Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #183 - Legions, Part 3

Episode Date: December 12, 2014

Mark continues his 4-part series on the design of Legions with part 3. ...

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so last couple podcasts I've been talking about the set legions. And as I've only gotten up to G, I am not yet done. So today, I will continue with that task. Okay, so I think I left off at G, so we're going to pick up today with H. And my first card is Havoc Demon. with H. And my first card is Havoc Demon. So Havoc Demon is a demon for five black and black, so seven mana total, for a 5-5 demon. It is flying, and when it dies, all creatures get minus five, minus five. So it's interesting. One of the trends we've started doing more
Starting point is 00:00:42 recently is making our demons 6-6. So this is pre-our 6-6 demons. So the idea basically is here's a pretty scary demon. It's a 5-5 flying demon. And if you happen to kill it, it kills all your creatures mostly. And so it's pretty cool. I definitely think that we were beginning to experiment a little more with death triggers.
Starting point is 00:01:05 I mean, obviously, death triggers have always been part of the game. But this was something where the idea of, I have this thing, and either you deal with it, but if you get rid of it, then it causes problems unto itself. And this is one of those cards where, like, some colors, like white and blue, have abilities to get rid of things without actually getting rid of them, and that was much, much better. You know, pacifying a Havoc Demon
Starting point is 00:01:26 was much, much better than actually killing it. Okay, next, Hollow Spectre. 1 BB for a 2-2 Spectre. It is flying, and when it does combat damage to a player, they pay X. I'm sorry, you pay X, and that player has to reveal X cards in their hand.
Starting point is 00:01:46 You pick one of the cards, and they have to get rid of it. So, Spectres, the very first Spectre was an alpha called Hypnotic Spectre. And Spectres, not a lot of creatures. There is a few creatures in Magic that we've kind of tied one for one with a mechanic. Spectres are one of those creatures. Spectres always hit your opponent and make them discard in some way. There are creatures that make you discard
Starting point is 00:02:10 that aren't specters, but pretty much all our specters make you discard. And so this one is one where you have some ability to influence it. Now, obviously, you have to pay at least one in order for them to at least show you a card. But the fact that you can pay more mana and make them show you more cards
Starting point is 00:02:25 means if you can pay equal to their hand size, it's a coercion specter if you can do that. Okay. Next, Imperial Hellkite. Five red and a red for a 6-6 dragon. The demons aren't 6-6, the dragon's 6-6. It's flying, and it has a morph cost of 6 red and red, so an 8 morph cost.
Starting point is 00:02:49 But when you unmorph it, when you morph it, turn it face up, you get a tutor for a dragon. So Imperial Hellkite went really well in a dragon deck because what you can do is you could play it as a dragon if you're able to, but if not, you can play it as a morph creature, and when you finally get a turn into a dragon, it gets a buddy to come with it. It gets another dragon.
Starting point is 00:03:09 And I remember I had a dragon deck in one deck that used this card, just because the ability to go get dragons can be useful. Okay, next. Infernal Caretaker. So Infernal Caretaker is a three black, so four mana, for a 2-2 Cleric. You can morph it for 3B,
Starting point is 00:03:28 and if you do, you return all zombie cards in Graveyard to their owner's hands. So, basically this card is, like I said, the role of Clerics in this set were all about doing nasty things. It's a 2-2 Cleric. He's nothing special. You know, even when you un-morph him. Un-morphing him doesn't make him any bigger. He's a 2-2 Cleric. He's nothing special. You know, even when you un-morph him.
Starting point is 00:03:45 Un-morphing him doesn't make him any bigger. He's still 2-2. But getting back all your zombies is pretty good. Now, note, this doesn't get back just your zombies. It gets back all zombies. So, now, if you're playing a deck full of zombies, unless you have a mirror match or something, odds are it's better for you to get back your zombies than your opponent.
Starting point is 00:04:03 But it did get back your opponent's zombies. Okay, next. Keeper of the Nine Gales. So, it's a blue creature, two in the blue, three mana, for one, two bird wizards. So, flying, tap two untapped birds to boomerang, to return a permanent to
Starting point is 00:04:21 its owner's hand. Boomerang's a card from Legends. One of the things we tend to do sometimes in R&D is, when we're making cards, sometimes we'll shorthand, and a real common shorthand is, you just write the name of the spell that's most famous for doing that thing. So Bounce the Permanent, oh, first spell they did, that was Boomerang back in Legends.
