0:00

I'm pulling away from the curb. We all know

0:02

what that means. Other than dropping my son off

0:04

to college. It's my drive to

0:07

work. So today

0:09

is part two of

0:12

every top 20 ever green

0:14

mechanics. When we left off

0:16

I got into number 10 which was trample. But now

0:18

we're up to number 9, Life Link. Okay

0:22

so the history of Life Link

0:24

goes back to the set Legends

0:26

which was the third ever Magic

0:28

Expansion. In it there's

0:30

a card called Spirit Link. It

0:32

was an aura and then if

0:35

you put it on a creature whatever damage that

0:37

creature did you would gain life.

0:39

Now I should stress you could also put it on your

0:42

opponent's creature and then you gained life with your opponent's

0:44

creature doing damage which sort of was

0:46

an answer to your opponent's creature. If

0:48

you put Spirit Link on it then you sort of, you know,

0:50

you gained all the life they dealt. So you sort of

0:53

equaled out the life. We

0:55

liked that ability. We called it the Spirit Link

0:57

ability for a while. And

1:00

we started putting on creatures. I

1:03

think, actually now that I think about

1:05

it, before Spirit Link existed

1:07

there was a card in Arabian

1:09

Nights. A black card

1:12

that I think basically had pseudo Life

1:15

Link. Anyway we generally

1:17

liked the ability. We called it Spirit Link tying

1:19

it to the Legends card. You know now that

1:21

I realize it I think Arabian Nights actually did

1:23

it first. But anyway

1:26

so what happened was this was one of

1:28

the abilities that during Future Sight, to

1:31

remind you I talked a little bit last time. When

1:33

Future Sight happened we were making a bunch of

1:35

future-shifted cards. I kind of wanted

1:37

to take more abilities and both

1:40

keyword them and push them in more

1:42

colors just to broaden out, serve our

1:44

Evergreen Suite. So in Future

1:46

Sight we managed

1:48

to keyword Life Link, Death Touch,

1:51

Reach and Shroud. We

1:53

tried a few other mechanics, but those were

1:56

the four we ended up doing. Shrobr

1:59

later turning to Hell. proof.

2:01

But anyway, Lifelink,

2:04

we ended up putting it in white and black, interestingly

2:07

the first two colors that actually did it. White

2:09

because white is king of life gain, and

2:11

then black because it kind of feels like

2:13

you're draining somebody. It felt

2:15

similar to sort of like a lifelink effect

2:17

that black does. So and we

2:21

were talking about calling it spirit link, but the

2:24

problem was we liked putting on things like vampires

2:26

in black, and spirit links just didn't sound right.

2:28

So we decided to do lifelink just to make

2:30

a little more direct. This

2:32

is a good example sometimes when we name things,

2:35

sometimes we use direct words, and then sometimes we

2:37

sort of make compound words out of it. Lifelink

2:40

is a good example where lifelink isn't

2:42

specifically a natural word, but lifelink is a word, and

2:44

links a word, and you put them together. It does

2:47

a good job sort of getting an

2:49

essence of what you're doing. The

2:51

reason we like lifelink, the reason it's a valuable

2:54

tool, why I said number nine, is usually

2:57

creature keywords do one of two things

3:00

normally. Either they

3:02

help with evasion, they help get your creature

3:04

in on attack, and help them get

3:06

through attack, or they

3:08

help protect the creature, they help keep the

3:10

creature from dying. This is the two most

3:13

common uses. There's

3:15

some like first-strike maybe that, well, it's a little bit

3:17

of asynch because you don't want to block first-breakers if

3:19

you can't kill them. It just helps them fight better.

3:22

Lifelink is interesting, and lifelink does something a

3:24

little bit different. So one of

3:26

the big things when you're talking about creature combat is

3:29

a concept known as the clock. The

3:31

idea of the clock is, let's

3:33

say I have damaged my opponent camp block,

3:36

I have a flyer, I have a three-three

3:38

flyer, my opponent's at 12 life. Well,

3:40

he's got a clock of four turns,

3:43

which means unless he interacts

3:45

with my three-three flyer, getting a

3:47

blocker, destroying it, doing something, if

3:49

I hit him every turn for three in

3:52

four turns, he'll be dead. That's the clock.

