Anybody here make custom cards / mechanics / sets?

[Jason Waddell]

My brain has been churning out some ideas for a custom card set, just curious if anybody here has attempted that before and has any advice to share. Thanks!

[Hannes Versmissen]

I've been a moderator over at the Magic Set Editor forums for a year, maybe two, and contributed to some sets made on that forum. I have some Self-designed sets, cards and mechanics.

A simple piece advise is to explore a card's potential first. Try to make it as interesting and appealing to read and as intuitive as possible, and then grade it on it's power level.

write down your ideas. explore them. fix errors later.

Op maandag 1 april 2013 22:39:32 UTC+2 schreef Jason Waddell het volgende:

[Jason Waddell]

I'm a little confused, why is there even a need to grade it on its power level? What does that achieve?

[Hannes Versmissen]

If you intend to only play/use the cards in a vacuum there is little need to do so, except for balance within the set. 

However designing to a level equal to the power level in Wizard's sets produces "real life printable cards". It's almost like setting a bar for yourself (i find it to be far more difficult than designing in a vacuum), and makes cards you could easily throw into a normal deck/cube and provide little-to-no issue.

when i design a card, in the end i'll try to get it to be "fair" in every viable format. and i usually try to create cards that have little to no chance in a legacy environment.

Op dinsdag 2 april 2013 08:34:21 UTC+2 schreef Jason Waddell het volgende:

[Jason Waddell]

Okay. For my purposes it seems a little needless. Aiming for a certain power range is fine, but I don't feel the need to assign a grade to cards, especially since things are super context-sensitive. There are cards that see Vintage play that never touch Standard. 

[Josh Blackborow]

I have a custom cube. If you have MSE I can send you it.

[Jason Waddell]

I don't have MSE, but I'll add/install it in the coming days. 

[James Stevenson]

I have two custom cards in my cube. 

Deus Ex Machina: Legendary Instant, 2G. Search your library for a legendary card and put it into your hand, then shuffle. Flashback 6W.
I saw Captain Sisay and thought it would be awesome to have a legend subtheme, so I added her in. She died on the spot whenever she was played, so I designed Deus Ex Machina to do a much better job. Mostly it just fetches Thrun, but I'm making some big changes and cutting really powerful cards like Thrun. We'll see where it goes.

Corpse Caller: Creature - Human Wizard, 2B, 2/2. When Corpse caller etb, put a 2/2 zombie into play. Sacrifice a zombie: target creature gets -2/-2 until end of turn.

I was thinking a lot about black being bad in cube, and tried to fix two problems with this card. Firstly it's 4 power for 3 mana, a very good 3-dropp for black aggro, and easily castable in 2-color aggro. Secondly I always thought one of the stengths of black is cards like Nekrataal and Skinrender which lend towards grindy removal decks. Nekrataal itself just always seemed unwieldy, costing double black and having such a weak body. I wanted to make something a but more efficient, even if Corpse Caller is a little less powerful.

I designed one more card which I cut, a legendary blue creature. I think he was a 2/3 for 4UUU. He gave you reverse cascade, that is "whenever an opponent plays a spell, they reveal cards from their library until they reveal a non-land card that costs less. You may cast that card without paying its mana cost." I thought the mechanic was awesome. He hit the table once, and everybody started freaking out about how overpowered it was. In the end the guy pointed a removal spell at it and cascaded into a card I didn't actually want to cast. I took him out of the cube because I didn't think people liked seeing such a splashy effect that was not a real card. Also it was pretty swingy.

The other two cards have been fine, fun, and pretty good. My advice for designing custom cards for a cube is to do it only when you want to fill a hole. On the other hand, if the people you play with are more open to this sort of thing, design away! As many as you want! Why not? You can always cut or change stuff that doesn't work out.

[Jason Waddell]

Just wanted to say I really like those cards. I would play Corpse Caller for sure. I hadn't really thought of doing custom cards to plug into my actual cube, more as a side-project adventure. But it's a lot of work, and after trying for a bit, I have a new-found respect for the people who pump out such well designed cards set after set. 

[Christopher Morris-Lent]

custom cube is a topic i'm not fully qualified to talk about, so i'll just say a couple things. designing custom cards is sweet, but i think most people would be better off using the time and brainpower to balance their cubes with existing cards. after you've done that, i'd recommend making custom cards to fill a particular role. for example, a friend of mine needed more fixing, so he designed enemy-color scars lands (easy enough) and enemy-color WWK manlands (a little tougher)!

[Jason Waddell]

I'll say, I enjoy playing with all real cards (and it keeps the barrier to entry (relatively) low), but if somebody wants to design custom cards, power to them. 

To expand on your comment Chris, I will say that custom cards are a lot more work. For most, it's probably more manageable to start with existing cards (i.e. learn to walk before you run). If creating cards from scratch is your passion though, do what you love. 

[Christopher Morris-Lent]

yep, the custom designs for enemy-color lands were creative. BW was flying/lifelink, UR was switch p/t, UG was an ophidian, BG was deathtouch, RW was double strike (i think?)