imakethecard - Tumblr blog

[imakethecard]

Not based on the man, just on the painting.

Balance is iffy. Can never get planeswalkers right on the first try.

Charles's official portrait looking like he costs 7 mountains to summon and wipes the opponent's board when he enters the field:

Ngl this slaps, credit to the supreme monarchist where it's due I guess.

[imakethecard]

I built a full set around the mechanic, too.

Trying something pretty ambitious.

Is this self-explanatory? If so, what do you think it does?

That aside, is it good design?

[imakethecard]

philippesaner

Custom sets made by competent amateurs are already common enough that you could draft a new set every week. With art, worldbuilding, coherent mechanics, and a draft environment that someone worked hard on. You could even start with mine!

oligopsoriasis

@philippesaner direct me to your wares

The main site you want to look at is Planesculptors, which has perhaps a thousand sets of varying quality in various stages of development. MSEM Instigator and Revolution Manifesto, meanwhile, contain only sets that are played in the two biggest custom formats (that I know of).

My own set is Avarelle, It’s complete and playable, though I do have some changes planned to the lore doc. With luck, it’ll be in Revolution eventually.

I’ve also made Xosmarium; that one’s a work in progress, and I haven’t done anything with it in a fair while. But it’s draftable.

I know the sheer number of sets here is overwhelming. I could recommend stuff all day, but without putting too much thought into it, Scriptures of Urshad, Secrets of the River Cities, Ruins of Doharum, Depths of Pyloa, and Monsters of Chikyu are all personal favourites. And the Planesculptors featured sets are a good bunch, too.

one AI-enabled thing that's gonna be really fun: procedurally generated magic sets. existing models might peter out before they can come up with original coherent themes that marry setting and mechanics (and indeed if "scale is all you need" etc then we have much bigger problems, so it's really only worth discussing these frivolous matters on the assumption there are such limits), but combined with cheap decentralized printing and weak enforceability of copyright you could get together and draft a new set every time you got together with your buddies. probably you COULD enter a prompt and some human guidance to get closer to the coherent theme managing themes + mechanics etc

[imakethecard]

I’m still active, but I’ve moved to Discord. Hence the hilariously slow response on this post.

Tumblr’s Custom Card Community

Hi everyone! A few years back there was an awesome custom card design community on here. I remember some of the most prominent members of the community like @remakingmagic, @follower-of-liliana, @abelzumi, @magicarasa, @imakethecard, @affinityforanime, any of y’all still active? (Sorry to those I missed)

Also, who should I start following that’s currently involved in custom card creation :)

[imakethecard]

I don’t mind having my work reposted from Reddit to Tumblr, but I would really rather you credit me when you do. Or else link the original thread. (Which also has five other designs on it, incidentally.)

LWA x MtG

[imakethecard]

The biggest problem with Magic, and how we can fix it

tl, dr version:

The biggest problem with Magic today is the sad state of 60-card casual play. We can fix this by giving casual the kind of community Commander has.

Long version:

Formatless "kitchen table" Magic is widely played, but only in disconnected groups that don't talk to each other. There's no casual scene. If you don't have a regular casual group, you likely don't play the (non)format. You can't just sit down at a game store and play kitchen-style against a random person; even if you find an opponent, odds are good that the game will be utterly one-sided because one player's idea of casual is vastly more powerful.

Why is this a problem?

Most of Magic's other problems are made worse by this. A couple are more or less entirely caused by it.

Casual play is the cheapest and easiest way to get into paper Magic, and the fact that casual play is inaccessible to someone joining the game alone raises the barrier to entry substantially. Magic doesn't have to be an expensive or competitive game, but when Standard is the main entry format it always ends up that way.

The average card is only really useful in Limited and casual. When people aren't playing casually, this means that the average card becomes useless shortly after it's opened. This is pretty awful; it's horribly wasteful and it concentrates the financial weight of each set on a few bombs. Uro costs $37.50 because Allure of the Unknown, The First Iroan Games, and a fair number of other rares from THB are worth about twenty cents.

(Let's not even get started on Un-cards, conspiracies, and the like.)

Almost everybody hates dealing with rotation, but non-rotating formats are all either very weird or very powerful. Opting out of rotation as a not-super-serious player is hard and inconvenient, and will remain so as long as casual play remains in the dumps.

