Thread by @EthanFleischer

THE PAINLAND THREAD
We reprinted six of the Ice Age / Apocalypse "painlands" in #MTGDominaria. Why these six cards, and not any of the other four? Read on to find out! #WOTCstaff 1/6

We knew we wanted to reprint the allied painlands to help to balance mana bases in the Pioneer format, where only the enemy colored painlands were legal. The challenge was in the cards' names: several of them had proper nouns unique to Dominaria. 2/6

Dominaria United and The Brothers' War provided the opportunity we needed. We could stick the allied lands in one set and the enemy lands in the other. Easy-peasy! But not so fast! 3/6

Some of the lands were named after locations that DIDN'T EXIST YET during the time period of the Brothers' War! There were no such places named Adarkar Wastes, Karplusan Forest, or Yavimaya back then. So they needed to be in Dominaria United. 4/6

Once that was decided, we added two more lands to balance out the colors. It would have been nice for the Caves of Koilos to be in the Brothers' War set, since they played a bigger role in that story, but they certainly still exist in present day Dominaria. 5/6

Pretty late in DMU set design, the Play Designers requested Shivan Reef to help mana bases in Standard work better. So we moved it from BRO to DMU (and commissioned some spectacular new art). That's how it went down. 6/6