Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #167 - Onslaught, Part 4
Episode Date: October 17, 2014Mark continues with part 4 of his 6 part series on the design of Onslaught. ...
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I'm pulling out my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work.
Okay, so last couple times I've been talking about Onslaught.
And I'm not done yet, so I will continue to do that.
Last I left, I think we were on D.
So we're like, this is two podcasts in on card stories, and I only got to D.
So we're going to try to pick up the pace a little bit today.
I just have lots of stories to tell.
Hopefully, I'm never quite sure it's the right number.
I know in Theros I did eight, and that felt too much.
But I've done like fours and fives.
Anyway, we'll see.
Okay, let's jump in here.
Dream Chisel.
So Dream Chisel is an artifact for two that says that face-down creatures cost one less to play.
So it turns all your morphed creatures into two-twos for two rather than two-twos for three.
One of the things that we were hoping was, whenever we make mechanics,
one of the things that we'd like to do is, so real quickly for those that might not know this terminology,
we talk about linear and modular. They're two
design terms we use. What linear
means, it's the card that kind of
begets you playing other cards.
For example, Goblin King makes all Goblin
Kings plus one plus one. Well, that
really says, hey, you better put some Goblins in your deck
otherwise the card doesn't have any value.
It's a very linear card. Where something
like Naturalize or Destroy Target Artifact
or Enchantment, it doesn't make you want to put anything else in your deck. It's just, you know, a card that Where something like Naturalize or Destroy Target Artifact or Enchantment doesn't make you want to put anything else
in your deck. It's just, you know,
a card that does something that maybe you need
the function of. That's modular.
It doesn't sort of beget any other card.
So one of the things we
like to do is, we
like to have a mix between mechanics that are linear,
mechanics that are modular. But even on
mechanics that are modular, we'd like to
give you some cards
that make you play them linearly, if you will. This is a good example. There's nothing about
morph necessarily that makes you have to play lots of morph. Any one morph card unto itself works
just fine. But something like Dream Chisel says, hey, hey, hey, maybe you want to make a deck of
morph cards. And this card's only good if you commit to morph.
So what it does is it's a linear card that takes advantage of something that's normally modular
and turns it into a linear strategy.
And the reason we do cards like this is there are a lot of people that really, really like linear strategies.
Why?
Some people, like, some players are like, don't tell me what to do.
I want to come up with my own thing.
And other players are like, give me hints.
What should I do?
Give me something cool to do.
And they really like having cards that say, okay, here's the plan.
Let's do it.
You know?
And even, I mean, Dream Trigger just says, make a deck full of morph.
It doesn't say which morph or what colors or anything, really.
It gives you lots of options.
But it does say, hey, this is really going to go in a deck filled with morph creatures.
Okay, next.
Elvish Vanguard.
I got to E. finally off the E.
Okay, Elvish Vanguard is a one and a green
for a 1-1 elf.
And then whenever another elf enters the battlefield,
you get a plus one, plus one counter on this.
So what this is meant to be
is something in which it says,
okay, hey, every time you get to play an elf,
I get to get bigger.
And so it's just a different way. I mean, we, every time you get to play an elf, I get to get bigger.
And so it's just a different way.
I mean, we, for example, the one cycle,
where they're all, like, heedless one I talked about last time.
Or not heedless one, I talked about, I don't know, one of them.
Where they get bigger based on how many you have.
This is doing that in a slightly different manner.
Those cards are star, star equal to the number you currently have.
Where this one, it just keeps getting bigger.
So it doesn't start big, but once again, as creatures die or things happen
to them, it doesn't shrink. It only gets bigger.
And one of the
fun things about this is that
green definitely has ways
we made some elf tokens in the set.
So there's a bunch of different ways to sort of enable
this, and that green is the color
of growth, so green is the color that tends to get bigger over time. So this was kind of a different ways to sort of enable this. And that green is the color of growth. So green is the color that tends to get bigger over time.
