Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #89 - Theros, Part 8

Episode Date: January 17, 2014

Mark concludes his discussion on Theros.

Okay, I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay. We got 25 miles to Wizards. A full tank of gas. Half a list of Theros cards. It's raining, and we're broadcasting.

Hit it. All right. This is the eighth, and I'm hoping the final podcast episode on Pharos. By the way, if you string these all together, it's kind of like listening to an episode of limited information. Anyway, okay. Last we left, we were in P, and I have like half a page here. We're going to get through this. Raining helps because, as we all know, people in Seattle drive slowly in the rain.

Maybe that's good, maybe that's bad. But anyway, we have a little extra time today because of the rain. So we're going to start with Perforos, god of the forge. Okay, so the story of Perforos, which is interesting, is when you stop and say, okay, I'm going to do the colors, I'm going to do five gods that represent the five colors of magic. When you got to black, you're like, okay, of course we're doing Hades, god of the dead, black. You get to blue, we're like,

okay, Poseidon, god of the water. You get to green, you're like, oh, hey, god of nature, god of the hunt. And even making Zeus, the Zeus parallel, the white. That all makes sense. The interesting thing is when you get to Red,

we actually didn't do the obvious thing for once. The obvious thing for Red would be Ares, the God of War. Red is pretty war-centric, and so having the mono-red god be the God of War, it's pretty obvious. But the creative team, they came up with a very interesting idea. You will see as the minor god is introduced. They had a neat idea how to use Ares somewhere else.

And so they came up with the idea of using the minor red god as being the god of the forge, Hephaestus in Greek mythology, and the idea of making red something that builds things rather than something that destroys things, which is very interesting because, as I talked about in my podcast on red, that red is not just about destruction. It's part of red.

Red definitely has this attitude of, I'm going to follow my emotions and do what I feel impulsive to do. And, hey, emotions can be destructive at times, and so red definitely has a destructive element. What happens is, we're in a game about combat. And in combat, anger and destructiveness is pretty useful. And so red tends to skew toward that side of red. But every once in a while, when we have opportunities, we try to show that red isn't only a destructive color. And this is one of the examples.

And we had a lot of discussions whether this was supposed to be Ares or not. Like, you know, is this supposed to be God of War or not? And in the end, I think the creative team made an interesting decision because, like I said, it's neat when you can find a way to do something that's not the obvious way. And that a lot of what we're doing in our top-down is trying to be obvious where we can. But every once in a while, it's neat when you can find a way to do something that's not the obvious way, and that a lot of what we're doing in our top-down

is trying to be obvious where we can, but every once in a while, it's kind of neat to do something that's correct, but a little less obvious. So next we get on to Pyxis of Pandemonium. So for those that don't recognize it, this is meant to be Pandora's box. Which, by the way,

if you actually know your Greek mythology, Pandora's Box wasn't a box. I think it was a jar. And so this is one of the ones where we're trying to be a little more true to the roots. The idea of it was we wanted something that kind of you got it

and it taunted you to use it, was the idea. It taunted you to open it. And we played around with the design a bit. It was fun. And we wanted something that was both chaotic and tempting. And I thought we ended up with something that was pretty cool. There might not be any hope in the bottom, but anyway, I thought I did a pretty neat job. So one of the things about doing top down card design, individual card design, is it's not always that you're wanting to

do the exact mechanics. So sometimes mechanics, like I don't know what exactly it means to release all the evils in the world that have hope left. I mean, I don't know what that means. But sometimes the key is to just get an emotional connection. Like the idea of this tempting thing that you just can't resist

and eventually you open it and who knows what comes out. It could be very bad things. I thought, we thought it was a neat, and that it captures the essence of it. And that a lot of what we're trying to do when you make a card, a top-down card, is you want to sort of get the emotional essence of the card. Because it can't do everything the original thing did in the original story most of the time. And that the goal is to make something that's a good magic card. Because remember, this is an important thing to remember.

This comes up all the time in Undesign, which is an idea that's cool to look at and go, ooh, cool, but doesn't play well, fails in its role as a magic card. Magic cards aren't just for reading. They're for playing. And so one of the rules is true for all the Un cards,

and it's true for every magic card, but in the Un world, it's very tempting to go, ooh, this is funny. But okay, yeah, it's got a funny name, but what does it do? If it doesn't do something relevant, then you know what? It's not holding its weight. Magic cards have to be played.

If they don't play well, then they're failing in their major task, which is to be a magic card. Okay, next. Rage Blood Shaman. Let's see. Oh, is this the Minotaur? Yes, this is the Minotaur Lord. So this is the, I talked about putting is this the Minotaur yes this is the Minotaur Lord so this is the I talked about putting

Herloon Minotaur to shame here's the card that literally puts it to shame it's like I'm a 1RR Minotaur 2-3 but I'm a little better

I make all the Merfolk better so we knew we wanted to have I wanted to have two Minotaur Lords. One which was meant for Limited and encouraged the black-red deck. And the other which was just, hey, here's a fun Minotaur Lord. We knew Minotaur Tribal was going to be the thing we pushed most tribally.

And I wanted to make sure that people because Minotaurs in black are mostly a Theros thing. If you go through the history of Minotaurs, they've been all over the place. But they've been in red, it's been their center color. I mean, in Homelands, they were in blue. In Ravnica, they've been in white, or at least, you know, hybrid red-white. So, I wanted to make sure that if you just wanted to put together a good old-fashioned

throw all your Minotaurs in a deck, that I wanted to make a minor red one that you could just play with the red Minotaurs in a deck that I wanted to make a minor red one that you could just play with the red Minotaurs all across the time and that if you wanted to make a fun, you know, legacy style, I mean, I say legacy only in the

access to cards, not in the power level, Minotaur deck that you could. And so we made that card to be that. I don't think when we made the card originally, by the way,

we exactly made it Hurling Minotaur. I think the development actually changed the numbers around because they thought it was entertaining to say, real quickly, one of the stories about Hurlin Minotaur. I think the development actually changed the numbers around because they thought it was entertaining to say Real quickly, one of the stories about Herlin Minotaur is

the game came out and Herlin Minotaur had this very awesome artwork by Anson Maddox, but it was a really weak card. But what happened was there were people at Wizards who didn't really understand how bad the card was. They just really liked the art. Or maybe they understood how bad the card was and didn't care. But they really liked the art. And so in the early days, Herlu Minotaur

became kind of the mascot of the company. The problem was that I think the people who originally picked it understood that it wasn't that strong a card, but over time other people in the company that didn't know the game that well started assuming that this was something that players

really liked. And what they missed was, no, it was a weak card, Players didn't like it. And that Wizards had this attachment to it, but it wasn't something players were attached to. So, for example, real quick aside, I know I'm trying to get through this, but it's a funny story. I was called in one day by one of our people, our marketing person, many, many years ago.

And this was for 5th edition, I think. And they had an ad for 5th edition. for 5th edition, I think. And they had an ad for 5th edition. And 5th edition, if I remember correctly, was the one in which Sarah Angel left the set.

