Hello everybody, if it's Wednesday, it's Warhammer and that must mean it's time for another episode of Warhammer Weekly Joining me as always. Well, that's the biggest lie I've ever told is my co-host Tom who is currently In a basement somewhere in the middle of the woods. He's deep underground. I can think of other lies that are probably bigger Sure. Hello friends, and I'm actually in the middle of a woods in a garage. Oh, there you go That's happening, but maybe the internet's better than it has been previously When we would do thank you or janky or say other Thanksgiving shows absolutely Hello Good to have you joining us back again. He's back on the show after not too long But I couldn't help myself because After our last show he mentioned this project he was working on and I was like, well, we're doing that show Like right away. I wanted to do it the next week. It was only my you know My my Really, I've got I got to give hey was someone at a time. He's a busy man So I can't just bring him on as the new co-host basically constantly, but hey was back. What's going on, buddy? How you doing? yo We are gonna be talking about ages sigmar and magic the gathering tonight. So basically every show Same as always nothing different and but no today for tonight. We're gonna talk and take a little bit of an interesting deep dive into a project that hey was been working on on making a custom commander For magic the commander format for each faction so no matter what faction you're playing Don't worry You've got a commander coming and maybe just maybe since commanders a fun casual format that you can just play with your friends And you can use whatever rules you want much like at my own table when we're like Hey, do you want to use battle tactics and somebody's like no, I really don't and I'm like, okay Then we're not gonna do that now That's how that works or do you want to roll these extra stupid primal dice? And I'm like not really I hate these things and think it's terrible and then we don't do that and the game is fine You can do that with these other games too like magic. It's great Make games fun for you. The police do not come to your house at any rate Of course first we will begin With the news before we get into all that. All right, so Tom I have zero There's a zero percent chance you read the news first. Yeah rumor engine right now friend sure Followed by I can I can read a list. You can read a list. That's right Okay, is this a new rat ogre claw? Yes moving on That's it Yeah, rat ogres like yes, I clearly it's not a storm beans. Who's I don't have hands, but Rat ogre maybe yeah, yep They they arguably have hands. Hey, well, I would listen to an argument that said that they do have hands They're just inside the guns. Sure. Well, I would suspect not I Think it's like doom where it's just kind of connected to it And they can't eat cereal in the morning, but their arms are chain guns and that has its own positives, too Yeah, I feel like insight I think it depends I think on some of their their hands that the presence or absence of hands within that I think as it could vary by storm fiend But you're right. It would pose a significant problem having a giant brute who's just like got two galling guns his hands It's like hey, can you move that rock? No, I could destroy I could shoot it Shoot the rock. That's what you're looking for. Yeah, this is probably that I think I agree Um Context clues. Hey skavens probably on the horizon as many have predicted And oh, hey, here we go. Um, I Once did a tier list of the ugliest models still for sale for ages sigma and all the community got involved and submitted all of them and The winner was the rat ogre. Yeah Um There's a the the one that's still for sale on the website. There is a slightly newer actually slightly better But mono pose version that was from what is it? Isla blood that they There's a it's got a tragic history to it. But yeah, those those gaps man those lines it looks like a pose of action figure from the dollar store and Looking the looking forward to it getting replaced The current model that they sell that they charge Actual currency, it's like thirty five dollars or something. I don't know. Maybe it's not go check my True facts there, but if it's more than zero dollars. It is too much money There is no amount of money that is the correct amount of money for that thing Okay If they were just offering you those models Vince, would you accept them? No, no, I Would not take them for free.  Yeah, that's more than zero. I would rather have the empty space Okay, the void of my house of nothingness is worth more than those Abominations those war crimes given physical form. They are awful and anyway, so this is a rattle girl I'll be happy to get new ones look forward to it. What's next? Yeah, so we had the obviously there was a bunch of interesting things that dropped this week But the one that caught well, let's talk about the Old World combat stuff Sure, I want to get that out of the way then we'll talk about the announcement show that dropped as well Yes, I will get there. We'll get there. I want to do the Old World thing first. They talked about the combat phase and Hey, well, I I want to get your take on this Is it just me or are they leaning into like they're not afraid of complexity with this? They're like no, no, no, no, no, we're gonna make a niche game for the people who want high complexity As they should that's the target to me the target audience is two-fold And the second one is ironically much more important. And the first is Old people who actually played Warhammer fantasy battles and would like to nostalgically play it again perfectly fine install just big this time of year and decade and century and then the second are an Entire wave of people who were introduced to the concept of Warhammer from Total War Warhammer on Steam one and two Go much lesser to your three. Oh, you know Yeah, and that's that's huge and a surprise probably to them, too. It tragically it came far too late Like miraculously this game built on their old system becomes really popular after it dies and then also after they killed it and So they're like well damn we got a whole bunch of people interested in this old IP we have And we got whole people kind of nostalgic two birds one stone maybe and The game is pretty complex. I mean the video game Warhammer fantasy battles is pretty crunchy, you know Everybody's obsessed to streamlining stuff for the wider and wider audience Nowadays So let's look at our target audience and make something for them. And I think that's crunchy. That's fine. Yeah I just hope that internally. Yeah, I think the the bosses who were I know Tom's delayed Sometimes He's not being rude folks. He's on a delay. He's just on a delay because his internet satellite from yeah from from the woods From his bunker. Yeah, okay So Here's here's my thing. I I think that's actually a quite a smart business strategy to like appeal to the niche And it's very different than a West different for user persona so on and so forth So like as a sort of product manager, I'm like, yes They've made the correct choice here to try to single out a new audience and blah blah blah but The question is do their bosses Have that expectation Right, like no, no, no, this is gonna be a relatively small game. Okay, like we're not selling to The 80 90 percent of the market. We're selling to the 10 20 percent of the market, right? Because that's what this is selling to Like if I was if I was gonna do my my sort of, you know Market sizing on this it would be like the way other end like this is the main market This is the niche market. Yeah, but we're going after like, you know The the purpose of going after the small market is that they're extremely loyal And they'll buy anything as long as they're happy forever.  No go on. Yes. Tom go. Yeah. Good Lord No, I'd say it seems like the target here is It is indeed it's it's parallel to the horse heresy Market in that they're trying to hit this niche market with this Like in parallel their success with horse heresy I think the big unknown here is ultimately going to be What we're seeing in the total war audience, which You hey, well certainly identified it itself is complex And so clearly those that are engaging in that game are not afraid of complexity in any way shape or form And so I think that that's gonna be the big question mark for them I would suspect that they view this as hopefully their Like like I would expect that they're setting their sights as likely it will be successful as a niche game like Horse heresy and I think they're maybe hoping that it would rival age of signal I think that that is probably misplaced, but that's probably where they're Where their sights are that's my point. There's no way. I think the the total war audience probably leans younger especially when compared to the actual war hammer fantasy battle audience and As such, I think maybe this is like I'm not a busy. I'm not a businessman I have a bachelor of fine arts. All right, but as I see it a big strategy for games workshop is Expose your IPs to young people That are all expensive and take a lot of time and those people grow up and go to college and then They become financially stable and then they got that prick of the thing they saw when they were a kid and now they Really get into it. Sure and ten years later or five years later or whatever And so that's I imagine You know, maybe a percentage of what they're trying to do with it. It is a big unknown though because One of the things I think that people fell in love with When they played total war one and two and I'm not necessarily a fan I don't really like RTS games that much, but it's just like A genre thing. It's not really dismerging the game at all is that They fell in love with the world and the characters and Necessarily with Old World, it's not like they're bringing back all your favorite characters It's like a time skip. And so that's a question mark to me But to get back to what I was gonna say before about the CEO, you know, the bosses bosses Okay, what are they thinking? I think they're like, well, we did it with Horace heresy and seems to be profitable So let's do it with a just a mark. Sure Yeah Yeah, this the rules wise which you haven't discussed at all. It was fine. It's what I expected. This is like a basically version of What you would imagine from most Warhammer fantasy The difference is in what this then calculates to because you didn't roll the dice and you have to pay attention to both The unmodified role and the modified role and you compare both To your bravery and then like different you end up in like different situations. Yeah Oh, it's all Thacko charts, baby. Yeah the the hit chart was in here too, and it was interesting because it runs two through five and It never goes to six no guarantees never goes to one and It's you know double for a long time. It was often one higher Jumped you to fives and one lower jumps you to threes. That was kind of the classic breakdown of the thing Right and now you stay on fours for basically weapons skill the weapons skill comparison moved to the old-strength toughness comparison Where double weapon skill plus one is where it ticks up to five If that makes sense. So like if you're weapon skill three fighting weapon skill Six it's still force to hit. Okay, so Anyways, the whole thing was interesting enough And you know they talked about how the this little like swinging modifier Do you fall back in an organized fashion? Do you break and run?  Yes one. They made a chart for it I'm an AOS. Yep to in the article They were like Okay, we know this seems complicated, but whoa, whoa, whoa. Don't leave yet. Trust us. You'll do this a few times Yeah, and it'll become really easy and I was like, okay, you know what you wrote here, you know And you know, we've all been there so it's refreshing for a little bit of honesty when it comes to copy You know, yeah, absolutely. Yeah We'll talk about that more when I get to a pick of the week in a little while Uh, okay, so what's next the preview preview show Tom, right?  Obviously FPC was front and center in that But I don't want to miss like before we jump into FPC. I don't want to miss the Tomb Kings Preview the dragon thing like it's ugly. I hate it. I saw that and I was immediately That's fine and you're allowed to have that opinion, but I looked at that and I was like, I don't know I could do a new Lumnia A new Lumnia army with a zombie dragon that thing converted a zombie dragon. I can do that I'm essentially a comment average Joe the answer is yes very much. Yes very very much. Yes. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Hey, whoa Oh, yeah, um, I did like I always do a little live Watch party for these reveal things and sometimes we have bingo cards when everyone doesn't know that it's gonna be flashy to chords and The tomb king croc-a-dillion Skeletal dragon thing came on the screen and I believe it was like one second.  I Was we were all kind of like waiting for them to say plastic? Please say plastic Please don't say resin that thing looks Doesn't look like a load bearing Model and it indeed it's plastic to the rejoice of the peasants And it looks cool while still maintaining a very old feel and theme and style to it Tomb King Tristan we had a new new tomb king bit Hmm New new tomb king bits like to me what did what the the best part about this is Actually the bits for those that want to do a os conversion armies Because now we have an entire host of new like bits are going to be more readily available I mean you might as well give all your customers an excuse to buy the stuff that even they might not be interested in the game before Which is me. That's me. I'm not really interested in an old world whatsoever. I don't have the nostalgia ever played fantasy I was playing magic in card stores for 20 years and looking at Empty fantasy tables and warhammer tables and 40k tables and stuff like that.  Yeah, I just think it's ugliest in Compared to the unbelievable raw elegance that was the Sphinx And the various of the Sphinx when it was like that monster It is such a dramatic step backwards. I can't even understand how we got to there Sorry, whoever sculpted that I apologize, but um Nope that one's a pass for me. I just I I really think it's aesthetically awful in so many different ways so Well, I request models didn't have a lot of polygons to work with so sure Spiraticus said the sculptor went on instagram and said he didn't like the final result Okay Uh, I is that for the sporadicus is that for the tomb kings guy because boy. Oh boy. Does that say everything? Perhaps it was part of the design doc a lot of the decisions they had to make sure Uh, all right, so yeah, there was a tomb kings thing. It was fine. I didn't have any pictures for that What I did bring up here and is on screen right now is usher on the summer king uh and um I'll let you know a secret. I don't like this guy very much either. How about that? How about that a hot take? You ready? I'm dropping scorchers tonight Are you uh, are you a silhouette man vince is that the Are you a movement and silhouette kind of man? And that's because I'll take that criticism It's exactly it It's a bulb It's a bulb. That's right. It's a bulb. Nothing's happening. He's not doing anything Yep, there's no movement. He's not exactly two meatballs with the illusion of chains swirling and rotating and all this other stuff, right? um I I'll take the criticism. It's not. I mean he's fine. Exciting in that way Um, to me, I'm overwhelmed by the I guess the style and look and all this other I like all that stuff Um, in fact, I like that quite a bit more than I was prepared to After having seen some of the fleshy decors Stuff that had been trickled out and then we get Godric the giga ghoul from elden ring and I'm only I didn't think they were gonna go Into a dark solzian kind of blood-borne elden ring way with this I kept saying every time a fleshier to court release came out. I'm like, yeah, it looks like a little squiggly guy from bone tomahawk Resident sleeper. I want to see the do show me the delusion on the model. Show me what they see It can be a mixture, but give me a little bit of that instead of just wiggly guys Yep, and um, then they're like, well, what about elden ring? I'm like, oh, actually that's that's pretty tight, too Yeah, that's that's super sick Now to be clear The actual sculpting on this one of the components is all exemplary like Again dripping down the stairs exactly the flowing cape The musculature the way the skin gathers at certain points where it's loose at certain points But taught at certain points the way the bones his bone crown The scepter is like scepter of rulership there is amazing His face is so detailed and like really full of expression Uh and in like a really detailed way His bands like bracers around his arm.  