Locations
Hello, Nation! For the second Great Designer Search that was done by Wizards, I designed my own plane and cards to go along with it. I wanted to be prepared in case I was selected to go on after the multiple-choice test. Unfortunately, I missed the cutoff by one question (grrr), but I really enjoyed the plane that I made. I thought it would be an interesting diversion to show you the place, and the occasional dollop of cards, mechanics, flavor, returning things, and more that made my plane tick.
If you’ll recall, this task was in part about using ideas that others had and making them your own. I looked through every plane that someone submitted. I found some common concepts that usually didn’t resonate with me:
1. Sprawling epic fantasy worlds with super-major plotlines thick and rife with evil and good, in a Tolkienian sense.
2. Worlds that played with the color wheel. One was a Red-centric world; another had ally colors now enemies, and vice versa; another made it hard to get mana from enemy colors; etc.
3. Race worlds, with one or two or four typical races that are doing other things.
This was my first attempt to create a plane, so I wanted to keep it simple. What is the opposite of huge, sprawling massive planes with fifty characters and more plot arcs than you can write in thirty trilogies? Welcome to my
The Waypoint
This artificial microplane was created eons ago as a stopover place. No one knows by whom, but it was designed to be a central location in the æther for travelers. It’s a small plane, square, with twenty city blocks on each side. With its known name lost to time, it has simply come to be called Waypoint.
As Waypoint was artificially designed by a planeswalker, it requires one to keep everything up and running. Each ruler of the plane appoints a new ruler, and that one takes over for as long as he or she wants. The current ruler of the plane is Valia Intaria, a traveler who has walked to hundreds of different planes, and has now retired to run Waypoint.
In addition to planeswalkers, those enabled by artifice or sorcery also arrive and leave regularly. It is a place to rest, gather forces, train, find information, make purchases, and have meetings in neutral territory.
At the ends of the plane are barriers that hold back something beyond. There are circular, swirling motions in the mists. Staring out too long can cause one to go mad. There are many giant portals around the plane that head out into the æther. Each one activates in a different way. For example, one large rhombus will take any person who steps through to a random plane. These facilitate the travel of people who may not be planeswalkers. There is also a large dock for various planeships that are enchanted to travel safely among the planes.
The Jendi
While Waypoint has no indigenous life, it has accumulated a variety of races over the years. As these various humanoid species intermarried, a new race developed. The jendi are descendants of many different species that have comingled, and they have a mongrel look to them. Each one has a mixed and mottled look, with various aspects of certain ancestor races coming to the front. For example, one jendi might have elvish ears, brown skin, a rhox body, half of his chest and one arm with a green tinge, and so forth. Another might have a goblin body with a hardened shell on one leg and a leonin face.
Each jendi has wildly different characteristics, and they can be found doing anything from menial labor to powerful wizardry. Due to prejudice they find on many other planes, they’ve learned not to travel, and most jendi are found only here, at Waypoint.
(As I begin to show you cards, I will put in a quick note that if Wizards prints any material here, I will not hold them financially accountable, and I will steer clear of anything other than saying “See how cool this was,” in a future article. I don’t know if this note is needed or not, so I might as well toss it in.)
Other Planes
With so many travelers coming into and out of this plane, it has a lot of people from different planes. In addition to using this as an opportunity to show off the members of a few planes we’ve already known about (just Rabiah and Dominaria in the first set), we also see a few other planes that are brand-new.
One example is Travask.
Travask Scholar
Creature – Minotaur Wizard
, 
: Draw a card.After destroying everyone else on the plane, the minotaurs of Travask naturally began to fill the jobs recently vacated.
I wanted a simple uncommon, and this was designed before Azure Mage was printed, and it was intended as a simple Benalish Heralds in White.
We have three new planes featured in cards, and the Travask minotaurs are one. What are the other two planes we see people from? Secrets, secrets. I’ll give you a hint about one of them:
Scarab of Tainted Night
Artifact
Orobis is known for the production of many powerful scarabs. It’s also known for the death of the scarab users.
Valia Intaria
This planeswalker, now retired, runs Waypoint, employing various staff, taking tariffs, taxes and fees, and keeping the peace. Vaults under her palace are said to be full of the greatest artifacts from a variety of planes, rumored to include various powerful items from planes that have gone missing over the centuries. Each of them has had gossip about it spread.
