Custom Magic Designs part 1
I began playing Magic: the Gathering in paper back in 2017 at the Aether Revolt pre-release, but I’d played Duels of the Planeswalkers and other digital offerings like Magic 2015 so I was familiar with the game. Shortly thereafter (relatively speaking) in 2018 began the Great Designer Search 3 (GDS3), which was my first foray into Magic card design. This event sparked my interest in game design in earnest. I wanted to highlight some of my favorite card designs and mechanics that I’ve brewed up over the years. I also have a full set I’ve been working on, but the more I look at it the more I think the basic premise is flawed and the main mechanics aren’t all that fun. So it goes. For this first installment, I’ll go over 10 designs and mechanics, discussing their inspiration and comment on how they fit into current Magic design.
One note is that for some of my card designs I’ve begun to add AI-generated art so that there is at least some visual appeal to them. For these cards I’ve used CrAIyon, but I’m sure there are other image-generating tools I could be using. A second note is that some card names will have letters in front, these are card codes from the design skeleton (see Mark Rosewater’s Nuts & Bolts article, and check out the rest of the series if you’re interested in Magic card/set design) and I’ve left them in.
#1. Cyclonic Rift variants
Unsurprisingly, as a Blue-White-based person/player, I am a Cylconic Rift apologist in Commander. One issue is that there are no cards that are similar enough substitutes, so I aimed to make some “fixed” Cyclonic Rift variants. The issues with Rift and the reasons why its would-be substitutes fall short warrant their own article (to be linked if I remember to write it and also update this). One key aspect of Rift replacements is that they should be instant-speed, another is that they must bounce many different permanents to remain relevant in Commander. I designed 3 variants using different existing mechanics/templating: Multikicker, Escalate, and Strive.
I wanted to keep the cost in the 5-8 mana range, which feels reasonable for potentially one-sided board wipes (mass bounce effects are technically soft board wipes, but Blue makes do with what it has). The variants can accomplish the same thing in different ways, bouncing everyone equally or all permanents of specific types. Numbers 1 and 3 are technically more comparable to River’s Rebuke, which is one of the best substitutes for Cylconic Rift (in my opinion). Regardless, the point of this design is that existing mechanics can be leveraged to create powerful pseudo-board wipes comparable to Cylconic Rift, which could allow Blue Commander players to make more interesting card choices during deckbuilding. Or it would just allow them to play multiple Rift effects (a control player’s dream) until the Rules Committee bans the OG Rift.
#2. Deepmine Transport and Solo Driller (AKA Clown Car and Unicycle)
One of the GDS3 challenges was to create cards that would fit into the fictional plane of Bigtopia. This was a top-down challenge in which designers selected 8 of 25 provided card names with a circus theme. I didn’t score high enough on the test to get past the first round of GDS3 (though I did get the infamous Flying+Vigilance question correct), but I used subsequent rounds as inspiration and design exercises. In this case I took Clown Car and Unicycle to create some interesting vehicles. I recall at the time there was a lot of discussion whether Unicycle would be best as an equipment or vehicle, but my “clever” solution to this conundrum was restricting activation of the crew ability.
I repurposed these designs for my underground/mining set, renaming Clown Car to Deepmine Transport and Unicycle to Solo Driller. Both designs care about how many times the vehicle is crewed. Deepmine Transport gives you a 2:3 payoff in power, which could certainly be pushed to 2:2 in this day and age, but I was cautious with my early designs. I have since learned that it’s best to start strong and scale back on a card later. Regardless, the point is that the Deepmine Transport gets stronger based on how many times you’ve crewed it, making it a variable threat. Vehicle design space hasn’t really explored multiple crew activations and payoffs for activating that ability multiple times. Other payoffs could include “draw X cards” or “deal X damage” where X is the number of times the crew cost was paid that turn. But for a Clown Car, it felt right to buff the vehicle based on how many creatures you fit inside it.
In contrast to Deepmine Transport, Solo Driller can only be crewed once per turn. Now that I’m reviewing it, I realize there is no real reason to crew it multiple times per turn anyway. That said, Luxurious Locomotive from Outlaws of Thunder Junction restricts the crew ability to once per turn, but actually has a reason behind that restriction. Solo Driller is more of a flavor restriction, which is a good lesson that ideally there should be a gameplay purpose behind your design decisions.
