You Make the Draft IV

[Simon O'Keeffe]

Date: Saturday 31st March - 12 noon

Where: Penderel's Oak - High Holborn

 

Concept:  

* Each participator designs 45 Magic cards in Magic Set Editor format

* Send finished cards to [e-mail]

* We print them all out, sleeve them up, and shuffle into boosters

* Draft and enjoy!

 

Although there was only four of us who did this last time, many onlookers expressed their interest in being part of the next one.

 

Threads from previous instances:

You Make the Draft I - Initial thread 

You Make the Draft I - Preliminaries

You Make the Draft I - Aftermath (includes link to visual spoiler of all created cards)

You Make the Draft II - Initial thread

You Make the Draft III - Initial thread

You Make the Draft III - Aftermath (includes link to MSE file)

 

Things we learnt from the previous attempts and loose rules:

• No planeswalkers. Having 8 untested planeswalkers in a draft can be pretty lopsided, especially as people tend not to design simple answer cards as they are dull
• Super power mythic bombs - try and limit yourself to 1, if you desperately need more, let us know and we can try and accommodate them
• Cards must have art (designer secret - finding lots of art first inspires lots of ideas for cards!) (DeviantArt is a pretty good resource)
• Designing heavily linear/parasitic cards, as your 45, that all interact with each other is not really going to work if we get 360 cards total. If you want to do something like this then let everyone know so they can either support your theme or veto it mercilessly
• Having a theme or design goal would be a great way to help tie different peoples 45 cards together. If you have any suggestions please post them

 

EDIT: We have chosen "land matters" as a theme, so try and include a smattering of cards that interact with lands in some way.

People who have expressed interest so far:

1. Simon
2. Tom Baker
3. Kieran 
4. Glenn
5. Andy
6. Dan
7. Charlie
8. Phil
9. Rebecca

EDIT: Design Skeleton file here: YmtSet.mse-set

[Simon O'Keeffe]

Okay if we are thinking of building a 'set', irrespective of whether it will be singleton cube style or not, Martin mentioned something good on Tuesday.

We should draw up a design skeleton, as outlined by MaRo here. This would be a communal design file where we have the general make up of the set pencilled in, and then people just need to design for a slot rather than a random 45. This does mean that there will be no surprise element on the day where you see new cards, but at least we have a pretty good shot at producing something balanced.

This would also allow us to control the level of rare/mythic level cards better, as they would have limited slots and cards would have to compete for them or be lowered in power level/complexity.

Regarding themes for colours, here is what we kind of have so far:

Green - graveyard, ramp, Bears, Frogs

Black - graveyard recursion, Zombies

Red - landfall,

Blue - Turtles, Wizards, top card of library

White - tokens, Spirits

As usual looks like red and white will be the hardest to fill in.

[Thomas David Baker]

Can we do something for red based on their new ability of looting?  Lots of looters and things that count stuff in the graveyard or "when you discard" or Madness?

And 100% agree that the next one should be a known set developed out loud.

[Peter Dun]

just to say that I only mentioned 4 cards, but I actually thought many cards were very cleverly designed from this set... those were the ones that just stood out most (or I was curious about in theory).

@Dan:

Purecolour Guys

Simple way to work it out is how many cards you would expect someone to have to see to be good. Assuming someone is mono coloured, they would need 7 lands in play to "turn on" these cards, that's turn 11 on average, by which time the game might already be over. This means that its not enough of an incentive by itself to be mono coloured in order to play these cards. If you are 2 colours, then they might NEVER turn on. Going 1 colour in limited is a pretty big drawback (especially as people won't have multiples). I think you can safely have these cards as 5 of a particular land type. This means that with a 10/7 manabase you will turn on these around the same time as average, and if someone wants to play 15 forests they deserve a payback (a good comparison when judging power level is to compare them to playing a demigod of revenge in a deck which you can only pay for it with one of your colours). The "ultimate" forms can be scaled back a little to compensate (Drop the initial ability of each card, and -1/-1 from each ultimate). If you want to keep the "OMG POWER" factor, 6 lands is definitely fine too.

 

Steady Researcher
I really liked this guy too, but he's definitely an uncommon :P

 

Everlasting Corpse

Or sorcery speed returning?

 

Floor-Talon Drake

What about 4/4, and return 2 islands? Precedent has been set with Fathom Seer, it plays into your "basic land type matters" theme and encourages a certain type of deckbuilding. I actually think that even this is too powerful, and a 3/4 flyer might be better (you WILL get Card Advantage when it unmorphs). Untapped lands is something that isn't really done any more, but could also work.

