Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #620: Orzhov

Episode Date: March 15, 2019

This podcast is the ninth in my Ravnica guild series. In this podcast, I talk about the white-black guild, the Orzhov Syndicate. ...

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 I'm pulling up my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so I've been doing a bunch of guild podcasts, and I'm up to the Orzhov Syndicate. So that's white and black. So let's talk a little bit about white and black, and then I'll get into their three visits to Ravnica. Okay, so white is all about the good of the group, wanting peace, realizing that if we all work together, we can create a world that is good for all of us. Black is much more self-centered. Black is more about, I want a world in which it gives me the chance to have the things that I want. black is really much one that believes in systems that reward the individual. That say, oh, well, an individual that
Starting point is 00:00:52 excels has a chance to thrive. And that white and black are obviously enemies. One of the challenges of making color pairs when they're enemies is, at some point, there's a fundamental disagreement of what's going on, in that white really wants to do what's good for everybody and black wants to do what's good for black. How do you sort of bring those together? So what we found with white and black, what tends to work best is somebody who's very
Starting point is 00:01:22 selfish about their group. So it has the group sense of white. It has the, I'm looking out for others. But it has kind of the, but not everybody. It's my own group. And so one of the things that we were looking for very much was we were trying to find some model of something that did a good job of feeling like, look,
Starting point is 00:01:46 I have a lot of darker black tendencies, but you do get the sense of honor, of a sense of rules to them. And that's when we stumbled upon the idea of organized crime. And I joked, what's more white black than organized crime? Organized white, crime black. And the idea that we really sort of modeled the Orzhov after is the sense of this group looks out for itself at the cost of whatever,
Starting point is 00:02:15 but there are a lot of structures and rules that we really felt were interesting. The other thing that we did that we tied this to the Orzhov is that the Orzhov is that the Orzhov is kind of the center of the religion on Ravnica. And so there's this interesting cross between kind of this organized religion sort of quality and this kind of organized crime. It's kind of a merging of a bunch of different things. The other thing that we wanted that was really important for White-Black is that the play of White-Black is what we tend to call a bleeder deck.
Starting point is 00:02:52 And what that means is, what I'm going to do is use my resources to kind of gum you up, and then I'm going to slowly beat you. I'm just going to plink away at you little by little. So it's more of a control strategy, but it's a control strategy in where, well, I'm winning because I'm slowly beating you. If I just stall the game long enough, those, you know, the little tiny plinks will finally do you in. And so we wanted to make sure we had a group that sort of fit that as well. And so the idea of having an organization that sort of controls things, but in a little more devious way.
Starting point is 00:03:28 I mean, White Blue, Osiris, clearly controls the government, right? They clearly sort of create the official laws of the land. The Orzhov, we like the idea that they, too, had a hold of a system. Religion, obviously, is the system. But that they are using their advantage to slowly eke out advantage from those around them and to advance their own cause. But we like the idea that within the group that there was a sense of, a system of honor and rules
Starting point is 00:04:00 and, you know, you can't just do whatever you want. That gets into red-black. That's Rakdos. It just does whatever it wants. No, no, no. This is white-black. So there are rules set up. But the rules are set up to overall help the people in charge of the Orzhov.
Starting point is 00:04:16 And that was a lot of what we were trying to go is trying to get that general sense of control but in a more refined way. The other thing we played around with was Golgari very much cares about death in the sense of recycling.
Starting point is 00:04:38 We liked the idea that Golgari was doing that, but the Orzhov sort of had a different take on death that we liked, which was that death isn't the end. Both white and black definitely interact with spirits in the graveyard. And like, okay, well, what if in the Orzhov, once you're in somebody's debt, dying doesn't mean you get out of their debt. And one of the cool ideas
Starting point is 00:05:03 that the creative team came up with is the idea that in the Orzhov, when you work for the Orzhov, dying is not an end to that. It just means, okay, now your ghost works for Orzhov. And we had this nice flavor we sort of worked in where the creatures that actually rule the Orzhov, at least when we start the story, is what's called the Ghost Council. And the Ghost Council literally is a council of ghosts. These are dead people that the Orzhov are run by dead people.
