Building Foundations: Something Old

In honor of the soon-to-be-released Magic: The Gathering Foundations, I decided that for today I would tell some stories about the making of some of the reprints. I hope you enjoy it.

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Micromancer (Dominaria United)

In Limited Edition (Alpha), Richard Garfield created the card Demonic Tutor. It was a sorcery that allowed you to fetch any card out of the library and put it into your hand. The effect was so popular (partly because of how strong it was) that "tutoring" quickly became a slang term for an effect that lets you search your library for a card. It usually went into your hand, but later we started making some versions that went to the top of your library to power down the effect slightly.

Magic designers were very liberal with designing tutors in the early days of the game. They were popular, and there were a lot of subsets we could allow players to search for. Tutors started showing up in every color. We even started making mechanics that let you tutor, such as transmute, the Dimir mechanic from Ravnica: City of Guilds.

Eventually, we realized we had to be a bit more careful with tutoring. An important part of Magic is the randomization of your library. We don't want every game to play out the same way. Tutoring tends to make the game repetitive. We didn't want to eliminate tutoring, as it is an effect players enjoy, but we wanted to be more careful about what we were tutoring for. In general, the more specific the subset of cards we were looking for, the better.

Some years later, we were working on Fifth Dawn. The Mirrodin block was the first block with an "artifact matters" theme. While the Urza's Saga block was given the name "The Artifacts Cycle" for story purposes and there were a lot of powerful artifacts in it, the set mechanically was about enchantments. Mirrodin and the small set that followed it, Darksteel, ended up breaking the Standard environment. We managed to figure this out as we started making Fifth Dawn, so we were instructed to avoid using most of the mechanics from earlier in the block. That led us to push in a new direction and create a five-color theme, with the sunburst mechanic being the loudest component of the set with that theme.

But we were still in part of the Mirrodin block, so it was important to me to make sure Fifth Dawn had a strong artifact component. We just had to find new space to explore. One of the areas I was interested in was what I dubbed "cogs," which were artifacts that costed one or less mana. The idea behind cogs was that they were cheap artifacts that had small functions, but ones that could be valuable in the right circumstance. Aaron Forsythe, who was on the design team to document the process for the Magic website, realized that a creature that tutored for cogs would be interesting.

Trinket Mage hit a sweet spot for tutoring in that it hit a subset of cards that were niche enough in nature that you often didn't get the same one. Also, the fact that the cards never cost more than one mana meant they weren't particularly powerful cards and seldom won the game by themselves. Trinket Mage was so popular that it spawned two different design paths. The first of these are what I'll call the "T Mages," which tutor for artifacts of a specific mana value range. Trinket Mage gets mana value 1 or less, Tribute Mage gets 2, Trophy Mage gets 3, and Treasure Mage gets 6 or more—yes, that means we haven't finished this cycle yet.

Micromancer is a card in the second design path. This is a creature that tutors for a card of a specific type that costs one or less.

Ranger of Eos was a Magic Invitational card designed by Antoine Ruel. It searched for two cards rather than one. The original Modern Horizons set riffed on this card with Ranger-Captain of Eos, which tutored for only one creature. Micromancer continues this path by being a creature that tutors for an instant or sorcery with mana value 1 or less. So yes, that does mean this path also has some cards yet to be designed, although the enchantment version is the main one. Lands all have a mana value of 0, and we don't make many planeswalkers or battles that cost one or less mana.

Omniscience (Magic 2013)

My story about this card has nothing to do with the card design itself. I wasn't on the Magic 2013 design team where it was first created. In fact, I didn't do any design work on the set at all. I mostly work on the premier sets that aren't core sets, which keeps me busy. But, as with any set, there's a period where we review each card. In 2013, we would all get together in the same room and watch the cards in a slide show on a big screen in collector number order. The idea was that we could take notes to send to the design team for last-minute changes. What often happened was, because we were all in the same room, people would yell things out. Nowadays, the slide show has become part of our gate system, which includes a series of meetings that occur as a set advances through different levels of production.

We were in the middle of looking at the blue cards when Omniscience popped up. Well, not exactly Omniscience. It had the same mana cost and rules text as the printed version, but it had a different name. The card was called Omnipotence. I had a strong reaction to seeing the name. Here, presented with dramatic license, is the commentary between me and whatever editor was showing the cards:

Me: Omnipotence?
Editor: Yes.
Me: That's the final name?
Editor: That's the planned final name.
Me: You can't call it Omnipotence.
Editor: The name has never been used and it matches the effect of the card, so I believe we can call it Omnipotence.
Me: Omnipotence is the name of a black card.
Editor: There is no black card called Omnipotence.
Me: I mean, when the name gets used, it should be on a black card.
Editor: This card is blue, so I would argue it won't be.
Me: No, each color has a goal and a means to accomplish that goal.
Editor: So?
Me: The color black's goal is power, and it achieves it through opportunity.
Editor: And?
Me: Omnipotence means "the quality of having unlimited power."
Editor: I'm aware of what it means.
Me: It's the color black's goal. We can't give a blue card a name that relates to black's goal.
Editor: What's blue's ultimate goal?
Me: Technically, perfection, but it's means to accomplish that goal is knowledge. The "quality of having unlimited knowledge" is omniscience.
Editor: So, could we call this Omniscience?
Me: Yes.
Editor: Okay, done.