And so they had this campaign where Sarah Angel is writing a postcard to Herlun Minotaur. And Sarah Angel's like, Hey, Hurley, I'm off having a great time. I hope you're enjoying things back in Dominaria. and Sarah Angel's like, hey Hurley, you know, I'm off having a great time.

I hope you're enjoying things back in Dominaria. Hey, hold down the fort or something like that. And so they called me in and they said, and they called a bunch of R&B people in and they're like,

hey, what do you think? And so I'm like, oh, okay. Let me see if I can translate to how the players will read this. So basically the ad says, hey, remember that card you really liked that was pretty good?

Yeah, that's gone. Remember that card that you didn't like that kind of sucked? Yeah, that's still there. I go, I don't know if that's the campaign you want to go with. But anyway, we've made a better Hurley, so next, Rescue from the Underworld. So this, I think, is my absolute favorite card on the set.

I think it just sneaks out past the rocks, a change of the rocks. Only because it's a... I love when we make a card that we could not make anywhere except here. And the reason is, without the top-down flavor, this card doesn't work. In fact, the card takes a little...

Let's black, dip its toe into flickering. That's not normally a black thing. But the flavor carries the card. It's an awesome, awesome card. So obviously, for those in Greek mythology, Orpheus was this... He was a lyricist. He played lyres.

I mean, lyricist, and he played a lyre. Not lyricist, as he wrote songs. But he was a musician. I think he played a lyre. Not lyricist as he wrote songs. But he was a musician. I think he played a lyre. I think also he was blind. But anyway, he played the most beautiful music ever. So beautiful that he could do crazy powerful things because his music was so lovely.

And he lost his loved one. She was taken down to Hades. Or taken by Hades. Down to the underworld. And he went down to rescue her, and then he was allowed to take her, because he, I don't know, he played music and soothed the savage beast or something, and

the, um, basically what the rule was, he couldn't look back until they've gotten out of the underworld. That if he looked back, he would lose her. And so, he, like, he steps out into the sunlight, and he's like, ah, we did it, and he turned around to see her,

but she hadn't stepped out yet, so she was technically still in the underworld, and he lost her forever. But anyway, this is a little happier version. If you notice, in a lot of our stories, we go the happier way. You know, it's like, the Gorgons can know love, Orpheus can rescue his loved ones.

It's the romantic in me. Anyway, so this card came about in that same meeting we made, Chain to the Rocks. We literally were trying to capture the sense of rescue from the underworld, and I love the concept that the creature has to die to go

to the underworld to bring the other one back, and that is it's so compelling, and the reason it's my favorite card, and the reason Eek's out Chain to the Rock to bring the other one back. And that is it's so compelling. And the reason it's my favorite card, and the reason Eek's out Change of the Rocks is, Change of the Rocks is a card that we've done, we do all the time. It's got a little extra twist, it's a mountain, I mean, it's a little different. It's not exactly what we do, and it's a neat twist

and it's very flavorful. It's probably my second favorite card. But I feel like Journey to the Underworld just does something we've never done. This is a black card unlike any other black card you've ever seen. I mean, black does have reanimation, but this has other tricks and does neat things. The one thing is we actually made it a sorcery, and development was the one that decided that it was so much fun they turned it into an instant, because there are a lot of tricks you can do if it's an instant. And so, anyway, I really, really loved how the card turned out.

It's crazy fun to play. It makes wonderful stories. Anyway, my favorite card in the set. Uh, Rescue from the Underworld. Next is Scholar of Aetherius. Um, okay, so, this is, um, an example. So, something we've been starting to do in our sets. Um, so, hold on a second.

Okay, um. something we've been starting to do in our sets so hold on a second okay something development started doing a few sets back, I think is it having an Innistrad maybe? something that Eric, Eric Lauer is the head developer, equivalent for me I'm the head designer, he's the head developer he really likes using off-color activations in cards to help limited because one he really likes using off-color activations in cards to help limited.

Because one of the things that off-color activations do is they sort of say, hey, if you were playing these color combinations, I'm much more attractive to you. And so they're cards that float a little bit because if you're not drafting both colors, the card's less of value. Now, you might take it later on because the card can be played in a monocolored deck. So they're cards that

if someone needs them, they can get them, but if not, they float and then they can be late cards for people that need them in certain colors. And what they do is they definitely sort of

give you some guidance of what these color combinations are doing. And this is an example. So what happened was I did not do that in Innistrad design and Eric added that I think there's an off-color flashback

is what he did in Innistrad so something that we try to do now and now design just does it Eric has convinced us it's a good thing to do is we build this in that we normally have a cycle or two of off-color stuff that helps push in certain directions

one of the things design does now is we map each color combination and what it's supposed to be doing in the draft, just to make sure that we're providing the right number of cards so you can do the thing you need to do. And then sometimes we have gold cards, sometimes we have off-color activations, sometimes we have both, that sort of push you and encourage you in the right direction. Okay, next, Sedge Scorpion. Okay, so one of the things that I talked about is that we were doing a lot of building up of giant creatures and that we took some of the normal answers

and took them away. But we wanted to have answers, meaning we wanted to make sure that if your opponent builds up this giant monster, that there are answers to it. So one of the things we did like, one of the answers we did, is death touch. And the reason death touch is interesting is, one of the things that is pretty good is, and something we do in white a lot, is answers to answers are interesting, meaning that I get an answer.

So, for example, you build up your giant guy. I get up my death touch. Okay, you don't want your giant guy to die to death touch, so now you stop attacking. He's holding him off. But, if you can come up with an answer to the scorpion, oh, once you kill the scorpion, then you can attack again. And so it makes a dynamic gameplay where, like,

oh, you can address it and slow them down, but if they find an answer to your answer, they can start attacking again. So, it sort of neutralizes the threat, but it doesn't necessarily eliminate it. So that, you know, it allows some nice gameplay where it's like, oh, I have this thing, they've answered my thing,

okay, well, they slow me down until I get the answer. And so that gameplay is nice, and it doesn't punish you. It's not the card disadvantage that a terror would have. But it does require you to work around it and it gives the person a defense to fight against it.

The key is not that we don't want to give you answers. We want answers. Every set is supposed to have threats and it's supposed to have answers. And our job is to make sure that we give both interesting threats and interesting answers but the key and this is what I'm trying to explain in previous podcasts is when you are making your your environment especially unlimited you want to make sure that you have answers to your threats

but you want your answers to be appropriate to the threats that match the environment you're trying to make you know if you have answers that are too good for your threats then your threats don't have any teeth and you have answers that are too good for your threats, then your threats don't have any teeth. And you have answers that are too weak to your threats, then your threats run wild. And you want to find a nice balance. And one of the things Theros does is that Theros provides a whole bunch of answers to the threats. But the thing that's interesting is they're not quite the normal answers. And you have to learn, for example, there's certain things in this style like Death Touch or Insommany that are a little bit stronger than they would normally be in the normal environment and you have to sort of adjust and figure out what the

strong answers are here. Now that's one of the things in general, by the way, that I like a lot, which is I like each environment to shift the value of different answers so that part of playing an environment is not just figuring out what to do, not figuring out the threats, but also figuring out what the answers are to those threats. Like I said, any good living environment, what you want your audience to do, and once again, I tie what I say back to things that I've done before to show that this all interconnects, is you want some comfort.

