Probably the first major decision I made about the set was what to do about the Mane Six. These were the criteria that I wanted to address and make sure that I met with their designs:
-- The Mane Six must all be both relevant to and good enough to play with in both Limited and Constructed formats.
-- The Mane Six should all be roughly equivalent in power level.
-- The Mane Six should have build-around-me designs.
With these three criteria in mind, I set out to tackle the first major issue, color. As I'm sure you're aware, M:TG has five colors, whereas FiM has six main characters. There are a number of ways to address this problem; I'll list a few here, followed by the reason why I did or did not choose each solution.
1) Put one of the Mane Six into each of the five colors, then have one colorless card for the sixth.
This solution was unsatisfactory for two reasons. First of all, which pony deserves the ignominy of not having their own color? Secondly, none of the Mane Six struck me as M:TG black creatures.
2) Put one of the Mane Six into each of the five colors, then put the sixth pony in a duplicate color.
This solution solves the first problem from before, but not the second. Also it leads to color imbalance, which is never fun to deal with.
3) Make each of the Mane Six a different two-color pair, using the six pairings that do not include black.
This one's a bit better, as it solves both of the aforementioned problems while condensing all the color imbalance into one easily-addressed thematic issue; calling out Black as the "disharmony" color. I very nearly went with this solution, but it was scrapped because of the first criteria. Multicolored cards, especially in non-multicolored sets, are very difficult to use effectively in Limited formats, since they're only playable in decks that are playing both colors.
4) Make each of the Mane Six a different hybrid two-color pair, using the six pairings that do not include black.
This one's even closer, but hybrid cards are tricky to design and are very rarely open-ended. At this point, one might as well just make the cards colorless. So that's what I did.
5) Make each of the Mane Six colorless.
This choice not only frees design from pigeonholing any of the Mane Six into well-defined color roles, but also maximizes their playability. Since they don't have any color requirements, they can be used in any deck you'd like, both in Limited and Constructed.
And now this brings up the other issue of what to do with them; at what rarity should Rarity be placed? (Har har.) If I wanted them to be immensely powerful, Mythic Rare seems like the best place, as it's used to justify all sorts of broken cards. (cough*Titans*cough) However, that would be a direct violation of the first criterion, as Mythic Rares appear so infrequently that they almost never have an impact on Limited play outside of singlehandedly winning games for lucky openers. Regular Rare is essentially identical to Mythic Rare in this respect.
For a long time coming, Uncommon looked like the place to go, but as I was still mulling over the decision, I stumbled across my Time Spiral "Timeshifted" version of Squire, and the light bulb clicked on. What better way to make sure that the Mane Six get seen than to completely saturate the Limited environment with them?
That's right. Every "pack" of the set would contain exactly one of the six Mane Six. Every. Single. One. (And yes, their expansion symbols are purple, just like TSB cards.)
Granted, there are plenty of ways to address this issue, but I hope that you understand the process that went into my decision.
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