Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #614: Lorwyn Cards, Part 4

Episode Date: February 22, 2019

This podcast is the fourth in a four-part series about the card-by-card design stories of Lorwyn. ...

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Starting point is 00:00:00 I'm pulling out my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so I've been talking all about Lorwyn for the last couple podcasts, and today I think it's going to be my final podcast on Lorwyn. So we're going to start with Secluded Glen. So it's a land. As Secluded Glen enters the battlefield, you may reveal a fairy card from your hand. If you do, Secluded Glen enters the battlefield tapped. you may reveal a fairy card from your hand. If you do, Secluded Glen enters the battlefield tapped. I'm sorry, if you don't,
Starting point is 00:00:28 Secluded Glen enters the battlefield tapped, and it taps for blue or black. So we made this group of lands, dual lands. One of our challenges was we wanted to make dual lands to enable you to play tribal decks, but we weren't interested in... We weren't interested in just making... Because the combination of colors we had wasn't kind of complete, we kind of wanted to help you play the tribes we wanted you to play,
Starting point is 00:00:56 but we weren't really interested in making dual lands, just a smattering of dual lands. Because normally when we make dual lands, we sort of make them complete. So the goal of this was to make dual lands specifically for these decks. So the idea was, it's a fairy land. Fairies are blue and black. You just have to be blue and black.
Starting point is 00:01:14 And the reason it's blue and black is not because we're making a cycle. It's just that fairies are blue and black. And the idea we came up with was, look, you are allowed to get a dual tap land. We make dual tap lands that is coming to play tapped. And so the idea here was, well, it's better than that, but only if you're playing a fairy deck. Well, how do we know you're playing a fairy deck?
Starting point is 00:01:37 We talked originally about maybe having fairies on the battlefield, but a lot of the times, you know, what matters whether it's tapped or untapped is the early play so that you can get the fairy onto the battlefield. And so then we decided that we'd use technology of what we call reveal technology, which is, well, I'll show you my hand. And if it's in my hand, if I can prove I have a fairy, hey, I'm playing a fairy deck. Look, I got a fairy. And the nice thing about reveal we found was it feels like a very low cost like it feels like oh i'm not even doing anything i already have the fairy in my hand i'm just showing you i have it um so it
Starting point is 00:02:11 turns out it was actually not as low a cost as it seems to be one is it affects deck construction like for example to make sure that you have a fairy you have to play a decent number of fairies you know if you just have one fairy in your deck the odds that you'll have the fairy when you need to play this land are not real high. And the second thing is that it also gives a little bit of information out. So sometimes I have to show you I have a fairy. Well, especially
Starting point is 00:02:36 in this set with tribal, maybe I'm showing you I have a fairy spell rather than a fairy creature. I'm giving you a little bit of information. That doesn't always matter, but it can. And sometimes what you tend to do is you show things that are coming down the road. It's not that I'm casting this fairy right away, but it's the fairy I have. So you kind of know, oh, he's got this five-cost fairy.
Starting point is 00:02:59 It's something the opponent now gets to keep in their mind. And that gets to be a cost. One second. Sorry. Even though that doesn't... It's one of those costs that seems like a nothing cost that's a little more than it seems. And we ended up making... I mean, we made a cycle in the sense that we made one of these
Starting point is 00:03:17 for all of the creature types. I think we made all of the creature types. We might have... We just made five. My gut is we made all eight, but maybe we pushed a few of them off to Morning Tide, maybe. Okay. Anyway.
Starting point is 00:03:34 Next. Seed Guide Ash. It's four and a green, so five total, four of which is a generic one green. Creature Treefolk Druid. It's four, four. When Seed guide ash dies,
Starting point is 00:03:46 you may search your library for up to three forest cards and put them onto the battlefield tapped. If you do, shuffle your library. So one of the things that we did with the tree folk that I thought was kind of fun is we intermingled tree folk matters with forest matters.
Starting point is 00:04:01 And the idea that part of playing with tree folk is, like one of the things we liked is obviously tree folk themselves are trees, forests are made up of trees, that there's this nice natural flavor synergy between forest and tree folk. So we thought it was kind of fun to play up with that mechanically. And one of the things about tree folk in general is tree folk tend to cost more mana. And the idea here is this allows you to, in the middle game, play something that allows you to get to the... Because there's a bunch of big tree folk that you can play. And so this sort of helps jump you from the middle game to the end game to cast the larger things.
