Last week, I told some card-by-card design stories about reprints in Magic: The Gathering Foundations. This week, I'm telling card-by-card design stories for some of the new cards.

Curator of Destinies

0034_MTGFDN_MainNew: Curator of Destinies

The color pie has always been a core part of the game. One of the ideas we came up with in early Magic design is what we call iconic creatures. What if each color had a creature type that embodied the core of what the color was about? It was something we could put on rare (and later mythic rare) cards to make exciting ambassadors of the color.

White's and red's iconic creature types were clear out of the gate. Two of the most popular creatures in Limited Edition (Alpha) were Serra Angel and Shivan Dragon. Angels in Magic embody the sense of peace through structure. They work for the good of the community. Dragons, similarly, embody the sense of freedom through action. Dragons are guided by their own impulses and do what they want.

Black had two good choices: Vampires and Demons. Both Sengir Vampire and Lord of the Pit were popular cards. In the end, we decided Vampires made more sense as a characteristic creature type, letting them appear in higher numbers at common. This let Demons be the splashy rare creature that embodies black's ethos of power through opportunity. Demons will do whatever it takes to get the power they crave.

Green and blue didn't have options that were quite as obvious. The two most popular big creatures from Alpha were Force of Nature for green and Mahamoti Djinn for blue. In Alpha, Force of Nature was just listed as a Force. We would later change it to be an Elemental. We experimented with Elementals being green's iconic creature, but it failed on several counts. First, many colors wanted to have Elementals. Red and blue, for example, have elemental forces related to their color, fire and water. Elemental also didn't quite have the prestige that Angel, Dragon, and Demon had.

We tried Beast, Treefolk, Dinosaur, and more, but none captured the feeling we were looking for, and none embraced the audience in the way we needed. These creature types were best at lower rarities. We knew that green wanted a wilder creature, so we looked for something that felt home in a natural setting that embodied growth through acceptance. Eventually, we found that the answer was to take a creature that we had started in a different color and move it to green, bringing us to Hydras. There had been a Hydra in Alpha, but it was red. Hydras ended up being the perfect match for their feral nature, connection to the wilds, and their embodiment of growth through a growing number of heads.

For blue, we started with Djinns, but they didn't feel right in many settings. Also, Djinns are tied thematically to wish granting, which wasn't quite what we wanted. We also tried Serpents, Krakens, Shapeshifters, and Illusions. None captured the "perfection through knowledge" feeling we wanted. Eventually, we tried Sphinxes, which interestingly had also first appeared in a different color, the white Petra Sphinx in Legends. We wanted a flying creature that was thought of as smart, and Sphinxes ended up being the perfect fit.

When we were designing Foundations, we knew we wanted all the iconic creatures to show up multiple times. Some would be reprints and some would be new designs. My first design story today is about one of the new Sphinxes, Curator of Destinies.

The earliest version of the file had a reprint in this slot:

Stuffy Doll (version #1)
5
Artifact Creature — Construct
1/1
Indestructible
As Stuffy Doll enters, choose a player.
Whenever Stuffy Doll is dealt damage, it deals that much damage to the chosen player.
{T}: Stuffy Doll deals 1 damage to itself.

Yes, this slot started as Stuffy Doll, a Time Spiral card that referenced the nickname of a little doll that showed up in early Magic on cards like Black Vise and The Rack. The design team decided they would rather have a new design in this slot, which led them to this:

Cyborg Conversion Chamber (version #2)
6
Artifact
2, T: Put an enhancement counter on target creature you control. Creatures you control with enhancements on them have base power and toughness 8/8.

This card was an artifact that turned your creatures into 8/8 creatures. I believe this card lasted for one playtest. It was at this point that the designers realized there were too many colorless cards. When we build a file, we tend to balance the colors outside of mythic rares. That means if there are eight rare white cards, there are eight rare blue cards. Because of that, we usually add or subtract colorless cards, be they artifacts or lands, in groups of five. The design team didn't know what they wanted to do with this slot, but they knew it should be blue, for a little while the slot was just this:

Blue Rare Hole (version #3)
???

It was at this point that the team decided it was important to include the five iconic creatures. I believe that, at the time, there were no Sphinxes in the set. They decided that this slot, along with the card that would become Sphinx of Forgotten Lore, would be Sphinxes. Here was the first attempt at this card's design as a Sphinx:

Inscrutable Sphinx (version #4)
4UU
Creature — Sphinx
4/5
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, look at the top five cards of your library and separate them into a face-down pile and a face-up pile. An opponent chooses one of those piles. Put that pile into your hand and the other into your graveyard.

