B - Commons need to be simple and can't require too much attention during play.

Commons are truly the backbone of any set. They define how a set plays. To succeed in this role, commons need to be relatively simple. In some ways their true mission is to provide a backdrop for the more complex uncommons and rares. If commons get too complicated we end up with board situations where each player has far too many decisions. When commons are simple it makes games move forward more quickly, helping players get right to attacking and blocking without getting bogged down. We could easily print the other two cards, but just not at this rarity.

Spirit Guard became Torii Watchward. The others were cut.

A - Mechanical themes need to pick one direction and focus on it.

As you might imagine, there are a ton of possible mechanics that have to do with hand size. So many, in fact, that if we included a broad array of them the set would end up doing too many different things. Early on we decided to focus on the interesting tension that happens when you want to hold on to cards instead of playing them out right away. Should I play this creature or hold on to it so it can boost the abilities of my other cards? Should I play my sixth land so I can play multiple spells next turn or hold it back?

Note that (nearly) every ‘hand size matters' card in Saviors specifically rewards you for having lots of cards in your hand. The set has no place for cards like Extravagant Spirit, Megatherium, or Ensnaring Bridge, no matter how interesting they are. If it did, there would be little ability to anticipate opponents' strategies and the whole play experience would feel more random.

Further, the ‘hand size matters' mechanic is deeply tied to the story of the kami war. We knew we needed some way for the mortals to save themselves from the ravages of the immortal kami, and in the storyline that element was knowledge. They had to realize why the kami were attacking and do something about it. In Magic, knowledge is represented by cards in hand and more cards means more wisdom. By staying focused on having lots of knowledge, the mechanic stayed true to the story, which was really our number one priority in this flavor-driven block.

Growing Guy later became Descendant of Masumaro. The others didn't make it.

C - Every card needs a reason to be in this set. Otherwise we can save it for a later set that wants it more.

Situations like this break my heart. Very often we'll get cards that are so exciting and cool, yet don't really fit any of the block themes. In those cases, we have to say goodbye to our beloved children and send them off to the Holding Cell, a file in the database where cards wait like puppies at the animal shelter to be adopted by later sets. It's one of the hardest things for designers to do, especially when we don't have comparably cool cards to replace them.

Even though I'd love to see a card like Minds Into Balance printed, it's better to have Twins Convention here, and Minds in a future set. Maybe someday we'll do a ‘cards in library matters' set, where Minds Into Balance can really shine. Equal and Opposite is just too un-fun to print since it spawns hideously complex stack tricks.

Twins Convention belongs in this set because it interacts with soulshift (it brings spirits back) and legends (it kills them all).

Twins Convention made it in the set but was later cut when we created the cycle of Kirins. The others may or may not be rotting in Holding Cell gulag.

A - This set needs cards that can help players increase their hand sizes, especially in colors other than blue.

This question has to do with how well the set focuses on its theme. Again we need to ask ourselves “Is there a reason this card needs to be in this set and not somewhere else?” There are lots of cool cards we could print, but we are striving for cards that add up to more than the sum of their parts when taken together. In the case of Killdebeest we have an ability that anywhere else would be a drawback since you have to keep spending mana to replay a creature every turn. In this set however, this card gives you flexibility to start returning creatures, thus increasing your hand size the same way the Moonfolk do with lands in blue. In fact, we turned Stampeding Wildebeests into a five-card cycle in order to help give all the other colors more options to increase their hand sizes.

You might not realize how many other Saviors cards help players increase their hand sizes outside blue. Some of them include: all soulshift cards, the Yuki-Onna cycle, the Sweep cards, Seek the Horizon, Blood Clock, all cantrips, Death Denied, Elder Pine of Jukai, Mikokoro, Center of the Sea, and Molting Skin.

Kildebeest became Skull Collector. The others did not survive.

C - We need cards that play well with the other cards in the set in limited, constructed, or both.

This question is really about which cards play well in the current environments and which don't. Anyone who lived through the days of Sparksmith will cringe when they see Mr. Burn. A card like that wreaks havoc in a sealed or draft environment, often preventing any enemy creatures from ever hitting the table again. Despite this dominance in limited, it's still too weak to see constructed play. This card has the worst of both worlds - overpowered in limited and underpowered in constructed - and it makes nobody happy. Even though its ability seems to support the hand size matters theme, this card needs to go to the great digital database in the sky.

Garden of Good and Evil affects hand size, so it looks like it might support that set theme, but it actually hurts it. With the Garden in play, the game really turns into a battle of who can generate the most mana to keep his hand size bigger. All the interesting play decisions of what to play vs. what to hold back are suddenly obviated. In fact, this turns out to be a way to ruin all the work we put into subtle card interactions.

Corpse Tango looks kind of bad at first glance (the creature doesn't get haste, so it can't even attack,) but it actually turned out to be too good at that cost. Playtesters found fun tricks with Soulshift creatures and even started playing it in constructed, reanimating Kokusho, the Evening Star, and Yosei, the Morning Star just long enough to get their triggered abilities.

Corpse Tango became Footsteps of the Goryo. The others went to the recycle bin on my desktop.

B - We need to make the channel, sweep, and epic mechanics robust rather than spend card space on past mechanics or new ones that don't fit as well.

This question is about how many keywords to put in a set. The basic choice here is A) Keep doing keywords introduced in the previous expansion (ninjutsu), B) introduce two or three new keyword abilities while still supporting those from Champions, or C) introduce even more keywords in addition to sweep, channel, and epic.

