Gavin Verhey brought Jadine Klomparens from Play Design and the Core Set 2021 team to discuss what happens behind the scenes on a new set.
Core Set 2021 was the first set Klomparens worked on after arriving at Wizards of the Coast (WotC). She tells Verhey about how her mindset changes from being a competitive player to a designer and how making tiny changes to cards impact them. Klomparens also pointed out how cards that are currently powerful affect decisions on future sets that are being worked on at the moment.
The two discuss how art can impact the design of cards, particularly when the art has a creature that clearly flies or the type of creature shown limits the sizing of a creature. She goes over the two cards she designed from scratch and went to print – Tempered Veteran and Thieves’ Guild Enforcer.
Klomparens emphasized how much work and discussion was had around Teferi, Master of Time. After Teferi was going to be able to activate on all turns, the rest of the abilities went through constant change and had to be tweaked so that it wasn’t overly complicated. The team also wanted to create a cycle of cards like Baneslayer Angel that were very powerful but were susceptible to removal.
After going over how Play Design succeeded with the synergy between mutate and +1+1 counters and it making constructed, Klomparens wraps up by talking about her favorite cards to design and work with, highlighting Liliana, Waker of the Dead.