Design Class – Lonely Legends

Eh, close enough.

If I’m such a legend, then why am I so lonely? Let me tell you, legends are all very well if you’ve got somebody around who loves you.
- Judy Garland

One of the largest growing formats in Magic is the much loved (Especially by me) Elder Dragon Highlander. If you haven’t played this format, I would highly suggest it. Not only does it reward deck building skills and creativity, I have met very few people who dislike it (and most of them are Spikes who play the usual 40/60 card decks).

If you’ve only heard about EDH and want to know how to build a deck, read this article here from the creator of the format, Sheldon Menery. He talks about some of the things you should look for when creating your deck. My advice? Well, sometime we’ll get around to that. Today, instead let’s look at the most important piece in EDH, your General.

If you don’t know, you start with a Legendary creature (General) in the Command Zone (a zone created in Planechase just for this) that you can play at any time you normally could. Your 100 card deck (including General) can only have one copy of a card (excluding basic land); hence Highlander (There can be only one!). The cards in your deck can only be the same color as your General, you lands can only produce mana of your general and text boxes can’t have off-color mana symbols as well (A deck with Rafiq of the Many as the General cannot have Ethersworn Adjudicator because of the Black mana symbol).

All of this is very flavorful and makes perfect sense; if you have a legendary creature (One who is named and supposedly powerful) leading your army (hence the General), they would only want to have their support be by cards with the same philosophies in the Color Pie. It’s a very flavorful format and with all of the things you can do with it, very customizable as well.

Back to the Legendary creatures themselves. If you didn’t notice recently, Wizards has officially adopted EDH as a format, but let the Banned list still be effected by the “Elder Dragons.” In the most recent developer’s chat I even asked the question if Wizards designs Legendary creatures with EDH in mind. Guess what, they do (At least Ken Nagle (@norrYtt) does). But that doesn’t always seem to have been the case.

Design Class – How Much Fetch Could a Fetchchuck Fetch, Ohh, You Get the Idea

Admit it, you'd pay $30 for this card (or at least your #1 Dime)

Editor’s Note: Some of you might have read some of this before. I accidentally hit publish when I was still working on my draft. Sorry about that. Here is the full post. Also, I hate Jeremy Fuentes for picking the best title ever (Stop Trying to Make Fetch Happen).

Fellow blogger Kelly Reid runs the amazing blog Quiet Speculation about his love affair with a certain Judgment uncommon instant the financial value of Magic. On his blog he recently ran a letter complaining about the horrible effects that Fetchlands have on the Game of Magic, both from a financial and play standpoint. Mike wrote this:

I recently bought a box of Zendikar cards: $85 bucks paid partially in store credit and partially in cash. I’m working my way though the packs slowly and so far, in about 8 packs, I’ve opened up two fetchlands. A quick search of the internet tells me that this small portion of my packs is worth a little under $40.

See, like you, I’ve been making a lot of decks in preparation for the new standard format. I’m trying to be realistic with what I can spend money on, and the last thing that I want to do is spend $80 per playset of lands in order to just get my deck off the ground…

…To say it more briefly, fetchlands are boring. Dual lands are boring. Mana fixing is boring.

What if mana fixing was all in the uncommon slot? Sure, there could still be rare lands like Oran-Reef the Vastwood or Mutavault that have additional effects, but what if the foundations of deck building were more readily available?

This is a very interesting idea; making something like that uncommon. There are two facets to this issue, as a business model and as design.

Magic started off as a collectible card game (Hence, the CCG). Dr. Richard Garfield created a game to be played in between sessions of D&D, where he got the fantasy influence. Never in his wildest dreams (alright, maybe in his wildest wildest dreams) did he ever think that Magic would become so popular, that 17 years later people would be dropping hundreds of dollars every few months. So, he took an idea from D&D when making the game: different rarities.

Design Class – What Would You Pay For a Creature? How About Nothing?

And remember: Keep the Kobold population low. Have your Koblod sprayed or neutered.

Sometimes an idea is so wild, so out there, so insane that at first glance it won’t make sense. You’ll shake it off as insane and think never in a million years would this make sense. But this is exactly the idea that LSK on MTGSalvation came up with. To the message boards!