Starting point is 00:04:41 So a lot of times, like in my notes, I'll just say Boomerang, but for those of you that might not have played Legends since it came out in 94, it was return target permanent to its owner's hand. Okay, does this card, is this card familiar? This card is us riffing off a famous magic card. And the famous magic card was called Tradewind Rider
Starting point is 00:04:58 from Tempest. So Tradewind Rider allowed you to tap it and two creatures to return anything to their hand. This requires you to tap two birds. So the idea is Tradewind Rider was really, really strong, so we were making a slightly weaker Tradewind Rider. But the idea is, in a bird deck,
Starting point is 00:05:14 it's Tradewind Rider. Although, you've got to play a bird deck, so that's the limitation. The bird decks were never particularly strong. Okay, next. Killmoth Dragon. 5RR, so 7 mana for 5, 5 dragon. Amplify 3, which means when you play this dragon, for every dragon you reveal that's in your hand, you get 3 plus 1 plus 1 counters on it. Then, tap to deal damage to target creature or player equal to the number
Starting point is 00:05:40 of counters on it. So essentially, if you have just one dragon in your hand when you play Killmoth Dragon, it comes out as an 8-8 creature and can tap every turn to bolt something, do three damage to a creature or player. Now, if you happen to have two dragons in your hand, it is a 11-11 that taps to do six damage. So anyway, this is one of those cards that in the right deck can end up being very powerful,
Starting point is 00:06:04 but it is, like, it's one of those cards that, like, in the right deck can end up being very powerful, but it is, like, it's just a 5-5 Dragon. So, 7 mana for a 5-5 Dragon, nothing special. So, you really, really want to have a Dragon in your hand when you play this. You really need to use the Amplify, because the Amplify is what turns this into something really scary. Next, Krosan Cloudscraper. 7 green, green, green, so that such ten mana, three of which is green, for a 13, 13 beast mutant.
Starting point is 00:06:34 It has an upkeep cost of, you have to pay green, green during its upkeep. Something we used to do a lot, starting in Alpha, and we did for quite a while and we sort of moved away from, is upkeep costs. So this creature says that each turn, if you don't pay green green, you have to sack it. And there's a morph cost of seven green green. Okay, so this card has a couple stories behind it. So the biggest is, when Alpha first came out, Richard had made... There was Lord of the Pit, and there was Force of Nature.
Starting point is 00:07:04 And Force of Nature was an 8-8, and Lord of the Pit was a 7-7. And so those were the biggest creatures in magic. And then, in Antiquities, they made a 9-9. What was it called? It was Colossus. Colossus of Sardia. It was a 9-9. And then, along comes...
Starting point is 00:07:23 Was it Ice Age? I think Ice Age had a 10-10 oh no no Ice Age had 10-10 there was a 10-10 and then oh maybe the 10-10 was in
Starting point is 00:07:38 what was the 10-10? 10-10 was in Legends or Dark and then Ice Age had an 11-11 we had never seen before an 11-11. We had never seen before an 11-11. Then, the first team that I... I worked on Alliances, but the first team
Starting point is 00:07:52 that I was sort of there for the whole time was Mirage. And during the Mirage, I really wanted to continue this game of one-upmanship. So I wanted to make a 12-12. And so Bill Rose, who was the lead designer and developer of that set, said to me, well, make an interesting 12-12. And so Bill Rose, who was the lead designer and developer of that set, said to me, well,
Starting point is 00:08:07 make an interesting 12-12, and then we'll talk. And so I came back with a one-mana 12-12 trampler that required you to sacrifice up to 12 power worth of creatures. It was called Phyrexian
Starting point is 00:08:24 Dreadnought. Bill liked it and went in. But anyway, so that was Mirage. That was a while ago. So there's a Mirage, then Tempest Block, then Urza Saga Block, then Mercadian Mass Block, then Invasion Block, then Odyssey Block. So we're on slot, right? It's been a long time.