Starting point is 00:05:35 And we thought that was kind of a very different take on things. Also the idea that it's a whole council trying to get sort of the white qualities of it's not just a single individual, it's not one person, it's a group making the call. So anyway, the Orzhov has a very cool
Starting point is 00:05:53 and kind of distinct flavor to it. It was one of the things I think when we first started working, like some of them took a long time to really craft and figure out. Orzhov came pretty quick, the creative came pretty quickly. Like, we pretty quickly, the idea of organized crime and organized religion
Starting point is 00:06:09 and sort of morphing all this together, that concept came very fast. I think that Orzhov was one of the first. Oh, so in the first block, Orzhov was not in the very, very first set. And the original Ravnica had Selesnya, Golgari, Boros, and Dimir. So they were not in, but they were in the second. They were in Guild Pack. Guild Pack had the Orzhov,
Starting point is 00:06:32 had the Izzet, and had the Gruul. Interestingly, by the way, we'll get into this, but the Orzhov overlap with nobody. They're white and black. The only overlap in Guild Pack is in red, because both Gruul and Izzet have red, but Orzhov has neither
Starting point is 00:06:51 of those. Okay, we'll get there in a second. So let's talk about the mechanics. So we like the idea that when you died, you were still in servitude. And that theme was really cool, so we try to apply that into the mechanic. So the mechanic we came up with was called Haunt. So Haunt is one of those mechanics I'm not a big fan of Haunt, we'll get into that, but Haunt is one of those mechanics that is really hard to remember. It's one of those mechanics that every time I talk about it, I have to like, okay, let me remind myself
Starting point is 00:07:23 exactly how it works. Because it's, and this is a sign of a mechanic that has issues, where if you just can't quite remember how the mechanic works, it's saying there's something about the mechanic that's not super intuitive, that it's sort of fighting your brain. And Haunt kind of does that. So let me walk through how Haunt works. Okay, so Haunt actually works differently on a permanent than it does on a spell. I think most of the haunt went on creatures. I think there might have been one or two. Okay, so when it goes on a creature, it says when this creature dies, exile it, haunting target creature.
Starting point is 00:07:59 Now, obviously when it's permanent, it's put into the graveyard for the battlefield. Exile it, haunting target creature. Now, if you put it on a spell, it says, when this spell is put into a graveyard during its resolution, exile, haunting target creature. Okay, now those might, on the surface, those sound similar. And what that means is, if I've haunted on a creature, the way it works is is that creature usually has an enter the battlefield effect. And what the creature will say is whenever this creature enters the battlefield or the creature it is haunting dies, blah. Draw a card or whatever it is. I mean, it's white and black. They're white and black effects. But do something white or black, depending on what the spell is.
Starting point is 00:08:43 So the idea there is I play a Haunt. Let's say I play there is, I play a haunt. Let's say I play a creature. I play a haunt creature. It enters the battlefield and it does something. Now, when the creature dies, then it gets to haunt a creature in play.
Starting point is 00:08:59 So you then exile the card and it goes on top of a creature that you have on the battlefield. Now, when the haunted creature dies, you trigger the enter the battlefield effect from the creature. So it's like the creature, you play the creature, when it comes to enter the battlefield, it does something. It dies, it haunts a new creature. When that creature dies, it does this effect. So the idea is, it's an effect that's an enter the battlefield effect on one creature, and then a death trigger on another creature.
Starting point is 00:09:28 That alone is a little bit complicated. But, the tricky thing is, let's say I now put it on a spell. So I put it on a spell, the spell does something, and it gets put in the graveyard. As soon as it gets put in the graveyard, you hunt a creature, and now when that creature dies, the spell you get when this goes off comes off. Now, once again, we try to be as similar as possible. It's sort of like, when you cast the spell they do something, and then when it goes to the graveyard, you haunt a creature.
Starting point is 00:09:54 So we were trying to, I get how we were trying to parallel it. It's just the thing played out a little differently. We made ten cards haunt. I think most of them, I think more of them were on creatures than on spells. There's something fun here, by the way. Haunt is a cool idea.