Starting point is 00:04:40 And so it's one of the things where, like, mechanically it's doing cool things. and so it's one of the things where like mechanically he's doing cool things but it's also you know it's also something that sort of like it plays in the space that Treefolk wants to play but in a way that's so flavorful that it just comes across as oh we're being flavorful not realizing that we're doing something mechanical as well
Starting point is 00:04:58 okay shapeshare one in a blue so two total one generic one blue creature shapeshifter it's a 1-1 it's got changeling and two and a blue. So two total, one generic, one blue. Creature shapeshifter, it's a 1-1. It's got changeling. And two and a blue. Target shapeshifter becomes a copy of target creature until your next turn. So one of the
Starting point is 00:05:14 things that we did in the set is, most our tribal was the eight main tribes. But, here's an example of us doing shapeshifter matters, or really doing changeling matters. Because one for one, doing shapeshifter matters, or really doing changeling matters. Because one for one, every shapeshifter was a changeling. And every creature with changeling was a shapeshifter.
Starting point is 00:05:39 So the idea here is that it says, oh, well, maybe you want to care about changeling. So this is a card. I mean, it technically cares about shapeshifters, meaning you can play shapeshifters from other sets. I mean, it is a build-around shapeshifter card. It does let you do that. But in the context of this set, it's kind of a changeling matters card, which we thought was kind of fun. So it's an example
Starting point is 00:05:56 of us messing around with tribe a little bit outside the main tribes, but in a way that was pretty organic to the set. And the cool thing about it is it allows you to sort of say that any of my changelings can turn into any of my other changelings.
Starting point is 00:06:10 So if you got this card early in a draft, I guess this is a rare, but if you got this card, it all of a sudden may be like, I'm going to do a Changeling Matters draft. That's not something you normally would do. So we thought that was pretty cool. Okay.
Starting point is 00:06:24 Shriek Maw. Four and a black. So five mana total, four generic, one black. It's a 3-2 elemental creature. It's got fear. So for those who don't remember, fear means it can't be blocked except by black and artifact creatures. Fear would later turn into intimidate, which would later sort of become menace, as the I'm scary, you can't block me mechanic evolved over time.
Starting point is 00:06:47 So this is back when fear was the mechanic. When Shriek Maw enters the battlefield, destroy target artifact non-black creature, evoke one in a black. So the idea is, this essentially is a terror. Terror is a spell back from early magic that destroys a non-artifact non-black creature. And it's got fear that can only be blocked by artifact. So the idea essentially is, I'm super scary and I will kill anything that can be afraid. And then if you're afraid, I can kill you and you can't block me. But if I can't kill you, you can block me.
Starting point is 00:07:16 So if you're something that won't get afraid, other black creatures or artifact creatures that don't get afraid, then, you know. So this was one of the most powerful Vogue cards. Probably Muldrifter was the most powerful, but this was up there. This plot played in tournaments. And the idea essentially is, look, it's a terror that costs what terror costs, but if you have an extra three
Starting point is 00:07:37 generic mana, you can also get a 3-2 that sticks around. So this is a good example of where a Vogue plays at its best, which is, look, it's a functional spell. You'll want to play this spell on your deck. It does something you need to do. And if you have the mana, you can kind of just, you know, pay a little extra
Starting point is 00:07:54 and get a creature that sits around. So that seems, I don't know, pretty cool. Okay, next. Silvergill Adept. One and a blue for a 2-1 creature. So two total. one generic, one blue. It's a Merfolk Wizard. As an additional cost of casting the spell,
Starting point is 00:08:11 reveal a Merfolk card from your hand or pay three. When Silvergill Adept enters the battlefield, draw a card. So essentially it's a cantrip creature for 2-1. The idea is it costs four and a blue or one and a blue. It costs one and a blue if you're playing a merfolk deck essentially. And so the idea with this card is that to really make it efficiently, this is kind of like the lands, we like the idea that, look, you might play this card, you know, it's not great if you're not having a merfolk, but let's say you're just playing a little bit of merfolk.
Starting point is 00:08:42 Oh, I can throw this in my deck, you know, if I get trapped playing it at its 4u cost, it's not ideal, but it's not horrible. And the more I Merfolk, you know, the better off it does. And that's one of the kind of cards. So we did it not just with the lands, but we did some of the reveal stuff on other cards as well. It's one of the little themes of the set. And it's something we don't do a lot of.