Starting point is 00:08:38 So I went to, I don't know, Bill or whoever was in charge, and said, you know, we really haven't one-upped ourselves in a while. We decided that we wanted to slow down the pace, but I'm like, occasionally we should be able to do it. And I go, I think it's time
Starting point is 00:08:52 to make it 1313. And I said, you know, what better place to do it? Morph. And most of the design team was all on board on this. So we made this 1313 Montrossi. So why does it have an upkeep of green
Starting point is 00:09:06 green? And the answer is reanimation. Because the 1313 creature, the biggest creature we've ever made so far, really something you might want to reanimate. And the problem with reanimation is this thing's expensive. But if you use reanimation, it's not so expensive.
Starting point is 00:09:22 So we made sure that if you stole it, you actually had to at least be playing green. And we figured if you're playing green, you can handle the green, green upkeep. If you're not, okay, sorry, sorry black player. You know, you necromantic black player.
Starting point is 00:09:37 You cannot take my creature if you cannot pay for its upkeep. Okay, next. LavaBorn Mews. Another one in the Mew cycle. So it was three and a red for three, three spirit. During the upkeep of the opponent, it did three damage to them if they had two or less cards.
Starting point is 00:09:54 Okay, so this Muse... So there are a lot of cards in Onslaught that definitely were not cards of old. So this was a notch in another old card. Can you name the card? This was the Rack. was the Rack. So the Rack, there are two cards
Starting point is 00:10:07 in Antiquities. The Rack and Black Vice. The Rack did damage to you, did one damage for each card under three you had. So either it would do one damage
Starting point is 00:10:18 if you had two cards, two damage if you had one card, or three damage if you had no cards. And Black Vice would do one damage for every card
Starting point is 00:10:24 you had over four. So if you had five, it was one. Six, it was two. Seven, it was three. And anyway, those cards, I mean, Black Vise ended up being a little more powerful, but both cards ended up being pretty good. A lot of discard decks used the rack. Anyway, we decided,
Starting point is 00:10:39 while looking for muses to do things, we thought that it might be a fine ability to stick in red. So we made a red rack. And Lava Worm Muse was that card. Okay, Lowland Tracker. 4-W for a 2-2 Soldier with First Strike and Provoke. So the idea behind this card was,
Starting point is 00:11:02 2-2 First Strike Provoke is okay, it kills little things, but one of White's things is White has auras, and if you can somehow make this a little bit bigger, just a little bit bigger, you can go to town, because first strike provoke on a big creature is really powerful. Like I said previously, it's an abyss. The abyss being a Legends card that kills a creature every turn. Okay, next.
Starting point is 00:11:30 Master of the Veil. So two blue blue for two three wizards. It has morphed to you. Put target morph creature face down. So this theme shows up in blue a little bit. The blue was a color that tended to manipulate morphs. And really, blue, if you wanted to get a morph back face down, blue was the color to do it.
Starting point is 00:11:50 And there's a couple cards we'll talk about today and next podcast where blue was able to turn things face down. This is one of those cards. So the idea is, I play a morph deck where I have a lot of morph reveals. Well, this card allows me to reuse a morph reveal. Because what I can do is I can take something I've already turned face up, turn it face down,
Starting point is 00:12:07 and now I can use it again. And there are a bunch of morph creatures where the reveal is really the cost of the card. That when the card comes face up, it's a tiny creature,
Starting point is 00:12:15 sometimes smaller than 2-2. But really, the advantage was the spell you got out of it. And this allows you to reuse those. If you have enough mana, this even allows you to reuse those. If you have enough mana, this even allows you to essentially
Starting point is 00:12:28 turn this creature into that creature by, you know, you turn it face up, turn someone face down, and then you get to turn that thing face up. There are a lot of fun shenanigans you got with Master of the Veil. Okay, Mistform Seaswift. 3-1 illusion, flying,
Starting point is 00:12:43 and for one mana, it can turn into any creature type until end of turn. Rules wise, I believe the way this works is it doesn't overwrite the creature type. It merely becomes that in addition to. So this allows you to use fun tricks where if there's multiple
Starting point is 00:12:58 things in play that care, I believe that you can turn this, like, let's say you care about having merfolk and you care about having elves. You can go, I'm a merfolk. I'm also an elf. And then you count both as merfolk and as elves. And there's cards, I mean, there's combinations where it matters and there's individual cards where it can matter. So I believe this card was, or a card very similar to it. When I first looked through Onslaught, when Bill had asked me to look at the set,
Starting point is 00:13:25 and I was trying to figure out things we could play up a little more, this is the card I saw that I said, oh, this card seems to be doing some fun things with tribal. I think the set probably could up the notch of its tribalness. And this was the actual card, and this was the mechanic, the Mistform mechanic, is what really made me see, like, ooh, I mean, I'd wanted to do Tribal, something I'd wanted, but when I saw that Mike was messing around with Tribal, it's like,
Starting point is 00:13:52 because the volume was, like, at one, and I'm like, let's crank that up to, like, eight or nine. But anyway, this card was one of the cards that really inspired me to help push the idea of making Tribal much more of a louder thing in the set. Next, Mistform Ultimis.
