Innistrad: Midnight Hunt card-by-card thread! I'll talk about various cards in the set, which I led the Vision Design team for. #WOTCstaff#MTGMidnight 1/X
Phantom Carriage: This is one of many references to classic horror films... 2/X
In this case, to the extremely bleak and gloomy 1921 Swedish film, The Phantom Carriage. 3/X
Defenestrate: This was one of my high school English teacher's favorite words. When I needed a common black removal spell, I designed this in Judith DeWoskin's honor. It's surprising that we never put this line of text on a card before! 4/X
The Meathook Massacre: This is a reference to the 1974 American film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. As we make more and more cards set in our horror plane of Innistrad, we'll occasionally dip into types of horror other than Gothic horror. 5/X
That includes the slasher genre, which Texas Chainsaw is a classic example of. I keep joking that we'll eventually have to move the camera back to reveal the Province of the Promiscuous Teenagers. 6/X
Rotten Reunion: Now THAT'S what I call Gothic horror! 🤣 More later! 7/X
Immolation: This simple, evocative card from Legends is one that I've long wanted to reprint somewhere. I'm glad the Set Design team added it to the set! 8/X
Moonveil Regent: This card was inspired by the visual design of Innistrad's dragons. The resemblance of their wings to stained glass windows made me think of a colors-matter design. The card went through a lot of iteration over the course of the set's design. 9/X
Consuming Blob: Another classic horror film reference! 10/X
This one is the 1958 American sci fi/horror film, The Blob, about an extraterrestrial, well, blob, the grows and consumes until people figure out how to kill it. 11/X
Rise of the Ants: Another, 'nother classic horror reference! 12/X
This one, I haven't actually seen, but it's the iconic 1954 American B sci-fi/horror movie, Them! 13/X
Rem Karolus, Stalwart Slayer: This character appeared in the flavor text of multiple cards over the years. We finally made a legendary creature card for him! 14/X
Sigarda, Champion of Light: Since Avacyn was unmade, and Bruna and Gisela were, um, Eldrazified, the only big angel left was Sigarda (or so we thought!). We knew we needed to make a new legend to lead what remains of the church. More later! 15/X
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#MTGKaldheim: Creature types, color combinations, and the Realms! This will be a long thread, so I may have to take breaks here and there to do the actual work I'm being paid for, eat, sleep, etc. #WOTCstaff 1/
For context, I led the vision design team. Our team collaborates extensively with the worldbuilding team, with ideas from one team inspiring more ideas from the other. 2/
I was so excited by Kaldheim as it developed that I asked Jenna Helland if I could help write the world guide. My main contribution was writing early drafts of the descriptions of Istfell, Karfell, and Surtland, 3/
DRYADS AND NYMPHS: A MAGIC THE GATHERING HISTORY I talked about this on the Weekly MTG stream, but I know that not everyone was able to watch that. 1/X #WOTCstaff
IN THE BEGINNING Richard Garfield, PhD created Magic, and it was good. 2/X
He populated the world with various creatures you'd expect to see in the AD&D Monster Manual, and from various mythologies and fantasy novels. There were dragons... 3/X
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
When I started designing Theros Beyond Death, I already knew that we'd be seeing a lot more of the Underworld than we had in our previous visit to Theros. #MTGTHB#WOTCstaff 1/8
I got really excited about the titans from Greek mythology. These are the primordial ur-gods who created the universe and gave birth to the current crop of gods. Cronos, Oceanus, Hyperion, etc. The gods imprisoned the titans in the Underworld when they rose to power. 2/8
In Magic, we use the Elder creature type to represent huge primordial entities. We always pair it with another creature type. 3/8
I wanted to make Dragon Tribal a deck you could build in #MTGM19 Limited, due to the thematic tie-in with Sarkhan. #M19CardStories#WOTCstaff 1/9
This meant that we would have to get our Dragon as-fan high enough. (As-fan is the average number of cards of a given quality in a booster pack.) An uncommon Dragon increases the Dragon as-fan by 0.0375. while a common increases it by 0.099. 2/9
We had a couple of great reprints at uncommon, Volcanic Dragon, which is a simple, elegant card, and Dragon Egg, which is a great top-down design and counts as two Dragons for the purposes of some interactions. 3/9