For those of you that do not know, before every set, "cards" are made & playtested to see how they work- together and with existing cards. But before MTG was made, everything was starting from scratch... and this is (mostly) what I have to show you today.
Unfortunatly, there isn't great organization to these scans, so bear with me, okay?
^This above scan shows 8 different playtest cards. One thing to note is that all cards' casting cost were done so that if you saw a card that was, say, 2B, it means "two mana, one of which needs to be black".
They had only one number for creatures originally, not two. Banding was called stacking, and other things changed as well...
There are 3 different incarnations of the playtest cards, of which all 3 can be seen in the above scan. First, a circle was at the casting cost, and a colored pen was used to color in the card as they chose what they wanted it to be. Creatures had one number. Second, all creatures were given 2 numbers (like we see today). Third, a final printing was made using actual letters (B,G,R,W,U) to stand for the symbols.
Of note, notice the undercasting of the Angel, and misspelling of "Magic". Also, Ron Spencer's sense of humor on the only Alpha card he ended up drawing. So, here's a few other scans as well-
^ This scan includes a Goblin card that is a photocopy of Richard Garfield's face- I got to play this card AGAINST Richard himself in a game. Also, Shatter changed from a sorcery to an instant, there's a DEFENSIVE red card, a misprint/ mistake crossed out, and the legendary RED TIME WALK!
^In this scan you see major changes to Fireball, a card called "Ents"- LOTR fans!- Plains that was a RED MANA CARD, and Acestral Recall's final version.
^Here we have a few original creatures, Mark Poole's sense of humor, a card with SPOCK on it, and the original "singing tree".
^Yup, this one's a bit anticlimactic!
Anyhow, this is a retrospective of some of my 200+ alpha playtest cards... once all of my homework is done I would like to contribute an absolute guide to this subject matter, but until then, enjoy! Any questions, feel free to ask. And stay tuned, I scanned other (non-alpha) playtest cards and Invitational cards (ever seen a Black Lotus that costs 3?) to share as well.