Starting point is 00:14:09 Three and a blue for a 3-3 illusion legend. It has every creature type, and it can attack as if it were not a wall. Okay, so let me explain real quickly. At the time, there were two creature types that had rules baggage, which meant that having the creature type on your creature type line actually gave you rules, affected how you functioned. So one was legend. Legend at the time was not a super type, but a creature type.
Starting point is 00:14:36 So if you had legend, it's like having legendary now, which meant that you only could have one of these in play at a time. There was a point, actually, early on, where you were only allowed to have one legend of each legend in your deck, but that got changed. Now remember, with the release of um...
Starting point is 00:14:53 Oh no, National Champs of Camigou. Champs of Camigou, we'll change how legend rules work for the first time, then we change them again. So Mists from Ultimis, obviously, was a very popular card. In fact, it inspired an entire mechanic. So in Lorwyn, there were creatures called Changelings. And what Changelings were, were basically the Mistform Ultimis.
Starting point is 00:15:13 And that... Changelings meant you had every creature type. And so... Oh, did I explain? Did I jump? Oh, I didn't finish explaining. Sorry. There were two... I said there were two creature types that had? Oh, I didn't finish explaining. Sorry. There were two creature types that had rules baggage. I didn't finish that. Legendary.
Starting point is 00:15:31 The other one was wall. Up until sometime after this set, walls meant that you automatically could not attack. You had defender built in. And eventually what we decided was we disconnected wall from having the rules baggage, created the defender keyword, and then put defender.
Starting point is 00:15:51 Everything with a wall had defender, so there was a one for one. If you had a wall, you had defender. But then we put defender on things that weren't walls. This allowed us creatively, one of the big issues we've had with walls is creatively walls are not, they don't make a lot of sense as a sentient creature.
Starting point is 00:16:09 I mean, they're not really alive. And so, anyway, I mean, there are living walls. That's a living wall being an example. But anyway, for a while, the creative team tried to kill walls. And so one of the ways to do that was to make defenders to defend against things other than walls. Players loved walls too much. Walls came back. But the reason this has a line that says you can attack as if it were not a wall
Starting point is 00:16:31 was originally, the original idea, I made this card and I said it's every creature type. And then we realized that because it was a wall, it couldn't attack. And so Randy had made the suggestion, well, what if it was every creature type but a wall? And I said, no, that's lame.
Starting point is 00:16:47 I go, just make it a wall and say it can attack anyway. And so that's what we did. It's funny, now, it no longer has that, like in Oracle, it doesn't have that can attack if it's not a wall, because walls no longer mean you have to be able to attack. So, for a little bit of trivia, this is the one wall, I believe, in Magic that does not have Defender. I think that is true.
Starting point is 00:17:11 But anyway, it is a wall, and it does not have Defender. Another interesting thing about this is in Oracle, this does not technically have Changeling. I mean, it really does. I'm not sure. I guess they decided that, I don't know. I mean, it really does. I'm not sure. I guess they decided that...
Starting point is 00:17:28 I don't know. I don't think it has changed technically. But for all intents and purposes, it does. I mean, what it does is what Changeling is. But I don't think we decided
Starting point is 00:17:36 to give it Changeling. I might be wrong. Someone wrote it as Hi, Chief Oracle. And it has Changeling. Okay, next. Noxious Ghoul. So Noxious Ghoul was a five mana, three black black, three three zombie.