So this was kind of a neat way to sort of make you play elves
and then give you sort of a big, a card that can become a big threat down the road.
Next, Enchantress's Presence.
So it's an enchantment that says whenever you play an enchantment, draw a card.
So we had made a card in, or Richard had made a card in Alpha called
not Agobian Enchantress, he made
Verdun Enchantress, which
allowed you, whenever you played an enchantment, to draw a card.
Very linear.
So one of the things that
players had always asked for was
it's a creature that makes
you want to play enchantments. And they're like,
how about an enchantment that makes you want to play
enchantments? Obviously, Constellation will hit this
harder later on.
So anyway, this card was made for people who
wanted to play that deck but didn't want to
bother to have to stick creatures
in their enchantment deck.
This obviously was before enchantment
creatures. So
anyway, I'm not sure why
it's in this set. I mean,
it's one of those cards that people want.
I mean, we make sure to just put cool cards in every set.
And this is the kind of sense where it wasn't particularly on theme, but it's a rare.
And, you know, here's just a fun card to stick in.
My best sense is that this is the kind of card that someone like Mike Gallagher, the lead designer, just really liked.
And, like, it was his set.
He's like, you know what?
We need some cool stuff.
This is a cool thing.
I know people have been asking for it.
Let's just make it.
Okay, next.
Endemic Plague. So
three and a black for a sorcery.
You sack a creature, and then destroy
all creatures. As an additional cost to play the
spell, you sacrifice a creature, and destroy
all creatures that share the type.
So this was,
we definitely, we wanted
you to play tribal decks, but we wanted a few answers.
This one's kind of interesting in that in order for you to use this correctly,
you have to have the creature type that you're trying to stop.
Now remember, there are creatures in the set that can change their own creature type.
So A, you can use it with that.
Those are in blue, and this is black.
So a black-blue deck could do that strategy.
you can use it with that.
Those are in blue, and this is black.
So a black-blue deck could do that strategy.
Years later, with Lorwyn,
we would have changelings,
which would work well with this.
But at the time, it was definitely sort of like,
how do I do this?
And it was good in mirror matches where I'm black and I'm playing something
where I'm playing people that are playing things I might have.
But it was tricky to use.
I liked the flavor of it, though.
The idea that I needed a creature of the type to be able to destroy that type I thought was kind of cool. Next,
Erratic Explosion. 2R sorcery. So you reveal the top card of your library until you reveal
a non-land card. And then you do damage to target creature or player equal to, I mean
you have to choose a creature or player first. So you choose a creature or player, then flip until you get to a non-creature, and then you do damage to that creature or player equal to... I mean, you have to choose a creature or player first. So you choose a creature or player, then flip
until you get to a non-creature, and then
you do damage to that creature or player equal to the
converted mana cost of that spell.
So for those that don't know, converted
mana cost means
if you add up all the mana, what's the total
number of mana required to play this?
So if you had a card
that was one green
green, that is a converted mana cost of three, because it's three mana.
If it was four and a red, that's a converted mana cost of five.
If it's one black, black, black, that's a converted mana cost of four.
Anyway, this card was fun.
It definitely, one of the things I talk a lot about in Ranimus, Ranimus is important.
I wrote a whole article about this, I did a podcast
on it, you want some randomness in your game
I mean, your game could be chess
but, and even then
that's a whole separate
discussion, you do want, I think you do
want some randomness in your game, it makes it fun
it allows your players not to necessarily be able to
know everything, it lets them rest a little bit
because since they know they don't know everything
they don't feel an obligation to figure everything out
ahead of time.
And anyway,
this was definitely a fun card.
The way the card got used,
you had to pick the target
before you saw what you did.
And so, for example,
it was tricky to kill creatures
with it because,
you know,
now, there are people
who built their decks
so they didn't have
a lot of small things
and there are people
who can manipulate their decks
so they knew
what the next card
was going to be.
