Earlier this week, Magic: The Gathering head designer Mark Rosewater shared several snippets of "the story that could have been" for the upcoming expansion Dominaria United. It seems that the returning villains of the set's story, the Phyrexians, were meant to start returning far earlier - all the way back in MTG's 2019 set, Throne of Eldraine.
One of the biggest spoilers revealed ahead of Dominaria United's release features the return of the black Phyrexian praetor, Sheoldred, and according to Rosewater, her story was originally set to take place in Throne of Eldraine, the fairy tale-themed set. “At least once upon a time it did," he said.
Rosewater revealed that Throne of Eldraine was originally going to be two sets (codenamed "Archery" and "Baseball") instead of one. The first set was going to introduce the world and feature the courts, and that the original villain was just referred to as the Whispering Witch, and the original plan was to feature her in a card in "Baseball", and that she would be revealed to be Sheoldred.
Rosewater went on to explain why they decided to make Eldraine just one set. "We got a lot of feedback that the players want to take a bit of a breather from the overarching storyline," Rosewater said. "The Creative team got some other interesting ideas about how the story could work. Anyway, when the dust settled, Sheoldred was removed from the Throne of Eldraine story. Vorinclex would go on to be the first warning sign, and Sheoldred got moved to later in the story, to the part where we returned to Dominaria, which brings us to her design in Dominaria United."
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Dominaria United is set to release on MTG Arena on September 1. Pre-release events start on Sept. 2, and the new expansion will be fully-released in stores on Sept. 9. You can read more details about the upcoming set at MTGRocks.com.