Signature spells, part deux

Disclaimer: This article contains custom card designs. If you are a Wizards of the Coast employee you have my full permission to use any designs or ideas within this article without my explicit written consent or prior knowledge, or without giving me any sort of credit. I love this game and I want to help it in any way I can.

 Last time, I talked about the Planeswalker signature spells that Wizards started implementing in the Core Sets starting in M11, and I "completed" the missing cycles for Gideon and Jura since there were no uncommon signature spells in M12.

This time I would like to continue the tradition and make some new signature spells for another character.

I am going to choose Elspeth Tirel (the character, not the card).

First I am going to lay some ground rules for my process for designing signature spells.

1. I design primarily for mono-colored walkers, as they have the greatest chance to be printed/reprinted in a core set.

2. I plan to follow the initial design philosophy of the cards being a mix of effects similar to the particular Planeswalker card, and those that synergize with the Planeswalker card.

When I designed these cards I chose Elspeth, Knight-Errant so I wanted all of the cards to be something that you could build a deck around with.

Here's what I came up with for my common:

Simple and to the point, yeah?
It's just Elspeth's middle ability. I new from the get go, that this card already existed in the form of Angelic Blessing, a palatable but hardly exciting card. So what did I do to make it more interesting? Made it cheaper and an instant, but more color intensive.



Next is my uncommon:

Now the synergy here should be obvious. If you use Elspeth's middle ability (or her Blessing), this guy becomes ENORMOUS and evasive. It works similar effectively with other pump effects, evasive combat tricks, and hoses black and red toughness-based removal. That part was a happy accident since red and black are enemy colors of white.

Now here's my rare:

It's a temporary mimicry of Elspeth's ultimate! Designing this was a teensy bit tricky. I already knew that Elspeth sort of, kind of already had a signature rare, at least in concept, in the form of Dauntless Escort, so I had to make this effect different enough from that one to stand alone as its own card.

I'd like to think that I succeeded.

As an added bonus, this actually has amazing synergy with the other Elsepth's ultimate. How fortuitous.

Let me know what you think!

Signature spells

Disclaimer: This article contains custom card designs. If you are a Wizards of the Coast employee you have my full permission to use any designs or ideas within this article without my explicit written consent or prior knowledge, or without giving me any sort of credit. I love this game and I want to help it in any way I can.

So Magic has these things called core sets, yeah?

A yearly catalogue of baseline spells and flavor, primarily intended to be a entry point for new players and a repository of useful effects for tournament level play.

Since their introduction into Magic, Planeswalkers always appear in a one-per-color-cycle in each core set.

Starting in Magic 2011, R&D started one of my favorite new traditions; Planeswalker signature spells.

The purpose of these effects was to introduce players, especially newer players or players who don't have the resources necessary to get a hold of a lot of product and might not ever see a Planeswalker, to said characters. After all they are significant cards and the main characters of the story, its a good idea that people invested in your product know who's important.

Someone just starting Magic isn't going to know who Liliana is, much less, why they should care. But when they start seeing her name show up on a lot of cards, they're going to grasp fairly quickly that she's someone important.

Here's the explanation for their design and concepting.

Now that's all well and good, except that there's a problem.
A big one.
Sorin and Gideon never got uncommons!!!

We can't have that now, can we...

Much better!

Tales of lizard tails.

Disclaimer: This article contains custom card designs. If you are a Wizards of the Coast employee you have my full permission to use any designs or ideas within this article without my explicit written consent or prior knowledge, or without giving me any sort of credit. I love this game and I want to help it in any way I can.

So I once read in a Magic article (I can't remember by who, I think it may have been Jamie Wakefield) that one of the surest ways to get a dedicated audience for your articles is to make your audience care about you, the writer, on a personal level. Make them care about you and your well-being and your life behind the keyboard.

This:

Is my pet leopard gecko, Cisco.

I've had her for 10 years. That's a pretty good chunk of time.

Two weeks ago, she split her tail open.

I. lost. my. shit.

In fairness, this isn't nearly as bad as it sounds like.
Leopard geckos possess a pretty groovy little quirk wherein their tails can fall off whenever they are threatened, like if a predator grabs on to them, they'll often drop their tails which will thrash about pulling attention away from them while they run away.

Nonetheless, I have had this lizard half of my life, so I was rather freaked out.

Immediately, I took her to an emergency clinic since my normal vet is closed on Sundays. It took a couple of hours, but the vets were able to stitch her up.

In honor of my lizard, here's a design:

No article, just squirrels.

Disclaimer: This article contains custom card designs. If you are a Wizards of the Coast employee you have my full permission to use any designs or ideas within this article without my explicit written consent or prior knowledge, or without giving me any sort of credit. I love this game and I want to help it in any way I can.

No article tonight, just a cute design I thought of.

I might do an article about flying in green after this, though.

Lemme know what you think!

Random in Red

Disclaimer: This article contains custom card designs. If you are a Wizards of the Coast employee you have my full permission to use any designs or ideas within this article without my explicit written consent or prior knowledge, or without giving me any sort of credit.

I love this game and I want to help it in any way I can.

Eh, worth a shot.

So today, someone raised an interesting point on Mark Rosewater's (Magic lead designer) tumblr page.

He raises the obvious example that, overwhelmingly, these cards are just bad. The potential to lose what you were digging for in the first place makes almost every red looting spell (before Dark Ascension) not worth it.

I want to discuss the flip side of that coin, the flavor.

I feel that sometimes in concepting cards, especially in core sets, where they are less restricted by setting and culture, that Wizards falls back onto some of the more flanderized aspects of the colors.
In the case of red's random discard, the idea that red is the incarnation of chaos.

