Anyway,

for those of you out there that can vote, vote for Scott Johns. He deserves to get in the Hall of Fame. It is crazy he's not in. His contributions to the game, over and above his pro tour play, like, are awesome, and, like I said, five top eights. Anyway, aside of my little rant. Okay, next.

Mere Battle Sphere. Now, for starter, that is fun to say. So what happened was mirror were always there. When we did and mirrored in, mirror were created. So what happened was long ago,

magic somehow through a series of things, gnomes became the go-to artifact creature for a while. Which is kind of weird, because gnomes, if you know anything about fantasy, aren't artifacts! They're not artificial, they're creatures.

And I think that, like, Legends was, like, Quorum Trench Gnomes, which was the actual creature. And then all the other gnomes were, like, artifacts. And, like, Battle Gnomes, and Clockwork Gnomes, and anyway, Brady finally said, enough, enough! Gnomes were like artifacts, and like battle gnomes, and clockwork gnomes, and anyway, Brady finally said, enough, enough, gnomes aren't artifacts. And so Brady decided he'd come up,

we were in an artifact world, he'd come up with a new fun artifact type. And he came up with a mirror, which were based on the Myrmidon from Greek mythology. And the mirror were a mega hit, a mega hit. Everyone loved the mirror. And so, when we were coming back to Skarsgård's Myrmidon, we knew we were doing mega hit. A mega hit. Everyone loved the mirror. And so, when we were coming back to Scars of Mirroredome,

we knew we were doing the mirror. That slam dunk, of course we're doing the mirror. But what happened was that when the design handed over to development, the thought was that we had a lot of mirror cards, and we had a lot of cards that actually were good mirror cards, but we were missing a little bit of the whimsical mirror

cards. And so one of the things we'll do is we'll put together a little sub-team, a little design team that meets for a week or two. That was a very specific focus. And the mirror, so we put together a mirror design team that was really just saying, hey, let's jazz up mirror a little bit. And so I think the person who ran the team was Aaron Forsythe. At least he was on the team.

I do know that Aaron Forsythe made, or I believe he made, Mirror Battlesphere. Still fun to say. And anyway, it was just, the team was just trying to, they knew there was a Mirror contingent out there that just loved playing with Mirror and wanted to make some more social fun sort of Mirror cards. And Mirror Battlesphere was a direct result of that goal.

Next, Mirror Smith and the Smith Cycle. So what happened there was, one of the things about returning to Mirrodin was, like I said, 80% of Scars of Mirrodin was Mirrodin. And I wanted to definitely revisit things that we loved about Mirrodin, but I also wanted to find some new ways, some new mechanics, and new... And so one of the things I was very interested in is the idea that the Miridans love artifacts. And we toned down the artifact mattersness of Scars of Miridon, meaning Miridon screamed from its lungs, like,

Play artifacts! Play lots of artifacts! Play, play, play, play, play! And that's my imitation of Miridon. And Scars of Miridon, we wanted that, but the volume turned down a little bit. Not quite turned to 11, as they say. And so what we did is, mostly we did a lot of what we called Threshold 1, or I guess Threshold 3 with Metalcraft, which is you needed some artifacts, but not, like, your deck didn't have to be full of artifacts. But we did want people that wanted to play that sort of style of just load up with artifacts, we wanted to give them a little bit to play with.

If you wanted to draft that, we wanted it to be draftable, but we didn't want it to be something you were forced to do. And so the Smith cycle, these are all creatures, they were monocolored creatures that whenever you played an artifact, you could pay one to get an effect that was in that color. And, like, the Mirror Smith made a little

mirror. And a little one-one token. So, I mean, it was kind of there to do that. I liked it a lot because it was definitely this kind of thing that was functional. It made you care about artifacts. But it was pretty simple. I cycled them up.

Like, one of the reasons we also do cycles is just for complexity reasons. Like, oh, here's a neat thing. Each one can do its own thing. But it's very simple, they'll all work the same, you know, they cost the same to use, and anyway, the Mirrorsmith was there

to sort of help give Mirrodin a little more of a something new and different, but also playing into the general themes of Mirrodin. Next, Necrotic Ooze. So Necrotic Ooze combined my love of oozes with my love of copying things oh and my love of the graveyard necrotic ooze is like oh three loves all together i'm not sure

where that metaphor is going um but anyway i loved the idea of a card that copied dead things. I think I made an ooze because I like oozes. And yeah, anyway, I mean, I feel like one of the things I like about Black is that Black has a resource in the graveyard that's a little different. That Green and Black kind of use the graveyard as a resource.

