Have you ever wanted to design a M:TG expansion? Have you ever tried to figure out how in the world WotC designs each and every expansion? Only to spend hours on end trying to figure out how, eventually going mad and seeing a dancing purple Ebon Praetor in the corner that tells you to stop? Oh, wait, that was me. The rest of you see dancing orange Black Lotus people who tell you to buy Homelands.

Well, Grub the Goblin Hero, in his attempt to raise money for the next Ironman Magic event, ended up hitting some man named Peter Adkins with his sock full of quarters. I don't know who this guy is, but it seems that he was carrying design plans and a design guide for the next M:TG expansion. Grub stole all of these papers and brought them to me, since he is unable to decipher normal paper from dollar bills. I took a look at them. They're real. They've got Garfield's and BethMo's approval signatures on them so they must be! I can tell you all now that the expansion due in Spring of 1999 is called "We Forgot Mishra so He's Back Now."

I also noticed that the design papers include the following notebooks: "How to Design A Magic Expansion," "How to Design A Magic Card," "How to Design Vangaurd Cards," and "How to Design Tournament Rules." I will slowly reveal one by one in my following rants. Keep in mind though that there were big red stickers on each one's cover that said "Top Secret" so after showing the first one WotC may send those Royal Assassins after me. Heck, I'm only royalty to some Spam containers, not people! They won't waste Royal Assassins on me...they'll just get some Ornithropters with Royal Assassin masks to come after me on Halloween. That way nobody will ever notice. You will also have to keep in mind that not only will WotC try to make me "Disappear," they'll also very slightly change the command codes and formulas for the booklets when I show them to you, that way the information I show will be a little incorrect the next time a Magic thing is designed.

I myself have tried these booklets, and have followed the procedures on each one. Strangely, completely following the design guidelines, I've been able to make exact copies of the following sets: Fifth Edition, Fallen Empires, Unglued, and even the oversize cards! I was able to make a version of Ice Age that included one card with a yellow border called "Don't Eat Yellow Snow," and a slightly messed up Mirage set that includes a 2/3 version of "Timmy, Power Gamer." As far as I can tell, these booklets are accurate for making expansions, unless you don't follow the guidelines. Grub only followed the first chapter correctly and ended up with a gold-bordered expansion 1000 cards in size that had nothing but "Summon Kobold" cards. He sort of got mad and wanted to take his anger out on the booklets...OH CRAP! HE'S LIGHTING THE BOOKLETS ON FIRE!!! I BETTER SAVE THE BOOKLETS!!! NOW I'LL NEVER BE ABLE TO DESIGN "UNGLUED SECOND AGE"!!!

This booklet is only for Level V judges and all high-paid WotC employees. If you are neither, then this booklet will begin to emit a real version of the Marsh Gas and Stench of Decay cards, thereby killing you, or at least making you useless to attack with.

Now that those who should not read this have been taken care of, on to the intro. The way you use this book is by looking at the tables and rolling random dice to see the results. Each result is described if you would not be able to figure it out by yourself. Always remember when designing a Magic Expansion to never base it anything any sane person would pay good money for. You have to make sure you will be able to sucker Magic players into wanting this set, so you will need to follow these guidelines very carefully. One mix up and you could end up with something as good as the Beta Edition. If an entry has the word "duh" in it, you better be able to figure it out yourself. If, for instance, you are unable to figure out what coming up with a 40-card expansion means, then you better go ask an Arena League Judge...they always know everything and will be able to help you out completely.

For those of you who care, only one animal was hurt in the making of this product. It was a small cat that happened to fall into WotC's air conditioning system. Phil Foglio saved the poor kitty and even put it in some of the Duelist comic strips. However, Drew Tucker wanted to turn the cat itself into artwork by throwing it as hard as he could at a canvas, hoping to get a nice big red and white-fur splat that would pass as the new artwork for the "Gaseous Form" card that you will find in Urza's Saga. Foglio was able to save the cat immediately after the fifteenth time Tucker threw the cat at the canvas (for some reason, the little cat just wouldn't splat...it just ripped a hole right through each canvas). The cat was released into the wild in Seattle, where it was promptly run over by a delivery truck upon leaving the doors of WotC's main office. If you consider cards animals too, then over seven hundred Onulets were sacrificed to the slave-labor Atogs writing these guidelines.

