On the Origin of Species

Today I thought I'd talk a bit about evolution, since I know a few people have been interested to see how I did that. I received a number of suggestions from people, including using a leveling system like in Rise of the Eldrazi, making lesser creatures work as cost-reducers of the higher evolutions, and making creatures like tutors that can search for the higher evolutions at any time. I didn't stick to one method for every evolution line, mainly because there were some Pokemon that have been excluded entirely, and it also just felt right to treat each line individually when designing. I'll be previewing a few new creatures today, each one representing a different form of evolution that I used in the set.

Artwork by Dante Corvus

After I completed the starters and their evolutions (I won't be giving those away today), I moved on to Caterpie's line, which is the three-Pokemon line of Caterpie, Metapod, and Butterfree. I originally was going to leave out Caterpie because I thought it would be too insignificant, but then I realized that if I was going to make this a complete set, we were going to need some "bad" creatures, too. However, the transition from a little bug to a hardening cocoon seemed odd, so I made Caterpie separate from Metapod. Because of this decision, I won't take the time to show you Caterpie today. Metapod is a different story.

I loved the idea of making Metapod a parallel to Roc Egg, since it was such a great value card in Limited. However, the fact that Metapod wanted to be green made this endeavor a little tricky. On one hand, a defender that makes a decent flier seems fine as uncommon, but when you think about green, they never get fliers. Pokemon's insects tend to fly in later evolutions, so I decided to translate that into higher rarity. Despite the fact that Metapod isn't incredible, it does enable you to have decent evasion in a mono-green deck, which barely ever happens. Thus an evolution line has been established.

Artwork by Snook-8

Another way of connecting creatures of the same evolution line is indirectly through parallels. A couple creatures in Pokemon simply look like the different age-groups of the same animal, so I was often able to represent that through the growth of power and toughness or a change of color. For Cubone, it was the latter.

The Pokedex suggested that the key difference between Cubone and Marowak was the emotional shift from sadness to anger. I decided to represent that by keeping the same creature, just flipping the power and toughness and changing the color. Neither are super powerful, and both are relatively useful in a draft. They both are also perfect for being common, which is also important to keep in mind when designing the set as a whole.

Artwork by Irshad Karim

...And then there's Magikarp. It's always hard to think of a creature so useless as being directly related to the most powerful Pokemon in the games. However, this is an undeniable fact, and I couldn't will myself to exclude it or separate the two. So I made it a herald.

Extremely easy to kill and extremely powerful when given the opportunity, heralds have been the bringers of much pain in Magic's history, particularly the heralds of Shards of Alara, which are the most similar to Magikarp. However, Magikarp is much more powerful due the significantly lower cost to search for its evolution. And I'm sure you're dying to see Gyarados...

Artwork by Alysia Prosser

As you can see, if you have both cards in your deck, and your opponent can't kill your turn-one Magikarp, it's going to be a pretty tough game to beat. I didn't want to give it an immediate effect, but it's still a pretty significant force to be reckoned with, even if you have to hard-cast it.

That's all for today. I hope you enjoyed my first mythic preview of the set; there will be a few more mythic previews to come, though not necessarily in the near future. Stay tuned next week for when I jump into the new mechanic of the set and start discussing noncreatures! Until next time.