Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #88 - Theros, Part 7

Episode Date: January 17, 2014

Mark continues discussing Theros in part 7.

Okay, I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another episode of Drive to Make Theros! The podcast that seemingly will not end. Anyway, for the last six podcasts, not consecutively, but this is the seventh podcast dedicated to Theros. And all of the... I'm doing card-by-card stories, talking about different stories from Theros and exploring the design. I've been doing experiments, trying to do more recent set.

And what I've learned is I have a lot more stories because I remember them all. So I should tell more stories about like Tempest. What was Tempest? I don't remember. Anyway. That was my old man voice. That was a very bad old man voice. like Tempest. Ah, what was Tempest? I don't remember. Anyway, that was my old man voice. That was a very bad old man voice.

I do actually do a decent old man voice. That was not it, so. Okay. Last we left, where were we at? We were at Hundred Handed One. Okay, so 100 Handed One

is Hecaton Horisis? Hecaton Horisis? Hecaton Horis? I'm not sure how to pronounce it. I can spell it, but I cannot pronounce it. Okay, so when Ethan made his little book about Theros

and it listed all the things that magic had done that fell into Greek mythology and all the things it hadn't done. One of the things he listed on the hadn't done is a hundred-handed one. So for those that know the Greek mythology, the hundred-handed ones were these creatures

that helped the gods overthrow the Titans. Zeus and company. I think it aided them in overthrowing the titans. But then they imprisoned them because they were powerful and they were worried that they'd overthrow them, I believe. Anyway, I'm not 100% on this one. But anyway, they were creatures of mighty power.

They were huge. Ethan definitely wanted to do 100-handed ones, and I was fine. So one of the things I've explained before is, one of our philosophies with Top Down nowadays is that you have to think about rarity with what kind of resonant thing you want. And what we've learned is, common should be something that people just know. So in Greek mythology, look, common's going to be satyrs and centaurs and cyclops and, you know, things that just you're familiar

with. You know what they are. You know, minotaurs and such. And the idea is that as you get higher in rarity, you can get a little more obscure. And the idea is that it's fine to sort of dig deep and give a reward to the people that really know the source material. Just you got to do that at a higher rarity not a lower rarity like the lesson of Kamigawa

was some of that obscure stuff was done at lower rarity and people were like what you know and at a higher rarity they still go what but the as fan of what is much lower and it's fun every once in a while to learn something you know but it's

not as much fun when the basic things aren't there. It's harder for you to latch on. You know, what we want when you first open a top-down set is that the comments are just, oh, it's this, and oh, it's that, and just you recognize things. And so what you want to do is take the things that aren't so recognizable and use them as a spice, you know, at a higher rarity so they show up. And I think the 100-handed one, so the other thing with the 100-handed one, so the story of it is, originally, it didn't have monstrosity, but we're like, oh, once we realized the monstrosity, we're like, of course it's got to have monstrosity, it's a giant monster. It's a giant monster.

And white, so one of the things we had done with monstrosity was we had chosen to put it mostly in red and green. And so red and green have monstrosity in common. They have the most, you know, the quantity and quality is higher. And the idea was that everybody had a little bit of monsters, but white was the least monstrous. White just has the least big creatures. At lower rarities, it mostly has tiny things, and it was going to be more the human color and the army color

and it had a role to play in the set, but it really wasn't going to be the monster color. But we wanted to make sure at high rarities we had a few monsters, and the hundred-handed one seemed good as a white monster. So what happened was we made the card I think the original version, before it had

monstrosity, was it could block any number of creatures. I think Ethan made that version. And the idea is, okay, it's a big monster. It can block whatever you like. That was the original version. A big monster, it can block as many as it wants to. And then I think we decided with monstrosity that we'd make the can block anything the monstrosity part of it. So the idea is I'm big, I can get bigger, and when I get bigger, my extra ability is I now can block anything. Because that was, like, the key to monstrosity is you want to sort of, you know, build into something cool. And so the end state, the coolest thing, which is where Ethan started, was, okay, giant monster that can block as many creatures as it wants. It's pretty cool, you know, that it serves as this, until you get through this thing, you're not going to get to the player, and it can block

