Today is all about Innistrad Remastered previews. I will tell some behind-the-scenes stories from all three trips to Innistrad and show off two preview cards for Innistrad Remastered.

The Odyssey Begins

The story of Innistrad starts all the way back in the design for Odyssey. The set released in October 2001, so this story takes place earlier that year. Brady Dommermuth was, at the time, an editor for Magic. After the Odyssey slide show, where we showed the completed cards to a number of people to get final feedback, Brady and I were talking. He said that the creative treatment for the set didn't do a great job of capturing the graveyard-centric design.

So, I asked him what would have made sense. He told me, "Gothic horror." I was very excited by the idea of a top-down design that was focused around a genre. I made a list of different genres to see what possibilities existed, and ones that stood out most was the horror genre, as it overlapped a lot with fantasy. Brady replied that Gothic horror was specifically the intersection of fantasy and horror. He and I vowed to find a way to make a Gothic horror block.

Flash forward to December 2003, and Bill Rose had become the vice president of R&D. He'd tried filling that role in addition to his head designer role, but it became clear it was just too much work for one person. Randy Buehler, my boss at the time, recommended that I take over as head designer. Bill's one request was that I also lead the Creative team.

Bill believed that you needed the mechanical and creative designs of a set to be tightly interwoven, so having one person oversee them both would help them flourish. When I was leading the Creative team, the first block that I was involved with from the beginning was Ravnica: City of Guilds. I only led the creative for two years, as being a head designer and the creative lead was too much work. Both myself and the current creative lead, Jackie Jones, now report into Aaron Forsythe, so Bill's idea was correct.

When I took on leading the Creative team, I went to Brady and told him now was our chance to make a Gothic horror block. It would take another eight years for us to make that happen.

Nowadays, we have an entire arc planning team that I am part of where we plan out upcoming sets. To give you a sense of how far ahead we work, the arc planning team is currently talking about the early 2030s. Back in the early 2000s, the arc planning team was just me. I would make a five-year proposal and give it to my boss, Randy Buehler. He, Bill Rose, and the Creative team would give me notes on it. I would then take everyone's notes and adapt the plan.

My first five-year plan started with a Gothic horror set. While Magic pushes its boundaries a lot more these days, this was considered a bit risky back then. I spent a lot of time championing the idea alongside Randy and Bill. Interestingly, I was using what political capital I had at the time to push what was considered another radical setting: Zendikar.

So, what finally got a Gothic horror set onto the schedule? I believe it was three things, and not necessarily in this order:

  • Brady Dommermuth and I are both quite stubborn. We believed in the idea, never gave up on it, and would bring it up whenever appropriate.
  • Zendikar ended up going well, so I was able to parlay some internal political capital from that.
  • Twilight, both the books and movies, was a phenomenon. It helped sell the idea that horror as a genre was popular in the wider public consciousness.

But even when we got the green light, it was only approved for one set. Here was the plan:

We'd go to a new, non-Gothic plane. The large fall set and the small winter set would be on that new plane. Then, we'd have a large set in the spring with all-new mechanics that was set on a Gothic horror plane. I said that was fine, as I at least got one set that took place there. I knew that if it was popular, we'd go back.

So, what plane was the setting of those first two sets? We didn't know. Yes, instead of just being on Innistrad for the whole block, R&D ran a company-wide contest to create a brand-new plane that we could start our block on. The winner of the contest was Brain Tinsman with a plane inspired by puzzle games. Brian recognized that match-three games had become a phenomenon and was inspired to make a plane whose mechanics and flavor played into that space.

It came up that it was odd for us to have a Gothic horror set in the spring when it could come out in fall, right before Halloween. The problem was the small winter set needed to be on the same plane as the large fall set. If the fall set was on the Gothic horror plane, the winter set would have to be there as well. Bill asked if he felt we had enough material to do two sets on a Gothic horror plane. I told him, "Bill, it's the horror genre. We have enough material to do many, many sets."