Starting point is 00:09:02 Actually, we probably should do more of. We tend to do it on mechanics on things that are larger, like dragons and things, just so we know they'll be stuck in your hand. But I do like the idea of, in order for you to have it in your hand, you have to have a high enough concentration in your deck. So, I mean, I think
Starting point is 00:09:18 it's an interesting deck-building tool that we probably could use more of. Okay. Okay, Soul Bright Flamekin. So it costs one and a red. It costs one and a red. It's an Elemental Shaman, so two mana total,
Starting point is 00:09:35 one generic, one red. It's a 2-1 creature, and it has the following ability. Two, target creature gains trample until end of turn. If this is the third time the ability is resolved this turn, and it has the following ability. Two, target creature gains trample until end of turn. If this is the third time the ability is resolved this turn, you may add RRR, RRRR, so seven red mana, to your mana pool. So one of the themes we played around with the elementals was that if you activated them three times,
Starting point is 00:10:05 it would generate a new effect. So the idea here is, look, this is a 2-1 for two mana that you could activate to give something trample. So for two mana, you can give it self trample, you can give it other creature trample. But one of the cool things was, if you ever got to the point where you could spend six generic mana, it would turn into seven red mana.
Starting point is 00:10:29 And so that was one of the ways to sort of, you know, explode. And one of the things about the elemental deck in general was, there was a lot of activations that required red, but the elemental deck usually required you playing blue or sometimes green, you know, branching on colors. So this allowed you to, if you played this later in the game, get an explosion of red mana that you could use in some of the red-centric activations. And one of the fun things that you could do with
Starting point is 00:10:56 this card is, I activate this three times, get a whole bunch of red mana, now I activate another ability on my elemental card three times to generate another ability. It could lead to these really explosive turns where you've got a whole bunch of things off at once. Okay, Sower of Temptation. Two blue blue. So four mana, two generic, two blue. It's a 2-2 fairy wizard. It's a creature. Flying, because fairies fly. When Sower of Temptation enters the battlefield, gain control
Starting point is 00:11:25 of target creature for as long as Sword of Temptation remains on the battlefield. So essentially what it is, is it's a control magic, meaning I get to steal a creature, but there's an answer to it. This is similar to some of the white cards we do, where white sort of plays something, and then while it's in play,
Starting point is 00:11:42 it exiles something. This is similar, except it's doing it a blue way. Rather than the thing going away, blue's taking control of it. This is another... The fairy deck was pretty good. This is another card that showed up in fairy decks. Stealing creatures is a good answer
Starting point is 00:11:58 to creatures, and so this definitely got played in the fairy decks. Spell Stutter Sprite, one and a blue. Creature Fairy Wizard, one one, so it costs two, one generic, one blue. It's got Flash, it's got Flying, and when Spell
Starting point is 00:12:14 Stutter Sprite enters the battlefield, counter-target spell with converted mana costs X or less where X is the number of fairies you control. So this is another card that showed up in the fairy deck. It's got Flash because it's a counterspell. One of the things we liked, each of the tribes we tried to give a flavor to, the Faeries' flavor was they were tricky, they were sneaky.
Starting point is 00:12:33 And so counterspells made a lot of sense in the Faerie deck. And here's a deck that's a counterspell, but it carries about Faeries. You need to have Faeries. And the idea is, the more Faeries you have in play, the larger the spell you can counter. And when we do count meads, one of the things we like to do is putting count meads on an enter the battlefield on a thing that is that thing.
Starting point is 00:12:54 Because the idea is, in a vacuum, well, the spell spotter strike can counter a spell that costs one mana because you get a count itself. It enters the battlefield, it now triggers. Well, if nothing else, it's a fairy. So we like a lot of times to put scaling effects,
Starting point is 00:13:10 ETB effects on the creature because it guarantees that the effect will at least be leveled at one. This obviously is flash because it's a counterspell. I mean, it needs to be done in reaction. Otherwise, the ability just doesn't do anything. And so, it's a good example. Plus, one of the things that we did with a bunch of the fairies was we gave a bunch of them flash. The fairies already
Starting point is 00:13:31 had flash. It was something that we were trying to give them a little bit of flavor. Originally, ironically, I think we were going to give most of them flash, and then we ended up deciding that we'd give a lot of the blue ones flash and not the black ones, although there were, I think, a couple maybe black ones that flash.