#3. Tunneler
Vehicles in general act as pseudo armor for your creatures, and they have a lot of available tuning knobs. Most importantly the ratio of the crew cost to the vehicle’s power. As such, vehicles with a higher crew cost than their power intrigue me. Tunneler is the simplest implementation of this concept: tap a stronger creature to deal a lower amount of guaranteed damage. When balancing this for a set, you can adjust both the crew cost and the vehicle’s power to find the perfect ratio of acceptable damage. As mentioned above, vehicles can be considered armor for your creatures in that they get into combat while your creature sits back, tapped. Because of this advantage, losing some power is not a bad tradeoff. Vehicles with power less than or equal to their crew cost tend to have other beneficial effects, though they are few and far between. Conqueror’s Galleon is the best example, but I think this is an underexplored design space for vehicles.
Other advantages that players might be willing to trade off power/damage for include evasion, card advantage, direct damage, or removal. I’m sure the designers at WotC could come up with even more ideas I wouldn’t even imagine, and I hope they try.
#4. Co-Pilot
To cap off this vehicle-heavy section is one of my favorite pet designs. Aether Revolt was the first paper set I played, and I thought the inventor’s paradise of Kaladesh was spectacular when I joined the game. There are still very few creatures that benefit from crewing a vehicle, but I think, especially since vehicles are deciduous, there is a sizeable design space to explore. The set itself would have to be pretty vehicle-heavy to justify it as a main mechanic, but it could also be the theme of a single commander deck.
This design originated from one of the GDS3 challenges. In this one, designers were tasked with creating a pack of cards from an old set, with restrictions like having proper color and rarity balance. I went with Kaladesh, and one of my favorite designs was this Dwarf Pilot who comes with a Servo pal. The idea is that a 0-power creature doesn’t contribute to the crew cost of a vehicle, but could still be beneficial if it provided some other ability. Three cards in Kaladesh do this: Gearshift Ace, Speedway Fanatic, and Veteran Motorist. However, none have 0 power, but I think it’s an interesting design.
Based on these three existing cards, Co-Pilot (or maybe his Servo friend) should have Vigilance. Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty added Pilot tokens that crew vehicles as if they had +2 power, which is an interesting way to support vehicles. I’d like to see more Pilot creatures with different ways of interacting with vehicles.
#5. Only twice each turn
This is an ability restriction I’ve been using for a while now, and I’m glad to see that Wizards of the Coast has embraced it as well. Nadu, Winged Wisdom goes all-in with it, too, granting abilities that only trigger twice per turn to all your creatures. When using it in my designs, I was unsure if there was some issue where “only twice each turn” wouldn’t work within the rules of Magic, but I didn’t see any reason it wouldn’t. Turns out I was correct, so that’s edifying.
One benefit of “only twice each turn” is that obviously two is greater than one, and many abilities these days are restricted to “once each turn,” much to the chagrin of Johnny players. Getting two activations/triggers per turn is much more palatable when you’re trying to gain incremental value in Commander. Even if you’re typically only getting the effect once per turn anyway, the potential to get another activation/trigger feels good to have in your back pocket. This restriction can prevent these effects from going infinite, and you can even get a different or upgraded effect on the second trigger. Some examples I’ll provide are also two new takes on Eminence abilities, effects that work when your Commander is in the Command Zone or on the battlefield. These were inspired by Gavin Verhey’s March of the Machine Commander teasers, one of which was “a new card with Eminence.” I don’t think Eminence abilities are inherently broken, they can be quite tame especially if they are restricted by number of triggers per turn or there is a mana cost on the ability.
I ended up creating a cycle of 10 three-color legendaries with Eminence abilities (explored further in their own article), but these two restricted their activations to twice per turn. The first is Abzan (white-black-green) and is a nod to Ghave, Guru of Spores. You gain life up to twice per turn, and if you have the requisite sac outlets and creatures you can gain up to 16 life per turn cycle in a four-player pod. This softens the blow of the 7 life cost of the second ability, which can be activated at instant speed and thus up to four times per turn cycle. A 0-mana ability can be dangerous, so I went with the more restrictive “once each turn.”
The second example is Jeskai (white-blue-red) and is similar to Kykar, Wind’s Fury except it triggers on every player’s noncreature spells. This legendary is a lifegain build-around that benefits from doing spellslinger things. The last ability is a hefty cost but gives you a decent incentive to actually cast your Commander. This is one aspect of Eminence on Commanders that helps to balance them: you need an incentive to actually cast it. I play Inalla and if I ever cast her it means I’m in dire straits, but her last ability could technically be useful to close out games. All current Eminence Commanders (including Oloro) have an ability that is active while on the battlefield, so that incentive exists.