I promise one day we'll make a black card called Omnipotence. And yes, I'm aware that Fraying Omnipotence is a card.

Phyrexian Arena (Apocalypse)

I'll start with a trivia question. What was the first black card that allowed you to draw an extra card at the cost of losing some amount of life?

Greed didn't see much play, but Necropotence's effect was so dominant that the summer of 1996 was referred to as "Black Summer." It took a little time for players to realize how powerful Necropotence was and to discover how well other cards from 1996 played with it.

In the fall of 1997, Mirage had the first sorcery with the effect.

It required a lot of commitment, as it required you to draw four cards and lose half your life rounded up. This effect was then used on a Portal card with a slight name change. Portal was an early intro-level product that I talked about during my first Foundations preview column.

Portal Second Age made a slightly tamer version that allowed you to draw three cards for just 3 life. That card got a new name in Portal Three Kingdoms. It's interesting that it was Portal that sent us down the path of "life for cards" as a one-shot effect.

The Tempest block and Urza's Saga block each took a shot at trading life for cards. Necrologia in Exodus was essentially a one-shot Necropotence. Yawgmoth's Bargain from Urza's Destiny was my attempt at redoing Necropotence but angling it to be more like Greed. When I handed the card over from vision design, it said "Pay 2 life: Draw a card" for three black mana. It's important to note that Greed required black mana for its activation cost. The development team weakened it by upping the cost to four generic mana and two black mana, though they lowered the activated ability to 1 life per card. The card still proved to be incredibly broken and has been banned in several formats.

This brings us to Apocalypse. Each color had a mechanical theme running through it. For black, that was life for cards. The initial design for the set had a common cantrip called Last Caress, then a vertical cycle of Gargantuans. There was a common 2/2 that drew you one card for 1 life, an uncommon 4/4 that drew you two cards for 2 life, and a rare 8/8 that drew you four cards for 4 life. We eventually decided the 8/8 wasn't exciting enough, so we took another stab at a Necropotence-like enchantment.

This time, you were forced to pay 1 life each turn to draw a card, but you'd be limited to only one extra card per turn. Unlike many other Necropotence variants, we didn't remove your draw step ability. While this card didn't break things like Necropotence, it was very good and saw a lot of tournament play. It was definitely one of the cards that Play Design was carefully watching when they put it into Foundations, but playtesting showed that it was okay. I think of it as a piece of Magic history, so I'm happy it was able to stay in Foundations.

Overrun (Tempest)

This design story is not a long one, but it's a cute one. When I was hired at Wizards, it was as a developer, not a designer. I figured it was good to get my foot in the door and that I'd find a way to show off what I could do as a designer. Most of R&D would spend their time after work playing games, many of which Richard Garfield introduced us to. One day, I was talking with Richard after hours, and he mentioned that he'd enjoy working on a Magic design team again. I went to Joel Mick, the head designer at the time, and told him that I'd like to lead the upcoming fall set and that Richard said he'd be on my design team. Joel said okay, and before I knew it, Richard, Mike Elliott, Charlie Catino, and I were at Richard's parents' house in Portland for an off-site Tempest design meeting.

Before the off-site meeting started, I asked people to design whatever excited them. Then, on the first day of the off-site meeting, we went through various people's designs. I'd been doing Magic design in my spare time since Limited Edition (Alpha) came out, so I had notebooks of designs. Mike did as well. Like me, he was hired as a developer but wanted to be a designer. One of the designs from my notebook from that day was Overrun. The idea behind it was simple. Let's take a core green Magic spell, Giant Growth, and just make it splashier. Rather than making the effect bigger, I expanded the range of what it affected. If giving one creature +3/+3 is exciting, how about all your creatures? I added trample for a little extra oomph.

So, there we are on the first day. I read Overrun, and both Mike and Richard had a similar card. "We definitely have to include that," I said. Overrun went into the set and made it to print close to its initial version. The card went on to be a popular card and has been reprinted multiple times, making it a classic that Foundations had to include.

Solemn Simulacrum (Mirrodin)

For those unaware of my Magic origin story, I got my start with Wizards creating a puzzle column called "Magic: The Puzzling" for a Magic magazine that Wizards published called The Duelist. They were much like chess puzzles where it showed you your hand and a board state and challenged you to find the way to win this turn. At least, most did. A few puzzles had other goals. The success of these puzzles led me to write articles for the magazine. Those articles led to various freelancing writing opportunities within Wizards, which, in turn, led me to getting my job in R&D.

