Magic The Gathering

Legions rare. Red has had haste since The Dark but those early haste creatures were usually just attackers as opposed to utility creatures. As time went on, however, R&D experimented more and more with putting haste on creatures with tap abilities as well to allow haste to have other strategic uses. It’s no secret Mark Rosewater loves the design of Sneak Attack, so it’s probably no surprise that this guy’s playtest name was “Sneak Attacker”.

Urza’s Destiny rare. From time to time the designers will have a card they like that doesn’t end up getting much attention from the public, so they try to find some other way to make the effect more interesting. The idea behind Rayne was to take the effect from Reparations and make it more powerful by tying into the block’s enchantment subtheme.

Time Spiral common. Coal Stoker began as a nostalgic reference to Priest of Gix, and as such originally generated when it came into play. As expected that turned out too powerful, so the card was scaled back to instead. That change also made it something of a reference to Coal Golem, which was taken into account when the card went through concepting by the creative team.

Time Spiral rare. Urza’s Saga featured a set of creature enchantments called the “make me” cycle by R&D, because each enchantment made the creature into something more like an iconic creature of that color, such as Serra’s Embrace (Serra Angel) or Shiv’s Embrace (Shivan Dragon). In retrospect, R&D felt like they’d let the green member of the cycle down, so Time Spiral was a great chance to take another shot, creating the Verdant Force “make me” enchantment.

Time Spiral common. Sage of Epityr references two different cards from Magic’s past. Its name comes from Tablet of Epityr, a card from Antiquities. (”Epityr” is a town in Dominaria’s Karplusans, and contains the Temple of Serra.) The ability comes from Sage Owl, first printed in Weatherlight.

Time Spiral common. Most players realize this guy is a reference to Gush, but did you ever notice the gold in those bubbles and wonder what’s going on? The card this art was originally intended for was actually a tweak on Dream Cache! The card was killed late in the process, so the art was used for Fathom Seer instead.

Time Spiral uncommon. The philosophy behind how to treat the removed from game zone has undergone a lot of debate in R&D over the years. Though the “RFG” zone originally started as a place to just put things actually removed from the game, such as Swords to Plowshares, the advent of other cards that interact with the zone, such as the Wish cycle from Judgment, changed it to a place from which cards could actually come back. Suddenly “removed from the game” didn’t mean the card was necessarily gone from the game! The inspiration for this spell was pulling suspended cards into an opponent’s graveyard before they could fire, but it was made much more interesting by applying it to nearly all RFG cards in a game. Whether cards like this open the RFG zone to too much interaction, or that the zone is simply the victim of an outdated name, still comes up for debate from time to time.

Time Spiral rare. Called “Blessing of Braids” during design, the suspend side of this spell was designed as a reference to the popular Odyssey card Braids, Cabal Minion. The final name was chosen as a hint toward the black legend.

Time Spiral common. A 4/4 flier for common is a very rare occurrence. Not counting Fog Elemental (which is basically a one-shot creature), the only other two printed so far are Illusionary Forces (Ice Age) and Breezekeeper (Visions).

Time Spiral common. This is the only card where the suspend cost () is higher than the card’s mana cost (). (Cards like Ancestral Vision don’t count, since they don’t have a mana cost.) It’s a twist on the normal suspend idea, as it’s an average-costed creature but offers an additional benefit in return for suspending it instead.