Funneling all 60-card play into the competitive formats also magnifies the impacts of WotC's mistakes. Companions ruining Standard and Modern is a much bigger problem when Standard and Modern are all that's available.

But to me, none of that is as bad as what the weakness of casual does to deck-brewing. There are thousands of thousands of fun, interesting, and unique decks out there that aren't good in any format they're legal in. So the decks just...molder. I want to build those decks and I want to play them, damn it.

So what can we do about it?

I think we need to follow in the footsteps of Commander. Commander is a casual format too, but it doesn't suffer from the same problems as kitchen-table play. It's hard to build for, preposterously convoluted in play, poorly suited for duels, usually expensive, and yet still often the best option for new players. Because it's casual, and it has a healthy community.

Commander players know how to talk about disparities in deck strength. Commander players know how to bring new people onboard, how to talk about deckbuilding, and how to set up games that don't end in one-sided blowouts. Most of the time, anyway.

Building that kind of community isn't exactly easy. But I have some ideas about how we can do it.

First, there's the obvious. Talk about casual play online. I'll put my money where my mouth is on this one; you can expect to see me posting casual lists and talking about formatless play on here going forward.

Second, we could really use some vocabulary for talking about casual deck strength. When you ask someone, "how good is that deck?" it should be possible for them to give a useful answer. It is in Standard, in Legacy, in Commander...but casual has no words for its tiers. I'll take a crack at writing up something along these lines over the next few days.

Third, we need people to understand this fundamental point: in casual play, you don't try to win until the match starts. You can always raise your win percentage with some Sol Rings; you almost never should. Make each deck as fun as it can be, and as powerful as it wants to be. If a deck happens to be very strong, avoid playing it against weaker decks. If giving someone a free Conspiracy helps even up the game...go ahead and do it! Why not?

Fourth, it would help if people made a habit of carrying a 60-card deck or three. Many people have them and they're not exactly heavy. So why not bring them whenever you go to hang out with Magic players? Bring enough to lend, or to play at multiple different power levels, if you can.

Fifth, we should have some casual events. Ideally, the host of a casual Magic event should have a whole bunch of borrow-able decks available at a wide variety of power levels, so that people can find matches for whatever they happen to have. And, of course, so that people can try playing new decks. But obviously this will need to wait.

[imakethecard]

pockmarkedmoon said: Neat, but basically flavored kicker.

You say that like it’s a bad thing!

Many good mechanics are basically kicker. This one’s actually less kicker-y than the average extra-cost mechanic, since cards like Simulated Landscapes are miserable to template with kicker.

More cards using JN’s override mechanic.

[imakethecard]

Yes, it is. Good catch.

Ten cards using JustNobody’s Override mechanic.

Cards marked JN are copies or near-copies of his ideas.

[imakethecard]

More cards using JN’s override mechanic.

[imakethecard]

Ten cards using JustNobody’s Override mechanic.

Cards marked JN are copies or near-copies of his ideas.

[imakethecard]

Announcing Hentara

Making Avarelle was a great experience, and filled me with the desire to make another set. But I’m still a little salty about Eldraine stealing my set concept out from under me, so I’ve decided to take on a genre that WotC will never touch.

Hentai.

Hentara will be a large black-bordered set, emulating hentai manga and anime in much the same way that Avarelle emulated fairy tales and Innistrad emulated horror. It won’t be an adaptation of any particular porno; rather, it’ll be a fantasy-tinged distillation of illustrated pornography as a whole.

Hentara is currently in early vision design; very little about it is fixed. Now’s a good time to brainstorm. My ears are open; I want to hear your suggestions.

Right now I’m leaning towards a tribal framework for the set. I’m tentatively planning Elves (G), Kithkin (W), Squids and Octopi (U), Demons (B), and Orcs (R) as the main tribes, but I may rejigger that setup to provide a stronger furry presence. And given WotC’s experiences with tribal sets, I should probably be considering secondary colours for my main tribes.

Secondary tribes would, of course, abound. I’ve always been a big fan of weird niche lords.

Marriage and changeling are likely to return; Avarelle didn’t quite let me explore Marriage as thoroughly as I would’ve liked. And changeling is just a really useful mechanic in a tribal set.