Starting point is 00:13:47 Because at the time, black wasn't one of the colors that had flash. Since then, black has gained flash. Black's now secondary in flash. So it's interesting. Going back, black could have had more flash with the modern color pie. Okay, next.
Starting point is 00:14:05 Spring Jack Knight. So, two and a white. So, three total, two generic, one white. It's a 2-1 creature. It's a Kithkin Knight. Whenever Spring Jack Knight attacks, clash with an opponent. If you win, target creature gains double strike
Starting point is 00:14:19 until end of turn. So, each clashing player reveals the top card of the library, then puts that card on top or bottom. You essentially scry with it, and a player wins if their card has the higher converted mana cost. So this is the clash mechanic. The idea was, we liked the idea that you didn't quite know
Starting point is 00:14:36 whether you were going to win or not, there's a little bit of suspense. I talk a lot about how randomness can make excitement and if you can sort of contain the randomness so it doesn't feel completely random. And the reason we use top of the library is you can manipulate the top of the library. It's something you have some control over.
Starting point is 00:14:52 And the idea here is, okay, well, this is a 2-1 creature. If I win the clash, I get to get double-striked. Now, maybe I give it to him. He gets to do two extra damage. Or maybe I give it to another creature that's bigger. And this is a good example of a clash that has... This is a clash that has a decent amount of variance. If I'm attacking with a 4-4 creature,
Starting point is 00:15:16 my 4-4 getting double-strikes is a pretty big deal. Now, notice we did the trigger on the... It's an attack trigger, meaning my opponent gets to know information before they have to block. It's not as if they would... A, we want... I mean, there's some confusion if you gain double strike after blocking happens
Starting point is 00:15:32 because the first strike part of it doesn't happen. But anyway, it also gave the opponent a little bit of knowledge of this is going to happen, now you can decide what you want to do with your blocking based on this. As I said in my major podcast on Lorwyn, this was not...
Starting point is 00:15:50 Clash was not a particularly well-received mechanic. It's funny how much players like randomness in the play, but this was a little too blunt in its use of randomness. And so ironically, this was one of those few mechanics that used randomness but was more embraced by the pros because it clashes and helps smooth your mana draw than it was by the average people who just saw it as seeming too random, interestingly.
Starting point is 00:16:20 Okay. Spring Leaf Drum. It's an artifact that costs one. Tap an untapped creature you control. Add one mana of any color. And the idea there was we were trying to do mana fixing, but we wanted to do mana fixing
Starting point is 00:16:36 within context of what you were playing. So the nice thing about this is it gives you mana, but mana of the colors you have, not of colors you don't have. And we've repeated that card in other sets because it does a good job of that. Stink, Drinker, Daredevil.
Starting point is 00:16:52 Two in a red, so two generic, one red, three total. It's a 1-3 Goblin Rogue. It's a creature, an odd red creature with a toughness higher than power. Giants, Fellowship, Cast, Cost, two less to cast. So I talked about how we did overlap of creature types, so maybe if you are. Giants, fellas, you cast, cost two less to cast. So I talked about how we did overlap of creature types, so maybe if you are playing giants, you also might want to play some goblins.
Starting point is 00:17:11 This was meant as a goblin helper. One of the problems with giants is giants can be more expensive. They're bigger creatures. So we made a creature that allows you to get them out quicker. It itself can't be a giant because giants are big, so it gets to be a goblin.
Starting point is 00:17:24 So we get to sort of do some flavor you could play this in your giant deck even if you don't have goblins or if you play this in your giant deck maybe it's a little bit of encouragement now to do a little bit of goblin tribal one of the things I hope you'll see is how many moving parts there are.
Starting point is 00:17:48 It's not like Lorwyn, for example, where we're doing tribal. There's a lot of different things you need to do to try to do that. Okay, next is Summon the School. Three and a white. It's tribal sorcery, merfolk. So it's a sorcery, but it's tribal, meaning it counts as a merfolk.
