Dominaria United Teasers
Before spoiler season starts for a new Magic set, Mark Rosewater puts out a blog post with teasers for upcoming cards. Here’s his entry for Dominaria United (which I will refer to by its set code: DMU). This is prime time for r/customMagic and other designers to get some inspiration, and I personally like to try my hand at creating cards with the appropriate effects and rules text. I may end up sharing more later, but I at least wanted to put out some hot takes and comment on some of the teasers that piqued my interest the most.
a popular planeswalker gets a reprint
This is particularly interesting in that premier standard sets have never reprinted planeswalker cards. The core sets (M10, M11, M12, M13, M14, M15) are a different story, but the last time we saw a reprinted planeswalker in a standard-legal set was 2014 (core sets use the upcoming year, similar to car models). Having a new version of a planeswalker shows character growth, especially in sets related to story. So one idea is that DMU has a dedicated slot to reprint legendaries, including planeswalkers, akin to the timeshifted sheet in Timespiral and Timespiral Remastered or the Strixhaven Mystical Archives. In this case, MaRo is being intentionally deceptive by only mentioning one popular reprint when really there will be several. As for which popular reprints this may actually refer to, my bet is on Teferi or Karn, as they’re from Dominaria, featured in the story, popular in multiple formats, and Jaya Ballard’s previous planeswalker cards weren’t very interesting/popular (so she’ll get a new iteration).
a blue card with “destroy all creatures”
Blue gets polymorph effects, which can sometimes be pointed at enemies as pseudo-removal (Pongify, Ravenform, Reality Shift). Blue doesn’t otherwise destroy creatures, and replacement/upgrade effects often exile instead of destroy and only hit your own creatures (Day of the Dragons, Synthetic Destiny, Mass Polymorph). So this has to be in the same vein as Curse of the Swine, destroying all creatures but replacing them with creature tokens of some sort.
a five mana value creature that can be a 10/10
My first thought is a reverse Draco or Scion of Draco that gets larger depending on the number of basic land types among lands you control. Of course, this could be a misdirect and it’s actually more along the lines of a Death’s Shadow that could be even larger than a 10/10 under certain conditions, and not strictly a 10/10. What this won’t be is a Gigantosaurus which is always a 10/10 for 5 mana. The power/toughness of the creature could key off of some other variable, such as number of cards in your graveyard, creature cards in all graveyards, or total loyalty among planeswalkers you control. While using total loyalty is interesting, it is too dependent on other cards to function as a standalone card. I wouldn’t mind if there were cards like that, I don’t think Wizards of the Coast would with their current design philosophy.
three original Weatherlight crew members are in the set
This has a bit more boundaries, and a finite pool of candidates. We’re unlikely to see anyone resurrected, and Karn has been the focus of the story so far. We also saw a compleated Ertai in Episode 4, so that makes two easy picks already. Multani was referenced in the story and got a new card in the 2018 Dominaria set. Then again, you can never count out Squee…
“exile each nonland permanent with mana value 2 or less”
This is an interesting case, because this line of text could be the entire rules text of a spell. But note that it’s neither capitalized nor contains a period, so there is potentially a lot more to this. It could be an enchantment with “When ~ enters the battlefield, exile each nonland permanent with mana value 2 or less until ~ leaves the battlefield.” similar to a Banishing Light or Oblivion Ring (or Aligned Hedron Network, an artifact that exiles creatures). However, I think an effect like that would have to specify “each other nonland permanent” just in case.
As for colors, White would be able to do this and Culling Ritual does something very similar in Black-Green. White also exiles instead of destroys in many cases. But it all depends on the other clauses surrounding it, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this ends up being a multi-color card (White-Blue or White-Black most likely).
“For each opponent who doesn’t, that player loses 2 life and you draw a card.”
Punctuation is always important, and we can see here we have a standalone clause. Combining opponents losing life and you drawing a card screams Black, but what kind of choice did we force our opponents to make? The easy leap is forcing them to sacrifice a creature or planeswalker. Some potentially interesting effects would be related to opponents willingly discarding cards or allowing you to resurrect creatures from their graveyards.
“instant or sorcery card with mana value 1 or 2”
The most straightforward effect would be a tutor akin to Mystical Tutor or Spellseeker. We got Solve the Equation in Strixhaven at uncommon, but this is oddly restrictive. So I’d imagine this more as an enters-the-battlefield effect tacked onto a blue creature, either in the vein of Snapcaster Mage (you may cast it this turn) or Torrential Gearhulk (cast it without paying its mana cost). I like that it’s a narrow band of instants/sorceries, which means the creature itself can be in the 3-4 mana value range (compared to the 6mv of Torrential Gearhulk) without being too broken.
I don’t want this to go on too long, so I’ll end it here for now. I may update this with images and more designs if I feel further inspired. I’m hoping Gavin Verhey posts some commander-related teasers too, those can be pretty wild.
