Cellar Door

Designing Innistrad's Cellar Door

New • 07 Dec 2020 • Asked by 22bebo • 31 Comments

Mark we have already had "mill from the bottom" on Cellar Door in original Innistrad! I believe the reason was because it was too easy to setup what the top card of the library was and that it felt appropriate since cellars are beneath the rest of the house (or library in this case).

It was mill from the bottom because it was a top-down design with that name.
Cellar Door Innistrad Mill The Library Top Down

Bottom Library Design Space

New • 28 Mar 2014 • Asked by awesomesoup • 25 Comments

Do you think there is design space that uses the bottom of the library?

A little. Cellar Door from Innistrad used it, but it was more for flavor than design space.
Cellar Door Design Space Flavor Innistrad The Library

Cellar Door Design

New • 13 Feb 2013 • Asked by spartacusreturned • 6 Comments

What's exactly the difference for Cellar Door whether the card comes from the top or the bottom of the library? Sorry, I realize it's supposed to be a top-down design, but I don't get it.

The bottom of the library = the bottom of the stairs.
Cellar Door The Library Top Down

Bottom of Deck Mechanics

New • 12 Feb 2013 • Asked by mistershinyobject • 23 Comments

Why aren't there any cards that pull things from the bottom of the deck? Or are there some I just don't know about?

Cellar Door is the one that comes to mind. Development wanted to change it to the top of the library. I said, “Don’t you dare.”
Cellar Door The Library

Trepanation Blade Concept

New • 14 Dec 2011 • Asked by affinityforanime • 2 Comments

You talked about how you pushed the strong, mechanical flavor of Cellar Door to the development team, but how hard did you fight to keep the original concept behind Trepanation Blade? I know it's design name was "chainsaw" and that's not going to happen. But a lot of Innistrad's equipment were flavored to be humans' tools, so why not a regular, old-fashioned saw? That makes more sense to me.

I changed the name in the file from Chainsaw to Bladespinner hoping to get some steampunk-y type of chainsaw. The creative team rightfully said that steampunk doesn’t make sense in gothic horror so they went with the closest thing they could. Look up trepanation blade if you don’t know what it is. Leatherface might have used that if he lived in Innistrad.
Cellar Door Equipment Fight / Bite Flavor Horror Human Innistrad Trepanation Blade

Playtest Names to Print

New • 12 Sep 2011 • Asked by topiotts • 2 Comments

How often is it that a playtest name makes it all the way to print?

It happens infrequently but both Creepy Doll and Cellar Door, for example, were the design playtest names. (I think top down sets will have a better hit ratio.)
Card Printing Cellar Door Creepy Doll Playtesting Top Down

Inspiration Origins

New • 12 Sep 2011 • Asked by celestialelixir • 4 Comments

In an earlier question, you said some cards in Innistrad were inspired by popular media (I believe the card was "Creepy Doll"). Is there any chance "Cellar Door" was inspired by the movie Donnie Darko?

I’ll have to ask Jenna. She made the list of card names.
Card Names Cellar Door Creepy Doll Innistrad Pop Culture

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