Latest Developments

Latest Developments was a weekly column published Fridays on Magicthegathering.com. It concerned the development of Magic cards, as opposed to the design which is handled by Mark Rosewater in Making Magic. 
==History==
The column was written by a prominent member of R&D who is commonly on the development teams. In June 2017, the column was taken over by, and renamed to, Play Design, with the main author being Melissa DeTora. 
The column was previously handled by Randy Buehler (until February 2004 ), Aaron Forsythe (until August 2007), Devin Low (until August 2008), Tom LaPille (until December 2011 ) and Zac Hill (until August 2012). Mark Globus, Mike Turian, Matt Place, Erik Lauer, Kenneth Nagle, Bill Stark, Mike Elliott, and Mark Gottlieb have contributed as guest authors. Since August 2012 some have them occasionally returned in the rotating roster. For a while it was written by a rotating core of developers like Billy Moreno, Dave Humpherys, Sam Stoddard and Dave Guskin. For years afterwards (April 2013 to June 2017), it was written by Sam Stoddard on his own.Around April of next year, will beat @tomlapille for the second most Latest Developments written. I think I beat @mtgaaron by year's end.
A fixture of the column are articles in the wake of Banned and Restricted Updates that explain the reasons behind the changes that were made. Another high-profile event that took place during the run of the column was naming the new Type 1.5 format, after it became independent of Vintage, and the change to the Reprint policy in 2002. Other topics the column dealt with were various themes on balancing, decks in playtest (the Future Future League), and some general philosophies. A consistent article series was the individual card development stories that matched Rosewater's design stories, published in the wake of set releases These M-Files, as they were subtitled, were the last Development articles.
In June 2017, the column named Play Design replaced Latest Developments. It was written by Melissa DeTora and others. The last column was Jadine Klomparens' M-File articles on Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths, in April 2020. 
==References==
Category:Wizards of the Coast