Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #59 - Champions of Kamigawa, Part 3

Episode Date: October 3, 2013

Mark concludes his podcast about Champions of Kamigawa.

Okay, I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so two weeks ago, I started talking about Champions of Kamigawa. And last week, I continued to talk about Champions of Kamigawa. So this week, I will continue yet again to talk about Champions of Kamigawa. I've got more stuff to say. So what I'm going to do this week, and I gave you a little teaser last week, was I'm going to walk through cards and tell some stories about the making of cards. My little caveat is, this is just a chance for me to tell lots of individual stories.

I'm going to use the cards to jump off. Most of the stories will be about the cards themselves, but sometimes it might just give me another story I want to tell. Okay. And I'm kind of roughly going alphabetical order, but sometimes it might just give me another story I want to tell. Okay. And I'm kind of roughly going alphabetical order, but not completely. So next, I want to talk about the Cycle of Deceivers.

So the Deceivers were five cards, five creatures, a cycle, one in each color, in which they had two abilities. The first ability was one, look at the top card of your library, and the second one was two, reveal the top card of your library. And the second one was two, reveal the top card of your library. If it's a land, the

creature got a bonus to land a turn. So these creatures are interesting. They actually started with just the second ability that's like, oh, well, these creatures could get bigger. But what we found in playtesting was that it just, it really was this random thing. It's like, oh, okay, attack, and then roll the dice, you know.

And that, yeah, there were other things that could let you see the top of your library, but there weren't that many of them. And maybe in Constructed you could work real hard to do it, but it was something that was tough to do. And so what we realized was what we wanted the cards to be was more bluffing cards than, you know, random cards. Meaning what we wanted it to be be was more bluffing cards than random cards. Meaning, what we wanted it to be was like, I attack. I know whether or not I have the bonus. Do you think I have the bonus? And we found that to be much more interesting.

One of the things that Magic has a long history of is trying to make interesting bluffing cards. And they're tough. A lot of cards that end up being good bluffing cards. And they're tough. A lot of cards that end up being good bluffing cards, or cards that started as... Sorry. A lot of cards that started as bluffing cards ended up kind of not really working that well, or, in the case of

Curse Scrawl, working too well. But this cycle actually was interesting. I've seen a number of people playing Limited where you had the extra mana, so you looked... A lot of times what you would do is you would Limited where, like, you had the extra mana, so you looked. A lot of times what you would do is you would look the turn before if you had the extra mana, so that you didn't waste your mana on your turn.

And then you knew what it was. Oh, no, actually, you would draw. You had to look at it on your turn. Anyway, okay. But I saw people having some fun bluffing moments. I enjoyed the deceivers. Okay, next is Council of the Sword Tommy. Oh, so I talked about this last time, but there's a little story that I want to tell, which Okay, next is Council of the Soratami. Oh, so I talked about this last time,

but there's a little story that I want to tell, which actually has nothing to do with the Champions of Kamigawa. It has to do with the core set, but it involves Council of the Soratami. So one of the things that we've gone back and forth on on the core set is how much is the core set supposed to represent sort of generic magic and how much is it supposed to represent specific worlds that we've gone back and forth on, on the core set, is how much is the core set supposed to represent sort of generic magic, and how much is it supposed to represent specific worlds that we've visited.

And so the Council of Soratami got put in the base set, because, the core set, because we're like, oh, well, hey, it represents Kamigawa. This is a very, you know, it's not a boring, you know, it's a very flavorful card, and it represents, you know, the world we visited in Kamigawa. But the problem, as I explained last time with Constellation of Sorghami, is that people didn't quite know what it was.

It sounds like it's a creature, and I know it's spelled differently, but if you just hear the name, it sounds like it's a creature. The picture has this woman on it, and it's just like, oh, who's this woman? What's she doing? And the answer is, here's a similar funny story. Way back in the day, I used to play Land Tax,

for those who don't remember. Very, very powerful card. And Land Tax has on it a man holding a bag of money. And it's an enchantment, so you put it in play. Because it has a guy, everybody would try to bolt it. Because that guy's annoying me,

I'm going to bolt that guy. Well, it's not a guy, it's a enchantment. Anyway, Constance or I'm going to bolt that guy. Like, well, it's not a guy, it's a... Anyway, Constance Rotami had the same sort of feeling. And I really, one of the things that I believe strongly, and like I said, Chimney's Goblin fell down this area a bit, is I want to make sure that it's very clear

that the creative communicates what the card is, what the card type is, what the card does, and that when the creative isn't doing that, when it's confusing the issue, then creative, you know, it's kind of getting in the way of its role. Its role is to help delineate what cards are and aid in memory, not cause problems with memory. So anyway, I had a beef with Consular Dormitory. Next is Cranial Extraction. So in Tempest, I made a card called Lobotomy. And Lobotomy was this card where...

