Black/White Test Sheet? Revised Uncommon? Unique Piece!

[mystical_tutor]

Unlimited was released in Dec 93. Revised in April 94. That gives us a 4 month window when these could have been produced. Obviously changes to the cards can be made all the way up until the very last minute so I don't think we can narrow it down any further without input from someone who was there.

Humm, my take is that the release of UL has no bearing on the timing of this sheet. The work on the realease of UL was not much more than a phone call. AN was in the planning stages early on (as a different game) and these 4 cards may have been graphically completed at almost any time. Plus the absence of AQ cards support an argument for "earlier". On the other hand the mixture of AN and UL cards certainly certainly indicate a ramping up for a new printing.

Things were moving REALLY fast at this time and WotC was being bombarded with requests for "MORE CARDS". In my thinking that makes this sheet a very important part of their history. Wish I had it.

[cataclysm80]

Here is some more information that's relevant to this subject.

The game designers started to work on Revised BEFORE Unlimited. There were a few unfinished attempts to create a Revised set before the actual Revised set was released. Dave Howell (WotC Production Manager / username snarke) refers to these unfinished attempts as “Regathering”. Internally, this project was known by many names, MTG2, 2nd edition, Tap Cards, Revised Edition.

Here is a more detailed accounting of the order of events.
After film had been burned for the Beta cards which needed updated and sent to Carta Mundi for printing, work began on a revised and updated set of cards.

It started out when Richard, Skaff, possibly Jim, and myself were trying to define the difference between mono and poly artifacts. At some point, I realized that the only difference between them was that mono artifacts functioned like land ("Tap to") and poly artifacts worked like enchantments, so we could drop the distinction and just call all of them "Artifacts" by simply requiring tapping or not as a cost when using an artifact. "Since it's functionally a cost, just like a mana cost, we could even dispense with saying "tap to" entirely, and just have some kind of tap symbol instead." I know, it seems terribly obvious now. :) The logical extension was to use the tap symbol for all magic cards that tapped. I also came up with the tipped-T for the symbol. It later had to be replaced with the arrow-version when we started doing other languages because the word for "tap" doesn't always begin with a "T".
The idea was to run a new set of films for the 2nd edition, with a bunch of improved or revised text for the cards. The original plan was another, larger, limited edition with changed card backs. It's called "Magic, the GATHERING" because it was the first edition. The next one was going to be "Magic: something else". Which, of course, would have made the backs different. But PrePrint had a serous bug in it, which was making a mess of the mana symbols. In order to fix it, I actually walked right into their offices and made them fix the problem while I waited. The solution was upgrading from 1.5.1 to 1.6. "You call us and order it and we'll send you the upgrade." "How long?" "About a week." "Not acceptable. This is supposed to have shipped yesterday. Upgrade me right now. I'll wait." In the end, we decided to give up, because we had to get to work on Arabian Nights. However, that meant we would run out of core set cards. So that's why we came up with the idea of "unlimited."

The following link contains information about a locally made test print for this first unfinished attempt at a revised set. Notice that the text has been updated and includes mana symbols in the text boxes. Notice that Mono and Poly artifacts are just called Artifacts, while Continuous Artifacts are still labeled as Continuous. Notice the tap symbols.
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=9189
The tap symbol was used internally on playtest cards for Arabian Nights & Antiquities, but was not seen publicly until a core set with an updated instruction booklet came out to explain it.

At that time, Arabian Nights was also planned to have a different card back.

My recollection is that Unlimited came out as a result of the Alpha and Beta selling out at such a speed that we realized we needed more cards to fill the gap...even though we'd planned to make some game adjustments to the cards that clearly needed some revising. Unlimited filled the space between the original release of the base card game and the release of Revised. Revised is what we'd always planned to have after the initial set but there just wasn't time.

"Unlimited" was a stop-gap, but it was directed at the same sales space as "Revised" and all the white-border sets which followed - it was for the game player who just needed cards, rather than the collector. We knew we needed to fill both of those needs. 

Unlimited is simply Beta with white borders. We just called Carta Mundi and said "can you change the border color on the films you have now?" We wanted Unlimited to be gray bordered, but Carta Mundi made it clear that would have required either a 'screen' of little black dots or paying to have a spot color on the press. They could only do solid color modifications with tape. That meant black, white, red, yellow, green, cyan, magenta, or dark blue. The color options would have looked hideous against some of the card colors, so white it was. Carta Mundi did the equivalent of laying strips of white tape between the images on the printing plate films. They created a new set of printing plates, but the plates were made from the same films that they'd used for beta.

Paying for a spot color on the press was not an extra expense that WotC was willing to incur, and creating borders with a screen of little black dots to simulate gray would have required burning more film, which would also have been an extra expense. Using white tape on the Beta films to make new printing plates saved money, not only from spot color fees and film burning / shipping costs, but the white border cards would use less ink during printing. It also saved time because Carta Mundi could get started right away.

After Arabian Nights was sent to Carta Mundi for printing, another attempt was made to revise the core set.

Our second attempt to release a new core set was after Arabian Nights, so we had a list of which 1st edition cards were going to be replaced with Arabian Nights cards. The list is from a version of the master card-text file with a timestamp of December 3, 1993. I don't remember why we didn't release that one.

SUMMARY OF SUBSTITUTIONS (already made in text):
Lich --> El Hajajj
Word of Command --> Sorceress Queen
Twiddle --> Unstable Mutation
Jade Statue --> Brass Man
Time Vault --> Aladdin's Ring
Berserk --> Desert Twister
Sinkhole --> Erg Raiders
Psionic Blast --> Flying Men
Chaosorb --> Bottle of Solomon
Cyclopean Tomb --> Pyramid
Gauntlet of Might --> Jandor's Ring
Invisibility --> Fishliver Oil
False Orders --> Kird Ape
Blaze of Glory --> Eye for an Eye
2 - Headed Giant --> Mijae Djinn
Camoflauge --> Sandstorm
Raging River --> Magnetic Mountain

Mox Sapphire --> Flying Carpet
mox jet --> sandals of abdallah
mox ruby --> ebony horse
mox pearl --> magic saddlebags
mox emerald --> dancing scimitar
black lotus --> aladdin's lamp
timewalk --> island fish jasconius
timetwister --> merchant ship
ancestral recall --> serendib efreet

The black and white printouts shown in this thread are from this second attempt.

The reason this version wasn’t released probably has something to do with needing to get to work on Antiquities.

I vividly remember being all set to leave early for Christmas so I could go skiing before the holidays, and then having to cancel those plans because the designers & editors kept making changes to Antiquities and blew their deadline, and then there was some kind of production problem with *those* films, so I lost about 3 days and had to skip the ski trip.

After Antiquities was sent to Carta Mundi for printing, a third attempt was made to revise the core set.

This version came from an internal memorandum I circulated.
Note the reference to "MTG2," referring to the first major change to the card set since the initial release, even though this would eventually become the "3rd" edition.
The file timestamp is January 15th, 1994, 2:54 pm
Here is the complete list (I hope!) of what cards that were in
MTG1 have been replaced with expansion cards in MTG2…

This third attempt was seen through to completion and became the set that we all know as Revised.
During that process, a test print was done to show what the other solid color tapes that Carta Mundi had available during Unlimited would look like as card borders.
The following link contains more information on these colored border test prints.
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=9476

Tav