Tempest uncommon. The shadow mechanic was originally codenamed “Astral” before it was changed to “Shadow”. Then it spent some time as “Ethereal” before returning to the familiar name.
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Urza’s Destiny rare. Not all playtest names are short: Powder Keg used to be called “Nevinyrral’s Pinpoint Disk.”
Mirrodin common. The cycle of artifact lands were originally given building names: “Windmill” for blue, “Factory” for red, “Shanty” for black, “Farmhouse” for white, and “Observatory” for green.
Ice Age rare. Mountain Titan is a two-color card in two ways: not only does its mana cost require both black and red, its ability also encourages two different colors.
Champions of Kamigawa common. After going through many different possibilities for this Moonfolk, R&D finally settled on “the new improved Cephalid Scout“.
Nemesis uncommon. There was behind-the-scenes discussion about whether the word “zeppelin” (coined in 1900) was an acceptably “Magic” word, or if the card should use “airship” instead.
Alliances uncommon. The only Paladin with a red component, Lim-D?�l’s Paladin is also one of the only two cards associated with Lim-D?�l that isn’t pure black (the other one, Lim-D?�l’s Vault, is black and blue).
Betrayers of Kamigawa common. Down in the lower right of the art, you can see two villagers reacting to the bad news that the kami of the forest itself is attacking them.
Betrayers of Kamigawa common. These three forest kami are being overwhelmed with magic, which is drawing out and combining their life force.
Betrayers of Kamigawa uncommon. In the art for Overblaze, a spell has superheated the talons of the kami; the samurai is frantically defending himself.