Basically, the idea of Lobotomy was, I'm going to go after a specific card and remove it from your brain. But Lobotomy forced you to go after cards that were in someone's hand. So you only could sort of get rid of something that they already had. Well, cranial extraction was kind of the next, the next evolution of that is like, well, why wouldn't black just be able to go after the, you know, so one of the things that's interesting, the difference, I talked about this in my black podcast, um, is that blue and black, we, we try whenever possible to give colors mechanics that are similar, but each have their own slightly take on it.

And so in milling, blue just does the general milling. Like, I'm just going to forget. I'll make you forget. You will forget everything, you know. And sort of slowly grinds you away. Where black is like, nah, nah, nah, nah. If I have a problem, I'm going after that exact problem. I'm going to go in your brain, pull that out. Oh, nah, you don't know how to do that. Sorry.

So anyway, cranial extraction was us sort of taking lobotomy and making sort of the cleanest version, because lobotomy had some luck of what you hit. And we said, well, let's just make a very clean version. And the problem with cranial extraction, by the way, was we ended up putting our cane on it. In fact, this was a problem with Shemskama Gawa, is in order to make the little spice work,

we needed to have Arcane spells. And so just some number of spells we would put Arcane on. And later on, when we wanted to reprint it, we didn't want to reprint cards with Arcane because it just confused people. Like, just this word that didn't mean anything. And this is one of those cards that we kept wanting to reprint, but we couldn't because it was arcane. So, anyway,

it's interesting. One of the problems. Next, Eight and a Half Tales. So, this is one of those cards. So, something I talked about previously. I need to communicate. When I say that we need to be careful about resonance in doing worlds inspired by

real mythology, that doesn't mean that I don't think there's a place to dig a little deeper and find stuff that's true but unknown. For example, Theros definitely has some actual Greek mythology that, you know what, the average person probably doesn't know. The difference between Theros and Champions of Kamigawa is

Champions of Kamigawa put, Champions of Kamigawa put the unknown in your face, in common, it came up constantly. Like, what? Where Theros says, you know what, we can do that, but we're going to do it at higher rarities. We'll do it at rare. We'll do it so they come up more infrequently, and when they do,

you go, ooh, what is that? So it's the exception and not the rule. And I feel like when you're doing residence, the is that? Not like, like, so it's the exception and not the rule. And I feel like when you're doing residence, the rule, the commons, even to some extent the uncommons, need to be the expectations of what people expect. But the rares and the mythics might be a place where you can sort of educate a little bit.

Like, I do like the idea that people play Champs-Élysées and learn things about Japanese culture they did not know. That's awesome. And same with Greek mythology. We want to do that. But what we've learned is, and this is less than Champs-igawa and learn things about Japanese culture they did not know. That's awesome. And same with Greek mythology. We want to do that. But what we've learned is, and this is the lesson of Champs Kamigawa, is that those educational lessons can't be the cornerstone of the set.

When you have a common doing something no one understands, it just makes it confusing. If you have a rare that does that, like, oh, well, it doesn't come up that much and you learn about it, it gives you a chance to learn the world before you learn the sort of the teaching cards if you will and I like those anyway speaking of which Aiden F. Tales

it's a very Japanese thing um uh Foxes are very Japanese and this is a it is a trope of Japanese mythology I don't my Japanese mythology is not as extensive as people who made the set

or the creative team. So Aiden F. Tales was interesting in that we wanted... So one of the things we try to do from time to time, and we don't do this at Common, but we do this at Higher Rarities, is mix-and-match abilities that kind of allow a color

to do something a little beyond what it normally does, but each of the abilities are something that it can do? Now, we want to be careful. We don't want to be so clever. Like, one of the classics is blue has the ability to give things minus N on their power. It can shrink things. It also has the ability to swap power and toughness.

Well, if you mix those two together, hey, blue can kill things. Well, every once in a blue moon, we will let blue do that. But blue really isn't a killing color. So even though it can do both halves of it, we don't want to make it easy to do it. And so, you know, so A. MacDowell's kind of does that, which is protection, something white does all the time, right? And the ability to turn things white. All the colors have the ability to turn things their own color.