3:54

And So one of the things is you get

3:57

in more advanced play is understanding your clock is

3:59

very important. The wings or like there's

4:01

a lot of Ah Kong racing where I'm trying

4:03

to be used for you're trying to beat me

4:05

and a lot of that is making sure that

4:07

your plot is different than your opponent. Gladiator Your

4:10

clock is slow worthy opponent latter faster than one

4:12

thing of it steady that you're going to be

4:14

them for that on be you are in life.

4:16

Gain really does a good job of messing with

4:18

the cloth. That. Will likely increase

4:21

our of the alleged links cruiser.

4:23

I'm really changes a lot of

4:25

of lot of calculations and so

4:27

on. And everything of nice is

4:29

using Grant Life Links as an ability

4:32

which means that it's summer temporary like

4:34

game but tied the combat arms. It

4:36

also isn't a tad. Triggers are the

4:38

Kurds is I mean. There's. None

4:40

of that trigger it's it's it's com a damage

4:42

but I'm there's a lot of reasons one would

4:44

have the way flicker sometimes use that. that will

4:46

lead to scan. On it is you're

4:48

not careful. Life Lingers can get into

4:50

advanced stage the of Make sure. We.

4:53

Don't make a lot of like one go to

4:55

five. Like like said, careful with things a little

4:57

bit too aggressive. But.

5:01

It is a useful velvety and it

5:03

it combines in ways that are just

5:05

have a nice dynamics. Of

5:08

number a successful protecting your future is

5:10

ward so headstrong which are tied for

5:12

last time. Ah, it's a little bit

5:15

hard interact with. roses justify your spouse.

5:17

We were looking for something that had

5:19

a similar see all to protect your

5:21

creatures arm, but it was something that

5:24

you could interact with a little bit

5:26

more. Word was kind of niner after.

5:29

All and so the idea was

5:31

retry the bunch of things looking

5:33

for places for war. For

5:36

independence as I only tried

5:38

the. Cold

5:41

War. During

5:45

Tardy Me it costs more not as you

5:48

can do it. Another, there aren't answers for

5:50

the answers you know maybe tissue for you.

5:52

More terms of are you can do it

5:54

or if you do it may be picked

5:56

something else that are. Arms.

5:59

And one. Once we realized we wanted to sort

6:01

of make a keyword out of ward, we

6:03

then decided to broaden out a little bit.

6:06

Usually when we'd written down a card that had been done

6:08

with mana. But once we

6:10

realized it existed, we started looking for other

6:13

costs. The

6:15

cleanest one was, outside

6:18

was mana, but

6:20

not every color really made sense doing a lot of

6:22

mana ward. So for black and red, we

6:24

came up with the idea of a life ward, which is kind of

6:26

cool. Life is a resource you have. If you want to target me,

6:29

it's going to cost you life. That felt good. We've

6:31

done a lot of experimenting since then, trying

6:33

to find other ways, you know, what are

6:35

other ward effects. We've

6:38

had some fun experimenting. Clearly

6:41

you're prone to paying a cost, that's easy.

6:43

There's some stuff where the ward

6:45

is like, there's an action that has to be

6:47

taken. We've definitely had some

6:49

fun experimenting, and we'll continue to experiment. It's definitely

6:52

an area that is neat. Something

6:55

we get asked a lot for that is a little trickier is

6:57

the idea that my ward is

7:00

you giving me life that's a little bit harder.

7:04

You giving me life is not a cost, so it

7:06

gets trickier. But ward

7:08

is very effective. One of

7:11

the better protective things, if

7:13

anything, one of the complaints we're getting right now is we're being a

7:15

little too aggressive, meaning we're using ward too much.

