Back to the Future Sight, Part 2
Last week, I began examining all the futureshifted cards from Future Sight to talk about how they came about and predict their chances of seeing a "preprint" in the future. There was a lot of cards, so I have some more to talk about.
If you need a reminder of how I'm grading the cards, click below.
Click here to see grading
For each card, I'm going to grade its chances of ever being reprinted, in a premier set or a supplemental set with new cards as a significant element of the product, using one of four grades: Likely, Unlikely, Very Unlikely, or Already Reprinted. Here's what each means:
Likely – This is a card that I can see us reprinting in the right environment. It's a reprint card I have actual hope of us maybe one day reprinting, although that day might not be soon.
Unlikely – This is a card that I don't see us reprinting, but possibly under the right circumstances.
Very Unlikely – This is a card I am skeptical will ever get reprinted.
Already Reprinted – I'm assuming you understand this one.
I'll start off with where I ended last week.
Ghostfire
This card has yet to be reprinted, but it's probably had more influence on Magic than any other futureshifted card. Let's start with the mechanics. I designed this card because I believed there would come a day where we would make spells that costed colored mana but were colorless. As many of the things I was predicting mechanically, I didn't know where or how we would use it, I just recognized it was a tool we'd probably need one day. I also liked it as a futureshifted card, as it captured the quality of being something you'd never seen but did so very simply. The set had so much complexity that I was always looking for ways to capture our goals on simple cards whenever possible. This was just a normal direct-damage spell in every way but one.
Obviously, years later, I would find a use for this mechanic in Battle for Zendikar. I needed to find a way to make the Eldrazi feel different in a way that was applicable to any kind of spell at any rarity while being simple. The "
The more interesting part of this story, though, is the creative side of things. The rationale for it being colorless was that the magic was invisible. Yes, it cost red mana to cast, but the spell itself had no observable quality to it. To help convey this flavor, the following flavor text was written: Only those gifted with the eye of Ugin, the spirit dragon, can see his fiery breath. The writer of the flavor text (whom I'd credit if I could remember them) just made up everything beyond "it's invisible." Ugin, the spirit dragon, wasn't a character that we'd made yet. The flavor text writer was just creating a cool possible future piece of creative.
That flavor text so spoke to the Creative team (as well as the players) that they ended up making Ugin and wove him into the story. If you've enjoyed any of Ugin's story—all of it started with this little piece of flavor text.
I'm always on the lookout for a chance to put a futureshifted card in the set, so Battle for Zendikar seemed like a perfect opportunity to reprint
I do think there's a good chance we could find a place to reprint this card someday.
Reprint Chances: Likely
Goldmeadow Lookout
This card was part of a cycle.
You'll notice that the other four cards in the cycle weren't futureshifted. Here's how that happened. We came up with a cool idea of making a cycle of Spellshapers that all discarded a card to make a creature token; but not just any creature token, a creature token that was a copy of an existing Magic card. We then decided it would be cool if one of the cards of the cycle was a futureshifted card that made a creature token of a card that didn't yet exist but would. After looking at all our choices for cool cards to make tokens of, we decided white had the fewest good choices and made a future card for it to create.
Both
Reprint Chances: Unlikely
Grave Scrabbler
This card came about because we were mashing two previously existing things together—the madness mechanic along with the card
Reprint Chances: Unlikely
Grinning Ignus
Reprint Chances: Unlikely
Henchfiend of Ukor
Michael Elliott first suggested echo during Tempest design. I think it might have been part of his homemade set, Astral Ways. We ended up pushing it back to Urza's Saga. Time Spiral block brought echo back, this time allowing the echo cost to be different than the mana cost.
Reprint Chances: Very Unlikely
Imperial Mask
Reprint Chances: Unlikely
Imperiosaur and Muraganda Petroglyphs
As much as the Design team was trying to hint at future mechanics, the Creative team was trying to hint at future worlds. One of the worlds that's forever been on the short list of possibilities is a prehistoric world. At the time, we hadn't done a world where Dinosaurs played a large role, and a prehistoric world felt like the best fit, so the creative world didn't just make a prehistoric world, they named it—Muraganda. The Creative team then tied two cards we made that played into simpler aspects of the game (using mana from basic lands and rewarding vanilla creatures) to Muraganda.
Muraganda is a frequent request for a world to visit. There's just one problem. Neither of these two mechanics is very fruitful and not the kind of thing you'd build a world around. So, we're kind of hesitant to visit Muraganda because we don't think we can meet expectations while building an interesting world mechanically. I hope one day to solve this problem, but I have no hope of it being soon. That causes a real problem for
Reprint Chances: Likely (
Logic Knot, Death Rattle, and Tombstalker
Of all the new mechanics we created in Future Sight, the one I had the most hope for was delve. (A hint was that it's the mechanic with the most cards that's not in a cycle—three.) I kept looking at a place to put it. I tried it in Innistrad, but it created too much tension with flashback and other mechanics that cared about the graveyard. We ultimately found a home for it in Khans of Tarkir as the mechanic of the Sultai clan. I was determined to reprint one of the three Future Sight cards with delve in one of the two sets with the mechanic.