It's not something we use a lot, but it's something they do. Blue is the color that can turn anything any color. But every color has the ability to turn stuff into its own color. I mean, the laces from Alpha sort of played this up. And so what 8-Nephthales does is this cute thing where, you know, it has protection from white, and it can turn anything to white. And it's kind of cute, and it definitely plays in the protection aspect. I believe Aiden of Tales is a very tricky creature, and it's hard to capture it,

and so we try to play that aspect up. Next, the Zuberas. And so we tried to play that aspect up. Next, the Zuberas. So the Zuberas are based on a card from Legends, of which I did not write down, so my ability to remember this card from Legends. So the card in Legends was a red card that when it went to the creature,

that when it went to the graveyard, I think it bolted, you know, it did a lightning bolt. And we always liked that card. And I think the Zubiris was us just trying to play in that space of the idea of, here's a creature. Oh, and the thing that it does is, the Zubiris were saying, oh, we're going to count ourselves. So when we go to the graveyards, we're going to count how many

of us are there. So if you start playing more Zubiras, it has sort of a tribal feel to it. I mean, it does have a tribal. And then Zubiras kind of combine. We were playing around a lot with life and death. The kami have a lot of themes of

life and death. I'll get to two cards that are straight up that. But anyway, I did enjoy how the Zubiris kind of had some fun gameplay, brought back something we had fun for, but it added a tribal element to it. I thought that was pretty cool. Next, Forbidden Orchard. Okay, so one of the things that we do from time to time, we don't do a lot of it, but what I call traveling cards.

And the idea of a traveling card is, it's a card that by definition changes ownership. And usually the way it works is, I get some bonus out of it, but the downside is I give it to somebody else. And this card is a very popular card in casual multiplayer, where it's kind of like I get some color and I give it to somebody else. Now they get some color. And there's a little bit of a political thing to it

because you get to choose who gets the card. But anyway, it's one of those cards that like it's... One of the things people don't realize is that there's a lot

of things we do. And some things we do at a very high level. Like every set does them. But some cards, you know, we do at a very high level like every set does them but some cards we do at a much lower level that they're not intended to be an every set thing

it's like once a block or once every other block there's certain subsets of cards that we slowly add to over time and I want people to realize that there's hundreds of subsets we probably service on some level and that this is one of the little ones maybe every other year, every third year.

It's not something we add a lot to very quickly. But over time, if this is the kind of thing you enjoy, you can imagine it's slowly been doling them out. Next is gifts ungiven. So, in Tempest, I made a card called Intuition. And Intuition said, go get four cards out of your graveyard. I'm sorry, three cards out of your library. Get three cards out of your library, put them into your graveyard.

Sorry, it was four cards. Four cards. And then your opponent chose... I'm messing this up. Intuition says, get four cards out of your library. Show them to your opponent. And then they choose two of them, I believe. And then two go in your graveyard and two go in your hand.

And so my intent had always been that there were four uniquely different cards. But I didn't say that in my template. And I think I handed off the design with it saying, just get four cards. So in development, they started to abuse the fact that you could get the same card. And I'm like, oh, no, no, guys, guys, guys, guys. It must have been three cards for intuition, because I think

I'm pretty sure that gifts and gifts is four cards. Anyway, and it kind of got abused, and I said, well, guys, no, no, no, no. It's supposed to be different cards. And they're like, oh, no, no, this is fun. And I could not convince them, even though the intent of got abused, and I said, well, guys, no, no, no, no, it's supposed to be different cards. And they're like, oh, no, this is fun. And I could not convince them, even though the intent of the card, the point of the card was it was supposed to be four different cards, or three different cards. You guys all know. I can't look it up. The fact was it was supposed to be different. And anyway, I could not overrule them. They would not change it. So intuition

went out, you know, carefully designed. Make sure your cards get turned over exactly what you want them to be. Anyway, so during Shem's Kamigawa, I remade the card. I'm like, in fact, the funny story is I was inspired by John Hughes. John Hughes is a director.

So John Hughes made a movie called Pretty in Pink. For those that, and the premise of Pretty in Pink is Molly Ringwald plays a girl from the wrong side of the tracks and her best friend is John Cryer from Two and a Half Men fame and that was long ago, they were kids

and she falls for this rich guy played by I think Andrew McCarthy but anyway, the way it's a love story, but the story, she comes to realize that what she really loves is the guy that's been by her best friend that's been by her side all along. And she gets together with her best friend and that's the end of the story. So anyway, they made this film, and then they showed it,

and the audience, what the Hollywood studios do is, before the movie comes out, they preview it in front of a test audience and get their reactions. And the test audience was upset. They really wanted Michael Ringwald to go with the rich kid, not the poor kid. And so the studio went back to him and said, okay, you've got to change the ending. And he's like, what? And he's like, no, but no, you're missing the whole message of the movie. And anyway, they made him change it.

And he wasn't happy. And so he changed it, and she ends up with the rich kid. I remember when I first saw the movie, I was so mad, because the movie leads you to the ending it's supposed to have. It's not like he redid the whole movie. He just changed the ending. So anyway, he was so upset that he made another movie called Some Kind of Wonderful,

which is the exact same plot, he just swapped the sexes. So instead of main female characters, it's main characters male. But it's the exact same story, just ending the way he wanted to end it. Anyway, this is my version of that story. It's just like, okay, guys, I want to end it the way I meant to end it.