Valia Intaria was once a traveler. She used her planeswalker abilities to journey and discover. She was never interested much in domination or magical study. Her abilities were used simply as a tool to find out what was in the next plane. During her many years of plane-hopping, she made many powerful friends and contacts in the fields of magic, technology, and politics. From kings to senators, wizards to shamans, artificers to necromancers, many call her “friend.” She has continued to be the gregarious ruler of this plane. Her time running it has seen its popularity grown even more. She appears to be in her late fifties or early sixties, but she has used magic to extend her life to roughly three hundred fifty years.
Valia Intaria, the Traveler
Planeswalker – Valia
+1 – Search your library for a basic land and reveal it. Put it onto the battlefield tapped. Shuffle your deck.
−1 – Gain 1 life for each land you control.
−5 – Each opponent chooses three lands and sacrifices the rest.
I think all three of these abilities express her traveling nature very well. The first two work quite well together, and the third suits someone who runs a small plane (which would be a small number of lands).
The Land
As Waypoint is built on a flat plane/plain, the whole plane is used for Plains. There is a central aqueduct and river that is used for harnessing Blue mana. The other three colors cannot be tapped into here. However, there are three distinctive-looking sets of Forests, Mountains, and Swamps in the set. I wonder where they are? To be revealed in the second set! (Or a future article, I suppose.)
The Mechanics
White sees the mechanic of taxing pushed in high numbers. This represents the tariffs and taxes that a place like this naturally has.
Tariff Administrator
Creature – Jendi
There are a lot of these sorts of cards in White. Tariff is reprinted as an uncommon, by the by. Oh, and if you wanted, you might also have the jendi mechanically be beasts.
A mechanic seeing its debut is Voidtrigger. This triggers whenever a creature you control is exiled. With this plane representing people coming and going, it felt right to have exile be the central mechanic of the set. I got some things (jendi, Orobis, Voidtrigger) from others, but I really like how they help to make the set feel stronger.
Shaman of the Fourth Claw
Creature – Elf Shaman
Remove a void counter: Add to your mana pool.
After their totem animal was violently killed, the Fourth Claw became much more attuned to the spirit world.
With a strong exile theme, many other exile cards began to appear in my mind.
Unbottled Efreet
Creature – Efreet
Whenever Unbottled Efreet deals combat damage to a player, he or she must exile a creature he or she controls.
No one is safe from an Efreet let loose after a thousand-year exile. Its “master” least of all.
I debated whether to make this Black and a Demon, but I like the idea of an enraged Efreet let loose, and it ties back to Rabiah as one of a handful of references to it. This was originally mythic, and it forced a creature to be exiled for each combat damage it dealt, but I felt it was a bit too cute. It’s basically just “hit and exile their board” in an awkward way, so I dialed it down to rare status and reduced the cost as well (it was originally nonland and nontoken, so now you can exile your own land).
Sacrificial Idol
Artifact
I love how this plays in this set. Exile this for a trigger, to prevent a creature biting it to Unbottled Efreet, and so forth.
Return from Exile
Sorcery
In a set with a lot of creatures being exiled, you have to have a way to pull them back out again. Naturally, the Flicker mechanic appears, but a simple Zombify for exiled creatures was deemed appropriate. No other card went through more changes—should it be Blue or White? Should it be 4 mana or 5? Should it exist at all? You could just suspend a creature and then pull it out immediately, so something like Greater Gargadon could come out quickly, but of course, you could do that with Show and Tell, so as I thought about it, the less I worried. I put it back in the set, and made it 4 mana, because this set wants this ability badly. (I mean, it’s a bit low-hanging fruit and an obvious card to make, so it’s not exactly amazingly insightful to create or anything.)
In order to use Voidtrigger, I included various cards that exiled. For example, instead of creatures having self-sacrifice abilities, they have self-exile abilities. Here’s one now:
Screaming Goblin
Creature – Goblin Berserker
I wanted to make cards that were nice and simple, too.
Blue got some bounce-heavy mechanics. I wanted to emphasize that since bouncing feels very “traveling through the planes” (just like exiling).
Stuff of AEther
Enchantment
It’s a super Seal of Removal. I vacillated between this at 4 mana, and one at 3 mana that bounced nonlands. I decided to go with this supercharged version. Part of that is because I included a bit of a hoser in case all of Blue’s bounce got out of hand. This hoser allowed me to push bounce in Blue.
Planeship
Artifact
One of the most heavily enchanted forms of travel you’ll ever find.
Fleshing out the Plane
I also wanted to flesh out the plane. I didn’t want everything to be taxes and exiling and other planes. I decided to focus on the parts of Waypoint that I thought would be interesting to explore and detail. One great example was the docks. I knew that I had an extensive set of docks, so from there, it grew.