But remember that this section is about “twice each turn” triggers and the great benefits they can provide. Terrain Grinder has a requirement before you can access the activated ability (literal Threshold), which means you may not have access to it as soon as you cast the card. The second ability gives you temporary keywords, and you can only choose up to two each turn. Hexproof is the only one relevant on your opponents’ turns, but you are able to protect it on your turn as well while also giving it combat-relevant keywords. I think adding a fourth keyword would make such an ability even more interesting, but it would have to be something relevant on your opponents’ turns like Flying or Lifelink. One issue for this design in particular is that it is meant to be a colorless artifact slot, so that restricts which keywords are available. Regardless, I think it is a good example of an ability where restriction to one or two activations per turn makes for an interesting choice. You can leave up two mana to threaten the Hexproof mode, but then you’re giving up either Trample or Vigilance when you want to swing with it and push damage through.
#6. Delayed Blast Fireball variants
A lot of my individual card designs are inspired by Mark Rosewater and Gavin Verhey’s set teasers. For Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate, one of Gavin’s hints was simply “a card named ‘Delayed Blast Fireball’.” There are a lot of potential mechanical implications here. My first thought went to Suspend and Rebound, but the actual implementation used Foretell and cared about casting the spell from exile (a great addition to my Nassari deck). Based on the name, this sounded like a powerful spell that would take some time to cast in D&D, thus I favored sorcery-speed effects. I came up with 3 variants that vary quite wildly.
The first design used Rebound and cared that it was not cast from hand, which ended up being close to the actual design so I’ll take a couple points for that. In this case, the spell casts once for 3 damage, then again on your next upkeep for 6. “If this spell was not cast from your hand” is probably not the proper rules text, it could be “If this spell was cast from anywhere other than your hand” instead. Regardless, if you manage to cast the first half from somewhere else, it’ll deal 6 and 6 again, which is not a bad rate for 3 mana. It should probably not be able to target opponents directly at that rate. But since CLB was a Commander-specific set, I balanced the cost and damage for players starting with 40 life rather than 20.
The second used Suspend, with a similar restriction to some Planar Chaos cards that the X in the suspend cost can’t be 0 (see Aeon Chronicler). This design was also inspired in part by Lightning Storm, where the spell charges up before it resolves. In practice it could be a little confusing to have Time counters ticking down while another counter ticks up on the same suspended spell. Still, it results in a powerful damage effect, and I increased the multipliers (2 damage per counter) and number of targets to make this more playable in commander. I likely overshot on that, but that’s something that could be tweaked later.
The third is more of a rattlesnake effect, or a pre-emptive removal spell. 8 damage is a lot for 3 mana, but Red’s creature removal is mainly damage-based so sometimes it has to be a little excessive (see Star of Extinction or Blasphemous Act). I chose to use the wording “any creature or planeswalker” rather than “target” because I believe that would allow you to choose the target as the ability resolves, and you wouldn’t have to select a target upon casting. To prevent this from slowing the game to a halt, I opted not to make this a “may” ability, so the first enemy source of damage triggers the fireball. In this way, the caster isn’t second-guessing whether or not to trigger the blast, plus triggering on the first instance of damage feels fitting for Red’s impulsive nature.
Of the three, my favorite design is the first, since getting a benefit for casting a spell from outside your hand creates an incentive to find wacky interactions. For example if you manage to foretell the card, give it flashback, or hit it with an impulsive draw effect. The built-in Rebound gives you a guaranteed way to trigger the synergy, of course. In retrospect, all three probably should only target creatures/planeswalkers or I should tweak the cost:damage ratio.
#7. Blinding Blink
This is a very recent design, and I’m showing the second variant because it is much cleaner in my opinion. Vaguely inspired by the upcoming Modern Horizons 3 set (maybe Dog Umbra? Such a flavor win) and my proclivity for ETB value, I dreamt up a blink spell that doubles as removal. The baseline 2 mana mode can remove an opponent’s blocker temporarily, but if you have the extra mana you can exile it forever. There are a few blink spells that can double as removal, such as Settle Beyond Reality which explicitly gives you both modes, but at the steep cost of 5 mana at sorcery-speed.