So I made the card. Probably more than you need to know about Gifts Ungiven. We would later, by the way, parody Gifts Ungiven on a holiday card called GiftsGiven. Although, maybe I should save that. Maybe I'll do a holiday card.

That's actually not a bad podcast. Maybe we'll do a holiday podcast. Okay, Glacial Ray. So Glacial Ray is actually kind of controversial. Why is it controversial? It's got nothing to do with what it does. It's a direct damage spell. Why is it controversial?

It's got nothing to do with what it does. It's a direct damage spell, and the creative team decided, oh, well, a bunch of the set took place in a cold setting, and they're like, well, what if we use the weapon of ice? It's glacial. It's a glacial ray. It's an ice ray. And there's a lot of controversy because red tends to be more heat, where blue is cold, and blue tends to use ice.

And there's this big, like, well, but red isn't the ice color, blue's the ice color, is that okay? But, you know, what if I want to do an ice beam and do damage with ice? Well, blue can't do that, you know. And it was very controversial. I think in general, people kind of... I think if you're in a setting that's all cold, that you've got to give Red some access to cold. But anyway, it just rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.

So anyway, I'm not sure how many people realize that glacial meant cold. But if you look at the art, it does. Next is Godot, Bandit Warlord. So this might be... I believe this is one of the most popular commanders of Ken Nagel. And the funny thing is, we were trying

to make a bandit warrior, and so we gave him this flavor of he goes and gets equipment. But since that time, we've sort of put that in the color pie of white, not of red. Godot kind of sits out of time, out of place. He'sot kind of sits out of time, out of place. He's a man without a color pie.

So he does something that nowadays we would do in white. But at the time, I think it's the first time we actually did it, it just was done on a, you know, flavor basis. And so anyway, Godot had that ability. Hanakami. Oh, so this is an interesting card. This card was just in Modern Masters. This was one of those things where the set gets very parasitic,

where we're like, okay, oh, well, we have a lot of Arcane cards. Well, let's make Arcane matter, not just with Splice onto Arcane, but with other cards. And so this card with, like, green gets regrowth. We're like, well, what if it gets a regrowth? An Arcane card. And so this is one of those things that if you dig deep, the reason I think limited actually works well is

all this parasitic interconnectedness works really well in a set where that's what it is. And if you play Modern Masters, I mean, this card is very exciting. If you decide to go down the arcane path, it does some neat things to allow you to have extra utility with the arcane cards. Next, Heartbeat of Spring. Okay, so Alpha had a card called Mana Flare.

And Mana Flare said all lands, everybody, not just yours, all lands tap for an additional colored mana when you tap them. So your mountain would tap for an extra red and such. And what I realized early on, after I got to Wizards, was Mana Flare really isn't a green spell. I mean, it isn't really a red spell. What's red about it?

It's a green spell. You know, red's not about creating more permanent mana. I mean, red would later go on to be the ritual color, but even back then, it wasn't even the ritual color yet. And so I said, you know what? I think it was Urza's Saga. And so I said, you know what? I think it was Urza's Saga. I think I said, you know what?

Green should have, you know, green should, oh no, was Urza's Saga, might even have been Tempest. Anyway, either Tempest or Urza's Saga,

I'm like, you know what? Green should have Maniflair. So I made it, put it in the set. And it got cut for some reason. Usually what happened was, like, we wanted to do

a variant of Man of Flare and Artifacts or we wanted, different reasons why just we ended up, it got cut. You know, something else was too close or it got cut for numbers or whatever. And so I think I tried to put it in Tempest first, either Tempest or Urza Saga, but so anyway, I got kicked out of there,

and then we tried Bricadian Mass, and then after Bricadian Mass, I tried Invasion, and after Invasion, I tried Odyssey, and after Odyssey, I tried Onslaught, and after Onslaught, I tried Mirrors. And finally, I mean, after like eight years or something, the cards finally got made. I literally, so one of the things I learned

about Magic Design is you got to be patient. So you have an awesome card, eventually you'll find a home for the awesome card. It's just a matter of sort of being diligent and finding, you got to find a set in which the card shines, and usually that's when the card has the best chance, when it's thematic and it really fits what's going on. But anyway, Heartbreak of Springbreaker Spring was me not giving up. So next, the Hondens, the Shrines. So Brian was very gung-ho.