everything. So what happened was, I think the original version was, I don't remember the size, but it was whatever size, you do monstrosity, it gets to some counters, and now it can block everything. And we were in a meeting, and somebody, I don't remember who, I would give credit if I remember who it was, said, well, shouldn't it be it can block 99 more things? And we laughed, and we laughed, and then I'm like, okay, we're using that. Because one of the things that's very important in any magic set, but top-down sets especially, is that you want to find mechanics that sort of have a little bit of novelty in expressing flavor. And the

reality is, you know, the 99 plus is just cute in the sense that I'm sure there will be games in which it matters that it can only block 100 things, but we thought it was kind of neat that the 99 Plus was just a flavorful way to say what we wanted it to say that just had a little extra oomph to it. And one of the things that's funny, we've gone on this path. Early Magic was all about that,

just like, write whatever makes the card the coolest it could be. And there was a lack of consistency which was a lot of cards in alpha didn't all work the same even though they were similar because each card kind of handled the problems individually. And then what happened was with time, like, okay,

we need to consolidate that. We don't want cards working almost the same way. Cards need to work the same way. So we went to the other end of the spectrum which is like, no novelty text no trinket text, no, you know, let's cut to the bone, what does the card do and then eventually we came back around and said, okay you know, we've got to be careful

we want to be consistent, but that doesn't mean that we can't use trinket text, so trinket text by the way, there's novelty text and trinket text, which are slightly different things, I will define trinket text is something that adds flavor to the card that really in gameplay is not going to matter most of the time. A good example is you have a knight with protection from dragons. Well, how often is a knight going to even know, like, first of all, dragons fly and the knight doesn't, like, how in the world is it going to matter? Now, hey,

there's some dragons that have direct damage effects that, you know, can activate to damage things. Oh, they can't hurt the night. You know, I mean, it's not that it never comes up, but hey, having a night with protection from dragons has a very cool flavor to it. We call that trinket text. It doesn't matter much, but it adds something. So novelty

text is a hundred-handed one. So novelty text says, okay, we wanted the creature to block any number of creatures. Well, blocking 99 additional creatures is functionally very similar to blocking any number, but it has more novelty to it. That it

just reads funnier. If the card existed and just said block any number, that card's not as cool as blocking 99 extra. And so novelty text means that it doesn't tend to change the functionality. It just takes the functionality that exists and puts it in a fun way. The other example of that,

although this one didn't actually come, was Door to Nothing, that Aaron and I originally had wanted it to destroy target player rather than they lose the game. I think we wanted to destroy target creature or player. And the reality is, it's very similar to target player loses the game they lose the game. I think we wanted to destroy target creature or player. And the reality is, it's very similar to target player loses the game,

but it just felt cooler. You know, destroy target creature or player felt cooler than target player loses the game. You know, we've done target player loses the game a lot, and we've never done destroy target player. You know, plus creature or player is kind of cute. Anyway, that is an opposite text. And that is what the 100-handed one is up to.

Next, Hythonia the Cruel. The Cruel! Okay, so this started... So Hythonia the Cruel and Keepsake Gorgon started in the set. Keepsake Gorgon was Baby Gorgon and Hypothion the Cruel... Hypoth...

Hythonia the Cruel was Mama Gorgon. And neither of them was legendary when we made them originally. So the original version of the card was they both had Death Touch because they're Gorgons. Baby Gorgon it's Monstrous Ability or Monstrosity Ability. It was called Monstrous in a design. So if I say Monst ability, or monstrosity ability, it was called monstrous in a design,

so if I say monstrous, I'm thinking monstrosity. Its monstrosity effect was destroy target creature, which I think it still is. And then Mama Gorgon had this cutesy thing where it did one damage

to everything in play. And the reason that was cutesy was it had death touch, so that meant its damage would have death touch, which meant it killed everything. And development rightfully said, okay, yeah, yeah, stop being so cutesy. It just destroys everything.

Oh, and let me talk about Non-Gorgon. I've joked a lot. Have you seen me in an interview at the Pro Tour and on my column about how I did Non-Gorgon because I wanted to create our own world of Greek mythology where Gorgons knew love. In the actual Greek mythology, Gorgons affected each other. It was a punishment. It was not meant to be something great. The fact that nobody could look at them without dying, even other Gorgons, you know, the point of the curse was it isolated them.