The first thing you have to do when designing a Magic expansion is to figure out how large it is going to be. Will you make only a few so that every tourney player will foam at the mouth trying to collect this ultra-power card (like the Arena lands and spells)? Or, will you make the set so big the collectors will have to buy twenty cases just to have a complete set of commons? Well, role a dice according to this table and find out. Once you get a field of numbers, just pick any one number inside that field and you have yourself the beginnings of a great Magic expansion set.

d20 Roll	Size in Cards
1-10	1-5
11	6-59
12-14	60-100
15	101-200
16-18	201-500
19-20	600-4,000

1-5: The set will be very small and thus very hard to get. Players who want these cards will have to sacrifice their dignity to get these cards. Just look at all those poor folks who wasted their money on those boring Magic novels to end up with the Arena card...and even worse, the Sewers of Estark card! Its a good idea to make these cards available only through mail-in offers, that way the cards will be all good and gone before any gets them in the mail and discovers how useless they are.

6-59: Arena lands and spells fall under these size sets. The best thing to do with these cards is to give them away, but only after enormous public image costs have been paid, like having to join the Arena League.

60-100: Duh.

101-200: Duh.

201-500: Duh.

600-4,000: This number has been rolled for the upcoming 6th Edition. You better start saving your money, kids! This one will be a whopper to collect!

Probably one of the most essential things for your set's survival is coming up with a flashy wrapping. With this handy table you'll be able to figure out exactly how to design your booster packs.

d8 Roll	Wrapper Design
1	Name Text Only
2-7	Stupidest-Looking Creature in Set
8	Weakest Spell in Set

Name Text Only: This used to be rolled for all those goofy sets, like Fallen Empires and the even weaker Arabian Nights. You decide if you want the text plain like the above two examples, or if you want it flashy like on the Homelands packs. Either way, the players will say "Oh! Look at how cool the name ANTIQUITIES is! I gotta have that set!"

Stupidest-Looking Creature in Set: Enough said here. You get a pathetic creature like Mesa Pegasus or something that isn't that cool. The players will always see these things and say stuff like, "No WAY! That Auratog is so CUTE! I gotta have a set with such @$$-kicking creatures like that!"

Weakest Spell in Set: This one is harder. People tend to think these might be creatures. You have to be careful with this one. Any card on your wrappers will end up as one of the most popular staple tourney cards. This poses a danger because some players may actually want to shuffle the booster wrappers into their decks and use them as the spells themselves. Who cares! As long as they want to buy the wrappers they'll buy anything! Make sure they are really cheesy things like Exaulted Dragon, which isn't really a creature, its a way to slowly geddon yourself. This makes it a perfect card to put onto your packs. "Hey mom! They got that stupid dragon that slowly wastes my land for nothing! PLEEEEEEEASE let me get some of those! Please mom!?!"

Every player is going to ask sooner or later how many of the cards are tourney-calliber. No matter how well you talk about your set in the Duelist or how much you put them into Magic puzzles, players will eventually figure out that a portion of your set will be composed of useless cards like Gray Ogre and Tor Giant. For this reason, you'll have to distract them with cards that are actually good like that stupid Null Brooch card. Just roll the dice to see how many you'll need to have to keep the rabid power-players at bay.

d30 Roll	Number of Tourney Cards
*	Every one of them.
**	Half of the whole set, rounded up.
1-2	20
3-5	10
6-10	2
11-30	AYKWWWWYM

Every one of them: The * here denotes that you use this entry only if the side happens to land on an edge instead of a side and stays that way non-stop for twelve consecutive days.

Half of the whole set, rounded up: The **'s here are the same as above, but only if the dice stays on its edge for over a day.

20: We messed up and did this one once. Back in Legends and Arabian Nights, which were going to be one set. We split up the good cards so players would have to buy two sets instead of one and we wouldn't have to give out so many cards at once.

10: Duh.

2: Duh.