Usually in Limited, What you tended to do
is you tended to go after smaller creatures,
except if you were desperate, you'd go after
a bigger creature going, well, I'm going to lose anyway.
I might as well, you know, try to use this.
And the cards you reveal, by the way, go in the bottom of the library.
I didn't mention that.
Next, Exalted Angel.
4-WW for 4-5 Angel.
Flying and basically Lifelink.
This is pre-Lifelink being spelled out.
But essentially it's a Flying Lifelink 4-5 Angel.
And it's a morph cost of 2 white-white.
So this card became pretty important
because it was one of the most powerful morph cards.
Essentially, for 2 white-white,
you could play...
Sorry. For 3 mana, you could play, for, sorry,
for three mana, you could play this face down as a 2-2,
and then on the fourth turn, assuming you
got your mana, you could play
2-W-W and flip it face up for a 4-5
Flying Life Flicker.
Which is really, really good, really efficient.
One of the things about Morph is,
you can cost it, and this is a card where we did that,
where you can, if you go through the curve,
meaning turn three, turn four, bam,
something I couldn't get out normally to turn six, I can get out in turn four, assuming I get the land.
And the problem with this card was it was so good and saw tournament play,
but there were so few tournament-level morph cards that when you saw someone play a face-down card,
a lot of the time, especially if you're playing against a white deck, you knew it was Exalted Angel,
so there wasn't a lot of surprise.
The problem with Morph and Construct the first time through was we didn't have enough Morph
cards that really people were playing, and so the few that got played, it wasn't really
a surprise, which is kind of the fun of Morphin, not knowing what it is.
Next, Fefterin Goblin.
It's a one, for black, one single black, a 1-1 Zombie Goblin.
I believe this might be the very first black goblin.
I'm not sure.
I mean, there might be a gold black goblin,
but this might be the first mono black goblin.
And, of course, it's a zombie goblin.
For some reason, I don't quite know why,
if you are of a race that isn't human,
then when you're a zombie, you're a zombie and you're race.
But for some reason, humans just are zombies.
They don't get their race. They don't get zombie-human.
I don't know why that is. I sort of...
I call it human bias.
Anyway, so the Fetcher and Goblin has a little ability
that when it dies as a death trigger,
a target creature gets minus one,
minus one. It's full of
plague. When you kill it,
another creature might be infected by the plague
and could die from it.
This proved to be a very fun card. We've reprinted
this card a lot because it's pretty cool.
It just does a lot of neat things.
It's a pretty nice one drop, too.
One of the things is it's tricky to make one drop
so that both are
worth one so you can play them on the first turn,
but later in the game can mean
something. This is one of those cards where you have to be careful how you block, because this
thing can attack and block one thing, and then also use a shrink, a different thing
to help you win, either save your creature or kill another creature.
Okay, next, Fever Charm.
Our instant, you could choose one of three effects.
Target creature gains haste, target creature gets plus two, plus zero to end of turn, or do three damage to target wizard.
So we did another set of charms in Onslaught.
The first charms were done in Vision.
In fact, there were two set of charms.
There was one in Mirage and one in Visions.
Onslaught did the next set of charms,
next set of one-color charms.
The shtick to these was it did two abilities
like a normal charm would do,
and then the
third ability was always creature-type related.
For example, I'm not sure if it was always, what are their hit cards?
This one is.
This is like, oh, I'm really good at killing wizards, but I don't damage anything but wizards.
But, you know, that's a narrow effect, but hey, the other effects, you know, gaining
haste or plus equals O, is valuable enough that, okay, a lot of times I'll do that, but, you know, that's a narrow effect. But, hey, the other effects, you know, gaining haste or plus or plus O is valuable enough that, okay,
you know, a lot of times I'll do that.
But if I happen to run into a wizard, I can kill a wizard.
Okay, next, Flamestick Courier.
Two and a red for a 2-1 Goblin.
You can choose not to untap it.
And for 2-R untap, target creature gets plus 2, plus 2 and haste, or has haste, until this untaps.
