I’d always hoped to avoid making hotfixes after completing this card set, but we caught a few errors after the printed cards arrived. This final (I promise!!!) set of reprints should cap things off for good. Most were very minor typos and templating mistakes, but a few had serious gameplay ramifications. There was also one last balance adjustment to a very special card…. 

(MISPRINT) Gerald the Heavy

Fixed set code 117 →112

Starting with the most minor typo in the set, Gerald the Heavy got printed with the wrong set code: 117, which should be Flaming Table. If this was the only mistake I made across nearly 300 cards, I never would have bothered to fix it and I doubt anyone else would ever notice.

(MISPRINT) Plant Familiars

Fixed flavor text typo

The typo on Plant Familiars also doesn’t matter at all for gameplay, but it stings to know that it was staring me in the face throughout nearly three years of paper playtests! I misspelled “familiar” as “familar” in the flavor text, which went under the radar thanks to that small italicized text.

(MISPRINT) Awakened Level Skull

Fixed missing power/toughness

The back side of Level Skull got printed with a nasty oversight, resulting in it missing power and toughness when it flips into a creature. This was the error that convinced me to issue reprints. As a peek behind the curtain, I set up all the templating for these cards in a few giant Photoshop files which required tons of layers to be toggled on and off for each card. If I ever do a card project like this again, I’d like to find a more reliable way to handle this end of things, to reduce the chance for errors like this to slip through.

(REWORK) Establish Order

Reworded to fix timing error when spell resolves

Establish Order is a lesson in precise wording. While the intent of the card was already clear and no one ever misplayed it, I realized that it technically didn’t function correctly according to Magic’s rules. By including all the text in a single paragraph, the spell would technically resolve as part of its casting cost. Veteran MtG players might recognize this as “very bad” and “yucky!”… For example, it means there would never be a timing window to counter the spell.

Unfortunately, splitting the cost of the spell from its payoff did make the wording a bit more clunky, but it’s a tradeoff I’m willing to accept. I knew I was already pushing it with “sacrifice or discard” effects across this set, since many of them already bend the verbiage for cards vs. permanents. Still feels fine to play with, though!

(BUFF) Garp Garp, Lord of Bones

I was bullied into this one

And that leaves the one reprint that’s purely a balance consideration: Garp Garp, Lord of Bones. Simply put, this higher-level Garp card never felt good to play across any of the formats we tested. I intentionally played it safe with the numbers on him, since he has the potential to synergize so effectively with other Inspire cards or reanimation effects like The Indigo or Thrash//Dash. On paper, Garp Garp was potentially terrifying. In practice, he always seemed to come down a turn late, do too little damage to swing the board, and then die. Baseline, he was usually a worse Lava Axe.

After a lot of consideration and discussion with other testers, I’ve decided to let Garp Garp have his cake and eat it too. Instead of a funky tap ability with weird timing restrictions, his main ability now triggers on attack and lets him deal normal combat damage before he dies and gets an additional damage burst. To be clear, this is a serious buff. He now threatens to deal twice as much and can even split the damage if blocked! But in addition to making Garp Garp a proper bomb, it should make him much more intuitive to play and synergizes with other attack triggers like Blargg Blargg and Thrashalla.

It’s possible that this is an over-correction and an irresponsible change to make at this point in the project. I’m willing to let it rock to make players happy though. It’s fitting that Garp Garp, of all cards, gets the final dose of main character syndrome!

I don’t foresee any further developments on the Unwell Kingdom cards after this. I’m frankly happy to be done with it, and excited to play with the cards without needing to think about balance adjustments. From here on out, some cards may bubble to the top while others stumble, but that’s an inevitability of any metagame. If anything, I’m shocked there weren’t more typos or glaring errors!