Was it Brian? Well, once we knew that Legendary was going to be a theme, something that was going to be a little more than normal, I think this is Brian, this might have been the development team, we decided we wanted legendary enchantments. And what did legendary enchantments do? And also,

in the theme of making the set as parasitic as humanly possible, we said, what if these shrines cared about other shrines? And flavor-wise, it made a lot of sense. So, like, you got different shrines to different oni, and as you got more shrines, they benefited from one another. But each one of those would do something,

but it would cut the number of shrines you had. So, for example, if the white one gained you life, and the red one did damage, well, if you had two shrines, right, the white one gained you two life, and the red one did two damage. And so they were legendary. So the fun thing about this was it made you want to play a five-color deck damage, well, if you had two shrines, right, the white one gave you two life, red one did two damage, and so they were legendary, so the fun thing about this was

it made you want to play a five-color deck, because you only have one out at a time, but they played with each other, was the idea. Anyway, I think they were fun, I mean, they did not help the parasiticness of the set, but they were fun, I did like them. Okay, next. Iname death aspect,

Iname life aspect. So one of the things that designers do is, I talk a lot about aesthetics, about how there's these things that humans like, balance and structure, and just humans have, you know, human brain works a certain way. So one of the things designers love to do is make cards that parallel each other, but like really parallel each other. So the interesting thing about this card, to see if people ever notice this, I assume some people did. Okay, so what happens is the Anomaly of Death aspect, when it comes into play, when it enters the battlefield, you go to the library and take as many cards as you want and put them into your graveyard.

So what it does is, when it is born, it creates death. It takes things and puts them in the graveyard. And in Nami, life aspect, when it dies, when it goes to the graveyard, you get to take cards from your graveyard and put them into your hand. So the death aspect, when it comes to life, brings death.

And the life aspect, when it dies, brings life. I think that's cool, but it is definitely one of those things where we're trying to create subtle parallels, and I enjoy the hell out of this stuff. We talked about the scale of Melvin D'Vorthos, and this is a very Melvin thing, of just the intricacies of this stuff. We talked about the scale of Melvin to Vorthos, and this is a very Melvin thing.

Of just the intricacies of making all the things work in a mechanical way that has this kind of pleasing thing in that these cars actually have both a Vorthosian quality and a Melvinian quality. I'm venting words as I drive. Hopefully that's not too dangerous.

But anyway, I like those cars. Those cars have a lot of flavor, but also have a very kind of neat mechanical elegance to them. Okay, so next. Isamaru, Hound of Kanda. First off, by the way, I did mention this before. Kanda, or should I mention Kanda? Is Kanda coming up?

No, he's not. So Kanda was the bad guy. And he's white. He was the bad guy in white. And there's a good guy in black. So one of the things So Kanda was the bad guy. And he's white. He was the bad guy in white. And there's a good guy in black. So one of the things when Kanda first got named is Gerard's father, or Gerard's adopted father, was named Kando. Siddhar Kando.

He never actually had a card. I tried to get him a card in Time Spiral, but not enough people were convinced that anybody knew who he was. He's been referenced in a few pieces of flavor text, and he's an important character. What happened in the Weatherlight Saga is Gerard, it's preordained that Gerard is going to be the chosen one, basically, that the prophecy have said, and they're worried that, his parents are worried that the bad guys are going to come after him, so they send him to live with a friend of theirs named Siddharth Kanda who adopts him and raises him. And Siddharth Kanda's other son, biological son is Vool. Vool would grow up to become Volrath, for those that don't know.

They're with Arsaga. But anyway, I really wanted to do Kanda and they wouldn't let me do Kanda. And then when they named him Kanda, I'm like, Kanda, we have a Kanda. Like, how do you, you know, and they're like, no one knows Kondo! So they named him Konda. And to this day, it bugs me. Anyway, speaking of Isamaru, Hound of Konda. This card came about because somebody somewhere was in a room and said how you can't make vanilla legendary creatures. And I, being the challenge mic driver, I was like, of course you can make vanilla legendary creatures.

They go, no, no, no. Legendary creatures have to be something special and cool, and vanillas are the opposite of that. And I said, I can make a vanilla legendary creature. They go, okay, you're on. So I thought about it, and I said, okay, W22. And poof. And the other thing that I did

that we liked a lot was in order to make our legendary theme work, I really pushed that we needed to get some uncommon legends, so we needed to push the theme down. I didn't quite figure it out that it didn't work because we didn't have commons, but I was trying to get the as fan

as low as I could, or as high as I could, to be fair. Meaning, I wanted to make sure you opened a legend as many packs as possible, and so we tried to make some uncommon legends. And Isamaru was perfect, right? It was flavorful, it made sense as a legend, but it made sense as an uncommon.

And it was vanilla, so it worked out pretty well. Okay, next, the Dragon Cycle. Okay, so the Dragon Cycle is turned over from design, had attack, no, no design. It had activated abilities that you would spend mana, tap them, and they would do very powerful things. But my problem was, I go, that's

being mean. Here you go, especially for, like, Timmies, here you go, here's a powerful giant dragon, and now let's tap him. Like, what? What? What? Like, you know, when you get a giant dragon in play, you know what you want to do?