That's Maybe I want to push back on this if we're talking. No, I don't disagree with that at all I don't disagree with that at all But I want to push back on this because there is something that in the narrative. This is usher on chain Right like what your second version of him is usher on like No, I'm not but If you read the lore like if you read what they talked about like negash has actually like chained him and broken him Right, so there is a sense in which like he like Well, yeah, but he's but he's doing like he's on negash's side like he's not leading a revolt against negash Anymore in the lore like in the article if you read like in some way He's been deceived and and basically brought back through his own delusion or whatever Into the service of negash And to me that speaks of it of of an individual who's been broken and like I read that in the posture Right, like yes, the manacles and yes, the cloak it all feels heavy And it is and I fully agree that the silhouette is just terrible, right uh, but I also read the narrative of what they're what where what they're where they're going with that 80 of the upward facing surface on this guy is just the same fur cloak From above like picture you looking at your model as it exists on the table You will be staring at a ball of fur.  Oh a critter. Hey, yeah Don't feed him because all of that fur is going to be what you see That's it Because when you look at him from above, he's just fur Sure, sure When you get down on this level and you can like look him in the face, sure He looks okay Like again, all of the sculpting is masterclassed up on expression on musculature on skin on everything It's exemplary work It's just the pose if he was open if he was standing if he was moving if he was Ripping somebody in half if he was doing anything Man, I'd be about this guy It's just we just like this pose is just terrible Like I don't like it. I think it will look bad on the table That's it. I think you will not be fun to paint because his entire front is in shadow Just spray black under there. It's close enough Like he's so hunched This is my issue with him. Yeah, I see that again Well, I'm looking forward to painting him. So you can just Go that's fine paint something else. That's fine. Uh, at any rate, there's other stuff It'll it'll be great for dry brushing Sure. Uh, yeah. Yeah, if you want to make fur look bad. Yeah. Um, so like the This is he's going to be booked for The mad king rises which I am very excited for this Like we've been we've been leading up to this for like two books now in the story I am very excited to see what we get in the mad king rises to see how usher on comes on the scene what he's doing Uh, and stuff like that. By the way, I just want to be clear my aesthetic opinions are my own Like if you love that model Love it and go nuts. I'm not trying to yuck. You're young I'm just telling you why I don't like it personally and why I'm not excited for it If you love it and it's the coolest thing since sliced bread for you, then I'm in and I'm super glad you have something you love period end of story Okay, um Yeah, but I'm excited for this. I want to know what else we're going to get the book Is it like all fec or are we going to get some else other forces in there too? Uh time will tell Uh, yeah, exactly inquisitor has said to compare him to radical like exactly dude. Come on now Radicar Chattacart knows how to how to strike a pose right that dude's doing something. Okay At any rate, we've also got a flesh eater court's army set box coming. Uh, and it's got Ladies and gentlemen We got him. It's got a new vargulf. Oh my god Yeah, we could we could put him to rest You've you fought long and hard. I mean he's fine He's fine like I get it right Like when I see the vargulf and uh, like I just see basically a resculpted vargas gear or whatever from the like the cursed city box set Yeah, I think the vargas here looks better than him. Um, I think they could I I would agree with that. I would agree with that. Like I don't know I I It's fine. He's fine. He's fine. He's he's like the one i'm least interested to paint Out of all of them. He's a long lad Yeah, the new crypt guard boys looking good that gore warden dude who we already saw the guy on the cover with his little like Bone necklace thing again. It's exactly what you said, right? They gave all these guys like stuff They've got something to attach their delusion to they're not just naked people Running around imagining they're in finery or whatever right or riding a horse Like there's stuff Speaking of stuff to attach to Boom nights real nights Uh, these guys i'm all about the like bat dog FEC ghoul pegasus knights. I love these guys These guys I hear some sort of mount, right? Yeah. Yeah, I believe it was supposed to be That the flares and the crypt honkers were supposed to be like cavalry of some sort But I just I can't buy it with one guy They gotta they actually have to be on something and here here we go Looking fun. Look, I think it would have looked nice if On the crypt horrors which are supposed to be the knights if Like on the leaders they have in there like main on the back They have like a skeleton like the remnants of a skeleton I think they could have sold it better on both the crypt horrors and crypt flares If they would have had like mounted dead guys on the back And so like they are the mounts even though they they they think yeah, like yeah That would have sold it from a modeling standpoint like that would have sold it for me better than what we got Yeah, it was just an old model from the old game. So right right kind of had to That's exactly right and now we're getting this beautiful new range. So we got a bunch of stuff I'm really excited for all this new stuff here. There was there was other models I didn't have pictures of they had like the executioner guy who simple but effective beautiful model They had the the pope Yes, I don't know Yeah, so now we have We have judge jerry and executioner. Finally, we got the triangle Exactly and we got the cardinal And they're making a little society here and it's like uh, like a horrific inversion of cities of sigmar Which is I think probably a little bit What they're going for moving forward But I was stoked for all this stuff. Yeah, totally. Yes 100% Like a dark Is this all great? Yes It's great. You'll love to see it. So many people were excited about flesh eater court stuff After every reveal show I always tweet something about it And this is like my most liked tweet ever They're showing like the flesh eater court stuff people are excited about this. They're hyped up. Yep Good to see What they can do with a renewed range, right with just a handful of kits taking an old range And breathing new life into it, right like before they always felt like a dangler faction with like what four kits five kits Everything in a start but now, you know, they doubled it Everything yeah, exactly the entire army previously was in a start collecting box Like my old advice was buy four to start collecting and you'll basically have everything you need for this army, right? Yeah Um, and so you get a this is just an amazing example Go ahead. Yeah No, it's just amazing what they could do with just a little bit a handful of kits Yeah Yeah, you get a second half of The army released for aos and it's kind of like pulling it into age of sigmar from being one of the clearly Sort of hangers on leftover from the other stuff. Um, it's always nice to see The bloom into okay now we're we're aosified we fit the game. Look at how interesting all this stuff is Can't wait for the next one. I wonder who it'll be Yeah, cool. Now do fireslayers technically I think they were they were right on the hump, right? Is fireslayers the first aos themed faction or was that they were the second uh the first aos like the first full aos was Was iron jaws and then fireslayers were second. Okay. Yep Both of which were taking a single model in the old range and expanding them out into a whole army concept Which is a terrible idea, right? I mean, sorry fireslayer players, I guess. Yeah Opinions mine, but Yeah, I mean fireslayers got that new awesome flame can unit. I mean like they're rules-wise. Yeah, there's there's rules There's room to explain. Yeah, there's room to expand for sure Yeah, I I'll tell you what this gets me mega hyped for I'll just say this very quickly and then tom go ahead Is this gets me mega hyped for what does a mass scale scaven refresh look like like if this is what we're batting at right now And we get that scaven refresh for the fourth edition launch as I have as I have foretold I have tapped two colors and placed a face down car on the table. It is foretold. Okay We're just gonna start making the references now uh Then like I cannot wait to see what that is tom go ahead I just I just want to see what the scale is gonna be because felicitor courts didn't have a lot of kits gaven's got a lot of kits Yeah, I I can't imagine that they'll they'll do more than 10 kits for scaven But I mean it is a huge huge range. So who knows now all I was going to simply say though was that of those that uh That coup haul mentioned the ones that that strike me that really do need the overhaul is the fireslayers Because ogres do have kind of kind of the distinct factions But fireslayers are the one where there really are like if you've played that army They're really really are gaps in that army and you feel it when you play it Yeah, I think one's a one's a gameplay mechanical and the others an aesthetic I suppose right Ogres with all ogres got a lot of fine cast In their modern range, but they got mostly all the units they would want and fireslayers Are just kind of running on half-empty And they need a refill. All right Uh warpstone and joyer said is there more to the scaven rumors is still just white Fang Homie, this is the secret. I'm gonna will this into being Okay, let me tell you what this is All right Like if you will hard it if you could just change reality. That's what I'm banking on here So it doesn't matter. I don't care what it is. I don't need a rumor This is I believe do you ever watch the never-ending story? All right bastion. Just got to start wishing for something Okay He's got he's got he's got to give her a name like whatever do start saying stuff Dream everything back into existence. Let's go. All right At any rate, uh Yeah, I think that's oh, sorry. We had one more one more thing Uh, the only other thing from the reveal show. We'll mention it quickly and then move on Uh cruel boys got a Underworlds unit Yeah, there was five normal men Immediately immediately after usher ran and all the fleshiered courts. It was like and here's five Grubais that look pretty much like the other group wise All right I mean, it's a tough act to follow. I probably probably would have put it If I was organizing a reveal show, I probably would have put it before the most exciting thing to kind of ramp up, but you know What's the island is done what's done is done Last thing I'll say on this reveal show.  What happened like The the two hosts were fine. They're both great. They're both very charismatic both very nice guys. They did a wonderful job I love how they talked about fec and like as you as you mentioned a way you and I were talking before And they like leaned into the delusion they were like, ah, and here's these noble knights on their their glorious deeds And like all that that was all great like those guys fantastic. No problem a plus great work as always team like they great great presentation team It's what's surrounding them So I was watching it. Actually. Hey, whoa was watching you watch it. That's what what happened Like I didn't end up doing a reveal show because it's like hey, whoa's got all my opinions on lock It's all good. I'm showing you up and say the same things a base. Hey, whoa, twitch lurker enjoyer I was just lurking. I'm always lurking so At any rate as I watched it. I was like What's going on here? When did we forget how to do a real trailer? They just flipped over and they were like, okay, and next up here's age sigmar and here's the summer king and cool And it was just like bup. Here he is on screen. Just like boop Here's this most important figure that we've built up to for Years and in the story for months in a very detailed way and now he's just getting a whole narrative book Yeah, you know it's In from multiple pathways they're building up to this Exactly. So I had to go back once again, and I'm sorry to keep bringing this up, but it's really important I had to go back and watch the daughter's cane reveal trailer again. That is how you do a reveal For like I'll link it in the chat down below. Okay You wanted elves you got them and then rock music starts and we get the canary and it's just like And every image every scene is cut to the beat of the trailer like they're cutting on the beat Right And switching the images and it's just throwing up like blood glory slaughter Murder and I'm like this is a vengeance, right? And then they cut at the end and you just and it's like and the the beat like really hits It's like And as it's hitting you're like getting these shortcuts of like a big tail Wrapping around a rock and a wing and then marathi talks and then the trailer hard cuts And they don't even show you marathi They give you the idea you're looking at marathi, but they don't even show it We had to wait like a month to get the follow-up trailer to see full marathi and i'm just like That trailer was hype. I've watched that thing I don't know. I'll be conservative and realistic. I've watched it 500 times That's real Okay and Uh, I watched it about 30 times that night, okay And it's just like such a missed opportunity They could have done something so similar for all these new amazing models like everything here in this range could have done the same thing Right, they could have had an awesome reveal trailer Uh, and yet we didn't imagine if the voiceover had been usher on And he was like come forth my servants Right Night like as he's like narrating, you know, like the the the marching forward of his various um, you know and my entourage like imagine if he would have like um If he would have marched that out then I mean a silhouette would not have worked for him, but um like even if you had done like a close-up of Like of his of his face or something, right? Or or I don't know just anything than what we got anything Like I agree like I love the fanfare Yeah, just do anything and create Rather than uh like a originally like a power again I don't want to bang on this too hard for you know the for the video videographers and creatives in the in the house My guess is they're just not giving the time but it would have been wonderful Yeah Yeah, that's true. I I don't think it's their fault. I think they want to be doing creative things I just think I'm just guessing they're not giving the