When nobody can look at you, it's very hard to have a relationship with somebody. And so, but, so there's two reasons I did not grow up. One is, you know, I felt, you know, I wanted our Gorgons to know love. But the mechanical reason, the actual mechanical reason, which is that by putting non-Gorgon on Hythonia, I was making a Gorgon tribal card. And what that meant is, oh, I have a card that kills everything except Gorgons. Oh, well, you know what would go well on that deck? Other Gorgons. And so, for example, Keepsake Gorgon goes well with Hythonia, because if you have Keepsake Gorgon in play and then play Hythonia, well, guess what? You kill everything except both of them.

They both remain. And so it was a way to add a little bit of Gorgon tribal. There's not a lot of Gorgons in the set, but magic has enough Gorgons that, look, you can use Hythonia to make a Gorgon deck. Okay, so how does Hythonia become legendary? So this story is a cute one. So what happens is we get the art in. So Jeremy Jarvis is the art director for Magic. He does an awesome job. One of the things Jeremy does is when art comes in, he picks the best art,

what we call tier one art. And the reason is we pick images that we want to use for marketing and for, you know, like as we're trying to sell the set, like, oh, these are the best images. Let's use these images, you know. And Hythonia was one of the tier one images. And Creative finally said, oh, this is so awesome. We really want to use this in a lot of places. This seems so awesome. This just can't be a generic Gorgon.

This has to be a specific Gorgon. Like, she looks awesome. And so Creative came to development, I think at the time, and said, guys, do you mind we make this legendary? And development's like, oh, no, no problem. It's very powerful. Legendary's fine. And so we made it legendary. At Creative's request, because

the art was so awesome, they were like, we want to make this a character. They were inspired by the art to make it a character. Next, we have Kragma Warcaller. So So this is a black-red card. It gives haste and plus two plus zero to Minotaurs. Okay, so one of the questions that I get about this card is, hey, wait a minute. Grants haste and plus two plus zero. Red can do that. And my answer to that, why is it black-red? Red can do that. And the answer is black can do that. And my answer to that, why is it black and red? Red can do that.

And the answer is black can do that too. Black can also give plus two plus zero and haste. So one of the things we do, when we talk about gold cards, there's a bunch of different types of gold cards that we can do. I did a podcast, I believe, on gold cards. One other thing is the intersection where you find something that both colors can do and then you give it at a bargain price because uh hybrid i mean a hybrid uh uh multi-color costs are harder to get than a simple cost so if i have a card that costs 2b or costs 2r i can get a spell that costs 1br that does more

than either 2b or 2r can do and so what happened was um we wanted to make this a black-red card because there's a cycle of uncommon cards that are encouraging different draft strategies. And this card is meant to be, I open this pack one, booster one, pick one, pick one, pack one, pick one, pack one, that I want to go, ooh, I'm going to go Minotaurs. And then it's setting up and it's

red and black and it says to draft black Minotaurs and red Minotaurs and it lines everything up. And so we really wanted this to be something that sort of sent you down that path. Also, we knew minotaurs were going to be fun, we had put them in black and red in the set, and we wanted to make sure that if you're going to make a minotaur deck, that we definitely encourage you to play red and black. Now note, we made a rare mono-red minotaur lore, that if you wanted to make a, if you wanted to go bigger than just a set and make it, you know,

in casual, make a mono-red minotaur, we gave you a very good minotaur red and mono-red. That's not for limited so we put it at rare. Once again, when you look at rarities, like I said, I'll do a podcast on rarities one of these days, rarities have a lot to do with limited and so if something is meant for limited,

either it goes to common or uncommon, and if it's not meant for limited, it goes to rare or mythic rare. Every once in a while, it's not meant for limited and goes at lower rarities for complexity reasons, but usually if it goes there, it's something that can work in limited.

It causes a problem for limited, we always get it out of uncommon, or common and uncommon. Okay, next. Labyrinth Champion. Oh, so this is the heroic... So this is a guy who has heroic shock, meaning when you target him,

he shocks something. He does two damage to a future player. We had him a common originally. So we decided early on, or, I don't know, middle of the way on, that we wanted white and green to have heroic that makes them bigger, and white would have small effects. White would get the small

plus one, plus one, like a single plus one counter plus a small effect, where green would get more plus one, plus one counters, and blue and red were going to be more spell-oriented, while white and green were a little more creature-oriented. Black kind of cut the difference. And so we wanted blue and red to have a little more, like, I generate a spell when I target it.