The new plan for the block was as follows:

  • Large fall set: Gothic horror plane
  • Small winter set: Gothic horror plane
  • Large spring set: Puzzle plane

Two years earlier, we had a similar plan with Zendikar. The large fall set and small winter set would be on Zendikar, and then the spring set, with all new mechanics, would be set on a different plane. Brady Dommermuth, speaking for the Creative team, said that there currently weren't enough resources to build two planes in one year. What if they just made an event big enough that it felt okay to shake up what the set was doing mechanically? That "big shake up" would be the Eldrazi, and their release from their prison within the world of Zendikar.

I bring this up because when the same plan came up two years later to have the block be on two separate planes, Brady Dommermuth came back saying the exact same thing. We don't have the resources to make two different planes, but we could have a massive event that justifies the mechanical change. That event would be the opening of the Helvault and the restoration of Avacyn. That led to a set where the monsters were on the run, with the humans and angels leading the charge.

It took a while to happen, but in the end, the full block was set on Innistrad. We leaned into the monsters, premiered double-face cards, introduced some cool new mechanics, and brought back some old favorites. All in all, it was a huge success.

Cosmic Encounters

In 2003, we went to Mirrodin. In 2004, we went to Kamigawa. In 2005, we went to Ravnica. In 2006, we returned to Dominaria for the Time Spiral block and saw the Mending, a major story beat where the Planeswalkers were depowered. In 2007, we went to Lorwyn and Shadowmoor. In 2008, we went to Alara. In 2009, we went to Zendikar. That was a stretch of eight years with seven new planes and one old plane that was drastically changed.

While we wanted to keep doing new planes, we knew that we would have to start returning to planes that weren't Dominaria. In 2010, we made our first attempt at this. We went back to Mirrodin and discovered that the Phyrexians were corrupting it, eventually turning it into New Phyrexia.

Our first return, where we didn't completely change the plane we were revisiting was Return to Ravnica. It was what we call a straight return, where we go back to a plane exactly as we had left it. Yeah, the new block had new mechanics, and new themes, but it was still "guild world" with all the basic features you would expect. Based on the feedback from the block, we decided that our future returns should have a little more of a twist to them.

I bring all this up because it helps contextualize the Shadows over Innistrad block. We had two blocks set on new planes, Theros and Khans of Tarkir, and then the plan was to have two blocks that were returns. First up would be Zendikar. We left on a cliffhanger with the Eldrazi threatening the plane, so we felt we had to go back and finish the story. That was a big departure from original Zendikar block. Now, what twist did we want for Innistrad?

The answer we came up with involved shifting into a different kind of horror genre. The original Innistrad block was about Gothic horror. Was there another subgenre that was close to that? After looking at several options, we settled on cosmic horror. It emphasizes the horror of the unknown and incomprehensible, playing with themes of forbidden knowledge, superstition, ancient powers, and madness.

Additionally, we were restructuring how we made blocks. We had come to realize that the three-set block structure was flawed and were looking for other options. Inspired by Lorwyn and Shadowmoor, we decided to try a model where we removed the core set and had two blocks each year, each made up of one large set and one small set. Our return to Zendikar and Innistrad were next on the schedule, so we just turned them from three-set blocks into two-set blocks.

This was done while we were working on the large set for Battle for Zendikar, so we had to switch from a three-set block to a two-set block. The original idea was that each set in the block focused on a different Eldrazi. The Gatewatch would come together and defeat them one by one. The shift to two sets meant we could only focus on two Eldrazi. We chose Ulamog and Kozilek. But what about Emrakul?

This is when the Creative team came up with a pitch. We wanted to do cosmic horror on Innistrad. That meant we needed some ancient evil affecting things. Emrakul warps biology. Mutation is a part of cosmic horror. What if our ancient evil being was Emrakul?

As a quick aside, with 20/20 hindsight, I think Emrakul being the "big bad" of Shadows over Innistrad block was a great idea, but we shouldn't have done it right after Battle for Zendikar. We'd just set up the "where's Emrakul" thread. We needed to let it simmer a little to give players a break from Eldrazi. I think if we'd pushed it off for a year or two, it would have been recived better. Also, we underestimated the impact of the smaller blocks, so it made it feel even faster than intended.

