Unhinged common. The concept behind this card is that the bird keeps coming back to peck at your cards whenever the opponent touches the table. Note that in the art, not only do the pictured cards have holes pecked into them, but so does the card Cardpecker itself! Unhinged is also notable as the set that inspired the use of pseudo-keywords. (See Aaron Forsythe’s The Spoken Word for more on this.)
Revised uncommon. Because early production of the Revised set encountered a number of printing issues, a new printing was ordered, which came to be known as Summer Magic. Unfortunately, Summer Magic also ended up having some issues. The most famous example is Hurricane, which was printed with a blue border! (Click here to see an example.)
Darksteel uncommon. During the early design process of equipment, the designers searched for old enchant creature cards with effects that might be more interesting if the effect was reusable. Skullclamp started out as an equipment version of Bequeathal, but it was the +1/-1 clause that was added later which led to most of the card’s problems.
Fifth Dawn uncommon. Once it was decided that Fifth Dawn would have the sunburst theme, extra effort was made not only to include mana fixing in that set (like this card) but also in Darksteel as well. Among other changes to prepare for Fifth Dawn, Darksteel Ingot was moved to common (from uncommon) and Vedalken Engineer’s ability was changed to produce colored mana.
Ninth Edition uncommon. While picking cards for Ninth Edition, Aaron Forsythe wanted to include Tithe, but that card turned out to be on the Reserved List. Looking back through other sets, Aaron found this card, which had a similar effect. Like many land-searching spells, this one (originally from Portal) is worded so that it can find even non-basic Plains cards, something you may want to keep in mind when you read today’s Arcana??�
Odyssey common. This was a reprint of Hermetic Study, from Urza’s Saga. It was added to Odyssey with a non-storyline-specific name with the likely intent of adding it to an upcoming core set (a process called “promotion” by R&D). However, it was right about this time that R&D reexamined the color pie and decided that this effect made much more sense for red’s set of abilities, so Psionic Gift never managed to make the jump to white border.
Champions of Kamigawa rare. Many players think of Fact or Fiction when they first see Gifts Ungiven, as both instants share the same casting cost and feature an often-agonizing choice for the opponent. However, this was actually inspired by a much older card: Intuition, from Tempest.
Alliances common. Released in 1996, the Alliances expansion was the last set to have multiple art versions for cards. The practice was discontinued (except in special circumstances, like Brothers Yamazaki) because of just how strongly players identify cards by their art. (Click here to see the other version of Gift of the Woods.)
Invasion rare. Occasionally Magic cards are created by simply combining the effects of two separate (but related) cards. In this case, the designers combined Mana Flare (which, even back then, they felt made more sense as a green card) with the red card Manabarbs.
Invasion uncommon. Some time back, Wizards commissioned a market research study wherein players were given “godbooks” containing all Magic cards created so far, and asked to pick their favorites. The results? Molimo, Maro-Sorcerer and Heroes’ Reunion took top honors. (Something to keep in mind next time you hear someone claim that Magic players don’t like life gain!)