And so one of the obvious spells... So one of the things, by the way, is every year we have new mechanics. And every time we do a new mechanic, the very first place we look to in red is damage. Now, I explained this, I think, in the red podcast, that I think damage is thought of, grouped together as, like, one thing, when really it does a whole bunch of different functions, and red uses it very useful. It has a lot of functions that you can use it for. And so obviously when we're

thinking about heroic, we wanted red, we wanted spell effect, direct damage made sense. This one got moved around a little bit and ended up going uncommon because we have a rule in New World Order that says if you're capable of killing multiple creatures, you get red flagged, which means you have to justify yourself

in common. So usually a card capable of killing more than one creature is not uncommon, and this thing is. So I think we had it uncommon for a day or two, and then like, oh yeah, okay, it's uncommon. It moved to uncommon. I do enjoy, by the way, that separating

heroic things that make themselves better versus heroic things that generate effects just make very different style of decks and play differently and one of the things that's very important is when you make a mechanic trying to get breadth to the mechanic the thing I like about heroic is while the trigger's the same different kind of heroics work very differently

how you'll do things it's a very different animal from I want to build this up to same, different kind of heroics work very differently. How you'll do things, it just, you know, it's a very different animal from I want to build this up to I want to sort of, you know, use it as to build the deck around and the shock one or the draw cards. There's certain heroic ones that really let you sort of craft a deck if you're willing to do that. Okay, next, Lightning Strike. So, okay, Lightning Strike threw me a little bit. So when the set comes out, I have a blog, for those that are unaware, called Blogatog. It's on Tumblr.

And I answer questions. I also post my comment there, and I post my podcast there, and I post my columns there. But the biggest thing I do there is I answer questions. And so one of the first things that happened as I started getting all these questions about Lightning Strike. Lightning Strike? Why wasn't it the Searing Spear? And I was a little taken aback. Mostly because it's a common. And, you know, I understand when we take a card

that's a valuable card that people have, you know, you have when we take a card that's a valuable card that people have, you know, you have a rare, mythic rare, and we just reprint it but change the name. Okay, now it's annoying. You have these cards. Now you've got to go and get other versions of these cards, and I understood that, but I felt like it kind of was like, you're going to open four of these, just an opening, you know. You get a box, you're probably going to open four of these.

I didn't think it was that big a deal. In fact, I didn't even think it was that big a deal. So we're like, why are people so upset by this? And what I come to realize is that it's the principle of the thing. I think what happens is we do something that's upsetting, and then we do it enough that, like, it's not that this one's really that upsetting. It's not that hard to get for lightning strikes. But it's kind of the principle of the thing.

Like, we had just done a Searing Spirit as some sort of promo, I believe, an old art promo. People are like, ooh, I got this old art promo. I want to use it. Oh, the exact card exists, but I can't use it. And Message Heard, it's something for me. I didn't realize how that is something people were as touchy about as they are, which is important for me to understand,

because if something concerns you guys, I want to address it. And so, okay, I mean, that's very important, and it's why I have my blog to learn things like this. So let me explain how it happened, because, as you will see, there was never an opportunity to be Seren's Spear, and I'll explain why. So what happened is, we had a spell.

I don't remember what the spell did, but it was a direct damage spell, and I assume it had some of the mechanics of the set or something, as we normally do. And so it got concepted as Lightning Strike, and we got, you know, Lightning Bolt. We knew we wanted a Lightning Bolt-like spell. I mean, Lightning Bolt we did not want to bring back. We talked about it, but it's very powerful, and it warps the environment. It causes all sorts of design issues. And I'm not saying we'll never reprint Lightning Bolt again, but it's not something we want to do a lot.

And we've done it. I mean, in the big picture, we did it relatively recently. I know it's been a few years. But it's not something we want to run all that often. It's supposed to be very infrequently. So we knew we wanted a lightning spell, and so we made this creative, like, Jen was doing the card cut, so I'm like, oh, direct damage spell, okay, good, good. I mean, you can't call it lightning bolt, but lightning strike, you know, because the god threw lightning. And then what happened

was the card turned out to be too good. And development figured it out late enough that they didn't want to mess around with making a new card. So what happens when development needs to change a card late in the process, the normal thing they'll do is they'll change it to a card that's already existing. And the reason for that is it's an understood thing. You know, Lightning Strike, for example, and the Lightning Strike Searing Spear is a card that development understands the power level of is. It's a card that actually means something to the constructed, but in a way that's not scary to them.

