Sometimes Wizards of the Coast just baffles us with their decisions. Removing stacked combat damage made sense. Printing Rise of the Eldrazi as a 249 card set seems intriguing. Removing a Pro Tour from the yearly schedule was a cost-cutting measure during an economic downturn. But why on earth did they print Halo Hunter when his two best targets are...untargetable? In these seemingly moronic cards may be hints for future sets. It's easy to assume that the people making the cards are functionally retarded, but that's far from the truth.

Before anyone deposits the stock "they're idiots" response in the comments section, let's remember who's designing and developing the cards. Since we're looking at Zendikar, in the hopes of making some inferences about Worldwake, why not meet the team? Mark Rosewater, Ken Nagle, Greame Hopkins, Doug Beyer and Matt Place were the creative team for Zendikar. Mark Rosewater has been in this since Magic's formative years and has more experience developing Magic cards than anyone else. Ken Nagle and Greame Hopkins are two of the anointed four hired during the Great Designer Search. Doug Beyer is the creative mind behind the 'Alara Unbroken' novel, and Matt Place is a Pro Tour winner.

So, they're not idiots.

Card designers design each card for a reason. It's not a bunch of apes tossing darts at a board. Much like an a console RPG, if you have to ask yourself why something is there, it's usually there for a reason. The Vampire Nocturnus situation is a prime example. M10 didn't really have a lot of Vampires - nowhere near the number Zendikar had. So the Vampire 'Lord' didn't make much sense. The logical conclusion that many players reached was that Zendikar would, and in fact did, contain a Vampire tribal theme. We've got limited information about Worldwake, and even less info about Rise of the Eldrazi, but we can make like Robert Downey, Jr. and do our best Sherlock Holmes impression to see what we can gather, if anything.

Taking a walk through Zendikar rares shows us a few cards that really don't make sense in their set. By 'make sense' , I mean that they don't tie in to the block's theme, nor do they fit into the Standard environment as we currently know it. Cards are most often printed for one of two reasons: Standard or Limited. There are Casual cards, like Doubling Season, that make themselves clear, but sometimes a card just sticks out like a sore thumb. They also print cards for older formats, but that's very rare, and the cards called out below really can't be mistaken for future Legacy powerhouses.

Halo Hunter

Starting with the original misfit, we can look at a few factors. First, Zendikar doesn't really have a demonic presence. Ob Nixilis is a demon because of some unfortunate mana-related incident, but Halo Hunter seems thematically out-of-place. In some worlds, the demons are the enemy, but on Zendikar, it seems that every race is fighting against the plane itself. While it's possible that Design just decided, "Hey, lets toss a demon in there!", it's more likely that he exists for a reason. Reviewing the Angels in Standard, we see Baneslayer Angel and Empyrial Archangel, which couldn't be hit by Halo Hunter. Then we see a whole subset of Angels that are almost strictly worse than Baneslayer Angel: Serra Angel, Battlegrace Angel and Shepherd of the Lost. It wouldn't make sense to print Halo Hunter to be "Mediocre White Flier Hunter", so let's move on. We've got a few multicolored Angels: Jenara, Asura of War, Filigree Angel, Stoic Angel and Maelstrom Archangel. Then we have the "Utility" angels, Guardian Seraph, Platinum Angel, and Iona, Shield of Emeria. Black doesn't really have a tough time dealing with Guardian Seraph or Platinum Angel, and Iona will probably be set to "Black" if your deck is regularly casting spells that cost 2BBB. The multicolored Angels are all pretty unexciting as well, but they remain relevant targets. Remember, WotC didn't know that Stoic Angel won't see tournament play when they printed it, and probably didn't know that when they designed Halo Hunter. That leaves us with the token-generating Angels, Sigil of the Empty Throne, Emeria Angel and Luminarch Ascension. Knowing the background of these designers, it seems unlikely that they'd force a player to play a triple-color costed card to deal with a 3/3 flier and some tokens.

It just doesn't make any sense! Most of the Angels that you want to kill most can't be killed by Halo Hunter! Since you're almost assuredly mono-black or at least heavily committed to the color due to his cost, you have to realize the wealth of creature-killing options the color has. So, what could his presence imply?

