Portal rare. While designing the Portal and Starter sets, R&D had to look at what cards could be brought over to a format where there are only sorceries and creatures. Last Chance is actually a Portal version of Final Fortune, and it???s a good example of how drastically a spell’s power level can change when moved from instant to sorcery.
Ravnica common. During the early design process R&D examined all of the different abilities in the game and which colors they were associated with, to identify areas of potential overlap for each of the guilds. As this card illustrates, both the basilisk ability and regeneration show up primarily in black and green.
Ravnica rare. When designing complex creatures with multiple abilities, one of the important challenges is to make sure that all of the abilities interact in interesting ways and in a fashion that makes sense as a whole. Sisters of Stone Death manages to pull this off with not just two, but three different abilities.
Ravnica uncommon. Because gold cards often naturally lend themselves to complexity, one of the challenges to designing these kinds of cards is also coming up with good, simple effects, such as Terminate from Planeshift.
Ravnica uncommon. Note that cards like this are made to only trigger off of nontoken creatures to prevent them from creating an infinite loop combo that would be far too easy to set up.
Ravnica rare. This card was called “Super Blinky” during playtesting, because the combination of dredge with the ability to draw a card made this creature feel very much like the nearly unkillable Blinking Spirit. The similarity also wasn’t lost on Mike Flores, who titled his preview article on the card Blinky’s Revenge.
Ravnica rare. Magic design has been trying out new variations on the original dual lands since the days of Ice Age. The idea behind this cycle was to combine the strengths of two different land cycles: Invasion’s tap lands (like Coastal Tower) and the cycle of painlands from Ice Age and Apocalypse (like Adarkar Wastes and Battlefield Forge). By giving players the ability to choose when playing these lands they become more valuable for both aggressive and controlling decks.
Ravnica rare. An interesting thing about Savra is that, though she triggers specifically off of creature sacrifice, she doesn’t actually give you any way to sacrifice creatures. That she is at her best when your creatures are dying, and giving you life in the process, ties right into the flavor of the Golgari.
Ravnica rare. The idea for this popular card came from Richard Garfield. It worked out so well that it inspired an entire cycle of cards, one per color.
Ravnica rare. Double-digit colorless mana costs are quite rare in Magic. In fact, there have been only nine such cards printed so far: Aladdin’s Lamp, Stratadon, Darksteel Colossus, Mycosynth Golem, Blinkmoth Infusion, Mox Lotus, Draco, Autochthon Wurm, and the undisputed king of meaty casting costs - the mighty Gleemax. Aladdin’s Lamp is a special case because, due to typesetting issues back in the days of Arabian Nights, “10″ couldn’t be shown as one symbol. It was instead shown as 