How about
The problem the three cards all have is delve ended up being a bit overpowered as a mechanic, so just the mechanic coming back is a longshot, making these three reprints an even bigger longshot. Normally, I'd say that maybe this could be printed in a set focused in a format other than Standard, but delve has proven to be problematic in most larger formats.
Reprint Chances: Very Unlikely
Lucent Liminid
I knew I wanted to eventually use enchantment creatures in a design. I just didn't know where, so the creative treatment on this card was just a random guess. That world ended up being Theros. We talked about including
I do believe we will use enchantment creatures on worlds other than Theros, so
Reprint Chances: Likely
Lumithread Field, Whetwheel, Whip-Spine Drake, and Zoetic Cavern
Morph was a byproduct of the Rules team trying to solve the rules for the cards
The other three cards were part of a futureshifted vertical cycle. Morph had only ever been used on creatures, so we made three cards that had morph on the other three permanent types (planeswalker cards wouldn't become a thing until the next set, Lorwyn). The common was a land with morph (
I think off-color morph is more likely to see print than non-creature morph, as non-creature morph has a lot of play and rules issues to be worked through.
Reprint Chances: Likely (
Sliver Cycle
Slivers were another creation from Mike Elliott's Astral Ways set. They first showed up in Tempest and then returned in Legions and again in Time Spiral. In Future Sight, we decided to make a futureshifted cycle of them with each one granting all slivers an ability never before seen. The chance of seeing any one of these return is low as it requires that we do the mechanic and make a set with Slivers. The more interesting question is what chances do we have to see of each of the five mechanics?
Absorb – This mechanic was inspired by a mechanic we'd made for the Star Wars Trading Card Game called Armor I think. It ended up being a little more powerful than we'd expected and slowed games down, so I'm not too optimistic of its return.
Type cycling – Scourge had introduced basic land cycling, where you could cycle your cards and instead of getting a random card, you searched your library for a specific basic land. Type cycling was the same thing, except you got a specific creature type. It shows up not just on
Fateseal – Fateseal is basically scrying another player. It's straightforward, and since Future Sight, scry has even become evergreen. The problem is that it's just not fun. It feels really bad to have your opponent scry your library. So, this is another mechanic I'm not too optimistic about.
Frenzy – This mechanic was made as a mechanic to encourage blocking. Don't block me, I get bigger. I've tried to put frenzy in numerous sets, but Play Design is not a fan. I've been told the play pattern is not that fun. I will say of all the mechanics on the Slivers this (or maybe poisonous) has the best chance of seeing the light of day, but that's a low bar.
Poisonous – This was me planting a flag in the ground that poison was going to return one day. I basically just keyworded how poison had always been used in the past. We even started Scars of Mirrodin design with poisonous as our Phyrexian mechanic, but playtests showed that players tended to die to the damage before the poison. It also wasn't very interactive in creature combat. Our solution was infect. Infect had its own issues, and I do think poison will return one day, so maybe poisonous will get another chance.
Reprint Chances: Very Unlikely (
Mistmeadow Skulk
This card introduced protection from particular converted mana costs. It would get reprinted less than a year later in Shadowmoor. As with all the "preprints" in the following year, we planned it ahead of time. We would go on to do protection from converted mana costs on a handful of other cards (
Reprint Chances: Already Reprinted
Nacatl War-Pride
This card was experimenting with making token copies of itself when attacking. I believe it was trying to be a different take on
Reprint Chances: Very Unlikely
Narcomoeba
This card was designed during the same session that I designed
Reprint Chances: Already Reprinted
Dual Land Cycle
This is the cycle of dual lands that I talked about two weeks ago where each dual land in the cycle is from a different potential future dual land cycle. Let's talk about each of the lands.
Reprint Chances: Already Reprinted (
Nix
One of the ways you can tell the futureshifted designs were hard to do is that we included a few spells like
Reprint Chances: Likely
The Foreseeable Future
I've run out of time yet again. I hope my stories have been enjoyable. I find the futureshifted sheet such a fun moment in Magic history. As always, I want to hear what you think about today's column and any of the cards I've talked about. You can write to me through my email or contact me through any of my social media accounts (Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, and TikTok).
Join me next time for my annual State of Design address before we return for more Future Sight designs.
Until then, may you dream of an exciting future.
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