 

Staffbearer

Compare to Ruin Ghost... If you can return the lands straight away for no cost, it will 100% be used most often as a mana accelerator :P. The problem is that even with the same ability and a cost of W it will be used as a Rishadan Port on a 2/2, and if you make it cost any more, then the ability will never be used. I'm not sure there IS a way to balance this... if you are worried about manlands, maybe make it non basics only?

 

Dan Barrett said:

Elvish Meditator - this was a cool idea. We should probably reword it to not use cascade. Also was the intent that you would put the land straight into play, or like cascade, you would have to play it using your land drop for the turn?

Put it straight into play, it is intended to be kind of like a random Ondu Giant

Purecolour dudes - these were interesting but I never saw one trigger. Could probably bring it down to 6 of the same land type

I'm not sure, I wanted them to be an incentive to draft mono-colour decks, however that might not be well-suited to this format.

Rampaging Beast - Why is it not an Elephant :-)

I couldn't find any more beast images, and wanted my creature types to be consistent!

Sharecropping - a little too good in practice, but the idea is nice

OP only because of Kieran's mechanic, to be fair?

Steady Researcher - did anyone play this guy? I really like him. Simple and elegant cards are always the best

One of my best I think, good flavour in what would be a common/uncommon. I liked Charlie's U - fateseal 2 draw a card a lot too, which is similar I guess.

 

Thanks, Bro! - the best anti-Glenn card ever!

Glenn has been quite OP recently, so a hoser card needed to be printed.

Other cards of mine:

End of All Knowing - should have been worded as Forbidden Crypt, to prevent same spell being returned multiple times

Everlasting Corpse - Charlie suggested either: comes back tapped OR cannot block. Both seem a fair tweak

Floor-Talon Drake - Perhaps should return untapped lands? Or sacrifice rather than return? It was supposed to be a genuine drawback, not just undercosted dragon.

Fuck You Dragon - I went over the top here

Game-Winning Bomb - Again, too far.

Staffbearer - This can be fixed to my original intent (enable landfall, protect you from manlands) rather than 2-mana LD by having the land return straight away?

Throw Back - Simon suggested this might be OP, could make it bounce a land and a creature controlled by different players if necessary? Or same effect to each player (return a land and a creature he/she controls)?

[Peter Dun]

background story for world? can justify all sorts of bleeding for flavour reasons!

 

Simon O'Keeffe said:

Okay if we are thinking of building a 'set', irrespective of whether it will be singleton cube style or not, Martin mentioned something good on Tuesday.

We should draw up a design skeleton, as outlined by MaRo here. This would be a communal design file where we have the general make up of the set pencilled in, and then people just need to design for a slot rather than a random 45. This does mean that there will be no surprise element on the day where you see new cards, but at least we have a pretty good shot at producing something balanced.

This would also allow us to control the level of rare/mythic level cards better, as they would have limited slots and cards would have to compete for them or be lowered in power level/complexity.

Regarding themes for colours, here is what we kind of have so far:

Green - graveyard, ramp, Bears, Frogs

Black - graveyard recursion, Zombies

Red - landfall,

Blue - Turtles, Wizards, top card of library

White - tokens, Spirits

As usual looks like red and white will be the hardest to fill in.

[Simon O'Keeffe]

Okay I spent a little time this afternoon mocking up one of these design skeletons to see how it might work. I went for a 249 card set and fairly standard distribution of colour, creature levels, instant/sorcery mix etc..

The idea with this is that it would be a central file, somehow version controlled, maybe host it on dropbox or something. When you design and add a card, don't change its name, but fill in its rules text, and image if you have one. If you have an idea for a name put it in the comments field below the card mockup. This way if people have multiple ideas for the same card slot you just create another entry with the same card code, then we know that they are vying for that spot.

Any thoughts on this approach?

I've had to link to the file in the first post, as can't seem to do that in this reply.

 

[Philip Dickinson]

google docs sounds pretty suitable. just make a spreadsheet and give the right people edit privileges. if basecamp still exists then that might be suited too

[Thomas David Baker]

I have some working code that can read MSE files and put them into a database.

Before I go any further I think we should discuss our preferred mode of working.

We definitely want some website where everyone can go and comment on cards.  Our own "multiverse".

Thomas Baker 23 mins ago said, "Very aggressively costed ... what about 1GGG instead?"
Simon O'Keefe 12 mins ago said, "But then you can't play it with the mana from Park Ritual on Turn 1!"
Kieran Symington 1 min ago said, "Don't worry I've changed Park Ritual to produce GGGGGG and sac all your lands."

