MTG Salvation

Hi folks... long time no see.

I've been quietly plugging away at a set project and have a particularly troublesome cycle I'm struggling to nail down. In short, the plane is a feral nature world, and I'm trying to capture the idea of a food chain using a cycle of common creatures. I've been through several iterations on the idea, and here's my current frontrunner. While I like the general concept, I really don't like a few of the specific effects on most of them and am looking for alternatives.

Lizardeater Frog 3U
Creature - Frog (C)
When Lizardeater Frog dies, draw a card.
Sacrifice a creature named Bugeater Lizard: Draw a card.
3/3

Bugeater Lizard 2R
Creature - Lizard (C)
When Bugeater Lizard dies, it deals 2 damage to each opponent.
Sacrifice a creature named Shroomeater Bug: Bugeater Lizard deals 2 damage to each opponent.
2/3

Shroomeater Bug 1W
Creature - Insect (C)
When Shroomeater Bug dies, you gain 3 life.
Sacrifice a creature named Germeater Shroom: You gain 3 life.
2/2

Germeater Shroom 1G
Creature - Fungus (C)
When Germeater Shroom dies, put a +1/+1 counter on target creature you control.
Sacrifice a creature named Frogeater Germ: Put a +1/+1 counter on target creature you control.
1/2

Frogeater Germ 1B
Creature - Germ (C)
When Frogeater Germ dies, target creature an opponent controls gets -1/-1 until end of turn.
Sacrifice a creature named Lizardeater Frog: Target creature an opponent controls gets -1/-1 until end of turn.
1/1

Sure is! Sent you a PM.

This set takes a similar approach as was taken in Magic: Origins, but follows the stories of five of Magic's more nefarious planeswalkers.

Nahiri, a native of Zendikar (GW), experiences her first planeswalk to the dwarven utopia of Doharum (WB).

Tezzeret abandons his home plane Esper (WU), visiting the neighboring Grixis (UR).

Aisha departs her mind palace of Noctus' Dreamscape (UB), becoming Ashiok in the process of sparkwalking to the artistic realm of Aenyr (BG).

Tibalt escapes from Innistrad (BR) to the wild wests of Lorado (RW).

Garruk finishes his work on Ringsir (GU), and searches for greater prey on Shandalar (RG).

Visit Planesculptors for the latest version of the set.

A more detailed story skeleton and a set skeleton will follow.

I know it's been a long time, but seeing Ankheret at the top of the threadlist reminded me that I should probably give an update on Magic Villains too. There's been a substantial amount of tweaking and exploring new ideas and falling back to old ones, but Villains is now in a very stable place. There's been a lot more development of Frenzy and Traps that make the archetypes more cohesive. The most up to date version is in the same link from the OP, or just click here.

Designing Duel Decks

Introduction
There are countless formats and ways to play Magic: The Gathering, and there are just as many different ways to participate in amateur/custom magic design. Some people enjoy designing single cards. Some people enjoy participating in design challenges. Many embark on the journey of creating an entire custom set. But strangely, few custom designers focus their energy on creating one of the best tools to develop design skills: the Duel Deck.

Why should I design a duel deck?

There are several obvious answers that apply to all of custom magic design, but let’s talk specifics about the advantages you get by designing duel decks. Since I love lists, here are four good reasons you should consider designing a duel deck as your next project:

1. Duel Decks focus your designs.
You don’t have to worry about supporting various or multiple archetypes when designing for a duel deck - you’re only concerned with designing to create synergies for the specific decks in mind. This also allows you more freedom to think of various ways to create synergies that you may have missed doing a larger project.

2. Duel Decks are a small body of work.
While designing a full 200+ card set is quite a daunting task, duel decks require only around 72 card slots on average, with reasonable opportunity for single designs to occupy multiple slots. This makes the step of actual card design a much faster process.

3. Duel Decks are immediately testable.
As soon as you’ve completed design for a duel deck, you have a game you can try out right away. There are no logistical hurdles like creating a sealed pool or finding a drafting solution, or dealing with people’s hesitance toward deckbuilding. It’s as simple as finding another player and handing them a deck, or goldfishing against yourself if you can’t wait.

4. Duel Decks provide many of the design lessons of a large set.
Reading about custom magic is a great way to become a better designer, but some lessons you have to learn through experience. Things like editing down your designs to fit in the appropriate card slots, or balancing a selection of cards with varying power level, or finding a healthy mix of mechanics are all things that require deliberate practice. While those skills can be improved upon by doing set design, duel decks allow for much more rapid turnaround on those same skillsets.

Okay, I want to make a duel deck. How do I do that?