So these guys, what they did was,
and there's a cycle of them, that you
locked them down, meaning you tapped them and could choose
not to untap them, to permanently kind of
grant an ability to another creature.
Now,
the interesting thing, there's some aesthetics
to this that I'm a little off. Like, notice
how bestow when we granted things. The thing we granted
matched the power and the toughness
and the abilities of the creature that granted it.
This doesn't do that.
So, like, it's a 2-1 goblin, but grants plus 2 plus 2.
It doesn't have haste, but it grants haste.
So it's a little...
In some ways, you can see this is some of the precursors to equipment.
Equipment would show up in the very next block.
The idea that I have something that I can make something stronger,
but that if you kill the creature, it doesn't lose the enhancement.
The enhancement can be used on something else.
Okay, next.
Future Sight.
Two, blue, blue, blue.
It's a five mana.
It's an enchantment.
You play with the top card of your library revealed,
and then you can play that card as if it's in your hand.
Which is a very, very fun card. There's a set named after this card.
Not a lot of cards can claim. I mean, it literally was named after this card.
When we were doing Time Spiral Block, we liked the idea that because it was a nostalgia set
that all three sets were named after existing magic cards.
And so each set had a theme it needed,
and we knew that the last set was about the future.
We're like, well, it's about the future.
How about we use the word future,
since there's a card called Future Sight.
This is a very fun card.
One of the neat things about this card,
and why it's kind of fun to build around, is it lets you draw cards in the sense that
every time you cast the card off the top of your library,
you have access to a new card.
So the more cards you can play off the top of the library,
the more cards you have access to.
And blue is a card drawing color.
So this is, I mean, it ended up being a decently strong card,
especially in the right decks, but it was a pretty fun card.
By the way, in the picture, in the art,
you see a man walking through,
and there's like a blue screen with a picture on it,
a yellow screen with a picture on it, a red screen with a picture on it.
So that's Ixodor.
He is seeing alternate versions of his future.
I'm trying to remember what, I don't remember exactly how that happens,
but it's Ixodor glancing at his own future.
So Ixodor is having a future sight.
Next, Genghis Goliath.
Three black black for four four is zombie giant
and you can tap five untapped clerics
to return it from your graveyard to your hand
so this is another fun thing we did with clerics
like the idea of
black clerics
they do sort of dark and creepy things
like raising things from the dead
so this was a fun card
it was a giant that, you know,
particularly you could use your clerics on.
So it went in your cleric deck.
It wasn't a cleric, but it went in your cleric deck
and allowed you to have a 4-4
that was really hard to get rid of.
Your opponent had to eventually kill the clerics
to keep it from coming back
because killing the goliath didn't stop it.
Okay.
Goblin Piledriver.
1-R for a 1-2 Goblin. Had protection from
blue. Whenever it attacks,
it gets plus 2 plus 0 for every attack, for each
other attacking Goblin.
So this card is bonkers!
So it turns out
when Onslaught came out,
Goblins, we were a bit aggressive with Goblins.
Goblins had never really been
a tournament tier deck, and Onslaught fixed Goblins. Goblins had never really been a tournament tier deck,
and Onslaught fixed that problem.
Goblins were really strong.
Really, really strong.
And one of the reasons was this card.
People always talk about how Red doesn't have its broken 2-drop,
and some people argue this is Red's broken 2-drop,
and then others say it only goes in a goblin deck, which is true.
Also, this card is protection from blue.
Note that for a while,
we used to play up the
enemy relationships a lot stronger
in the set, and so
you were allowed to have protection from
your enemies. That was just something you were allowed to do.
So,
I'm not sure why this is a protection from blue.
I mean, I think we were trying to make a
strong goblin card, and we didn't want blue
to bounce it or mess
with it. I'm not sure. I'm not sure why we get pro blue.