Starting point is 00:18:01 Create two 1-1 blue merfolk creature tokens. Tap four untapped merfolk you control. Return some of the skull from your graveyard to your hand. So one of the themes I talked about with merfolk is that you tap merfolk as a resource to do things. This is a good example of, it's a card that makes more merfolk, and instead of being something that just, you know,
Starting point is 00:18:22 we wanted it to be something you could repeatedly do. So what we did is we let you get it back from the graveyard. So it's a sorcery, but because you can sort of self-regrow it from the graveyard, it essentially says, hey, it acts a lot like an enchantment. I mean, it's not sitting out. It can't be destroyed. But it has a lot of, hey, when you have the ability to do this, it's something you can do. of, hey, when you have the ability to do this, it's something you can do. And the idea is that the merfolk I am making, I can use to help get this back.
Starting point is 00:18:52 Now, the more you use it with other merfolk, I mean, for example, by itself it can never get itself back. It makes two merfolk, you need four. So you really need other merfolk to get it going. And once you get it going, though, there can be a point in which, once you've cast it twice, the other thing you can do, like in limited, for example, is have multiple of these in your deck. And, you know, hope that the future
Starting point is 00:19:13 one of these will help you. Normally you only play this if you're playing some merfolk, because, you know, three white for two merfolks, not particularly strong. It's only if you can get it back that the spell really is something that you're going to build around. Okay, Sunrise Sovereign costs five and a red.
Starting point is 00:19:33 So six mana total, five generic, one red. It's a 5-5 giant warrior. Other giant creatures you control get plus plus two and trample. So this is a lord for giants. It's a little more expensive because it has to be a giant, so it has to be bigger. And since it's a little giants. It's a little more expensive, because it has to be a giant, so it has to be bigger.
Starting point is 00:19:45 And since it's a little bigger, we make a little, you know, giants already are a little on the bigger side. So instead of a normal plus one, plus one, it's granting plus two, plus two. So just giants get a little bit bigger, and trample's important because they're already big, and you're making them even bigger. So trample's
Starting point is 00:20:01 a pretty good ability to grant them. So this is a nice, simple sort of giant lord. Okay. Sig River Guide. Costs white and a blue. So two mana total. One white one blue. It's a legendary creature. A merfolk wizard. 2-2.
Starting point is 00:20:17 It has island walk which means it can't be blocked as long as the defending player has islands. We don't do land walk anymore but land walk first showed up in alpha. There was force walkers, I think an island walker, some swamp walkers in alpha. Actually, maybe mountain walkers. I think all the land walking, but plains walk.
Starting point is 00:20:34 Anyway, for one and a white, target merfolk you control, gains protection from the colors of your choice until end of turn. So the idea here was, this was something that was protecting your merfolk. This was obviously a legendary creature. something that was protecting your merfolk. This was obviously a legendary creature. You put it in your merfolk deck and then
Starting point is 00:20:49 it gave you a means to protect your merfolk. It was kind of, often we talk about lords in the sense that they enhance your creatures. This was something that didn't enhance them as much as it protected them. But it had a lot of that function of, oh I put this in my deck, I want to have a lot of merfolk, and then it allows my merfolk to become harder to kill.
Starting point is 00:21:06 So it acts a lot like a lord in that it enhances them, but it does it in a slightly different way. Tarfire costs one red mana, tribal instant goblin. Tarfire deals two damage to any target. So this is basically shock, except it's like goblin shock. I think we actually called it goblin shock in playtest. And it's a good example where we were playing around with what we could do with tribal. The idea being,
Starting point is 00:21:30 oh, you have an extra shock if you're playing goblin tribal. If you're not, well, I mean, you have a shock regardless, but if you're playing goblin tribal, it's a shock that becomes stronger than a normal shock. Okay, next. Thorinum Amnestist, artifact costs two, non-creature spells cost one more to cast. So one of the tools we gave to tribal decks was not only we want them
Starting point is 00:21:57 to sort of do their thing, but they wanted them to compete a little against the non-tribal deck. So this is the card that says, oh, it's a really good sideboard card against a non-tribal deck. So this is the card that says, oh, it's a really good sideboard card against a non-tribal deck, but a bad card against a tribal deck. So it's sort of, we gave some tools to the tribal decks to sort of fight against some of the non-tribal decks. Next, Thought Seize. Black. One black mana. Sorcery. Target player reveals their hand. You choose a non-land card from it. That player discards their hand, you lose two life. So this is a very aggressive discard spell. Obviously, it's seen a lot of tournament play.