This was a tough choice to make since we could easily have done more ninja or additional keywords like “possess” (which would fit the set mostly based on flavor reasons.) It's a judgment call what the right level of keywords are in a given set. Too many old ones like ninja and you won't have enough room for interesting new ones. Too many in general, and each one starts to seem less important to the set. Too few keywords and players start to feel cheated. During Champions design we had a big debate about whether we should have keyworded the ‘whenever you play a spirit or arcane spell…” trigger that appears on so many cards. Maybe we should have. In the end we decided that channel, sweep, and epic were the correct new keyword abilities for this set and ninjutsu and other new keyword abilities would have to step aside to make room for them.

B – Complex cards should generally be limited to either important story elements or to rare cards with especially interesting and unique effects.

These cards are all complex. Each set, we try to give ourselves a certain level of ‘complexity points' and not go over that limit. Each complex card uses up some of these theoretical points and when they've all been spent we don't make any more complex cards. This forces us to be very careful how we spend those points. Complex cards are best at rare, where they come up less frequently. At lower commonalities they tend to bring games to a grinding halt as the players pause to figure out the effect. We don't want that happening too often. We also like to use complexity points for unusual ‘top-down' card concepts to reflect the unique abilities of a character or event. Some good examples are Sekki, Seasons' Guide, Toshiro Umezawa, Oathkeeper, Takeno's Daisho, and Godo, Bandit Warlord.

In this case, one of the elements we wanted reflected in the set was the massive clash of armies as the denizens of the mortal world came together for the final decisive fight to save their world from destruction. I love the drama of Great Army as well. Many times you get next to nothing, but once in a while you get enough to just win the game spectacularly. The other cards here might fit into the set flavor-wise but we didn't feel we had to do them if we didn't want to. Plus neither one's effects are interesting enough to justify forcing players to parse all that text.

Great Army of the North became Rally the Horde. Super Maro Brothers never made it into the set. Binding Eternity was one of many Legendary Sorcery cards we tested but ultimately cut and replaced with the Epic spells.

A - Cards that support the set theme generally shouldn't compare unfavorably to well-known cards.

Wrath of Alexandria is a great example of how to make a theme look terrible. It's going to be directly compared to Wrath of God and almost always end up looking worse. When players see a card like that they wish they had a regular Wrath instead and just get annoyed at your mechanic.

Temporal Inept is also a worse, junked-up version of the rare Temporal Adept. It again uses the hand size mechanic in a way that makes it seem like a drawback.

Fiery Ritual may not look like a great card, but it's not easy to directly compare it to anything. Since it has a unique effect it's hard to make a snap judgment on its worth. Here the hand size mechanic is very open-ended. Who knows how many mana you could get out of it? Johnnies can wonder what kind of combos could abuse it. This is far superior to the other cards that are very close to known quantities (and compare poorly). The lesson here is that it's not hard to create cards that, while seeming like they might support your theme, actually do great damage to it.

Fiery Ritual became Inner Fire. The others were scrapped.

B – “Bad” cards should still be interesting to someone.

These cards are all so bad you can smell them a mile away. Every set needs bad cards, but Power Siphon does a pretty poor job of pretending to be interesting and Narrow Head actually works against the wisdom theme. Unwelcome Guests supports the wisdom theme by … what's that you say? One With Nothing? Let me check the spoiler… Holy cow!

I can't believe that got printed.

Well, I guess I'm not perfect. Even I got this one wrong. Apparently the right answer is A. But I hope everyone who opens a booster containing One With Nothing realizes I fought like crazy to kill it. Here's a snippet from the design file.

BT (Brian Tinsman) 4/28: Bad card. The design team is split here. My side says this is going too far with the badness. Plus it works against the set theme. The other guys say it's cool to combo it with reanimator and threshold. Putting it in for discussion purposes.

WW (Worth Wolpert) 4/30: While I sympathize with the "going too far with the badness" argument, I think "working against the set theme" is no different than us printing a card like Hum of the Radix in Mirrodin block. As it stands, I'd be happy to see this card in the set.

BT 5/6: This card is less like Hum in Mirrodin and more like G, Instant, Sacrifice all artifacts you control. - It only hurts you. But anyway that's not the main argument. This is worse than Pale Moon!

BB (Brandon Bozzi) 5/11: rare?

DAL (Devin Low) 5/12: Should be rare.

PB (Paul Barclay) 5/12: Pale Moon doesn't get you to threshold!

BT 5/16: Should be a new level of ultra-rare, such as 0 per display.

BT 5/16: Team makes it an instant to increase combo possibilities.

RB (Randy Buehler) 6/5: Could be rare

RB 6/10: Moved up to rare. Wow is this bad (but there ARE narrow applications ...)

BT 6/11: If this sees print as is, I'm going to pound my forehead against a cement wall until I get a little scab.

bs (Brian Schneider)6/24: does that mean you like it or dislike it? I have a tough time reading you.

AF (Aaron Forsythe) 7/1: Print this bad boy.

Hmm. Kinda sounds like they wanted to see me pound my head on the wall.

In fact, I now believe that One With Nothing is so bad it's good. Any Johnny who makes a deck with it will be a hero among Johnnies. And even if nobody plays it, it never fails to generate heated discussions whenever it comes up. So in the end, I'm actually glad it got printed. Even though I still had to pound my head.