I’m not sure about the new mechanics yet. I have high hopes for pregnancy, which might look something like this:

I’m a bit concerned about the wordiness of the mechanic, and about whether it’ll still be flavourful when I vary the effects a bit more. But it’s worth exploring.

Anyway, let me know what you think. Now is the best time to make your voice heard, while everything is still new and flexible.

[imakethecard]

For Kaldheim.

[imakethecard]

http://www.planesculptors.net/set/avarelle/version-29/green-knight

You might appreciate this, @izandai​

Aw hell, the Green Knight would've been perfect for Eldraine! (it's a story from Arthurian mythology for those who don't know) Now I'm sad you didn't do it. Please try to make it happen again if/when we return to Eldraine!

We asked around about Arthurian elements and very few knew the green knight (even though it’s a pretty big character).

[imakethecard]

My take:

Overall concept seems solid. Split second does have a sort of divine-verdict-ness to it.

Thunderous Scorn worries me. Seems really, really, strong. Especially since, unlike most extra turn spells, it doesn’t self-exile.

Cleansing Plague just feels kind of eh. Dunno why. Maybe because it doesn’t really need split second?

Ecstatic Feast is weird. Food’s not really a Theros thing, a five-mana spell granting haste will rarely matter, you’ll almost never use the Food as Food, and the play pattern encourages you to just have your food lying around instead of using it. Not a big fan.

Law of Commerce is great. Interesting, useful, makes split-second very relevant.

Set the Path and Ferry the Souls feel kinda pointless. They’re hate cards, obviously, but I don’t really know which deck wants them or what they’d be used against.

Wicked Whims seems solid. Not much to say about it, honestly.

Conqueror’s March seems okay, but I don’t really see the appeal. Doesn’t look terribly fun.

Answer the Call looks pretty good. Bit wordy, but it kinda has to be.

Invoke Animosity is neat. Really benefits from the split second, and it has nice flavour.

My three would be

1. Law of Commerce

2. Invoke Animosity

3. Either Wicked Whims or Answer the Call

Hello everyone!  While we are on the hype train for Theros: Beyond Death I wanna talk about an idea I had that wasn’t implemented in the original Theros block and probably won’t be a part of the new set either.

I am a big fan of the time spiral block to a point that even split second, a rather dull mechanic that denies interaction, fascinates me. I thought it would be crazy cool if it’s absolute nature was used to represent divine acts.

So, with a little rebranding and a good dose of Theros flavor, I designed the ten cards above. I tried to post one card per day, but I went behind schedule because life, and because the perfectionist part of me took over and I had to rework some of the cards because I wanted each of the ten cards to feel unique, flavorful and if possible, as interesting as the other nine cards.

Big thanks @magus-of-the-color-pizza​ and @samwisethebold​ for their feedback while the cycle was under development. I’m waiting for your feedback too, and I’m curious to know your top 3 of the 10 cards! Thanks for reading!

[imakethecard]

Looking to make some brawl decks for Avarelle, which will in turn open up some holes in the main set.

So if there are any things you wish I included in Avarelle, or any designs you’d like to suggest, now’s the time to bring it up.

[imakethecard]

Here are the results of a series of holiday-themed design prompts on the Discord.

Worth a look, I think.

[imakethecard]

These are for a design challenge: remake three of your earliest designs.

By my count the originals, recreated on the left, are about fifteen years old.

Amphibious Titan was written on a blank white paper that I'd glued to the front of a bulk card. I even painstakingly drew the Kamigawa-era card frame onto the blank. The frame is much better done than the design. The other two were written on notebook paper and taped to the art box of a bulk card.

Delay is clearly suspend, before suspend was a thing.

Not sure exactly how possess was meant to work. Perhaps it made the creature into an aura enchantment?

Well "enchant creature". This was ages ago.

...

Decided to stick with canon mechanics for the two keywords. After all, WotC basically did what I was aiming at. Or for possess, what I suspect I was aiming at. No sense re-reinventing the wheel.

As for Amphibious Titan, I actually think the flavour was really good for a huge ambush predator. And the flash-block-counterattack-bounce play pattern is actually pretty cool. So I just cut islandwalk, fixed the colours, made the card less weak, and tuned up the templating. In some ways it's a whole new card, in others it's basically unchanged.