Every three or four years, I get a new computer. When I do that, I'm careful to make sure all my old files get uploaded, because I have every file since I started working at Wizards back in 1995. Usually, when someone leaves Wizards, their computer is erased and given to another person, which means there are a lot of older documents that only exist on my computer.

It was time for another computer change, so I was looking back at my old files and found something pretty cool that I've never shown my audience. Back in the day, whenever we would hand off a file from Design to Development, we would send a copy of all the cards at the time of handoff. Sadly, this process ended several years back because of how our new database works, but this document has a complete list of all the cards I handed off from old sets that I led. That gave me an idea for a new series, one that I'm calling "Design Files."

For each one, I'll pick a few cards from the set's handoff to talk about. Part one (this article) includes cards that made it into the final set, although they often changed from their initial versions. Part two (next week's article) will include cards that never made it, although some of them did saw print in later sets. I'll give some commentary on why they changed, why they never made it to print, and/or when they did see print. For my very first "Design Files" column, I'm going back to 1998 and my very first project as a design lead, Tempest. I hope you enjoy the look back.

Part One: Cards That Made It

The Slivers

I'll begin with the common Slivers.

cw06
White Sliver
1W
Summon Sliver
White
1/1
Banding
All Slivers gain banding.

cu06
Blue Sliver
1U
Summon Sliver
Blue
1/1
Flying
All Slivers gain flying.

cb04
Black Sliver
1B
Summon Sliver
Black
1/1
2: Regenerate
All slivers gain "2: Regenerate."

cr02
Red Sliver
1R
Summon Sliver
Red
1/1
First Strike
All slivers gain first strike.

cg03
Green Sliver
1G
Summon Sliver
Green
1/1
All Slivers gain +1/+1.

The basics of the Slivers were established in early design. They were 1/1 Slivers for {1}{M} (R&D speak for one generic mana and one mana of a given color) that granted an ability to all Slivers. Remember, because this was in the early days of Magic, abilities tended to affect all creatures, not just your creatures. The blue, black, and green common Slivers don't change during development.

Interestingly, the green Sliver, what would become Muscle Sliver, was a source of a lot of arguments because the card was "strictly better" than Grizzly Bears. We eventually decided that green was allowed to get more than just a 2/2 for and that obsoleting Grizzly Bears was acceptable. We would do it many times over the years.

The white Sliver originally granted banding. During Tempest development, we decided to stop putting banding on cards and had the white Sliver grant first strike. The red Sliver was changed to give haste, though the ability wasn't named at the time and had to be written out.

For those interested in how the Slivers got into the set in the first place, one of the members of the Design team was Mike Elliott. When I convinced R&D to let me lead Tempest, they said I could choose the rest of my team. Mike Elliott and I had both been hired as developers but wanted to be designers, so I put him on the team to show what we could do.

Before Mike came to Wizards, he'd designed his own set: "Astral Ways." When he was hired, R&D purchased the set, meaning it was available for us to use for Tempest design. The Slivers, and yes, that was the name Mike had originally given them, were a design he'd made inspired by Plague Rats from Limited Edition (Alpha). Instead of just boosting the power and toughness of your Slivers, what if they could also grant abilities? In the story of his set, there were creatures that fell from the heavens and split into many pieces. Those pieces were the Slivers, and they were so closely tied to one another that they shared abilities.

Michael Ryan and I, when creating the story for Tempest as part of the Weatherlight Saga, came up with a new story for the slivers, though we kept their "Astral Ways" name. They were a hive mind of shapeshifting creatures that could share information with one another as long as they were within a certain physical proximity. For example, if one learned how to grow wings and fly, any slivers near it also learned how to do that. This is why the original Slivers were all named after body parts. The slivers had learned how to grow that body part and gain an ability related to it.

In the story, Volrath had found the slivers on another plane. Being a shapeshifter himself, he was fascinated by them and brought them to Rath to study. The Metallic Sliver was an artificial sliver he made to study the slivers. That's why it's an artifact and the only Sliver that gets abilities without granting any. That story was inspired by the desire during development to add a colorless Sliver to help people play Slivers in Limited. That's why it doesn't exist in the design file.

Next, the uncommon and rare Slivers:

rwo4
Gunther, Lord of Slivers
3WW
Summon Legend
White
3/2
Counts as a Sliver. All Slivers get +0/+1.
T: Chose a color. Target creature gets protection from that color until end of turn.

rb08
Garak, Sliver Master
3BB
Summon Legend
Black
2/3
Counts as a Sliver.
All Slivers get +1/+0.
BB: Return a Sliver from the graveyard to your hand.

ur10
Big Red Sliver
2RR
Summon Sliver
Red
3/2
Trample
All Slivers gain trample.