When I started in R&D, I became the liaison between R&D and The Duelist. I continued making puzzles and writing columns. When the original editor-in-chief, Kathryn Haines, left Wizards, I became the editor-in-chief. That is where our story begins. The Duelist's producer was a woman named Wendy Noritake. Wendy and I were always looking for opportunities for promotion, so I started running a tournament series at Gen Con which was branded with The Duelist name. It was called The Duelist Team Challenge. In it, teams of three competed, and each member played a different Constructed format.

The Duelist Team Challenge went so well that Wendy wanted to think bigger. She had the budget to run our own event, but it wasn't a lot of money. She asked if I could think of a tournament idea that would be splashy and high profile while not costing a lot of money to run. The idea I pitched was based on the All-Star Game in sports like baseball. At the time, I ran the feature matches at the Pro Tour and knew all the top players. What if we had a round-robin tournament where every player plays every other player once with sixteen of the biggest names in competitive Magic?

From a budgeting perspective, it would rely on eighteen plane tickets (the sixteen players, myself, and another writer to cover the event for The Duelist), nine shared hotel rooms, and a place to play for a few days. The budget could cover that, but that's all it could cover. That meant I had one more problem to solve. I needed a prize for the event that didn't cost any money. My favorite idea was to let the winner make a Magic card.

R&D was a bit skeptical when I first pitched it, but I explained that it wouldn't be the final product. The card would go through the normal design process and change as needed for the set it would appear in. I would work with the player to keep them in the loop of what was happening with the card and ensure they were happy with it. I got sign-off, and "make your own Magic card" officially became the prize for The Duelist Invitational, later known as the Magic Invitational.

The first invitational was held in Hong Kong. Hong Kong was supposed to host the very first Grand Prix, but that fell through, so they used The Duelist Invitational as a draw for the large event. It was won by Olle Rade, who would eventually be inducted into the Magic Hall of Fame. He turned in a joke card that didn't do anything. I asked him for an actual submission, but never got one, so we didn't make a card for him. Not a great first showing for what I thought was a cool prize.

The second invitational was held in Rio de Janeiro and was won by another Hall of Fame player, Darwin Kastle. Unlike Olle, Darwin was very excited by the prize and had his card design, Avalanche Riders, ready to go. I worked with Darwin on his card to include a new mechanic in the set called echo. It was printed in Urza's Legacy. It just so happened, due to a weird series of events, that I was writing the art descriptions for Urza's Legacy. Since Darwin's card had a person on it, I asked if the artist could make that person Darwin. My art director said sure, so we did.

Avalanche Riders went on to be a big hit, both in gameplay and for Darwin. My dream of the invitational prize being something sought after finally came to fruition. From that point forward, invitational players were excited about the prize. The winner being pictured on the card became an expected thing. Olle even came back years later and asked him if he could get his card for winning the first invitational. I said yes, but the image of Olle had to look like he did when he won the event. Since then, he had been in the army and shaved off his long golden locks.

Some years later, we were hosting the 2002 Magic Invitational. This was the first year the invitational was played on Magic Online and was held at the Wizards of the Coast headquarters in Renton, Washington. The event was won by a 22-year-old Swedish student named Jens Thoren. Here's the card he turned in before the event began, which was the standard procedure so the spectators knew what each player was playing for:

Forestfolk
2GU
Creature — Elf Wizard
2/2
When Forestfolk comes into play, you may search your library for a basic land card and put that card into play tapped. Then shuffle your library.
When Forestfolk leaves play, draw a card.

One of my goals for the invitational card was to always adapt it to the set it appeared in. Jens's card was being printed in Mirrodin, which had a strong artifacts theme. What if we turned Forestfolk into an artifact creature? Artifacts with a color weren't a thing yet, so we had to give it a generic mana cost. We started at four to match the mana value Jens had given it. If it was too strong, we knew we could change it or possibly change the power and toughness of the creature. The card ended up being quite good, but not too good, so we left it as it was. Here's the card as it was printed in Mirrodin:

Solemn Simulacrum has gone on to be a fan favorite and has seen numerous reprints, including appearances in Magic 2012, Kaladesh Inventions, Duel Decks: Elves vs. Inventors, Core Set 2021, Time Spiral Remastered, Commander Masters, and over a dozen Commander decks. Now, Solemn Simulacrum rejoins Standard in Foundations.

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"Storytime Is Over"

That's all the time I have for today. I hope you enjoyed the stories. As always, I'm eager for any feedback, be it about today's column, any of the cards I talked about, or on Foundations itself. You can email me or contact me through any of my social media accounts (X, Tumblr, Instagram, and TikTok).

Join me next week for some stories about designing new-to-Magic cards from Foundations.

Until then, may the nostalgia run high.