And so it was a latent of change that they said, okay, we need to change to a known thing. Now, they wanted to change to Searing Spear. The problem is it was so latent in the process that the art was already done for Lightning Strike. You know, there's a guy throwing a lightning bolt. Like, well, that's what the art is. And so Searing Spirit didn't make any sense.

It wasn't a spear. It wasn't on fire. The art didn't make any sense for Searing Spirit. So the answer was, okay, it's a common. Look, we'll just give it a new name. And so they ended up saying, okay, we'll do Searing Spirit. We'll go ahead and change the name. they ended up saying,

okay, we'll do searing spear, but we're going to have to change the name. But it's not as if they knew the whole time they were doing searing spear and just changed the name. It was out of the necessity of trying to fix the problem. And so, if they decided to repeat searing spear

and just change it for the sake of changing it, I understand maybe people would be upset, but I'm trying to stress that that wasn't the case. Something happened. They didn't want to break the environment. And so all the reasons behind it were very rational, sound reasons, but it did end up resulting in a Serium Sphere duplicate that's not called Serium Sphere.

So anyway, it does now allow us a little flexibility. It is an ability we want to use a lot. And sometimes fire makes sense, and sometimes lightning makes sense. So it gives a little flexibility to match our world in the future. And I think that is good. Lotham Ketelblipis. So Ketelblipis, a real short story here, was also like Hippocamp, where Ethan really wanted to do it. And so it just was another one. I'm trying to show. one of the things when I try to do these stories is the idea that there's context and there's ongoing things that are happening. And that one of the most important things about being on a design team, or when I look for designers, I look for skill.

That's very important. But another thing that is also equally important is part of being on a creative team is spending a lot of time in a small room with these people, that you want people that make the process fun and entertaining. And so we goof around a lot just because part of the creative process is being light and loose and having fun. And so one of the running jokes of our things was Ethan was just trying to get, he had a short list. He wanted a hundred-handed one. He wanted a catableepis. He wanted a hippocamp. And I used to just tease him. I mean, not that I didn't want that, not that we didn't label those things,

not that we didn't encourage him to do that, but it just was a running joke, you know, where he was in charge of the file, and if I didn't name something, he could name it. And so he would come in and go, okay, it's a roaring catapulipis. And the joke is, he would say this, and I'd go, really, he'd say, really, kettle bleepers. And we would joke.

Anyway, it was a running joke. It was funny. I mean, the thing I'm hoping when I talk about some of these stories is realize that, look, you know, I want to get some of the humanity behind, you know, these are people making the sense, you know, and I'm a big believer of trying to share who we are and that we're not just, you know, the man behind the curtain making stuff. That we are people, you know, and anyway. I will move on.

Miss Cutter Hydra. If I asked you, I mean, Aaron did a little question and answer at the last Pro Tour. So if you weren't there, for those that might not know the answer to this question, what did this card, what Greek trope did Miscutter Hydra start as? And the answer is Hercules!

And you're like, what? And the answer was we had Hercules, we wanted to do Hercules. So the original version of Hercules, like, I don't know, needed, like, some number of enchantments on it.

It was trying to match the labors of Hercules. Like, it needed seven enchantments, but Hercules had 12 labors. It didn't make sense. It was impossible to play, and getting seven ores on something was crazy so we changed it

we came up with a card that I liked a lot so much I like a lot that I'm going to make the card so I'm not going to tell you what the card did but it did something that on the surface it was one of those things where so I'll say this it was a 12-12 for not a lot of mana

and it had a restriction and the restriction was not the restriction seemed easier to overcome than it was. But it was this neat restriction that you really were challenged to beat the restriction. And the problem was two things. One is, Creative didn't like having Hercules be a 12-12. We were tying a bunch of stuff together. We were trying to make him the most powerful human, you know, ever.

