I'm pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for a drive to work.

Okay, last time I started, I'm doing a two-part podcast based on a series of articles I had called Looking Back.

And what I did is I looked at the previous 30 years of magic, and then for each year, I named the best addition to magic from a design standpoint, and then I have one or more runner-ups each year.

I got through 2008 last time, so that means we begin with 2009.

Okay, the randomized boosters of 2009 were Conflux, Allara Reborn, Magic 2010, and Zendicar.

So the best addition to magic was Landfall. So that was a mechanic introduced in Zendikar.

It has shown up in every Zendikar set and has shown up elsewhere.

It's shown up in a few other places, I think.

Modern Horizon sets and such.

So landfall was a really interesting...

So I had wanted to do a land-based, a land-mechanic-based set, or block, actually,

what would become Zendekar. And we spent a lot of time sort of looking at various mechanics.

What we ended up choosing was a mechanic that just rewarded you for playing land, which, by the way, is something you always do anyway. Like, it was a mechanic that just rewarded you for playing land,

which, by the way, is something you always do anyway.

Like, it was a really interesting eye-opener of that, hey,

every mechanic doesn't have to be about tension.

Every mechanic doesn't have to be, well, I have to make tough choices.

That I could just reward you for doing things you wanted to do. And even that had a lot of strategy into it. Um, landfall is one of the real,

what I call lenticular, meaning for the beginner, it does something they understand it. And for

the more advanced player, there's extra strategy. And the idea is for a beginner, look, every

time I play land, I just get a

reward. It's great. For the events player, oh, because I get a reward every time I play a

...