You want to attack with a giant dragon. So I said, look, let's, instead of giving them activated abilities, let's give them death triggers. So the idea was, when they die, they'll do cool things, you know. And the idea is, it created this nice damage you do, damage you don't moment.

Because it's like, I want to have a dragon, I want to attack with you. Well, either I want to kill you with my dragon, or you're going to do something about it. And if you do something about it, well, hey, that's going to suck for you too. And the dragons were hugely popular. They might have been the most popular thing on the set.

They're very, very near the top. Now, a couple of them were super powerful on top of that. But people just liked them. One of the worries at the time was this complaint that the Death Trigger, that people wouldn't like the Death Trigger. Because one of the things we've learned is that lower-level players, they don't, higher-level players look at a Death Trigger and they're like, okay, I have to think about when it's going to die

and time it correctly, you know. What we find with lower level players is, it's just like a happy thing when it dies. Like it dies, ooh, but now I get this. They don't tend to plan ahead, but they're happy when it happens. And so, the people that are... The more advanced players, you know,

the dragon oftentimes would die because they planned for it to die. Where the beginning players are just like, I'm playing a dragon. You killed my dragon? Wahey! Good stuff happens. Okay, next. Kiki-jiki. So, for those who do not know, I love copying things. Very much. I might clone myself if I could. I'm a huge fan of copy effects.

And so, I think this one was just me saying, oh, and I also I'm also a big fan of sort of here and now effects. Boom, you get it. Boom, it's here. Then boom, it's gone. And I've done a lot of effects like that in the past.

So this was me kind of saying, oh, I love cloning and I love kind of use it or lose it cards. You know, cards that, one thing that's kind of saying, oh, I love cloning, and I love kind of use-it-or-lose-it cards. One thing that's fun of the use-it-now cards is that I think there's a lot of fun. So for example, there's a format called mini-masters, for those who have never played. Here's how you play mini-masters. By the way, a format invented by myself and Henry Stern many, many years ago, and then I put it in the duelist back in, before I worked for Wizards,

like, 94. And the way it works is you open up a pack of, a butcher pack of cards. Do not look at it. You add in 15 lands, three of each basic land type. Shuffle them together, and then you play.

And like I said, you don't look at it. And then the idea, in a true mini-master, if you want to play future rounds, the winner takes the loser's deck is kind of the advanced way to play. It's based on a format called Grandmaster I used to play down in L.A. back when I was just a Magic player.

And Grandmaster was the same basic concept but with a starter deck. And that came with land, so mini-masters were a little bit different. But anyway, the thing I love about mini-masters is that it forces you to play with cards you might never, ever, ever play with. And, what happens is, when you

have to use cards in the moment, cool things happen. You know, cool things just happen that, when you're kind of forced to use cards you'll never use, well, you know what? You find exciting ways to use them, because, hey, you have them, you know? of forced to use cards you'll never use well you know what you find exciting ways to use them because hey you have them you know and i feel like um cards that say use it now just say well find a way to use it now you know and that i like making magic cards that kind of force your hand a little bit um i've talked about this before but like i love making cards that have weird weird constraints and you just have to figure out how to make the weird

constraint work now obviously that's very Johnny, my Johnny is showing, but I do think those cards are fun for everybody, and that if you can make cards that people will play, especially Unlimited, which is the barrier of lower, that you create a lot of fun moments.

And so, I mean, Kiki Tiki obviously has tons of constructed ramifications. He's played a lot. But I don't know. Kiki, if I had to list my top ten cards I'm proudest of designing, and I've made thousands of magic cards, Kiki Chiki's up there. I'm really, I am a Kiki Chiki fan. Next is Marrow Gnar.

Marrow Marrow? Marrow Gnar. Marrow, Marrow Gnar, because it's bone marrow. Or marrow? Marrow? Marrow-nor. Marrow. Marrow-nor, because it's bone marrow. Anyway, for a long time, people had bugged us to make a rat lord. I think this is the first one. One of the things in general we try to do... My plan before magic goes away, although it's going to outlive me, so... My plan before I go away, I guess, is...

I try to make sure that I find every creature type and at some point find a place and make a lord. Because tribal is very popular, especially on casual. And it's like, oh, you love this obscure creature type? Hey, look for you. It's, you know, it's Jojo Goatmaster. Okay, I have not made the goat lord yet, but one day. So here's another quick aside, is the goats. For some reason, there is a subset of people that love goats. I do not know why. It's not a large subset. But they are letter writers. I get a lot of letter writing.

