Design Files: Mirrodin, Part 1

In 2024, I began a new series called "Design Files." Back in the day, whenever I turned over a file for a Magic set, I would keep a copy of the file as it was handed off at the end of the design. In "Design Files," I take a look at that file and show off cards from it. Some of the designs went on to become printed cards in the set (often with changes), while others vanished into oblivion (or appeared in future sets).

Here are the three sets I've covered so far:

• Design Files: Tempest (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3)
• Design Files: Urza's Destiny (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3)
• Design Files: Odyssey (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4)

This time, I'm going to be talking about the fourth Standard-legal set I led the design for, Mirrodin. The Mirrodin block was the second-to-last block in what I call the third stage of Magic design. In this era, each block had a core mechanical theme. The Invasion block's theme was multicolor, the Odyssey block's theme was the graveyard, and the Onslaught block's theme was typal. I was eager to do a block focused on artifacts (my favorite set before coming to Wizards was Antiquities which will soon become quite apparent), so I asked Bill Rose, the head designer at the time, if I could lead the block, and he said yes. Remember, Mirrodin was created during the era of design and development, before today's exploratory design, vision, set, and play design structure.

One last thing before we begin, I've decided to change up how I do this series. Rather than break up the cards into different sections, I'm going to print the whole handoff file, in order, and then talk through cards as I go through it. I'm not going to comment on every card.

I'm dividing this file into four articles. Today, I will look at all the white and blue cards for the Mirrodin design file.

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"Bacon" Design File

July 28, 2001

The sets in the Mirrodin block were codenamed "Bacon," "Lettuce," and "Tomato."

This was part of a cycle of common creatures that each got enhanced when they were equipped. The final set only has a white card (Skyhunter Cub), which has different stats and gains flying instead of first strike.

This card was cut from the set. It would come back a little smaller in Betrayers of Kamigawa as Kami of False Hope.

This design became Leonin Elder. It lost the death trigger as we didn't feel the card needed it, which let us drop the card's mana cost to .

In the published set, affinity for artifacts only appears on blue cards and colorless artifacts. In the design handoff file, it appeared in every color except green. We were leaning into green being the biggest artifact-hating color.

Back in the day, we did more damage-prevention effects in white. Clearly, we were starting to do less of those as this creature didn't make the cut.

This card made it to print as Auriok Transfixer. It's almost identical, except it's a Human Scout. Note that Human doesn't appear in the design handoff file. That's because the Creative team hadn't yet pitched the "species and class" creature type proposal yet, where most humanoid creatures have one creature type for their species and one for their job or role. That proposal came during development. One side effect of that model was the introduction of the Human creature type. Since most creatures previously only had one creature type, creatures that depicted humans always listed their job. This was controversial at the time, and R&D had several large discussions about the addition of the Human creature type. We finally agreed with the caveat we wouldn't make Human typal cards. We would eventually go back on that decision in Innistrad.

Energy was one of the most prominent things in the Mirrodin design handoff file to not make it to print. That's what the @ symbol represents. Kaladesh design would later use to represent energy. Mirrodin is an artifact set, so I was looking for something new to do with artifacts. Inspired by Serrated Arrows from Homelands, I made artifacts with limited uses. I then came up with the idea of allowing those artifacts to share their uses, which led us to energy.

The design handoff file had too much stuff in it, so Bill Rose told me something had to be removed. As you will see, "artifacts matter" and energy were the two big themes, and artifacts were core to what we were doing. Energy also was the easiest to remove as it had less structural synergy. I took it out of the file and was intent on finding a home for it later. That took over a decade, but it did happen. In the design handoff file, only artifacts use energy, but we did let all the colors gain energy. We clearly had not figured out our energy economy (that would have been done in development). In Kaladesh, the set that introduced energy, almost all the cards that use energy also create it. It also appears on non-colorless cards and not just artifacts.

This card moved to black and became Moriok Scavenger. At the time, we decided it was this set's Gravedigger. Ironically, the design handoff file put it in the correct spot in terms of the color pie (from a modern perspective).

Mirrodin only has eight cards with affinity for artifacts. The design handoff file had a lot more.

Design did a lot of experimenting with different in-color ways to gain energy.

This was the period where I was cleaning the color pie a bit. One thing I did was try to focus artifact hate in green rather than white. Part of this involved introducing Naturalize in Onslaught as a replacement for Disenchant. By the time Mirrodin went to print, I had managed to make green the dominant color for artifact and enchantment removal, so all the white Disenchant cards in the set would later get cut. Years later, we decided that white and green could remove artifacts and enchantments.

The finished set had only four cards with a damage-prevention effect. This is high by modern standards but a lot lower than what was handed off. I also want to point out the question mark in the creature type line. Usually, we would fill in every aspect of the card with something, but not always.

Legends has a creature called Whirling Dervish that gets bigger whenever it deals combat damage to an opponent.

I was a huge fan of the card, so in Mirrodin design, I made a couple of "Dervishes" in white and red. The original design had them as 0/0 creatures that entered with a +1/+1 counter. The idea was that this would be easier to track. Development ended up turning these into a five-card cycle. We made a new creature type for them: Sliths.

This was another that we cut as we moved Disenchant effects out of white.

This shows us experimenting with different ways to capture elements of protection.

Because affinity for artifacts required playing a lot of artifacts, we experimented with different ways to interact with artifacts.

Argivian Archeologist from Antiquities was one of my favorite cards. I was trying to do a tweaked version of it here.