Next, Goblin
Pyromancer. So Goblin
Pyromancer for 3R is a 2-2 Goblin
Wizard. When it enters the battlefield, all
goblins get plus 3, plus 0 to end of turn.
At end of turn, destroy all goblins get plus three, plus zero to end of turn. At end of turn, destroy all
goblins. So this is kind of a
goblin finisher card. The idea
was, you got a huge boost, but
uh,
you know, goblins are a little on the destructive side,
so it'll help you win.
It's a pyromancer, it'll, it'll, it'll, uh,
but, probably all the goblins are gonna,
the flavor I got is he lights them
all on fire. And then, uh, well flavor I got is he lights them all on fire.
And then, well, they're dangerous when they're lit on fire,
but at some point, you lit them on fire,
they're not going to last very long.
This also, remember, this affected all goblins.
So this also was something that occasionally would get splashed in decks that could cast it to destroy goblins
if they're playing goblins.
Okay, next, Goblin Sharpshooter.
2-R-11, goblin.
It doesn't untap as normal.
Whenever a creature dies, untap it,
and you tap and deal 1 damage to our creature or player.
So it's a red tim.
It's funny, because originally when the game started,
Prodigal Sorcerer was a blue card,
tap, do 1 damage to creature or player.
Really wasn't a blue effect. It's kind of weird.
I think Richard just liked the flavor that the little tiny
cantrip stuff was done in the wizards
where it's centered in blue. But we
ended up shifting it over to red.
But this is one that, early on,
it wasn't really established
in red yet, but it made sense. I mean,
no one argued that red couldn't tap to do damage.
So this card
was kind of interesting because it did
a lot of... you could do some neat things.
For example, if your opponent had a bunch of 1-1s in play,
you could just mow them down.
You know, shoot a 1-1, it dies.
Untap the creature. Shoot a 1-1, it dies. Tap a creature.
And you also could, like, let's say they had a bunch of 1-1s and then a 2-2.
You could do some fun shenanigans where you could
shoot something
and then have something die
and then be able to untap and shoot it again
to kill a 2-power thing, or 2-toughness thing.
So the card actually came about,
this funny story with the card.
The card was made by
Richard Garfield during
Odyssey, and it was called
Goblin Gatling Gun.
The problem was there was no goblins in Odyssey.
I talked about this before.
I took all the goblins out.
Not the strongest idea in retrospect,
but at the time it seemed like a good idea.
Trying to get some dwarf love.
But anyway, Richard really liked this card.
He loved the name Goblin Gatling Gun,
so it turned out it couldn't be a Gatling Gun, a little too modern.
Although, if you look at the picture, it's pretty Gatling Gun-ish in the picture.
So anyway, it became Goblin Sharpshooter and ended up going to set.
He had made the card, and I knew he wanted it to be a Goblin.
So when the next set was doing a Goblin-themed thing, I knew there was Goblins.
I handed this one off.
So anyway, Goblin Gamut Gun.
Next, Gratuitous Violence.
2 RRR Enchantment.
So 5 mana total.
Double all creature damage.
So there's a card I made in Tempest
called Furnace of Wrath, which doubles
all damage.
And that card was a little overpowered, but this card
is a tweak on that. And this just damages all creature damage. And that card was a little overpowered, but this card is a
tweak on that. And this just
damages all creature damage.
Once again, this doesn't just
damage your creature damage, it doubles
all creature damage.
Next, Grinning Demon.
Two black black for a 6-6 demon.
It's a demon, so of course it's a 6-6. We love
making 6-6 demons. Beginning of upkeep,
you lose two life. Morph, two BB. Two black black.
So the idea here is, it's a 6-6 Demon you can get out pretty quick,
but if you get it out, then it starts doing damage to you,
and so you have to sort of make a choice.
The other thing that's neat about this card sometimes is,
sometimes it's just doing good work as a 2-2,
and I don't need to turn into the 6-6 until it's valuable.
But it's kind of fun.
It definitely had a sort of a demon-y feel
where it's not strictly upside,
but it played nice with Morph.