And so, it's kind of neat to go, you know, well, Blue copies things in play, but Black can copy things in the graveyard. I thought it was an interesting place to play. I mean, Blue's kind of neat to go, you know, well, blue copies things in play, but black can copy things in the graveyard. I thought it was an interesting place to play. I mean, blue's messed there a little bit, too. But, I guess in Planar Chaos, so I'm not quite sure what that means. Okay, so,

Necrotic Ooze, yeah, I guess I just sort of made the card and made an ooze, and it wasn't so much made to be, it wasn't one of the things that was like, endemic to this set. It was just kind of a cool card. And in fact at one point we talked about removing it just because it didn't have anything particularly to do with this set. But

one of the things is we want to make sure they're just random fun cards and not every card has to plug into the theme. And this card thematically worked I mean it mechanically worked with the other cards. Anyways, we left it in. We thought it was cool. Platinum Empyrean.

So one of the... So in Mirrodin, we made a card called Platinum Angel. So for those that don't know this story, what happened was we decided we wanted a Metal Angel. We thought that would be cool. We commissioned the art for it. And then we're like,

okay, we better figure out what our middle angel does. And we knew we wanted to do something different. We knew we wanted to be a little more showstopper, if you will. And I don't remember who came up with it, but the whole idea of you can't lose the game. Like, that's pretty impressive. Like, it's in play, you can't lose. So when we were coming back, we didn't want to repeat

the angel because it's been in a couple core sets, and so and so it kind of it was being used there. So we're like, well, let's come up with something that's similar but not exactly the same. And then somebody, I don't remember who, came up with the idea of locking your life total, which is

a lot like You Can't Die, but just different. And that's kind of what I wanted. The Platinum had a similar quality to it but it wasn't just the same thing retreaded. Or retread. Anyway, so Platinum and Paran quality to it, but it wasn't just the same thing retreaded. Or retread. Anyway, so Platinum Impairment was us sort of saying, hey, we want to acknowledge Platinum Angel, but, you know, shake it up a little bit.

Prototype Portal. Okay, so when we made Fifth Dawn, when we got to the third set, there was this... Some of R&D felt that we should just not do any more imprint. That we had done a lot of imprints, there was this some of R&D felt that we should just not do any more imprint that we had done

a lot of imprints there was a lot going on and I said no no no I go I think people really love imprint I think they'll be sad if they come to the third set and there's no imprint

so let's compromise let's have one imprint card now the imprint card we ended up going with was Summoner's Egg designed by Aaron Forsythe and it had a face down thing that we had never done before.

But the card that I wanted to do in that slot, the one I made for the slot, was Soul Foundry. It had been very popular. A clone machine, if you will. And from Mirrodin. And so I wanted to make Soul Foundry, but for artifacts. You know, you can put

an artifact in it. And at the time, I don't think we'd ever made artifact tokens. I mean, we time, I don't think we'd ever made artifact tokens. I mean, we made artifact creature tokens, but we'd never made artifact tokens, and the thought was that it was a little too special, that, you know, that maybe we should save that, and so we ended up not doing it. So anyway, flash forward to Scars of Meriden,

and I said to the team, okay, let's make some new and cool imprint cards. I believe every member of the team, maybe four or five, but my memory is every member of the team turned in the card. Every member that got turned in a prototype portal. Like everyone said,

oh, you know what was an awesome imprint card? Soul Foundry. You know what would be great? Let's do it with artifacts. And everybody turned in. And so people often ask me, why, you know, the cards credit the artists.

Why don't the cards credit the designers? Why don't you give credit to the guy who designed the card? And the answer is, multifold. First is, we don't always know who did the card. Because, you know, sometimes someone did it but didn't remember they did it. Or one person did one part, someone did another part, someone else tweaked it and got tweaked development. Like, many hands were in it. Or sometimes, like Portal to Portal like, kind of everybody designed it.

It just was, it was an obvious thing that was hanging there, and a lot of people went down the same path and made the same card. And which is very funny, by the way, that as someone who leads the sets, when a lot of people turn in the same card, I know that. I see it.

But they don't see it. And so what'll happen is, I'll get prototype portal, put it on the set, and then everybody goes, ooh, my card's in the set. Which is fine, which is cool, I like people who have ownership.