Because he's like, oh my god, he's super powerful. But we had a big fight about how big he was supposed to be. And then, the ability which

we really liked that I thought played well, development did not like at all. In the god book poll, it didn't fare that, in the rare poll,

it didn't fare that well. It's an internal thing we ask people in the building what they think of it. It didn't do that well. And people in the building what they think of it it didn't do that well and so at some point they realized they needed a card that had to fit developmental purposes

and so what they did is they're like okay we need a green card we can turn into this function I think they were worried about Delver something blue and so they

needed to scrap a card to make a green card that was good against this particular archetype. And the team didn't like this card. I tried to save this card. In fact, they tried to kill it multiple times, and I came to the card's defense. Usually as a lead designer, I will jump in once in a while on a few cards that I really think matter.

I felt this matter. I really wanted it. At some point, it got changed from Hercules to Hydra because the creator team didn't think it could be Hercules. I was like, fine, fine, fine. It's not Hercules. But I liked the card mechanics. I said, fine, it could be Hydra. And they got art

for Hydra in, so when they needed to change things, it was late enough that they couldn't change the art. So they ended up deciding they wanted to use the Hydra. And so my card, the team's card actually, went bye-bye. So I will try some other day, one day when Hercules shows up. I mean, this card, not necessarily Hercules. I will, I'll tell you. Next is Nessian Courser. So Nessian Courser was a card in Future Sight so one of the things that happened in Future Sight was I was aware as I was designing

Future Sight that it was getting a little complicated, for those unaware it is the most complicated set in the history of complicated sets and so one of my ideas was I was trying to figure out how to do future shifted cards

that could have a new frame that felt like they made sense in the future shifted frame but weren't complicated. So one idea we came up with was full frame commons. Oh, sorry, vanilla. Full frame common vanillas. And the idea was, oh, it's a

special frame, so the reason it's future shifted is, ooh, the frame, it's a full art vanilla. Because vanillas don't need a text box opposite to vanillas. And so we made a series of vanillas. And we went to

we also went to the development team, or maybe the developer on the design team and said, what are vanillas we've never made? And tried to make some new vanillas and push in some places, and we made a few powerful vanillas. But anyway, Creative had the world as their oyster. One of the

things Creative was doing during Future Sight was showing, they were looking at future worlds. Like, here's a hint of places we might go. So on this card, it was a centaur, so they made it like a Greek-inspired world. And that was the little nod in Future Sight that, you know, one day we might do a Greek-mythological-inspired world.

So when it came time to do the set, whenever we do a set, we always look at Future Sight and say, oh, is there a Future Sight card that makes sense here? When it does, we try to use it. We don't always use it. We're not slaves to Future Sight. But when we find opportunities, we look. And I realized that this card was a perfect fit here. The name was made to match the world. Nessian has Greek roots, I believe.

Anyway, so we knew this was a perfect place. Obviously, we don't reprint art on new sets, so we knew it would have a new piece of art. But we're like, oh, this is a very cool place. I then teased that there was a Future Sight card. In retrospect, I guess I made a mistake. I think the problem was that I set up expectations for a crazy Future Sight future shift card, and we got a very plain future shift card.

So I think I made a mistake of expectations. Maybe, I'm not sure what I should have done. But anyway, I like sort of teasing guys but I think when I tease you I have to be careful not to lead you like normally I lead you down the path of it's a 12, 12 creature that costs 1 mana 12, 12 trampler that costs 1 mana

but I think when people read that they have expectations that of course there's a drawback how else could you have a 12, 12 trampler for 1 where this, people were just expecting the world and they got a little unhappy when, people were just expecting the world, and then they got a little unhappy when I didn't give them the world. So, a mistake on my part. Nikdos, Shrine de Niks.

I have no idea what accent that was. So this card started as a top-down card. Basically, what happened was, we wanted to make a temple, because the temples were very big, and the idea was, oh, it's a temple to the gods. And so one of the ideas we had was, oh, well, if it's a temple to the gods, oh, well, let's make use of devotion, because it temples were very big. And the idea was, oh, it's a temple to the gods. And so one of the ideas we had was, oh, well, if it's a temple to the gods, oh, well, let's make

use of devotion, because it's a temple. And then the cleanest idea of devotion is, oh, we'll do a devotion with something that helps your mana. It's a land. So like, okay, well, you know, cross. Temple has to be land. Devotion makes sense to temple. Mana is tied to land. We all mix together, and we ended up with Nykthos.

When we made it, we had no idea what the powerhouse was going to become. I'm not sure if development tweaked its numbers or not. I do know that, like I said, it's funny when you make a card that ends up being this tournament staple, and really, we were just trying to make a top-down temple.

