R&D 180s on Cone of Creatures

by Bill Stark | posted at 2010-01-16 14:22:00
tagged: MTG, Magic, Mark Rosewater, Magic the Gathering, Worldwake, Prerelease, Spoiler, Maro, Cone of Creatures

On Friday, MTGCast.com released their Worldwake spoiler in this article. Here's the text for their card:

Bestial Menace 3GG

Sorcery UNC

Put a 1/1 green Snake creature token, a 2/2 Wolf creature token, and a 3/3 Elephant creature token onto the battlefield.

Tom Gustafson of MTGCast pointed out on Twitter this former Making Magic column by Mark "Maro" Rosewater: Tokens of My Affection.

In the article, Mark discusses tokens and the complexities of cards that generate more than one type of token. A direct quote from Mark on the issue:

"We don’t create cards that produce more than one type of token. If a card makes 2/2 token creatures, for instance, that is all it will ever make. The reason we do this is to avoid confusion. In Judgment design, we actually experimented with a flashback spell called Cone of Creatures that created a 1/1 squirrel, a 2/2 bear, and a 3/3 elephant. But playtesting showed players kept confusing the tokens for one another, so the card was scrapped."

That's right, Rosewater plainly states R&D doesn't do cards with multiple token creature types. He then goes on to detail exactly Bestial Menace as the test case for why R&D doesn't do this. The article, published in 2002, is a fun walk down memory lane as R&D is clearly breaking that "rule" for the production of Bestial Menace, called "Cone of Creatures" in Mark's article.

It isn't the first time Wizards has broken its own self-imposed rules, but it does go to show just because a Wizards R&D member says something can't or must happen, doesn't mean you can accept that it will or won't.

What do you think? Is Bestial Menace too confusing for players to understand? Share your thoughts in the forum link below.

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