For the last two weeks (Part 1 and Part 2), I've been looking at the card file I handed off from the Design team to Development for the set Tempest, which released in 1998. I started talking about cards that made it to print from the file, and now I'm talking about card designs that didn't make it to Tempest. Today is the final article in this series.

The Lost Designs of Tempest

cb20
Death Link
1B
Enchant Creature
Black
Accelerator for enchanted creature's controller. (Receive a poison counter if you control a poison counter.)
Gain 1 life for every 1 damage target creature deals.

Here's another attempt at a keyword that uses poison. Accelerator was a spell that gave an opponent a poison counter, but only if they already had one. If you could get one poison creature through, your spells would start nibbling away at your opponent.

This spell also granted a version of lifelink before it was keyworded in Future Sight. A similar ability showed up on other cards but in different permutations. Spirit Link from Legends was the inspiration for this card, hence the mirror of its name.

ub07
Dark Knight
2BB
Summon Knight
Black
3/2
First strike
BB, Receive a poison counter: Target creature blocking Dark Knight is buried.

Here's a design where I tried to use poison as a cost for an ability. The controller could threaten to activate it without having to activate it that often. A player could purposefully block the Dark Knight to try and goad their opponent into activating the ability.

ub19
Demonic Consultation Part II
B
Instant
Black
Name a card. Keep drawing from your library until you draw two copies of the card. Keep one copy and remove the rest of the cards you drew from the game.

Demonic Consultation was a powerful card in Ice Age, but it took a while for players to understand how good it was. The card was risky, which caused many players to pass on using it, but it was so effective that using it was often the right call. This design was a different take on it. The right call in a lot of Demonic Consultation decks was to run one or two copies of the card you needed. This design tried to encourage players to play more copies of the card they wanted to tutor for.

ub20
Insecticide
2B
Sorcery
Black
Destroy all Insects, Spiders, and Faeries.

I don't think there was any intention of this card ever making it to print. I just thought it was funny, so I included it in the handoff. For the older players, I had a column in The Duelist called "Extra Pulled" where I pitched joke cards, and Insecticide was one of them. That's why a few of you might recognize the card, even though it's never seen print.

rb02
Poison Blinky
2B
Summon Blinking Spirit
Black
2/1
Receive a poison: Return Poison Blinky to owner's hand.

Blinking Spirit was a popular creature from Ice Age. I ran it in a lot of decks. This was just a tweak on it using poison as a resource.

rb16
Iceman's Tutor
B
Instant
Black
Search your library for a card and put it in your hand. Then discard two cards at random.

This is a design from Mike Elliott, who I believe had the nickname "Iceman." It was a cheap Demonic Tutor that came with some risk. We would later do a red version of this card, Gamble in Urza's Saga, where you only discard one card.

cr05
Dodger
R
Summon Dwarf
Red
1/1
Cannot be blocked by fewer than two creatures.

Goblin War Drums first appeared in Fallen Empires. It was an enchantment that gave your creatures menace, although the mechanic wasn't keyworded and wouldn't be for many years. This is the first design I remember where we put the ability on a creature, so I included it here for a little historical context.

cr18
Sliding Stone Rain
3R
Sorcery
Red
Sliding (When you draw card, reveal it to all players to put it on the bottom of your library and draw another card at the start of the next turn's upkeep.)
Destroy target land.

Another mechanic in this file was an early iteration of cycling. This mechanic, called sliding, was a design by Richard Garfield. Richard recognized that narrow cards often sat in your hand, so he came up with a mechanic that allowed you to trade them in for a new card. Note that the card you traded away went to the bottom of your library rather than your graveyard and you wouldn't draw the card until the next upkeep.

Tempest had way too many mechanics, so I was asked to take a bunch out. Sliding was only on a handful of cards, so we removed it. Mike Elliott would use it a year later in Urza's Saga, where it would get a new name and templating as cycling.

cr20
Better Shatter
R
Instant
Red
Destroy target artifact controlled by opponent.

It bothered me to no end that Shatter costs {1}{R}. It didn't need to. Better Shatter was just that, a better Shatter. It had the same effect for a lower cost. I got enough grief from the other members of R&D that I finally changed it to this. Fine. It's worse. Now you can't destroy your own artifacts. This card got removed during development and replaced with Shatter.

ur08
Goblin Commando
R
Summon Goblin
Red
4/4
Goblin Commando gets -1/-1 for each creature in play.
"They hide well in crowds. Sometimes we never do find them."

One of the fun parts of design is trying to come up with drawbacks that let you push the limits of the rate of creatures. Goblin Commando was intended to only count your creatures, though it isn't phrased that way. This card mostly failed at that goal, as the drawback wasn't as big as it seemed.

