Bestial Menace

Variant Mechanic Recognition

"Have you tried making Cone of Flame/Bestial Menace variants in any of the other colors?" Does Cryptic Annelid (etb scry 1, scry 2, scry 3) count as a Blue variant?

I’d count it.

Bestial Menace Blue Colors Cone of Flame Cryptic Annelid Enter The Battlefield Menace Scry

Color Variants

Have you tried making Cone of Flame/Bestial Menace variants in any of the other colors?

I have. One came out in black.

Bestial Menace Black Colors Cone of Flame Menace

Clone Tokens Complexity

Do you think you could print a card that puts multiple clone tokens but each copies something different? Or would it be too difficult to keep track?

As a general rule we avoid cards that make different creature tokens, but Bestial Menace exists so we do it on occasion.

Bestial Menace Card Printing Creatures Menace Rules Tokens

Future Cones Possibility

We've had a cone of damage (Cone of Flame), a cone of -1/-1 counters (Incremental Blight), a cone of creatures (Bestial Menace), and now a cone of +1/+1 counters (Incremental Growth). Can we expect any more cones in our future? : )

Most likely.

Bestial Menace Cone of Flame Creatures Incremental Blight Incremental Growth Menace

Bestial Menace Omission

Why didn´t you put Bestial Menace in RTR?

Don’t tell anyone but you’re allowed to put Bestial Menace in your populate deck for fun. : ) There are a lot of cards from the past that would have worked well with populate. Bestial Menace is complicated as it makes three different tokens which doesn’t really matter with populate as it can only clone one token. Now if we had stayed with the original token proliferate version…

Bestial Menace Menace Populate Proliferate Tokens

Card Designer Credits

Have you ever considered including the respective card designer's name on cards? I think it would encourage collecting cards based on the designer just how people might collect music based on the musician and people would begin constructing MaRo decks.

Design credits are not so clear cut. Much of the time, many hands can be involved in the design of a card. Also, it’s not always obvious who made a particular card since there is a lot of parallel design going on. For example, I was trying for years to get Bestial Menace in the game. It eventually made it into a set, one I was on the design team on, yet it was turned in by Kelly Digges who had no idea that I had written about it in a column nine years earlier.

Bestial Menace Kelly Digges Mark Rosewater Menace Pop Culture

Bestial Menace Origins

From your May 27, 2002 article Tokens of My Affection: "In Judgment design, we actually experimented with a flashback spell called Cone of Creatures that created a 1/1 squirrel, a 2/2 bear, and a 3/3 elephant. But playtesting showed players kept confusing the tokens for one another, so the card was scrapped." Was that Judgement card really saved from 2002 to become Bestial Menace in Worldwake (2010)! You guys are kind of hoarders, huh?

Interestingly enough, Kelly Digges (former editor-in-chief of dailymtg.com and current R&D developer/editor) parallel designed it completely unaware that I has designed it many years earlier.

Bear Bestial Menace Creatures Elephant Flashback Kelly Digges Menace Playtesting Squirrel Tokens Worldwake

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