Last week, I started looking at the handoff card file from the Tempest Design team (to the Development team) from 1998. That article went over the cards that were mostly unchanged from their early iterations to print. Today, I'll take a look at some cards that made it to print, albeit with a number of changes.

Scragnoth

ug05
Greased Weasel
3G
Summon Weasel
Green
2/2
Protection from blue
If countered, return Greased Weasel to your hand at the end of the turn.

This is one of the cards I designed before I ever came to Wizards. I was tired of playing against mono-blue decks, so I created a card that could answer them. Protection from blue wasn't enough, as most blue decks would just counter it, so I gave the card an ability that basically bounced back from being countered. During development, I asked if the rules could support "can't be countered," which felt more direct and splashy. I was told yes, and we changed the card.

Searing Touch

cr22
Poke
R
Instant
Red
Buyback: (Pay cost when you cast spell to return it to your hand at end of turn.) Receive a poison counter. Do 1 damage to target creature or player.

Buyback was a mechanic created by Richard Garfield. The idea is that you pay an additional cost on an instant or sorcery then return it to your hand as it resolves. Poke is almost exactly Searing Touch, a common red instant that can deal 1 point of direct damage with buyback. The only thing that changed was the cost. Instead of , it was "receive a poison counter."

Let me explain what poison is doing in the set. Ever since Legends came out and introduced poison, I've been a huge fan. My biggest problem with poison was twofold. First, the cards sucked. Second, there weren't enough of them to build a deck around. I planned to do that in Tempest by making poison a major theme. Not only could you give the opponent poison counters, but getting poison counters could be a cost that you paid for things.

My biggest problem with this plan was that, along with banding and world enchantments, R&D chose to stop making new poison cards. Tempest began with a huge number of poison cards. The Development team kept lowering the number of poison cards until it was zero, and they declared no more poison. It would take some time, but I eventually got it back into the game.

Most buyback abilities ended up costing mana. In early design, we treated buyback like we would a cantrip, meaning the buyback cost was often . We quickly found out in playtests that was way too strong.

Krakilin

rg15
Creatureball
XG
Sorcery
Green
Put a X/X green token creature into play.

Here's a card I initially costed properly that the Development team (which I was part of) incorrectly raised the cost of. I was very excited by the cleanness of an X/X creature token for . R&D was afraid of it, thinking it was too good. I got outvoted, and we added an extra to the cost. We then added a regeneration ability and made it a creature to offset the extra mana. With time, we would learn that could create an X/X creature and even had some space for a little more.

Shadow Rift

cw20
Astral Jump
1W
Instant
White
Target creature is astral until end of turn. (It can only be blocked by astral creatures; can only block astral creatures.)

Astral was the original name for shadow. Like Slivers, it also came from Mike Elliott's unreleased "Astral Ways" set. When building the artificial plane of Rath, Michael and I invented a backstory where Rath was populated by pulling people from other planes onto Rath. Some of them got stuck between planes in the process, representing the shadow mechanic in the set. We would later discover the homeworld of one of these creatures, the Kor. They came from Zendikar.

This card, interestingly, was handed over as a white card but moved to blue, as blue is good at making creatures unblockable. We also made it better dropping it from two to one mana and making it a cantrip, meaning it draws a card.

Nurturing Licid

ug12
Green Lice
1G
Summon Lice
Green
1/1
G, T: Green Lice becomes an enchant creature card and moves to target creature. Enchanted creature gets +2/+0.
1G: Green Lice becomes a creature under your control if it is an enchant creature card.

The Licids were a cycle of uncommon creatures that had the ability to turn into Auras and back into creatures. Mike Elliott came up with the cycle. I designed a similar cycle of Auras that you could discard to create a creature token. Mike's version was the more complex version, so we decided to start by putting that in the design file. It never left.

The way Licids, originally called Lice, work stayed the same. Although, the effects on all five cards changed, and the costs to put them on and off shifted on some cards. Since it was brand-new design space, the templating also went through many changes.

