Okay people, here it is: the start of my writing career at MDV! (Hoping and wishing, hoping and wishing, hoping and wishing...) But seriously, I hope you like this article and will support this article thread.

So what do I plan to do with this space of mine? What else -- Make Cards! Now the idea is I will place a list of creature types or ‘spell themes’ (Like Counter, Burn or Bounce + Discard) and you, the readers will vote which theme I will work on next month (Or weekly, not sure yet). As I build the card, I will show the thought pattern behind my design and will show how this ties into other cards that have already been designed.

But for my first attempt, I needed to come up with a topic myself. I didn’t need to look far; I just wondered over to the magic website and found out its VAMPIRE WEEK! And seeing as my name sake was a vampire, it seemed like fate had conspired for me to create a vampire!

EDITOR'S NOTE: It is not currently Vampire Week. *grin* 2/21/08 -Streetz

Step 1: The Main Premise

So when I design a card, before anything else I layout some initial groundwork on ideas and goals; what type will the card be, what power level are we looking at, colours, abilities and so forth.

Seeing as this card is a vampire, it immediately becomes black in my mind (Come on, they suck blood). Obviously I need to show the bloodsucking ability and because I love them so, I’m going to build a powerful vampire.

But what do I mean by power-level? Well I could break down my system into a mana cost to ability based system using a simple system of algebraic maths system, but you don’t want to read that, so I do the next best thing.

The Power-Level Scale

The ‘what were they on!?’ Card – This is the category for those cards you wouldn’t pay someone to take from you. Take One With Nothing; What was R&D on that day, coz I recon the world would be a strange place if we all took some.

 

The ‘Comse, Comsa’ Card – Those cards that are nothing special, but could have their uses. Aven Envoy is a prime example in my mind because we all know there is a better version out there in the form of the Ornithopter, but because of colour, type and creature type, the envoy could be better for certain decks.

The ‘Solid Choice’ Card – These are those cards that make for good deck additions, such as Serra Angel and Grizzly Bear. A large number of cards fall into this category.

 

 

The ‘Powerful’ Card – These are cards that are ones most people would build a deck around, like the Bringers. This is the field that my vampire will slide into. 

 

 

The ‘Oh-So Broken’ Card – These are those cards you would chop of your left arm to own. These are things like Black Lotus or the Moxes. 

 

 

Of course, my system maybe at a tangent to yours; you may value cards in a different manner than me.

Step 2: Research

Having addressed the fact I want a ‘Bloodsucking’ ability, I would dive into the archives and look at the older vampire cards (Here for your reference).

Now, having looked, I have found two such abilities:

- Choose and discard a card: Vampire Gets +X/+X until the end of the turn.

Stalking Bloodsucker is a prime example of this ability.

- Whenever a creature dealt damage by Vampire this turn is put into a graveyard, put a +1/+1 counter on Vampire.

Sengir Vampire is a prime example of this ability.

Now I need to be honest, these abilities suck, they don’t reflect the affect the thirst has on the children of the night. Because of this, I’m going to create my own ability. To do this, I will draw on my role-play experience; a great source of ideas in my opinion.

Now in some of my games, the vampire grew with the damage he dealt, but weakened over time and if he was hurt and I want to build an ability which reflects this.

Growth with damage is nothing new, but I want the ability to be stronger than the pre-existing abilities, so let’s start with something like:

‘When Vampire X deals combat damage, place two +1/+1 counter on it.’

The reduction due to damage has also been done before and to be quite honest, I like the pre-existing ability:

‘If damage would be dealt to Vampire X, prevent that damage. Remove a +1/+1 counter from Vampire X.’

Now, the time aspect is really easy to fit into Magic, because it runs on a turn base system. Because I think of a full turn as a day, and the weakening period was a full day in the roleplay sessions, we’ll work with:

‘During your upkeep, remove a +1/+1 counter from Vampire X.’

So, we have three abilities that fit the Vampire theme, now lets take a look at the actual beast himself.

Step 3: The Base Creature

Now we all think of creatures as strong creatures capable of throwing humans around like dolls, but we don’t immediately expect a vampire to beat a daemon in a wrestling match, so we have a power and toughness bracket to work in. Now as a general, Humans are no better than a 3/3: except in the case of legendary creatures, so we know that our vampire needs to be a 4/4 or bigger. Demons complicate matters because there are a large number of demons who are smaller than this, but the bigger and harder demons can go as far as 9/9! (Kuro, Pitlord is the demon I’m thinking of).