But people are going, where are all the goats? We need more goats. In fact, when we made the goat napper in Lorwyn but didn't put a goat in. Which I tried to stop. I got a lot of mail about that. Anyway. The goat people are out there. All I'm saying is

I try hard to make a lord. So, I mean, Marinar was us making a rat lord. Certain creature types are more popular. Those are more likely to have gotten one earlier just because we know

they're popular. But we're like, you know, I have Ooze Lord on my list. I want to make an Ooze Lord. There's other stuff. There's other lords I want to make.

You know, in fact, I was happy that Theros Black actually managed to hit a Lord or two that had never been done before. Okay. Next. Oh, also, by the way, people ask me about Kiki Chiki, why he says non-legendary.

And the reason's pretty obvious if you think about it, which is he's not an assassin. His goal isn't to kill a member at the time. Now this is not true, but at the time, if I put a second legend into play, it would kill the first legend, at the time of Champions of Kamigawa. And so, if Kikijiki could copy legends, he could just destroy,

he just would kill legends. And so, that wasn't his role. Next is the Myogens. So the Myogens, Theros obviously has us playing around with gods Next is the Myogens. So the Myogens, Theros obviously has us playing around with gods, but the Myogens was our first take on gods.

Now, we didn't actually put gods on the card. The creature type wasn't god, it was spirit. If we read this back in 5, we should have said god, spirit, spirit, god. Myogen in Greek mythology

are gods, or equivalent to gods. I mean, a little like gods, I guess. And they were our version of the gods. I mean, they're like gods, I guess. And they were our version of the gods. I mean, they had the Divinity Counter, which said, as long as they had the Divinity Counter, they were indestructible, but if you wanted to do this awesome effect,

the idea was that they were, in their own realm, were invulnerable, but if they came to our realm, then they were vulnerable, was kind of the flavor we were going for. Anyway, I thought the Myogens were cool. Other worldly journey. It's funny. flavor we were going for. I thought the Myogens were cool. Other Worldly Journey. It's funny. So in Urza's Destiny, I made a card called Flicker. In fact, I made three cards called Flicker in Urza's Destiny.

We get Urza's Destiny. I made a vertical cycle, but I'll get there in that podcast. But anyway, I'm a very fond of Flicker. I think I've said this before, but I, I consider flicker to be the, the Swiss Army knife of mechanics.

It just does everything. It just, there's so many things you can do with flickering, and I love flickering. And so this one was interesting in that we made a flicker so it was still end of turn, but the idea was the thing that went away got better. And so you could use it on your own guy and lose your guy, better. And so, you could use your own guy and lose your guy

but make it better. You could use your opponent's guy but the downside was you improved it. So, yeah, anyway, I thought Otherworld Journey was a pretty fun,

cool card that kind of gave you, I like cards that somehow have different uses for you and your opponent but, you know, like,

how you use it on each of them is different. And here it's, like, positive and negative, so how do you want to use the card? I think that's fun. So, Rend Flesh and Rend Spirit. So, one of the things that is true is that this was a war. Like, one of the things that I wish we had done a little bit better, I mean, I'm happy for them how Mirrored in Besiege did this, is that it was a war. There was a war going on. The humans and the creatures of the natural world

were fighting creatures of the spirit world, and it was an all-out war. I mean, really, the flavor of the set was all-out war. Now, I know magic is war a lot. I mean, we're a game of conflict, and we're a game of environmental stories, so wars play well, if you will. But I feel like there wasn't a lot of really hammering home,

these guys, those guys. There was a little bit. And Ren's flesh and Ren's spirit were one of the best ones, actually. So what we had done is we took our murder, our drug banishing, our kill card of the set, and we broke it into two. And one just killed spirits, and one just killed non-spirits. And I thought that was actually pretty cool. It definitely...

In general, one of the things I believe is... Well, I like some kills that just can kill anything. I also feel that narrow kill is very cool. Especially for limited, where I get a kill card and I'm like, oh, but I can't kill that particular thing and I have to figure out how to use it. Just like I think counter spells, it's fun to have counter spells in which it doesn't counter everything.

And so this both did that and had some flavor, you know, and it was funny because one of them ended up being a decent constructed card, and one of them didn't, because other than this set, there weren't a lot of spirits. So non-spirit, well, that kills a lot of things. Because before that, by the way, black tended to have the rider of non-black on it. We're a little more loose on that these days. And so the one thing that was very nice about Ren's spirit

was that it destroyed black creatures. Now, it didn't destroy black spirits, but if you were playing the larger game, you know, I mean, there were a lot of spirits in Kamigawa, but Magic as a whole had a lot of spirits and so we gave black a kill card that could deal with black creatures next

