Birthday Trivia Time! Can you give me trivia on Stuffy Doll, my favorite Time Spiral callback?

Stuffy Doll first appeared on Black Vise illustrated by Richard Thomas. The character got noticed by the audience, enough so that Richard Thomas included him in other illustrations. Then, during Time Spiral, we decided to make a card out of him. We spent a lot of time figuring out the right mechanic for him and ended up with him being very hard to kill. I have Stuffy Vise doll at my desk. I don’t remember where I got it from. Happy Birthday!

Why would Magic with the Power 9 as normal cards imply turn 1 wins? If players are expected to have those cards, wouldn't Magic then evolve in a way that mitigates the imbalances they can create? I'd imagine corresponding hate in the form of Leyline effects, uncounterable Black Vise and Ugin's Nexus variants, a more vicious version of Manabarbs that hits artifact mana, and so on.

Yes, Magic would evolve to a game that’s not about actually playing the cards but trying to get the card that shuts down the opponent’s strategy first. That game system would appeal to a tiny fraction of Magic’s audience and the game would die off because a trading card game needs a threshold of revenue to support the work needed to create and balance it.

It’s my birthday today! May I have some trivia on my favorite colorless card “stuffy doll”? Thanks Happy Halloween!

Stuffy Doll, originally pictured on Black Vise and The Rack, appeared in the art of a bunch on of cards (five or six, I believe). It would eventually get its own card in Time Spiral. Happy Birthday!

Stuffy doll has been the star of many card arts including the rack, black vise, and wall of wonder. Is there any particular reason it was featured so commonly?

Richard Thomas was an artist who liked the Stuffy Doll and put in my of his paintings.

Mark! My birthday was last Saturday and I've been asking everyday, please give me some birthday trivia on one of my favorite cards: Avatar or Woe, The Rack and Thoughtseize.

The Rack, in Antiquities, was made as a follow up to Black Vise, an artifact from Alpha. Instead of punishing a player for having too many cards in their hands, it punished them for having too few. It got played in a lot of discard decks in the day. The creature pictured in it, referred to affectionately as “Stuffy Doll”, first appeared in the art of Black Vise and was in The Rack as a joke that The Rack was a riff off of Black Vise. Happy Birthday!

While we're talking about Magic references, the anime/light novel series called Accel World has two characters called Black Lotus and Black Vise, who are the leaders of the protagonist and the antagonist characters, respectively. And the plot revolves around a game, making it even more relevant to Magic.

I hadn’t heard of that one.

In one of my first ever games of Magic (I believe I was around 10 years old), I defeated an opponent using only a Bog Imp and a Raging Goblin. Do you have any funny victory stories you'd like to share?

I once played a game where my opening hand had only one land (this was pre-Paris mulligan). I played Black Vise on my first turn. I never drew another land and was never able to cast another spell. I won.