Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #620: Orzhov
Episode Date: March 15, 2019This podcast is the ninth in my Ravnica guild series. In this podcast, I talk about the white-black guild, the Orzhov Syndicate. ...
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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
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
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,
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,
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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,
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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,
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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,
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,
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.
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
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,
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,
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,
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.
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
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...
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
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
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
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,
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...
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.
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,
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,
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,
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
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
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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,
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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,
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
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
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
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,
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
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
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
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
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,
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,
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
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,
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.
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
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
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.
So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to
make it magic. I'll see you guys next time.
Bye-bye.