I looked at alternates to Kicker, but it is such an elegant mechanic, especially for this kind of effect. I considered Cleave, but Cleave forces you to adjust the wording to make the card work properly (and Cleave was unpopular amongst the non-designer Magic population). Blinding Blink reads similarly to the Mastery cycle from Strixhaven which could be cast for an alternate cost (see Baleful Mastery) but benefit your opponent. You sacrifice value for tempo, but that flexibility makes for interesting decision-making in-game.
I believe “unless this spell was kicked” could work within the rules, though it hasn’t been used technically. I think the design is concise and as a Kicker spell it could probably fit into a lot of sets without any flavor considerations.
#8. Toxic Touch
Another design from the GDS3, this one was part of the art-based challenge where you designed color-balanced cards based on 10 of 12 art pieces. This one looked like it could be an aura, and I was fascinated by the idea of an aura that reduced a creature’s power but gave it deathtouch. In creature combat this effectively gives you infinite power. But because it technically reduces a creature’s power, it could be played on an opponent’s flying or unblockable threat that you couldn’t otherwise deal with. Flexibility is always good to have in a design, and obscure corner cases are fun too. I think I may have initially had this in Green, but while both Green and Black use deathtouch, negative power auras are in Black’s wheelhouse.
There are few if any auras that have a tradeoff like this, namely reducing power to gain a keyword ability or some other beneficial effect. I think this should be explored more, and I envision more auras like this would have the added benefit of a low mana cost. I see them as similar to spells that require you to sacrifice permanents as part of the cost, only in this case you’re sacrificing your creature’s power.
#9. Metaphysical Anchor and the Heavy/Anchored mechanic
In response to the animosity against Cyclonic Rift, I wanted to come up with a mechanic that would prevent opponents from bouncing your permanents. I believe this wording elegantly captures my intention without accidentally making the permanent indestructible. I also believe that this could be keyworded as “Anchored” or “Heavy” and players would intuitively understand that such permanents are going to stick around barring destruction effects.
It’s a somewhat narrow form of protection, however. “Hexproof from Blue” would accomplish the same thing in most cases, but this is more interesting and feels stronger when you play it. Initially there might be some rules concerns but based on rules 120.6 and 704.5g, damage marked on a creature that meets or exceeds its toughness will destroy the creature as a state-based effect (704.5h concerns deathtouch damage, any amount of which will destroy the creature). Thus combat or noncombat damage will destroy an Anchored creature, as will reducing its toughness to 0 with -X/-X effects.
This still allows opponents to flicker the creature to remove auras and equipment, but if you’re playing a Voltron strategy this will save your creature from Leadership Vacuum and other Unsummon effects. See, I design both alternatives to Cyclonic Rift and protections from them.
#10. Discard 1, Draw 2, then Discard 1
Another of my pet mechanics is “discard 1, draw 2, discard 1,” I think it’s a fun combination of Rummaging (discard 1, then draw 1; usually based in Red) and Looting (draw 1, then discard 1; usually based in Blue). Lifeless Looting is a reference to Faithless Looting, a classic Loot effect, with some lifegain prevention tacked on. This is also unique since it is the ETB ability of an enchantment rather than a standalone instant/sorcery like Faithless Looting or Faithless Salvaging. I like when permanent spells mimic effects typically found on instants and sorceries, since this allows them to have persistent effects (in this case lifegain prevention).
This effect could find a home in Blue and/or Red and provides an extra layer of decision-making compared to “draw 2, then discard 2” and “discard 2, then draw 2.” Would this work within the rules of Magic? I believe so, since the initial discard will typically be part of the cost, then you get 2 new cards, then you discard just 1 at the end. Is it better than frontloading the discards or frontloading the draws? Obviously it’s halfway between the two; being able to draw 2 and see all your potentially available cards is the best option when you want to plan your moves. So it is not better than Looting, but it is an upgrade to Rummaging. It may be the case that it is unnecessarily complicated for not much gain, but it feels like a fun variant to the existing Looting and Rummaging paradigm when drawing and discarding multiple cards at once.
Those are the first 10 of some of my favorite Magic mechanics and card designs that I’ve come up with over the past 6 years. I have plenty more that are interesting and inspired, along with a fair amount of draft chaff and mechanics that don’t quite work. Hopefully you found these cards interesting and the design discussion intriguing. If so or if not, I’m always up to discuss Magic design if you’re interested!