Our goal was not lofty, it was just, I mean, it was lofty, but it wasn't, we weren't trying to make a powerful card. We were just trying to make a flavorful card. Uh, and it ended up being, I mean, I love, by the way, when the super flavorful cards happen to be good tournament cards. I think that's cool. It's neat. Um, I'm happy Devotion is, is, is showing up and constructed like it is in the sense that here's the mechanics that I really, I really wanted people to love.

And now that it's getting played, I think people are really falling in love with it. That, uh, Chroma never really got quite it's getting played, I think people are really falling in love with it. Chroma never really got quite this reception, so I'm happy for that. Okay, Pelucranos. Okay, so Pelucranos. The car was originally called Phytohydra, and when you used the monstrosity, it said, it fights all creatures!

And that's one of the things, one of the luxuries of being in design is you can just write words. You can write words that sound like they make sense. But at some point, somebody has to look at those words and go, you know what, that doesn't actually work. We try to have that happen during design.

Sometimes the rares and the mythics will fall through only because we spend a lot more time on the mechanics and things that happen a lot to make sure that all that stuff works because if any one card can't work

it's easy to change but if a whole mechanic doesn't work that can undermine your set significantly. So it turns out Pelucranos couldn't fight everything.

Eric did the best job he could to try to retain the general essence of it. I'm a little sad in that I'm not the biggest fan of green doing damage to creatures. It does have a little bit of a fight feel, so I can justify it in my head, I guess. It's a little sad to me that it can't fight everything. I thought that was awesome.

The other thing I guess that was one of Eric's issues, which is a very strong issue, is it tended to destroy lots of creatures but always die and it's like you kind of want to have this cool creature in play and so that's true. You want this giant creature in play. So as I explained earlier today, the monstrosity, the monsters we ended up putting, focusing in red and green.

The idea being if you're drafting that red and green is where the monstrosity deck, the monster deck is going to be. There's monsters in other colors. I believe black was next in line for monsters, and that blue and white had the least amount of monsters. I think the way it worked was

white was the least, so green was the most, then red, then black, then blue, then white, is my memory. That's how it played out. White didn't make a lot of sense for monsters. Blue had some serpents and things, so blue had a little more sense for monsters. Black had all the gorgons, and it had plenty white didn't make a lot of sense for monsters blue had some serpents and things so blue had a little more sense for monsters

black had all the gorgons and it had plenty of things that made a lot of sense there so um and then red and green were you know very the monster colors

and they're the colors that are common have a little bit bigger things especially green um so anyway uh

that is that is Pookness okay I have now arrived at Wizards um so I need to wrap this up. I finished almost another column, all but one,

but I guess next time, I'm hoping I will be able to finish off with one more. Maybe next time I'll have to pick up the pace. I got up to P, though. So next time you join me, I will finish off P and hopefully get through the rest of the alphabet. One of the big tests that we will discover with this set of podcasts is

how many podcasts on a topic is too many podcasts? I'm not sure. But anyway, we are testing the waters. It's not something that I know you guys like, me talking about actual design stuff. So I'm hoping this is something people like. Hopefully not every future thing will be this long.

I think this was a byproduct of me just being recent, so I know it in my head very, very well. Anyway, as always, I love talking design. I love talking Theros. I'm very, very proud of Theros. I mean, I'm part of many sets that I've done, but

Theros definitely was one of the ones that everything lined up, and really, it shines, and I feel like in the last couple of years I've done some of my best work. Innistrad and Theros are two of my best sets I've ever done. And I'm really happy about that. It's funny that they're both top-down. I believe that I... I mean, one of the things I've been experimenting with, you guys will see this in upcoming years,

is trying to do some stuff that's not top-down, that invests a lot of how we're doing design now in a different way. I've been experimenting with, you guys will see this in upcoming years, is trying to do some stuff that's not top-down that invests a lot of how we're doing design now in a different way. I want to use stiff-edge design things other than top-down. Only because we can't do top-down every year. There's only so many things that make sense with top-down. And you want to mix up anyway. Magic is best when we mix things up.

So anyway, thank you very much for listening to me go on and on and on and on about Theros. But I guess it's time for me to be making magic. Talk to you next time, guys.