You want the audience to just have things they know. Oh, it's magic. There's a giant growth in green. I know what colors do what function, and those basic functions show up in every set, so I know what to expect. I want surprise. I want some things that don't happen in every set.

I want some things in which, oh, in this set, that's better, or this is normally good, but in this set, it's not as good. The classic example is when I did Mirrodin, that I put both Terror and Shatter in the set, because traditionally, Terror was very good in Limited, and Shatter was not so good. And in that environment, Shatter was very good, and Terror was okay, but because it didn't kill artifact creatures, it was weaker than normal. And the idea was, in a draft, oh, you actually, I mean, not always, but a lot of the time, you want to take shatter over terror.

That's not something that normally happens. And so having an element of surprise is very important. And then, once you set up all the patterns you're doing, then there's a sense of completion, meaning you create expectations for your audience, and then you have to follow through on the expectations. And so, once again,

surprise, I'm sorry, comfort, surprise, and completion rears its pretty little head, and it very much applies to how sets are put together. Okay, next. Shipwrecked Singer. Okay, so this card was always meant as a

top-down siren. One of the things that we were trying to figure out, this is actually an interesting card where what we did first is we figured out what it was supposed to do because it's a siren, and then we figured out what colors it was. A lot of the times we start like, oh, I'm making a black card. Well, what does a black card do? This was not that, and in top-down sometimes you do this.

So we said, okay, what does a siren do? So, for those in Greek mythology, I think the sirens first show up, actually, in the Odyssey, I think. The idea of a siren is they're creatures that sit on the rocks, and they sing, and their songs are so lovely that the sailors are lured, and they crash their ships on the rocks. And then I think the sirens eat them or something.

I'm not sure what the sirens do once they crash them on the rocks. But anyway, they're creatures that seem lovely, but end up being cruel and evil. A little subtext of what seems beautiful is not always beautiful, and that might be harmful. What seems beautiful is not always beautiful, and that might be harmful. So we knew we wanted something that would lure things in, but also be destructive, right? That's what a siren is. So it seemed clear to us that a siren would try to get you to come to its side. So we said, okay, it lures you into attacking, and then it has the ability to punish you for attacking.

Because it has to lure you in, make you attack, but then because you're attacking now, it can hurt you. So we had the idea of forcing you to attack, and that ability is done in red and blue, and then we had the idea of damaging an attacker, and there's a couple different ways to do that. White can damage attackers. I mean, red can damage anybody. Black, obviously, can do minus X, minus X, so it can do that conditionally. So we played around with what we wanted. So part of it was, okay, mechanically, the first part needed to be blue or red.

The second part needed to be white, red, or black. We said, okay, well, what do we want? Well, sirens live at the sea, right? They make the soldiers crash into the reef. So, well, they're sea-based, so we really kind of want some blue flavor in there. So, okay, the first part can be blue or red. We'll make it blue. Now we need the damage,

and, well, let's look at the flavor of siren. They're pretty malicious. They're a selfish thing, you know, selfish creatures, in that they're kind of on the dark side. So we thought, oh, black makes a lot of sense. Okay, well, since we want to do blue and black, that matches the flavor, we'll just make it minus X minus X, because that's how black would do it.

And I like how the card turned out. One of the things that you try when you make top-down cards is you want to sort of get the flavor where you need it to and get the mechanics where you need it to. And it worked out really well where the flavors started to match, the color matching was good, the mechanics were good. I don't know.

I'm very happy with it. It turned out to be a nice card. Okay. Sip of Hemlock. Oh, okay. I mentioned this way long ago, way back in the beginning of the podcast series. I was talking about Jenna. So Jenna Helen was the creative team member

that served on the design team, and she was the person who did the card concepting. So I want to talk about card concepting, because this is my card where I want to talk about card concepting. So what happens is the design team makes cards. Now some of our cards, we try to

flavor all the cards we can, especially in a top-down set. But some of the cards, like this card was, I think it's, you know, Destroyed Top

Creature and it's Control of Losers Who Life. Okay, it's just a pretty vanilla thing, right? So I'm sure we named something.

I'm sure Ethan, when he typed it in, put some name on it that had something to do with the greek mythology um but it gets to jenna and like oh whatever okay what is this you know and jenna what she'll do as the person who's doing the the top down doing the the card concepting is she made a long list of things that she thinks are really good and have a nice strong feel of of theirserese. And so what she did was, whenever we would turn on a card,

what she would do is she'd look at our card and go, okay, well, the design team topped on this as such and such. Does that make sense? Does that make sense for the concept? And whenever it did, she goes, oh, yeah, this is a top-down siren. Oh, perfect, perfect, perfect. Black, that's right. Okay, awesome. a top-down siren. Oh, perfect, perfect, perfect. Black, that's right.

Okay, awesome. I'll show a siren. But sometimes she gets a card. She goes, oh, okay, yeah. The thing they want is there's nothing special here. They just want a kill spell. Okay, let me go look and see what I have on my list because if I have something like,

so my example here is, oh, kill a creature, lose two life. So she's looking, and she gets the like, so you know, my example here is oh, kill a creature, lose two life. So she's looking and she gets the idea oh, hemlock. Okay, so this is actually not Greek mythology, this is actually Greek history. So back in the time in ancient Greece one of the things that would happen is if you had done something wrong and you were essentially sentenced to death, they would make you drink poison, hemlock being the poison.

Socrates, by the way, I believe is famous for being forced to drink hemlock. And it kills you. And so the idea is, oh, here's a neat death. This is not, you know, if I say I'm forcing you to, I'm going to kill you by forcing you to drink hemlock. Well, that's pretty Greek. That's about as Greek as it gets, you know, if I say I'm forcing you to, I'm going to kill you by forcing you to drink hemlock. Well, that's pretty Greek. That's about as Greek as it gets, you know. And so she's like, oh, that's a cool idea.

We'll do this. That's where the life loss comes from, that, you know, I'm forcing you to do this so it hurts you, but it kills you. And then she makes this thing up, and then, you know, it adds this nice layer. And that what the creative's doing, or Jenna here as the card concepting

is that if every card can just find a way to just add a little extra you know one of the things that I think

card concepting does is that let's say we want to do a top down set well creative starts and we come up with everything we can think of

that's top down and we design to it then development they get extra things they think of and they add things to it. And then when it gets to creative, she's like, you know, trying to figure out where there's

more nooks and crannies to sort of stick in extra flavor. Because one of the goals of our set is, we want Theros to just ooze Greek mythology, right? We want you to just, from every pore. And so one of the ways to do that is, you know, I know that, you know, design and development are trying very hard mechanically to make that happen.