Here’s the theoretical card:
Minikin – 0
Artifact Creature – Mannequin
1/1
Imagine it were a M10 common, tacked on to the set as-is. Would it break limited formats? Standard? Extended?
It might allow for explosive openings, but that’s balanced by its low power.

Right now in Magic (to M10) there are six 0 casting cost creatures: three of them are Kobolds, and three are artifacts. None of these creatures have a power greater than 1. What would happen if Wizards decided to print a “free” 1/1 creature?

Some people suggested that it should have a drawback like “you can’t play other spells this turn,” or make it Legendary. All of this talk is nice, but it defeats the purpose of the goal. Could a 0-casting cost 1/1 creature see print? After all, we have a 3/3 for GW, a 2/2 for W, why couldn’t there be a 1/1 for 0? Let’s take a look what this entails.

Design Class – What Happens when Wizards “Steals” your Keyword

Surprise! There’s no After MaRo today. Ask me why? Because, it actually deals with what he was talking about with a new keyword ability: Evoke.

Here is what MaRo first came up with when he (so he claims) came with up with the idea of Evoke (called animate). After rules problems, it was changed to what it looks like today.

When we (as non-Wizards employees) create sets, we like to come up with keywords, because as research shows, players love keywords. About 5 years ago, I was working on cards when I was sitting bored in class and at work, like I always do. I came across a cool idea for a keyword that would mostly be used on creatures, but it could be seen on artifacts, enchantments and lands. It plays out like this:

Aggression [cost] (As an additional cost to play this, you may pay the aggression cost. If you don’t, sacrifice ~this~ at the end of the turn.)

After I saw Evoke, I knew that there was similarities, but it wasn’t until yesterday when I saw how close Evoke was/is to Aggression. There are differences (as mine were still creatures, but acted like spells) but it begs the question: can I still develop Aggression as a keyword since Wizards (Offically) put out Evoke?

Editor’s Note: Yes, I know that Wizards didn’t steal my idea. It’s just how a person feels after they see something like what they’ve been working on gets made for real. Plus, it makes for an interesting title.

Design Class – Top-Down vs. Mechanic

First: I won’t comment on the new official card type: Planeswalkers. Only because we have no idea what it does. There’s been plenty of ideas that have been thrown around about what it could do. But until we “officially” know, I can’t say anything. I’m actually saying this for all spoiled cards: No comment until we see a sanctioned spoil. That means, it comes from Wizards, a magazine, or another web site that has a scan. It’s only fair to people who aren’t trying to be spoiled before the prerelease, and so we don’t get any information wrong.

Anyway… now that some of you have been making your own cards, lets take a look at different ways to design cards; Top-Down and Mechanic. It’s pretty simple concept; simple enough that this is what Wizards used for “You Make the Card 2” which lead to Crucible of Worlds. If you’re too lazy to click on that link, just keep reading.

Design Class – Necessary Materials

Welcome. I know that today I would discuss Linear and Modular design, but then I realized: hey, let’s start from the beginning.

Welcome class. You’ve come here to learn how to design better Magic cards I’m assuming (but you realize what they say about assume… it makes an ass out of u and me). The types of cards that we care going to be designing are ones that seem logical to both the Color Pie and to the style of Magic in general. That means no Blue Lightning Bolts, no Green discard, and no 5/5 creatures for Black with no drawbacks.

Now, I’m not saying that you have to create strict “Magic only” cards, because you won’t see me doing that at all. Like Nightcrawler from the X-Men demonstrates, you can create a Magic card about anything. Just let your imagination go wild. You can create funny cards, you can create serious ones. But with Design Class, we’re going to teach you how to create those cards according to the Color Pie.

But, I’m sure most of you have Magic cards already in your mind. You doodle ideas while you’re bored at school, those car rides to your grandmother’s, and sometimes during those long, boring meetings your boss makes you sit through talking about the annual report. Those are soooo boring. You’ve seen magic sites that have card creation contests and have wanted to enter in them, but scared at what other people will say about your prized baby. This is a good place to start.

So, lets get to it…