time and budget and that's real shame Because they should be making bangers like that daughter's a cane trailer again As a person who who literally does that uh, the daughters of cane trailers like a four-hour job If they if they supply the Footage which they would and if they give you the music or at least the rights to it Yeah, you do that in like four hours one person right All right, well probably stretched thin I would say I I assume so all right. Let's move on people Let's get on to some pick of the week. We've spent a long time in news, but it was lots of stuff to discuss So pick of the week Uh, hey, well, we'll start out but I will bill you for a day just just of course As would be completely fair like what would you like to share with everybody? Hey, well um, I arrived unprepared Actually, as usual when it comes to pick of the week. Um, because I'm always watching stuff when I'm editing and it's Rarely aos I have another one for you if you'd like by the way, would you would you like? I was bullied into this I was pressured into it, but um, My pick of the week is my own show I On twitch twitch.tv slash. Hey, well, which is where I'm always Making content every week a few times a week um I have a second youtube channel. Hey, well plus just search for that It's the vods from the twitch show and I think I'd like to think it's pretty comfy And I got a guy who does that sjrk one of my mods who likes to make thumbnails with Bunny girl's feet all over it to try to capture a certain audience I'm not judging you any slinnish worshipers in the chat. Um, but then it like gets to the video and it's just me like playing Everquested talking about video games in ages sigmar and stuff Very busy professionally right now. So I haven't been uploading to the main channels. You may have noticed, but I don't know Um Post holiday season we'll see how that one goes Excellent excellent pick I I full and wholeheartedly support both of these Tom i'm gonna turn it over to you here What's your any do you have a pick you'd like to share? Yeah, of course I do um because we're uh, I wanted to be on theme for the show. Um, I picked this one before but I'm I'm gonna drop it again I Talk in war here and magic in the same show. Uh, I like to uh, uh, I want to bring before our audience. Um, pleasant Kenobi's Pleasant Kenobi is a big uh, he's uh, he's a wonderful voice. Uh, that's much after my own heart of appropriately critical When it's warranted, but um, just just a generous good spirit for the most part. Um in the in the magic world and so it is, uh He has gotten into war here in the last I think two years or so. Um, and he's I know that he was in 4k He's considered dipping his toe in aos. So I want and I think he did maybe I don't know. But anyways, he has a bunch of wonderful, uh, uh, Most of his videos are generally shorter. They're more at the like the 10 to 15 minute mark. Um, and they're, uh, they are Delightful and so um, some are think pieces some are reflections on the competitive nature of things and the like It's not as much commander focused, but it's still great content Yeah, it's just great. Pleasant Kenobi Yes For once, I think I recognize this person They were they like replied to me on twitter When I posted that I was doing this and they're like, hey, let's talk about magic. I'm like, all right And then I clicked on their name and they had like 40 000 followers or something. I'm like, oh big all right Yeah, I haven't seen their stuff. I'm sure it's good. They want to talk to me. So Obviously, uh, their content is the highest quality and they have great, um You know opinions about everything Yes, Pleasant Kenobi is awesome would second that recommendation watch very regularly And uh, we're gonna try to have him on the show actually at some point in the future We'll do some more magic content. So we'll we'll see how that works out Uh, but and if you're watching this, hey, what's up, buddy? I'm good to see you Hopefully he catches up on this episode. I'm sure it's very late. We're being in the uk right now Uh, at any rate, I didn't mean to pause during if we're on the vodka Oh, all right. You're funny here. Oh good uh Let's I got two picks just in case I came with two picks just I was I was ready uh, so pick number one is For roman the pot in his most recent video where he talks about sort of the highs and lows and the emotional journey of going to a miniature painting competition Is a really nice very comforting video He talks about like sort of the struggle of the thing The anticipation the anxiety the build up the presence and it's all it all read very true to me and what I had experienced He talks about the different kinds of expectations and all this and he was this is all framed around his recent journey to uh, montezan savino, which happened like two weekends ago, that's right and Uh, I just loved it. I thought it was a really really really great video So I that will be linked down below and the second one is peachy Is back with another episode of the painting phase where he's got some of the old school like the old school tool Producer, I'm sorry. I don't remember the gentleman's name because I'm bad at names But the guy who like told the story of how they came about to gw clippers And spruce like this is the guy who really who created like all the hobby products And he gives like all the background and skinny on the story of all this because he was there for forever just like peachy, okay And in this episode. Hey woe. Are you ready for this? They are talking about why fine cast Why did fine cast happen? What Happened here, okay And so That is I was like I watched that episode immediately. I was like, I gotta know the story behind this and it's It's more complicated than you think is is really the answer That's how the older I get the more I realize how true that is about everything. Yeah more complicated And you might think right It's so very rare that anything has a simple explanation But it was an amazing story. Ah, there you go. Thank you Chris H. Tom Hibbard is his name. Thank you, Chris Much appreciated. I don't want to insult like the dude's awesome I like me not remembering his name was not a judgment of this gentleman who was absolutely fantastic and funny And has like amazing great stories and they're all great together. It was a truly truly wonderful episode So would recommend 10 out of 10 for the painting phase that one Um, yeah, he talked about fine casting kind of that whole journey as well as the journey with blister packs with clam packs okay and Like this is you should go watch the episode, but I will tell you I will relate one funny story from it It will get you to inspire you to go watch it. You ready? If you have you ever bought a Citadel paint thing like a paint set thing and you open it up and the plastic container the paint comes in It has like little recesses like a well palette and paint brushes and stuff like that in it Okay, you know, that's the like plastic container the paint comes in is also like a little well palette Yeah Okay, I'll just assume you both know what I'm saying It's fine. It's like that. Okay The reason it's like that is because in the uk you have to pay For all non you have to pay a tax on all non recyclable components That come that are just components like shipping components of your Package But if they turn it into a product if it's part of it, right? No, this is a plastic palette That it comes with Okay, then it's no longer like a packaging component And doesn't have to pay the tax Right. Oh I love that. I love stories like that. Yes That kind of a little thing.  That is amazing Right Like and so he's like and look honestly, it's not that bad.  You're just getting an extra thing, but gw's dodging attacks That's why it's like that. Yeah, and they really did amazing. Do you have a license for that? They really did it. Okay. Yeah, yeah So, uh, yeah, it was pretty great. Yes. Yeah tax on packaging the efforts tool as far as the product there you go So very cool episode full of stuff like that so At any rate, all right Let's uh, let's make our way over here to some hobby time Uh Hey, whoa, you'd be said you've been busy with work. You you've been able to paint anything or do any hobby Not really. No Have you got any games in recently? Yeah, I haven't even gotten any games in recently on even on twitch and stuff Um, once again after the holiday season, we'll see if we can Go over it. I'm still probably gonna get the sarlacc that even though it's explicitly not made for my Faction really. Yes. Yes in the rules text. It literally kills me. Yes, but Gutbusters are immune and then our other terrain feature helps wizards, which we don't have in our half of the army We're the priests and so, um Interesting the Gutbusters have two terrain features made for them and we have none, but it it looks cool. Maybe I'll use it for a Tyrom or Board or something. It's an ogre thing. I'll probably end up getting it and do something with it anyway I love that your army change, you know sure is the first army to get a second piece of terrain And it's a well-known problem that half of the army Does not the terrain piece does not work at all for half the army And so you would think logically like when they revealed it. I was like, oh cool BCR is going to get their terrain piece even though I saw like a video of it I'm like, oh, we're getting maybe it gives a bonus to priests Right you thought and I was like logically you would just think Two sides to an army one already has a training piece that works for them one doesn't Okay, but nope Just explicitly even worse For that side of the army it went the opposite rules Gutbusters immune beast claw You're taking mortals from your own thing like ooh That's that goes a little farther than just like, you know, well you could play a wizard even though It's not really for you. That's one thing for the moped, but this one is like it kills you All right Great stuff great stuff. All right tom. What about you buddy? Uh, you had a chance to to do any hobby I mean, obviously we we got went to the tournament. We got a lot done. You did get a lot hoppy. Yeah, great. It's been working on Thanks Um, yeah, so I am expanding out. So this is actually going to blend into a news item as well That I failed to mention earlier But I am building right now for two different events So I'm on like full on shot mode right on building. Uh, so I'm doing a uh trugs Trog herd for holy wars. So I'm doing I I'm doing all all all the trolls which which just means one big guy in 12 small Which is great. Um, as an aside, uh, it's really hard to find fell water Like the only reason why I have any fell water in my army is that I had three dusty ones in the old like bits box Of other stuff because fell waters are impossible to get now. So, uh, but that's fine Uh, so I built or I finished, uh, 12 trolls. Um My wife helped me with some of that which was delightful. I appreciate that And then, um, I am on full build mode for my the rest of my the second half of the sultan army And so I built 40 skeletons this week and a bunch of a skirm true blades Like a unit or working on a second unit I built 30 built or rebased 30 graveyard So I'm just like a bunch of the heroes that I like again Just kind of getting rid of sprues and and trying to get stuff like fully assembled in in prime And then I'll then I'll refine the list and I'm refining that list for soul light For an event in april Um, we are actually, uh lexington, uh, the city that I'm in is actually hosting a Two-day event. It'll be the first one. Uh clay who I believe is in the chat Was, um, we have a couple lexington folks in the chat. I've noticed. Hey, uh, hey, mike. Um We did a, um, like, uh Clay is put together and arranged with um one of the our host stores to do a two-dayer Now here's the funny thing. Uh, it's sold out Like we did not go public and it already sold out And there is already like a six person waiting list And there's a chance that I don't know for the venue in the spring But it looks like we may be doing a two-dayer every six months is the target And if that's six to eight months, um, at least twice a year I think we're no next november-ish is when we're going to target our next one. I think Clay is putting it together. Um, but I say that only to say, um So venue is going to be a big deal. So we're capped. I think at our 30 some right now We may be able to expand it more. Um, but I want to encourage all of you that even if you Even though it's a wait list if this is something that would interest you and it's drivable Go sign up for the wait list. It doesn't cost anything But it's more about demonstrating what interest looks like Um for this region. Um as we begin to plan our next event So if that's something that interests you, I'm going to encourage our entire viewing audience to go Bomb the the wait list sign up for this event So they just have a healthy view of what a potential event could look like beyond the, you know, the 30 or 40 something if we had Very nice. Yeah, there you go. Um, yeah, so and as as Clay just mentioned in the chat, we can potentially do double the size as early as november Yep Awesome I will put the link down there so people can join the wait list absolutely I'm signed up tom.  I think tyler is coming. You said right and anthony's coming up. So It's gonna be a good time. Yep tyler's gonna come out. Yep. So, yeah, we it'll it'll be a blast So, uh, and it's actually like the current venue is in a mall Like it's a mall and they have like good play space You know for a good like 16 to 20 tables and it's right off the food court So like you will never find another venue where you will play Finish for lunch and step out and have like 10 or 15 food options already. Sure Get that panda express just rocking right away. All right, so Uh, maybe a sabarro. Who knows could be could be crazy. Maybe a wetzel's pretzels. You know, there's lots of options um My my food references all of them are not changed since 1998. I am pretty sure all of those you have mentioned are I'm gonna get a poke bowl. That's probably where I'm gonna start. There you go. All right, very good Excellent. All right. Well gentlemen with that Shall we turn to our main topic tonight? Uh, aos Commander what? So I'm gonna set this up, but really I'm not going to be the one guiding this particular presentation Because this presentation is courtesy of one mr. Hey will twitch And I want to set this up first. So last year two years ago Three years ago. I don't even know Manson's COVID time has no meaning. All right. Yeah, exactly. Some time ago We got Warhammer thousands of years ago before the dawn of man. Yes, exactly um We got Warhammer 40k commander decks in magically gathering and it was pretty great Legitimately, they're fun. I think most reviewers and people who are in the magic world praise these decks highly They're all very fun. They play against each other very well They have a lot of interesting cards in them and designs. They represented the world very well Like each deck felt like its thing And the characters and and things that were represented felt very much like their thing will also still um bringing magic the gathering mechanics to life And cards in there were Useful in the broader game commander wise itself. Yeah, it's a different stuff being used out of there Also a bunch of custom cards, not just the commanders themselves with like some magic pre-con, but They won the extra mile and made Just a whole bunch. I mean some were reprints, but a whole bunch of brand new 40k themed cards with art and everything Yeah, it wasn't 40 or 50 new designs per deck. I mean it was on the high end So an age of sigmar got four Cards that already exist with different pictures on them Exactly So a os got a dumb secret layer that was just printed over cards that weren't even that good And were all bad representations of their thing because they didn't have like, you know A product director who was really secretly in love who was obviously like super in love with it Now this this year we saw the doctor who commander crossover come out came out and again You had a lead designer who was in love with doctor who and knows the lore and the background really well and Worked with the bbc and all that and made an amazing product again I thought those were exemplary and and great and fun and all of those And so what in my mind the dream that I have is that someday we don't just get commander decks We could do a whole set lord of the ring style. Let's go. Let's cross over all the way Let's not just have they're doing the second one of lord of the rings. I think yeah, yeah Let's like let's get in there. Let's get deep into this. This is where the aos is big enough We could easily do a whole set around but for today Hey, whoa Has put together some custom commanders for every faction so no matter who you're playing You could have a commander and you could build a commander deck around this custom guy. It's as easy as just printing out a card It's real easy to print cards Uh and just put them in a sleeve and that's your commander. There you go. Congratulations. You did it Hey, they wrote they wrote rule zero for a reason it works pretty well actually I have found Especially if you play with the same people over and over Yes, I know normally tonight pre Thanksgiving as it is a holiday tomorrow. We often do thanky or janky Oh, thanky or janky. Yes, don't worry. Don't worry. We'll we'll have thanky or janky. It'll still come It's just we're gonna do it. We're gonna do thanky or janky next week Everybody chill out. It's all good. This was the week that we had everybody lined up to do it because of who is available And win and such so this is this is what we're doing. I had we've just we We're doing it. We're not gonna we're not gonna skip a time Tested your treasured segment like thanky or janky.  