Shadows over Innistrad was always a two-set block. Cosmic horror has two clear parts: the mystery, as characters investigate the strange happenings of the horror, followed by the reveal, where the characters learn of the great horror. That felt like a great divide for the sets. Shadows over Innistrad would be the mystery set, and Eldritch Moon would be the reveal set where we see all the things that went wrong.

Players generally liked the mystery set. The mood was a different from original Innistrad, but not by a lot. The reveal set was a little too much. While it accurately captured the cosmic horror feel, all the mutations were more visceral than the Gothic origins of Innistrad. The lesson we took away was that we pivoted too much from the original block.

I also get to show off some cards from Innistrad Remastered today. My card previews for today come from Eldritch Moon and serve as a good example of what the set delivered on. These two cards were both two of the most popular cards in the set and were the center of a lot of conversation.

Click Here to See My Preview Cards

0014a_MTGINR_Main: Bruna, the Fading Light 0024a_MTGINR_Main: Gisela, the Broken Blade

Event Planning

Innistrad released in 2011. Shadows over Innistrad came out in 2016. Our third return to Innistrad came out in 2021. The original plan was to have a single set. Since Shadows over Innistrad, we'd moved away from blocks altogether. Each set is now a large set that you draft by itself, usually on a different plane than the last set.

We are allowed to stay on the same plane if we have a reason. For example, the first year of the new system had three sets all take place on Ravnica, seen in Guilds of Ravnica, Ravnica Allegiance, and War of the Spark.

We were interested in recapturing what players loved about the original Innistrad block. We didn't want to push further away from the core of Gothic horror, as Shadows over Innistrad block had done, but embrace it. Zendikar Rising, our third trip to Zendikar, was born of a similar philosophy. This gets into the question of how similar an original release and a return should be. It's an ongoing topic that keeps evolving as we do more returns.

Ethan Fleischer led the vision design and handed it over to Set Design. I was busy leading the vision design of the next set, Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, when a meeting popped up in our email.

The meeting was about a decision to pivot back away from core sets, a problem we'd eventually solve with Magic: The Gathering Foundations, and moving from three premiere Magic sets a year to four. To make that schedule work, we needed to add a second set to the fall. We had enough time for a full vision design session, but not enough time to build a new plane. That meant we'd want to make another Innistrad set.

I ended up leading the vision design, as it was a challenging set and I was the most experienced vision designer. In the end, the solution was to look at what Innistrad: Midnight Hunt was doing and find a way to do something similar but different. As we looked at the set with fresh eyes, we realized that it leaned slightly more toward Werewolves than the other monsters. What if Innistrad: Crimson Vow did the same but with a different monster? We ruled out Spirits, as they just aren't as popular with players as Vampires and Zombies. The Vision Design team took one meeting to pitch a Vampire set and one meeting to pitch a Zombie set.

We had two very fruitful meetings and had ideas for either option. The idea the Creative team was the most fond of was a vampire wedding. Innistrad: Midnight Hunt had focused on a harvest festival, so it seemed cool to have a parallel set focus on a different event. The Creative team had brainstormed a lot of cool visuals for a vampire wedding, so that's the path we took.

Looking back, it's interesting to see all the twists and turns that went into our various visits to Innistrad. As one of its greatest champions, I'm so happy for what the world has become, one of the core planes of Magic, something beloved by many players. I know one day we'll return, and I'm eager to see what kind of set we make.

For those who want to experience Innistrad right now, you're in luck. Innistrad Remastered takes the best of all three visits to our Gothic horror plane and mixes them together in a brand-new Limited environment, one filled with great reprints and revisits of classic card designs and mechanics. For those who have lived through the many trips to Innistrad, this will be a fun trip back. For those who haven't, this will be a great introduction to one of Magic's fan-favorite planes.

That's all I have for today. I hope you enjoyed my stories, and I can't wait to hear about your stories playing with Innistrad Remastered. You can share them with me, along with any thoughts about today's column or the design of any of the Innistrad sets, through email or social media (X, Tumblr, Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok).

Join me next week for the next installment of my "Trivial Pursuit" series.

Until then, may you enjoy all the cool elements from across seven Innistrad sets.