AYKWWWWYM: Stands for "Are You Kidding!?! We're WotC, We Want Your Money!" You aren't foolish enough to put good cards in your set. The distractions you will use will not be actually good cards, but rules alterations and promises about the next expansion.

Some people think that a dart board is used to come up with the weakest color (you know, the same one used to come up with banned and restricted cards). In reality though, that DCI dart board is not used when coming up with a weak color. Instead, you should use a good d10 as indicated by the table below.

d10 Roll	Weakest Color
1	Blue
2	Red
3	Black
4	Green
5	White
6	Lands
7-10	AYKWWWWYM

Blue: Well, blue is WotC's favorite color. It is annoying to your opponent, and constantly alters the entire way the game is played...just like Customer Service, which is why we like it so much. If you roll to make blue the weakest color, feel free to re-roll.

Red: Duh.

Black: Duh.

Green: Come on! We here at WotC don't like standard fun combat between creatures. You don't want your players to actually get the point of your set and its cards, so you'll have to make the only ones that make sense (creatures) the weakest! If nobody is looking, go right ahead and change any other dice roll to this one!

White: Duh.

Lands: Anybody remember Homelands? The truth about that set is that the whole set was a stinker. Not a single color had a good card (Autumn Willow was actually a promo thrown in, like Decipher throwing in the USS Defiant in the DS9 expansion). The trick pulled in Homelands was to make the lands so horrible that everyone would hate those cards and forget that they just wasted their money on the other cards, too. Lands are by far the best way to distract players. Things like Winding Canyons can make even the worst discard cards like Tendrils of Despair look bad.

AYKWWWWYM: Every color is just as weak as the other. No lands or artifact distract anybody. You have to make sure the rules lawyers and Customer Service people will provide the distractions necessary for your expansion to make it.

Border color is a key thing to many players. Some like their white bordered stupid looking Unstable Mutation, while others prefer the silver of Unglued.

d20 Roll	Color of Borders
1	Black
2-16	White
17	Gold
18	Silver
19	Rainbow
20	Purple

Black: Duh. These borders always look cool. Just try to skimp on them.

White: You want to try to make things like Chronicles. This way players will be forced to have to buy special Wizards Brand(TM) Markers to color in the borders of their cards. This will destroy all trade value of such cards and will enforce the need to have to buy packs instead of trading for needed cards.

Gold: Try to make these cards really cool. Advertising campaigns like "These cards are the real decks the pros drafted to win the World Championships!" Yep, you can give out gold-bordered starter decks and slap on a different card back and everyone will think you're cool for having made such a great set.

Silver: Duh.

Rainbow: Some people like a lot of colors. This border is great for colorful folks. It also makes them have to be very careful against the Prismatic Wardrobe, since now they have to wear every color in the rainbow!

Purple: All because of Inquest people want purple color in Magic. Well, WotC gave in and now we'll let you use purple as a border for your cards.

Wizards Brand is an official trademark of Wizards of the Coast. The word Marker is a patent of Richard Garfield, which has been handed over to WotC. If you use the word "marker" then you owe WotC $17 in royalty fees.

There has to be one main thing about your set that makes it cool. Remember the old Portal commercials on TV? "All you need is a deck, a brain, and a friend. You do have a brain, right? Do you have friends? Do you have Magic cards? You don't want to look like a loser like this guy here shuffling cards all by himself in a park or at a restaurant, now do you? Well then, go out and get yourself some Portal and suddenly you'll have friends! You'll also grow a brain! BUY PORTAL TO GROW A BRAIN AND GET FRIENDS!" Chances are you'll need to come up with an equally strong advertising hook.

d12 Roll	Set Hook
1	Grow a Brain
2	Get Friends
3	Grow a Brain AND Get friends
4	Power/Cool Cards
5	Humor
6	Great Art
7	AYKWWWWYM
8-12	Storyline

Grow Brain/ Get Friends: Duh.

Power/Cool Cards: Never let this one be rolled. Bang the table, hit the dice, whatever. WotC never prints power cards or cool cards unless its a mistake.

Humor: Some people will buy anything they can laugh at, which is amazing that mirror sales aren't as high as they could be. Remember, the third Unglued set will feature reflective cards so you can laugh at your own mirror image. Anything stupid looking enough for people to laugh at--they'll buy.