It helps so that people find the show There's so many people watching and and not many of you have hit like it's as easy as just moving your mouse and clicking a button It's fun. Just look you'll be happier when you do it. Okay Click things that make dings Yeah, that's a good one and we're at 66. Who will be the lucky one? We're only three away. That's right. That's right Okay, so with that I have now given given my Uh preemptive sort of preamble here So hey, well i'm gonna turn this over to you as we go to the first slide and the disclaimers You want to you want to walk through this stuff? Um, well first and foremost before we start the presentation before we do that This is going to be a really You know, it's a magic heavy show not everybody in here knows about magic Basically, sorry. I can't catch you up but I can at least Quickly explain what commander is and stuff like that So, you know before we start with the disclaimers and stuff commander is a custom player invented Way to play magic the other You choose a legendary creature becomes your commander sort of like the representation of your deck that you build It's a hundred 99 card singleton format meaning you can only use one of any one card The deck may only be colors of which the commander is Um, like all magic it's pretty personal and customized and you can use whatever you want and that's a lot of fun Your commander sits in the command zone You can keep casting it over over every time it dies or whatever you basically always have access to it although it gets more expensive and it's Um, not even recently anymore. I think it's the most popular way to play magic period And that's kind of special as a player invented thing I think Um, anyway, that's briefest run-through of what commander is and let's start the Um presentation. I have some disclaimers here. We got um, la Got laurence fishburn here judging us On number one commander these cards are designed for multiplayer and commander specifically Their effect on constructed formats has been completely disregarded Pretend they're banned. I don't know They're also meant as commanders Also special note since I was only designing commanders themselves and not entire decks filled with new cards like 40k got Almost all the mechanics that you would think should be tribal All ogres gain this all deep can game that Are instead usually creature type agnostics so that people can play with them because I really do intend for people to Play with these if they feel like it Um, if ever 33 entire pre cons were made most of these would get key worded up and synergized with a lot less stuff Number two expert level set. I pulled from all eras and mechanics even failed ones And there's no reminder text because I couldn't fit it because the website you couldn't make the text small enough to do so Um, commander is an eternal format. Let's lean into it You might learn some hidden gems or laugh that I actually wrote bushido on a card in 2023 Boom now we're getting into the good stuff That original time ago. Yeah to be clear. I have not seen any of these cards He sent me the presentation and I that was under me swearing. I will not open it first This is going to be me reacting in real time. I have not seen anything other than this slide It's an early christmas. We'll say absolutely Um color identity these commanders are the colors. They ought to be individually and by faction As far as I could reckon Not as a cog in some giant fairness diagram meant to equally allocate all colors and combinations No order can have black. No chaos can have white get out of here if it makes sense do it Square pegs and square holes. All right Can I take and I talk for a second there real quick? Yeah, sure You can I'm just going to be going through these so you can jump okay I want to jump in on color identity and really talk about this for a moment an important concept in magic Is the five colors the color pie and that each of those colors has an identity a theme And that breaks down into mechanics, but it always that they tend to use like this color can you can can access this Mechanic very cheaply. It'll show up a lot. It'll be on a lot of cards And it'll be at a low rarity like it'll be a common right This color can access this mechanic, but only rarely or only on rares or only expensively or cards that have it will cost more mana This color doesn't get access to this mechanic at all. It's not part of its color identity, right? It's something I've often argued for that in Uh warhammer, I wish we had more of by grand alliance Right where the grand alliances would have closer to a color identity and it's easy to think about So if you're a warhammer player, this is very I can wrap your mind around like this Think of that because there's a little bit of this going on in warhammer, but not enough Think of the way death tends to recur models right recursion Bringing back units is a major theme for death Right nearly every army does it in some way or another either they refill models into the unit or they recur entire units back That's a death thing. They don't they that's baked into the assumption of what the color identity is of death right okay importantly The five colors of magic white black red green blue. I said there's an wrong order, but it doesn't matter Wuberg is how they're traditionally shortened um is Is not an alignment chart Okay, like it's not good and bad. It's not good and bad But honestly neither is age of sigmar order doesn't necessarily mean good. We do have murder cultists in order Right exactly those the aforementioned daughters of kane earlier are like, you know, they're their order Uh, and their announcement trailer had the words murder slaughter, you know, and it's so Blood just saying okay, like the bad guy in the original you mentioned champions of kamigawa The quote-unquote bad guy the villain of that set is like the human uh Like white color identity leader lord kanda Yeah, he's the he's the actual bad guy starts the the the kami war All right, and they created the artifact that which was taken so that the Game pieces would kind of inform Naturally what the story was doing. Yep. So good guys can be any color identity Bad guys can be any color identity. It doesn't have to do with alignment. So That's a really important thing and like Briefest explanation just here real quick. So everybody has some kind of grounding The white color identity cares about life healing renewal order Like all and civilization amongst many other things it tends to like that kind of stuff thematically Okay, law law. Yeah, absolutely The blue color identity cares about thought mind It likes artifacts a lot like it likes making things it likes being creative It likes exploration and looking at like understanding the world as perceived through game pieces So it could be looking at other people's hands looking in your library doing those kinds of things It's also very control based. It's it's a sort of like Being mental it likes to take control of other things or control other players actions and so on and so forth Yeah, both white and blue can control white is usually Vince um White is usually um pre-eminent and blue is responsive as far as All colors could be controlled. They just do it in their own way so that these colors kind of have philosophies and how They approach similar Game actions you could say that's right. Tom you're gonna say some each each of these yeah, I would say each of these colors are also associated with the like a loosely terrain type sometimes it Is So for example white mana is like planes Which is more like a blank slate Right and to in a which to kind of crudder on as opposed to something like Islands or like water like blue is deeply associated with water creatures and other types of things Water and air and so there is often a touch of like elemental Right elemental aspects in some of the colors and that's particularly true in blue. Yep Black cares about death sacrifice recursion reanimation These kinds of things it likes it. It believes in paying a cost for power Right. Yeah, uh, that's often what happens. Yep Exactly Uh red we'll do it in wuburg order this time red is about speed and emotion and impetus and you know, like aggression and It's as closely associated with garlands and kind of everything they do and fire and that kind of thing But also a lot of emotion impulse and short-sightedness freedom chaos that kind of absolutely very much freedom like rebel type things are often portrayed as Yes, uh, and then also has like like red white and blue all kind of touch into artifacts in various ways Everybody kind of Artifacts nowadays especially after treasures started coming out. This is true Just some have like it's a question of how they interact with them Like red will often want to sacrifice them and blue will often want to go search for them and white will often want to You know, like benefit or tax them or something like that either benefit from them or tax them or whatever, okay And then finally green green is like life and creatures and beasts associated to the forest. It's associated with Uh renewal and regrowth and things like that. Okay, so instinct independence nature a lot of that. Yep Okay, so that's just a basic grounding To get everybody set up. And so now hey, well, I'm going to turn it back to you for to continue the disclaimers with balance All right, uh balance. I only barely balanced these They had three passes total from idea to what you see This is more design less development.  It's our way down there at the bottom keeping us honest Too much text. I'm sorry, but I don't care Very nice beautiful All right, let's go to the next slide Well, actually before I do that Tom, is there anything else you want to add on this that we covered? Any other pre-emptive thing you want to get out there? I'll turn it over to you just for anything else and your terrible internet Uh, the only thing that I would add is that uh tribal or typo Um, so oftentimes some tribes sit in certain colors or color pairs Um, I don't know to what degree. Uh, hey, woe is going to actually touch on that But for you to signal just throws that like soul to the ocean Not to interrupt but yeah But but still for example elves Yeah Yeah, like in magic elves often sit in green or that's where they started And you often see them in green and black or green and blue recently We've had a little bit of white slipping in there with green and white Um a little bit more and so I just say that to say that uh in magic in the larger world The tights are often associated with certain larger color pairs as well. I don't again I don't hey well, I don't know if that informed into your decisions or not That is something to know about it fed into the decision to make a lot of the creature types agnostic Just because age of sigma turns that on its head a little bit, you know There just aren't that many non-green elves. I mean there's actually recently there's been a reasonable number of black ones, but um, yeah, and then goblins are almost always read in magic and that Well, okay, some things do translate, but you know regardless, um, sure It wasn't it wasn't a guiding principle where when it didn't need to be that's the Yeah, um, I thought it was more important that people could just play with this and most stuff says creatures you control And if ever there was a real thing made out of this it would be more limiting Right. All right. Let's go to the next slide Principles take us through your principles on this. Hey, well, what are we going for here? All right. Now we got John Goodman Um, I'm not a real designer, but I whipped up some principles of design for these I don't know if they're right, but these were the ones I used Um, first one is to tell a story the card should explain the character Even or especially to those unfamiliar with age of sigma Uh, two is evocative gameplay and the card should play similarly to how it and or its faction does in age of sigma Number three is copium parachute Look to the lore for inspiration, especially if the war scroll sucks This canon should be used to save number two play style as well since aos necessarily plays differently than magic in many ways Um, number four is deck building the card should inspire build around me ideas What kind of deck would want this can the player do something neat with this beyond simply casting it etc Um, number five is a representation of scale The cards cost should be reasonably proportional to their might or importance in aos which is Generally their point cost in game But I wasn't about to write a 16 mon in the gash. So this guideline is uh touch loose Uh, number six is wow factor the card should be uh, the card should feel impressive powerful And often make the game about it when it is in play 6a has some necessary evils scale and wow factor together means mana costs will be high It is a fact that in edh if your commander costs more than four it probably sucks intrinsically Some bloated seven mana derp lord takes forever to come out once and is difficult to recast especially in non-green To compensate for this I have made them powerful And as such they are arguably nonsense when Reanimated turn two or sneak attack to defense to the heart or otherwise cheated into play early when run in the 99 rather than as a commander I'm looking at you king broads and some others I have chosen to ignore this danger As they are meant to be played as commanders first of all against each other and surely you dear viewers Play plenty of counterspells and instant speed removal already right who wouldn't And finally winks and nods Include mechanical or emergent mel details that evoke in game or meta references that a os players can pick up upon Remember lord rose water big picture is great, but it's a little details players can fall in love with That's right. Love it Okay Very good. Let's go to the next slide Every army's leader in commander formats uh the french