While effects that represent some form of chaos are indeed well within red's slice of the color pie, most of the best examples are those that benefit red in some way, by destroying something bothersome, or by forcing the other players to play by your rules. Discarding at random isn't chaotic, it's, well, stupid.

And while red is prone to living down here (points to the base of the head) in the impulse zone! It's by no means stupid. A red mage wouldn't ignore good advice given to it, and it surely wouldn't give away valuable resources given half the chance.

Now I feel there is one key exception to which the random discard works well; Insanity!(well, gambling makes two, actually, but I don't have an article for that, so you're stuck with this.)

The best example of this out right now is Desperate Ravings, you don't get to choose what to keep, because you're going crazy! Brilliant!

I think what I'm trying to say can be summed up rather succinctly; When a red card is given a random effect, it should be because it paints a picture, not because its red.

Here's an example I came up with:

Birthing Pod, Custom card

And here's something special; what I hope to make a recurring thing here on my blog.
Custom card designs.
I'm not sure how clear I've made it so far, but I am passionate about Magic card design, and I would love to do it for a living some day.
When I do it, I'm going to try to make it topical.

In this case, here's a card that I would love to see printed so that I may use it in Birthing Pod.

It's pretty self explanatory. A creature with a death trigger that helps me find what I need.
2/2 might be a touch over the curse for this, but I think it's fair considering it doesn't get you the card you need right away like Diabolic Tutor does.
It does seem pretty darn strong though, I can understand a developer pushing the cost up to 1BBB or 3BB.
Let me know what you think!

SCG Open and Birthing Pod

Yesterday Starcity Games (http://www.starcitygames.com/) held one of their recurring open tournaments near where I live in Atlanta, Georgia. Unfortunately because it kind of snuck up on me, I didn't have the time to readjust my deck to the current meta. Ah well.

Just so you all know, here's what I'm playing right now; what I consider the be the most fun you can have in standard right now. Birthing Pod.

11 Forest
9 Swamp
3 Buried Ruin
1 Woodland Cemetary

4 Viridian Emissary
3 Perilous Myr
2 Phyrexian Rager
1 Glissa the Traitor
2 Solemn Simularcum
2 Phyrexian Metamorph
2 Skinrender
1 Entomber Exarch
2 Acidic Slime
1 Bloodgift Demon
1 Precursor Golem
1 Grave Titan
1 Massacre Wurm
2 Wurcoil Engine
1 Sheoldred, the Whispering One

2 Mortarpod
1 Doom Blade
1 Go For The Throat
2 Mimic Vat
4 Birthing Pod

SIDEBOARD
3 Spellskite
1 Go For the Throat
1 Doom Blade
2 Beast Within
1 Brindle Boar
2 Sylvok Replica
1 Thrun the Last Troll
1 Kessig Cagebreakers
1 Acidic Slime
1 Grave Titan
1 Black Sun's Zenith

Some interesting choices, eh? I'll run you through some of them.

Not enough duals. Mostly because I haven't acquired a set yet. I'm working on it.
I'm not playing Bant-Pod, which is widely considered to be the best Pod archetype. I can't afford that mana-base.
No mana dorks. When I built the deck, it was because my local meta was swarmed with Red Deck Wins and Mono-Black Infect. Gut Shot, Geistflame, Virulent Wound. Basically, playing mana dorks in my local meta wasn't an asset, it was a liability. They would almost never be relevant.
So I cut them. Added more threats. It's actually worked out better in my opinion. Yes, I have less explosive starts, but I feel I have better late game because I have more late game. Try it out if you play Pod.

Viridian Emissary. 4 of in any pod deck. No question.
Perilous Myr. This is pretty good in any Pod deck, but I added a bunch of these guys after the first week I tested this build an opponent played a Mirran Crusader. Owch. This guy helps stem the tide of inevitable failure against Mirran Crusader.
Mortarpod. I have a lot of Aggro in my environment, this is amazing against them. It also has hilarious synergy with my large amount of Deathtouch creatures. I've also gotten into some amazing scenarios with them like having a Mortarpod out when I have a Wurmcoil imprinted onto a Mimic Vat.
So. Tasty.
Glissa the Traitor: I have enough artifacts that she's frequently relevant. Sometimes I cast her just to buy myself some breathing room. You'd be surprised how many decks get shut down by a first strike deathtoucher. Or maybe not.
Mimic Vat. I want some more value. This provides it. I tend to take it out more often than other cards, but it does some amazing (and sometimes winmore) things.

Solemn Simulacrum. Sad Robot. At least 2 of in every pod deck. No questions.
Phyrexian Metamorph. Again, this is an auto-include in any Pod deck. If you're not Metamorphing, you're not doing it right.
Bloodgift Demon. I realized I didn't have much game against decks with loads of flyers (Tempered Steel, for example). This helps that, and it's a great way to pick off enemy Planeswalkers.
Precursor Golem. Another guy that comes out a lot, but is good when it needs to be. There's quite a few decks that don't have the removal to properly remove one of these guys.
Massacre Wurm, Wurmcoil Engine, Grave Titan, Sheoldred. I really hope these are all self-evident.

Spellskite mostly comes in against Wolf Run. Ideally, it stalls me a few turns against the eponymous card while I get my fatties out. And my fatties are much scarier than theirs.
Brindle Boar is against RDW. The best case scenario is you clone it with a Metamorph or imprint it on a Mimic Vat. They don't stand a chance.
Sylvok Replica. Against Tempered Steel.
Thrun. Against counter-heavy decks. He's less than ideal to be honest, since Pod decks tend to tap out almost every turn, which doesn't leave me much room to regenerate Thrun.
Kessig Cagebreakers. Comes in against decks that play the waiting game. Attacking for 18 split across half a dozen plus creatures tends to wrap games up in a hurry.

And thems the basics of my Pod deck. Let me know what you think?