Starting point is 00:10:11 I like the idea that something dies and haunts another creature. That the flavor was fun. But a couple things. One problem we had was, because it happened when a creature died, it had to be an effect that was relevant whenever creatures would die, which includes the end of combat, which really limits the number of effects you can have
Starting point is 00:10:32 because it can't be anything that affects combat because most of the time when you get the death trigger, it's at the end of combat, you know, during combat. So for starters, it just limits the kind of effects you can do on it. so for starters it just limits the kind of effects you can do on it and it is it is one of those things where it
Starting point is 00:10:53 I don't know if you watch The Great Designers Searches 3 Chris Mooney he on one of his assignments brought back Haunt and was trying to do new things with it and he definitely did a good job of
Starting point is 00:11:13 demonstrating that I mean if we want to bring Haunt back there's some different ways we can try to execute I do believe the way we did Haunt originally was not ideal this mechanic by the way didn't do well originally was not ideal. This mechanic, by the way, didn't do well. It scarred actually pretty badly. And, once again, remember, in Guild Pact, there was no overlap between white and black. Now, if you look at original Ravnica, black overlaps
Starting point is 00:11:40 with Golgari, and white overlaps with Boros. There is some synergy there. If you put it on, I mean, Boros tend to have aggressive creatures that die. So if you're playing your, you know, if you're playing creatures, if you're haunting creatures, odds are with aggressive play, your haunted creatures are going to die. Either that or they take the damage. They kind of have to block them. So it does allow you at least to trigger the haunt stuff. With Golgari,
Starting point is 00:12:20 I mean, there was some graveyard synergy, and there definitely was some, you know, Golgari tends to like to sacrifice creatures because it likes to sort of recycle them. And haunt cards are... You get some value if you bring them back because a haunt creature or haunt spell happens twice. So there was some synergy with the sets. You could draft around it. But all in all, I would not say haunt was a huge success. It was not well liked by players.
Starting point is 00:12:44 It is something that people ask me about from time to time my gut on it is that the flavor is really strong and that people would like for it it's one of those things that maybe one day we'd kind of reinvent the wheel and the word Haunt's pretty good and I don't know
Starting point is 00:13:02 I feel like I don't like its current execution. Chris did show some other ways we could play around with it. I think that, like, one thing that, I mean, for starters, I don't think we should have put it on spells and creatures. I think the fact they work slightly different caused problems. So, if I brought back, I'm more inclined to put it on creature, because the idea that the flavor of the creature dies and now it haunts another creature is just much stronger flavor than I cast a spell and my spell is haunting the creature.
Starting point is 00:13:34 That was always a weird flavor. Okay, anyway, that was haunt. Like I said, I feel it was a failed experiment in that it didn't really play quite as well and it was confusing to remember. And, um, but it's one of those mechanics that maybe, maybe if we were willing to revamp a little bit, um, there is something cool about something dying and haunting another creature. That, that part I admit is a cool thing.
Starting point is 00:14:00 And Chris did do some more interesting things with the mechanic when he brought it back. So I don't know, um, I will say Chris did more to make me rethink Haunt, uh, than I, I mean, I think Haunt was in the definitely-will-never-ring-it-back camp for me, and Chris did some stuff like, oh, let me think about it, maybe there's something cool, the flavor is cool. Okay, let's get on to, um, Gatecrash. Um, so the Orzhov, uh, oh, it's get on to Gatecrash. So the Orzhov... Oh, it's interesting. I mentioned this last time. The Orzhov shows up in the second set of every time we've done.
Starting point is 00:14:35 It's always been the second set. It was in Gatecrash. It was in Guilds Pack. It was in Gatecrash. And now it's in Ravnica Allegiances. I think it was in Gatecrash, and now it's in Ravenical Allegiances. I think it was... I think it was in the third set. Is it?