Spirit Mirror

rw09
Creature of the Light
4W
Enchantment
White
When Creature of the Light comes into play and at the beginning of controller's upkeep put a Light creature token into play if there is not one already. Treat this as a 3/3 white creature. When Creature of Light leaves play, bury Light Creature token.
0: Bury Light creature token.

For this card, I wanted to make a creature that you could only get rid of with enchantment removal. It was a weird idea, but many Magic designs often start with an odd premise. How exactly do I do that? The solution was to make an enchantment that created a token, but only one at a time. So, the only way to get rid of the token permanently was to get rid of the enchantment.

As a Johnny deck builder, I enjoyed how the card did weird things, like giving you a creature each turn to sacrifice. Then, during one of our design playtests, someone cast a Pacifism on my token. That didn't feel right, so I added the ability for you to destroy your own creature token. It read strangely, but the whole card was kind of weird, so it didn't bug me.

The version I turned in from design made a 3/3 token and cost . Development decided to change this to a 2/2 token to make it a little less aggressive, lowering the cost accordingly. They also added to the cost, as they felt the card was very white.

Death Pits of Rath

rb12
Slaughterville
2BB
Enchant World
Black
Any creature which takes damage is buried.

Here's another one where we got close. Development just added to the cost and adjusted the templating.

Kindle

ur17
Ion Charge
1R
Instant
Red
Do 2 damage to target creature or player. Do an additional 1 damage for each Ion Charge in any graveyard.

Here's another card that went unchanged from what was handed off. Kindle was inspired by Plague Rats. I was trying to figure out how to make a card I called Plague Bolt, which I think was its first playtest name. My revelation was that I could use the graveyard to mark how many copies of the card had been cast. Kindle went on to see a large amount of tournament play and inspired a cycle of cards in Odyssey.

Recycle

rg12
Limited Options
2GG
Enchantment
Green
When Limited Options is brought into play and whenever you draw a card, discard down to two cards. Skip your draw phase. Whenever you have less than two cards, draw until you have two cards. You may not voluntarily discard a card unless you pay GGG.
GGG: Discard a card.

This card was designed by Mike Elliott. The idea was to create a powerful enchantment that draws cards but with interesting restrictions. That core idea stayed from design. This card helps you draw cards but limits you to only having two cards. The actual execution changed quite a bit.

First, making you discard down to two cards whenever you drew a card was bothersome. We simplified that by just having you discard down to two cards at the end of your turn. Next, to make the card more appealing to build around, we removed the hand-refilling effect. Recycle draws you a card whenever you play a land or cast a spell. We also got rid of the activated ability that let you discard a card since it didn't fill up your hand anymore.

Finally, because the card was potentially quite powerful, as card drawing cards often are, we raised the mana cost from to .

Shimmering Wings

Fickle Flight
U
Enchant Creature
Blue
Fickle: U (Pay cost during upkeep or spell returns to owner's hand.)
Enchanted creature gains flying.

The handoff file had a lot of new mechanics, some of which got pushed into other sets. The idea with fickle was that we were trying to turn an upkeep cost into a situational positive. You often want to move an Aura after you play it. During development, we realized that we didn't have to give you any drawback; we could make the ability all upside. Instead of giving you an upkeep cost, we made it an activated ability that you could use whenever you wanted to. We didn't have a name to label this ability.

Jinxed Idol

ra06
Hot Potato
2
Artifact
Controller of Hot Potato takes 2 damage during his or her upkeep.
Sacrifice creature: Give control of Hot Potato to target opponent.

Here's another "brain to print" card, a nickname in R&D for a card that gets printed exactly as its initially designed. The one thing I'm sad about is that we couldn't call it Hot Potato. I did try, but it didn't exactly match the larger flavor of the plane. Rath wasn't exactly known for its potatoes.

Aluren

rg16
Fertile Earth
1GG
Enchant World
Green
Creatures with power of 1 may be brought into play at any time without paying their casting cost. Treat these creatures as though they were just cast.

