Category: Shadowmoor

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Editor’s Note: As with anything that I’ve written on this blog, I give Wizards of the Coast full use of these ideas and I won’t get mad. I mean, I suggested Memnite to see print at the same time Scars of Mirrodin was being designed. We’re cool Wizards, just send over some lawyers if you want me to sign some stuff if it makes you feel better (fist bump).

When I was flying down to Texas for the Magic Cruise 3, I had a few hours on the plane with no internet and a wife that was enthralled in Suduko (I have cards, she has numbers). Out came my paper notebook that I brought with me just in case I had some ideas for card design. Who am I kidding, I always have ideas for cards (and if you’ve got the same fever, you know what I’m talking about). My mind wondered to my GDS2 world that I half-heartly designed. It had been gestating in my mind for a while wondering if I should continue to work on it for fun. My pen connected with paper and out expressed all these ideas that I wish I had thought of the first time.

Time away from a project does bring focus.

Suddenly, I was coming across story and world ideas that I didn’t consider in the first place which would’ve made the whole thing (personally) much more interesting. If only I had thought of them in the first place…

Let’s not dwell on the past.

Anyway, besides the awesomeness of the story/world I was cooking up, I wanted to see if I could complete the cycle I was working on. You might remember it:

While I mainly focus on real world design instead of player created ones, I’m going to be a little egotistical here and show my process it about this cycle. For those that like to design their own cards in a serious manner, hopefully this will shed some light into what I was thinking. This is not a “You have to do it this way,” but just how my mind came up with this. After revisiting the world, I wanted to see if it could be done.

But before I create the future, I had to revisit the past.

Continue reading “Design Class – Colorless Hybrid is an Oxymoron”

Whenever someone asks me to explain Magic I tell them it’s like Chess with cards, but like Mousetrap, where it’s a puzzle and not everyone has the same pieces as you. After I show them a couple of cards and how they work off of each other, then they understand it.

But not everyone’s mind works the same way as mine, the world would be really scary. Everyone’s mind works differently at the game of Magic, which is why it’s so many thing to so many people. I am a Johnny/Spike/Melvin meaning I like opened ended good cards that make sense flavorly. Cards I like are: Undead Gladiator, Eternal Witness, Oblivion Ring, etc.

How does that relate to designing cards? Imagine what most of my card designs are: Opened ended good cards that make sense flavorly. People design what they know and love. You get a player who is a Timmy profile and they’ll design Timmy type cards. Keep this in mind when you’re designing a set, not everyone loves big creatures and not everyone loves proficient spells, you need to have a wide variety to make it a really good set (which is why I personally believe that once person can’t design a whole set and make it work beautifully. But that’s another topic for another post).

So, while putting together a new EDH deck, I noticed that most of the parts were interconnected in one way or another. Does that mean that every deck should have such synergies? No, but it amazed me how alot of the deck works together. This is just to give you non-Johnny’s what someone with this frame of mind thinks when they put together a deck. If you don’t know how EDH works, then please read this and come back. Continue reading “Inside a Johnny’s Mind – Sygg EDH”