For example, I could play Goblin Commando on turn one. On turn two, I could attack for 4 with a creature big enough that you don't have a good blocker. I'd then play a two-drop, which was likely a 2/1. On turn two, I'd attack with my 3/3 Commando and my 2/1. The 3/3 would still be too big to block with one creature. You could block and trade with my 2/1, but now my Commando is back to a 4/4. In short, it was a little too good.

ur12
Goblin Bone Charm
R
Enchant Creature
Red
Enchanted creature gets -2/-1.
Enchanted creature gets +5/+1 when attacking.

This is a cute design. It weakens your creature on defense but strengthens it on offense. In playtesting, the card was mostly just used to kill opposing creatures. We tried a version that could only enchant your creatures, but it still didn't see enough play and was removed during development.

rr03
Scavenger Assassin
1RR
Summon Assassin
Red
1/1
T: Put a marker counter on target artifact.
T: Destroy target artifact with a marker counter.

This mirrors another Tempest creature, Bounty Hunter, that does the same thing but for creatures. Bounty Hunter made it to print, but Scavenger Assassin did not. Repeatable creature removal is much more generally useful than artifact removal.

rr09
Shadow Dragon
2RR
Summon Dragon
Red
5/4
Planeshift (Pay the casting cost the upkeep after creature is summoned or bury it.)
Flying

Another mechanic that first showed up in Tempest design was echo, though it was called planeshift in this file. This was another Mike Elliott mechanic from "Astral Ways." Like cycling, there weren't many cards with the mechanic in the file, so I chose to take it out. Like cycling, echo would show up a year later in Urza's Saga.

cg11
Gremlin
1G
Summon Gremlin
Green
1/3
If target opponent has more life than you, Gremlin's power and toughness are swapped.

This was a cute card that ended up being a little more complicated than expected. For example, attacking with this card and a creature with first strike made it hard to handle combat. You also had to think about whether your opponent had access to direct damage. It ended up getting cut during development.

cg20
Sliding Tranquility
3G
Sorcery
Green
Sliding (When you draw card, reveal it to all players to put it on the bottom of your library and draw another card at the start of the next turn's upkeep.)
Destroy all enchantments.

An interesting bit of trivia about the Tempest file is that cards from it ended up going into future sets for about seven years. For example, this card appeared in Urza's Saga as the card Hush.

cg23
Pumping Growth
2G
Instant
Green
Reveal: (When you draw card, show it to all players for the following effect.) Target creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
Target creature gets +3/+3 until end of turn.

This is another draw trigger, one that doesn't involve poison. You get a smaller version of the effect when you draw it and then a larger version when you cast it. I believe this version was optional.

Early in design, we tried some designs where you got a larger effect for less mana than usual, but the card had a negative effect when you drew it. There was no way to avoid cheating with that version, so we dropped the negative effects. In the days before opaque sleeves, we thought about changing the card back so that people knew you drew these cards.

rg03
Enchanto Lad
3G
Summon Elf
Green
2/2
Draw a card each time Enchanto Lad is the target of an enchant creature spell. If Enchanto Lad leaves play, return any enchantments on Enchanto Lad to owner's hand.

We spent a lot of time trying to make Auras better. This creature was problematic, as you had to draw it before you could cast your Auras. Nowadays, we'd make this creature legendary so that you'd be able to play it first in Commander.

Another little quirk of this card, which tells me I designed it, is that I used to name a lot of cards using the naming conventions of characters from DC Comics's Legion of Super-Heroes.

rg08
Big and Weak
6GG
Summon Wurm
Green
13/1

We pushed the boundaries of vanilla design here. The fact that I put this card at rare says a lot about the state of creatures at the time.

rz02
Card Drain
2UB
Enchant World
Gold
During each player's upkeep, that player draws two cards and discards three cards. If a player does not have three cards to discard, they discard their entire hand.

Here's another world enchantment. I assume this design was inspired by Bazaar of Baghdad from Arabian Nights. It was a land that you could tap for this effect. I was a huge fan of Bazaar of Baghdad, so this is likely one of my designs. You'd build your deck around this card to give yourself an advantage over unwitting opponents. The card's best use case involved denying your opponent from having any cards, which wasn't particularly fun.

rz06
Great Wall of Bogavhati
2WB
Summon Legend
Gold
0/5
Counts as a wall.
Any creature blocked by Great Wall of Bogavhati gets a -1/-1 counter.

This card was experimenting with what we could do with Walls. Normally, a 0-power, high-toughness Wall just holds off an attacker, but this card allowed you to slowly shrink it as you were doing this.

Bogavhati was the codename for the set. It's a misspelling (which we were unaware at the time) of Bhogavati, a land of poison snakes and Naga from Buddhist mythology. Back then, codenames used to hint at the theme of a set, and this pointed toward the poison theme. Vhati il-Dal from the set is a nod to this codename.

A few other notes. The card says "counts as a wall" because all legendary creatures were treated as having the creature type Legend and normally couldn't have another creature type.

ra08
Regrowth Machine
3
Artifact Creature
1, T: Target opponent picks a card out of the top three cards in your graveyard and puts it on top of your library. This effect may only be used if there are three cards in your graveyard.