Starting point is 00:14:53 Oh, Gruul. I think it and Gruul have always been in the second set. Gruul was also in... Yeah, Gruul was in Guild Pack, Gruul was in Gatecrash, and Gruul was in Ravenical Allegiances. So, Gruul and Orgeo have always shown up together. So, maybe next time we'll assume there's next time we will give you the milk okay uh now we get to extort so extort was the mechanic in um gate crash so it says whenever you cast a spell you may pay a hybrid mana white or black if you do each opponent loses one life and you gain that much life. So the story here was we really had trouble
Starting point is 00:15:27 finding an order of mechanic that we liked. And in fact, there was a little mini team made during development to try, I don't remember what mechanic we made. We made a mechanic that wasn't quite working as well as it needed to be. And so they made a mini team and I think Sean Main ran that mini-team, and Sean, I believe, came up with Extort. The idea of Extort is this goes on permanence, and then once it's on permanence, it says,
Starting point is 00:15:53 okay, every time you cast a spell, you've got to pay white or black mana, but then you've got to drain your opponent for one. In a multiplayer game, you've got to drain everybody for one. So if there's, like, four other people, they each lose one life, you gain four life. So we did make it so it was stronger in multiplayer. The idea here is that black and white, your Orzhov likes to tax things,
Starting point is 00:16:19 and the idea of, well, every time you're getting a spell, there's a cost that comes out of that. And we thought that was kind of cool. This mechanic scored much better. It played much better. So, let's see. In Gatecrash, let's see. Boros was in Gatecrash.
Starting point is 00:16:40 So, the overlap between Orzhov for white was Orzhov and Boros. And for black it was Dimir. So Boros in Gatecrash had a mechanic called Battalion where you wanted to attack
Starting point is 00:17:02 with three or more creatures. And Extort basically just wants you playing spells, and so Boros having a lot more cheaper spells played fine into Extort, because Boros, you know, was trying to play aggro,
Starting point is 00:17:18 was trying to finish you. This allowed you to sort of get extra damage based on the spells you were doing, and so Extort works fine with Boros. Cypher, the way the Dimir mechanic worked was it went on spells. When you cast the spell, you then exiled it tied to a creature,
Starting point is 00:17:41 and every time that creature dealt combat damage, it triggered that spell effect. Um, so not quite as synergistic. I mean, synergistic in the sense that, um, Dimir is always trying to sort of eke out advantage,
Starting point is 00:17:58 and Extort does a good job of getting the extra damage in. Um, the Cypher spells did not trigger, I don't think it triggered the Extort. What does that mean? Have you cast a spell? I'm not sure. Oh, it's interesting.
Starting point is 00:18:14 Did Cypher cast a spell? Maybe Cypher did cast a spell. Even if they overlapped, my gut is we would have made a cast if it could have been. It's possible that when you do damage, then it casts a spell from exile. If that's the case, then it does trigger Extort
Starting point is 00:18:27 and it works with Extort. My gut is that's what we did. I don't actually remember exactly, but it makes so much sense that if we could have done that, I think we would have done that. Anyway, Extort was much more light. I think Extort was...
Starting point is 00:18:43 I mean, the only interesting thing about Extort was we tied it to white and black through the mana, which probably was a mistake only in the sense of it's hard for us to bring Extort back other than as a guild mechanic, because the white
Starting point is 00:19:00 and black is tied into the spell. Often when we make guild mechanics, the intent is not that the guild mechanics are going to come back, and I think we maximize making it a good Orzhov mechanic. Oh, the other thing that Extort did is it made a ruling
Starting point is 00:19:17 in Commander that you don't count mana symbols in reminder text. Meaning you can play this, if you have a mono-white haunt card, I'm sorry, distort card, you can play it in a mono-white deck because it doesn't count the half of black of the hybrid
Starting point is 00:19:38 as being a black symbol in the reminder text to make this color identity black, I think. If I remember correctly, that's I think how it works. But anyway, people generally liked it. This was a popular mechanic. I mean, much more popular than Haunt, so. And this is the kind of mechanic that we might do somewhere else, except for the hybrid mana cost in it is,
Starting point is 00:19:59 makes it a little trickier to bring back. Okay, that gets us to Ravnica Allegiances. to bring back. Okay. That gets us to Ravnica Allegiances. Okay, so... The first mechanic we tried, which I...
