MTG: September’s Custom Cards: Dead Mechanics!
Ah, September draws to an end and with it, grows the slow and steady spectre of the horrifying month of October. Before the rising of the dead, though, we are going to look at the places they fall, and explore some Dead Mechanics.
MTG: August’s Custom Cards: Tricksy Cards!
With the end of tricks month we have another collection of daily Magic: The Gathering cards. This month, we didn’t have a mechanical identity to work with, but instead we wanted to work with the same theme of TRICKS.
MTG: July’s Custom Cards: Echo, Echo, Echo!
With Time Spiral Remastered hitting the shelves this year, I got to think about my earliest custom card designs, from back around Onslaught through Time Spiral era. Back when Time Spiral first landed, it brought with it a change to echo, and at that time, Fox and I designed five different ways for Echo to work across the five colours. I love Echo as a mechanic, but it is something of a dead mechanic. Wizards doesn’t tend to play with strict drawback mechanics, which is a bummer (to me).
But despite that, I quite like the way those cards worked out, so I dusted the ideas off and tried to make some new cards using those ideas!
MTG: June’s Custom Cards: Gruul Turfs!
You know with a whole six months of daily custom cards under my belt there’s the very real chance that I’m going to wind up doing this daily for the rest of the year. Wild.
Anyway, the theme for this month, based on it being Pride Month! is a full month of red-green cards that include the word land. Why? Because there’s no room for Terfs on Gruul Turf.
May’s Custom Cards: Cephalids!
It’s another month of daily Magic Custom cards, and so here we have another theme! Some people went into Merfolk on May because Mer-May, but I, I chose differently.
I chose Cephalids.
WOTC Employees! This is an article about custom cards! Don’t look, please!
April’s Custom Cards: Monsters!
And now, a roundup of the custom cards I put out every day of this month. Here’s a break so any WOTC employees who stumble upon this won’t necessarily see unsolicited designs!
MTG: March’s Custom Cards: Boros Blessings!
March is over, and as I’ve been doing so far this year, it’s time for another round of custom cards! Despite what you may think if you’ve dealt with me on the subreddit, I am not against white getting good stuff. In fact, I’m a firm believer in white’s weakness in Commander presenting an exciting area to put new and interesting things rather than just recoloured Concentrate. It goes even moreso for Boros, where I see their flavour space as full of interesting potential, that largely goes untapped as people just try to fix their problems with the same simple tools of ‘but what if blue,’ and ‘what if I make something overpowered?’ Thus, this month, I’m back to the ‘what about white in multiplayer?’ hobby horse, and we’re looking at Boros Cards. Some quick rules on this front:
Continue Reading →MTG: Defining Pushed
For someone who hasn’t bought a new Magic booster in something like three years, I spend an awful lot of time working on Magic: The Gathering language, card design, and game lore. The primary way I play the game these days is Commander on MTGO, and creating cards on Reddit.
February’s Custom Cards: Love is in the Air
Alright, another month, another month of custom cards!
This month’s theme, because of the month of smooches was to make a bunch of cards with Partner. Partner is one of those mechanics where it kinda got accidentally effed up in the first round, and that has had problems that CEDH has had to deal with to this very day. I don’t wanna do that, so I’m playing it safe this time.
- Partner cards should cost 3 mana at minimum. We have a couple of them that were too powerful because they’re really flexible (hi, Tymna, hi Thrasios) and they enable too much stuff (hi, Vial Smasher, hi Thrasios).
- Partner cards shouldn’t be single-card engines. They should do one thing reliably. Any given partner card should have interesting interactions, but also be a reasonably handleable card.
- ‘Almost’ cards for Commander, cards that were good once, but aren’t good any more, can be good templates. Cards that you wouldn’t run, but you would if they were always in your opening hand.
- I’m playing it safe here. Assume that for text space and power reasons, I’m being very careful about how much text they have and if I had my druthers, some of these cards would be a little bigger, a little more defensive and maybe have a keyword or two.
- Also, flavour is hard. I know full well that a lot of fan-made custom card flavour text is weak. Broadly speaking, these are ‘first drafty’ flavour, and I do have ideas for how they work, but I don’t think what I’m doing and my ideas can necessarily be easily translated onto the cards. Rather than force it, I leave it off and will explain as best I can when asked.
What did Reddit have to say? Well, for most of them, not much, which makes sense. There was a hilarious bruhaha about Rinrin, because there were fears that she could, for example, cheat out a Consecrated Sphinx for only 2 mana, which means that you spent 6 mana to get a 1/1 consecrated sphinx. This also brought out the suggestion that nobody in commander uses size-based removal.
Also, some people were mad about Tatiana, because a 5 mana steal card without direct counterplay is… what? Unstoppably powerful? Over pushed for the commander environment?