I love getting things back from the graveyard and interactive cards, and this card has both. It also makes use of the order of cards in your graveyard, something that went away in the middle of the Tempest block.

I find it funny that I can tell whether I designed a card if it matches one of my naming conventions.

ra12
Enchantment Locker
5
Artifact
1: Remove target local enchantment you control from target permanent and place it underneath Enchantment Locker. You may look at that card at any time.
3, T: Put target local enchantment underneath Enchantment Locker on target permanent. The enchantment's new target must be legal. Treat the enchantment as though it were just cast. If Enchantment Locker is destroyed, bury all cards underneath it.

A local enchantment is what we called Auras at the time. This is another attempt at making Auras better by allowing you to save them if the creature they are on is about to die or move them if you get a better target. This design has the inklings of a type of design I was fascinated with, which would lead to the imprint mechanic in Mirrodin.

rl01
Poison Scrubland
Land
T: Add 1 to your mana pool.
T, Receive a poison counter: Add W to your mana pool.
T, Receive a poison counter: Add B to your mana pool.

rz02
Poison Bayou
Land
T: Add 1 to your mana pool.
T, Receive a poison counter: Add B to your mana pool.
T, Receive a poison counter: Add G to your mana pool.

rz03
Poison Tropical Island
Land
T: Add 1 to your mana pool.
T, Receive a poison counter: Add U to your mana pool.
T, Receive a poison counter: Add G to your mana pool.

rz04
Poison Volcanic Island
Land
T: Add 1 to your mana pool.
T, Receive a poison counter: Add U to your mana pool.
T, Receive a poison counter: Add R to your mana pool.

rzo5
Poison Plateau
Land
T: Add 1 to your mana pool.
T, Receive a poison counter: Add W to your mana pool.
T, Receive a poison counter: Add R to your mana pool.

At the time, we treated ally-color pairs differently than enemy-color pairs. One of the ways we did this was by making the ally-color dual lands stronger than the enemy-color dual lands. I made this cycle of enemy-color poison dual lands thinking they played well while still feeling flavorful. To get enemy colors to work together, you had to poison yourself. The lands were cut during development when poison was cut.

I tried to do these lands again in Unglued 2 as ally-color dual lands with fun names like Dead Bunny Isle, but that product was put on a hiatus. Even later, I pitched these as one of the five futureshifted dual lands in Future Sight, but it changed.

The biggest problem is that poison, in a vacuum, doesn't mean anything, so these cards don't have much of a drawback. Both are powerful and require a lot of bookkeeping for little reward. Essentially, they say "When you have nine poison counters, this land taps for {C}."

I put together this last batch of cards because they were all eventually done as silver-bordered cards.

ru09
Free Agency
2UU
Enchantment
Blue
When Free Agency comes into play, put all creatures in play under Free Agency. During each player's upkeep, that player may choose to randomly remove a creature from Free Agency and put it into play under their control. Treat these creatures as though they were just cast. If Free Agency is removed from play, put all creatures into their owners' graveyards.

This card became Free-for-All from Unglued. It's not that it doesn't work in the rules. It does. The card was just a little too chaotic for the rest of R&D's taste.

rr17
Chaosorama
2RR
Enchant World
Red
Treat all permanents as if they had the following: "If tapped, control of this permanent passes to target opponent at end of turn."

This card was also considered too chaotic. It ended up becoming Burning Cinder Fury of Crimson Chaos Fire from Unglued, the first card printed with landscape orientation. I did add a second ability to ensure players tapped permanents and didn't sit around doing nothing.

ra15
Fixed Stone Calendar
Artifact
4
Artifact
Your spells cost up to 1 less to cast; casting cost of spells cannot go below 0.

I was a huge fan of Stone Calendar from The Dark, but it costs too much mana. This was my idea for a fixed version. The rest of the Development team didn't agree with me, and the card was cut. I realized Unglued was my opportunity to make it, but it needed an Un- element to it. I decided to make you have to talk in a voice other than your normal voice while it's on the battlefield.

The card also has one of my favorite jokes from Unglued. In early Magic, there were a number of famous cases where the artist misunderstood what they were drawing and drew something else, such as a lemur rather than a lemure. The card is named Bronze Calendar as it's a nod to Stone Calendar, but we then had the artist draw a colander instead of a calendar. The flavor text reinforces the joke: "Every page holds a month, every date a numeral."

Any Port in a Tempest

And with that, we wrap up this three-part series. I'm curious if you all liked this "Design File" series. Want me to do more? Let me know, along with any other feedback you have about the column, by writing me an email me or contacting me through any of my social media accounts (X, Tumblr, Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok).

Join me in the new year for the start of Innistrad Remastered previews.

Until then, may you enjoy this work I did over 25 years ago.