I see a few options:

1. Basic.  Export card images from MSE, upload to the site.  If you want to update the card you have to edit in MSE, re-export as an image, and re-upload that image.  There is no capability to edit online, and people that did not create the original card would probably not have access to the art to update it.  Pros: all the good MSE features like ~ replacement, automatic reminder text, custom mechanics, spellcheck, card frames and custom mana symbols.  Cons: hard for anyone who isn't the original author to edit a card, have to go back to MSE to make small changes even typos.

2. Most radical.  Abandon MSE as a vehicle for card creation.  All cards are created online in a simple web form and can be edited by anyone.  Pros: most collaborative, no fiddling back-and-forth with MSE.  Cons: need to find a way to render and print the cards, none of MSE's nice features.

3. Most difficult.  Allow import and export from MSE files as well as online editing.  Search for groups of cards and export them to MSE.  Use MSE for final rendering and printing.  Pros: allows use of MSE features without preventing online editing.  Cons: code for importing/exporting MSE files will almost certainly be brittle and time consuming to write, you will still probably fiddle back-and-forth with MSE to get things how you want them.  The possibility that an MSE update or other change obsoletes a lot of work.

4. Simplest. Use something like Google docs, Basecamp and/or an MSE file shared on box.net to carry the cards and comments (probably separately). Pros: dead simple. Cons: fiddly as hell, things get out of sync very easily.

Do you have any bright ideas that are better than the above options?  Or an opinion about which of the options is better?

You can see Kieran's cards (possibly multiple times) here:
    http://bluebones.net:5984/_utils/database.html?multiverse/_design/q...
And an example card here:
    http://bluebones.net:5984/_utils/document.html?multiverse/c4af3400c...

(Kieran's set had super awkward custom mana costs and new rules so he was a nice and tricky test candidate for the importer.)

(This is a work in progress so don't be surprised if the database disappears or changes radically by the time you click the links.)

[Thomas David Baker]

Regarding themes, if I can change the subject so quickly, I was wondering if something in W could be "lifegain that is actually good".  Not very flavorful but I'd love to see a set where some things like Searing Meditation seeded at Uncommon made a lifegain-based Burning Vengeance-style deck possible.

I see cards like:

Uncommon - Enchantment - 2W - Whenever you gain life you may draw a card.

Uncommon - Enchantment -  1WR - Whenever you gain life you may have ~ deal 2 damage to target creature or player.

Common - Creature - Human Cleric Warrior - 1W - 2/1 - Lifelink

Uncommon - Creature - Turtle Cleric - 4W - 1/4 - Whenever you gain life you may draw a card.  Lifelink.

Rare - 3WR - Creature - Human Cleric Warrior - 2/3 - Whenever you gain life you may have ~ deal 2 damage to target creature or player.  Lifelink.

Common - Sorcery - 4W - You gain 6 life.  Draw a card.

Common - Instant - 3W - Creatures you control get +1/+1 and gain lifelink until end of turn.

Common - 1RW - Instant - ~ deals 2 damage to target creature or player and you gain 2 life.

Common - Instant - W - You gain 1 life. Draw a card.

I'm not sure if I'm allowed that much card drawing and cantripping in W but the principle is the thing - cards that relate to life gain that in sufficient numbers are quite nutty but which on their own vary from strong (rare guy, weak Lightning Helix, lifelink turtle?) to good (color shifted Child of Night) to terrible (gain 1 life cantrip, colorshifted Dosan's Oldest Chant) with more on the bottom end of the scale than the top (by rarity).  (I'd love to print 1W Enchantment - Whenever you draw a card you may gain 1 life, too, for infinite combo with the opposite card, despite one half of the combo basically being Ajani's Mantra.  Not sure if we want a two card win-the-game combo though.  Perhaps we could get rid of the may in the triggers?!)

I see us seeding a few decks like this.  Lifegain-is-not-terrible deck, top-card-of-library deck, reprint of Astral Slide and Lightning Rift cycling-based deck, others.  Decks that make you windmill slam some fairly bad commons but which also use a bunch of solid limited cards like french vanilla bears and so on.

Re: the top card of library deck.  Obviously there has to be cards that reveal it, cards that can use it, cards that can manipulate it, and of course Goblin Confidant to hose it.  Possibly interact with the opponent's top card of library too?  A lot of the cards in this area are very strong (Future Sight, Delver of Secrets, Mul Daya Channelers, Oracle of Mul Daya, Vampire Nocturnus, Ponder, Preordain) but some are decidedly not (Skill Borrower, Garruk's Horde, Goblin Spy, Lost in the Woods) and there are a bunch of fair-to-strong cards that might make sense as templates (Augury Owl, Foresee, Crystal Ball, Lose Hope).

