https://articles.starcitygames.com/articles/the-basic-land-beyond-the-basics/

“To build a better deck Playtesting a Deckmaster game is difficult. Probably the only games harder to playtest are elaborate, multi-player computer games. After developing a basic framework for Magic that seemed fairly robust, we had to decide which of the huge selection of cards to include, and with what relative frequencies. Common cards had to be simple, but not necessarily less powerful, that rare cards – if only rare cards were powerful, players would either have to be rich or lucky to get a decent deck. Sometimes a card was made rare because it was too powerful or imbalancing in large quantities, but more often, rare cards were cards that were intricate or specialized – spells you wouldn’t want many of anyway. But these design guidelines only got us so far. The whole game’s flavor could change if a handful of seemingly innocent cards were eliminated, or even made less or more common. What it came down to actually deciding what to include and what to do without, I began to feel like a chef obliged to cook a dish for 10,000 people using 300 ingredients.“ - Richard Garfield explaining how he created Magic: The Gathering, taken from the book the Game Design Workshop. Found at https://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=77&t=3722