Yeah, of orson wells With his monster zero ultra in matrix shades Oh my general of this powerpoint Beautiful, okay, so uh a os Army commanders just time stamping this as we move over Okay Now normally I start in alphabetical order with storm cast eternals Of course as my army is ogres and I like to think I design them pretty well And they're a good introduction to what I'm doing here. So we're starting with them We begin with ogres I have it up on the screen ogre maw tribes gutbusters. May I may I read the the the card name? Just yeah, okay Wonderful, uh, this is glob glitter maw Wonderful, uh, I'm I'm here already He is the leader of the meat fist maw tribe in the lore for those wondering at home Very nice Six callus one black one red one green making him firmly joined Which makes perfect sense for ogres the the uh Tri-color combination that invented devour Feels very appropriate for ogres. I have no pushback here Take us through glob glitter maw All right glob glitter maw. He is a four six for nine Well ostensibly nine because he has affinity for food and treasure Um affinity is a mechanic which reduces your cost for however many permanents of that type Are out and there are food tokens and treasure tokens in magic. So You could be getting some you could be making some in your deck and then look at that He's cheaper how nice plus it's funny and um, I think it fits really nicely Affinity for food and treasure is just like perfect for a gut buster, right? Absolutely. He has menace. He has menace and trample Yep, um menace means he has to be blocked by at least two creatures. You can't do it with fewer Tapped creatures you control have base power equal to their mana value Untapped creatures you control have toughness base toughness equal to their mana value And his flavor text is big Amazing this is this is a little bit of my hungry and eating Um representation. Yeah a lot of combat in combat tapped and untapped. I could have had it be attacking but I felt like it might be nice to expand it a little bit and let you play with that and ogres have a bit of a sub theme caring about mana value as a representation of girth I love it. So tapped on the on the attack. This guy's a nine six It's untapped. He's a four nine. I love it. It's beautiful And this guy's great for the rest of your guys Yeah, yeah, sure. Absolutely Uh This is this is really good design. Tom. I want your your feedback on this one. So I'm gonna throw it over to you here But uh, I I this is an a plus to me. What a great commander Yeah, I think the real genius of this card is actually how you're playing with mana value And how because it captures the genus aqua of Of ogres, right of of it being tied to there to this Uh intangible Like girth Thing and if you know anything about ogres in magic, uh, most of them are very high mana about you like It just it feels appropriate and it feels big Yeah, they're expensive and usually more expensive than their power and toughness would like Should be Yeah, um The only sad part about this here is you got to be Uh this playing glob does immediately shut off You don't want to you don't want to be running glob and kazool tyrant of the cliffs at the same time Because mr. I make a bunch of ogre tokens with an effective mana value of zero that come out untapped Uh, not a great day for your ogre tokens real real ogres only please It explicitly doesn't want you to make tokens, right?  Yeah, but that's because tokens aren't real We want meat on the bones. We want real creatures. We want a presence. That's right It's a very early design of this card did it to your opponent's creatures too in some way so that all your opponents tokens would be dying But I went with the more elegant choice, all right And that's this guy I a plus from me so far Real meat. I will also point out really great alignment here of the various color identities Like menace very frequently in black very flea green red trample very frequently in red very frequently in green food Green makes a ton of food treasure red makes a ton of treasure Like red and green or red and black often play with affinity in different ways So yeah, great stuff like all in all wonderful synergy of color pairing and identity and both Both green and black make make food by the way. This is true. Um, so actually there's a good color alignment there as well Totally right. Yeah, and there's a question from chat. You assume affinity doesn't reduce your mana value It doesn't reduce the mana value just what you have to pay. That's right. Just your cost so no No non bows here Beautiful, right. Some of these I have notes about like oh, I came across this problem in the designing it Then sure that's my question. But um, most of them don't so we can go on to the next one if you want to do the next one All right, ogre maw tries Beast claw raiders. Don't worry. We have one for both sides of the army. I know you're a big believer They are two different armies well, I mean Not in the future right, you know, if way the wind is blowing it's if they're doing it to orcs They're gonna do it to hovers, right? So But nonetheless No, no braggoth var druck who is for callus and then jund. So one black one red one green All right, what do we got here? Uh, this guy braggoth var druck is the leader of the boulder head offer stone from the lore for those paying attention at home um And he is a legendary snow creature because there are snow creatures in magic Beautiful. He is a six five six seven Uh with menace trample haste when he enters the battlefield you become the monarch As long as you are the monarch whenever a snow creature you control attacks deals damage equal to its mana value to any target And then of course we got avc always be charging you know For this guy I felt that beast claw is very much like a win more lose more sort of Uh a faction on the table And so I thought monarch worked very nicely for this.    That's right Which is very much what's happening here if you're on the attack if you're able to push through Yeah, you're gonna have a like this guy has a big turn the turn he drops if you've got other creatures in play, right?  Yeah, that's great Yeah, it's a it's a huge swing the turn it happens, but commander is a four player game It's gonna be a long time before it's back to your turn. So Um, again, we have the mana value instead of like the power of that creature because ogres are having this mana value theme Menace trample again except haste because Frostboards are fast and gut busters kind of aren't I mean, they're plenty fast, but Right, right Anyway, and that's this guy Love it.  Yes 100 percent. So the only So Once again the mana value actually kind of helps there because they're expensive and bad and so at least they're going to do impact It's that are decent right Go ahead Tom Yeah, the only challenge that I have here is that I just wonder if If you couldn't have worked the everwinter in something because they have this like perpetual hurt or this perpetual snowstorm blizzard Like chasing them wherever they go and so like I Like I just wonder if there might have been something around um around that Games work Fair answer because they're not even going to write one for eight or sigma or the game I don't know maybe extrapolating that to a card. I wrote snow on it. Is it that enough? That's close enough No, no, no, it's fair and actually your absence just maps to gain No, your your absence just maps the game's workshop design. You're right. No, I'm wrong here Remember our first principles, right? Okay. Yeah But I mean, it's it's a fair criticism regardless. Yeah for sure All right, very nice. Let's keep going Stormcast Eternals. Oh boy On for stormcast Eternals. We have the Celestant prime Big prime time three colors one white one blue one red Uh more more commonly known as jet sky That combination of colors Truly my favorite combination of colors.  All right, so at any rate Uh, tag us through the Celestant prime. All right, this guy is a four four for six Uh flash flying vigilance um flash and vigilance are Storm castian mechanics in my estimation flash for deep strike vigilance for defense and stoicness and stuff like that um The Celestant prime enters the battlefield with two one one counters on it for each time you've cast your commander from the command zone this game Um hurl gal maraz, which is boast which is a mechanic from I'm not sure which set which says When you attack with this creature, you may pay the boast call on time Tap target non-legendary creature with lesser power and gain control of it to becomes a storm cast eternal In addition to its other types and so Hurling gal maraz pretty good in magic not great historically But um this ties into the lore of actual gal maraz in in the books and the Core book and stuff like that where it's a hammer that Scales with the power level of whomst so ever is holding it And has the power to cleanse like if it hits a demon it will like purify them and turn them over to your side There's been people have been hit by gal maraz and it sends them straight to the reforging chamber And they've been reborn as a storm cast and stuff like that. And so that's kind of where we're Where I was headed with this one And the Celestant prime entering the battlefield with counters on it for each time you cast your commander from the commands on this game This is like the one guy that I made Who might not be your commander because just like an aos he's probably better in the 99 of some other deck Just how the Celestant prime is actually probably better in some other army than storm cast And so This ability here is sort of like him charging up his hammer in the heavens Sure You're playing the game and playing your commander and eventually he'll show up and become big if he is your commander The first time you cast him that counts.  I love this guy So flash means you can play any time you can play an instant for those who aren't as as as informed Basically just means think you can play at any time. Normally there's lots of restrictions on when you can play certain spells But this guy can just like show up anytime. That's a flash effectively means just like Oh, it's your turn and you're in the middle of something if I have priority boom. He's here Right and that's a very lightning strike very storm cast and yeah, vigi just means they can Effectively both attack and block. That's effectively what it means to put in the simplest terms possible Um, and I love that you tied it to boast where he's got to go into the red zone Right. He's got to go attack to use his special ability like the cell is throwing He's got a he turns like you're throwing it. So he's got to get out there, right Uh, so I love it. I love it interestingly So interestingly, uh As an interesting like design element of boast What he's actually doing with that so boast For that mechanic is you attack and on attack you can then pay the cost to trigger that ability One can because it's happening on attack.  Um, and so we're tapping it. It's a it's a non legendary creature Um, and it has to have a lesser power than prime time does although prime time does get kind of big if you've cast them a bunch So that would that's fine. He scales to the late game. That's all right.  Well, it's bothering tide But besides that of course, um, and I didn't so there aren't any here But if there was going to be a commander like entire edh deck Their keywords would be flash and vigilance and their main ability would be um When they would die instead you exile them and they gain suspend and so that's reforging over the course of turns Yes, yes They're back Absolutely in a multiplayer format probably to suspend Uh, you know, if it were 1v1 it would probably have to be a number of suspend equal to jeez I don't know their power or their monocost or something because it's a little good, but Uh, I love it. Okay. Although there already is a prime time in magic It's primeval titan, but I guess now there's two there's two All right, next up another storm cast eternals. We've got bastion carthalos Uh The mega chat himself. I love that you used your alternate art for him With the hyperexpanded chest. He was twice in tall twice as tall and wide as everyone else in the background. Yeah Custom art So good He is three and just guy white blue red Uh, and yeah, like take us through bastion carthalos. Okay. All right He is a 5 5 for 6 storm cast eternal with flash vigilance just like they all have but he has first strike instead of flying When bastion deals combat damage put a shield counter on it And at the beginning of each end step bastion deals x damage to anti target where x is the number of cards in your hand So as we all know bastion heals the full life because of his magical full plate crafted by somebody I can't remember who it is But in magic everybody always does that that's a magic rule And so how do you represent something that's really special in aos? But is simply how every creature works in the cleanup step of magic and so I decided well When he's fighting he deals combat damage will put a shield counter on him, which is a mechanic where they Technically have indestructible like one time. Um, right if they take damage at all even if it wouldn't kill them You have to remove the thing and he has first strike so Probably not going to die in combat unless you've blocked more than once in the Trans sequence or maybe they also have first strike and he dies or something like that. Um and then his Soul, you know from akira laser satellite laser ability That's another one that in age of sigmar you can build up damage on stuff But we got a cleanup here And so I'm like well, we'll make it x damage where x is equal to number of cards in your hand to give you Something to build around it could just be for damage. It could just be lightning bolt every time for three damage And I'm like, well, you know what you're in just guy Let's give you something to build around with all that card draw and have your opponents be scared of it and um Want to doom blade this guy or Actually path to exile or something like that nice nice I take it Tom any thoughts on bastion before we leave him behind? No, it It's good and I I just wonder if I just wonder like I'm just I'm reflecting on if jet sky is the right color set and I think it is um But uh, can you talk a little bit about your inclusion of red? um in in that hay well Yeah red got Red got a little bit grandfathered in because of boros because storm cast is giving In general giving me such a boros vibe um, there's a lot of first strike there actually is a decent amount of haste They're deep striking and immediately doing something. They're the charging arm of the pulling in a bunch of lore and stuff um depending on your storm host they are actually very fervent and proactive and sacrificial actually because they can regenerate um Many of many of their missions are like well up to the last man We can always reforge but we need these citizens to get out of here. So there's a bunch of sacrificial stuff too a lot of red creatures Are either sacrificed or sacrificed at any turn or haste trample dies later And um, they are human And I want to push this a lot of people When they first saw storm cast very early they're like, oh, so these are empty suits Is this like the zinch guys from 40k? And they are very human and they feel emotions and all that and red is very emotional. So for those reasons I went Just guy for all the storm cast Love it Okay, I was just curious. Um simply because like I was hoping your answer was going to be boros if Not lightning right um and and so no, I agree with you. I think from the boros side I think that they definitely uh, they definitely Do resonate deeply um on from that aspect of it So excellent. Very nice all right Next up cities of sigmar and we've got uh, talia vedra the Linus of the park I know Uh, there's already a thalia in magic and she is like a million versions of thalia I typoed thalia on this card three separate times during two of the different passes Because I'm pleased to type in thalia, which is a magic card. Anyway, absolutely Uh, sorry, elect man. Those were the two. Uh, those were the two, um Storm cast ones. I don't think we we're gonna have other factions in age of sigmar I some of them got two but most of them didn't so right apologies all right, so, uh talia and cities And I love this is wuburg five color commander white blue black red green their civilization it takes all types Yeah, okay. All right. Take us through talia vedra. All right.  