Jen is doing the card concepting. You know, Doug and other people are making sure that the names and the flavor text are just dead on, like the names hit it. You know, there's words that say Greek and there's flavor text that represents the kind of things you want. Jeremy Jarvis and his artists are just making sure that the style is right and the look is right and, you know, it has sort of a Greek feel in how it looks. I mean, one of the things that happens, by the way, is there's a thing where we do, I mean, the creative team does a world building where they get in artists and they do concepting and they figure out the look and the feel of the world.

And one of the things that Jeremy does every year, which I think is very, very cool, is there always is, when you think of any particular genre or any particular feel of a mood or a tone, that the art style will lend itself toward that. If you notice in Indischrod, it's set in a location. It was an Eastern European sort of feel. But also, it was dark a lot. Even when it wasn't dark, it was just cloudy and there was rain. It just had this very foreboding feel.

There wasn't like sunny fields that he made sure to capture that tone. And not only is the subject matter and the tone important, but just the style of artist. Meaning, I know when we say, okay, we're doing such and such, you're like, oh, I know what artists I'm going to get. And so what he does is he handpicks artists each year because those artists and their style will reinforce the feel we're trying to get. And that's why, you know, there's a shift in artists every year, partly to shake things up, but partly because, oh, each year requires a certain style of art.

And he's matching artists to sort of get that feel. And anyway, it's something that, like, there's a lot of stuff the creative team does that when you just see the set,

you feel it, and you might not even be able to consciously understand why you feel it, why the Greek set feels so Greek, but everything about it, every nook and cranny,

that card concept and the names, the flavor text, the mechanics, the art, we push to make sure that everything is having that feel as much as we can. And I really think you feel that. And it's something that I'm very proud of,

and that Innistrad and Theros have showed that one of the reasons I think Top Down is something we can do well is that we can really make every nook and cranny ooze the thing we're trying to get. Okay. Every nook and cranny, ooh, is the thing we're trying to get. Okay, next is Spear of Thuleod. Okay, so let me talk a little bit about the origin of the gods' weapons. So what happened was, I explained this on Erebos, each of the gods was taken by one of the team members on the creative team,

or five, there's more than five, but five of the creative team members each took one of the gods was taken by one of the team members on the creative team, or five, there's more than five, but five of the creative team members each took one of the gods. I don't remember who did who, but I do know Doug Byer did Heliod. For those unaware, Doug's been on the creative team for quite a while. In fact, the very last task I had when I was running the creative team was hiring Doug. It was my last official act as the head of the creative team. Doug's been around for a long time.

He's in charge of names and flavor text and also helps oversee a lot of the story stuff. He wrote The Secretist, which was the story for Return to Ravnica. The e-novel. Anyway, Doug was in charge of doing Heliod. And so Heliod, the idea of Heliod was, as I explained before,

one of the role of the gods was we didn't want to just straight up do, like a bunch of people ask this, why didn't you just do Zeus? Why did you make up other names? Just do Zeus. That's Zeus. Call him Zeus. And the answer is twofold. One is that we're trying to

create something that is our own, you know, and that the second we use stuff that's not ours, A, it sort of pulls people out of the world, and B, it becomes less our world. It's less something we control. And that we want, like, for example, we wanted to make a pantheon that tied to the color wheel.

Well, you know what? The gods don't exactly, I mean, Zeus does not clearly tie. I mean, if you really looked at it, he has a white component, but he has a red component. One could argue he has a black component, you know. And that we are trying very hard. So what we won was the embodiment of white. And so he definitely had a bunch of Zeus in him, but he also had a lot of Apollo in him, you know. He's about the sun. He is the sun god.

I mean, he is the leader, so he has a little king of the gods vibe. So we wanted a little Zeus. We wanted a little bit of Apollo. He's got a little bit of Athena in him. He definitely is one that cares about judgment and being fair. But one of the things that we wanted was, because he had a little bit

of a Zeus vibe to him, now Zeus, for those who don't know, he threw lightning bolts. That was his thing. And lightning bolts are really, really tied to red, you know, and so it was weird to give him a lightning bolt. We made sure to make lightning strike in the set to show that there were gods throwing lightning,

but it's not really Heliod throwing lightning. So Doug came up with this cool idea for a spear, which it has a name, I don't know the name off the top of my head, it's just an A. And the idea was, this was the tool that if Zeus thought someone was up to no good or whatever, he wanted to smite somebody, this was his tool of smiting. And that'd make an awesome name, by the way, for an artifact. Tool of smiting. One day. Anyway, so in his write-up, Doug made this. So one of the things we did is they all

did their write-ups about the gods and then we asked for them because we knew that we had designed the gods so we asked for them. And this was something early. We figured out we wanted to do gods early. They figured out gods pretty early. Sometimes in design we don't get to design some of the legendary characters

because we don't even know who they are before design ends. Development doesn't always know that early. Now, if they do, we design things. And if we don't, they end up being done in development. Sometimes design does in development. Sometimes other whole field will do it. Development might do it. But anyway, we knew the gods early,

so we were trying to make the gods. So we were reading the description of the gods, and, I don't know, Doug had a paragraph about the Spirit of Heliod. And we're like, that's awesome! And so, okay, we got I walked my team one day, I'm like, I said, okay, Janice, Spirit of Heliod, that's the thing, right? And she was like, yeah. I'm like, okay, we're doing Spirit of Heliod. And then we realized, and then we went down the path like, oh, oh, if we do this,

it's going to be in the Shem. In order of fact, I talked about this, we figured this out. I'm like, oh, that seems pretty kind of cool and pretty special. And then we said, we looked at the other gods. We realized that Nylea had a bow because she was a hunter.

Oh, and I'm saying Thassa, Thassa had her bident. So Heliod had a spear. Thassa had her bident. And it wasn't, the bident and So, Heliad had a spear. Thassa had her bident. And it wasn't... The bident and the spear were played up like, these are the weapons of the gods. They had names and everything.

And then we realized that Nylea had a bow, although it wasn't a big deal originally. Just like, well, she's a hunter and has a bow. So we went back to the creative team and we said, okay, well, look. We see that Heliad has a spear and Thassa has her bident and Nylea seems to have a bow. Could we, you know, could we give the other two? Um, and it's pretty clear that Perfos would have a hammer.

Um, he was doing Hephaestus. Um, you know, he, he's god of the forge. And so him having a hammer made a lot of sense. So really it was kind of like, okay, well, can we give Erebus something? Um, and I think Brady was the one that came up with the idea of giving him a whip. So anyway, the reason

we ended up with the cycle of God's weapons was we really wanted to do Spirit of Heliod. And then once we went down that rabbit hole, it was kind of like, oh, in for a penny, in for a pound. I guess if we're going to do this, we should give all five the gods.

