Card draw is an important part of Magic, especially when playing limited formats. Without enough ways to draw extra cards over the course of a game, it’s easy to run out of gas and slow to a crawl. But too much card draw can remove important weaknesses from certain decks in ways that flatten strategic depth. For example, an all-in aggro deck has little to risk by playing multiple fast creatures each turn if it’s also able to continuously refill its hands! Finding the balance that allows archetypes to thrive while minimizing non-games and topdeck wars is an important ingredient in designing a cohesive set.

Enter: the Merchants Cycle!

Early on, I designed a cycle of artifacts to provide persistent card draw tailored to each color. These are based on several of the key NPC merchants our heroes encountered during the Unwell Kingdom’s campaign. The merchants were a heavy-handed solution to keep games from petering out, but they went through a few iterations before landing on their current designs. I actually found that they were TOO consistent at one point, particularly if a player drafted multiple copies of one.

Making them legendary (thus preventing players from using multiples at once) fixed one problem but introduced another: something feels very wrong about a legendary common card! Wizards of the Coast learned this lesson almost immediately after the mechanic’s debut back in the “Legends” expansion, and the only a scant few exceptions (like a cycle of common Backgrounds) have been printed since. Fortunately, by this point in the Unwell Kingdom’s development, I had included enough other incidental card draw effects that I felt comfortable bumping the merchants up to uncommon, making them half as likely to show up in packs.

White – Maisie’s Meat Market

White isn’t a color known for drawing cards, but Maisie is here to spread the love! You won’t building any card advantage over your opponent(s), but it may be just enough to keep you from an empty hand. The extra bit of life gain is a nice bonus, and depending on the state of the match, an opponent may actually pass on their extra card to keep you from healing out of danger.

Blue – The Crooked Cap

The last thing Blue needs is more card draw… right? The Crooked Cap offers card selection rather than raw advantage, allowing you to shuffle away your least valuable card in a miniature nod to Silas, the Scatterbained‘s ability. This makes it especially useful to switch up the top of your library in combination with scry effects or Olly, Spellslinger‘s ability. Lastly, it synergizes especially well with Mesmir, the Magnificent, who turns the shuffle into even more selection!

Black – Bagzo’s Corner

Bagzo Bones is a weird lil guy. His spin on a card draw artifact is all about bone counters, an extremely niche mechanic only seen elsewhere on Bagzo’s own card and The Indigo Broker. This means it functions as a slightly worse Phyrexian Arena on its own, since it starts needing to take turns off to refill its own bone counters after the first few draws. This makes it a decent option on its own, but once Bagzo or the Broker enter the mix, Bagzo’s Corner can turbo-charge their abilities to cheat out larger creatures from the grave or flip Bagzo into an early Fell King!

Red – The Messy Hall

Goblins love food. They don’t always eat it. The Messy Hall plays on Red’s loot draw by asking you to give as much as you get. It comes with a free Food token, which you can choose to sacrifice immediately for the draw, but which also synergizes with other cards in the Red/Black/Green goblin tokens subtheme! Grub, Apprentice Chef loves having extra Foods around, Goblin Berries can be sacrificed for card draw to get a sneaky trigger, and Spitts, Furnace Keeper is happy to burn anything for fuel! And remember, goblins aren’t picky eaters… you can always sacrifice a creature or enchantment in a pinch!

Green – Grimmtail’s Ferry

Lastly, Green is a color that needs to jump through extra hoops for its card draw, to offset the inherent strength of its big creatures and mana ramp. Grimmtail’s Ferry serves as niche ramp OR card draw, but only for Equipment. Grimmtail offers handy discounts on those Equipment, and this card rewards you by letting you spend that extra mana on card draw instead! The wording feels a bit odd on this card to match the format of the other merchants, but it also means that you don’t always need to cast Equipment to activate the draw ability… creating tokens with Kornaan, the Cobbler or using Loam Scrounger‘s passive ability can be enough to satisfy the requirement!

This cycle of artifacts has proven to be an interesting puzzle of balance. It felt important to keep the structure consistent across each—3 mana, uncommon legendary artifacts, with a tap ability that requires some extra cost for the words “Draw a card”—to ensure they feel like a recognizable set. But at the same time, card draw should not be created equal in each color! Fine-tuning those effects to hit appropriate power levels while keying into certain synergies and sub-themes has resulted in a cycle of utility cards that drip with flavor!