Next, Gus Cloak Sentinel,
which was 3-W for a 3-3 soldier.
And when blocked, you can choose to remove from combat.
So there's a whole bunch of Gus Cloak.
This is something that the white soldiers did,
which was, it had a mechanic
based on a
card called Reconnaissance?
I forget what set that was in.
But the idea basically is, if you get
into combat, and things are like,
you go, oh, I didn't expect you to block that way,
you can go, oh, never mind,
I'm not going to fight.
And so the flavor is that the soldiers sort of plan ahead,
and if they see that there's going to be a problem,
they don't attack.
And so this allows you to,
the way you're strategizing is you get a sort of,
your opponent tells you what they're going to do,
and then you go, oh,
now that I know that's what's going to happen,
let me rethink how I want to do this attack.
Okay.
Harsh Mercy.
2W Sorcery.
Each player chooses a creature type and then you destroy all other creature
types. So
this is how you get a wrath effect in a
tribal set.
Where it's like, well we want to have wrath effects
but, you know,
there's so much about creatures we don't want to have it too
harsh. So we did this neat thing where it says
if you're playing in theme
if you have one creature type
you're immune to this effect
but if you're spread out then you're more vulnerable
now notice the card only costs 3
because everybody gets to save at least one thing
and often can save multiple things
it's not particularly the strongest of wrath effects
so it only costs three.
Next, Insurrection.
Five red, red, red sorcery.
So you get to untap all creatures and gain control of them until end of turn,
and they gain haste.
So this is basically mass-threaded.
So basically, originally there was a Ray of Command
showed up in
called Legends, I think,
which allowed you to steal
a creature from your opponent.
It was an instant.
So at some point we decided
that we wanted red
to do more shenanigans
and we moved
temporary stealing over red.
Changed it to sorcery
from an instant
because we didn't like
red stealing for blocking,
which is something
blue often did,
that you would attack a whole bunch of creatures,
you'd take one of the creatures you attack with and block another
creature that you attacked with. It's pretty
brutal. But anyway,
this was just us taking an
effect, and the effect normally threatens in common,
but if you take an effect that
affects one thing and affects everything,
well, you can make it rare.
And this card is, I mean, it's eight mana,
three of which are red. So it requires a
lot. But it's a really
good finisher card. It's kind of like
at some point it's like, okay,
you've built up defense.
Well, your entire defense is now attacking you!
And unfortunately,
you have no creatures to block.
Because I just, I mean, other than
wall defenders.
And I'm attacking you.
So, yeah, Insurrection was pretty brutal.
Maybe a little too brutal, I don't know.
Like I said, it does cost a lot of mana.
But it's fine. It's a fun finisher.
I mean, one of the things that I also like about Insurrection is
it can do some neat things in multiplayer.
One of the things people often talk about is
Red doesn't have a lot of great finishers in multiplayer. And this happens to be actually a good neat things in multiplayer. One of the things people often talk about is red doesn't have a lot of great finishers
in multiplayer. And this happens to be
actually a good finisher in multiplayer because
I have all the creatures to steal
but I get to assign them wherever I want to assign
them. So in two player you just
attack your opponent with everything that you have.
Where in multiplayer you can be more careful
about where you send things.
Also you can use this to wipe out one player
or multiple players
without wiping out the whole, without everybody.
Okay, next.
Ixador, reality
sculptor.
So it's three blue
blue for a three
four, once again, wizard
legend, as I mentioned
last time, time before that.
Legendary as a super type was not there yet.
In creatures, there was still a creature type called Legend,
and it came with rules baggage,
just like walls had Defender built into it and came with the Defender.
It wasn't called Defender yet because you couldn't attack.
Okay, so what does he do?
He does two things.
One is all face-down creatures get plus one, plus one,
so he boosts all your morph creatures.
All your morph creatures with him in play are three, three.
And for two you, you can turn target face
down creature face up.
