Gavin Verhey’s Good Morning Magic video series returned today with an installment going over the process of dreaming up a Magic card to seeing it printed in a set.
The video starts with Verhey discussing how thousands of ideas for cards are created for a new set and the process of trimming them down, changing them based on limited performance, and adjusting constructed level rarities. Then he gets into the meat of the video where he describes the task of being assigned to work on “wild rares” from Ikoria lead designer Dave Humpherys.
“Wild rares” are what Verhey sums up as eye-popping cards that immediately make you scratch your head at the concept. Not only does Verhey show off his original take on a card that made it to Ikoria, but he goes through his notes from the time and breaks down other ideas that didn’t make the cut.
The ideas he had ranged from a mutual ramping sorcery, a life-swapping enchantment, a planeswalker that made it to print via the Mystery Booster product, and a creature with an ability that eventually found its spot on an artifact from Commander 2020 – Manascape Refractor.
Finally, Verhey brought up his original concept for Lavabrink Venturer, or what he had named Numbered Paladin.
It’s rare that a card goes from idea to printing barely changed, but Lavabrink Venturer did just that. The only changes to the first concept were giving it another point of toughness and changing the creature type from Human Knight to Human Soldier.
Verhey wrapped up the show mentioning that another 2W creature he came up with, Monastery Mentor, that traveled a similar journey to creation.