We got I mean I had to include it Love it, which means you have 10 or more permanents If you have the city's blessing whenever another human you control would die during the combat phase Put a one one counter on it when you do regenerate it And this is um, she's got a worse girl ability that rally is in combat as well I wanted to represent that here. I wanted to make sure that her roles are very racist Only humans sure for every single thing specifically just like an age of sigmar Divergence from the lore I liked before And overall by the way in magic the more colors your deck is Generally the more difficult it is to assemble all of them immediately Also, the more expensive it is to do so and so you might notice that like five color cards Oh, geez. This card's really good, but it only costs five. Well Sometimes acquiring one of each of these will take you longer or maybe Um, be more expensive You'll have to jump there more hoops than even getting six or seven might in in some other some two color deck and so there's a little bit of Magic behind the scenes kind of stuff not so much with her but definitely for arcane Yeah, especially but when it comes to like budget and timing You can look at like getting you a seven man of mono green commander and you're like, yeah, no problem. Turn four. I'm there like let's do this Right, you look at a five color wooburg commander and you're like, well, I gotta I gotta stretch in a lot of different ways I gotta have rocks and fetches and fines and all those other weird Here's something for four that gets you two different lands.  Right exactly No, I love all the colors here being for cities because you're right I mean if there's anything that's wooburg, it's a hundred percent cities It's there's everything in here You look at the difference between hammer hole and mist oven and so on and so forth. It's like and what was once anvil guard Yeah, sure. Absolutely You know, like these these colors run the there. Sorry. This these cities run the gamut The the only thing that binds them together is just they are cities of civilization. That's it. That's their That's their feature. They're not lunatics running around in the wilderness trying to destroy or kill everything. That's it Uh, very nice Okay, love it Uh, next up. I hope sorry good Hold on. I I appreciate that. Um, the meta Uh, the meta call out to this idea of like the dawn bringers crusade about expanding your territory You see it in both the melee ability, which has you pushing out on all players Like you're better.  Yes, right And with the the ascension it's calling out Like a fun ability. Obviously, you're trying to build up. You're trying to establish your city which your your civilization so like It's just it's such a great like meta call out to the narrative Of of what this faction is. Uh, and this is the five color. Uh, this is the five color Fighting commander. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, we don't have enough five color fighting commanders. Actually, that is true A lot of a lot of janky combo. We five color commanders. All right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly Uh, just existing is benefit enough for some. All right certain dragons, which will go not named Okay, cool Uh daughters of kain Marathi the shadow queen no longer Shall she be denied? Okay Uh, so she is four colors a white a black and a red or commonly known as mar do The color combination here. Uh, my favorite color combination. I should say love mar do It's the color combination of tariel the the angel and a lot of other great like angels Returning creatures from graveyard at random. Exactly this version these three colors are everything I want to do in magic. It's it's perfect Okay, take us through this one um Bit of trivia marathi was the first card I made for this experiment She is a seven five for seven with flying death touch and haste Death touch means any amount of damage is enough to kill something she deals Damage to not necessarily combat damage for those combat player combo players out there Um, she enters the battlefield with three shield counters on it.  Yeah, no, I love it.  She's hard to get rid of no doubt She sticks you're looking at your sword to plowshares and for once you're like this isn't gonna do it Yeah And doom blades not either Because like obviously she has three well, you know, she's black, but she has three She has three different You can pick go for the throat. She's not an artifact. There you go. You're go for the throat would work as an example Once you got rid of the shield counters Regardless, but you gotta do it. You gotta do it. You gotta fight through those shield counters. Yes Yeah, it's so good and you might want to because it's a flying haste commander in black And so maybe there are they running hatred? Is this a one shot? It's a concern I love it Uh, one of the things I love about magic. I'll just talk about on this card She's a very potent commander when you think about how she would play in the game. She'd come down Again, like she's meat and potato play styles. I think yeah I I did that on purpose because she does in aos too. Absolutely and Yeah, a hundred percent. I think that's a great representation of of how she plays Like if you just got somebody trying to build like some go big Tribal deck right or something like that or kindred deck or whatever With the guys and walk with the guys, you know, like why a first strike and death touch? Yes. Oh Hmm. Yes, somebody who had like a first strike death touch commander deck for a while I will say it is it is an impressive thing um and But at the same time one of the things I love about magic that that that isn't present in aos really as much Is the field is so wide of answers like as as sticky as this girl is There's still a million things that answer her. Yes. That's what's so funny, right?  Or you're getting phased out a cool creature Do whatever we ask she gives death touch that's sweet. Hey, I win Good creature though, but uh I win good game, right? Yeah And so I just I love that it that that the pool and the experience Of of commander magic. This is truly one of my favorite things about the experience of commander magic is that like Things are so wild In the interactions that will occur that everything always has an answer always In a table of four people running wild decks, right? And that doesn't even have to be expensive decks It could be like four people running relatively budget decks Nothing costs more than a hundred dollars and you'd still have that a kind of interaction going Right. That's what's amazing Your opponent could be on a 14 cent molder slug and just tap three red and killer Yeah, by exiling his library for some reason like you're just Or a great one grape shot when three people have cast a spell and the shield counters are gone and now you know There's always an answer. There's always an answer Elec man's 24. She could be chatter fang squirreled one as well That's of course always Is there a reason why marathi isn't a god asks elect man in the chat? That is a great question Let me look to my notes. I think I wrote something about this Uh, oh, yeah, her creature type is probably a whole can of worms is what I wrote um She should probably have the creature type god Or arguably demigod Is it really an avatar of kane? I honestly the creature type I wanted to say the word kane So that somebody new to aos would know what army it refers to And and there it is. Sure You can always do like god avatar kaneite that could be that could be what it actually boils down to most of the decisions Was pertain the creature types here is like I ran out of space It looks like you can fit god in there. You kind of can't it bleeds into the I tried It's a little logo. Yeah All good All good And there are plenty of god avatars around like that's a thing that that does exist. So Okay, oh, I like god elf serpent. There you go. It's good.  That's a good maybe there are gorgons in magic are gorgons.  We got it. We got a hybrid man. I come in In here Love it. Okay three colors and two hybrid red white Man, uh, all right. Take us through norgrim grim nearer. Okay. So it was hard to find a named impressive fire slayer Thanks, wikipedia, but they all have hyphen grim nearer in their names. That's what the rune fathers do So he's a rune father five five four five with vigilance and battle cry When you cast norgrim grim nearer for each mana from a treasure spent on Guild mana up here to cast it search your library for a basic mountain put on a battlefield tapped then shuffle When norgrim grim nearer is dealt damage it deals that much damage to any target And so this is that molten magma drop damage reflection stuff It comes prepackaged with a fun little build around me And he playing a norgrim grim near and a mug maniac and two of those Red white, you know reflector damaged guys and then oh it's time to blasphemous act a everybody takes 26. Let's go I I love this. I love that it cares about the treasure you spent to cast him Which is because they're mercenaries and if you spend the treasure you get to go get mountains Which is their their holds you get to go get the the flame holder when notice I didn't say mountain or planes It's only a mountain because that's where your holds are that's where their holds are right And we've got the molten blood perfectly and the battle cry again another You know wants to go out wants to get in the red zone wants to attack and and His he leads all the other fire slayers and gives them basically a bonus. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes Battle cries whenever he attacks Um, all other attacking creatures get 1 0 plus 1 plus 0 Man, this is doesn't have to attack. This is good design For like communicating story through mechanics. This is good design I have to say like I was able to reverse engineer Exactly what you were going for just reading it there and then knowing what fire slayers are. I was like, okay Yep, I get the story. They they were evoked. They were just like an emergent property of the mechanics and let me tell you what People at magic. I'm normally talking to games workshop. But hey, where's where's the coast? I'm talking to you now directly Uh, you should whenever you do this aos at which I'm sure it's coming anytime Uh, you should be reaching out to halo directly to consult on this set. This is this is incredible work Tom any thoughts for for norgrim? This is one of your armies It is Um, I think that uh as uh, elect man 24 in the chat mentioned It's a miss for not bail grim near. Um, because we've seen war scrolls for him as well He's the the named ruin father for both start That said it's like this is banging on all cylinders Both, uh, I think vigilance and war cry makes sense Less so maybe for vigilance for myself But war cry or battle cry. Sorry. Absolutely. I love the treasure spent I expected to see some treasure generation here and there wasn't Um, and so I thought it was a real interesting Um, like obviously incentivizes that in the army Yeah, no that makes sense that makes sense and um, yeah, and then obviously the the build around is fun Yeah, yeah, the build around is fun put some star of extinction in there for your Damage reflecting creatures everybody takes 20 Maybe stuffy doll. What's that rash talented guy? You can yeah, you know breast hunter Pet car for sure that guy's fun. Of course. Of course. Uh, anyway Very nice. Okay. Apologies for the not bail grim near by the way That's all right. We'll forgive you for not knowing the deep lore Of 27 armies or whatever, you know, like yeah, especially the ones that don't normally have named characters that are just self-evident in the The book by the war scroll or something. I think bill has a war scroll though He did at one point. They eventually retire. He does it was a dragon magazine. Okay. Yeah It was in you don't mean dragon, but yes, it was in white wharf All right dragon magazine. Oh, there we go. It was in dragon magazine 1991. I used to get those Uh, it's a great. It's a great issue. Go check it out. Uh Okay, here we go. Next up I'd net deep kin with volturnus king of the deep Who is two colors one blue and one black more commonly referred to you as demir He is a three four for four with flying Volta notes has hex proof as long as you control at least one other creature And then we have the tides of death paragraph that I couldn't escape from Volta knows enters the battlefield with three tides of death counters on it At the beginning of combat on your turn remove one when you remove the last one Preaches you control gain flying trample double strike until end of turn then put three tides of death counters on bolting else nice, so Um, everybody can see it coming flying trample double strike.   Um, and uh, forgotten nightmares is my Representation for that has hex proof as long as you control at least one other creature Yep, because they have to target the other thing not him. Yeah, that's the forgotten nightmares. Yes, absolutely again, perfect Perfect. They can't target him. Yep, because I forget he's there because there's somebody else in the way Yeah, you got you got to hit the thrall or whatever something else. Yeah I think I don't know if being demir reads absolutely correct. Well, this is generally a pretty Like this is a lot more lore. It's more lore than it is necessarily. I think gameplay for the color identity Maybe there's some red in there or whatever, but I went with demir for the lore. There's psychic vampire Yeah, I mean oftentimes demir ends up being first of all demir ends up being a color that like that kind of Uh mind vampirism occurs in like demir very much has a bottomless stuff. Yeah, exactly Like a milling type strategy for getting type strategy That's like milling type things where you're just taking your library and throwing it into the graveyard is oftentimes cast in the sort of theme of cards as Memory or mind manipulation or stuff like that, right? Where it's just like making you crunch your your spells And so I think it fits very well for for them. It's also traditionally a pretty villainous quote-unquote color combination So like there's zombie decks in this color combination and a lot a lot of bad things But again, it's also like the spy craft color combination, right? And the the sneaky infiltration color combination Skull ninjutsu Exactly All those types of creatures often show up in this place So very much makes sense road one. What is it called? When you attack with a rogue or something like that, I can't remember what the name is. Anyway, go on. Yeah. Nope. I'm with it There you go, okay Yeah, tom any thoughts for volternos No, I like the only thing that I was wrestling with is it does Uh, like should this be soul type like should green be the third color here? Um, and I think that um, I think it's just my merfo bias That is pushing me that direction rather than uh, the actual lore. Yeah, there's nothing in the lore. I think that makes them green Yeah, I don't I don't think so. I mean consider I mean think about the giant, you know Uh whale beasts we have in pure blue, you know in magic, right? Sure a giant turtle I guess maybe in this era of magic design a giant turtle would be like Salti or something like that But um, you know, we got leviathans and merfolk and everything in mono blue didn't See a need to pull another color into it. Agreed All right Next up Keradrin overlords, uh, so our commander here is brock grungson Uh, who is white blue black red? So basically everything except green for a fourth. You know not pulling green into things Yeah, indeed No, boy if there's one color that definitely shouldn't be on this guy's card. It is that color Okay, so take us through brock He is a four four for four. Keradrin overlord flying haste When brock grungson attacks defending player reveals top card of their library If it's a land card exile it put it out of the battlefield under your control Otherwise create a treasure token Pay to bays us out Lie high Lie high He is a pirate. He steals lands He steals treasure. He generates it. He's got haste because they're the most alpha strike army in the world every every other six months in between nerfs And he's the colors of capitalism and honestly humanity minus the green Yep Yep, uh, I I think maybe the most generically strong commander here, uh, when you consider monocost He just like gets in there and slaps really hard. Yes He's just a little treasure and land generating machine and a color that normally Isn't supposed to get extra lands necessarily sure and he protects himself and he's just generically great pure good stuff which I consider a bit of a Maybe a little bit of a failing honestly on this guy I've tried to stay away from just pure good stuff and he I think gets the closest to it He's going to be annoying to play against because he's going to be flying high all the time but Then he's gone and you can swing it, you know, it's not unbalanced Sure. Are you using the artifact type just simply to reflect the technology the use of technology It's just that And also his suit and everything like that. Yeah, he's kind of he kind of comes equipped you might say Yeah, I'll buy that.   