So one of the things, to give you a little warning, is not all the gods have a special weapon. Only the major gods have a special weapon. So for those that are waiting for the ten more weapons gods, the minor gods,

they don't get their own weapon like the major gods. Because it's good to be a major god. That was a horrible accent. What was that? I was trying to do Mel Brooks. It was supposed to be a French accent, I guess, but that was not a French accent. Okay. Every once in a while I'll do a correct accent. Other times I do

woefully, woefully bad accents. I actually took, by the way, in my youth I took classes, I acted, and I my youth, I took classes. I acted. And I actually took a bunch of classes in dialects. And what you do is they basically show you all the vowel sounds and some of the consonant sounds that aren't the same.

And like, oh, whenever you would say the ah sound, it's A, for example. And then so you read the words. And the key to doing dialect is learning what the shift is on those letters and there is a period in time

that I actually was decent because I learned and remembered them all the problem now is I don't remember any of them

so I've lost it but in my youth when I kind of knew it I could actually do an Irish accent and now it's pretty pathetic so

it's lost the skill that has to be kept up. By the way, doing dialects is really, really hard. If you see people in films doing dialects and they're doing it really well, then you should be impressed, actually. It's very, very hard to do. Next!

Okay, the temple cycle. Okay, so one of the things you have to understand about how design development works is what lands go in the set, especially lands that are going to be relevant to construction. I mean, if they're more limited things, design doesn't, but if there's something that is going to be relevant to gameplay, development makes the call on what lands go where.

And it's almost become a running joke because what makes sense for the standard environment, it almost feels like it's directly wanting to contradict. The classic one was Innistrad where I created this theme, this very, very

strong ally color theme. We had five tribes, they all were ally colors. The standard very, very much of this theme tribes. They all were ally colors. And so they said very, very much of this theme of, okay, play ally color, especially limited. And then we needed,

the dual lands we needed were enemy colored. But I'm like, enemy colored? It's like nothing about my sense of enemy color. And I actually, out of protest, I made the slots for them and then I put in lands we would rather have in,

knowing that two seconds in, Eric would take them out. I mean, I gave them the slots. I even put a note in the file. If, perhaps, you want to have enemy dual lands, they can go right here. But I refused to do it on principle, and that had nothing to do with my set. But anyway, the Scry lands obviously were designed by development. For starters, they added Scry to the set, so that should be one big tip.

So the interesting thing about Scrylands, and I won't answer this question because people always ask, which is when you look at the guild lands, the gates from Return of Ravnica, those are common. And then you look at the Scrylands and they are rare. People are like,

what? These seem almost the same. They are both come-and-play tapped dual lands that have a small effect. So let me explain a couple things. Number one is, let me explain how the default works. If we make come-and-tap lands, especially ones that do anything other than just come-and-play tapped, those are defaulted to uncommon. In a normal set, they go in uncommon. That's where they go. Now, what happens is the reason you change out of a default is the set has a particular need. So, Return to Ravnica is a multicolor block. It is a very, very strong multicolor theme.

Because of that, it is very important that we give you the tools from Limited to make sure that you can play multicolored strategies, your two-color strategies. And so the key to doing that was making sure that you have the lands that can do it. And so

essentially what happened was they needed to go down to common. There's no way to make that happen. And because we have the pain lands at rare, we did not want to do just generic come and play tap lands. In a perfect world we would have. But because of the pain lands, we felt like the pain lands were already strictly better and essentially you can pay life to get them untapped, that's strictly better

and having the land type is not strictly better but it's mostly better, it is mostly upside and so like oh making commons in which the rare versions feel like they have two upsides felt a little much and so we came up with gates as a means to like make them have a little matter a And so we came up with the gates as a means to, like, make them matter a little bit.

And then we made the gates relevant in the set. And so we moved them down to uncommon. And then for reasons that were very particular to the set, we added a little extra something. But normally those should be uncommon, especially with added value. So when you get to this set, okay, default is things want to be sitting at uncommon except while it might seem like counting as a gate and scrying for one

are of equal value, they are not scrying for one actually is much better that if you are playing constructed, unless you happen to have one of the few gate matters cards very very few which are remotely constructed, you would want to have the Scryland over the Gateland almost every time.

And, on top of that, one of these days I'll do my rarity podcast where I talk about rarities, and one of the things I'll explain is that the tightest rarity is at Uncommon, just because so many things need to be in Uncommon, and so Uncommon is always fighting for space.

And so what happened was, we decided that it was cramming a lot in uncommon, the limited game didn't need it, they were decently strong cards, and like I explained in the land thing, look, one of the reasons that lands sometimes will go to rare is we do want you to make sure that we have enough cards that when you open the pack, you're excited to get the rare you get. And, you know, having lands that just go in any deck that are good, or any, you know, two-dollar deck, or even if you're a lesser player, having lands that people will just trade you for so that you can get the things you want, we've found that people like that.

And so we try to make sure that we put exciting cards. like that. And so we try to make sure that we put exciting cards. Lands that we know will see constructed play are one of the things that people will be happy with. That it is a card that has value, that when you open your pack, it's a value card in your rare. And that we try to have balance and so we tend to push things down

when we need it from a limited environment. And we don't need the limited environment, we will push it up. And this is the case right here where we were squeezing uncommon, we needed more spells and less land. We wanted to we needed more spells and less land. We wanted to have the five spells versus the land. We thought the land would do better at rare. It also was better in value.

So anyway, we pushed them up. So that is why they are separate. I think in general, by the way, the reason people don't quite get how good scrying lands are is that I don't think people really realize how good scrying is. It seems pretty minor, but the thing about magic is, since the game can often be decided, a very common practice

is when you lose that you look at the next card on top of your library, and I mean, it's a bad habit because it teaches you bad habits, but you'll notice on certain games, like, oh, the next card is the card I needed. So very much in Magic, there are games in which you are one away

from getting what you need, and that scrying means that that doesn't happen. That means the end of the game, when you looked at the top card of your library, if that would have helped you, you would have had that card in your hand. And so I know that Scry 1 seems, on the surface, like it's not that big a deal,

but it actually is a lot more powerful than it seems. Also, something else funny is, we made Niktofs to be the top-down temple because we wanted a temple, and then Creative decided that temples were important, so these got turned into temples. So if we had known these were temples, we might not have made the top-down temple, which might have not led to Niktofs being made. So for all, it was probably good to have it way because Nykdoth's is doing good work. But it's funny that we made a temple because

there weren't temples, and then Creatives were like, oh, we need temples, and added more temples. Next, Thoughtseize. Okay, so Thoughtseize is a powerful card from Magic's past. When we were making Modern Masters, one of the cards, we made a list of cards that we knew players wanted,

that we wanted to put in Modern Masters. But one of the things that Eric did is Eric said, okay, we want to make sure that there's a few cards that we can put in normal expansions that Modern might want. And so we held off. We ended up holding Mutavolt and Thoughtseize. The reason Eric wanted Thoughtseize for this set was that we were messing around with enchantments. Black has a weakness against enchantments. He wanted to make sure that Black had a good tool and that Discard is one of Black's good tools against enchantments because they can get them before they come into play.