But none of them know that they aren't the only person that made the card. Okay, next, Ratchet Bomb. So Ratchet Bomb was, what's the card called? I made a card in Urza's Legacy, Urza's Saga block,

where you put counters on it and you destroyed everything that had that many counters. This is when I do my car show, my podcast. Engineered explosives? Is that right? I think that's right. And I really liked... Mike Elliott and I had fought at the time. He wanted it to be that many counters or less, and I wanted it to be equal to. Because my argument was, if it's that or less, and I wanted it to be equal to. Because my argument was

if it's that or less, you just constantly put it on and at some point it's just a disc and whatever. And I'm like, no, no, but if you have to choose, then you're like, oh, I want two, I want three. Each time it's an interesting decision, and I thought this was a cooler card. Anyway, Ratchet Bomb was me. We needed to have charged counter matter stuff,

and so it was just me kind of taking that, redoing Engineer Explosives and making it a charge matter card, just because that was a theme in the set. Um, Sword of Body and Mind. Okay, so what happened was, we had Sword of Fire and Ice, and Sword of, um, the black white one, uh, Ard, Light and dark. Light and shadows. I forget. Anyway, we had done those two cards previously, and the thing was, we hadn't meant it to be a cycle. We just kind of made

one, and then made this other one, and then the audience were like, what are you doing? Where's the rest? And so, I realized that we had two enemy combinations, and that meant that, well, we had three sets. There were three more not done, we could finish out the cycle. Now, yes, yes, by the way, for people like, where's the ally cycle?

I consider the cycle done. One day, might we want to do an ally cycle, a separate ally cycle? Maybe. It's on the table. I'm not saying we never will, but I feel like this cycle is done. Okay, so we had three things to do. We had green and blue, we had black and green,

and we had red and white. And so the idea was what went where. And so the first thing that I said is, okay, well, these are all going to be mirrored and themed. So that meant the third set needed to look first because it had the trickiest time. Because in the third set, like only 10% of the set was mirrored in. So I'm like, okay, well, what will be left? And it turned out that the rebels were red and white. Like, okay, well, why don't we take the red and white sword and put it at the end? That way it makes sense that it still has a Mirrodin watermark. It represents, you know, the last holdout of the Mirrodins.

And then it was either green, blue, or black, green. And so I wasn't sure what to put where. So I was doing Scars of Mirrodin. Mark Gottlieb was going to lead Mirrodin of the Siege, which was his first lead he had done. So I went to Mark Gottlieb and I said to him, look, I have two swords. You can have whatever sword you want.

Whatever you don't want, I'll put in my set. And Gottlieb, his two favorite color combinations are black and white and black and green. And so he's like, oh, well, I'd love to have the black and green one. And I'm like, okay. You know, the black and green. And so he's like, oh, well, I'd love to have the black and green one. And I'm like, okay. You know, the black and green kind of, in my mind, felt most the Phyrexian.

I mean, even though it was going to be mirrored in Watermark. But I said, okay, well, maybe we'll put that in the middle set that's all about the war. And then, okay, I'll take the blue-green one and put it in the first set. And... Yeah, Potty to Mind came together pretty easily. It had a funny name for a while.

What was it? It was something about I don't remember. I remember something in bear because I made a bear token. I don't remember. Arrgh! So this is where my podcast and my memory do not play nicely.

Okay, next is Tainted Strike. So what Tainted Strike was, is one of the things I wanted with Infect was I wanted... I didn't mind people playing all Infect decks. I knew people would do that. But I also wanted people to mix and match Infect with non-Infect. but I also wanted people to mix and match infect with non-infect. And, for example, I wanted you to, like, sometimes have creatures attacking that weren't infect but then die to infect.

And so Tamed Strike was a card that we could sort of say, okay, here's something where people might not expect it, and out of the blue a creature that doesn't seem like a threatening creature can turn into an infect creature. And I really liked it that it added this tension even when there weren't just infect creatures sitting in front of you. Or, you know, you got hit by a couple infect creatures, but then some non-infect creatures came out. You couldn't even still,

you had to be a little bit nervous. One of the things we were trying with the Phyrexians is we were trying to get you on edge. In fact, it's funny. One of the things I've done a lot is, I made it in fact, in the guidebook studies and in all the ways we market things to figure out whether people like them, it did very, very well.

It was the top rated mechanic in the set, for example. Um, but there's a contingency that really dislikes, in fact, and I was trying to figure out what it was. And I think I finally, I finally hit upon it, which is one of the things that I worked so hard to do was I wanted the Phyrexians to feel really violating. I wanted Phyrexians to feel like, which is, one of the things that I worked so hard to do was I wanted the Phyrexians to feel really violating. I wanted the Phyrexians to feel like, just like, you felt dirty. There was this virus that kind of infected you. And we worked really hard

to give the Phyrexians, we wanted them to be, in my mind, they're the Lex Luthor to Magic Superman. They're the main bad guys in my mind. I mean, one could argue it's Nicol Bolas. But in my mind, the Phyrexians are like, they were the first big baddies, and I love them. I really feel like they're the staple magic bad guys.