Back Alley Brawler
Creature – Human Warrior
If Back Alley Brawler dies, instead exile it.
The Ebon Wharf district inspires many interspecies brawls, which the law largely ignores.
By giving my docks a few cards that really demonstrate the nature of the area, I give it life. I name it the Ebon Wharf district, which sounds cool. Again, I knew that I’d want simple cards and mechanics just as much as the flashy ones. I didn’t stop at the docks.
I knew that I had something with the portals. Remember, each portal does something different. I knew that I wanted to reprint Planar Portal, but its name was too generic. They are all planar portals, albeit with different characteristics. I also wanted some other things as well. I began to design a few gates, and I made one in homage to Planar Portal that I really like:
Epoch Gate
Artifact
, : Choose a creature card you own from outside the game. Reveal it, and put it in your hand.
It really feels like Planar Portal in its power, but it’s different. Making a wish ability recursive is something we’ve not seen before, and this card could be one of those spoiled early to show how this set pushes the boundaries of previous sets in a few cards. It’s the Mindslaver, Platinum Angel, Time Stop, etc. of the set.
I also remembered the border to my plane. Remember how looking out there could drive someone mad? I wanted to reflect that, and how better to do that than with Black cards?
AEther Madness
Sorcery
It’s a Smallpox for just one player, but the exile could help them with Voidtriggers, so it’s not as good as a pure sacrifice of a critter. It’s a nasty card for a player, and helps to demonstrate the madness. Once I had that idea, I knew I needed to push it.
Border to the Void
Land
: Add 1 colorless mana to your mana pool.
, : Remove a void counter from Border to the Void. Target player discards a card. Use this ability only when you could cast a sorcery.
By looking at parts of the plane that include the borders, docks, and portals, I am able to delve into the plane. This enables me to show Waypoint as something new and interesting. In reality, it’s a bit of a combination of Mercadian Masques, Ravnica block, Rath, with my own stuff.
Sorbanna, the Great Entertainer of All Existence
One other way to flesh out the plane was to add some characters. I added one more planeswalker to my roster, and then that made it complete at just two. Would you like to see the greatest entertainer in the plane? People will come from all over to check out one of his/her/its shows.
Sorbanna, the Entertainer
Planeswalker – Sorbanna
+1 – Put a 1/1 colorless Shapeshifter token onto the battlefield with changeling.
+0 – Choose a creature type. That creature types gets +1/+1 until the end of the turn.
−5 – Search your library for up to three cards that share a creature type, reveal them, and put them into your hand. Shuffle your library.
Ah, the great shapeshifter itself! Its ability over its own form is so masterful that it can entertain and even inspire audiences after doing it straight for nine years.
I was debating whether to have the ultimate give you an emblem that gave all of your creatures Changeling, but I prefer this. I think I saw too many emblem abilities as ultimates in other designs, and I wanted to stay away from that.
All of these little things combined to give my plane a character and place of its own.
I wanted to save some places for exploration in future sets of the block, so we don’t see the vaults, treasures, and such. However, I did include two cards that are plants for how I would intend to develop the world in the second set. Here they are:
Agile Cutpurse
Creature – Jendi Rogue
The Guild won’t allow just anyone to ply the streets; only the talented need apply.
Yes, it’s just a single Syphon Mind for one player on a stick. I get that. Not exactly a super-sexy card. What it represents is the thieves’ guild in Waypoint . In the first set, Blue and White get a lot of the cool mechanics that work well here—bouncing, taxing, exiling, flickering, etc. In the next set, the thieves’ guild will move front and center, and that will mean Black will move to the front with some power getting pushed.
Eldritch Tome
Artifact – Equipment
Equipped creature gets +2/+4 and has vigilance and “: Draw a card.”
With that low equip cost, ouch. I originally had this at 4 mana to equip, but it was too slow, so I dropped it and removed 2 power to compensate. (It was originally, , +4/+4, : Draw). This represents the artifacts of massive power from various planes that have been collected here both by Valia and her predecessors. This will be fleshed out in the last two sets, when things start to change, and we find out just what Waypoint was designed for, and who built
Also, I don’t want a bunch of random themes to throw me. This isn’t everything I can think of in one block. I wonder how I will link the themes of valuable treasures and a thieves’ guild?
Anyway, I hope that you enjoyed this look at my own plane and some of the various cards I created for it.
See you next week,
Abe Sargent