This creature's design borrowed from a mechanic that first showed up in Invasion.

The mechanic, while it wasn't officially named, was called "divvy" in design. The idea behind it was that one player was forced to take a number of cards and divide them into two piles. The other player would then pick one of the two piles. This proved to be skill testing and fun, and the card we chose to push with it, Fact or Fiction, became a tournament staple. For a while, it was the poster child for the cards that Spikes liked to see. It was a card that got more powerful the more skilled you were at the game.

Eldritch Moon built upon the divvy mechanic by having one of the piles be put face down, adding some unknown information to the mix. That proved to be fun and showed up on a number of cards. When creating this Sphinx, the design team decided to put the divvying into the hands of the Sphinx's controller, as the Sphinx being the source of the mystery felt flavorful. It also allowed the controller of the Sphinx to have the fun of dividing the cards.

The design team liked how the card was playing but realized that there was room to add some creature abilities:

Inscrutable Sphinx (version #5)
5U
Creature — Sphinx
5/5
Flying, vigilance
When CARDNAME enters, look at the top five cards of your library and separate them into a face-down pile and a face-up pile. An opponent chooses one of those piles. Put that pile into your hand and the other into your graveyard.

They added flying, as all Sphinxes fly, and vigilance, an ability we'd recently added to blue. They also changed it from a 4/5 to a 5/5. Here was the next iteration:

Inscrutable Sphinx (version #6)
4UU
Creature — Sphinx
4/4
Flash
Flying
When CARDNAME enters, look at the top five cards of your library and separate them into a face-down pile and a face-up pile. An opponent chooses one of those piles. Put that pile into your hand and the other into your graveyard.

This version dropped from a 5/5 to a 4/4 and lost vigilance, but it gained flash. This allowed you to keep mana up on your turn for counterspells and then cast it at the end of your opponent's turn. It turned out there were too many rare blue creatures that had flash, so they decided to give it "can't be countered" instead. This gave it a distinct role against other blue decks. It also allowed them to return it to a 5/5.

Finally, here is the art description for the card. As a note, FRM is short for "Farmer," the code name of Magic: The Gathering Foundations.

Set Code: FRM
Plane: N/A
Color: Creature associated with blue mana.
Location: A misty waterfall
Action: Show an ENIGMATIC SPHINX—human's head, lion's body, bird-like wings—emerging from the waterfall, wings spread wide. There are beautiful stone cairns (see references) stacked artfully on either side of the sphinx. Maybe the sphinx gestures to them, as though offering you a choice. The sphinx's appearance and costuming are inspired by the concept of duality or "twos." Maybe they wear a mask with two visually distinct halves.
Focus: The sphinx
Mood: Pray that you choose correctly.

Hare Apparent

0015_MTGFDN_MainNew: Hare Apparent

To appreciate the story of this card's design, we'll also begin this tale all the way back during Alpha design in August of 1993.

When Magic first came out, there was only one deck-construction rule: your deck had to be a minimum of 40 cards. Yes, 40 cards. Constructed decks being 60 cards wouldn't happen until Wizards formed the DCI (Duelists' Convocation International), and thus sanctioned play, in early 1994. The 40-card limit was kept for Limited play.

The lack of rules meant there weren't any card restrictions. A deck could have as many copies of a card as it wanted. Plague Rats was clearly designed with this in mind. One of the popular early decks had only three unique cards in it: Swamp, Dark Ritual, and Plague Rats.

Inspired by the popularity of Plague Rats, R&D kept making more Rats, and many of them got more powerful the more Rats you controlled.

During Fifth Dawn design, we decided it was time to redo Plague Rats as originally intended. We made three small changes. First, this card would be a 2/2 instead of a 1/1. Second, it'd cost 1BB instead of 2B. Third, we added "A deck can have any number of cards named CARDNAME." This would allow you to play as many as you wanted regardless of the restriction of the format you were playing.

R&D nicknamed the ability "relentless" after Relentless Rats. We used it sparingly. The next relentless cards were also black cards. Shadowborn Apostle has an ability that works best when you have several copies in your deck. Rat Colony was another tweak of Plague Rats, although one that allowed you to play it alongside other Rats.

