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we're fucked

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whats the fucking point of having laws if people can keep making led headlights

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pansies

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comedy peaked with katamari damacy level designers arranging a several apples gathered around a single much larger apple with a crown on it

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Ohhh my God, the current VA for Foghorn Leghorn actually dubbed it.

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Design Deep-Dive #10: From Concept to Card

Iteration is crucial to good design. Your first ideas are rarely your best, and especially when designing an entire set of cards, it's impossible to know exactly how everything will interact until you actually sit down and play with it. One of the clearest examples of this is the card Mesmir's Betrayal, which required a drastic overhaul to find its niche!

Let's take a look at how this card went from rough concept, to one of the most exciting cards in the set!

1. Concept

Mesmir's Betrayal is a top-down design, meaning I started from the theming and flavor and had to build mechanics to fit (as opposed to bottom-up design, where the mechanical effects come first and narrative theming is decided later). In this case, I knew three things:

Mesmir was a powerful NPC wizard who betrayed our heroes at the end of a pivotal arc.

I'd already drawn art of this story beat that would be perfect for a card.

In this set, Red and Blue are all about Wizards, so this card should be a big, flashy payoff in those colors! Ideally, if you're playing lots of Wizards, this card should be able to close out the game.

2. First Draft

After a bit of thought, this was the first version of the card I printed out:

{2}🔥 Instant Rare

Until end of turn, target Wizard gains +3/+0, first strike, trample, and "Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a creature, exile that creature."

Cycling 💧 (💧, Discard this card: Draw a card.)

I really wanted to lean into the idea of a Wizard turning around and becoming a lethal threat! So this first draft operated as a combat trick that gives a scary stack of keywords a la Kaldra Compleat.

However, the way it's written, it would do absolutely nothing without a Wizard already in play. I decided this would be a good opportunity to split the Red and Blue identities of the card into two modal effects -- you could spend 🔥 for the aggressive combat trick, and 💧 to simply cycle the card away and draw a new one, if the situation didn't line up. It didn't feel like a perfect compromise, but it was good enough for the testing phase.

3. Playtesting

After several playtests, I began to realize that this card didn't operate the way I'd hoped. Frankly, it didn't operate at all -- even in tests where players had access to the card and were playing lots of Wizards in their deck, this card just wasn't making the cut. Instead, I focused on what was working with those decks, to see why this didn't fit into the gameplan and came away with several insights:

A combat trick feels useless to a non-combat-focused deck. The Izzet Wizards archetype wants to sling spells, not rely on pushing damage through combat. While it's important for those decks to have Wizards on board, their main role is to enhance other instants and sorceries, and to provide good targets for Concentration auras.

The buff feels unnecessarily complex. All those stats and keywords can be difficult to parse and make the card easier to dismiss. It feels flashy and scary, which is great, but it might as well read "Target Wizard gets +3/+0 and unblockable."

The card feels small. Making this card a 3-drop doesn't give it the impression of a big finisher. As flashy as the buff is, it doesn't feel like an effect that's likely to end the game on the spot.

It ignores too many Blue subthemes. Blue decks in this set have a lot of support for completely different angles, especially hand and library manipulation. If this card could hook into those synergies somehow, it might be more attractive to players.

It's not really "betraying" anything. Sure, making a Wizard suddenly good at combat does a decent job of conveying Mesmir's sudden heel-turn, but it doesn't quite capture the scope of our story: a man throwing his entire community into ruin for a chance at personal gain, a desperate but calculated final gambit!

With all this in mind, I was ready to push Mesmir's Betrayal to the next level...

4. Iteration

{4}🔥🔥 Sorcery 198/275 Rare

Mesmir's Betrayal deals 2 damage to any target. Wizardstorm (When you cast this spell, exile any number of target Wizards you control and/or Wizard cards from your hand. Copy this spell for each Wizard exiled this way. You may choose new targets for the copies.) Wizardcycling {1}💧 ({1}💧, Discard this card: Search your library for a Wizard card, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle.)

Deal 2 damage. Wizardstorm. Wizardcycling.

Now we're talking.

It's risky to commit an entire brand-new keyword for this single card, but I just couldn't pass up the chance to play on the infamous Storm mechanic of MtG past! Instead of copying the spell for each other card played this turn, Mesmir's Betrayal lets you trade off your Wizards for damage, either decimating your own board or cashing out your hand to potentially reach lethal levels of burn!

Wizardstorm also provides an extremely satisfying mirror for the Wizardcycling mode of the card. This technically isn't a new mechanic, thanks to the cheeky and experimental Future Sight era. But it's certainly a deep cut that fits the flavor of the card and makes the card way more interesting in the early game, if you're having trouble drawing your Wizards or before you're ready to go all in on the burn plan.

It also allowed me to design a fun nod to Mesmir himself, by giving the creature version of his card an ETB that shuffles some spells back into your library. So you can Wizardcycle to find Mesmir, and then play him to let your opponent know... his Betrayal could be just around the corner! But that's a Card Showcase for another day.

5. Lather, Rinse, Repeat...

In all, the revised version of this card is a massive improvement in every aspect, and it's already been used to great success in a playtest with its new text! Most importantly, the Izzet Spellslinger archetype, which has underperformed so far compared to more creature-combat strategies, finally has a proper build-around card to pull players into those colors in a draft!

But of course, I'll keep testing it to make sure it's right in that sweet spot. The key to iteration, after all, is to keep iterating.

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Pangur cries until I hold her

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New page! Check it out! (via No More pg.36)

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Card Showcase: Un-Candle

Artifact 240/275 Uncommon

During combat, all creatures have shroud.

Originally crafted by wizards to prank their colleagues, the Un-Candle looks like an ordinary candle, but emits a sphere of magical darkness when lit! Even those with natural darkvision cannot pierce its inky void. In our campaign, our fighter Mishka once lit one in the midst of battle to slip right by an enemy the party was unprepared to fight, rescuing a wounded NPC along the way!

When designing this card, I wanted to create an answer to combat tricks (especially Inspiration tokens, which are at their strongest when buffing creatures after blocks have been declared). With the Un-Candle's shroud, however, players are forced to commit to their tricks before combat begins, making it much easier to plan attacks and blocks!

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Someone captured the solar eclipse on an airplane

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making accidents on purpose

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Adapting a pinball machine into a movie is a surprisingly difficult task. But the Princess bride pinball machine does it really well!

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you arent a real gamer until you played this

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Tree roots following the pattern of concrete footpaths