And so Eric decided this would be a good play. He felt that Thoughtseize was standard and could handle Thoughtseize. So anyway, Thoughtseize, one could argue, might have even been the first card in the set. I started to design knowing Thoughtseize was standard and could handle Thoughtseize. So anyway, Thoughtseize, one could argue, might have even been the first card in the set. I started design knowing Thoughtseize was in the set. And so, it was there from day one. It never moved.

And that is how Thoughtseize got there. Oh, by the way, for those that are looking at your clock going, this is a long broadcast, because according to my clock, I passed the 40-minute mark. As I said up front, it is raining. It is raining hard. Maybe you can even hear it. Traffic is mega, mega slow.

So I don't know if I want to meet my all-time record. There's no bread truck overturned, but I have a ways to go to work. Which, by the way, I'm going to finish this today. I'm going to finish, but I have a long podcast. So a little extra long podcast. See, not many podcasts turn traffic into awesomeness. This is that podcast. It is my tagline.

Okay, so we're talking about, what are we not talking about? Titan, oh, I thought, I meant to say, next is Titan of Eternal Fire. So Titan of Eternal Fire, so one of the things that we did is we wrote down every single thing we could think of that would want to be in Greek mythology. Every character, every object, every place, everything. Every story beat from stories. We just wrote everything down we could think of.

And what happened was we made a whole bunch of stuff. Now, some of the stuff ended up getting pushed back to later sets. So some of the stuff we made, you'll see in Born of the Gods, or you'll see in Journey to Nyx. Some of the ideas we had that the later teams would redo it, like our version wasn't the best version, and so

we ended up cutting it because it wasn't quite shining, and then someone else goes, oh yeah, I have a better way to do this, and we'll do it again later on. Some of them also didn't make it. When the dust settles, I know you're going to say, where was blah? I guarantee you, no matter what blah you name, or I don't guarantee, but most of the blah you name, we tried.

Most of the stuff that didn't end up in the set, we did, in fact, try. For different reasons, the card just didn't line up, or sometimes we had a neat flavor and we did a good try. For different reasons, the card just didn't line up, or sometimes we had a neat flavor and we did a good top-down, but it just mechanically didn't quite gel with the set. For different reasons, things didn't make it.

But, I mean, there's a lot of goodies. There's a lot more goodies in Born of the Gods and Journey of the Nyx as far as, I mean, you know, hey, remember such from Greek mythology.

We have some more top-down stuff that's reminiscent that you'll see. But anyway, Titan of Eternal Life is Prometheus. So Prometheus is a Titan. The Titans... I don't know what the Titans say. The Titans actually, I think, predate the gods or... Anyway, he's one of the Titans.

He, I believe, I think Prometheus, was the one who actually made mankind, like mold of metal clay or something. And so he was very possessive of mankind. The gods, they were like, I don't know, they loved to torture mankind. The gods, the gods were very fickle. So, by the way, if you ever studied the Greek mythology,

one of the things that's very interesting is the Greek take on the gods were, well, what would humans be like if they had godlike powers? And their gods were very human in the sense of they reacted like humans. They were full of the emotions you expect. But the idea was, these are people, they were powerful gods, they can do anything.

Well, what would happen if you could do anything, you know? And so there's a lot of squabbling, and a lot of the tales are sort of the fights between different gods. And the gods are petty in a lot of ways, that they're very, they're not above, you know, they're not all that lofty most of the time they're getting caught up in their own petty things that's the way the Greeks saw their gods that the gods were kind of like them

but just all powerful anyway Prometheus loved his people and so he decided at the time I guess fire was a thing of the gods. The gods had fire. And so he realized that for his people to thrive, that they needed fire for protection, to cook food, for warmth, for different things. And so he brings down fire to the humans and gives them fire.

And then, obviously, he's punished for it. He gets chained to the rocks. They talk about that, chained to the rocks. And he later gets freed by Hercules, but anyway, that is the tale of Prometheus. So we wanted to make a Prometheus, and so, obviously, the thing we were trying to do is, okay, what does he do?

Well, he gives fire to the humans, and so we were real literal. We're like, what if he gives humans fire breathing? That's about as literal as it gets. I will hand fire, because Alpha had a card called Fire Breathing, which activated it to have a creature, you spend red mana, get plus one, plus oh. Shivan Dragon, which was a dragon, which clearly

slayers having Fire Breathing, it had that ability. And so early in Magic, it cemented the idea of red mana activation, plus one, plus oh, that is Fire Breathing. And so the idea is, it is Prometheus giving fire to the humans. So that's another card. So one of the things that happened was when I first started in design, we started with

Minotaurs really being the only tribe that we were pushing. And then as we did design, we realized that there's just some stuff that wanted to reward humans. And so we did a little bit of human. Development would ratchet it up some. I mean, it was there in design but development turned up the volume a little bit next the triad of fates ok so in Greek mythology there were three women

one was young one was middle aged and one was old and they spun the web of life. so anyway, we knew we wanted to do the fates. We knew the fates, there's three of them, but the fates are a single

entity that had three components of it. And so, it was important that we had the sense of three. Now this card went through all sorts of changes. And in the end, we didn't know what color it was. We kept trying to make things that made sense. Like the Siren, this is the kind of card we just kept trying to do top-down.

In the end, we decided that it made a lot of sense if it was white-black. Only because the Fates have the sense of, they very much set order and they choose things, but they also kill you, they just serve you to death, so we felt like, I don't know, we felt it had a neat white-black vibe to it. And if you notice, there's three different abilities on the card, and the idea is each ability goes along with one of the ones who spins the web and creates life, and one is the one that measures the web, And one is the one that measures the web. And one is the one that

cuts it and decides when you die. Anyway, that's exactly us sort of messing around and that each of the activations represent one of each of the fates. We messed around. We liked the idea of fate counters because we wanted to sort of get across that these were the fates.

Anyway, it was one of the trickiest cards. We knew we wanted to do of, you know, get across that these were the fates. Anyway, it was one of the trickiest cards. We knew we wanted to do the fates on, you know, day five, and it took us to the end of the design. We did, this is, I think, pretty close to what we handed over. I mean, development tweaked it some, but this was the design we handed over. Okay, next. Trident Fortune Healer. Oh, okay, okay.

So, the second we decided, I mean, we made Heroic. Originally Heroic was plus one, plus one counters. Then we decided we wanted to mix it up a little bit. And so once we knew that, we said, okay, well, we're going to have some colors more get abilities for the creatures, meaning that the Heroic makes their creature better, and some are going to generate effects. And we decided that blue and red made the most sense. They're the spell colors, and so it just made a lot of sense.

It made a lot of sense for them to be where we focus that. And so, obviously, the very first time, I talked about in red that whenever we use a new ability and we put it in red, the very first thing just by default make is damage. Well, the same thing happens to blue. When you do a new ability and we put it in red, like the very first thing just by default make is damage. Well, the same thing happens to blue. When you do a new ability and you put it to blue, the first thing that always happens is draw cards.