The idea of an uncommon cycle of Slivers came up during development, although you can see the beginnings of what became that uncommon cycle. To match the common cycle, all five of the cards had the same mana cost of {2}{M} and the same power/toughness (2/2). None of that is here.

The one uncommon in the design file mostly made it into the set, although in green rather than red. Elements of the two rare cards also made it into the uncommon cycle. The uncommon versions made the power-increasing ability an activated ability for two mana. The toughness-increasing ability stayed in white, but the power-increasing ability moved to red as it felt like Firebreathing, an ability we did mostly in red.

Tempest didn't end up having any rare Slivers. That would happen in the next set, Stronghold, with Sliver Queen, which was not only the first five-color Sliver but the first five-color card ever.

Wasteland

ul01
Revised Strip Mine
Land
T: Add one colorless mana to your mana pool.
T, Sacrifice Revised Strip Mine: Destroy target nonbasic land.

Some cards made it through unchanged, not that there were a lot of elements to change on this one. The name kind of gives away what I was doing when I designed this card. Strip Mine was too good, so I thought I'd make a "fairer" version. A lot of early Magic design involves us trying to make "fixed" versions of cards and not fully understanding how powerful the original card truly was.

Ancient Tomb

ul04
Mana Vein
Land
T: Add one colorless mana to your mana pool.
T, Pay 1 life: Add two colorless mana to your mana pool.

One of the fun things about looking back at old designs is seeing how off we were on the power of specific cards. For example, Ancient Tomb is a key player in most larger formats. Our card at handoff required 1 life to get two colorless mana, but it also gave you one colorless mana without paying life. Development did make the card weaker than Design's version but still printed something we consider over the line.

Humility

rw16
Divine Might
2WW
Sorcery
White
All creatures become 0/1 white Sheep creatures until end of turn.

Some cards stay the same, and some change a lot. I made this card because I was inspired by something I'd seen in a video game. When I first got to Wizards, everyone in R&D had moved there from somewhere else, so we were basically our own social circle. We stayed late most nights playing games. One of the things that was popular, because Wizards had a connected computer network, was playing Warcraft. I wasn't interested, so I spent most of my time flirting with the receptionist near the computers. That was Lora, my wife, so I consider it time well spent.

Occasionally, I'd watch a game. My favorite spell, one that Bill Rose loved to cast, was one that turned all your opponent's creatures into sheep. I was trying to capture the flavor of that in this design. Because templating was not my forte, I didn't explain that the creatures lost all their abilities, but that was the intent. Your creatures were now harmless Sheep.

During development, we decided it just wasn't impactful enough if it only last one turn, so we changed it from a sorcery to an Aura. Interestingly, the cost didn't change. It no longer turned the creature into a Sheep, and we decided to make the creature a 1/1 instead of 0/1, that way it had a little use.

Cursed Scroll

ra25
Joy Buzzer
3
Artifact
2, T: Name a card. Have target opponent pick a card at random from your hand. If he or she picks the card you name, do 2 damage to target creature or player.

This was Richard Garfield's design. For the first week of design, we went down to Richard's parents' house in Portland, Oregon. One night, we went and saw a movie (The Frighteners, for those who love obscure trivia). While walking back to the car, Richard came up with this idea for an artifact. Richard was always interested in different ways to add elements of randomness.

The card mostly stayed the same but with some numbers changing. Cursed Scroll itself would cost one less mana, and the ability would cost one more. This is another card where we were a bit off on the overall power level. Soon after this set's release, we started hiring more players off the Pro Tour who had experience judging the power levels of cards.

Scroll Rack

ra11
Card Swapper
2
Artifact
XX, T: Swap X cards in your hand for the top X cards of your library.

This was another of my designs. In my defense, I got most of it right. My one mistake: I overestimated how powerful this effect was. I was very open at the time that judging power level wasn't something I was good at. The fact that became is a good example of that. The effect ended up being strong at one mana.

Grindstone

ra13
Happy Miller
1
Artifact
3, T: Take the top two cards from target player's library and put them into that player's graveyard. If both cards are the same color, repeat until you draw two cards of different colors.