Starting point is 00:22:30 We've reprinted it. It saw tournament play when we reprinted it. It's a nice one-drop answer to things. The thing that's cool from it is that it lets you get whatever, other than land, it lets you get to wherever you want. It's just at the cost of life.
Starting point is 00:22:45 But early game with black, usually the spending of life is okay, and it really gives you some nice, clean, easy answers to some of the problems. And I think we put it in this set to allow some of the black tribal races to have some answers
Starting point is 00:22:58 to some of the problems they were running into. Okay. Thousand-year elixir, artifact three. You may activate abilities of creatures you control as though those abilities have haste. Okay. Thousand-year elixir. Artifact. Three. You may activate abilities of creatures you control as though those abilities have haste. One tap, untap, target creature.
Starting point is 00:23:12 So the idea is this allows you... It allows your creatures to have haste, but only for activated abilities. So essentially things that have a tap in them, normally you can't use right away, but with this ability out, you can use right away. There's a lot of tap abilities in the set so this was sort of
Starting point is 00:23:27 once again it's a tribal friendly card without exactly being a tribal card it can go in any deck but most of our tribes had activated abilities that required tapping and so this was just a means to do that okay, timber protector 4 and a green, creature, treefolk warrior
Starting point is 00:23:44 4, 6 other treefolk creatures you control get Okay, Timber Protector, 4 and a green. Creature, Treefolk Warrior, 4, 6. Other Treefolk creatures you control get plus 1, plus 1. Other Treefolk and Forest you control have Indestructible. So this is, again, us playing around with this tie between Treefolk and Forest. And this is the Treefolk Lord. Like I said, there's lots of Lords in the set because it's a tribal set. So it boosts all the Treefolk, and it sort of makes them hard to kill.
Starting point is 00:24:08 One of the things that you often want to do when you're being a lord is you want to grant some ability to your team that is doing something useful. The idea with tree folk we played around with is that tree folk tend to have higher toughness. They're harder to deal with.
Starting point is 00:24:23 One of the things about tree folk in lore is, well, how do you deal with it? You know, a tree is a pretty tough thing to deal with. I know in Lord of the Rings they play around a lot with that. The Ents are quite powerful because what do you do? There's these giant trees. How do you stop the trees? So we thought that was kind of cool. Okay, next. Vigor. Three green, green, green. So six men in total.
Starting point is 00:24:49 Three generic, three green. It's an elemental creature. I think it's, is it a 6-6? Yeah, it's a 6-6 creature. It's got trample. If damage would be dealt to a creature you control other than Vigor, prevent that damage and put a plus or minus counter on that creature for each one damage prevented in this way. When Vigor is put into the graveyard from anywhere, shuffle to its owner's library. So this was a cycle. It was a rare cycle. They were incarnations, elemental incarnations,
Starting point is 00:25:14 and they just had a global effect that was super powerful. They were 6-6s. I think they were all 6-6s. And the idea here, for example, with this thing, is when this is in play, your creatures, not only don't they take damage they grow, they get bigger with time and that is you know a pretty cool ability
Starting point is 00:25:31 something you really have to deal with it is definitely tricky Wanderer's Twig one artifact, one sacrifice Wanderer's Twig, search your library for a basic land card reveal it, put it in your hand, then shuffle your library. One of the things we had to do with tribal was there were a lot of different color
Starting point is 00:25:50 combinations, and we wanted to sort of help enable you. So you see there's a lot of mana fixing to help you go get stuff. I think we said basic land here just because we want you, we don't want you going to get the hideaway lands and a lot of other, there are a lot of lands in the set that were non-basic lands. So we just wanted you to sort of fix your mana
Starting point is 00:26:05 without giving access to all the special lands that was going on. Okay. So I'm almost to work. So we're winding up here. Luckily we're in the W, so we're getting close to being done. Worn pilferers. Four in a black.
Starting point is 00:26:24 So five total. Four generic, one black. It's a 3-3 Goblin Rogue, so that's a creature. When Warn Pilferers enters the battlefield, return target creature cards from your graveyard to your hand. If the card is a Goblin card, Warn Pilferers gains haste until end of turn. So this is a good example where we take a basic effect that we have. So this is a Gravedigger. It's a creature that, you know, regrows a creature. But what this card says is, hey, look, you can just play me in any deck.
