Harry Potter and the Gathering of Magic: README
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Introduction
My wife is a big Harry Potter fan, and I'm an amateur Magic designer, so back in the summer of 2011 I decided to make her a Harry Potter-themed set. I have a ton of my own set ideas in the works, but I had never actually completed an entire set before. In order to make this one easier on myself, I made it a 130-card standalone small set with only returning mechanics -- no new mechanics to have to design and balance. With her help, I was able to finish the whole set in one summer. That was the summer right before Innistrad came out, which you will see is relevant later.
Whenever Harry Potter, Chosen One attacks, other attacking creatures you control get +1/+0 until end of turn.
You may look at the top card of your library. (You may do this at any time.)
If Harry Potter would be destroyed, regenerate it.
Lord Voldemort has indestructible as long as you control a permanent with a phylactery counter on it.
: Turn target face-down attacking creature face up.Harry Potter and the Gathering of Magic
The secret to Harry Potter and the Gathering of Magic is that it is two things in one:
1) It is a 130-card standalone small set, with all the normal color and rarity distributions and themes for limited and all that jazz. It should be able to be drafted alone, although I'd imagine it would get stale pretty quickly since there's only 130 cards in the format.
2) It is a pair of Commander Duel Decks. This is the shocking one. As you may have noticed, Harry has a lightning-bolt-scar watermark, and Voldemort has a Dark Mark watermark behind their respective text boxes. This isn't a coincidence -- much like Mirrodin Beseiged, every card in the set has one watermark or the other, and they're distributed 50/50 in the set. The watermark designates which of the two Commander Duel Decks each card belongs to. That means 65 cards per deck; shuffle in 35 basic lands and you've got yourself a pair of 100-card singleton decks to face off against each other.
Harry and Voldemort were designed to be the commanders of their respective decks, but the set has two other mythic rare legendary creatures that can serve as alternate generals if you so choose:
Wizard spells you cast cost
less to cast.
Whenever another Wizard enters the battlefield under your control, scry 2.
Other creatures with wither you control get +1/+1 and have first strike.
: Put a -1/-1 counter on each creature with a -1/-1 counter on it.I'd like to point out the implication -- by Commander rules, each deck must be the exact same colors as its general. This, actually, helps to explain why Voldemort is green. I knew I wanted him to be black and blue, but his deck also needed to contain the snakes, spiders, and trolls that he commands, so he had to be green as well in order to serve as their commander for the purposes of this deck. As for Harry, I was having trouble settling on a color for him. He's courageous and heroic, traits exemplary of white, but also reckless and impulsive (red), and his deck needed to be full of Wizards, which would imply blue. Eventually I hit upon the clever fact that Hogwarts has four houses which could fairly neatly be aligned to four colors, so that's what I went with for Harry's deck.
Of course, a four-color deck would be hard to manage without good mana fixing -- but not to worry, there's plenty of it in the set, and in Harry's deck in particular:
, 
: Add 
to your mana pool.—Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry official school song
, : Add 
to your mana pool., , Sacrifice Marauder's Map: Search your library for up to two basic land cards, reveal those cards, and put one onto the battlefield tapped and the other into your hand. Then shuffle your library.And what Commander deck would be complete without a few nonbasic lands? Don't worry, each deck gets two:
. (To scry 2, look at the top two cards of your library. Put any number of them on the bottom of your library in any order and the rest on top in any order.)
: Add , or to your mana pool.: Add or to your mana pool.
: Return Forbidden Forest from your graveyard to your hand. Activate this ability only during your upkeep.Hogwarts Castle doesn’t untap during your untap step unless you control a Wizard.
: Add , , or to your mana pool.
, : Draw a card.: Add , or to your mana pool.
