Magic Deck Vortex: If I Worked at R&D... The New Guy.

HA! I got the call, I’m going to Seattle where people commit suicide on a regular… wait, really? Uh… yeah… let’s move past that point. Let’s imagine that Luther left the R&D for whatever purposes and well, they hired me. MZ. True to Luther’s style and way I’m going to be designing and dissecting cards on a regular basis, of both the printed MTG and the fiction MTG cards that come across my line of sight, but that’s about where it ends in the similarities.

So, let’s jump right in with the “Scale-Of-Power!” Actually first, let's look at how I derive this scale:

In a card there are three things that I look for in game play mechanics – Cost, Power, and Uniqueness. The Big ones are cost and power, but uniqueness can give a good deal of room between them.

Broken	WAY high powered, WAY low cost	if you read that and instantly didn’t thing of the following cards, you might just be out of the game. Counterspell, Black Lotus, Moxes of any color except Chrome, Time Walk, Timetwister, et. Al.
Strong	good power, low cost or high power, medium cost	Some of the Standard’s current meta is made of these cards, Tarmogoyf, Thoughtseize, Reflecting Pool, etc. etc. etc. these cards are strong and at a great cost, considered under the normal curve for such abilities.
Balanced	good power, medium cost	This is the promise land of MTG cards finding that right balance and power for the overall cost of the card. Few cards in my head reach this level or are just slightly better or worse than balanced. Grizzly Bears is considered balanced, but on the low end, while Llanowar Elves are balanced on a high end, I know that seems weird, but I’ll explain as we go.
Weak	low powered for a high cost or a high powered for something unreachable normally in MTG games as cost	This are cards that can be powerful in the right decks or using the right strategies, but alone they just seem weak to say the best of it. It’s poster child: Storm Herd.
Unprintable	low power, low cost	These are cards that you wonder why do they even exist in the game of Magic, sometimes they can be helpful, but only in VERY odd ways. The Poster Child here is “One with Nothing.”

Uniqueness comes into play when deciding cards’ value and power. Looking at Magic’s most recent, say 5 to 7 years, we’ve had a lot going on in terms of power, but there are only a few cards that shine as unique. The Wishes for example (when printed back in Judgment) were very unique cards since now the Removed from Game Zone can be Wished back into the game. One with Nothing, as odd as it is, is unique in that respected oddness. Sometimes they're powerful like Dovescape, or not so much like Stigma Lasher.

So let's move forward to card design. Some people take it different ways and get different ends to a mean. Some start with a name, or an image, or an ability and work around it. I like to take it as it comes and then find how to fit it together. So let’s start one of these from the perspective of the art.

I want to thank Seph on the MDV forums for showing me the full art (which I cropped for this shot)

Well, it’s not going to win any card contests like this, but it’s a start, so let’s move it around a bit and make it a unique card. Here’s where I start thinking about color. Color is very important to flavor and playability of the card, but I already have a great idea for the ability of this card.

OK, it might be a bit off on the wording, but it’s a cool ability taken from cards like Inflame or Fatal Blow. So color wise I feel this guy should be red.

Now comes the hardest part for me: the decisions of costs, rarity, and Power/Toughness levels. Considering his ability is a powerful one, I’m going to bump up the rarity to Uncommon and make him cost 2RR. Keeping the power and toughness at 1/1 for easy killings if the opponent feels TOO threatened by it.

OK, he’s closer to being a polished figure, but “Some Red Wizard” isn’t a name for him, he needs something a bit well, better.

OK, he might have a shot at a contest, but that’s only one way of looking at the art. Another way is to go Blue. So let’s start over.

Blue has several good ideas here for Wizards, including countermagic, bounce, ping damage(in the older days), freezing things (i.e. Tapping down for a turn or two), moving permanents and counters around, switching control, and transformation.

I’m not going to try and roll all that into one card, but I don’t see a lot of new versions of Ovinomancer, so I want to go the transformation route.

The first ability is not nearly as cool or as good as the second ability, but both of them show both version of transformation in Magic, the temporary and the permanent. Some might notice that the first ability is just slightly taken off from Humble or Ovinize, while the second ability is pretty much word for word with Ovinomancer / Pongify, but at a tremendous cost.

OK, that’s a cool card in my opinion. Maybe I’m a little biased on my work. OK, new card. Let’s do a completely new card and art.

Let’s start with the name of “Dirrx Abomination” personally I get a big green or black feel with the name. So we can go with monocolor one way or the other, or gold, or hybrid. Eventide has kinda covered a lot of ground in that one, so I think just a classic Gold card would be a good call.

Creature type could be Horror because that’s a nod to the original Abomination’s recent errata. Now this is a big powerful creature, 1/1 doesn’t cut the mustard for a creature of this type. How about something big like a 7/7? Now Plated Slagwurm is an 8/8 for 8, and Hypox is an 8/8 Flyer for 10, so around 7 mana is fine for this creature.

See that’s all well and good for a vanilla creature, but it has no uniqueness to it, nothing that screams “I want to use this card.” So I would like to say we give it something interesting. Delve is a cool little ability seen in Future Sight that I might just have to borrow for this card. OK, now I want to add a little something extra to that, but I know that’s going to increase the cost of the card. Delve does give a lot of room for it though, so I want to give it a temporary Pump move, which hurts it later.

Well these are three good cards in my opinion. Let’s represent them back to back:

Now on my scale, using just the cards themselves (and not how badly you can abuse them), where would the people rate these? Using my power scale as above, I would like to hear it, and what I could do to fix them, if anything is wrong. Tell me all about it in the forums.

Now, for the last bit of business, Here’s a change from Luther’s version. I want you, the people, to tell me what three cards I should design next. It could be as simple as “A Red Common Card.” Or as complex as “A B/G Hybrid card with Trample, First Strike, and ability that gives it Haste.” Or even something like “Do a card around <points to an art> this art.”

This is a direct challenge to the people. Give me something hard! This is MZ and it’s back off to the Æther with me.

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