Starting point is 00:17:49 Whenever it or any other zombie enters the battlefield, all non-zombies get minus one, minus one until end of turn. So one of the flavors, I mean, different zombies will do different things. Nowadays, zombies are a little more graveyard-centric, but I think during Onslaught, we really were playing up the disease part of zombies. The idea is zombies are these rotting, you know, rotting corpses that carry disease. And so whenever a zombie shows up,
Starting point is 00:18:17 oh, they're spreading disease. You know, zombies can't catch disease. Why do they care? But other creatures can. And so Noxious Ghoul is playing to the idea that all zombies are spreading disease, idea that it's kind of spreading, that all zombies are spreading disease, and that it makes them extra dangerous.
Starting point is 00:18:31 Next, Patron of the Will. It's green for a 1-1 elf, with morph of two and a green, two giant growth. So this is a good example of a creature where you can play him turn one if you need it. There's some decks where you're just trying to get elves in play, so sometimes you actually play him as a 1-1 elf, but that depends on having other
Starting point is 00:18:51 things. But, the real fun of this guy is that he can turn into a giant growth. Although, it's cool, it's, well, it's interesting that when he uses a giant growth, he actually shrinks. Like, not only, like, he's a 2-2 creature. One of the neat things about Morph is
Starting point is 00:19:07 sometimes you want him to be a 2-2 creature, and you don't care about his ability. And sometimes you want the ability. You also can do this fun thing, by the way, where you attack with him if you're trying to do some extra damage or you're trying to kill something, you attack with a 2-2 and then it has the ability to turn itself
Starting point is 00:19:28 into a 4-4. See, it shrinks to a 1-1 but it's plus 2 plus 3. Now, it could also affect other things but anyway, it's definitely a very versatile card. Okay, next. Phage the Untouchable. 3 black, black, black, black. That's 7 mana, four of which is black.
Starting point is 00:19:46 For a 4-4 minion legend. When it comes into play, or as we say today, enters the battlefield, you will lose. You will lose the game if it was not cast from your hand. Now, it has two abilities beyond that. It has essentially Death Touch written out, but Death Touch didn't yet exist as a keyword. And the most interesting one, when it deals combat damage to
Starting point is 00:20:07 a player, that player loses the game. Okay, so this is one of my babies. So, I've been toying around with a Super Basilisk. In fact, I think I made a card called Super Basilisk. And what Super Basilisk did was, it killed
Starting point is 00:20:24 anything it touched, whether it was a creature or a player. And I was trying to figure out where to use this, and then I read about Phage. So Phage was originally Jeska, which was Kamal's sister. Kamal's the main character of both the Odyssey and the Onslaught story.
Starting point is 00:20:42 By the way, we joke a lot about Jeska that we thought it would be awesome in the Conjuring of Tarkir storyline if Narset pulls off a mask and, you know, it's called Jeskai because she's Jessica. But anyway, that is not canon, so don't... Anyway, so Phage was Kamal Sifter and got changed by the Cabal Patriarch, I think.
Starting point is 00:21:03 Changed with Dark Magic of the Cabal into Phage. And now her very touch kills. She's Phage, the untouchable. So I always figured that she'd have trouble dating, you know, on the dating site. I'm Phage, the untouchable. Notice she's a minion. We don't support minion much anymore.
Starting point is 00:21:24 Minions are... Well, we haven't gotten rid of the creature type, but we no longer use it. I'm not sure. There are some people that didn't like minions. I like minions. I would bring minion back, but... Minion is supported in that there are still minions
Starting point is 00:21:38 that exist in the game, but we currently don't make new minions. Why do you lose a game if it enters the battlefield in front of your hand? We were very, very worried about this being reanimated and doing shenanigans because there are a lot
Starting point is 00:21:48 of shenanigans you can do with it that's really, really powerful. Obviously, a hit you in your dead is super powerful. Oh, anyway, so I had Super Basilisk. I'm just jumping around.
Starting point is 00:21:56 See, one of the things about this podcast is you really, really get how my head works because this is how I think. This is really how my brain functions. I'm just bumping around.
Starting point is 00:22:03 Well, I forgot something. Go back to it. Anyway, I had the card Super Basilisk. I think. This is really how my brain functions. I just bumping around, well, I forgot something, and go back to it. Anyway, I had the card Superbascals. I think it was really cool. I read about Phage. She was like Superbacillus, so I said, I got it. And so I put this on a card.
