Cosmos Elixir

Kaldheim's Lore Connections

Hi Mark, a funny thing I noticed about MOM is the way that quite a few parts of Kaldheim's lore that ended up being very plot relevant (The World Tree, Doomskars, Cosmos Elixir, etc) are the parts that come most directly from Norse Mythology.
Was this a case of "we built a Norse myth world and realized these ideas would work well the phyrexia arc", or was it "we were looking for ways to reintroduce planar travel and we discovered we wanted to draw from the way Norse Myth handles it"?

Kaldheim was designed in such a matter that it made the best Kaldheim set, and we saw the relevant pieces and realized they could help the Phyrexian story.

Cosmos Elixir Humor Kaldheim Phyrexian Plot Story / Lore The World Tree

White Card Draw Strategy

Is Cosmos Elixir part of the white card draw design strategy? It draws cards when you keep your life total high, which is a strength of white’s.

It is consistent with where white card drawing is going.

Card Draw Cosmos Elixir White

Rationale Behind Cosmos Elixir

My wasn’t Cosmos Elixir actually made a white card? It would have made it strictly worse by limiting how many decks it can go in, but it feels like a card that could have been a cool card for white that now every color gets.

There’s an alternate reality where we made it white where someone’s writing in asking why it couldn’t have been an artifact, so other colors could have used it. By the way, while it doesn’t have a white mana symbol in its mana cost, it is a tool easiest used by white.For what it is worth, I do think in the future this effect can be printed on a monowhite card.

Artifacts Colors Cosmos Elixir Mana White

Impact of Card Balancing

So I'm on reddit looking at comments about "Cosmos Elixir" and they are mostly about how this is barely playable in commander. And I'm sitting here thinking how this will be good if not out right tier one in standard. With the popularity of commander how difficult has it become to make cards playable in that format but not break other formats? It seems like smaller more fragile formats are the ones impacted the most by cards that aren't very good against multiple opponents.

While the proliferation of formats is overall good for the game as it gives players a lot of options, it does make play design’s job significantly harder.

Commander Cosmos Elixir Standard

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