Helpfully, it was pointed out to me by Enderlord that First’s wording needed some refining (and that’s addressed here, with the up to date wording).
Wide Orgo got compared to [mtg_card]Prophet of Kruphix[/mtg_card], which is hilarious. Untapping all your lands and giving all your permanents flash is kind of important parts of Prophet of Kruphix!
MTG: January’s Custom Cards: Witness The Whiteness
WOTC Employees: This article is entirely about about unsolicited game designs, with example cards.
I partake of custom magic design over on a subbidy reddity thing over there, and I make good designs and sometimes, they do not appreciate them because, what, like, people have different tastes or whatever. One thing I’ve been trying to do of late is just do more stuff in general rather than give up on them, with some little once-a-day tasks to keep myself from falling into 2020’s rut of ‘what did I do all day?’ I’ve been seeing if I can find a theme I like, then building around it.
Presented then are the 31 cards of January, themed around the question of adding to white.
By default I’ll always be designing cards for Commander, and with the understanding that that format is not one with a power level banning situation but rather a casual banning situation. Things on the commander banlist are usually there for access reasons or for tedium reasons: They make the game boring and repetitive.
One thing I learned from the custom magic subreddit about this, though, is that people are really inclined to measuring an optimal scenario for white cards. Devotion, for example, is always treated as if it is functionally infinite, as if a multiplayer commander environment isn’t this space renowned for board wipes and proactive removal.
It’s honestly really funny: Mono-white is underpowered and weak in a multiplayer environment, but at least as far as we’re talking here with custom magic creators, it can always get access to infinite resources to do what it wants to do. Weird!
MTG: Reimagining The Nephilim
Warning: hey, WotC employees, this will feature custom designs!
In February 2006, Magic: The Gathering released the set Guildpact, and with it the first four-colour magic cards that had ever been printed. With no prior precedent to work from, these four cards were exciting and they had the intriuging and hitherto unused title Nephilim. They were the Yore-Tiller Nephilim, Glint-Eye Nephilim, Dune-Brood Nephilim, Ink-Treader Nephilim, and Witch-Maw Nephilim.
Nephilim are a reference to a sort of – you know, I’m going to pull the bandaid off and just say that Nephilim are one of those pre-Bible Bible stories that gets trotted out and recycled by various people building RPG Sourcebooks or Religious texts (but I repeat myself). There’s a chance your actual religion actually respects them as actual things that actually exist, but that’s sure not what they’re being used for these days.
Also, if you read the lore you’d know that these Nephilim aren’t the real Nephilim, they’re just magically crafted Nephilimmy things, and they’re sort of pre-god gods of Ravnica, creatures that are so transcendentally powerful and important, that they don’t even need worshippers or sacrifices – their cult calls upon them to be seen not because of their actions, but because of their existence being so fundamentally powerful and dangerous that their presence humbles people.
They also suck ass.
Continue Reading →MTG: April Custom Commander Cards (Part Two)
WOTC Employees: This article is entirely about about unsolicited game designs, with example cards.
And now, the second half of the cards I made for my own edification and fun during the month of April! These cards have had a little bit of feedback and some rewording since their original sharing on Reddit.
Continue Reading →MTG: April Custom Commander Cards (Part One)
WOTC Employees: This article is entirely about about unsolicited game designs, with example cards.
April is meant to be a month where I’m self-indulgent, and it seems one of the things I wanted to be self-indulgent about was wanting to make custom Magic: The Gathering cards to share on reddit, because what I really needed each morning was to open a post and go ‘pah, these fools don’t appreciate my genius.
Continue Reading →MTG: Mel Candy
I’ve spoken in the past about Magic The Gathering‘s player psychographics, characterisations that the game developers use to describe and discuss the types of players that engage with their game. These archetypes are Tammy, Jenny and Spike, and they also kinda line up with other, similar efforts to categorise gameplay choices from the work of Roger Caillois, immense racist and clown-hater.
In the conversation about player psychographics, one Matt Cavotta introduced the idea of the Vorthos, a type of player who cared about and engaged with the game because of its lore, someone for whom the fiction of the play took paramount presence. In Magic’s case, it kind of needed this distinction because there’s a whole collection of people who engage with the game for reasons that treat the game as a secondary element of the game.
And then, with Vorthos, there was one more name that Mark Rosewater introduced, bringing their player nicknames up to five: Mel.
MTG: Big Gulps
WOTC Employees: This article talks about unsolicited game designs, though it does not show any specific example cards.
When it comes to custom magic card design, I’m something of a pain in the ass. I don’t find myself particularly adventuresome in design, and will generally look at things in terms of what space they’re opening up. The effect this has in the community is that I’m the one who’s generally going ‘maybe not this,’ and that can be a real bummer for people. Apparently, I’ve got a reputation for being unpleasable.
