Ravnica uncommon. This versatile card was actually inspired by a submission from one of the readers for You Make the Card 2. In addition to fixing your own mana this also offers help to your teammates, and it can even switch over to offense when you don’t need it by putting mana into your opponent’s mana pool at times when they might not be able to use it!
Ravnica common. There are many firsts with this new set. Golgari Brownscale is the first card to have a trigger based on going from your graveyard to your hand.
Ravnica common. In a world like Ravnica, mana fixing is obviously crucial. The challenge for the design team with this one was that they wanted a card which could take advantage of the new dual lands, but which didn’t strictly obsolete Rampant Growth. To accomplish both, Farseek was worded to get any land type other than forest, but note that it can still search out any of the new dual lands that is also a Forest.
Ravnica common. This card underwent quite a bit of change during development. The original version from the design team actually milled four cards per activation, but that proved ridiculous for Limited play. The ability was moved to three but still turned out to be problematic, so the final version ended up at two. Even at half the power of its original version, we think you’ll still find this plenty reasonable for Limited formats.
Ravnica rare. This is the first Magic card to ever feature the phrase “target library.” In fact, the comprehensive rules were changed to allow this phrase, as previously libraries couldn’t be targeted by spells. The main reason? It was the only way to template Circu’s abilities that would fit on the card!
Mercadian Masques uncommon. Though it’s easy to miss at card size, the background to the Mercadian Masques piece shows a hunter’s silhouette gesturing to fellow hunters as they chase the Wumpus in the foreground. (Click here for a large version of the MM Hunted Wumpus.)
Mirage uncommon. Red and blue are tied for the most Efreet cards in Magic at five apiece (plus Frenetic Efreet, which is both colors). At a time when much (if not most) popular spot creature removal was either white or involved 3 damage, this efreet enjoyed quite a bit of play in many different decks.
Urza’s Saga common. Black is the only color with such a core philosophy of trying to get you to play more and more of the color to the exclusion of other colors. Often that commitment shows up in mana requirements, such as Drain Life’s cost or Frozen Shade’s ability, where more black mana means more power. But a related family of black cards rewards you for having more swamps rather than just having more black mana. (Some other examples are Nightmare, Dakmor Sorceress, Infernal Harvest, and Mutilate.)
Alliances uncommon. The reason this card used temporary +1/+1 counters was to get around a templating problem Magic used to have. Originally, a spell with multiple targets couldn???t target the same target more than once, which caused problems with how the designers wanted this card to work. To get around the problem counters were used for this card. (This kind of problem was one of the reasons the targeting rules were changed with Champions of Kamigawa.)
Stronghold common. In addition to Torment, there are four other Magic cards which share an exact name with a Magic set. (Remember, only exact names, so something like Lingering Mirage wouldn’t count for Mirage since there are extra words in that card’s name.) How many others can you come up with? When you’re ready, click here to reveal the answer.
