Dies to Removal

I GOT TO HELP DESIGN A MAGIC CARD!
i honestly never thought id type those words. It has been a dream of mine for a very long time, see magic the gathering was probably one of the most important games in my life.. especially when it comes to game design.
I got into MTG when i was 13 (94ish), my best friend AJ told me that i needed to see this card game that was like DnD, where you could summon demons and dragons to fight along side you. i watched these kids playing at the local boys club and when i saw Keldon Warlord hit the table i was floored… “he gets bigger the more creatures you have in play” AJ said. i was
already thinking of amazing deck ideas based on the card that play a lot of little creatures so the warlord came out mega huge!… i was sold, i went to a comic shop and picked up a starter deck of revised (because unlimited starters were 4 bucks more!) and my love affair with magic was born.
2 years ago i was lucky enough to be one of quite a few other game devs to be asked to help design a card for the next core set, M15. i had a hobby of designing magic cards, myself and a few other game dev friends of mine actually designed a whole fake set of cards just for the hell of it one month.. so when i was asked to submit a few card ideas i went through my notes and sent in a cycle of cards i called “the children”.
the cycle was a series of 1 drop creatures in each color that were designed to be rare, think 1 drop titans.
i cant find my notes for all 5, but the 3 i submitted to wizards were these.

Blue Child-
U
t: untap target land you control, you may only do this when its not your turn
0/2

Green
Child-
G
Flash, when this creature takes damage put a +1+1 counter on it
0/3

Black Child-
B
T: pay 1 life put a +1+1 counter on this
T: remove X counters from this to do X damage to target creature or player
1/1

I really liked the Blue Child a lot, but it wasnt an ability wizards wanted to print in a core set and leaned more towards the Green and Black cards. in the end i decided to focus on the black 1 drop because i felt it was a lot more interesting.
the cards name became Cruel Sadist, a psychotic child that feeds off the player to grow stronger then unleashes it on creatures or players, i had pushed the idea of the card being a succubus or vampire type creature that would drink your blood and spit it at stuff, but wizards liked the idea of a crazed child assassin a lot more.
the card was designed to be kind of like a
Guul Draz Assassin that could possibly protect itself a bit earlier and had more options late game. i really like reactionary decks, i could see myself playing it in a blue
black control deck that waited till the eot with a counter spell, but if nothing was played then i put a counter on my guy to raise the threat. it could also be a great anti green card, killing off any early game mana elves and the like.
i like cards that give me a lot of options, killing creatures, growing larger, damaging players or just being an agro 1 drop were all options so this was the card i wanted to push through.
sadly my design was a but too OP and needed to be taken down a few pegs. the design team played around with the card, adding a black mana to each of its abilities and even moving it down to an uncommon to see how it played there. There was a great deal of back and forth on the card but in the end this was the final design for Cruel Sadist.