The following Magic 2012 cards have flavor text written by me (though often edited more than a little after I submitted them).
* Peregrine Griffin - A griffin is not just an eagle's wings and a lion's claws. It is also the fiercest of hearts. (My original submission was quite different, emphasizing that a heart that could unite its dissimilar parts was the most defining trait of the griffin, and I'm more than a little sorry that this meaning was lost in the translation to Shorter English.)
* Timely Reinforcements - The gods are not always kind, but they do have a soft spot for plucky underdogs.
* Aven Fleetwing - "It was too fast, even for our veteran archers; they might as well have been blowing it kisses." (In retrospect, I am not proud of this quote, but I guess somebody liked it.)
* Flight - "Those who claim to know the world in its entirety rarely have the requisite perspective."
--Ulamarus the Wise (Not surprising they shortened this from my rather awkward original version, but I'm also puzzled to note that they always seem to change the proper names I make up when crediting things. I was trying to go for something less generic than the typical "Abracadabrius" mage, but they don't appear to have preferred my version.)
* Merfolk Mesmerist - "Don't you think if I saw a half-woman, half fish with three glowing eyes, I'd have remembered?" --Drugo, town guard (Once again the name was changed and some do-withoutable words were cut, including more details that were intended to demonstrate that our unfortunate witness was quite specific about what he never saw.)
* Gorehorn Minotaurs - Some of the eleven minotaur clans of Mirtiin are expert crafters and learned philosophers. Others just like to hit stuff. (They seriously adjusted my choice of adjectives, but I'm too happy about being able to write an iconic piece for one of my favorite fantasy races to complain about such a detail.)
* Reverberate - For every action, there is a swifter and more violent reaction. (I think I'd have to call this my single favorite of my contributions to the set.)
* Angel's Feather - The angel represents divine perfection, even the smallest feather is imbued with beauty and benevolence. (This greatly waters down my original concept for this line, but since I was using the word "fractal" I'm not surprised they deemed it too sciencey and high-concept for Magic in general, let alone a Core Set. I'm satisfied that this version at least hints at the idea I was going for.)
The following Magic 2012 cards got their name from me:
* Pride Guardian
* Phantasmal Dragon (it's not very surprising, but it is a reference to some old
cards
which I've missed a great deal.)
* Sorin's Thirst
* Greatsword
These cards owe me for BOTH halves of their creative identity, a feat I never achieved in New Phyrexia.
* Gideon's Avenger - "The good do not sit idle and wait for the evil to act. They prepare to defend. They prepare to punish." --Gideon Jura (this one was shortened quite a bit from my version but didn't lose much of anything, other than the clarification that they defend the innocent and punish the guilty - I thought that needed to be specified, myself. I also made a reference to a New Phyrexia card but it's unsurprising that got cut just due to the issue of length.)
* Scrambleverse - Sometimes a little chaos is in order. (Easily the card I'm most looking forward to getting my hands on a copy of, out of those I've written. A Timmy rare even crazier than Warp World! As a Red creature at heart I'm quite happy.)
* Hunter's Insight - "The predator knows the true way of the world. Life is conflict. Only the strong survive." --Garruk Wildspeaker (My version wasn't credited to anyone, but it's just as well they changed that, lest it be taken as "word of god" rather than just as a generic Green opinion. The change I'm less happy about is that my version did not have "only the strong survive", a phrase that I would have deemed too commonplace to be worth using here; the original version was a further elaboration on Darwinian attitudes that would have fit perfectly for Garruk. I'm not too unhappy about the change though, since the result better fits a Black-Green character's ethos; mono-green ought to cleave more closely to the "hippy spirituality" vibe, and while this quote is pretty gritty, my original was way more so. So I can live with the way this turned out.)
So, the same number of total cards got something from me in this set as in NPH, but more of them had flavor as well as a name - I definitely feel like I made a strong contribution to the Vorthosian awesomeness of M12, and I hope that the most passionate members of the community agree.