Starting point is 00:26:47 I'm a four mana 3-3, and, you know, that gets back a creature. You can just play that in any deck. But, but, if you play me in a Goblin deck, you just play me with deck of Goblins, and if you get back a Goblin, I'll give you an extra bonus. So it's a good way to sort of,
Starting point is 00:27:00 yeah, anybody can play this. It can go in any deck. It'll eventually get drafted, but the Goblin player just can draft it a little bit higher, because in a deck with a goblin, it's just a little bit stronger. And that is something that really
Starting point is 00:27:13 we like to do, because it encourages you to sort of, like, if you drop this I mean, if you're playing goblins, it just makes you want to drop it a little bit earlier. And we like cards like that where they have a little extra utility, meaning the Goblin player is more likely to get it, but if
Starting point is 00:27:29 they don't take it, it will go to somebody else. Okay, Wings of Velus Vel. Tribal Instant Shapeshifter. Changeling. Until end of turn, target creature has base power and toughness 4-4, gains all creature types, and gains flying. So this is one of the things that's fun is essentially grants Changeling.
Starting point is 00:27:49 I mean, it doesn't technically grant Changeling, but it spells out the words that make something, for all intents and purposes, have Changeling. Then, one of the things we did is all the spells that are tribal Changeling spells have to change you in some way, that they have a shape shifter flavor to them. And so obviously this thing's turning you into a 4-4 changeling, essentially. 4-4 flower with changeling.
Starting point is 00:28:14 And so that, there's a lot of fun tricks you could do. There's things in which you care about whether something is, or you're counting something, or your opponent's relying. Well, actually, this doesn't shut off things because usually you care about... I mean, I guess there's a few negative cases
Starting point is 00:28:30 where your opponent doesn't want a certain creature type. But most of the time, this is used positively for yourself because the way it's designed is it's something which... Usually granting changeling is something that's beneficial for you because most of the benefits of being a certain creature type are having the creature type. And so it was a nice way. Now, it also was a combat trick
Starting point is 00:28:48 because it turned into a 4-4. It had sort of a pseudo-giant growth feel. It's a good example of a spell that just has lots and lots of functionality. And there's a lot of different things you can do with it. And the neat thing is a lot of times you played it not for the changeling,
Starting point is 00:29:03 but when the changeling came up, you had fun changeling moments. You had fun tribal moments with it. And that's the kind of thing we liked about the spell was you tended to take it for other things, and then when changeling mattered, like having instant changing effects created really fun effects. And this sort of put it on a spell you'd probably take anyway, and then when those things came up, you felt extra clever.
Starting point is 00:29:24 And so that was definitely very fun. Okay. Oh, Wart Bogart Anti. So two black, red. So it's four mana, two generic, one black, one red. It's a legendary creature,
Starting point is 00:29:39 a goblin shaman, three, three. It's got fear, so it can't be black except by black and artifact creatures. At the beginning of your upkeep, you may return target goblin cards from your graveyard to your hand.
Starting point is 00:29:47 So one of the things we're playing around with, goblins is in black or red. While often black-green is sort of the, like when we do Golgari, that's the color that we sort of regrow things. In this set, black-red was the colors that did that. We did that more with goblins. The goblins
Starting point is 00:30:04 sort of kept coming back. And notice it says Goblin Card. That means, like, I earlier talked about the shock. That's the Goblin Shock. Oh, Wart Annie, not only can she get back your goblins, but she can get back your goblin spells. And so you're able to do stuff like that. Okay.
Starting point is 00:30:21 Well, that's a good place to end, I guess, on Wart Bugger Annie. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed looking back at... looking back at Lorwyn. Lorwyn is a fun set. It's very fun when I look back at sets that I haven't done for a while.
Starting point is 00:30:37 I mean, Lorwyn was a long time ago at this point. You see a lot of things we don't do anymore, but you notice a lot of the nuances. One of the things I love when I go through sets is there's so much little tiny stuff woven in that sometimes the players see but not all the players see so i hope by doing these you get a little sense of oh i didn't get that or i didn't notice that and um you know we one of the nice things about having so long to work on sets is there is time for nuance and time for a lot of cool effects so anyway i hope you guys enjoyed that hope you enjoyed the the look through lorwyn um but anyway i'm now at
Starting point is 00:31:11 work so we all know what that means means instead of talking magic it's time for me to be making magic i'll see you guys next time bye

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