Another card that made it through unscathed! This one is more impressive, as it has both a mana cost and an activation cost. I created this card because I was a big fan of Millstone from Antiquities and milling strategies in general. But, I wanted a card with a little more suspense. What if we made a Millstone that milled a random number of cards? I tried a few different things, but this version was my favorite.

Altar of Dementia

ra10
Millstone Altar
2
Artifact
2, T: Sacrifice a creature: Force target opponent to take the top X cards of their library and put them in the graveyard where X is the casting cost of the sacrificed creature.

I liked Millstone so much that I designed two variants of it. This one didn't make it through unscathed though. There were two big changes. First, we changed the milling effect from caring about mana value to caring about the creature's power, as that felt more flavorful. We then removed the mana cost from the activated ability, as we thought milling wasn't a strong strategy.

Coffin Queen

rb03
Grave Stealer
3BB
Summon Thief
Black
1/1
1B, T: Gain control of target creature card in any graveyard. That creature comes into play with -1/-0. If Grave Stealer becomes untapped, you lose control of this creature. You may choose not to untap Grave Stealer during your upkeep phase. You lose control of the creature if Grave Stealer leaves play or leaves your control.

Another strategy I'm a huge fan of is reanimation. This card's design was inspired by the card Old Man of the Sea from Arabian Nights. Instead of stealing a creature, I thought it would be fun to use that same design shell to reanimate a creature. It grants -1/-0 as a callback to Animate Dead from Alpha. Development decided the card was cleaner without it. Again, I was a bit off on gauging this card's power level. Development decided the card was more fun if it was cheaper to cast but had a slightly higher activation cost.

Time Warp

ru11
Time Walk O'Rama
3UU
Enchant World
Blue
Every player takes two turns in a row.

Time Walk is one of the Power Nine, and, as such, is a highly sought-after card. Extra turns, in general, have proven very popular, although a bit of a danger from a play-balance perspective. Time Warp started with a much bolder design: what if everyone got an extra turn all the time?

Our thought process was that you, the person casting the spell, would get the extra turns first. If you put this in your deck, you'd likely be building around its ability. Note that it's a world enchantment, which first premiered in Legends. They represented the field you were battling on, so if a new one was cast, the current one would go away. At the time of Tempest's design, world enchantments were evergreen. We decided to stop making new world enchantments the same time we stopped putting banding on cards.

Development felt this card was a little too powerful, so we chose to make what we felt was a "fixed" Time Walk. Yes, the trend of us undervaluing powerful cards continued.

Apocalypse

rw15
Ragnarok
3WWW
Sorcery
White
Remove all permanents in play from the game. Discard all but one card of your hand.

I did not remember this being handed off as a white card. I assume I did it in white, as that was the one color that could get rid of every card type. My best guess as to why we moved it out of white was that the forced discard effect didn't align with white's abilities.

That said, it's also odd in red. I remember discussing how red wasn't supposed to be able to destroy enchantments, but R&D decided that red removing enchantments was okay if it was blowing up everything. That felt very chaotic. I also didn't remember that we let you keep one card in design. I assume that changed because it just felt more like an Apocalypse if nothing remained.

Harrow

ug15
Crop Rotation
3G
Sorcery
Green
Sacrifice two lands: Go through your library and remove three basic lands and put them into play. Reshuffle your library afterwards.

The version we handed off was almost what we printed with one pretty big change. The printed version costs three mana to sacrifice one land and get two, while this card cost four mana to sacrifice two lands and get three. During development, we decided we'd rather have the card be a bit cheaper and do a little less. I really wanted this card to be called Crop Rotation but lost that fight. We would go on to use the name on a different green land-fetching spell.

Winds of Rath

rw14
God's Angry, But Picky
2WW
Enchantment
White
Bury all enchanted creatures.

Here's something that doesn't happen often. The Design team's version is the exact opposite of the card we printed. I liked the idea that the card was a white board wipe that left a certain class of creatures behind. During development, I realized that I had it backwards. The fun of this card involved allowing you to build around it, which was easier to do if you were enchanting your own creatures. Auras already have enough card disadvantage built into them.

Tempest in a Teapot

We're out of time for today. I hope you're enjoying this look back at early Magic. As always, I'm eager for any feedback, be it on today's column, any of the cards I've talked about, on Tempest, or just about Magic from back in the day. You can email me with feedback or contact me through any of my social media accounts (X, Tumblr, Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok).

Join me next week for part two of "Design Files: Tempest."

Until then, may your present love of Magic harness the fun of Magic's past.