Sensei's Divining, a Spinning Top is it Spinning or Divining? I wrote Spinning on my list but I actually think Sensei's Divining Top which, yeah it is so that's one of those cards, sometimes, when you look back, like, you have a broken card, or the card is really, really good, and you go, ooh, was that

your tent, were you trying to, like, no, like, we were just making card, oh, I think we made it to go with the deceivers, by the way, remember the deceivers, the ones, uh, I think originally, they didn't look at the top themselves, and so and I think that was their original purpose, and then once the deceivers took a look at themselves, they changed it because, I mean, now it goes to the top of the library, so now it doesn't work with deceivers

because by nature, if you look, you know, it goes on top. But anyway, I think the original purpose of it was to help with the deceivers. Anyway. And like I said, it wasn't made to be this awesome card. It was actually

just made to be this flavorful card, and then we just kind of missed. We didn't realize how powerful it was. A lot of broken cards end up that way. Finally, my final card, which, ironically, is Timestop, which will also end up being podcast stop.

Uh, so the thing with Time Stop that was awesome is we came up with this card. I don't remember who came up with it. Um, let's say Elliot, but I'm not sure who came up with it. Um, Elliot led, oh no, no, no, I'm sorry, Elliot didn't lead the set. Tinsman led the set. So maybe it was Tinsman. I don't know. One of the, one of the design team did it. I, not, not me. Um, and so the idea was end of the set. Tinsman left the set. So, maybe it was Tinsman? I don't know. One of the design team did it.

Not me. And so the idea was, end the turn. And originally, the text was really complicated. Like, finish the current turn. It started explaining everything. And then someone just said, maybe it was Del or like in templating, they said,

what if it just says end the turn? And then reminder text takes all that complicated stuff and explains it. And it really was a big shift. I think this card actually was one of the cards that pushed us toward our modern templating philosophy that says make the text easy to understand and hide the nitty-gritty

in the reminder text. So that like because if I spell it all out and the card is eight lines long, you're like, oh, what does this card do? But if I just say end the turn and then the card's eight lines long, you're like, oh, what does this card do? But if I just say end the turn and then in reminder text I tell you, you're like, okay, end the turn. I get a general sense. Well, let me read and see the details of that. But I get a general gist of what this card does.

And I believe that there's a lot of power in the flavor of the templating. And that's something that we've become much more conscious of in the last five years. I mean, this is more than five years ago. But that's the peak of us slowly learning this lesson of templating can be flavorful and that templating can help get across the card and that we have a little more leeway,

that we don't have to talk in strict magic ease all the time, that sometimes we can talk more vernacularly that'll make it easier for people to understand it, and then we can use reminder text and stuff to help people you know get the mechanics of what exactly

is going on anyway with that I have finished going through all my cards that I wanted to talk about so I believe this is going to be the last

of the Champs of Kamigawa podcast I hope you guys enjoyed them I also see that I had some traffic today so you guys got a little extra bonus

which is good. Let me finish my cards. So actually, the traffic gods were smiling, or podcast gods, whoever you wanted to be, were coordinating this correctly, so I got to finish with my cards. And I had fun talking with Shemza Kamigawa. It was up and down.

I mean, it was not the high point for Magic. I've said before that I think the block might be the low point for Magic Design as a block. I mean, Homelands is probably the least... Homelands is the lowest set as far as design. But I think Kamigawa is the lowest block. And there's a lot of debate on my blog about people who love Kamigawa and how dare I say that Kamigawa is not that great.

The reality is we have a lot of metrics. We look at market research. We look at Magic Online. We look at sales we have a lot of metrics. You know, we look at market research. We look at Magic Online. We look at sales. We look at tournament play. I have a lot of social media. I get a lot of emails. I mean, we have a lot of means to get feedback. And the reality was this set was a miss. I'm not saying people didn't love it. I'm not saying there weren't fans of it. I'm not saying that it didn't do some things correctly. Because everything, you have to look at things. Things will go right, things go wrong. I think the set did some things right, and we did borrow some things from it. But it did more wrong than right.

And I feel that, kind of looking back on it, I like to think of it as a block where we learned a lot of lessons. I talk about how your mistakes help you grow, and your mistakes make you better, and that you don't always learn from successes as much as you learn from your mistakes. Well, this was a very, very educational block. I'll do other podcasts talking about betrayers and saviors and you'll learn plenty there too. And like I said, I'm not trying to be down on it in the sense of I know there are people who loved it.

There's people who love everything. And it's awesome that people loved it. I know there's people that really got into the Japanese and that weren't put off by it and that's great. And there's people that learned a lot about Japanese culture and that's great. And I love the fact that people love the set. It is just my job as

the guy who makes the set to be honest and say, were we successful? And to be successful, part of that means that we make our audience happy and we did not. We did not make the majority of the audience happy.

And so in that regards, we failed in this set, this block. Anyway, but hey, trying to talk to you straight, tell you the news and anyway,

that was Shem's Cowgallow block. Like I said, we learned a lot and I guess what? It's time to go make the magic.