7:19

I think we like ward because one

7:21

of the things we want to do is you want

7:23

to make sure you have creatures that have some presence

7:25

on the board and making them a little bit harder

7:27

to kill and to structure especially helps with that. Okay,

7:31

number seven, Death Touch. So this,

7:33

along with Lifelink and Reach and

7:35

Shroud, was one of those things

7:37

introducing future sites. So

7:39

Death Touch started, there was a

7:42

card in Alpha called Stick at Basilisk and

7:44

a second one called Cockatrice. And

7:47

here's my little personal story about it. When

7:50

I first got into Magic, I bought cards at a

7:52

convention, I bought some Alpha. Not tons though. So

7:54

when Beta came out, I bought two boxes of

7:56

boosters and two boxes of starters just because I

7:58

wanted... I wanted to be able

8:00

to access magic. I knew if I wanted to play with friends, I

8:03

would need to provide the product because it was hard

8:05

to find magic. But

8:07

anyway, one of my treats is I allowed myself

8:09

to open one booster pack a day. In

8:12

one day I opened my booster pack and I saw

8:14

a thicket basketball for the first time. And I was

8:16

blown away. There's this moment when you first

8:18

played magic where you see this card, where you can't believe

8:21

Widgen's made that card. Stick of

8:23

basketball's for me. It kills anything,

8:25

anything? So a thicket basketball, by the

8:27

way, said, I believe

8:29

if you are blocked by a

8:32

non-wall, destroy that card. It's based

8:34

on blocking. And

8:36

eventually one of the reasons we key worded

8:38

this, Death Touch, was we liked

8:41

the ability. We called it the basketball's ability to

8:43

forgot a name. But we tended to sort of

8:45

change it up. Some of them were like, if

8:47

I'm unblocked, if I'm blocked, some of them were

8:49

if I do damage. Eventually

8:51

we tied to combat damage who we just liked

8:53

the flavor better. Like, oh, I attack you. Ah,

8:56

but if you like, you know, shrink my creature or

8:59

somehow prevent the damage, oh, you know, it

9:01

has to do damage to you to kill

9:03

you. The touch is deadly, but it has

9:05

to touch you. And

9:07

then Death Touch, yeah, we thought that name did

9:09

a good job of sort of communicating the idea

9:12

that I'm so deadly that I immediately have to

9:14

touch you and I kill you. Death

9:16

Touch has proved to be a pretty valuable tool, especially

9:18

in green. It shows up in green and

9:20

black. On small creatures, it's

9:22

a nice answer to larger creatures, especially in

9:25

the limit. We like making

9:27

the one-one Death Touch feature. It's

9:30

something that can protect you. And

9:34

also it has some invasion in that people

9:36

don't really want to block the

9:38

Death Touch feature as they can help, especially if the things

9:40

that are losing are worse than what you're trading. But

9:44

usually Death Touch creatures being smaller, you

9:46

can answer them. We do

9:48

put Death Touch a little bit on bigger features some of the

9:50

time, more on black than green. In

9:52

black, we like the idea that this thing's really

9:54

dangerous and that if you have to double

9:56

block it because it's big enough that you have to double block to

9:58

kill it, then with Death Touch, it kills everything. blocks it. Assuming

10:00

it does enough damage to each of the pictures. As

10:02

to one damage to each picture. Anyway,

10:05

and it's just very useful. It's

10:08

something that, it's

10:10

sort of creature answers but in combat.

10:12

It allows smaller things to answer bigger

10:14

things. So anyway, it just does

10:16

a lot of good work. Okay,

10:19

number six is Vigilant. So

10:21

Vigilant showed up in Alpha on the card

10:23

Sarah Angel. For a

10:25

long time we called it the Sarah Ability. And

10:29

we put it a lot on, mostly it showed

10:31

up in White originally. Then

10:35

in Champions

10:37

of Kamigawa, we introduced it as

10:39

a keyword. The

10:43

one that challenges with Vigilance was when

10:47

you name abilities, there

10:49

are sort of three

10:51

levels of abilities you could name. Number

10:54

one is, it's just an intuitive name. You read

10:56

that name and you know what it does. Flying

10:58

is the perfect example of that. Like, you

11:01

know, I don't have to do a lot of

11:03

explaining what flying does because the word flying conveys

11:05

what it is. Number

11:07

two is something like Death Touch where

11:10

it kind of can piece it

11:12

together. Where it's not

11:14

like, it's not a word that you know. We made up

11:16

a word, it's a compound word we made up. But it

11:19

does a lot to help you. It

11:21

does a lot to imply things. The

11:24

third level is, look, the word

11:26

in the vacuum is never getting you there. And

11:28

one of the problems we had is, there's no

11:30

word we could come up with that sounded like,

11:33

oh, not tap to attack. It's not tap to

11:35

attack. It's not like a real world thing. It's

11:37

like a game action. So

11:40

anyway, the third category is, well,

11:43

it makes sense, once you know what it is, it

11:46

makes enough sense that you can sort of use

11:48

the word to help remind you

11:50

what it does. The fourth category, the category

11:53

we don't use, is the word just doesn't tell anything. And

11:55

even when you know what it does, it doesn't help you.