Great Art: Make sure to hire the artists of the Muppet Babies for this set.

AYKWWWWYM: You should understand this by now.

Storyline: What the heck? People don't care about a story! But, if you copy something they like, then they'll care about tour stories. For example, since people like Star Trek: Voyager so much, we just copied the Voyager series and put it into the Weatherlight Saga. Sissay is Janeway, the captain who always gets captured. Hanna is Kes, the little blonde lady who had special powers. Squee is Nelix, the freak cook, and navigator/ship hand. The Weatherlight is the USS-Voyager itself, with the folding wings being a copy of the folding nacelles. Gerrard is more like Will Riker than Chakotay, but we still have a Trek copy! The slivers are like the Borg, all sharing abilities, except we didn't want a blatant rip off, so we didn't give them the ability to assimilate. The assimilation is done by Volrath, who instead of transforming people into Borg, just warps them up into monsters--like Borg. The Moggs are just copies of the Kazon, with the freaky stuff on top of their heads. The Badlands that sent Voyager to the Delta Quadrant is copied by the Portal that sent the Weatherlight to Rath. You get the idea. All you have to do is copy a Trek series or movie, and you have a perfect storyline to annoy the players with, and become the greatest hook in history!

Every good set comes up with some new rules to confuse everyone. This is to distract people from the fact that the cards with the new rules are virtually useless. Here are some you can use to spice up your new expansion set.

d30 Roll	New Rule
1-4	Burrowing
5-8	Chickenwalk
9-12	Physicality
13-16	Spittle
17-20	Fartknocking
21-24	InQuesting.
25-28	Smoking
29-30	None

Burrowing: This is a new evasion rule for creatures that allows them to only be blocked by other creatures with burrowing. When you attack with a burrowing creature, you must actually burrow it into the playing surface and continue to burrow with the card under the playing surface until it reaches the opponent. You then quote Bugs Bunny from any of his cartoons where he came out of his hole and says "Gee, I must have made a wrong turn at..." then fill in the name of the nearest street. If you do not do this, you lose the game entirely.

Chickenwalk: Upon casting this spell, for the duration of the occurring calendar year, you must walk around like a chicken with a bobbing head and flapping arms and all that embarrassing stuff.

Physicality: You are allowed to physically hit your opponent. Example: Buyback--Kick opponent in the groin (Every time you cast this spell you may kick each and every opponent in the groin to put this card back into your hand after it is successfully cast.)

Spittle: The cards with this rule will have a lot of "S" and "P" sounds. Each time you use the ability of or cast a spittle card, you have to spit accordingly. If you spit during an "S" sound, then you must spit on your opponent. If you spit during a "P" sound, then you have to spit on your opponent's cards. If you spit during any other sound, then you must spit all over your own cards, essentially marking them.

Fartknocking: This new rule allows you to pay costs on a card by farting rather than mana. The power of worthy farts will be measured by a match held to the butt of the person farting. If the result of such a fart with a match held in such a way results in a blue flame extending over three inches, then the spell or effect is paid for. Otherwise, the spell of ability fizzles.

InQuesting: These cards will allow you to quote InQuest on their use and rules.

Smoking: Certain new cards (especially the power ones) will allow you to roll them up and smoke them for good luck. This rule is being looked over by the FDA, and so far there is no problem with it.

None. Duh.

Sometimes you just have a smaller set than you planned. In such a case you might want to fluff out the set by adding in worthless cards from older sets, like Fog or Memory Lapse. This handy table shows you how to figure out just how many golden oldies you're going to have to reprint.

d% Roll	Reprint Number
1-90	Every Card in Magic.
91-95	20
96-98	10
99	2
100	None

Every Card in Magic: This set of yours will not only include your own cards, but reprints of every available card known to the Magic: The Gathering game. This has already been rolled for 7th Edition, which will be out in November of 2003.

20: Duh.

10: Duh.

2: Duh.

None: Be careful not to roll this one. You don't want to give people something for their money, after all. If by some strange occurrence you roll this number, instead re-roll and then make alterations of that many cards. This is the way you got to see Sex Appeal instead of Healing Salve. Its also the way Raging Bull was created even though the crappy Gray Ogre already existed. Its always fun to see players like your expansion, only to find out you just re-made old cards they never played with anyway!