Persistent Petitioners would be the first non-black card with the relentless ability. Like Rat Colony, it leaned into a typal reward rather than calling out other cards with its exact name.

Strixhaven: School of Mages brought the ability to red and noncreature cards. Dragon's Approach made use of the graveyard to care about having multiple copies. Like Shadowborn Apostle, the card had an ability that worked best with more than the standard four-card limit.

Murders at Karlov Manor introduced the first green card with the relentless ability and the first one to make tokens.

Magic: The Gathering – Assassin's Creed® introduced the first white relentless card. Templar Knight relies on tapping other copies of the card rather than sacrificing or exiling them.

This brings us to Magic: The Gathering Foundations.

Hare Apparent showed up early in design, though without the relentless mechanic.

Relentless Rabbits (version #1)
1W
Creature — Rabbit
2/2
CARDNAME has +4/+4 as long as you control six or more Rabbits.

The first version was just a Rabbit typal card. It was a two-mana 2/2 with a dream!

Relentless Rabbits (version #2)
1W
Creature — Rabbit
2/2
CARDNAME has +4/+4 as long as you control six or more Rabbits.
A deck may contain any number of copies of CARDNAME.

The design team quickly realized that the set didn't have enough support for a common Rabbit typal card, as the set had only two Rabbits. They were both common, but the as-fan still wasn't high enough. While trying to think of a way to fix this, they came across the idea of adding the "relentless" ability. The fact that "relentless" shows up in the name tells me they were considering the ability from the start, even if the first version didn't include it.

Putting it on a Rabbit felt like a flavor win and allowed the card to properly support itself in Constructed. In addition, as I explained in my first Foundations preview article, we were trying to include as many fan-favorite things as we could, and the relentless ability seemed like a good inclusion.

Relentless Rabbits (version #3)
1W
Creature — Rabbit
2/1
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, create a 1/1 white Rabbit creature token for each other creature you control named CARDNAME.
A deck may contain any number of copies of CARDNAME.

After playtesting, we realized the 6/6 Rabbit wasn't particularly enticing. It seldom grew to that size and, even when it did, it did so late enough that a 6/6 creature without evasion wasn't all that impactful. What if the ability was something more immediately useful that would get powerful over time? Playing into the Rabbit theme, the design team tried creating Rabbit creature tokens. The theme had been super fun in Bloomburrow.

Relentless Rabbits (version #4)
1W
Creature — Rabbit
1/1
When CARDNAME enters, create a number of 1/1 white Rabbit creature tokens equal to the number of creatures you control named CARDNAME.
A deck may contain any number of copies of CARDNAME.

The next version dropped it to a 1/1 to have all the Rabbits be the same size, but testing in play design showed the card to be fun and brought it back to a 2/2. The editing and typesetting team also started fiddling with the template. 

Next, I wanted to show something I don't normally get to show you. Just as the design of the card can change over time, so too can the art description. Normally, I just show the final version of it, but this one changed a bit, so I thought it would be fun to show you the initial version versus the final version, just so you can see the small details that evolved as the card subtly changed.

Here's the initial art description:

Set Code: FRM
Plane: Bloomburrow
Color: Creature associated with white mana
Location: A rabbitfolk home interior (p. 167–170)
Action: Show a proud but humble RABBITFOLK (p. 6 and 154–162) standing in front of a massive FAMILY PORTRAIT. The rabbit has the appearance of a cottontail. The portrait behind it depicts many more rabbits of varying ages (p. 12 for elderly rabbits), colors, and professions. They might be cooks, farmers, clerks, or guides, equipped with tools of their trade (give them fruit/vegetable themes, such as a trowel made from a melon slice; see p. 14–17 and 163–164 for inspiration). Feel free to put more rabbits in the house so long as they do not detract focus away from our first, central rabbit.
Focus: The rabbitfolk
Mood: A big happy rabbit family! Rural, simple, but fierce.

Here's the final art description.

Set Code: FRM
Plane: Bloomburrow
Color: Creature associated with white mana
Location: Decadent rabbitfolk home interior (p. 167–170)
Action: Show a RABBITFOLK ARISTOCRAT posed regally in front of a massive oil painting of a FAMILY PORTRAIT. The rabbit has the appearance of a Lionhead rabbit (see reference). The portrait behind the rabbit is packed to the brim with many more Lionhead rabbits of varying sizes, colors, and ages (see p. 6, 11–21, and 154–172 for rabbitfolk, costuming, design language, and motifs).
Focus: The rabbitfolk
Mood: A proud lineage.