11:58

We try to avoid those. But

12:00

vigilance is definitely more of a vocabulary word in

12:02

that you're not going to know what vigilance does. I

12:05

once did a podcast where I asked my daughter, evergreen

12:09

keyboard names for her to guess what they did, just to

12:12

sort of demonstrate the phenomenon. Anyway, it was a fun,

12:14

if you haven't heard it, it was a fun podcast.

12:17

Okay, vigilance,

12:19

by the way, is useful in that

12:21

it allows you to be offensive and

12:23

defensive. We normally tend to

12:25

put it on things that have a little bit of

12:27

a, well, of a higher toughness. Sometimes we don't have

12:29

low power creatures, like a 2-5 kind of fun to

12:31

visualize, but sometimes, especially in green,

12:33

we put it on just bigger creatures to allow you

12:36

to be aggressive but still have a defensive game. Okay,

12:40

number five, Flash.

12:44

So Flash first showed

12:46

up, I think, in...alliances,

12:49

I think? The

12:51

idea of a creature that you can cast whenever.

12:55

Normally, when we're mentioned to men, alpha, there's source,

12:57

reason, and instance. Instants are nice because it's something

12:59

you can do outside of the main phase. You

13:01

can do it in combat. You can do it on your opponent's turn. And

13:05

the idea of creatures that sort of function that

13:07

way. I

13:10

think the earliest ones might

13:12

have made it to token. We

13:14

had instances that made tokens, and then we started realizing that

13:16

we have creatures that you could cast like it was an

13:18

instant. The reason

13:21

we did it at first Flash was

13:23

for surprise, right? Oh, I

13:25

can attack. I turned the map. I can attack. Haha!

13:27

You didn't expect I had a creature that you didn't

13:29

know I had. So it allows some

13:31

sort of surprise, playing the hidden information, which we like.

13:35

We then learn... There's

13:40

sometimes instances

13:42

that let the two things we don't normally do. Probably the

13:45

classic example would be enter the battlefield effects.

13:48

Let's say I wanted to enter the battlefield effects at basically

13:50

an instant. Counter target spell.

13:52

Well, that's not a normal creature. It just doesn't make any

13:54

sense. I can't put when

13:56

this enters counter target spell as a sorcery,

13:59

as a normal creature. creatures but that it would never

14:01

work but with flash on it allows

14:03

us to make that so flashes

14:06

primary in uh...

14:09

and then secondary and green blue

14:11

and black uh...

14:14

what i did primary blue green secondary black

14:16

and white we

14:19

really had even read an access to it if

14:21

read as an effective really need to doesn't do it

14:24

a lot but like it is a red about the

14:26

fact that read that we really want to be instant

14:28

we can put flash on that is

14:31

just about so uh... we had

14:33

it since pretty early on a magic week

14:35

he worded it when we in time spiral

14:37

block there was a time theme and

14:40

and we have talked about the wording and just

14:42

in the perfect opportunity to keyword it uh...

14:44

and so for the first time ever for those

14:47

that long-time listeners know that uh... effect

14:49

ago back and we do the game i would

14:51

make instant a super type and not uh... not

14:53

a car type uh... instead of having

14:56

flash i would have that's or

14:58

for instance would be instant sorcery last

15:00

creatures we instant creature at

15:03

worst or possibly to do that but what

15:05

i would do uh... flash is definitely

15:07

a useful tool it

15:09

allows us to uh... make

15:11

that just creatures we put flash on any permanent

15:14

uh... the only permanent we don't

15:16

put flash on is lands only

15:20

causes counterintuitive the rules say when you can play

15:22

a land uh... and you can't

15:24

play a land on your opponent's turn so putting flash

15:26

on land imply things that are true uh...