I can see the following possibilities:

Play with the top card of your library revealed.
If the top card of your library is revealed you may play it as if it were in your hand.
You may put the top card of your library into your graveyard.
You may put the top card of your library on the bottom of your library.
You may put a card from your hand on to the top of your library.  Or swap.
If the top card of your library is revealed and is X then Y.  Where X is a type or a CMC and Y is a continuous effect or the option to play it or do some other thing.

And of course some cards would combine some of these, like Corrupt Seer does.

In particular I think basically all of them have to say "play with the top card of your library revealed" just to avoid awkward templating.  I see this area as UB.

[Simon O'Keeffe]

Reply to multiverse post:

While it would be nice, I certainly don't think it is needed to re-invent the wheel by trying to create your own MSE. I think try and stick to something as simple as possible that will allow us to collaborate, so I'm thinking option 1.

There is still some potential fiddlyness if multiple people design a card for the same slot or people who don't design want to make changes, but I think that is acceptable. Since it is very likely that there won't be that many of us doing this, we could probably try combining this with a communal MSE set file too.

PS: Is it worth starting a new thread?

[Simon O'Keeffe]

Reply to themes post:

Trying to make lifegain better/interesting is certainly an area worth exploring. I imagine it is going to be very tricky to balance, so as not to just invalidate aggro strategies. We might have to look at adding in support for less common win conditions like milling or poison.

Top of the library certainly looks to have a lot of design space, and is probably easier to do than lifegain. Most of the cards you mentioned that are very strong with top of the library stuff are primarily in constructed (MulDaya Channelers probably the exception). There are loads of interesting things in this space like Deceivers, Scry, Scroll Rack, Clash, plus card manipulation is generally an area of the game that makes players feel good. Actively reducing variance and generating interesting decisions are all good things.

So with looting as a Red theme, and graveyard as a green/black them, we at least have something to work with for all the colours to begin with.

[Thomas David Baker]

The Wizards of the Red Tower have a giant store of crumbling books left by an earlier generation.  They are immensely powerful but not always comprehensible to the lesser mages of today.  They have a tendency to race through the books, tearing out the ruined or incomprehensible pages, to get to powerful spells they can use today.

The Wizards of the Blue Tower speak of a time when their forebears could see far into the future.  Now they can only see a few moments ahead, although even this can be a powerful ability.  Their leader is a one-eyed mage who it is said gave his other eye in order to see the moment of his own death.

The White Tower has forbidden all Wizardry and erased all records of their magical tradition.  Instead the priests who dwell there practice the dual arts of healing and war.

The Black Tower has descended into madness.  Their is no longer a discernible power structure there as Necromancers practice their dark arts and Zombies shamble through its hallways.  The tower itself collapsed inwards during a magical experiment and is now partially underground.

The druids of the Great Forest lay claim to the tradition of the Green Tower.  The Tower itself has not been seen for centuries and its location is lost to memory.  The druids maintain that it can only be found in a secret grove at the heart of the Great Forest by those with an extreme kinship with the forest.

A continent once ruled by five Towers of Wizardry.  The White, Blue, Black, Red and Green Towers ruled, performing impossible magical feats.  Too much magical force threatened the stability of the plane and many wizards went mad and much knowledge was lost.  Now the remnants of the magical traditions dwell in the huge towers avoiding the madness of the outside world and plotting against one another.

[Simon O'Keeffe]

Awesome!

You have even setup the inevitable 3rd set: Towering Erections

Seriously though, this is a pretty good starting point. Using just your short description I would expect the following:

Madness - primarily in Red, but also Black and Green

Scry, library manipulation - Blue, a little in Red (looting)

Lifegain - White, a little in Green

Graveyard interaction - Black (and we will have to work this into Green too)

Looking at that Green is going to be a jack of all trades and master of none, also Blue only really has top of the library. As looting (discard required) and the graveyard look to be key areas perhaps we may also want to bring back the ever popular Flashback mechanic to help support these, and give Blue a little extra identity. It could represent their ability to have to keep repeating the same old spells, as the vast knowledge of the past is lost to them.

Thinking about lifegain already has me designing hoser cards to keep it in check:

Spiteful Goblin - 1R

Creature - Goblin - 2/1

If a player would gain life, that player loses 1 life instead.