We ended up taking out white's Regrowth effects for artifacts. Years later, the Council of Colors would go back on that decision. My love of Antiquities is a major theme in this design handoff.

This was an attempt at an affinity for artifacts removal spell in white.

This was our attempt to create a card that could answer problematic creature abilities. It ended up being too weak to justify the card slot.

Affinity for basic land types first appeared in Darksteel, but we originally planned for it to be in Mirrodin.

Whenever I look back at design handoff files, I'm always struck by how often a certain effect will appear. I think this is the third Disenchant effect, and none of them made it to print.

In the handoff, we had a theme of white protecting your artifacts. Most of these designs never made it to print.

This is another damage-prevention effect that creates energy.

The finished set has a mass creature removal spell (Solar Tide) and a mass enchantment removal spell (Tempest of Light), but nothing that does both.

This became Second Sunrise. It's close to what we call a "brain to print" card where what is designed makes it all the way to a finished card as initially created. The printed card lists out the permanent types it returns, which matters now that we have other permanent types.

Gary Wise turned in the design for Chalice of the Void at the Magic Invitational, and we ended up putting it into Mirrodin. As this was too similar, we cut it.

I designed Flicker for Urza's Destiny. For many years, I tried to make a mass Flicker card. I would eventually get some made, but not in Mirrodin.

A slightly worse Stasis? I'm glad this got cut.

This is the blue creature in the "enhanced when equipped" cycle.

This card mixes affinity for artifacts with energy. Also, as this card demonstrates, we allowed players to steal energy from their opponents in blue, something we didn't do when energy eventually came out in Kaladesh.

Repeatably bouncing creatures turned out to be not that fun. This card does show a small theme of artifact cards being used as a resource.

The design handoff file has a number of cards with basically "artifactfall," or effects that trigger when an artifact enters. The finished set has a number of them but often with changed outputs.

Other than Vedalken becoming Drone, this card is exactly Somber Hoverguard.

This became Neurok Spy. The design was basically us making "artifactwalk" (in the style of landwalk).

While affinity for artifacts stayed in blue, this particular effect got cut.

I really liked this card. It was strictly weaker than the card Annul first printed in Urza's Saga, but I felt artifacts were important enough that it was okay to make a "strictly worse" card. I was using Mirrodin to make a lot of statements about how reprints can change power based on environment (more on this when we get to Terror and Shatter), and I liked the idea that a spell could be worse but still playable. Development felt we should just make it Annul, and we argued about it for many months. In the end, I lost the debate and "Malfunction" became Annul.

This was the original design of Thirst for Knowledge. I was trying to find a way to make a card-draw spell in blue that rewarded you for playing a lot of artifacts, and this was my best stab at it. It's intriguing that this isn't a brain-to-print card but inspired an entire string of designs.

Like "Malfunction," I was trying to make a narrower version of an existing card, but we ended up just making a basic bounce spell that bounces a permanent instead: Regress.

This spell would become Override. It's interesting that we missed the cost by .

As Mirrodin was the introduction of Equipment, we tried finding different ways for each color to interact with Equipment. In the end, we decided that every color didn't need to interact with Equipment. In the final set, we let white tutor for Equipment with Taj-Nar Swordsmith.

This was an uncommon that tapped to do what the common spell did. Here's a good tip: repeatable counterspells aren't much fun.

This effect ended up moving to white and the card became Auriok Steelshaper, as we decided white should be the color to care about Equipment.

This card was printed as Neurok Familiar. It almost didn't make it to print as there were members of R&D that were concerned it was too swingy.

This card would morph into Neurok Transmuter, which was printed in Darksteel.

Knowing how affinity for artifacts played out after Mirrodin's release, I'm glad we didn't print this card.

This card started as Ancestral Recall if you have enough artifacts. The printed version, Thoughtcast, draws two cards, which proved to be plenty powerful.

The design team included reprints we wanted to see in the file. Argivian Restoration is from Weatherlight. It didn't make it to print.

This spell was inspired by Mana Drain from Legends. As you can see, we were very interested in non-colorless spells that help you gain energy in different ways.

This is the card Broodstar. The only change is that Elemental became Beast.

This became Vedalken Archmage, which costs more. It's interesting to note a lot more blue cards from the design handoff file made it to print than white.

This doesn't copy all abilities because the rules don't allow that.

In the design file, we allowed blue a number of ways to get artifacts out of the graveyard. None of those made it to the final set.

I had made the card Bribery in Mercadian Masques and was attempting to do an artifact version here. Development stopped that from happening, and I'm glad they did. If only they had stopped Bribery.

This is another card playing into blue being the color that steals energy. This is also one of the few nonartifact cards with an activated ability that requires energy.

I really enjoy exchanging control of things. We ended up doing this effect on a different card, albeit in red (Confusion in the Ranks).

I would eventually make this card, even with the name Topsy Turvy, in Unhinged, though we tweaked it to be even weirder as an Un- card.

Neurok Familiar turned out to be okay, but this was a step too far.

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Through the Mirrodin

I hope you enjoyed looking through all the white and blue cards of the Mirrodin design handoff file. As always, I'm eager for any feedback, be it on today's article, any of the cards I talked about, or Mirrodin itself. You can email me with feedback or contact me through social media (Bluesky, Tumblr, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter).

Join me next week for black, red, and green cards.

Until then, may you find some Mirrodin cards to add to your decks.