I believe this was a Mike Elliott design. The original version cared about power instead of mana value. We found that the power-based version was much more easily abused, as there are expensive, low-power creatures with powerful abilities. It's interesting to note it started as a world enchantment. I find the original templating quite entertaining. This was a point in Magic where we were still figuring out many basic templates, so a lot of card designs were a bit loosey-goosey in their wording.

Booby Trap

ra18
Letter Bomb
5
Artifact
Come into play tapped.
T, Sacrifice Letter Bomb: Shuffle Letter Bomb into target opponent's library. While Letter Bomb is in that opponent's library, that opponent plays with their hand face up. Opponent may discard Letter Bomb to cancel this effect.
If opponent draws Letter Bomb, it deals 10 damage to opponent.

This was another Mike Elliott design. You shuffled a card into your opponent's library, and, when they drew it, it blew up. The problem is that the rules don't allow you to put your card into an opponent's library, so we had to come up with a workaround. The version we printed had you name a card, and when the named card was drawn (because the opponent showed every card they drew), the artifact blew up and dealt 10 damage.

I liked the original card so much that I kept trying to find a place to put it. I tried to put it into original Mirrodin. There wasn't a different rules manager, so I thought I'd give it a shot. It, again, was turned down. I eventually did find a home for the card, with the name and everything, in an Un- set: Unhinged. The only change was the damage change from 10 to 19.5, since Unhinged used fractions.

The Cards That Didn't Make It

Now, let's look at some cards in the file that didn't make it to print.

cw03
Poison Martyr
1W
Summon Martyr
White
1/1
T, Sacrifice Poison Martyr: Remove a poison counter. Use this ability only during upkeep.

As I discussed earlier, poison played a major role in the design of Tempest only to be removed in development. I did not remember that I once had a card in the file that removed poison, something I've been adamantly against for many years. This is partly to keep poison separate from life and partly because it adds an extra tension that gives poison a distinctive feel.

As I discussed earlier, poison played a major role in the design of Tempest only to be removed in development. I did not remember that I once had a card in the file that removed poison, something I've been adamantly against for many years. This is partly to keep poison separate from life and partly because it adds an extra tension that gives poison a distinctive feel.

cw10
Poison Accelerator
1W
Summon Soldier
White
2/1
Poisonous 1 if opponent controls at least one poison counter. (When damaging opponent, give them a poison counter.)

Future Sight had the poisonous mechanic. I'm not sure how many people know it first existed in the Tempest design file. I assume very few, as I was the one that put it there, and even I forgot.

uw07
Light Knight
2WW
Summon Knight
White
3/2
First strike, protection from black
WW, Receive a poison counter: Gain protection of a color of your choice until end of turn.

Part of what I was interested in designing at the time was seeing if we could use poison as a cost in addition to a win condition. I thought it was a cool way to limit how often you could use certain abilities. With time, I've realized that it's hard to have a set that tries to win with poison while using it as a resource. It creates a lot of tension and causes blowout matchups.

If you're trying use poison as a resource and your opponent is trying to poison you to death, it's going to go very badly for you. The other problem is that in games without the threat of poison, using it as a resource has little downside. It's problematic when the set has offensive poison and problematic if it doesn't. That's usually a sign of a big problem.

uw09
Angel of Mercy
3WW
Summon Angel
White
3/4
Flying
You may return Angel of Mercy to your hand from the graveyard at the end of any turn if there is at least one creature above it.

Graveyard order mattering went away in the middle of the Tempest block, but we designed some cards around it early on. My guess is this card was moved to rare and replaced by Avenging Angel.

rw07
Protective Bubble
3WW
Enchantment
White
During your upkeep receive two poison counters or bury Protective Bubble.
You may not be the target of spells or effects. All damage done to you by spells or effects controlled by an opponent is reduced to 0.

The best "poison as resource" designs were self-sufficient, meaning the card assumed you had no other poison cards. This design doesn't specifically need poison counters. You could use another type of counter, have the enchantment sacrifice itself when you get to a certain number of those counters, and have the enchantment lose you the game when it goes away.

cu11
Poison Leak
2U
Enchantment
Blue
During his or her upkeep, target opponent must pay 1 for each creature they have or receive one poison counter.

