ICONIC AND CHARACTERISTIC CREATURE TYPES AND THE PLANES THEY LIVE (AND DON'T LIVE) ON MEGATHREAD: I'm too sick to do anything useful, so you all must endure my ramblings. #WOTCstaff 1/X
Each color has one iconic creature type. These are generally big, powerful creatures that exemplify the color in some way. Some of these have been with their color from the beginning of Magic; some were picked up along the way. 2/X
Angels in Magic are holy, martial protectors. They are, as a rule, female, in contrast to the male demons. Angels first appeared in Alpha and have been a staple of the game ever since. 3/X 
Sphinges (Hi, @zdch) represent blue's intellect and trickiness, forcing people to answer difficult riddles. And of course they can fly. The first sphinx appeared in Legends, but the first blue sphinges were in Ravnica: City of Guilds. 4/X
The price of black magic is frequently high, and often involves more than mere mana. Some demons have dangerous "downside" mechanics, and may turn on their summoner. Demons were introduced in Alpha, but disappeared from the game for several years in response to a moral panic. 5/X
Dragons figure prominently in many cultures' folklores, and are probably the most popular type of creature in Magic. The traditional Western dragon flies on batlike wings and breathes fire. Dragons were introduced in Alpha. 6/X
Hydras, with their ever-expanding number of heads, represent green's tendency toward growth. Hydras were introduced in Alpha, but the first monogreen hydra was in Dissension. 7/X
Characteristic creature types are a little less-defined. These creatures frequently appear at common at lower mana costs. They have the support of powerful tribal lords, so it's easy to build a deck themed around a characteristic creature type. 8/X
White doesn't really have a characteristic creature type. We tried to make Kithkin and Kor work, but neither of them really stuck. 9/X
White tends to have a lot of humans though, and some of the most powerful human tribal cards are white. However, humans appear in every color. Humans were first introduced in Alpha, though they didn't become a creature type until Mirrodin. 10/X
Merfolk, as fish people, reflect blue's association with the element of water. They were introduced in Alpha. We experimented with alternatives to merfolk in the mid-2000s, but Merfolk made their triumphant return in Lorwyn. 11/X
Black has two characteristic creature types, zombies and vampires. Both of these creatures are undead, tying into black's association with death. Zombies usually appear in hordes. Vampires reflect (haha) black's parasitic nature. Both types debuted in Alpha. 12/X
Goblins originate in medieval European folklore, and are small, malicious faeries or demons. Magic's goblins are often suicidally short-sighted, playing into red's philosophy of embracing the present at the expense of the future. Goblins first appeared in Alpha. 13/X
Magic's elves owe much to Tolkien, who in turn borrowed them from Norse and Germanic folklore. Elves are intimately associated with the forest, and often have abilities that add mana or help lands. Elves first appeared in Alpha. 14/X
I'm going to hit all of the major planes in chronological order of their debut. I'll define major planes as ones that were depicted on all of the cards of a draftable Magic set. So planes like Segovia, Ulgrotha, Serra's Realm, and Fiora don't count. 15/X
DOMINARIA: Magic's original, sprawling, hodge-podge of a plane contains just about everything. Interestingly, sphinges are few and few between. We've only seen three Dominarian sphinges. 16/X
We decided that djinns better represented the iconic big blue creatures of early Magic, so we used them as blue's iconic type in 2018's Dominaria set. 17/X
Rath contained all of the characteristic creature types. No sphinges though. Hydras were still red back then. Demons were off-limits, though Pit-Spawn was later errated to be a demon. 18/X
Mercadia doesn't have elves, angels, demons, or hydras. Also, the goblins are really smart for some reason. Mercadia just ain't right, folks. 19/X
When Mirrodin (now New Phyrexia) was introduced, the creative team didn't like the creative disconnect of merfolk and other sea dwelling creatures fighting with land dwellers. So they invented the vedalken, a race of blue-skinned intellectual artificers. 20/X
KAMIGAWA was heavily inspired by Japanese folklore, so many of Magic's traditional creature types would have felt out of place there. Plus, the creative team still hated fish tails. So we got rabbit ears instead, with the moonfolk. We got rat folk and snake folk too. 21/X
Angels, sphinges and hydras, all Western monsters, need not apply in Kamigawa either. Their mechanical roles were filled by various spirits. 22/X
RAVNICA: The original Ravnica block introduced our "missing" iconic types to their proper colors. 23/X
Interestingly, the first Ravnica block contained no merfolk, replacing them with more vedalken. However, in Return to Ravnica block we revealed that the merfolk had merely been hiding in underground oceans. 24/X
LORWYN / SHADOWMOOR: This is a noteworthy plane for several reasons. The first is that there are NO HUMANS on Lorwyn (or Shadowmoor)! The only humans that appeared in the booster packs were these guys, and they never even went there in-story. 25/X
Another important thing was the triumphant return of merfolk! They'd barely been seen at all since Invasion block, just Ambassador Laquatus and a handful in Time Spiral block. The creative team was still figuring out how to integrate them with the land dwellers, though. 26/X