And so I was trying to just make a set where mechanically you felt just the sheer evilness and the ugliness of the Phyrexians. And so part of doing that was creating a mechanic that was invasive and scary and slowly hurt your creatures and poison you in a way that you just couldn't get rid of it. And what I realized after the fact when it was done is I think I succeeded a little too well. That one of the reasons people hate Infect is it makes them feel bad. Like on purpose, like I was trying to imbue our bad guys with really like just, ugh, these are bad guys. And I think what happens is there are our bad guys with really, like, just, ugh, these are bad guys. And I think what happens is there are a bunch of people that are like, I don't like playing Gens of Effect.

Man, it makes me feel bad, you know? And so it's funny that, like, at some level, I think one of the visceral reactions is something that I created, and that I was trying to make our bad guys really, really feel like bad guys. And I think I succeeded almost too well in some regards, because I think there's players that really it makes them uncomfortable. Anyway, it's so weird. My goal was

to make people uncomfortable. I did. Did I succeed or not? That's an interesting question. Next is Thrummingbird. So Thrummingbird is interesting because originally when I made this set, Proliferate had a lot larger role in Limited. Because Blue had a lot larger role in limited because blue had a lot of cards in common

and thrumming bird was in common. Because what I realized about it was I wanted a lot more cross synergies between the... The way it ended up based on how some of the stuff got developed, you chose a side and you were the mirror side and the flexing side. It was harder to mix and match and one of the reasons I loved proliferate and the reason

I pushed it down to common was so there's this whole charge counter theme that was going on on the artifact side. And so there's a reason to mix blue with white or blue with red to play around with the mirrored side of it. The proliferate is a mirrored helper. Or you can mix blue with poison and make a poison helper. Or you can mix and match

and do some weird combination there. And I understand why development did what they did. It is a complex mechanic make a poison helper, or you can mix and match or do some weird combination there. And I, I mean, I understand why development did what they did. It is a complex mechanic, but, but,

I mean, from a design standpoint, I wish we had extracted complexity from somewhere else because I feel like the set lost a little something in Limited

without having proliferate and serve the role it was supposed to serve. Next, Tower of Calamities. So Tower of Calamities is a funny story, which is we made four towers in Mirrodin.

It was not meant to be a cycle. We did not color, connect them in any way. But players were like, oh, well, this one gains life. That's kind of white. And this one mills. Well, that's kind of blue. And they assigned all of them. And they said, oh, well, you're missing one.

And they decided that we were missing, I think we were missing black is what they decided. And so we decided, okay, well, you're missing one. And they decided that we were missing, I think we were missing black. So we decided, okay, we'll finish the cycle. People feel like we're missing it. Okay, we didn't intend that, but you know what? That's what people really want it. Okay, we tried to deliver. So we made a tower that finished the cycle.

Also, each of the towers cost a different amount. So we made this cost, like, I think they were four in a row, and this cost one more than that. So it fit the pattern. It even had a little black background to it. It did a black thing. Okay, next is the Trigon cycle. So the Trigon cycle was, I was trying to make

more charged countermatters, and at the same time, I was trying to make color matter more in artifacts. And we came up with this idea of something that had so many uses that was refillable if you were playing the color. And what it meant was it was playable outside the color. In fact, some of them were very good, and you played outside the color. But you know what? They were just a little better in color.

And so it sort of served two different roles. It made charge counters matter in a very neat way, but it also allowed color to matter. And it also tied into proliferate, obviously. One of the ways to get more, even if you're off color, is to proliferate them, which was cool. Trinket Mage. Okay, so when we made Scars of Mirrored, I had my design team write down every mirrored in card, mirrored in block card, they wanted to reprint. Mirrored in block card, they wanted to reprint.

And we went through and we tried a whole bunch of different things that ended up being either too good or not quite work. But in the end, one of the ones that people really wanted was Trinket Mage. And we're like, you know what? Trinket Mage is pretty awesome. Let's put Trinket Mage in. And it played nicely. We knew that an artifact block is more likely to have a lot of cheap artifacts in it and so it just worked well with it.

Same reason it worked in Fifth Dawn and it worked well in Scars of Meriden. Next, Tumble Magnet. So the lesson of Tumble Magnet which I think

is the same lesson Rashad in Port is I keep trying to make innocent cards and I just need like I'm making a little colorless card

I need a little tiny effect like Tumble Magnet was I was just trying to make some charge counter cards because I wanted charge counters to matter and I just needed a tiny effect that made sense on an artifact and I'm making a little colorless card. I need a little tiny effect. Like, Tumble Magnet was, I was just trying to make some charge counter cards because I wanted charge counters to matter. And I just needed a tiny effect

that made sense on an artifact. I'm like, oh, well, okay, tap a creature. That sounds innocent. Tap a creature, you know, low-key effect. You can do it three times. Okay. Man, I have, that effect, tapping things is powerful.