One of the topics that we’re – still – hammering on is White. The argument –
no, hang on, it’s a whine.
– is that white is weak and that we in the heroic custom magic mines know better than Wizards, and will produce the cards that ‘fix’ White that they’re too cowardly to print. I’m pretty regularly there to tell people why I don’t think their solutions are good (in my opinion), but I know I don’t often put my ideas out there.
Continue Reading →MTG: Dinobots (Not The Transformers) Commanders!
Hello, Wizards of the Coast employees. This blog post is going to feature custom cards and I know you’re not allowed to look at those. So, please, go elsewhere, sorry!
Magic The Gathering? In Smooch month? is this going to be about shipping? Is this going to be about Nissa and Chandra, and the War Of the Spark: Forsaken?
No.
Because I don’t really care about that.
I mean I don’t have the book; I don’t plan on buying the book; the book was handled so badly that Wizards of the Coast apologised for it, and there are rundowns on how the writing is bad (even setting aside the subject matter) and ways that the Nissa/Chandra romance was specifically handled, and really, you don’t need someone who hasn’t got the book, and has no interest in reading it, to go over it.
Instead, I want to talk about a shipping pair I learned about from Twitter, and has basically no basis in actual canon but I don’t care.
MTG: Stop Designing White Counterspells
Seriously. That’s it. Those four words.
Alright, fine.
White in the Throne of Eldraine standard period, isn’t great! It’s not very strong and uh, also in Commander, white’s not very strong, and so the Content Creation mill has kicked in and presented the brilliant idea of White Bad. The Magic community, being the reasonable well-rounded and thoughtful group of people they are have immediately leapt face-first into a wall.
We’re not good with handling conversations that need words.
One of the places that people have decided this needs addressing is by saying that white (which is the WORST COLOUR and ALWAYS SUCKS) needs to have CARD DRAW and RAMP and COUNTERSPELLS. Now, I’ve some sympathy to the problems presented before (and I’ve written about it), but the last one bothers me, because it’s the same, simple, looping argument. It’s very catastrophised and gets to involve things like ‘Maro doesn’t know what he’s talking about’ and ‘Maro hates white,’ which… yeah. Do I bust out the statistics and the historical context to address these arguments? Sometimes – it’s just it’s work, and because it’s social media, that argument drifts away and I have to go re-make it an hour later. I want it all centralised and convenient.
Here, then is my thoughts on why we should stop designing custom white counterspells. If you’re a Wizards employee, current or former, rejoice, because I’m not going to show any custom designs here or even talk about them in depth. I’m just going to go over the idea of white getting counterspells at all.
And first, some context!
Continue Reading →Decemberween: Custom Card Making
I participate on the Custom Magic Subreddit, a place where amateur designers come together to make cards for Magic: The Gathering, and it is a place where, overall, people get the colour pie wrong. But that’s okay, because we’re all amateurs and we’re all having fun.
Now, if you look through my history you’ll see that largely, I am pretty negative, but I have seen cards that I liked and wanted people to see, and so, that’s what this post is about. I thought I’d get all the cards I liked in a year and put them in one master post, but uhhh, so that was a bad idea for a number of reasons. First, Reddit doesn’t archive your personal upvoting history that far (it only shows the most recent 1,000, it seems), and second, I have liked way more than ten or twenty cards this year, and third, some of the people who made those cards have deleted their accounts, which makes it really hard to properly credit them.
Hey, Wizards employees! Stop reading! This is going to start showing custom magic cards, as unsolicited designs! Thank you! I don’t want you or me getting in trouble!
Muruganda!
Hey, if you’re a Wizards of the Coast employee, you’re not in a position to read this article. There’s a custom card or two in here, and I know you’re not allowed to look a those. Don’t worry, I don’t expect it’s anything you haven’t come up with on your own.
MTG: Word Counts
Hey, Wizards Employees! There’s a custom card in this post! It’s just a bunch of existing keywords on a blank field! I think this one is safe for you to look at, but just in case, now you know!
Continue Reading →MTG: Custom Rarity
Hey, why do we put rarity on custom cards?
Seriously.
Do you build your game to think it’s draft? Do you make cards for cube? Why do you try and position your cards as some rarity or another? It’s interesting that often, rarity is presented as a reason for a card to justify power – cards that are probably too good are excused with ‘it’s meant to be a rare’ or ‘it’s meant to be pushed,’ and that’s always funny to me when you consider how few people are actually making things based on rarity.
Not nobody mind you.
Now, my answer to this personally is that rarity is another form of proper design of magic cards. They have constraints, and they’re reflective. If you make a card that should be a common, you should have the design sense to do that. And that can mean sometimes, a card that’s a weird oddball that only works in niche spaces winds up being rare.