1. Demons on Zendikar. There seems to be enough "evil stuff" going on around the Plane. Maybe there are demons on the way. Or maybe... they've already arrived. Keep an eye out for a small demonic sub-theme, perhaps even related to the Vampires.
2. Angels on Zendikar. We know that the heavenly hotties can be found around the Plane, but maybe there's more to come. Iona, Shield of Emeria isn't a tribal lord, but she seems to be a big-shot in the angel world. There's also Celestial Mantle, which seems to be some sort of Holy Uber-Armor, indicating that the holy subtheme will continue into Worldwake and Rise of the Eldrazi. A counter-point to the Angel argument: Celestial Colonnade, which I thought WAS an angel, is in fact an Elemental! A 4/4 vigilant flier for 3UW seems to indicate "angel", and would have been an easy creative "out" to shoehorn another Angel into the set if that's what they were trying to achieve. As such, we can probably rule out a big angel theme.

Magic storylines within a block seem to follow a formula similar to a short story. The large Fall expansion sets the scene, introduces characters and concepts, and introduces inklings of conflict. The middle set fleshes out the conflict and hints at the resolution, and the final set concludes the conflict and shows us what the post-conflict world will look like. Maybe we're going to see the divine/demonic conflict on Zendikar. We already have a plane populated by diametric opposites, so why not have them fight? That would go a very long way towards explaining an otherwise hilariously ironic and terrible card.

Lullmage Mentor

Something's fishy here, and it's not the horde of Merfolk tokens you're not making with this guy. To start, he's far too over-costed to see play outside of Standard. Had he been made as a 2/1 for UU, he'd probably be insane in Legacy and maybe even Extended. It's also pretty obvious he wasn't made for Limited, since Zendikar's countermagic suite is pretty sparse. Its marquee card doesn't even technically counter spells! Merfolk have a small presence in Zendikar, and an almost non-existent one in Shards of Alara and M10. We've seen a lot of Merfolk in Lorwyn and earlier blocks, so it seems unlikely that we'll get a heavily tribal theme.

That leads us to believe he's meant to stand alone. Considering that the other merfolk are unplayable in constructed, and I trust Wizards to know when they're making a card for constructed, the only way you'll get his final ability relevant is by countering a few spells. They're smart enough to know that when 3 mana gets you a 5/4, no one is going to be casting that dumb merfolk that might get you a free island alongside an overcosted 1/2 flier.

The only logical conclusion here is that we're going to see more countermagic. We've been deprived of truly good counterspells for too long. Expecting to get elite countermagic like the original UU version or Force of Will is not reasonable, but we could see cards like Force Spike, Miscalculation or Mana Leak make a return. In addition, they explored interesting design space when they made a Force Spike/Negate hybrid. Again, it's possible they just printed an utterly terrible card, it's easier to believe that they either have a merfolk token generator in the works, or plan to print more counterspells. Personally, I'd love to see Miscalculation return, but I'm not holding my breath.

Summoner's Trap

This goes hand-in-hand with Lullmage Mentor. If they're printing such awful counterspells, why make a card that really only exists to defend against them? This seems most likely to be a product of poor evaluation, but it still supports the Lullmage Mentor theory. Ramping to 6 mana to hard-cast this seems cumbersome, and we've already seen a similar card with Dramatic Entrance. This is one of the cards that could see some play if a bona fide control deck comes to prominence with the release of new countermagic, but we can't make any certain inferences from it alone.

Warren Instigator

Looking at Warren Instigator outside of Standard, we see that Zendikar block is relatively light on Goblins, so far. The best in the tribe live in M10, and with any luck, M11. Still, printing a card with such a tribally dependent ability in a block with almost no tribal support is unlike Wizards. Again, it doesn't seem consistent enough for Legacy play - Goblin Lackey's main draw is that he can be Aether Vial'ed out, under countermagic, at the end of turn, keeping him hidden and safe until it's time to attack. Warren Instigator doesn't have that power level. We already know that one goblin will appear in Worldwake, so it's a good bet that we'll see a few more. Leaving a heavy tribal card alone in a block without the rest of his tribe is unlike the designers. The last time they did this? Vampire Nocturnus, an that was quickly rectified in Zendikar. Warren Instigator is still a Mythic, and if 2009 taught us anything, it was that Mythics can absolutely explode in price when they see play. Be very alert as the spoilers roll in.

While this week's article might not have contained hot price tips or immediate take-aways, it's very important to think about how the cards are designed and the implication these designs have on future sets. People who rightly speculated that Nocturnus was a herald of a major new tribal theme hit some serious pay dirt, and while Halo Hunter might not become the next hot new thing, knowing how to think about Magic cards is possibly the most important skillset to have when speculating. Keep an eye out for cards that don't seem to make sense. They might be clues of things to come!