, : Return a card at random from your graveyard to your hand.Color Breakdowns
Because there are an equal number of cards of each color in the set, they have to be divided evenly between the decks. Because of that, I pushed a pretty heavy artifact subtheme in Voldemort's deck since he only got three colors compared to Harry's four. In other words:
-- Harry's deck only
-- More than half in Harry's deck, less than half in Voldemort's deck
-- Voldemort's deck only
-- Harry's deck only
-- More than half in Voldemort's deck, less than half in Harry's deck
Artifacts -- Almost all in Voldemort's deck (including all artifact creatures), only a handful of non-creature artifacts in Harry's deck
Harry's Keywords and Mechanics
I wanted this set to have four supported keywords (beyond all the evergreen keywords, of course). That meant each deck got to feature two primary keywords. Remember that I made the conscious decision to only include returning keywords, not newly-designed keywords, to make the set easier for me to finish. If you've been paying attention, you've seen that Harry's deck contains Scry, which wasn't yet evergreen back in 2011, so it counted as one of my returning mechanics. It wasn't the most groundbreaking of returns since it has just come back in M11 the year before, but it was long before it returned again in Theros, so it was a more interesting inclusion in design than it looks today.
Voldemort's deck contains Morph and Wither, but so far I haven't shown off the second mechanic for Harry's deck:
—George Weasley
Clash wasn't very popular when it first debuted in Lorwyn, but my wife loves the mechanic, so I wanted to include it in the set. I was very careful to find a way to make Clash not suck here. There are a few things in particular that help:
1) Clash does not appear at common. It was too wordy for commons, so it only appears on uncommons and a rare.
2) The cards should always be playable even if you lose the clash. In other words, you shouldn't run into any situations where you have to get blindly lucky just to do the basic effect of the spell. Either the spell should do its base functionality for free, with an unrelated but pleasant surprise when you win the clash (like Finite Incantatem or Firestorm Charm), or else (like Fred and George) you get upside whether or not you actually won the clash.
3) It's paired with Scry. Having Scry and Clash in the same set works wonders. Scry lets you stack the top of your library, so you can set up a win with Clash or else at least know whether or not to hold the Clash spell for a later turn. Ginny is a great example of this, where she scries before every clash for maximum shenanigans.
4) Sometimes Harry just gets lucky. And at Hogwarts, what's the best way to absolutely guarantee you get lucky? Why, Felix Felicis, of course!
You may tap an untapped Wizard you control instead of paying Felix Felicis’s mana cost.
: Put Felix Felicis on top of your library.Its mana cost of 
guarantees you win 99% of clashes, but you never actually have to pay the cost as long as you control a Wizard...or can mill it into your graveyard somehow. Once it's on the field, simply tap it to put it back on top of your deck for the next clash.
Playtesting showed Clash plays very well here. Note that, in the Commander Duel Decks format, Harry's deck has a slightly lower mana curve overall than Voldemort's deck, so you're actually less likely to win clashes off of blind luck unless you leverage scrying -- and Harry's own ability to peek at the top of your deck -- to find out the most opportune time to cast your Clash cards for a blowout!
Voldemort's Keywords and Mechanics
We already know that Voldemort's deck's two primary keywords are Wither and Morph. Wither itself is really pretty self-explanatory. I don't really use it in any mechanically innovative ways in this set.
When Barty Crouch Jr. enters the battlefield, you may exile another target creature. As long as the exiled card is a creature card, Barty Crouch Jr. has that card’s power, toughness, and creature types.
When Barty Crouch Jr. leaves the battlefield, return the exiled card to the battlefield under its owner’s control.
Flavor-wise, wither represents pain. Most of the Death Eater characters have wither to represent their lust for causing pain. Poisonous creatures that can cause pain with their venom also have wither. Creatures aren't the only things in the world that can cause pain, however, and this set has a few non-creature cards that interact with -1/-1 counters as well:
At the beginning of your upkeep, put a -1/-1 counter on enchanted creature.
—Barty Crouch, Jr.
, : Put a -1/-1 counter on target creature with a -1/-1 counter on it.Until end of turn, you may cast creature cards from your graveyard.
Voldemort sure has a lot of different ways to put -1/-1 counters on things, but it wouldn't be very fair unless Harry also had a way to take them back off. Fortunately, he's got friends in high places:
When Fawkes enters the battlefield, remove up to three -1/-1 counters from among permanents you control.