Starting point is 00:22:17 Originally, I did not have the rider, and in playtesting, there were just shenanigans that came up, and so we said, okay, well, what if... We tried to come up with different cut came up, and so we said, okay, well, what if... We tried to come up with different, like, cutesy answers, and finally we're like,
Starting point is 00:22:29 ah, whatever, fine. You can't play... You must play from your hand. You lose. Now, the fact that if you play from other places, you lose has been used
Starting point is 00:22:37 by some clever players to do weird things. And also, by the way, I was once playing a game of online that's called...ir Vig. And I was playing... Actually, sorry, I wasn't playing online.
Starting point is 00:22:52 I was playing a live version of it, Gunslinger, Spellslinging at World, and playing in somebody, playing a live version of Momir Vig. Somebody has a live version. I played it. In fact, I played it multiple times with them, I believe. Anyway, I was turn 8, and I had him dead to rights. Dead to rights, I was going in the game,
Starting point is 00:23:12 there was no way he could stop me, and for fun, I decided to see what creature I would get. And I got Phage and lost the game. Which really makes me wonder why Phage was there, since Phage does nothing but say, hey, do you want to be dumb and roll your eight? I didn't realize Phage was even an option,
Starting point is 00:23:28 and I did, so. I do like Phage a lot. I think Phage is pretty cool. A Chroma and Phage were the two most popular cards in the set. Interestingly, they were the two legends, so we did something right. They would fight and make Chroma the false god, but that's the next set. I have some words about Chroma the false
Starting point is 00:23:44 god when we got there in, what's the third set called? In Scourge. Okay, next, Plated Sliver. So Plated Sliver was one mana for white, one white, one one sliver. All slivers get plus O, plus one. Now remember, the red version of this was 2R, 2, 2. All slivers get plus one 1 plus 0. This is a
Starting point is 00:24:06 1-1 for W. This one is a little cheaper because getting toughness is not quite as strong as getting power. But this is the other side. I said there was two sides. Next, Primal Whisperer. I'm not quite sure what that means. I must whisper
Starting point is 00:24:21 primally. Anyway, 4 green for a 2-2 elf soldier, and it gets plus two plus two for each other face-down card in play. And it has a morph cost of three in the green. So,
Starting point is 00:24:38 I think blue and green were the two cards that, well, blue, green, and red all had a little bit of shenanigans with sort of interacting with morph as morph. Here's an example of someone that cares about face-down things that says, oh, well, I want to play this in a deck I'll morph, or mostly morph, because this guy can be very valuable
Starting point is 00:25:00 while other things are face-down. Also notice, once again, he's five mana to play face-up, but he's only four mana to morph. It's also interesting when you have multiple of these in play whether you want to keep some morph or put some up. There's interesting math.
Starting point is 00:25:12 I've actually played a deck with multiple of these and it was very interesting. Next, Riptide Director. So remember, the Riptide Project was the people who brought back I guess they had found so when Wrath
Starting point is 00:25:29 was its own separate plane and then the invasion of Dominaria in invasion they overlaid the plane of Wrath so they made Wrath combine with Dominaria when that happened the slivers aren't from Wrath, but were brought to Wrath by Volwrath, who was fascinated
Starting point is 00:25:48 by them and wanted to study them. And he made the metallic sliver as something to study them, but it wasn't a real sliver. That's why it doesn't grant abilities. Anyway, so the Riptide Project were trying to clone the slivers. It went horribly bad. But anyway, here's the director. Two blue blue
Starting point is 00:26:03 for two three wizards. For two blue blue and tap, draw a card for each wizard you control. So it's very, very interesting by the way, that the templating we now use, which only counts your stuff, shows up in Onslaught only when developmentally we need it for control
Starting point is 00:26:19 purposes. Which is, oh, well if this drew a card for every wizard, even your opponent control, it'd be too good. Oh, we better make it U-control. So anyway, it's funny that the earliest use of U-control is not a means to make it easier for players or make them play it more intuitively, it's for power level reasons.
Starting point is 00:26:36 Very interesting. Anyway, in the story, I think the Riptide director was not particularly smart, but in the game he draws lots of cards, so. Okay, Riptide Mangler. So, 1U for a 0-3 Beast. For 1 and a blue, you change power of target creature...