15:30

and there's really no reason to play land

15:32

at instant speed so all

15:35

non-land permanents have the ability to have flash

15:37

on them uh... and a lot of times the nice

15:39

thing about it is when there's something

15:41

about it that kinda acts like a

15:43

spell in some ways where there's a

15:45

moment of suspense or surprise the

15:48

important thing to having flash on it is it

15:50

has to matter when if

15:53

you play it in instant speed if

15:56

you play it as you play it

15:58

instant uh... we want some sort of gameplay

16:01

where you don't know it's coming and that matters

16:03

that you do that. But

16:05

it's a very valuable tool. We use it quite a bit. Flash

16:08

is definitely an important

16:11

tool in our arsenal. Okay,

16:14

number four is Scry and Survey.

16:16

I put them together. Scry

16:20

first showed up in Fifth Dawn, designed

16:23

by Aaron Forsythe. I

16:25

think he was trying to make something that

16:27

was a little

16:29

bit more of a mechanic

16:31

for the more serious player. It's

16:35

not that any player can't play Scry. It's

16:37

just the utility of Scry is something that takes

16:39

a while to understand how good it is. One

16:43

of the biggest issues in Magic for competitive

16:45

play is you have a randomized deck. There's

16:47

a lot of variance in the game. But

16:49

one of the things that is nice is

16:52

Scry helps reduce variance in a way that

16:54

is subtle but effective. Scry

16:59

first showed up in Fifth Dawn.

17:03

Then Eric Lauer brought it to a core

17:05

set. And

17:08

then Eric Lauer kept putting in sets. He put in the arrows

17:10

and other sets. And eventually

17:12

we realized it was such a valuable tool, we

17:14

made it evergreen. The

17:16

nice thing about Scry is A, it fixes

17:19

your mana, which is a good thing. It

17:21

helps make games get smoother. It

17:23

helps in sets where you have any sort of high

17:26

synergy or combinatorics that you're trying to make happen.

17:30

The flavor is really good. Scry means to look into the future

17:32

if those don't know what Scry means. It

17:35

just did a lot of... It

17:37

played well. It just... And not

17:39

only did it play well, it just made the games play

17:41

better. And it's a

17:43

small effect, so something you can do incrementally. We

17:46

like to have effects that you can do whenever

17:48

such and such happens. We like triggered effects. There's

17:51

some triggered effects that you just can't do big things

17:53

on. And so it's nice to have a few small

17:55

effects. And Scry 1 is nice. It's

17:57

very bite-sized in that way. I

18:00

will note by the way that Scry1

18:02

is pretty easy. As

18:05

you add numbers to Scry, it gets complicated pretty

18:07

fast. So we don't do a lot of Scry2,

18:10

and we do things above Scry2 even

18:12

more infrequently. Blue

18:14

is primary in Scry, white secondary. Black,

18:18

green, and red all get Scry, all

18:20

colors get Scry. Red gets the least

18:22

of the larger Scry numbers, I think you mostly

18:24

know Scry1. Green and

18:26

black can get Scry2, though we don't do a lot of Scry2 in

18:29

green and black. And then blue really is

18:31

the only one we tend to do like Scry3. We've

18:34

been trying to do a little bit more higher number of Scry's in white,

18:36

but we'll see how that goes. Then

18:39

surveil got made, I think in

18:41

Guilds of Ravnica. There's

18:45

no greater fan of Scry than Eric Lauer, so

18:48

he made a Scry variant called surveil. So surveil

18:50

is exactly Scry except cards go to the graveyard

18:52

rather than to the bottom of the library. The

18:54

way Scry works, I didn't describe. Scry means for

18:57

those that somehow don't know this is every mechanic.

19:00

You look at the top end card to your library, whatever

19:02

the number is, and you can put those cards on top

19:04

of your library or bottom of your library in whatever order

19:06

you wish. So

19:08

if the Scry is larger than one, Scry2

19:10

or whatever, one card will go back to

19:12

the top, one can go to the bottom. Surveil

19:14

is the same except instead of going to the bottom of your library, it

19:16

goes to the graveyard. It's just much more

19:19

synergistic with sets that have a graveyard theme.