In fact, here's something from the outside. If I had to list all the notes that I got from development and like wrote them down, and then I went back and I said, let's collect and see what's the most common note I get from development. The most common note might be too much card drawing. Design loves card drawing.

It's fun. It enables you to do more stuff. But the problem is, card drawing is dangerous. I think in my article once, I showed that, like, if you take all the cards that have ever been restricted in Vintage, like, the tournament that's the most powerful tournament, there's cards that are so powerful

you can only have one of them. Like, three-quarters of them are all about card drawing. They're all about card advantage. And it is dangerous. I mean, blue gets to do it. It's something that we're allowed to do, but we've got to be careful with it.

But anyway, okay, Heroic was one of the key mechanics of the set. I really wanted to do something special. Draw a card made perfect sense. Like, oh, every time you target this, you get to draw a card. Well, that's pretty potent. We tried it at Common, the folly that it is. I mean, one of the things design will do... Oh, see, here's a little thing we can talk about this. Oh, by the way, it sounds like I'm going off and just telling extra stories today. We've just passed the 15-minute mark. I'm nowhere near work. I'm going off and just telling extra stories today. We've just passed the 15-minute mark. I'm nowhere near work.

I'm sitting in traffic. In fact, I'm going to be late to my first meeting, and I should have been at work. You guys know it takes me 30 minutes to get to work. So I have no idea why. I don't know if there's an accident. Maybe there's a bread truck somewhere. But anyway, we are going to break the record.

In fact, we are at 51 minutes. So before I go back to my podcast, dun, dun, da-da, dun, da-da, dun, da-da, dun, dun, da-da, dun, da-da, dun, da-da. We have now set a brand new record for Drive to Work. We have passed, I think the last one was like 51 minutes and, I don't know, 30 seconds. Actually, we haven't technically passed it yet, but we're just about to pass it right now.

But anyway, we know you are listening to the longest drive to work so far. And here's the funny thing, which is, if this was a normal day, if I was just driving to work and I was this late to work, I'm late to my meeting, I'm sitting in traffic, I would actually be very upset. But I'm doing my podcast, and I love doing my podcast. So this is why I have two podcasts a week, because

I enjoy doing my, it makes my drive to work more fun. So, okay, ooh, is this a ooh, is it an accident? Ah, it looks like there might be an accident. That might be why we're so late. But anyway, um, well, we'll see. I'm still, what am I talking about? Oh, I'm talking about trading Fortune Hunter.

Oh, so I'm talking about how we love making card drawing cards. So here's the thing I was going to talk about is one of the things that I will do a lot of times in design is I will put things in common that in my heart of hearts I know aren't common, but that I really want to understand how they work. I'll give you a good example, which is this card. I want a heroic that draws cards. In my heart of hearts, if you ask me, is that card going to end up being common? No. The cards that shock, is that going to end up being common? No. But sometimes I'll put those in common because what I really want to see is, I want to see the games where those cards get drawn, because those are going to be the exciting,

the real exciting heroic games. They're not going to happen all the time. The reason they're uncommon is so it's not a common occurrence. Ooh, traffic is picking up. I think I figured out why I was so slow, so I still have a ways to go, but we're heading toward work. Okay, so I will put things in common

because I want to see the volume of them. And so that's a very common trick, is to take the things that you want to understand, put them at lower rarities, so that in your playtest, you raise their aspen and it happens more. And then once you understand it, then you can raise their rarities. So that's what happened to this card, which is, I knew it would do really good things. I knew that we needed to, especially in the white-blue deck, really encourage you. Like, the white-blue deck says, I'm going to heroic reach,

and you want to target them as many times as you can. You jam-full your deck full of things that are going to target these things. Where other things, like the white-green deck, oh, the rewards you get, especially in green, is good enough that maybe, look, if you just target it once, that's good enough. You don't necessarily need to target it many times. But white-blue is like, no, no, no.

I get this card, I get this card, I get this card, I'm like, I want to target this baby as many times as I just target it once, that's good enough. You don't necessarily need to target it many times. But White-Blue is like, no, no, no. I get this card, I get this card, I get this card out, and I'm like, I want to target this baby as many times as I can target it. And I will put more Instants and Sorcerers in my deck, because I want to get extra value to try and target those things. And one of the reasons that's awesome is, it just makes different heroic decks. It pushes you in different directions.

But anyway, that card was a card we knew we were going to make. We made it very early, but it took a while to get there. Okay. I'm on my last page, which is a little tiny building. I only have three more cards to talk about.

And I'm not that far from work. Although, are we going to pass the hour mark? That's my... We'll see. We'll see if we pass the hour mark. I've never, ever... New frontier.

I do want to get to work, though. As much as I'm enjoying my podcast, I would like to get to work. I'm going to be missing a meeting in two minutes. So... In fact, I'm missing card crafting, which is one of my favorite meetings because we talk all about very important things

about how we do card design. And so I do not like to miss it. Okay. Next card is Underworld Cerebus. So when I made this card, one of the things I said to the team is, guys, there are cards

we can try. There's cards we can mess up on. But there are a few cards we just got to nail. When we were doing Innistrad, I said that with the werewolves. I go, guys, we got to nail the werewolves. So this I go, you know, one of the things we have to, we gotta

nail Cerebus. Or Cerebrus. I say Cerebus. There's a comic book that I always confuse with. So Cerebus is, I think that's the correct name. If I'm pronouncing it incorrectly,

pronouncing it like the character from the comic, I apologize, it's my comic brain. So Cervas is a three-headed dog that guards the gates of hell, or the gates, but guards the entrance to the underworld. And so we wanted to make a ferocious three-headed dog, we knew we were going to do it, it's one of the most iconic things there are in Greek mythology, imagine those monsters well, how can we not do the three-headed dog. We knew we were going to do it. It's one of the most iconic things there are in Greek mythology. Magic does monsters well. How can we not do the three-headed dog well?

And so, we spent some time and energy. I was really happy with this design. I love the fact that it was cool. It made sense of Cerebus. It had a flavor with the graveyard. So anyway, I think this was very neat, and I'm happy that we spent the time and energy to get it right.

And I... Every once in a happy that we spent the time and energy to get it right. And every once in a while, we finish a card, and in design, we'll do a card, and I'm like, nailed it! So anyway, this is one of the nailed it cards. But once we got it, I'm like, that is the card. That's it. We got it. Okay. Next, Vanquish the Foul.

So the interesting thing about this card was when we first decided we wanted... So one of the things that happens is this card was influenced by packaging. So one of the things you do when you make packaging is you want to figure out, we would call it the key art, which is what do you want to see on the box? So one of the things is you have a figure that there's some, we call it face of the set.

So Eldeth is coming, okay, Elsbeth's being dressed in, like, okay, what do we want to see? We want to see Elsbeth dressed in, like, Greek clothing, you know, holding, like, a spear, like, I'm Elsbeth, right? And one of the things we wanted was, there's a couple different, like, there's the booster box, and there's different boxes we have to make stuff for. So, one of the images we wanted was

Elisabeth with a Hydra defeated in the background. Because we wanted something that's like, hey, not only am I dressed in Greek clothing, but I'm here, I'm in Greek world, and I've done something really Greek. And so what's a very powerful, tough creature to defeat? Well, we look at our iconics. And, okay, dragons, cool.

