Because #MTGUNF is my baby, they gave me a social media preview. I chose this card because there's an interesting story behind it. which I'm going to tell today. I want you to try and predict what the card might do from my story before you see it. (1/10)
When we decided to make some of the cards eternal, I put together a four-person team: @Dunkatog, the Rules Manager, @Em_TeeGee from the play design team, @WotC_Matt, the set’s editor, and myself. Today’s preview card came up in the meeting. (2/10)
@Dunkatog said, “This works perfectly in the rules, I have no issue with it.” @Em_TeeGee said, “I have a few tweaks I’d like to do ratewise, but given those changes, I’m good with it.” @WotC_Matt said, “I can write it on a card.” So, the card got marked as eternal. (3/10)
My desire was to have every card that could be eternal be eternal because my motivation for doing eternal in the first place was just allowing more casual players access to the cards without having to beg their playgroup to let them use them. (4/10)
Flash forward to the slideshow. This is when we show the mostly finished cards to a whole bunch of people in Studio X that, up to that point, haven’t seen the cards. When this card came up, a lot of folks were like, “How in the world is this eternal?!” (5/10)
I explained that it works in the rules, we think it won’t cause issues in Legacy/Vintage, and we can properly template it. That was the guideline for what was made eternal. The general response was, “This just doesn’t feel like an eternal card. It feels acorn.” (6/10)
After a slideshow, people turn in notes on the cards, and the #1 note, by far, was “this card should be acorn”. Part of the divide between acorn and eternal is a feel, and it was clear this card just didn’t feel eternal to enough people. So, I made it an acorn card. (7/10)
I’m about to show it to you. Before I do, I’m curious for you to guess what effect could be eternal, but just didn’t feel like it was supposed to be? It’s a type of effect Un-sets have done before. Something that was first done not in an Un-set. Can you guess what it is? (8/10)
This is just some empty space so you don’t accidentally see the card before you have a chance to guess what kind of effect it is. I hope this is an insight into one of the challenges of making the acorn/eternal divide. (9/10)
Here’s the card from #MTGUNF. It’s called Tug of War. I hope some of you enjoy playing it. (10/10) #WotCStaff 
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