So the idea of Ixador, once again, I talked
about it last time, or I talked about it multiple
times ago, that Ixador is the
antagonist of the story.
That he,
through grief, he
his lover got killed in the pit fights,
and so, N'Vi, I think is her name,
and so he creates a chroma.
He wanders in the desert and realizes
that he has the ability to sculpt reality.
And so the morph ability comes from Ixdor.
Ixdor is the one that's able to...
So the flavor of morph last time,
and this time it's a little different,
but last time or from
the original Unflat
was that he was
making these things
but
and they look like
clay spiders
but secretly
that he could turn them
into other things
so he didn't quite know
what it was
and inside
it could be something else
so you might think
it's something
but you know
he created a different thing
he had an army
of morph creatures
and so
the problem with fighting them
is you didn't quite know what they were.
They appeared all to be the clay spider on the outside,
but inside they could be different things.
Anyway, so the tricky part about this is we wanted to make a card
that really brought Ixador to life.
Obviously, we wanted to mess with Morph.
And then we liked the idea that because he's the reality sculptor,
he could bring anything,
you know, he could, without having
to spend the straight up morph cost, that he could
un-morph things. So that he boost morph creatures
and he could un-morph them.
So Ixodor, by the way, proved to be a real headache
during Innistrad,
because his ability says,
turn target face down, creature face up.
What do you do with double face cards?
And finally, the ruling we made is
that there's two faces on it,
that there's no face down,
that a double face card's always face up.
And so you can't turn a face down card face up,
or you can't turn a face...
There is no such thing as a face down double face card
because it's always face up.
There's always a face that is up.
And so Ixodor does not work
on...
on... well...
As of Innistrad, it could not
work.
I do not want to speak... there's a lot of
discussion talked about
when Morph came back, and I don't know
that off the top of my head, so...
Well, no, they're face-down.
Anyway, I believe... I believe Ixodor works just fine of my head, so... No, no, they're face down. Anyway, I believe...
I believe Exeter works just fine.
In fact, you can dig it out to play with your new morph creatures
who are no longer flavored as being clay spiders.
They're now shrouded by draconic magic.
But anyway, Exeter still plays nicely.
Finally, my final card of the day.
I got to J today.
I'm working my way through this. I hope this won't be any 18th card of the day. I got to J today. I'm working my way
through this.
I hope this will be
an 18th card.
Okay.
Jareth,
Leonine Titan.
So he is
three white,
white, white,
six mana
for a cat giant legend.
Four, seven.
He's plus seven,
plus seven when he blocks.
And he,
for one white mana,
gets protection
from the color of your choice.
So Jareth was another pit fighter. Most of the
legends in the set were pit fighters.
He's a white pit fighter, and
his shtick is he's very, very good in defense.
That he's not
super strong when he fights, but he's very,
very strong when he defends. That's why he
gets a big bonus when he blocks. That's why he can
get protection to protect himself from.
And Jareth did two things, by the way.
One is, I think that he was indirectly
responsible for the idea of us doing the
Leonin. Notice he's not technically
a Leonin. He's Leonine.
He's Jareth Leonine Titan.
And later we make the Leonin.
So I think he's a lot to do with it. I also
think the popularity of Jareth is one of the
things, I think Brady Downermith,
our old creative director, I think really liked
Jareth, and I think when he was making New Planeswalkers,
I don't know this for sure, I'm just
making a guess, but I believe
there's some chance that Ajani
stemmed from him sort of liking what he
had done with Jareth. Or actually,
he didn't do with Jareth. He wasn't the creative director
at the time, but anyway. In my mind,
I feel like Jareth was interesting and
definitely sort of put in our minds
the idea of this cat warrior
that would lead to the Leonin and eventually would lead
to Ajani.
Okay guys, I've gotten up to Jay.
Obviously we will continue this next
time. But
I have parked my car, which means
that this is the end
to Drive to Work. So thanks for
joining me today, guys.