We do dragons a lot. But dragons, while they are in Greek mythology, and that's why we use them, they're not as iconic in Greek mythology. In fact, I have to tell people, yeah, yeah, they are in Greek mythology. So, um, sphinxes are very much part of Greek mythology,

but sphinxes aren't really monsters. I mean, they can be, but we felt like, but sphinxes aren't really monsters. I mean, they can be, but we felt like killing a sphinx didn't feel right. Demons, while they kind of exist, was not iconic enough. And there were no angels, because angels really don't fit in Greek mythology. But hydras, oh, that's one of my iconics.

Defeating the hydra is like one of the labors of Hercules. It felt like very monumental. And so we decided that having Elphys defeat the Hydra was going to be something that we were going to show in the packaging and ended up becoming a key part of the video, you know, the teaser video beforehand. But what that meant was, okay, we needed to show her beating the Hydra.

So one of the tasks that Jenna had for the card concepting is one of the cards has to show her defeating the Hydra. That one of the tasks that Jenna had for the card concepting is, one of the cards has to show her defeating the Hydra. That's in the story. It has to happen. We want it. It's going to be on the box. We've got to see it. And so Vinguish Vinguish

the Foul was the card where Jenna's like, oh yeah! Okay, okay. This is the perfect place. And she stuck it there, put the art, and we got a chance to show her defeating the Hydra. The other reason, by the way, that we needed it, here, I'll give a little tech behind the scenes, is the way we do the videos ahead of time

is we take the art that we've done for the card sets, and we use different techniques, special techniques, to give motion, but we need the actual paintings to be able to do that. And so they knew that they wanted to show or kill in the Hydra. So it was important to have that image so they could use that for the video. So some of the times, if they know images they want for the video,

they'll make sure that we have images in the cards so they have the components to be able to make the video. Okay. The final item on my list. By the way, if this had not been a crazy, crazy long day, I never would have got

through my list. So how are we doing? Oh, we're coming up in an hour. Holy moly. Okay, guys. Hopefully my double-a-day podcast

is not a problem for you because in 20 seconds I will have been doing this for an hour and I'm now late for my meeting. Anyway, thank you guys for sticking around for the extra,

extra long episode. I did not know when I left my house that the rain would cause such a delay. Although, there was an accident. That's why. Okay, guys, and it is now an hour long. You were here. You were here for the first time.

Hopefully not a too frequent time. Okay, last card to talk about. Witch's Eye. Okay, so if you watched, I don't know, anything with Greek mythology, we'll use Hercules, the Disney cartoon. So one of the things that Hercules did is they took the fates and they took the idea of the eye of wisdom. They sort of combined them. So there's the three witches that share the eye.

Those are actually separate things. The fates are one thing, and then the witches that share the eye are different. Those are different Greek tropes, but Disney combined them. And a lot of people think of them as being one thing, but they're actually not. The witches with the eyes, I'm not sure if there were three. There might have just been one. It is part of

the Perseus story. Perseus is the guy who slays Medusa. He is trying to... I'm trying to remember the story exactly he needs to get to Medusa and he needs a special sword and he needs a special shield

in order to fight her and along the way he meets the witch and she has the information he needs and he takes her eye and in order to get the eye back she gives him the information. But anyway, the witch's eye is a... Anyway, once again, it's one of those tropes that you see,

that we see in Greek mythology. I mean, Disney used it. It's something that... It's become associated. It's one of the tropes of Greek mythology. So we knew we wanted to do a witch's eye. The funny thing is, we made a Witch's Eye and I have no idea

what it did. We just knew that we wanted a Witch's Eye. And then, when development added in Scry, they said, oh, this is perfect,

you know. It foresees the future. The idea of the witches and the reason Perseus needed to know this was she could see things that normal people cannot see. She knew things people could not see. One idea of the witches, and the reason Perseus needed to know this was, she could see things that normal people cannot see. She knew things people cannot see. One of the tropes, by the way,

and this is not just Greek mythology, is the idea that they love the idea that the person that can see the future is blind. It's a trope. The idea that I can see things others can't see, but I can't see what they can see. And so this was a trick on the trope. Obviously, I mean,

we have a card, a blind soothsayer in one of the cards. It's a trope we played up in the set. So anyway, when development took it over, they decided and they gave it Scry. And so that's how, I mean,

Scry is perfect. It's exactly what the card needed to be. I don't know what we did. We did something because we made Witches Eye. Witches Eye was in the set, in the file. So anyway, I am very close to work. Um, man, I'm a little torn here. Am I supposed to get to work? Am I supposed to wrap up?

Um, I guess I will wrap up since, uh, I'm not supposed to end until I get to work even though today is a monster monster podcast thank you for listening guys so once I get to work I'm going to wrap up right away because I don't need this thing to be any longer than it is so let me wrap up by saying that

Theros was my 17th published magic set I believe I think Gatecrash was my 17th published magic set, I believe. Um, I think Gatecrusher was my 16th, because I did the Rosewater Rumble. Uh, so, um, it's my 17th published magic set. And, so I've done a lot of sets. Um, and it has really taken a soft spot in my heart. Um, uh, both Innistrad and Theros really, I, I, I believe that a lot of good magic can be done that's not top-down, but recently we've been experimenting more with top-down. I feel

like Innistrad and Theros firmly, firmly put us on the map and said that this is something that we know how to do, or we've learned how to do and we can do well, that bodes well for future top-down design. In fact, I can see the seven-year plan, so there is future top-down design. The reason we don't do it every year is, A, we like to change things up. I think what makes Magic special, it's not all the same. And secondly,

that there is not an infinite number of cool top-down things. I think horror and Greek mythology are two of the best because they are very deep, and they have a lot of cards we can make, and they have a lot of monsters. A magic set has a lot of requirements and so to be able to pick something it has to be a mythos. Not a lot

of ones do so there's not an infinite number of them so we have to be careful and space them out. Anyway, I had a blast making Theros. It was very fun. I'm very, very proud of it. It's probably one of the best sets I've ever done. I think Innistrad probably fights for the best set I've ever done. I think Innistrad probably fights for the best that I've

ever done. I mean, Robin gets in there. But anyway, I'm tickled pink that I got to be part of it. I know this was a very, very long series of podcasts. I never, ever thought I would do eight, and secretly I did nine,

but called them part eight because I did two in one. But anyway, I was very happy to do this. I hope you guys enjoyed this mega mega podcast series. Please give me feedback. I probably won't do anything this long until I hear from you guys again, whether I should. But ah! I see wizards and I'm late for a meeting. So guys,

thank you very much for being here. Thank you much for listening to all the Theros podcasts, but I really, really, really need to be making magic. Talk to you guys next time.