Like designing a set, there are many ways to begin a duel deck project. Whether top-down or bottom-up, you want to start with some kind of inspiration. Maybe your favorite movie is Underworld and you want to design a duel deck around Vampires versus Werewolves, or maybe you want to explore the design space of some cool custom mechanics you or another designer has come up with. Find what your inspiration is, identify what kind of gameplay experience you want your duel decks to provide, and write it down in the form of a design goal. By the time you’ve finished your project, you should be able to say that your design accomplishes the goal you identified here.

Next, you’ll want to look at possible skeletons for your decks. Most of the time, you’ll want to identify the broad strokes of around 36 cards that will comprise the nonland cards in each deck. Each project is different, but unless there’s a specific reason not to, I recommend having around 22 of those slots populated with creatures and the remaining 14 slots filled with noncreature spells. If you’re using Magic Set Editor, create two card files with 36 slots each. In the notes section jot down if a card is meant to be a small, medium or large creature, a spell, or any other identifying features or roles you want that card to fulfill.

Do some brainstorming to figure out what kind of mechanics you want to include in your decks if you haven’t already. Some mechanics want to show up in higher frequencies than others, so try to aim for the frequency that you think is correct. Don’t worry too much about frequency though - one of the advantages of duel decks is that you can iterate and change them much more rapidly than larger projects. It’s also worth noting that you don’t need to have named mechanics at this stage, so long as you know what kinds of themes your cards are encouraging.

Once you have your design goal, deck skeletons, and mechanics, you’re ready to do the fun part - designing some cards! Keep in mind that Wizard’s duel decks formula uses 1 mythic rare, 5 rares, 11 uncommons, and 19 commons. As always, you don’t have to follow this structure if you have a reason to break away from it, but it’s a good starting point to balance between complexity and power.

Hurray, I made my decks. What now?

Now you get to do what typically takes a large set design year(s) to get to - playtesting! One of the best ways to develop your skills as a designer is to see how your designs actually play out on the battlefield. There are several ways to accomplish this feat.
Paper playtest with a friend.
Print out the card images of your designs, cut them out, and sleeve them over some junk cards. You can bring these decks to a friend, or to your LGS to see if anyone has some spare time to play a game or two.
Online playtest over Cockatrice.
Create a package of card images and a cockatrice set .xml file of the cards in your decks. You might have trouble with special characters, but there are additional resources available that can help walk you through this solution. Once you have your decks in Cockatrice, finding another player to play them against you is the last step.
Solo Testing.
This method is nice in that it doesn’t rely on having to find another person, but it does limit the type of feedback you get about your project. Getting fresh eyes on your cards is really useful, but you can still learn a lot just by playing both sides of the matchup and seeing how the cards interact in-game. A lot of the time, mechanics or cards will surprise you!

When you playtest, there are a lot of things to look for. The most basic of which are:
What was really fun?
What was actively not fun?
What was boring?
It’s also important to keep your design goal at the forefront when playtesting. If you want your Vampires versus Werewolves decks to be gritty, you want to know if your playtesters find them corny instead.
Running a playtest and getting the right feedback is an important design skill in itself, so don’t be afraid to play around with how you playtest or gather feedback. Find what works for you.

Where do I go from here?

Once you accomplish your design goal, there are a few different “next steps” you can consider. There’s always the option of creating a new set of duel decks using the lessons you learned to make an even better result the next time around. If you feel like you’ve struck gold, you can also look into expanding your duel deck into a full fledged set. No matter what you do from there, you can and should continue to enjoy and play the decks you created. It’s an awesome achievement - within the Magic game engine you’ve created a brand new game!

About the Author
Jake "Piar" Mosby has been involved with various custom magic communities since the second Great Designer Search. He's facilitated several community projects including MTGSalvation's monthly "You Make The Card" contests. Beyond several personal custom magic projects, he recently started designing other board games as well. He hosts the custom magic podcast Cardography, which is available on iTunes and SoundCloud.

Someone posted a possible, unconfirmed Amonkhet card, which got me thinking about this flashback variant.

Overwhelm 1U
Sorcery (R)
Target player puts the top six cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard.
//
Brilliant Recollection 3UU
Sorcery
Aftermath (Cast this spell only from your graveyard. Exile it as it resolves.)
Cast target instant or sorcery spell from a graveyard without paying its mana cost.

Dark Omen B
Sorcery (C)
Put a -1/-1 counter on target creature.
//
Come to Pass 2B
Sorcery
Aftermath (Cast this spell only from your graveyard. Exile it as it resolves.)
Destroy target creature with a -1/-1 counter on it.

First Response 1U
Instant (U)
Counter target spell unless its controller pays 1.
//
Final Response UU
Instant
Aftermath (Cast this spell only from your graveyard. Exile it as it resolves.)
Counter target spell.