Lorwyn's lighter, storybook-inflected aesthetic precluded undead creatures or giant scary monsters like Magic's traditional iconic creatures, but some of these woke up after the Great Aurora turned Lorwyn into Shadowmoor. 27/X
ALARA was designed to pander pretty hard to what we understood the average Magic player's tastes to be, so most of the iconic and characteristic types appear there. No merfolk, though. We're back to vedalken again, as is appropriate in artifact-centered Esper. 28/X
ZENDIKAR: This is where we begin to see vampires treated as a characteristic type, with lots of small, common vampires. Previously vampires were treated more like iconics, with big, powerful flying creatures. Vampires still straddle that line to a certain extent. 29/X
We also created legged merfolk for Zendikar, solving the problems that had plagued the writers of art descriptions for fish-tailed merfolk for years. 30/X
INNISTRAD: Magic's Gothic horror plane obviously had plenty of room of zombies and vampires. And someone had to be the victim of all of these monsters, so humans clearly had a place here. Merfolk, goblins and elves didn't really belong, except in in-universe folklore. 31/X
The heavy reliance on medieval Christian imagery made demons and angels natural choices... 32/X
...and Gothic architecture inspired one of Magic's best dragon illustrations. 33/X
A hydra could be suitably horrific, but a sphinx doesn't really belong on Innistrad. 34/X
Theros, inspired as it was by ancient Greek mythology, was a great fit for some of Magic's iconic types. Sphinges and hydras were a great fit there! Greek myths are lousy with dragons, too. 36/X
The word "demon" is rooted in the Greek "daimōn" (though the original meaning was very different from how Magic depicts demons), and we found a cool visual identity for Therosian demons. 37/X
Ancient Greece being a pre-Abrahamic society, angels didn't fit well in Theros. Archons were more appropriate to the setting. 38/X
Goblins, vampires and elves were all from northern Europe, and much later than classical times, so they didn't fit. Merfolk were great, though! There were lots of examples of fish-tailed folk in Greek myths. 39/X
Zombies originated in Haitian folklore and magical practice, but they have long been coopted by fantasists for fiction. Having a "race" of dead people who had escaped from the Underworld made a lot of sense for Theros, and the zombie creature type was the most appropriate. 40/X
TARKIR: This plane was inspired by the Mongol Empire, which encompassed much of Asian and a good deal of Eastern Europe at its greatest extent. A lot of Western type creatures were a poor fit here, though some of the characteristic types made it in... 41/X
...and some of the iconics as well... 42/X
...and dragons. 43/X
So many dragons. 44/X
Uh, etc. etc. 45/X
KALADESH: This plane's Indian cultural influences were very much surface level, so many of the creature type choices were based on the mechanical themes and visual motifs of the block. 46/X
This is an artifact-based block, so the vedalken return! Sorry, merfolk. 47/X
Kaladesh's sunny, optimistic setting was no place for gross, awful monsters like zombies and vampires. Instead, we got the aetherborn, a very fresh take on a black race. The game designers really needed some vampires for Standard, so some aetherborn are vampires. 48/X
Instead of goblins, we have gremlins, which I believe originated (in the real world) from British aviator folklore and (in Magic) from the Antiquities set. 49/X
Elves fit the visual motif of Kaladesh, where nature and artifice mimic each others' forms. 50/X
Likewise, there were solutions for some of Magic's iconic types. Not sphinxes, though. Maybe next time? :) 51/X
AMONKHET: This block was based on Egyptian history and mythology. Few of the characteristic types made sense here. We used humans and zombies (as mummies), and filled in the rest of the set with various animal-headed folk. 52/X
The iconics are all present. Sphinges were an obvious must-have, and male angels lent an eerie sense of "something's not quite right here" to the set. 53/X
IXALAN: Heavily tribal themed sets tend to squeeze out irrelevant creature types. Black needed room for lots of vampires and pirates, so zombies were out, and green needed room for merfolk and dinosaurs, so elves were out. 54/X
In fact, dinosaurs squeezed out all of our iconics, with a single, decidedly non-native, example. 55/X
BABLOVIA: This plane has a lot of weird animal types to support the Host/Augment mechanic. Bablovia doesn't have merfolk, but it does have this tragic freak of nature. 56/X
There are plenty of zombies and goblins on Bablovia, because zombies and goblins are funny. There are no elves, because elves are Very Serious. Some might even accuse them of being stuffy. 57/X
Bablovia has angels and hydras, presumably because somebody came up with a pun involving them. There's no reason there couldn't be sphinges, dragons, or demons there if we went back. 58/X
ELDRAINE: The original vision for Eldraine was that it would be very human-centric, with very few other humanoid races. 59/X
We recognized, however, that the various restrictions we'd placed on which creatures types belonged in which plane were becoming onerous when we wanted to enable tribal decks in Standard. We put in the additional effort to make the denizens of Eldraine a bit more diverse. 60/X
As a result, you see zombies, goblins, merfolk,and elves... 61/X
...though of the iconic types, we only have dragons and hydras. 62/X
Well, THAT took way longer than I thought it would! We've made SO. MANY. PLANES! Goodnight, folks! 63/63