Starting point is 00:20:11 Which was the favorite mechanic that we made in Visions. My favorite mechanic we made in Visions was called Debt. So here's how it worked. You would cast spells that came with Debt.
Starting point is 00:20:22 When they did, you would give a player Debt counters. Usually your opponent, not yourself. I they did, you would give a player debt counters. Usually your opponent, not yourself. I think you gave Tarb an opponent debt counters. And so what happened is they would get some number of debt counters. And then at the end of their turn, let's see, beginning of their end step,
Starting point is 00:20:44 they are allowed to pay one mana for every debt counter they have. And for every one they pay, they remove the debt counter. And then at the end of that, if there's any debt counters left, they lose one life. So the idea was while you're in debt, every turn you're losing a life, but you can pay off the debt with mana. But until you're completely out of debt, you're in debt, every turn you're losing a life, but you can pay off the debt with mana. But until you're completely out of debt,
Starting point is 00:21:07 you're still being drained every turn. We went through a lot of iterations of this. This was our final iteration. And I know set design played around with debt counters for a while. The thing that was really interesting about it was, in the early game, when mana really mattered,
Starting point is 00:21:24 you tended to just, you didn't have the mana to spend. So like, okay, I guess I'll just go in debt. And early on, you're at a lot of life, so like, okay, I can you know, one damage, I can take one damage for a while. And then what happens is later in the game, it starts to be, that damage starts to really start to
Starting point is 00:21:39 mean something. You're lower in life, and then you start needing to pay the mana. So it starts interfering with what you're doing because you really need to start paying the mana to be paying off the debt. And then there's this neat sort of race between trying to do what you need to do but also trying to not let debt be the thing that kills you. And I thought it played really interestingly. It was super flavorful. The idea of, you know, Orge beats
Starting point is 00:22:06 you because you go into debt some of the time just felt so spot on perfect from a flavor standpoint. So what happened? Two things happened. One is, one of the tricky things about guild mechanics is you have to play nicely with the guilds around you. So, for example, in Ravnica Allegiances, Orojov overlaps with Rakdos in black, and it overlaps with Azorius in white. And the synergy, it just wasn't... Debt wasn't working quite as synergistic with the things around it.
Starting point is 00:22:48 So one thing was it didn't quite have the synergies. And one of the things you're always looking for is making sure that there's synergies in what you're doing. The second thing was it just was a weird balancing issue and they never quite, it never quite worked. I mean, I do think it's possible one day we figure out the right way to execute it and we bring it back. I'm not saying the debt would never happen.
Starting point is 00:23:12 It just didn't get figured out this time. And one of the things that is true about, I think, vision design for both Guild of Ravnica and Ravnica Allegiances is I was a little bit aggressive in trying to make, because it was the third time we were there I was trying to do stuff that was just a little bit different. I think I was trying to push innovation a little bit, just because there's not a lot of innovation going on. I mean, it's a more normal set. So I was trying to do some things that were a little more special in the
Starting point is 00:23:40 mechanics, and I ended up making things a little more complicated than they needed to be. And so a combination of me turning over things that were a smidgen complicated and just the normal synergies you need to work in a guild set just sort of kept debt from happening. Like I said, I don't think debt will never happen. I think there's a chance maybe one day
Starting point is 00:23:58 we can crack debt. But there's a few things we still need to work out. So, sadly, no debt. But they did come up with a pretty cool mechanic called Afterlife. So, Afterlife N, it's a number. When this creature dies, create N11 white and black spirit creature tokens with flying.
Starting point is 00:24:15 So, this goes, once again, into the idea of in the origin of when you die, your spirit is still still has duties to perform, if you will. And the idea here was creatures that when they die, you know, there's actually utility.
Starting point is 00:24:32 Like, I get a creature, and then when it dies, I get something. It's interesting in that a lot of ways this flavor is not that far from haunt. You know, haunt definitely has the idea that I have creatures, and then even upon their death, they still serve me to a certain extent.