: Return Fawkes from your graveyard to your hand. Activate this ability only during your upkeep.A side note on Fawkes can let me explain something else about the structure of this set: I know Phoenixes are typically rare, but I didn't have the room to put Fawkes at rare, so he got pushed to uncommon. Why was rare so full? Well, have you noticed how there have been a lot of Legendary Creatures running around in this set? Yes, this set pulls a Kamigawa -- every rare creature and about a third of the uncommon creatures are legendary. It sort of comes with the territory when you're building a set off of a series of novels...there are so many distinct characters in the story that each need their own legendary creature cards. I will point out now that there are a whole lot more characters that didn't get legendary creature cards in this set. I tried to put as many of them into the art of other cards as possible (as cameo appearances), but there's only so many legends a set can take. All but one of the rare legends are multicolored, so most of the monocolored legends had to be pushed down to uncommon.
So what else does Voldemort's deck have going for it other than -1/-1 counters? Well, it also has a substantive milling/graveyard theme. It has several cards to mill the opponent, several cards that use self-milling as a cost, and one card that becomes a powerhouse when you do both:
You control enchanted creature.
At the beginning of your upkeep, enchanted creature’s owner puts the top two cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard.
Whenever Dementor deals combat damage to a player, that player puts the top X cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard, where X is the number of creature cards in that player’s graveyard.
—Gilderoy Lockhart
Whenever a card is put into your graveyard from your library, target opponent puts the top card of his or her library into his or her graveyard.
Whenever a card is put into an opponent’s graveyard from his or her library, that player loses 1 life.
Morph
Obliviate made an instant specifically to interact with Clash. In response to your opponent's clashy spell, you can surprise mill the top five cards off their library, ruining whatever they had scried up there to steal a win.
Important to reiterate: I designed this set in the summer of 2011. Innistrad had been announced, but I didn't know any of the mechanics or cards in it yet. The fact that it was also a graveyard-based set that used milling/self-milling as a theme was a total coincidence. I had these cards done already before I knew about it (although there are a few cards you'll see later that I tweaked and/or revised after Innistrad came out).
Morph
My wife came up with the morph theme and had a big hand in the design of several of the cards, including the splashiest and most creative one. About 90% of the set design and almost 100% of the formatting, costing and development was done by me, but there were a few mechanics and cards that she had a more direct impact on. The main mechanic that she can take credit for is Morph. Flavorwise (as you can probably guess, she pushed for very flavorful cards since the set is based on one of her favorite series), Morph characterizes the Death Eaters perfectly; they are nameless, masked terrors. For this reason, Voldemort's deck got most of the Morph cards, including the following...
Draco Malfoy can’t block.
Morph
(You may cast this face down as a 2/2 creature for . Turn it face up any time for its morph cost.)Morph
(You may cast this face down as a 2/2 creature for . Turn it face up any time for its morph cost.)
When Smoky Apparitions is turned face up, return target permanent to its owner’s hand.
Black cards with Morph turn into some of the more memorable Death Eaters, while blue Morph cards have some effect (like bouncing a permament) when they are turned face up.
Originally, Morph was going to be only in Voldemort's deck, but eventually we decided that more Morph cards were necessary so that there would be some amount of mystery involved when an opponent casts a face-down creature. Eventually, the cards we found we could design with Morph bled into Harry's deck, and we wound up with these...
: Turn Afflicted Lycanthrope face down.
Morph
(You may cast this face down as a 2/2 creature for . Turn it face up any time for its morph cost.)When Sirius Black is turned face up, it deals 2 damage to target creature or player.
: Turn Sirius Black face down. You gain 2 life.
Morph
Conveniently, a generic wolf has the same power and toughness as a morph, so the morphed Afflicted Lycanthrope worked very well. Having morphs in Harry's deck also led to some fun situations where Voldemort's ability was used on creatures attacking him.
Speaking of werewolves...
Morph
(You may cast this face down as a 2/2 creature for . Turn it face up any time for its morph cost.)If you've been paying attention to the timeframe that has been mentioned, the set was completed just before double-faced cards were announced. Remus Lupin was originally a Morph that could change back and forth like an Animagus, and while we drew the line at including double-faced cards, we decided to take the trigger for werewolf transformation from the Innistrad werewolves. In the end, I think it captures the flavor of a werewolf's transformation very well, as something they cannot control. I guess WotC knows what they're doing :P
To support the Morph mechanic, we gave Voldemort's deck a few non-creature permanents...