I'll accept that by the way I could and I can imagine Ironclad vehicles Sure. Oh, absolutely. Yeah Uh, she would certainly get some vehicles wouldn't they It might be a great day Uh, I love me some vehicles By the way chat out there if you've got comments if you're you know comment on them talk about them Do we did did did hey? We'll get the colors right? Is there other abilities you want to see in there? You know throw your throw your two cents in I love your feedback I want to see what you y'all think as well. How how we doing so far If you haven't hit like yet hit like for all of hey woe's amazing hard work putting all of this together And and sharing it with all of us. So I just want to say thank you. Hey, well, okay Uh, all right um cool What uh, let's let's keep going here Lumineth realm lords Teclis and selenar for four colors one white two blue One green So this is the the color combination frequently known as bant Vant Oh my goodness. I see it already and I'm excited. All right. Take me through it All right. So teclis and selenar lumineth god. He is a they are a four or five for eight Flying bushido too. This is a failed mechanic from kamigawa where if it blocks or becomes blocked it gets plus two plus two On the turn teclis can't be countered Spells you cast can't be countered If you cast teclis from the command zone it enters the battlefield with total eclipse Spells your opponents cast cost x more to cast where x is equal to the amount of value of that spell double cost ease Um, this is brutally oppressive to play under in fact. Okay compared to how it is in aos In how it is in aos is a summer day with a glass of lemonade Compared to doubling costs and magic the gathering sure um I He requires you to play him as the commander to get his good ability not just for balance although it is for balance But for arrogance if you don't give him the respect he deserves He'll take his ball and go home and become the worst Or five for eight you've ever seen This is so good Yes, just crippling if total eclipse is up, but obviously he himself is eminently answerable He is making all this come out. But you're in green. So sure sure Tom what's your what's your feeling on teclis and selenar? We're really in your army space here Yeah, I mean what I would say is this I you know, I struggled with there are two things about this that I struggled with One is the green typing Like I can see it but initially my go-to would have been just blue white and so I'd love to hear your thoughts on why green and uh Why bushido other than the fact that he because uh, you know visually it has this uh Eastern aesthetic The answer to both questions is laur. So teclis and selenar specifically only just teclis I would be very receptive to a simply blue white but this is the whole of lumenath realm lords and with all the Mountains and earth spirits and giant cows and um, this isn't your this ain't your mama's uh high elves, you know I think I'm ready to admit that there is actually a lot of green in the laur of lumenath As well as bushido not just the look but it is like the elemental Um, yeah a lot of elemental stuff And for bushido, I mean that's just so suffused in all of their laur and discipline and enlightenment and um warrior tastes and all this other stuff that I uh, I felt I had to It was the most harmless keyword addition ever because who cares? Uh, it's bushido, but I think it's pretty representative of the faction in a certain way Whoa, whoa, whoa. Don't be don't be hating on one of my favorite mono red commanders of all time fumiko of the low blood with bushido x Okay, let's just yeah, yeah But yes, I mean this is really great. Um, as elect ban said, um It's a shame that he doesn't that we weren't able to capture in you know The sort of tech nato Like storm of searing white light type of thing that he has but I assume that'll be those are extra spells No, those are spells you can you put you put those in your deck. Yeah, those are incense or sorceries in your deck Exactly Okay, very nice Uh, russell said flavor wins all over the place with this guy. Oh, yeah, absolutely Uh, and jake up says double a free is still free. That's right.  There you go. Yeah That's right force a force of will still cost zero and just discard a card. That's right Uh, okay Uh lord croak as we travel into seraphon land Our mummy frog Uh lord croak is one white one blue one red and one green for a two four All right, take us through this bad boy. All right. Here's lord croak.  It's actually Been getting some popularity as I move forward, you know, so the hard face of him is the enchantment creature Theros kind of thing. So the Gods in magic at least during that block and a few others are Indestructible, they're not technically creatures unless enough people worship them. And so there's where you get this devotion mechanic The two four for four flying indestructible as long as your devotion to non black is less than nine Lord croak isn't a creature At the beginning of your upkeep lord croak deals x damage to each opponent and use scry x Brax is the number of dinosaurs you control Which is an actual big tribe in magic, particularly in naya colors, which is white red green Um, I ran out of space for the creature type. He should be frog lich god, but I settled for frog Uh, so good tom. What do you think about lord croak? This feels like a very you commander Yeah, like one I would say is this like Nothing made me more of a believer in In space dinosaurs, uh than this card. In fact, like I I this is a real faction now. Thanks. Hey, well, you did that for me Um This this gave it skin. Yeah, it's it's just gas like I love this on every level It calls out to the standard god Like mechanics that we will often see It calls out to like on just a it's just a banger on so many different levels And uh, and uh, you know, I'm a big dinosaur fan. So, you know, I'm in I was in a way I was kind of lucky the magic had such a ready-made representation prepackaged for me for how croaks weird life and wounds and how he Exists in a os the mechanically in the game It's like, oh, you have to roll and the damage goes away and he stays alive because you're doing this weird thing Because he doesn't have a body and I'm like, oh, yeah, they did that in theros easy I think this is perfect Here's a design question in my notes Devotion to non-black. I think inspires a rules question when the average player first reads it. What about colas? I'm saying non-black every other theros god is your devotion to and then they specifically say like red or green and blue And usually it's about five more than whatever is printed on the card. Sure Um, well, the answer is the devotion mechanic cares specifically about color And colas by definition is not that I think the question appearing at all warrants some kind of maybe rewarding Even if it says distasteful is space wasting Is spelling out each of the four colors in the rules text? Did you upon reading this think? Oh, non-black. Maybe you get devotion from colas or No, but I mean I I like devotion a lot as a mechanics. I was already familiar with it I mean you I think probably for like pure clarity you would they would you would write it out as your devotion to white blue red and green is I can fit an extra single on or something like that. Yeah Yeah, um, I I think that would be would be cleaner. Um Russell verbal Russell says I like the flavor A lot, but I wish he did more when he hit the board even for four men I think he should be blasting something when he e tv's You do have to wait a full turn cycle on him before he before he does anything You know, he's hard to get rid of as an indestructible enchantment. That's not a creature Those things often stick around for a long time True and indeed the player who's playing them usually wants to keep them a non creature Right to be honest because it's a real easy to exile a creature not so much an enchantment Not a lot of people running revoke existence. Yes, that is correct. Yeah, or they're they're one chaos warp in their entire deck They're just like Um, let's see. What are my notes? I have a lot of notes for this guy He used to be an enchantment creature tribal like it was tribal enchantment creatures and in my head this marathon are all enchantment creatures, but Enchantment enchantress is like too strong and it's solitaire and you'd have to print a whole bunch of Special dinos for that and I think what people really want Is an excuse to add blue to oops all dinos dot deck. So sure. We are I mean there are six printed Uh six mono blue dinosaurs Uh in magic, so it's not like there's no just no blue dinosaurs And there are quite a few multicolor dinosaurs that have blue In in their color identity like there's a lot of blue green and stuff like that or you know something like that Like there's there's plenty of dinosaurs that dinosaurs I think I think blue is a pretty easy argues for serif on as well Oh, absolutely especially for croak and as well Yeah, mr. Mr. Magic mr. Mind mr. Future seer. I didn't mention it But that's another thing blue often has in its color identity is like Future sight and being able to see and to manipulate time and Prophecy and stuff like that and that's very much croaks whole business Um, so I think you're right because making it just dinosaurs then doesn't care if you'd made enchantments You would have been specifically talking about starboard Right by making it dinosaurs. It feels more like coalesced or starboard It's just like they're they're still dinosaurs. They still are what they are So that's fine Okay Cool very nice Uh, all righty Sylvaneth Allariel the ever queen Uh four colors one white one red two green Uh, all right for a six six take us through the ever queen All right. Allariel the ever queen is a six six for eight legendary land creature forest god So she counts as a forest she taps for mana Um, I couldn't fit Forest Sylvaneth god and I actually had to put forest in there for rules reasons Uh, because it's a type uh, that anyway, um, she has flying and lifelink Clearly, um, when you cast allariel look at the top six cards of your library You may reveal a creature card from among them put it on the battlefield It gains haste return it to your hand at the beginning of the next end step And of course Doesn't even tap to do it pay a green regenerate allariel By the way, she can tap herself, but then she can't do that So she infinitely regenerates unless you kill her with mortal wounds, which is like Exile effects swords applause shares and we have strike and fade in the main paragraph Bird creature comes out swings and then back into the safety of your hand at the end of turn Yeah I love it Uh, by the way, just real quick Russell had said on the prat on the previous one on lord croak He said something like you can cast dinosaurs as if they had flash Would be a fun thing to add to lord croak That is that is there might be an interesting one where you could be like if lord croak is a creature You can cast dinosaurs as though they had flash So there would actually be Players aren't going to want to do that. So you want to give them an incentive Yeah, exactly like that could be an interesting way to to sort of add to that to have him because he He frequently will just spawn people off like that's what he does. He remembers that to existence So that's that's a good way to sort of represent their summoning Okay, but he has to be there to do it, right? Like he can't just be like the idea of croak up in his spaceship or something No eminence your creatures have flash and all that right right right right. Okay, but back to allariel Um Yes, I like the strike and fade. I love that she's a land creature. I love that she's a forest I love creatures that tap for mana because they're just lands like this is a this is a wonderful Rarely used thing You know, we got dryad arbor in a future site or whatever and we just haven't plumbed that well deep enough since then um But uh and first of all regeneration I hate that we got rid of this mechanic and stopped printing it on cards I bring back regeneration Regenerating enjoyers rise up. That's right. I'm here for it Uh, you will blow people's minds at your at your commander table when you slap out a two-mana wrapping vigor or as I like to call it Heroic intervention at home You know like the number of times 18 less dollars Yeah for for eight cents or whatever. Yeah Um, it's so funny how often people will just rely on board wipes that are just destroy just destroy. It's like, yeah, well No I regenerate Uh, so I'm here for regeneration. I'm here for it. I'm here for the strike and fade effect too um The I love that she has no protection by the way at all just as for standard other than like she can regenerate She can heal but just like it. Oh, yes. It's like that's it. She has no she's not x proof There's no other these things she's not getting shield counters. No no no protection in blue. No ward. Yeah Hey, you know what play us with foot boots if you want some my play light ingress put that in your deck My only question here is I think there's one ability that maybe isn't present with her Especially since she's got that she's got a red green color identity at least as part of it, right It feels like she should also be trampled with that big beetle She like I could see trample for that She hits pretty hard the beetle does do like impacty type stuff And it has those big giant horns that hit hard on the charge and stuff So it's like she does care about things like that and like in this identity it feels like she wants to be Doing that thing so like you should have her out there and want her to attack and trample Will make you want to put her into the red zone more right because then people can't just chumper infinitely Yeah So there you go. That was my only pushback on her other than that love it All right adding trample is an out-of-pocket in my notes for a laryl Very nice Very nice tom any uh any thoughts on a laryl. Did you ever see the strike should the strike