One of the hardest things to do with an expansion set is to come up with its symbol. Here is some help.

d6 Roll	Expansion Symbol
1	Graffiti from a subway.
2-3	Thing most far away from having to do anything with the set.
4	Gopher
5	Happy Face
6	The first thing you see.

Graffiti from a subway: The Homelands symbol isn't a world, its actually this. You can get anything off a really cool subway wall!

Thing most far away from having to do anything with the set: Weatherlight used this. That's not a Thran Tome on the set's symbol, its actually a children's story book Richard Garfield can't read but likes the pictures of anyway (Hint: Its a basic math book!)

Gopher: Use this if you intend to use the new burrowing rule.

Happy Face: This thing is loved by everyone!

The first thing you see: Make sure the first thing you see is something cool, like a person flipping you off! That way you can have a really cool expansion symbol like a giant middle finger on your cards.

Besides just having to copy some Star Trek story, you'll have to make sure you throw in a few twists to keep from dealing with copyright laws. However, these twists will be thrown out once WotC buys Paramount, and then copyrights will not matter because it will all be one giant company.

d20 Roll	Storyline
1	Nothing
2	Stone Age Fools
3	Collect Money
4-5	Save Something
6-10	Food/Lodging
11-19	Competitor
20	Bathroom

Nothing: You don't care to write a good storyline. The players won't want to read it.

Stone Age Fools: Why is it that the goblins in Portal get guns while the more advanced goblin in the main sets still wield stone weapons? With this twist, you'll be able to pit elves with wooden bows against the evil Klingon Empire with their disrupter rifles. Guess which one will win?

Collect Money: The heroes of the set need to collect money to pay off a large gambling debt, or to buy a complete set of the Power Nine.

Save Something: One of the Main Characters has lost their pet puppy dog and needs to retrieve it. Or maybe a foolish captain needs to be saved.

Food/Lodging: Hey, Dominia's a big place. Maybe the set takes place were one or various characters roam around looking for the best travel rates.

Competitor: The main characters play a crappy competition game like Wyvern or Dragon Dice. Whatever it is, they make it look REALLY bad!

Bathroom: Base the story on your bathroom. It gets really interesting if you don't have a bathroom and have to use a public one. This way you get cards like "Floating Turd Monkey" and "The Raging Butt Goblin." A bathroom expansion was planned, but eventually became scattered in other sets. "Stench of Decay" "Gaseous Form" "Marsh Gas" "Sewers of Estark" "Throne of Bone" "Constant Mists" "Nausea" and "Amulet of Quoz" are all examples of cards you'd find in a bathroom that were instead scattered.

Now that you have your expansion set, you're going to have to produce it. The next step to take now is sending all your cards to R&D so that they can alter everything for you or just leave it the way it is (depending on the worthlessness of the cards you made). If you want to take the steps further, read the other three booklets in this set of four. This way you will have everything designed. Always remember when making your expansion: A confused player is a happy player. Always try to stick in a new and worthless Atog card. The newest will be the Toilatog, where you dip your head in a fast food restaurant toilet bowl and flush. Then you gurgle the water while its flushing around your head. This gives the little 3/3 fellah a boost of +1/+0. Is that cool or what!?

When your set does come out make sure to have shipping delays and all that type of stuff. Also make sure to have pre-release tourneys for it so that way the first time people see it they won't have an idea of how truly crappy your set is. Always make sure that its release is right before or right after a major amount of sets have been rotated out of T2, that way people will be forced to buy your set to compete.

If you have feedback about this booklet or any other Mad Dog Rants, then send mail to madcanine@yahoo.com because Mad Dog likes getting feedback and questions. Just make sure that you don't speak about the "accident" involving him and that printing press full of Urza's Saga cards. If you have any suggestions about fights for the Ironman Magic fights, then Mad Dog would be glad to look them over and possibly include your suggestions in the next fight. Please send stuff, as mail is the only thing Mad Dog will eat now that they removed Oasis from the basic set (he used to love those as a snack).