As a pragmatic matter, rarity ‘only matters’ for draft. But we can, as amateur designers, get a good handle on rarity as it matters for draft. If a card could bust a draft environment open like Vengevine, it needs to be Mythic Rare to ensure it doesn’t ruin every pod. If a card is just the intersection of keywords and creature types, French Vanilla and nicely costed, it can live at common.
Yet, we often talk about Rarity as if it’s a list of four when that’s a sneaky lie. There are four Rarity expresions (well, there’s more, but bear with me); the symbol will show common, uncommon, rare or mythic. That’s not even all the basic categories of rarity, though.
There are seven basic rarities you can give cards:
- Common. Commons are often good cards that do one thing, in a few words. Common cards can still be exciting and fun to design, because being common doesn’t mean you’re bad. Commons are also some of the best places to show off keyword mechanics, because there’s nowhere for a mechanic to hide on a common. One reason I beef about amateur-designed keyword mechanics is that many times, the common of them gains nothing from just having the keyword.
- Uncommon. Uncommons are the siren of the casual designer because that’s where we tend to feel it’s okay to push something we like a lot, as long as we can justify it as being a bit bad in some way. I think Eternal Witness is my all purpose comparison card – casual developers would often print Very Strong Effect on a 2/1 and suggest it was okay because it wasn’t giving you a very good creature.
- Rare. Rares can have a lot of words on them – something like 50 words, for a comparison. Rares can have multiple mechanics that interact on them. Rares are also a place where you can show off what a keyword mechanic can do, pushed.
- Mythic Rare. Rares, but which are even more distorting to limited environments.
- Special Inclusive rarity, like Timeshifted cards, where the rules of this expansion give a reason for a Bonus Rarity. These are a fun thing to think about – it’s also the place that Innistrad’s Double-Faced cards kinda lurked.
- Special Exclusive rarity, like the starter deck cards or Commander cards; ie, it’s never meant to show up in a booster draft, but players can jam it in cubes or constructed formats. These are also odd because their rarity is literally only meant to represent specialness and complexity.
- Basic, cards that are extremely common and yet also extremely available.
This is what I sometimes call invisible ink. Players sometimes don’t even realise there are more rarities – I’ve seen players say there are only ‘really’ three rarities, and Mythic rares are a subtype of rare.
Anyway, just a thing to think about.
MTG: Kamigawa Revamp, Part 5: Betrayers of Kamigawa
Wizards of the Coast Employees, this article is going to feature custom card designs.
Goodness me, this project took some time. The opening documents you’ve read so far have all been done, weeks, no, almost months in advance, but as I sit here and pen this, it’s only two weeks before it goes up – and my goodness it has been a time to get this project finished.
First, let’s introduce you to the cards, and then we’ll talk some afterwards.
MTG: Kamigawa Revamp, Part 3: Legendary
Wizards of the Coast Employees, this article is going to feature custom card designs.
We’ve talked about the structural problems of Kamigawa 1.0, but just to recap, the whole set is about six conflicting factions – five mono-coloured groups against the five-coloured omnishambles that is the Spirit faction. With that problem ‘examined’ last time, it’s time to attack the next structural problem: Legendary.
Now, when I examined Kamigawa from the ground up, there’s a bunch of stuff in the set that works out well. Bushido is a good little combat complicator, even if cards printed with it overvalued it, making them mostly only valuable or meaningful within the context of limited creature combat. The flip cards and ninjutsu both work. Yet legendary, as represented on cards, presents two problems.
Continue Reading →MTG: Kamigawa Revamp, Part 2: The Kami War
Wizards of the Coast Employees, this article is going to feature custom card designs.
When you want to dismantle a set and fix it, it seems to me you should want to get down as close as possible to the basics of what went into that set. Strip it down, examine the central principles, and see what you can do to fix them. You need to find the things that made the set feel the way it did without, hopefully, carrying forwards the things that made it feel bad. Which means that you want to represent the same general factional struggle and strife, you want things to broadly still have the same boxes they can land in and in Kamigawa that means addressing the big flavour underpinning the whole thing:
The Kami War.
Continue Reading →MTG: Kamigawa Revamp, Part 1: First Principles
This is an article that discusses custom set design but does not show any custom designed cards.
Continue Reading →MTG: The Pack Rat Problem
Wizards employees, please do not read any further. This will discuss custom card designs and while it should only feature some abstract examples, I understand you are not allowed to look at unsolicited card designs.
Custom card designs feature a host of oddball problems, weird habits that we get into and things we don’t consider because well, mostly, custom designers are lone creators without the force of design and development behind us. Hey, we’re only human and all. But we have these problems and sometimes I think it’s worthwhile considering them.
Here then, let’s consider: Does your card create a Pack Rat Problem?