and fade It would have you'd have to change the wording on this But should the strike and fade be Uh On either casting her like here's a question. Should it be on cast or should it be on attack? Yeah, where you're doing it every every turn I wanted it to be on cast Because you can only strike and fade with one thing and to Help an eight mana commander at least do something when it gets countered every single time And so I put it on a cast trigger for her and sylvanuth is a pretty magical faction Um, they don't have the craziest bonuses necessarily, but they do be cast in those spells um original versions of other versions of her had Um, when she attacked put a creature from your handout Uh, when she entered the battlefield Ella damry's call effect, you know, just worldly shooter or something to your hand um The flickering kind of got out of control there creatures you control our Forests in addition to their other types and so you could channel some huge thing but I went with I went with cast trigger and then from the library out Tutoring some creature and just putting it out was it made her into a total combo deck And that's fun. Yeah, but I wanted her to strike and fade not Combo people out. Okay. I would I would put one change on this. Hold on. I've got I think I got this I think I think I can solve your problem. Tom. Okay. The problem like I like it as a cast trigger It's fine. It's now you're not flickering her and stuff like that, right? It's whatever but she is a hugely expensive commander at eight And the nightmare situation with an eight mana commander is you with Right. Yeah, so I think the wording should be oh until you hit a creature Look at the top six cards one of two situations either go until you hit a creature or Like that's option one. Here's option two. You may reveal a creature card from among them or from your hand And put it onto the battlefield it gains taste because then you're just taking it out of your hand Putting it onto the board and then picking it back up. So feels very strike and fade Yeah, it feels more like that when you're doing it. I agree And then when you know you cast her you know like maybe you get a better hit Out of the out of you know the top six or whatever, right? But you know, okay I've got this thing In my hand. So I'm definitely not with it. You don't want to with an eight mana commander. Yeah, I think that's really important Before you said or all yeah, I feel better. I was thinking of expanding it like We'll reward you for getting a lario countered three times. And so you look at the top x Where it's whatever mana you spent on her or something like that. I open it up more, but I think I like I like hand out That just feels very naturally strike and fade, right? It was there It was you know back not really participating in the battle as people tend to play with sylvaneth where it's like in the back corner There's a woods right here in the model sitting right here. And it goes boop Hit boop all the way back and I cannot think of a better representation than hand attack back to hand Yeah, the possibility of whiffing on an eight cast I think you've convinced me on that and um the hand thing just feels more like that. Yep. I agree into the notes it goes All right, we got there Okay, cool Very good All right, let's keep moving Order. Oh, you did order generically. I didn't know you had the grand alliances too. Okay. Yeah, I did I did Go track Gernison as the order commander four colors Three red All right, take us through this nightmare. Here we go for this this guy's an old school card They didn't have the old card face, but I would have used it on the website if they had it Sure, um because I used Ancient the old order leaf held looking style comic art on here um He is a star star for seven legendary creature avatar Um the likes of which sarah avatar of the past has used and stuff like that from other old cards He has double strike and shroud shroud is a Ancient version of hex proof Which has the downside that no one can target it not even you Just like if you're playing gotrick in your army, you can't target him with your um soupy abilities He enters the battlefield tapped because he is slow If damage dealt to gotrick prevent all but one of that damage his power and toughness are each equal to your devotion to red nice And so he's a humongous No trample Kills anything enters tapped you can't target him It's very hard to buff him because of that your opponents can't they just have to feed him stuff and jump block him forever just like in ages sigma Yep Yep, I like I love that you can't although, you know red has Infinite number of tricks to make your creatures hasty when they come out right and he shows up and he's like Well, I hope there was an amulet of vigor around or something because otherwise i'm just sitting here for a turn I mean, yeah, you can play a fervor or whatever, but he still enters tapped Right unless you can untap him what you could there are ways there are ways Uh, that's fantastic. Tom, what's your what's your take on go track?  It's so delightfully like Perfect and messy and unfortunate um The only thing that I would be concerned about is that he you know preventing all but one damage Like death's death touch still takes him out Yep, and I wonder if that's problematic right because like Okay, I I suppose It's maybe a little unfair of me to always point to AOS because sometimes just because it makes sense doesn't mean It's a good design idea, but Yeah, I wanted him to be so yeah, it was just yeah, I don't know what the answer is but He's he's still Totally killable. You can you can cast a wrath of god And he goes away you can death touch him and he'll go away You can cast a farewell and exile all creatures and he'll go away sure But generally he's difficult to remove and no trample because uh, you are supposed to Like as the way you play him yours your opponents are supposed to He's essentially removal Every turn he swings and your opponent sacrifices a creature to him essentially right refer just like what you're supposed to do in AOS Um when someone has a gotrick you just feed him chaff forever because you can't stop him But he's not going to trample over and kill somebody um, otherwise the The straight up double strike, but he's doing six if you have nothing, right? Right just standing alone.  I guess but He is uh You're gonna have to rely on all creatures gaining trample enchantment. Uh in in in red for the for him Which exists there's like one or two. Maybe yeah, uh arc uh Arc type of aggression comes to mind. That's a that's a good option But there's more if you want to pay a whole lot of chroma's memorial There you go Gives him a lot more in trample. He also needs to be an avatar dwarf Oh, yeah, and not even do ardent a dwarf actually And it was all I could do not to write gotrick's power and toughness or each equal to your devotion to Felix But it wouldn't make much rule sense But he's a less serious card anyway, so sure Uh, all right, very good. Let's keep moving All right flesh eater courts My guess is this art is one of the most recent additions to this particular presentation Yeah, we don't know this guy's rules yet So I made him an amalgam of flesh eater court themes in play style Sure, sure usher in the summer king to call us white black red So once again coming in in Mardu, which I absolutely agree that is correct That is correct for flesh eater courts A thousand percent correct. Yes They're one of the most Mardu things ever Yes, absolutely All right, take us through this guy. Uh, he's a six six four six with double white Flesh eater king. He has first strike lifelink lifelink. Yes, they stack As long as usher on is enchanted and equipped Other creatures of control get one one and have lifelink If you would gain life above your starting life total instead create that many one one white ghoul surf creature tokens with frenzy one Holy crap I love this so much. Yes Okay, first of all frenzy.  That's existed on what only I think Yeah, exactly. That's on one card two cards I think a sliver has it and maybe some want some other card.  Yes, absolutely correct Absolutely correct. Like that's what they are. I would have also bought White black Yeah, uh, I wanted to make a statement and so I went only white. It's the only white ghouls Perfectly fine. I I'm not hating on it. I think you could have gone either and I would have said yep That's fine. I'm I'm with that completely Um You can see the build around with life gain into the go wide strategy with him and suddenly you just have like A million bajillion little 2 2 life linking more life linking frenzy one morons It's great. Oh for those at home that don't know about the single card and all the magic that has frenzy it's a mechanic where If the creature attacks and is not blocked it gets plus 1 plus 0 it's only to turn that's what it does And I wanted him to be Um, there is a bit of a smash bat or there used to be an fec And so I brought a little bit of that in here with the enchanted and equipped but also A kingly crown a cleanly rod. He's got enchantments all over if he has the You know artifacts and equipments that a king deserves then his people Benefit it trickles down in other words Yeah, I I would have also accepted I mean, I don't know if it's really still a mechanic that works, but I instead of frenzy I would have also like frenzy is inverse rampage Effectively, right? Yeah, I would have also accepted Yeah You know like the more blockers like rampage one or something. I could have reached way back. I would have taken that too They go crazier the more people they get in their way like either one sells to me honestly Like I could go either direction I thought to me it was a I wanted like a not a visual thing. I don't know how to describe it, but you're thinking about white ghoul Surf frenzy like all of these opposites Clashing together. It's really nice Yeah, the word is better. That's what it comes down to. Yeah Is a better both of them mechanically work frenzy sounds because frenzy ghoul is a I think it's a creature actually frenzy ghoul I mean Scourge maybe or onslaught anyway Okay Tom any any thoughts on usher in the summer king? I mean this guy's a haas. It's six mana. Let me say that It's beautiful. It's beautiful. Like I love the the life gain Go wide strategy I love like the only thing I wonder is if there might have not have been a food summoning in here like a food Like sub theme in here And and I don't know what that looks like like I'd have to do some work shopping, right? But I just wonder if um I could see turning opponents guys. Yeah food because that's what they imagined them or something. Um Yeah, that's exactly what I was gonna say is like somehow, you know when you kill a creature or when an opponent Yeah, you get the food and then you get to eat it and something It'd be a lot and that's what I was going to say is is then imagining the opponents for food Yeah, and then that having uh, and then being able to like destroy food on attack or something like I could imagine and maybe this is like a wider Like an enchantment right the grand the grand banquet or something like that. It's a delusion enchantment Well, you're in double whites already So you could make a wrath of god that destroys all creatures and gives everybody food tokens equal to the number of creatures destroyed Sure. Well, it's it's the battle of by water. It exists. It's a lord rocks card Um, you know, you just do that But I would say, you know, if you wanted to add the extra text to him like again, you don't need to he's perfectly fine He's super perfectly powerful. You'd have to up his cost if you had another ability. He's pushing it Yeah, he's already pushing it But like if we were going to make him even more outrageously expensive The the way you'd staple that on or the support enchantment for him or whatever the other thing would be It would be like if one or more creatures die in the combat Yeah, you know like it during during combat create a food token and that would just be it right like This ability triggers once per turn or something like that. Yeah, like the exact wording. I'm not writing the exact card But you get it, right? So every combat you theoretically be creating a a food token, right? Or it's something like um at the end of each turn um Usher on Targets a creature and that creature becomes a food in addition to its other types and then your ghouls get bonuses against that guy Sure, sure. Yeah, it's lots of lots of fun. Your opponent can sacrifice that guy because he's a food now and gains life from it Or something like that like a way to put a bull's eye on something maybe Two things one vent. I love the idea. So if you're generating food tokens when other creatures die um One I can already imagine what that token looks like like the horror feast that is First of all, it should be a double-sided button as well. Hold on. Hold on. It's a double-sided token But both sides of the token are food The front side is a noble luxurious feast Yeah, banquet and then the back side of the card is like has visual signifiers that it's clearly the same table But it's just a charnel feast of ripped apart bodies and ripped cages and stuff like that Yes, and then on each one the and the reason why it will be the opposite So the yeah, it'll be lords and ladies feasting on the entrails and it'll be ghouls feasting on the banquet. Yeah Yeah, okay. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah And and then the other the flip side of that is and the reason why this also works is that if you're generating food by They're dying creatures You burn that food and because of his ability you gain life and generate more goals, right? Exactly So like like that's like that's the thing that like it just you know circle of life Yeah, literally. Um, yeah, I I like and that's why I think the only thing is like I said I would restrict it to the combat step not like any time they died. I I'd basically do it So that you're doing it not that some random thing is happening over here.  Correct. Yes. Yes. I agree with that That's why I said if a creature dies in the combat step and you create a food token Like that's why it would be one or more it'd be like a check at the end and it'd make like one food So to have the potential if everybody's swinging and everybody's dying You know, it's like on all four turns around you can make like four food Right on one swing around the table one journey around Okay. Cool. And yes, Dylan. Absolutely. Shelob does something similar. Yep. Opponents It's more potent because you actually get a copy of their creature except it's a food token Which means that like they are ETB effects and stuff like that trigger. This would just be like generating food Which is way weaker, but still good Okay, uh night haunt With Lady Olinder One colors one white one blue one black more commonly known as espar Espar my favorite color combination Uh, it was the original one of the original tricolor combinations gave us the first colored artifact creatures Some of the first where we're in that That time period there and it introduced a bunch of sphinxes that were in this color combination That are like still some of my favorite creatures to this day Uh white blue and black everywhere. I want to be doing everything I want to do counterspells kill things Win it's great. Okay. Take us through Lady Olinder All right. Lady Olinder is a four three four four with flying and ward two Ward is a mechanic that they started printing on cards for basically, uh hex proof except more fair So you got to pay whatever cost it is after ward and then you can target the creature Otherwise you could not target it Uh spirits you control have vigilance Tap an untapped spirit you control Choose one Target creature gets negative one negative one until under turn plus one plus one until under turn Target player loses a life target