With the upcoming release of Double Masters, Gavin Verhey took today’s episode of Good Morning Magic to dig up some information on the original concepts of some mythic rares getting reprinted in the set.
Many of the major reprints in Double Masters started out differently, including Commander generals Atraxa, Praetors’ Voice and Breya, Etherium Shaper. Atraxa originally had the activated ability of “pay three: proliferate” instead of the endstep trigger while Breya used to be able to draw cards instead of deal damage.
Many of the swords went through big changes as well. Sword of Fire and Ice and Sword of Light and Shadow both had their equip costs moved from three to two while Sword of War and Peace had completely different abilities to start. It started out with Shatter and Demystify abilities and even for a brief moment in testing had the Blinding Angel ability of making your opponent skip their next combat step.
Trinisphere began as a four-mana artifact that made everything cost four and Karn Liberated’s plus ability started as a +2 that exiled the top two cards of a player’s library. Speaking of planeswalker changes, Jace, the Mind Sculptor’s first ability was a mill two instead of a fate seal and the ultimate read as “Choose a number. Each player draws that many cards.”
Force of Will had its alternate casting cost include the life payment. Geist of Saint Traft went through many casting cost, power and toughness changes, and angel token size changes. Lastly, Venegevine didn’t start with the return from the graveyard ability and instead came into play with a root counter, gained a root counter each turn, and its power and toughness was its root counters squared.