I also played around with poison as a tax, where the opponent chooses whether they get poison counters in lieu of paying for an effect. I like how these played, even if the larger ecosystem was flawed.

uu11
Copycat
UU
Enchant Creature
Blue
Enchanted creature becomes a duplicate of target creature in play. Destroy Copycat if target creature leaves play.

I'm a huge fan of copying things. This was me trying to make a cheaper copy spell with what I thought was a fun drawback. It let you copy a creature as long as the copied creature stayed on the battlefield. In practice, this was a bit harder to use than we thought, and the card was cut.

uu15
Give and Take
2U
Enchantment
Blue
Reveal: (When you draw card, show it to all players for following effect.) Give target opponent control of target creature you control to put Give and Take directly into play.
2U, Sacrifice Give and Take: Take control of target creature.

If you watched my panel, "The 20 Worst Mechanics of All Time," from MagicCon: Las Vegas, I talked about a mechanic that Richard and I came up with during Tempest design where cards would trigger when you drew them. Well, here's one of the cards with that mechanic, albeit an odd one. The card design was just a little too clever. The idea was that the reveal cost allowed you to give a creature to your opponent that you wanted them to have for a strategic reason. I would later make the card Donate to just do that effect.

ru08
Distant Vision
3U
Enchantment
Blue
During your upkeep, you may look at the top card of target opponent's library. You may choose to put the card on the bottom of that opponent's library.

You know what would be super fun? we must have thought. Increasing your opponent's chance of being mana hosed while letting them mana hose you. Making everyone have worse draws is not the path to fun gameplay.

cb01
Poison Plague Rats
2B
Summon Plague Rats
Black
1/1
Poisonous X where X is equal to the number of Poison Plague Rats in play. (When damaging opponent, give them X poison counters.)

One of the themes to this three-part article is how influential Plague Rats is to Magic designers. This card came about because it felt so flavorful. Rats passing disease was slam-dunk flavor. Is it fun? Well, is having four Rats with poisonous 4 attacking you fun? Not really.

cb18
Life Leech
B
Sorcery
Black
Choose target creature or player. For each card you discard do 2 damage to that target and gain 2 life.

This design comes with a fun story. It was a late addition to Design's file, and we'd never playtested it. In our very first development playtest, I played against Mike Elliott. This was in the early days when both players drew on their first turns. Mike drew his card. He played a Swamp and cast Life Leech, discarding the rest of his hand. He drained me for 12 life, taking me down to 8 and bringing his life total to 32. We both laughed. "Okay," I said. "Maybe this card needs to be taken out of the file."

cb19
Slurp
2B
Sorcery
Black
Negative cantrip (Target player must discard a card at the start of his or her next upkeep.)
Do 1 damage to target player and gain 1 life.

Cantrips were introduced in Ice Age. Because they had an artifact cantrip that cost in the file, they didn't want you drawing the card right away, so all the cantrips in Ice Age had you draw the card at the start of your next upkeep. Mirage and Visions kept that version of cantrips. By Weatherlight, we realized that there wasn't the need to wait a turn if we didn't make zero-mana cantrips. So, from Weatherlight onward, cantrips became "draw a card." Even though Tempest came out after Weatherlight, its design, as it was a large set, started before Weatherlight, so we were still using cantrips with the Ice Age wording.

This card was us experimenting with a variant of cantrip: a negative cantrip. What if, instead of drawing a card, your opponent discarded a card? It was the same card differential, where you're up a card over your opponent. It didn't take many playtests to see how unfun it was. There's just a tangible difference between you getting an extra card and your opponent losing a card. This was negative cantrip's one card.

Tempest Control

We've reached our word count. As always, I'm eager for any thoughts on today's column, any of the cards I've talked about, Tempest, and any related topics. You can give me feedback through 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 three.

Until then, may you have fun with some Tempest cards.