Haters Gonna Hate 1R
Sorcery (C)
Destroy target artifact.
//
A Man Can Dream 2R
Sorcery
Aftermath (Cast this spell only from your graveyard. Exile it as it resolves.)
Destroy target land.

Obviously there's a decent amount of design space for something like this, but the limitations tend to be that there's very little room for text so the effects all have to be simple.

Ahhh, I missed Guesswork threads. Glad to have you back around!

Seems like a reasonable enough starting point to get a grasp of how the mechanic plays. I usually like to have a bit more variety in the types of effects so I test a wider range of options to edit down, but that's far from necessary if you know what you want to do with the design space.

What other duel decks will you be testing it out against?

Red Rare 4RR
Sorcery (R)
Two target lands erupt. Untap all creatures you control. After this phase there is an additional combat phase followed by an additional main phase.

Balance might require only one land erupting?

Rare Artifact 4
Artifact (R)
T: Draw a card. Then discard a card or sacrifice a permanent.

Not sure about this one. It's probably bad.

Listen online or download the episode here.

In this episode I answer a question from listener Zarator - breaking down the most important aspects of making a limited environment fun and balanced.

Resource Shoutout:
yeefbear.com/as-fan/

Podcast contact details:
Jake Mosby aka Piar
Email: CardographyCast@gmail.com

Quote from Legend »

Quote from SecretInfiltrator »

Counter spells are troubling...

Especially when they're sorceries.

Edit: I can't read.

Reading is tech.

I do like this batch of cards a lot.

I really, really hope the mechanic isn't just called "consequences" on cards in English.

Quote from SecretInfiltrator »

Counter spells are troubling...

Especially when they're sorceries.

Edit: I can't read.

I like what you are doing with this. The effects flow nicely into one another. Counter spells are troubling since getting a guaranteed OG Counterspell out of your (cheaper and quicker) Force Void makes for consistent card advantage. There is a reason Fervent Denial costs an accumulated twelf mana for two Cancels in a time where the base effect was still two mana. The threat of such a spell is stifling.

In general - as with normal flashback - you should consider these cantrips and depending on the effect you "draw" not too cheap.

I remember suggesting split cards where one side has a mana cost and the other side has flashback in a distant, distant past. This has several benefits e. g. naturally giving the half the appropriate color and a converted mana cost (which helps with certain shenanigan cards that give you spells up to a certain mana cost for free).

It's also nice to get an update on something happening in the Rumor Mill - just as I stopped checking daily.

Quote from Piar »

Ahhh, I missed Guesswork threads. Glad to have you back around!

So I can argue at length with all my detractors?

Cross your fingers in terms of "back around"... I have a 15 month old kiddo, now, so free time is touch-and-go.

Priceless went through a lot of iterations, including one where having ten Merchandise made you win the game... I'm comfy with this version though. I kind of needed a ramp mechanic with all the high-cost cascade spells around and Life of Luxury is the obligatory out-of-color overcosted version.

What do you think of the Rebels/Mercenaries and the mana fixing?

Ah, there it is at last. Priceless seems intriguing, though it calls to mind a quality of the spell rather than making a mana producing token. Might need a more interesting card to sell it.

Suspicious Bargain amuses me. I wish it could be worded in a way that enables Ink-Treader Nephilim shenanigans, but uncounterable stuff and the Eldrazi titans already get mileage out of it.

What about "Endure" for the keyword name?

I assume we are supposed to post entries to the card contest here?


Edit: After putting a little more thought into melee, I'm not sure it could see print in Standard. Unlike surge, the ability does nothing if you're not playing a team game. It would probably be ok in a team oriented supplemental set. Something like Archenemy. I'll see if I can come up with something that would work better in Standard.

Restless Bodyguard 2W
Creature - Human Warrior (C)
Hireling (You may have this permanent enter the battlefield transformed under a teammate's control.)
Defender
W: Restless Bodyguard gets +0/+1 until end of turn.
2/3
///
Eager Combatant
• Creature - Human Mercenary
Whenever Eager Combatant attacks, each player on your team gains 1 life.
3/2

Greater Maro 3GG
Creature - Elemental (R)
Flash
Haste
Stand together - Greater Maro's power and toughness are each equal to the total number of cards in your and your teammates' hands.
*/*

Dang I forgot about this. I haven't had a chance to listen to this yet but hope to tomorrow.

Second Degree Burns (Common)
1(B/R)
Sorcery
Second Degree Burns deals 2 damage to target creature or player.
Kickback 3(B/R) (A teammate may cast this card from your graveyard for its kickback cost. Then exile it.)

Syndicate Assassin (Common)
2U
Creature - Human Assassin
3/1
Collude - Syndicate Assassin can't be blocked this turn if a teammate cast a noncreature spell this turn.