Starting point is 00:24:45 That flavor was there. But this one also was a little more straightforward. One of the things, like I said, about Orzhov is it wants to sort of be plinking you because it's a pleader deck, and little 1-1 evasive creatures do a really good job of that. It's like, oh, well, I die,
Starting point is 00:25:02 now I'm getting these little evasive creatures. Can you deal with my little evasive creatures? Because while I'm stalling you out, these things are going to plink away at you. And so a combination of the flavor of the spirits and sort of the, it plays nicely, it just worked really well in what the Orzhov was trying to do. So let's look at the two guilds inside of it. Rakdos is playing a little bit more of an aggressive game, and it's not hard for Raktos for creatures to die on. A, because it's more aggressive on what it's attacking
Starting point is 00:25:33 with, taking bigger risks, and B, there's sacrifice built into Raktos. So there's a couple different ways. Like, one of the nice things is, in the sacrifice outlet, afterlife creatures are at least two creatures, and if they have an afterlife above one, they can be more than that. And so if I have sac outlets, you know, afterlife works really well, and Rakdos is the guild that tends to have the sac outlets, because sacrifice is a big deal for Rakdos. So that works pretty well together. And we get to Azorius. Azorius is also playing a slower game much like Orzhov
Starting point is 00:26:05 and so it's mechanic addendum is set to give you optimization in what you're doing and so Azorius, and it's not that addendum per se blends perfectly with Afterlife, although there are individual executions of cards with addendum that work
Starting point is 00:26:22 well. The thing that really makes Azorius and Orzhov work together is that they're the two guilds playing the slowest strategy, and both of them have a lot of control elements they want. Both of them want to be stalling. And so that overlap is just making white cards that help sort of stall you, you know, works nicely with afterlife, works nicely with just the general philosophy about where Job works. And so that synergy tends to be good. So it's early on. As me recording this, we just had the pre-release, so I don't have a lot of data yet on what people thought of Afterlife.
Starting point is 00:27:00 I think Afterlife is a pretty clean mechanic. One of the things I liked a lot about the mechanics that got used in guilds in Ravnica is they really found some nice, simple, clean, elegant, sort of embodies the essence of the guild, but in a way in which it's not too complicated. Like I said, the one way I erred is in trying to find things a little bit more novel, I made things a little bit more complicated, and, you know, we are, guild sets already have a lot of complication going on in them, and there's just, you know, there's just more mechanics in general, and there's more moving pieces, so, I do like what, Afterlife seemed to be a very flavorful answer, that
Starting point is 00:27:41 while, in my heart of hearts, I do like like debt and I would have loved if we could figure out a way to make debt work I do think Afterlife does a good job of being a solid Orzhov mechanic so if we look back at them I think Orzhov is definitely one of those guilds where
Starting point is 00:28:03 we've done a pretty good job of weaving the general flavor in. It is true that Haunted Afterlife went a little bit more into the spirits, you know, in servitude flavor, where Extort was a little bit more about taxing, about sort of you know, they play in slave spaces. Orzhov is not one of these guilds that sort of has a lock on a mechanical component of the game. On some level, you could argue that
Starting point is 00:28:32 Orzhov maybe cares a little bit about dying. I mean, two of the three mechanics at least care about death some. And spirits play a big role, so there's just a little bit of spirits matter. But the Orzhov has never had quite as much about being a clean, mechanical tie as it's been about having a very strong flavor. I think the Orzhov, I mean, because it is using religion,
Starting point is 00:28:58 because it is using some organized crime, because it's using things that people know and blending them in a weird way. Like, it is taking things that don't normally kind of overlap, and overlapping them in a way that's a very unique thing, like, the organization that is Orzhov is a very, I mean, A, it's using magic, I mean, the idea that you are, um, that ghosts work for you, or that you're run by ghosts is obviously supernatural in its nature, um, but it, it is a cool... It's definitely one of the guilds where I feel like the flavor and the style of play is very... It knows what it wants to do. It plays
Starting point is 00:29:32 the way it wants to play. That's another thing I guess is it has a very clear play pattern. The bleeder deck strategy is very obvious, and you can see in each case we built the mechanic around making sure that the deck plays in a very specific, flavorful way. And that's one of the things that I like about
