Current Project

Name: Lords of the Tides

Maritime Set part of a 2-set block. Bottom-up. Intended for drafting.

Stage: Early exploratory design.

Card gallery here

Design Log VI: Second Archetype (BR Plunder)

One thing I like about black and red decks in limited is that they can be built in two very different ways. On the one hand, you have the usual aggressive, explosive aggro deck, and on the other a player can take advantage of the quality removal usually found in those colors to do a more midrange-y or control-y build that usually ends games with a big flying threat such as a dragon or demon.

The mechanic of BR, as well as the cards that take advantage of it, are designed to facilitate both of these strategies. Red cards tend more towards the aggressive strategy, whereas black has more value cards that emphasize ETB effects and card drawing. These are general tendencies though, and a deck of both colors can be built, in theory, in any part of the aggro-control continuum.

The BR mechanic reads as follows:

Exile target card in an opponent’s graveyard. If you do, put a Gold artifact token with “Sacrifice this token: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool”

Design Log V: First Archetype (UR Lull)

This is the named mechanic for UR in my set Lords of the Tides:

If this creature would deal combat damage to a player,  that player puts that many cards from the top of his or her library into his or her graveyard instead.

Essentially, it turns damage to players into mill. I wanted to make a combat mechanic for red and blue that felt aggressive, without eschewing the slyness that the color combination is known for.

Flavorwise, Sirens, which are the primary creatures that carry this ability, grind away at the opponent’s will, eventually making them lose their minds.

 

Design Log IV: Change of Direction

Can you make a set about a story that happens in a single day?

As I was taking my first steps into making mechanics for White and some singleton cards for the other colors, I realized how hard it is to tell a story through cards. A set is static: it shows a slice of time. A story is dynamic: it shows a series of changes in time and space. How then to reconcile both?

I also realized that the story I was trying to tell was one of characters, ideals, and social structure crumbling  under pressure. Note the use of present progressive -“crumbling”. Clearly, a story demands change, but in a single set it can be very hard to portray change, since the audience doesn’t know the starting point. In other words, Lords of the Tides was going to start in medias res, without the appropriate setup.

With this in mind, I decided to start with a sort of ‘set-up set’ that establishes the main story characters and factions and settings. After that, I can do the “everything goes to shit” set I originally wanted to do, essentially resulting a two-set block.

Another idea i’m toying with is making both sets “happen” in a very short amount of time- a day and a night, respectively. This may end up being too cute, since in the end i’m trying to portray slow degradation instead of quick, sudden destruction. Still, I like the idea of a Lorwyn-Shadowmoor type mirroring.

 As this set lacks the conflict of the invaders and the island, it will be focused more on marine and exploration aspects. I’m currently working on the first batch of cards.

Perhaps this should fly?

Names are provisional of course.

 

GB rock (SOI STD Week 1)

RE: Red’s Affection

I recently read Adventares’ post on the possibility of expanding red’s color pie to include some defensive spells to play up emotions that belong to the color in flavor but that we rarely see mechanically represented, and I wanted to do a quick write-up with some options I have come up with for doing just this.

As MaRo points out, Magic is, in the end, a game about conflict and war. This does not mean that in the context of battle and killing there can be no place for love, camaraderie and friendship. In fact, such a context can be used to play up these emotions even more, as the themes of  affection during or in spite of strife carry a lot of literary and symbolic weight. The question is then how to present these themes so that they fit mechanically  and offer good gameplay. Can it be done? I’m not sure, but i’m willing to try.

SOI prerelease deck

Record: 3-1

Round 1: 2-0 against UW tempo

Round 2: 2-0 against GR werewolves / aggro

Round 3: 1-2 against GW goodstuff

Round 4: 2-1 against BR madness

A brief history of cantrips, all the way up to Investigate

At is core, Magic is a game of resources and transactions. Under this point of view, many of the games interactions become quite interesting.

Most trades in resources elicit the use of a card. The use of a card is Magic’s baseline cost. For example, you can play a creature to advance your board at the expense of that card in your hand. You can diminish the opponent’s resources at the cost of a card for yourself by using a Doom Blade. Other trades don’t involve spending cards from your hand -you can trade lands in play for life via Zuran Orb or use that life to gain cards back using Necropotence- but most of them do.

Along with mana, cards are the most important resource in Magic. It is not by chance that cards that grant them for a cheap cost are the ones most frequently banned or found broken. Take Ancentral Recall and Black Lotus, for example. Or for a more recent example of both, Dig Through Time (delve offers a discount in mana, and the effect gives you cards).

Design Log III: World and Themes

When I started with the idea of designing a set, from the beginning I was captivated by the idea of exploring (literary?) themes via design. The colors of Magic each represent a spectrum of attitudes towards existence, and different ways of life. My idea with this set is to answer these two questions:

1. How does each color react in the face of the unknown?
2. How does each color handle complete isolation and loneliness?

As a setting to explore these inquiries I choose that of an island that is found and is being fought over. The island, though, has a will of its own and gradually vies to drive the invaders insane or to turn them against each other. Possibly some disaster cuts off the invaders from further supplies or from returning home.

Design Log II: numbers

Before we start with the interesting aspects of design, such as world-building and mechanics, first I needed to establish the general numbers of the set. This is what I came up with, based on a recent large set (Magic Origins):

215 monocolored cards

35 artifacts, multicolored cards and lands

20 basic lands

 Total: 270 (with 250 actual cards that need designing)

Then I settled for the number of creatures in each color. This is important because the ratio of creature to non-creature spells is a unique characteristic of each color. From most to least creatures we have: white – green – black (average) – red – blue. Blue and red, for instance, have access to relatively few creatures, but to a great number of instants and sorceries.