Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #614: Lorwyn Cards, Part 4
Episode Date: February 22, 2019This podcast is the fourth in a four-part series about the card-by-card design stories of Lorwyn. ...
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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,
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,
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.
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?
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
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
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.
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
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.
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,
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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,
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.
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.
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
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,
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,
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.
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
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
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,
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
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
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.
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.
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,
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
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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,
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
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...
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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,
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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,
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
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
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
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.
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.
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,
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
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
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.
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.
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
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
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,
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.
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,
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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