Taking this into consideration, I have decided to place the vampire at 6/4, because I see a vampire as a strong beast, not a resilient one. There is one more question though; should this value be fixed or a counter based value? The counters lend towards his abilities, but leave to much room for people to abuse the card with ease (Doubling Season) so it is my opinion that the values should be fixed.

Step 4: Mana Cost and Balancing

Okay, we know the vampire is black and we know it's boasting three abilities. Not many non-legendary creatures can boast that kind of skill level, plus the legendary rules allow us to reduce the mana cost by a certain amount.

Now, a general rule of thumb I follow is ‘Base cost = Power/Toughness Ratio + 1 + Colour factor’. What this means is, say a black card is a 2/2, I would suggest the card costs a converted mana coat of three, but the same creature could cost a converted mana cost of two if he was green and a converted mana cost of four if he was blue. The problem comes in when the power and toughness is at odds; which do you follow? I take a middle ground, finding a middle number between the two values and use that. So we use a converted mana cost of six for our card because his black and we consider him to be a 5/5 for the purpose of cost.

The abilities are another sticky point for some creators, because they haven’t done the ground work. If you look at certain abilities on different cards, you will see that the cost can be calculated if you think about it. Flying is cheaper on blue and green cards, and expensive on red cards. Trample is green, but artifact creatures can have it at a certain cost. But what about our abilities? Well growth in my opinion works out at the same rate as stated values on a card, so in our case +2/+2 would cost an additional three on the mana cost, but it’s a dependant ability, it doesn’t automatically trigger every turn so we can reduce the cost to two.

Damage prevention varies greatly but in our case, I would suggest the cost is an additional one for two reasons:

1. It’s a heavy cost – The skill reduces the creature’s power level, so it’s already got an inbuilt cost reduction.

2. DEPENDANCY – Because the ability relies on a counter being on the card, it’s can be circumvented with counter removal and anti-trigger abilities (Stifle).

Now the third ability is a negative ability, so rather than increase the cards cost it will reduce it. Now the things to consider are that the ability will always happen unless you do something about it, so that’s a great reduction in cost and the ability works in direct contradiction to his other abilities, so that’s another big drop in cost. Because of these two factors, I propose that the reduction in cost should be three.

So, our running total is six but we still need to consider one factor; is this creature legendary? If yes, that’s another potential reduction in mana cost and if not, why not? In my opinion if we made this creature legendary, would make it too cheap mana cost wise for the damage he could potential wreck in a well constructed deck.

So, we have finished the general maths for the card, now we need to determine a solid cost. Because of the two black abilities (Damage dependant growth and damage prevention at life cost) we should include at least two or three black mana in his cost. Knowing his cost will end up to be six, its rare to find a card with half of its cost being colour dependant if it’s over five (There are some I’m sure), so we’ll go with a cost of 4BB.

So last by no means least .. should it be Common, Uncommon or Rare? Simply put, this depends on how powerful the card is or how much the card can be utilised in the block its produced in. In our case, I would have to say the vampire is a rare solely due to his power levels.

Step 5: The Finished Article

And here it is; the finished item in all its glory.

I know the images comes form the artwork in Final Fantasy one or two, but I didn’t have time to draw something myself. Well, here’s hoping you enjoyed the article and that you will ask for a new one soon.

EDIT 2/17/06:  It has been drawn to my attention (By Mrraow) that the damage prevention ability is broken, and will work regardless of whether there is a counter on the vampire or not. This was not intended. As such, the ability should read: ‘Remove a +1/+1 counter from Expellian Vampire: prevent all damage that would be dealt to Expellian Vampire’. I am willing to hold my hands up and admit when I make a mistake and I thank Mrraow for informing me so swiftly of my error.

The three choices for the next themes are:

1. Sack-Burn: Sacrificing something to cause a burn effect.
2. Card Cost Bounce: Discard to bounce.
3. Death – Damage: A Kill effect caused dependant on a damage effect.

All votes must be either PM’d to me (in the forum) or sent to LutherAD(at)hotmail.co.uk.

Here’s Luthervamplord, signing off.

You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here.
Find other articles by this author here.
Find other articles from this series here.

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