I have to keep remembering that, that, especially, the ability to tap things multiple times is powerful and that I keep making it thinking like, oh, just nonchalant. One of the things that's funny is how often I just make a card, it's filler, I'm not, you know, and it ends up being like a major player. I mean, it's

limited, but, you know, it is funny that people seem to think that the design is like, well, this will be the good thing. Design does not do that. Design does not figure out what is the good thing. Design figures out what is fun, passes along development. Development, you know, then reinforces what they think is fun. And then they pick to push things they think are fun to play.

But, I mean, Temple of Magna was never, like, conceived as this limited, you know, this strong limited card. It was just, I mean, it has three charge counters on it. It's an artifact. What do they do? What do artifact counters, you do? What do artifacts do? Next. Untamed Might. Oh, Untamed Might.

So the interesting thing about Untamed Might was we were very careful in the set about giant growth because we knew that giant growth were very efficient with infect. And the idea, I think, was that maybe in a slightly higher rarity it might be fun to have a card that could kind of surprise,

get you with Infect. It's funny. If I look back now with all the knowledge I have, I don't know if this was a mistake. I mean, once again, we don't set the power level, so it's not something design would know.

But it was us pushing in an area that was kind of asking a little bit for trouble. I mean, I think that Infect did a fine job in Limited. I mean, this helped. I mean, one of the things that was interesting is development had to balance it, that we wanted Infect to matter but not matter too much. Anyway, I'm thinking in my mind is, like, maybe a mistake, maybe we shouldn't have done that, maybe an X giant growth was not what we wanted to do in an effect world. I mean, obviously it worked well, but maybe too well.

No, it didn't work too well, it's not even a power level thing, it's just, it just made the kill with infect a little too easy at times. And, like, to me, it was fun about Infect, which you had to work for it, that they were fragile creatures, and, like, you kind of had to do something that was a little bit harder to do, and I just wanted to make sure that, like,

you had a little extra to try to accomplish what you needed to accomplish. But anyway, Untamed might. The final card I'm going to talk about today is Venser. So I am a big fan of Venser. I often point out that Venser is my favorite planeswalker and the only planeswalker to ever be killed

by the creative team. I don't know if there's a coincidence there or not. So I, most of the planeswalkers get designed more during development. I mean, design will make them, but development will refiddle them quite a bit. And there's three Planeswalkers where I feel like I did the majority

of the Planeswalker. The original Garruk in Alorawin. Nicole Bolas, I did the first two abilities. I didn't do the third ability. I didn't do the ultimate, but I did the first two. And by the way, the third ability when I designed the card was take control of your opponent for two turns. He was the ultimate Puppet Master.

But they ended up saving that and it went on Soren, but I regret it. I thought that was the perfect Puppet Master ultimate. I feel the one he has is a little time-spirally, and like, oh, look, it's referencing his original card, but I don't know. I'm not a fan. Anyway, Venser, I was a huge fan of Venser, and so I was very involved in designing Venser.

So the cool thing about Venser is, Venser's big shtick was teleportation. He was very good with teleportation. So every ability on his card was all about things that made sense as being themed as teleportation. And so I mean, the other awesome thing

about it, one of the reasons I love Venser also, was that flickering worked really well as a flavor of teleportation. So I love the fact that he has the flicker ability. Anyway, I like how he came together. I'm kind of really sad he died, because I would love to reprint him. I think it's a really fun card. And it kind of...

It saddened me that that card had to go, because I really like it. And I like the character. I think he was a fun character. I mean, not that characters shouldn't die. Characters should die. I think stories don't have consequences. Characters never die. So I'm not against killing characters. But anyway, I'm now in my space and I've gotten through the end of my list. So I guess

that is going to wrap up part four of Scars of Mirrodin. Part four of four of Scars of Mirrodin. So anyway, I hope you all enjoyed listening to me ramble on about Scars of Mirrodin. It was definitely a set that... It was a hard set.

It was one of the more emotional up-and-downs of sets I've done. But I'm really happy with how it came out. And I feel like it really did reintroduce the Phyrexians in a way that was like... Really put them on the map and gave them a strong mechanical identity. They were both things I had set out to do. So anyway, thank you very much for listening. It's time for me to go make the magic.