Pre-Alpha playtest cards

Before the publication of Magic: The Gathering's Limited Edition (a.k.a. First Edition Alpha and Beta) by Wizards of the Coast in 1993, Richard Garfield had used five sets of Pre-Alpha playtest cards to reach a final design. In chronological order, these card sets are known as the "Alpha", "Beta", "Gamma", "Delta" and "Epsilon" playtests.^[1]^[2]

History

Alpha playtest

The first Magic playtest product, named "Alpha" (not to be confused with the finished set), consisted of 120 cards split between two people (Garfield and Barry "Bit" Reich), who would then duel in a manner surprisingly close to the one eventually used in the finished product.^[3]^[4] The games were played for ante until one of them had an unplayable deck. These cards had been created by hand on yellow card stock. Many had hand-drawn images, with the rest having only hand-written rules text and no images. Richard Garfield currently owns all of these alpha playtest cards.^[1]

Beta playtest

The "Beta" playtest featured 60-card randomized decks for roughly 20 different playtesters, with the "Penn group" and the "East Coast playtesters" being the core groups.^[6]^[7] Players were free to trade cards between games and hunt down weaker players to challenge them to duels. The players didn't know the card mix, so they learned to stay on their toes during duels.^[4]

The Beta playtest was produced on card stock in a variety of different colors.^[5] Cards were photocopied rather than created completely by hand. Some cards in beta playtest contain illustrations appropriated from various printed publications, while others have hand-drawn images or only rules text, as in the Alpha playtest.

The "Beta" playtest occurred in several phases. Like alpha playtest cards, early beta playtest cards showed creature strength as only a single number, but later beta playtest cards show separate power and toughness numbers. Casting costs used a format where the number represented the total number of mana required (not just the number of mana of any color required), followed by colored circles indicating how many mana were required to be of specific colors. The colored mana was hand-drawn with a colored marker, either freehand or by filling in a small blank circle that was printed on the card.

There are known physical copies of approximately 125 different Beta playtest cards. There is no complete list known.^[1]

Gamma playtest

The "Gamma" playtest was the largest playtest, in terms of number of playtesters as well as total number of cards produced. It featured 60-card randomized decks for roughly 40 different playtesters.

Gamma was the first playtest that closely resembled the published First Edition, containing approximately 250 of the 295 cards that were ultimately published.

All Gamma playtest cards were illustrated, mostly with appropriated images chosen by Skaff Elias. The illustrations included improvised art, clips from comics, D&D illustrations, and maps.^[4]^[8]^[9]^[10] The cards were printed on light gray paper stock. As with other playtest cards of this era, they measure 2-1/8" x 2-3/4" in size, as they were produced by making 8-1/2" x 11" photocopies and cutting each page into 16 cards. Casting costs use the letters "W", "U", "B", "R", and "G" to represent colored mana requirements. During playtesting, "4RR" would mean that a card cost a total of four mana, of which two had to be red.^[11]

A complete spoiler of the gamma playtest exists because Garfield retained the sheets that he used to produce Gamma playtest cards.^[2]^[12] Some Gamma playtest cards have the image of a unicorn stamped on the back (which would otherwise be blank), which indicates that these cards were part of the first playtest league.^[13]

Delta playtest

The "Delta" playtest was smaller and played by only a fraction of the Gamma playtesters. It was similar to Gamma in the number of different cards it contained. Many cards were identical to those used in the Gamma playtest, and many others had only small changes, such as changed casting cost. There were some additional designs, like the dual lands, Spell Blast and Conservator.

Delta playtest cards are printed on orange card stock.

No complete list of Delta playtest cards is known. There are known physical copies of only about 150 different cards.^[1]

Epsilon playtest

The majority of "Epsilon" playtest cards used new illustrations not seen in prior playtests. Epsilon cards were printed on white card stock, which was somewhat more durable than that used previously.

There is no known complete list of Epsilon playtest cards, though physical copies of about 230 different cards are known.^[1]