19:22

We've since made both evergreen. The rule of

19:25

thumb is all sets,

19:27

or most sets have either Scry or

19:29

surveil. We try not to put both

19:31

in the same set just because they're

19:33

similar but slightly different. I

19:35

will say as one of the word people, it

19:39

does bug me to no end that we didn't take

19:41

one word. I would much rather

19:44

like Scry the library, Scry the graveyard, something

19:46

in which you have one word connective tissue

19:48

that, so you don't have to learn two different

19:50

vocabulary words for basically the same thing. But

19:54

other than that, super useful. It's

19:56

incremental, you can put it on spells, you can

19:59

put it on a- effects. It

20:01

is what we call a keyword mechanic. So it

20:03

goes in lots of different places. It could be

20:05

trigger ability or whatever. You can do all sorts

20:08

of things with it. It is super, super valuable.

20:11

Okay, number three is Menace.

20:14

So Menace shows up for the first time in

20:17

a goblin, a card called

20:19

Goblin Wardrums in Fallen Empires.

20:24

It was just an aura. I was going to ask

20:26

a question. Which of you make Menace? I

20:28

looked a lot of these up. I did not look

20:30

Menace up. Menace was after Future Sight. Basically

20:33

what happened was early in

20:35

Magic we had Landwalk and

20:37

then we had Fear and then

20:40

Fear became Intimidate. The problem with all

20:42

those mechanics was there wasn't a lot of

20:44

gameplay for your opponent. If I

20:46

play Forest Walk and you were Forest, what can

20:48

you do? You can't stop me. If

20:50

I have a creature with Fear and you

20:52

don't have a black creature or an artifact

20:54

creature, you can't stop me. There wasn't a

20:56

lot of answers to them. What we wanted is

20:59

we liked that the invasion has answers. We liked

21:01

that it is something my opponent can do about

21:03

it. Menace is

21:06

really nice in that it is

21:08

a cost. It is a real cost. Sometimes I

21:10

can look at the board. You have one creature.

21:12

I have Menace. I know you can't block me.

21:15

Or maybe you have two creatures but my Menace

21:17

creature is bigger than your two creatures. It

21:19

allows for an interesting dynamic where it

21:22

changes up how combat works. But in

21:24

a way that matters, that your opponent

21:26

can interact with. Menace has proven

21:28

to be a really effective, cool

21:30

keyword. It is primary in black,

21:32

secondary in red. We have

21:35

used it a little bit in green. Anyway, we

21:43

like evasive mechanics. We will

21:45

get to number one.

21:47

Number one is also evasive mechanics. Number

21:49

three is a really

21:52

interesting dynamic. One of the most

21:54

dynamic of evasive abilities. I

21:58

really like the interplay of it. was really

22:00

good. I'm so scary that

22:03

one creature is afraid to black me alone. That's

22:06

pretty cool. So it's got a lot going for it

22:08

and it is just super,

22:10

super useful. Okay, which

22:13

brings us to the number two, Haste.