Starting point is 00:26:54 I'm sorry, you change... You change the power of Riptide Mangler to target creature's power forever. Well, until the game ends. So, the idea is, let's say it comes out as a 0-3. Let's say when it first comes out, there's a 2-2. Well, you spend 1 in the blue, and now instead of being a 0-3, it's a 2-3. But it's
Starting point is 00:27:13 permanently a 2-3. Okay, let's say the following turn, there's a 3-2 in play. Well, now you can spend 1-U. Now it's a 3-3. And so this thing keeps getting more and more powerful. The top just never goes up. But it keeps getting more powerful. There's some memory issues because it's permanent, but it was a pretty fun card,
Starting point is 00:27:30 and it definitely... It was neat in that it wanted you to care about power. It's kind of funny. If you ever mess around with Evolve, it sits in a very similar space as Evolve in that it kind of wants you to keep ramping up and getting bigger creatures. And as they get bigger, it gets bigger.
Starting point is 00:27:48 So, I don't know if Ethan was ever even in my senses, Ethan got to evolve in a very different way than from this. But, uh, hold a second, I'm... Okay.
Starting point is 00:28:03 Next. Rock Shard Elemental. Five red red for four three elemental with double strike and morph one red red. So this was a pretty scary creature. This was one of the reasons... I mean, I think this guy's rare, but... How sometimes when there's a morph creature in Onslaught, like, crazy things can happen.
Starting point is 00:28:24 Because this thing... So it's a morph creature in Onslaught, like, crazy things can happen. Because this thing, so it's a 4-3 elemental. So if I attack with my morph and you go, eh, okay, I won't block. All of a sudden, I spend three mana and I'm like, take eight. Bam. Or even if you block, it's still a double strike. It's still going to do four first strike damage. And then if that's not enough, four more. But anyway, that's a pretty powerful card.
Starting point is 00:28:49 Okay, next was a card I promised I would talk about when I got to, and I got to it, so it's time to talk. Cyan of Darkness. So this is going to be my final card of the day, the Cyan of Darkness. So Cyan of Darkness is a five, black, black, black
Starting point is 00:29:03 6-6 Avatar. Now once again, all the 6-6 creatures Sign of Darkness. So Sign of Darkness is a five, black, black, black, six, six avatar. Now once again, all the six, six creatures aren't demons. This seems like it would be a demon. Sign of Darkness? Is this turning? No, we have Havoc demons. We had demons. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:29:15 It seems like this would be a demon. So this was the card, by the way, that if you got the clerics and you got them all together, they summoned this. It was a six, six avatar with trample, and combat damage, when it hits you, you've got to reanimate a creature from the player who you damage. So if I hit my opponent, I then get
Starting point is 00:29:34 to reanimate a creature card out of their graveyard every time I hit them. So this guy is pretty good. Oh wait, but there's even more. He has cycling three. Now if you remember, when you used the clerics, they went and got him wherever he was, including the graveyard.
Starting point is 00:29:49 So the cool thing about him is early on when you got him, it was three mana to draw a card. Because sending him to the graveyard didn't matter because the clerics could go get him if your deck was doing that. But anyway, and he is a saucy, saucy...
Starting point is 00:30:03 You know, you might want to sacrifice some clerics to go get him because he reanimates every turn that you hit and he's got trample so I'll note by the way
Starting point is 00:30:12 um trample is primary in green it is secondary in red it is tertiary in black white and blue
Starting point is 00:30:20 which means that on large creatures black white and blue are allowed to have trample. White has trample a lot less than others,
Starting point is 00:30:30 but it still does get trample. Black and blue tend to have larger creatures, so they more often will have trample, but it's something that you're allowed to do. If you're a big black, blue, or white creature, you are allowed to have trample.
Starting point is 00:30:45 It's allowable in our color pie. So trample is one of those abilities that every color can have. Just kind of like flying shows up in all the colors, although green doesn't do it much. Every once in a while, green will do it. Okay, so I've gotten to S, but I have a bunch more to do.
Starting point is 00:31:00 I have one more podcast, I can tell, of cards. So hopefully you guys enjoyed listening all about it. And, uh, it looked like it was going to rain today. I thought maybe we'd have extra time, but it turned out not to rain. So my traffic was, you got a normal, average length podcast. But
Starting point is 00:31:17 I've now parked my car. So I know that means, it means it's time to end my drive to work. And it's time for me to be making magic. I'll talk to you guys next time.

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