Motherland: A Retrospective on Magic’s Lost Set 
Magic Arcana: I Want to Ride My Charcycle
(from MagicTheGathering.com’s Magic Arcana)
As you no doubt have seen at your prerelease, there’s a 10 card cycle in Shadowmoor based on an updated wording of our old favourite Char:
R&D noticed a trend among players discussing new cards – they would relate them sometimes nonsensically to previous cards. For example, players would say Brute Force was the “red Giant Growth”, Purge was the “white Terror”, Browbeat was the “red Fact or Fiction”; they would even say things like Remand was the “blue Time Walk”. You can see that the naming of this cycle steers this type of moronic discussion in the right direction; the other cards in the first half of the cycle whether they are old or new, common or rare, have all been updated with a new type and clearer name:
While Shadowmoor was being leaked in perfectly controlled amounts, someone on a message board commented that this card:
was “like a blue Char.” A little narrow minded, but I guess hate will always exist in peoples’ hearts. At any rate he was mostly right and like all cards in the second half of the cycle, it has a hybrid mana cost. We feel that this part of the cycle really showcases the hybrid theme of Shadowmoor and also whatever theme Char has.
This double cycle spans 5 rares, 3 uncommons and 2 commons – this is clearly terrible design and the person responsible will be sacked.
– Magic Arcana