22:16

So Haste means you can attack the turn you

22:19

cast it. It doesn't have summoning sickness. I

22:21

put in quotes because that's not an official game term, but

22:24

we use all the time. So

22:26

Haste first shows up in Alpha on a card

22:28

called Nether Shadow, which is a creature, a black

22:30

creature that could pop out of the graveyard and you

22:33

can attack right away. Yeah, early

22:36

on, Haste-like ability

22:38

showed up in black on things that popped out of

22:40

the graveyard. We eventually

22:42

started doing it in red. And

22:45

then in sixth edition,

22:47

I believe Haste is the first

22:50

evergreen keyword that

22:53

wasn't in Alpha that

22:56

we keywarded. One

22:58

of the things that happened early on is there were

23:00

a lot of abilities existed. Some in Alpha, some showed

23:02

up in other places, but like, oh, this is a

23:04

pretty useful thing. And then we started using it a

23:06

lot. And there was just for a while, there's a

23:08

list of mechanics we use, mostly every set, but we

23:10

didn't name them. And

23:14

we really, part of the, one of the pushes,

23:16

I was part of this push is saying, you

23:18

know what, we really just, it's easy. You

23:21

don't want too much vocabulary, but you want

23:23

a little bit of vocabulary. And just when

23:26

you name something, it allows people to talk about

23:28

it. It saves you a little bit of word

23:30

space, although there's reminder texts. But on higher rarities

23:32

where you don't have space for reminder texts, you

23:34

can drop it. It just allows us to do

23:36

some, and even with reminder texts, most people learn

23:38

that like the evergreen keywords are nice. Because once

23:41

you learn them, you understand what they are. There's

23:43

a high barrier to becoming an evergreen mechanic. You

23:47

really have to be something that you just, such

23:49

utility, we want to use you almost

23:51

every set. And Haste is a

23:53

great example of that. It really, it changes what we

23:55

call it. I mean, I talked about the

23:57

clock earlier, change of the clock, you know, if you don't

24:00

anticipate I have a Haste creature, I'm doing damage at

24:02

a time you didn't expect that. Also

24:04

sometimes if I attack and I go well, you

24:06

can't attack me next turn or I'm not worried

24:08

next turn, Haste creatures can be a surprise. I

24:12

know for Constructed play that Haste is a

24:14

really valuable tool. You want your creatures

24:16

to have impact. One of the things about Constructed is in order

24:18

for a creature to be worth it, like it's

24:21

not doing anything for the first turn it's in play. It's

24:24

a big barrier. So Haste is nice that

24:26

it immediately does damage and presents something right

24:28

away. But Haste is

24:30

primary red, secondary green and black.

24:34

We've done it a little bit in blue on things

24:36

that are mostly capabilities. We messed with that in future

24:38

site, we haven't done too much of that. Oh,

24:43

so the other fun thing was, so it

24:47

didn't have a name. For a while we in

24:49

R&D called it Celerity, which is a fancy word

24:51

for fast that comes I think from Vampire

24:54

the Eternal Struggle. Especially

24:57

when we named it in 6th edition we were looking for synonyms

24:59

for speed. Speed or

25:01

speed you have some issues because sometimes

25:03

you talk about the speed of the game and stuff.

25:05

So we end up calling it Haste with a synonym.

25:09

Haste is super valuable. We

25:13

use it a lot. In fact, it's one

25:15

of those mechanics after

25:17

flying, so I'll get you in a second. We

25:19

use Haste quite a bit. Haste and Flash are both super

25:22

useful and go to a lot of different places. Like

25:26

I said, it is

25:28

a nice, easy, impactful thing. You know why you get

25:31

excited when you see it for the first time and

25:33

it just leaves a nice interplay in the game. Okay,

25:36

which leads us to our number one category,

25:38

or number one in the category of Top

25:40

20, which is flying. If

25:44

I had done Top 20 mechanics of all

25:46

time and I didn't exclude Evergreen, there's a

25:48

good chance flying would have been number one.

25:52

Everything is just so... There

25:54

are not a lot of mechanics that have been in every

25:57

set we've ever made. I

26:00

don't think trample's been in every set, but I think for

26:02

a while we were leaving trample out of Core sets because we

26:05

thought it was a little confusing. First

26:08

strike might have shown up, first strike's the other

26:10

one that might have shown up in every set,

26:12

but there's not a lot of mechanics. Flying is

26:14

one of those. Although there was a set, Fallen

26:16

Empires, the East Coast playtesters who made Fallen Empires,

26:19

Scaphalyze, Jimlin, Gabe Petty, Chris Page,

26:22

they were not big fans of flying. So

26:24

I believe there was one activated flyer and

26:26

one enchantment that grants flying but kills the

26:28

creature that gives it to it in Fallen

26:31

Empires, and that's it for flying. Ice

26:33

Age also was kind

26:35

of famously, did

26:37

not have a lot of flyers. There's also lone

26:39

creatures in general, but there's not a

26:41

lot of evasion in Ice Age. And so if you

26:44

ever played Ice Age Sealed, which was not recommended,

26:46

a lot of winning

26:48

was knowing how valuable your

26:50

evasive creatures were. Anyway,

26:53

flying is

26:55

a tricky mechanic in that you kind of have to

26:57

commit to flying. You can't just do flying a little

26:59

bit. If you're going to do flying, you really got

27:02

to do flying. And the reason

27:04

flying is so valuable is one of

27:06

the things is you want people to play creatures. Creatures

27:09

are really fun, but at some point you can get

27:11

to a board stall where it's just

27:13

not advantageous for either side to attack. And

27:15

you need to make sure the game ends.