Enchanted creature gets +3/+3 as long as it’s face-down.
—Arthur Weasley
, , Sacrifice Walpurgis Mask: Turn target permanent face down.
: Return Walpurgis Mask from your graveyard to your hand. Activate this ability only during your upkeep.Morsmorde, fairly self explanatory: creatures are scarier when you don't know what they are. Walpurgis Mask went through some heavy development before we settled on an exact wording and cost. We originally cost it much cheaper, thinking that a 2/2 creature that essentially makes you sacrifice another permanent wouldn't be too good, but after we realized that in the late game, every extra land could become a 2/2 body, we hiked up the cost.
Lastly, my wife's favorite card of the set. Her favorite character of the series, and the reason we first pushed Morph into Harry's deck...
When Severus Snape deals damage to a player, sacrifice it.
Morph
(You may cast this face down as a 2/2 creature for . Turn it face up any time for its morph cost.)—Harry Potter
He looks like any other morphed Death Eater at first glance. Voldemort won't touch him, and despite all of his Gryffindor hate, he is incredibly red (everything he does, he does for love). This card was designed very specifically for the Duel decks, because once Snape shows his true colors, his role as a spy is no longer viable. Like I said, it's my wife's favorite card in the set because of the rich flavor.
The Role of Artifacts
About 25% of the set is artifacts, more than any one color. If you recall, this decision was made because I needed cards to fill in the rest of Voldemort's deck since he had only three colors, whereas Harry had four. In addition, Voldemort's phylactery counter ability requires artifacts in play, so it made sense to load down his deck with a heavy concentration of artifacts. Because of this, over 70% of the artifacts went to Voldemort's deck (including all of the artifact creatures), and less than 30% ended up in Harry's deck. This large number of artifacts naturally led to a minor "artifacts matter" theme in the set. For example, Voldemort's deck got a cycle of "chess piece" creatures (modeled after the ones guarding the Sorcerer's Stone) which interact with artifacts. There are six such chess pieces in the set, but I'll show three of them here:
Whenever you cast an artifact spell, Chess Knight gains flying until end of turn.
Chess Bishop has protection from the chosen color.
Whenever you cast an artifact spell, you gain 2 life.
Other Construct creatures you control get +1/+1.
Whenever you cast an artifact spell, you may draw a card.
About half of the artifacts in Harry's deck are Equipment, so his deck includes "Equipment matters" cards:
As long as Hufflepuff Chaser is equipped, it gets +2/+0.
—Hufflepuff Quidditch Team chant
—Garrick Ollivander
As long as Neville Longbottom is equipped, it has vigilance.
The set also contains a rare cycle of colored artifacts, representing certain items near and dear to the founders of Hogwarts. Those artifacts that were turned into Horcruxes in the story go to Voldemort's deck and are in his colors; the other two go to Harry's deck. I'll show off one from each deck here:
Whenever a white creature you control blocks or becomes blocked, you may equip Sword of Godric Gryffindor to that creature.
Equip
(: Attach to target creature you control. Equip only as a sorcery.)At the beginning of your upkeep, gain 1 life for each charge counter on Cup of Helga Hufflepuff, then double the number of counters on it.
Finally, the set contains a few mythic rare artifacts that are incredibly powerful and represent the pinnacle of their respective decks' power:
Equipped creature gets +3/+3 and whenever it deals combat damage, draw two cards.
When Elder Wand becomes unequipped, target opponent gains control of it.
Equip
You can’t lose the game and your opponents can’t win the game.
Planeswalkers
I debated about adding planeswalkers, but in the end I felt that they didn't have a place here. This particular set is based heavily on the flavor of an already existing world, and that world doesn't have planeswalkers. I could have shoehorned some in, I suppose, but I don't think they would have been appropriate.
Feedback
The set is sort of a museum piece for me now, so I won't be making any more changes to the file, but I still welcome any feedback you have. I've learned a lot already from the mistakes I made while designing this set, so chances are I already know about any flaws you notice, but I'd still love to hear what you think about the cards! Any insight can help me become a better designer in future sets. Thanks, and enjoy the set!