Zul Ashur, Lich Lord

0077_MTGFDN_MainNew: Zul Ashur, Lich Lord

As part of the larger goal of making sure the set hit different parts of Magic, some slots were labeled for what they needed to capture. Whether they were reprints or new cards was left up to the design team. Basically, they would start by looking for a reprint, but if they didn't find something they were happy with, they could design a new card. This slot started simply as the Necromancer slot. Black likes using the dead as a resource, and Zombies are a popular creature type.

The first stab at this slot was a reprint:

Xathrid Necromancer (version #1)
2B
Creature — Human Wizard
2/2
Whenever Xathrid Necromancer or another Human creature you control dies, create a tapped 2/2 black Zombie creature token.

The design team played with Xathrid Necromancer from Magic 2014 in a playtest. They found the Human restriction a bit narrow, so they decided to create a new card that was a tweak of this idea but something a little broader in appeal:

Headless Rider (version #2)
2B
Creature — Zombie
3/1
Whenever Headless Rider or another nontoken Zombie you control dies, create a 2/2 black Zombie creature token.

Headless Rider from Innistrad: Crimson Vow can turn any nontoken Zombie into a Zombie token. By limiting the trigger to nontoken creatures, the card stays powerful without enabling oppressive combos. If the growing army of Zombies can't be killed, they'll become impossible to deal with. Also, to make the creature a little more aggressive and increase its chances of dying, the creature is a 3/1.

Necromantic Lich (version #3)
2B
Creature — Zombie Wizard
2/2
You may cast Zombie spells from your graveyard.
Whenever a Zombie enters the battlefield, if you cast it from your graveyard, put a finality counter on it. (If a creature with a finality counter on it would die, exile it instead.)

Headless Rider played okay, but the design team thought they could do something even more flavorful. What if the card could cast Zombies from your graveyard? That felt like a flavor slam dunk. Worried that the card would just keep casting the same Zombies over and over, they added a finality counter to them. Finality counters are a recent tool that we've used with certain effects, reanimation being a big one, to keep the effect to a single use.

Necromantic Lich (version #4)
1B
Creature — Zombie Warlock
2/2
Menace (This creature can't be blocked except by two or more creatures.)
Once during each of your turns, you may cast a Zombie spell from your graveyard.

This next pass has some play-balance fixes. The ability to cast Zombies out of the graveyard was limited to once per turn as it proved to be a little too efficient. To offset this, the creature cost one mana less, gained menace, and the Zombie-casting ability lost the finality-counter drawback.

Prevna, Necromantic Lich (version #5)
1B
Legendary Creature — Zombie Warlock
2/2
Menace (This creature can't be blocked except by two or more creatures.)
Once during each of your turns, you may cast a Zombie spell from your graveyard.

The design team got two pieces of feedback. One, the card was problematic if you could get more than one copy on the battlefield because it helped offset the once-per-turn restriction. Also, the Casual Play team thought it was a fun effect for a commander. Making the creature legendary solved both problems. The one challenge was a rule we'd implemented where every legendary creature in Foundations had to be a pre-existing character. That meant the Creative team had to search for creatures that had been referenced and fit the role of a Zombie Warlock.

It turns out there was a lich lord named Zul Ashur who had first appeared in flavor text on a card in Magic 2012 and went on to appear in the flavor text of six more cards over several sets. It was the perfect kind of character to immortalize as a card.

Finally, here is the art description for the card:

Set Code: FRM
Plane: Setting not specific
Color: Creature associated with black mana
Location: A graveyard
Action: Show us a MENACING WARLOCK that is a FEMALE LICH. Show her striding through a graveyard as zombie hands reach up from the soil. The lich's hands brush the fingertips of the hands she passes by as purplish energy crackles between them.
Focus: The lich
Mood: A powerful tyrant.

Lastly, the card had flavor text written for it that didn't end up fitting. Here, for the first time, is that flavor text:

"You pity me? My soul was a small price to pay for this power. I would trade it a thousand times over without a second thought."

Designs Look Good

That's all the time I have for today. As always, I'm eager for any thoughts on today's column, any of the cards I discussed, or Foundations as a whole. You can email me or contact me through any of my social media accounts (X, Tumblr, Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok).

Join me next week for another installment of "Lessons Learned."

Until then, may you enjoy playing with Foundations as much as we enjoyed making the set.