27:17

I talked about inertia in my Top 20

27:19

podcast. It's important

27:21

that the game designer makes decisions such

27:23

that the game will end. That's

27:26

why evasion is so important as

27:28

an Evergreen Keyword. A

27:31

lot of the keywords that are Evergreen are

27:33

about helping you make damage happen, helping you

27:35

make the game end. And

27:38

flying is really, really good at that. The neat thing

27:40

about flying is it sort of

27:42

takes all the complicated board and narrows it

27:44

down to a smaller thing to evaluate. Sometimes

27:48

only 1% of the flyer, sometimes multiple people have

27:50

a flyer, but usually less often you

27:52

get stalemates in the air. It happens, but it happens

27:54

a little less often. And it

27:56

also sort of gives you some pinpoint for your removal. It's

27:58

like, oh, they have a big flyer. If I remove their

28:00

big flies, my medium size flies can get through. And

28:03

once again, the clock's in my favor. Flying

28:07

is interesting, and that's the only mechanic that was

28:09

so foundational on

28:11

how we have to build around it that

28:13

we made a whole other mechanic, Reach, I

28:16

talked about last time. Like Reach's only existence

28:18

is to deal with flying. That's what potent

28:20

flying is. That there's a whole, another mechanic

28:22

that's just like, I just deal with flying,

28:24

because flying's important. But

28:27

anyway, flying, oh, the other thing about flying, I

28:30

mentioned this a little bit, but just to reinforce

28:32

this, is flying is the most intuitive

28:34

mechanic we have. The

28:37

amazing thing about flying is when I'm teaching a beginner

28:39

and I say flying, it's

28:42

almost as if I explain the rules to

28:44

flying and the person's just like, well of course, that's

28:46

what flying is. You know, flying is, like if I

28:48

said to somebody, what do you think flying does? And

28:50

I've done this experiment. People just guess. It is just

28:52

so, you're like, I have a creature that doesn't fly.

28:54

You have a creature that flies. Can my creature that

28:56

doesn't fly block your flying creature? And they go, no,

28:59

no it cannot. And so there's,

29:02

that's another thing about flying, is that it's

29:04

flavorful to the point of, like, one

29:06

of the things you look for in names and

29:08

is that when your flavor

29:11

can define your mechanic in a way

29:13

that the player knows what it does

29:15

and that can figure out what it does,

29:18

that's super powerful. That is much, much easier

29:20

to teach something that is already intuitively known,

29:22

if you will. So flying is

29:24

one of the absolute easiest things to teach people.

29:26

And it's one of the reasons, like whenever we've

29:29

made beginner games, whenever we did Portal or Starter

29:31

or all of the things, we did a lot

29:33

of things where we, or even the Arc System,

29:35

a lot of things where we did a simpler

29:38

version of Magic, we

29:40

often would remove most keywords, but we

29:42

never removed flying. Flying was

29:44

so easy and so important that every version

29:46

always had flying. Flying was just a thing

29:48

we did because of how important was it

29:51

for the gameplay and how easy it is

29:53

to understand. But anyway, for

29:55

all those reasons, that is why that

29:58

was number one. to

30:00

read this one more time for a wrap-up for today. 20

30:03

was hexproof, 19 first-strike, 18 defender,

30:06

17 roots, 16 male, 16 in the stretch ball, 14

30:09

fight, 13 equip, 12 crew, 11

30:11

double strike, 10 trample, 9 lifelink, 8

30:13

ward, 7 deadsudge, 6 vigilance, 5 flash,

30:16

4 scryer surveil, 3 menace, 2

30:18

haste, and 1 flying. Those are,

30:20

in my order, at least as

30:23

of today, my ranking on the top

30:25

20 evergreen mechanic. So I hope this two-part series

30:27

was interesting to you. Maybe,

30:29

if you guys like this, I've done some top 10, usually

30:32

I do top 10, not top 20, but maybe I'll do some

30:35

more top something lists in the future.

30:37

Anyway, guys, I'm now at work, so I don't know what

30:40

that means. It's the end of my drive to work. Instead

30:42

of talking to magic, it's time for me to make some

30:44

magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.