• In a few sentences, what is the premise of Zorana: Old World?

"Zorana is a graveyard focused set that brings closer the world of Slavic paganism to a western wiever. It is a setting that's – unfortunately – nearly unexplored by popculture despite its potential for adaptation and magnetic aesthetic. It's a dark world full of death and hopelessness, but also not without rebirth and raw, primal beauty. While some may find such an approach too grim, I'm sure it's not without its fans either."

• What inspired you to begin creating Zorana: Old World?

"Well, my birthplace mostly. I think it's quite common that at some point every custom designer wants to tap into the cultural heritage of their forefathers and present it to the world. The international success of The Witcher games – followed by the standalone Gwent cardgame – also cannot be ignored. Gwent's artbase served as foundation and catalyst for realization of the project. Even though Zorana also takes inspiration directly from The Witcher IP (I find it only natural that in world defined in large by its demons and monsters plaguing humanity, specialized monster hunters would eventually form up), it stopped depending on its art so much and eventually became its own thing. In fact, one small thing I'm very happy about is the number of independent art by Eastern Europe artists that I've managed to collect and implement so far."

• Where would you say Zorana: Old World is in the development process?

"Zorana scored a massive reboot through its development. My initial pitch for the set included a mechanical monocolor theme playing up the primal, barely civilized nature of the world, but no matter what I tried, top-down and bottom-up aspects just never really gelled together. It could also be all the debt that came from developing Zorana from the earliest days of picking up Magic design as a hobby. Eventually I decided to freeze the channel [on the server] and completely rethink my approach. During the downtime, I came up with a few designs focusing on the deathly aspect of the world I'm trying to present instead and this time it worked. It's not without its challenges, but I am fully satisfied with this direction.

At this moment, I'm very close to finishing up the common slots. Some of the higher rarity slots were already filled as more complex card ideas came along, so I imagine I'm more ahead than it my seem. Looking forward to the testing and tuning phase."

• In your design document, you discuss how Slavic mythology has been edited or redacted by historical sources. How do you sift through what sources remain and figure out what to include and adapt to the world of Zorana?

"Unfortunately, it's true; at the time Slavic territories went under Christianization, no one came up with the idea to preserve the old faith, like it happened with Norse mythology. However, the way it occurred was quite specific, so perhaps a better word than "edited" or "redacted" here is "overwritten". As such, it requires certain knowledge about themes present in Christianity and then finding shared and disparate points between it and pagan believes. Many rituals and festivities were preserved for a long time in nearly unchanged form – only thing that changed were the proper nouns. In fact, the same can be said about even the biggest Paneuropean holidays: Easter and Christmas. In this case I simply had to change the names back.

On the other hand, some things required more deliberate straightening up. For example, I've made an effort to differentiate cyclical perception of time by ancient Slavs rather than Christian linear time by returning Foretell mechanic with shifted flavor.

Still, some things are straight up forgotten or hard to tell if the only source of the preserved records are "I made it up". In those cases, I simply settled on what feels right. For example, you won't find a classic pantheon of polytheistic gods like on Theros; Instead, I took a more pantheistic approach with worship of natural forces without their anthropomorphization."

• Food chain is an interesting mechanic that allows for continued value even after death. How do you go about designing these cards, but also avoid giving too much value?

"Carefully. Luckily, I can use all the experience already gained by Silicon Valley (Another project channel in the Custom Magic Discord server), who blazed the trail with a similar mechanic. Figuring the right as-fan for the cards with food chain (so it's not too easy or too hard to, well, chain them) is probably the biggest challenge I'm facing currently. It's certainly the most experimental mechanic of the bunch, so I expect plenty of further refinement that can only come with playtesting."

• What is your favorite card in Zorana: Old World?

"I've always been a huge fan of draw-go, "my turn is during your turn" instant speed playstyle. As a result, I'm unashamedly forcing Flash designs where I can. One of them is Swift Rusalka, which makes a great impression of more open-ended Spellstutter Sprite not tied to any particular tribal."

• Would you like to give any special thanks to anyone for their help?

"Naturally. I would like to thank Splitmoon for always giving helpful opinions on designs, Janahwhamme for those that were a bit more flavor focused and Philippe Saner for both. Additionally, I would like to thank Zangy for all the art drops, Pipsqueak for the ever so useful articles and Cool Beens for plenty of support over time (I still owe you some playtests). Finally, thanks to Bergland, dr platypeople, Ensorceler, Cheech the Beech, SpiritDragonSlayer, Enzio, pujok and everyone else whose name I might have forgotten now (It's been a long journey) but who's been dropping in every now and then and leaving bits of feedback."