Starting point is 00:29:50 Orzhov is, like some of the guilds are built around a component of the game. Orzhov is built around a style of play, which has been very, very consistent. Like some guilds, you'll notice there's a little bit of flux in how they play. Orzhov really has been playing, very consistent. Like some guilds you'll notice there's a little bit of flux in how they play. Orzhov really has been playing the same way. When you mix all the cards together you know what you... I mean, they're different mechanics they do slightly different things
Starting point is 00:30:12 but they all work toward the same greater goal that Orzhov is doing. The other thing that's been a lot of fun making Orzhov is the top-down flavor of Orzhov lends itself well to a lot of flavorful things. Like, one of the reasons,
Starting point is 00:30:28 like, of all the mechanics that came up, one of the reasons that debt was so popular to me was that there's a really strong flavor for Orzhov, so you've got to really hit something and try to hit that flavor. You know, I really appreciate as a designer that it is fun to make
Starting point is 00:30:44 individual Orzhov cards because the general sense of what Orzhov is doing on some level one of the things they say is it's fun to write the bad guys and I think Orzhov has a lot of definitely of the ten guilds the Orzhov are the ones that it's the least hard to find the redeeming
Starting point is 00:31:06 qualities out of them there are qualities that you can look to I think order job definitely looks out for itself one of the things I find interesting is that the white black does this thing where it very much you know like one of my favorite
Starting point is 00:31:22 white black characters is Magneto of the X-Men or the of the X-Men comics. And the idea of Magneto is he's someone who's like, hey, I, too, believe in the rights of mutants, just like Charles Xavier, you know, Professor X, who runs the X-Men, but I just believe that the humans should die and just the mutants should be around. And it's like that little tiny twist between
Starting point is 00:31:42 I, too, believe in the right of mutants and we should just kill all the humans, that's a little different from, you know, Professor X is like, I think humans and mutants should live together. It's a good example of a white-black character where he really, really, really believes in the rights of mutants,
Starting point is 00:31:56 just at the cost of everybody else. And that, to me, has a nice, strong white-black quality in that there is a group he cares about. There is, you know what I'm saying? That, when I look at Orjab, I like that sense of, they look out for themselves and that there is a bond within themselves,
Starting point is 00:32:10 but they really don't care about others. And that, that's been, it's a, it's a fun guild to design for. It's a fun, it lends itself well to make cool cards. Black and white, interestingly. One of the things that's, that's kind of funny is some color combinations have good overlaps and some have less you know some aren't as strong white and black have pretty good overlap
Starting point is 00:32:30 there's a lot of thematic things that tie white and black together because they on some level have one of the most identifiable opposites you know that light and dark i mean it really plays into a lot of pop culture stuff but But because of that, because of mirroring in pop culture and the idea of there's a light and dark side to things, that there's a lot of trope space to play with in that. It lets you do a lot of fun things. And so, Orzhov,
Starting point is 00:32:55 like I said, is definitely one of the guilds that has the cleanest, clearest, crispest flavor to it. And that has allowed us to have a very cremicalist mechanical identity as well. So that's been pretty cool.
Starting point is 00:33:10 But anyway, so how are we doing today? Oh, not too bad. Not too much traffic. That, my friends, is the Orzhov. So I think it's a guild that we've executed pretty well. Like I said, Haunt, I think we made some mistakes with Haunt the mechanic. I think we did a good job of the Orzhov
Starting point is 00:33:27 guild all three times. And Extort and Afterlife I think are both actually pretty good mechanics. Like I said, my biggest issue with Extort is, if we made any mistake with Extort, it's tying the hybrid man into it in a way that makes it harder to bring back Extort outside of the
Starting point is 00:33:44 guild. And afterlife, I actually do believe you will see afterlife again. I think that's a nice scene, a clean simple mechanic. Anyway, my friends, that is all there is to say about the workshops. I hope you enjoyed that. But I am now at work, so we know what that means. It's the end of my drive to work.
Starting point is 00:33:59 So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to make it magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.