21 Ways to Design a Card: More Cards Based on Aaron's Random Card Comments

I've been running an experiment of designing cards based on the perspectives provided in Aaron's Random Card Comment of the day.

(See here for the previous post.)

21 Ways to Design a Card Part 8: Design an Answer to a Card

I would like to applaud Wizards of the Coast for its epic, brave choice today, announcing to ban Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Stoneforge Mystic.

There are many factors leading up to the dominance of those two cards in Standard. Some of them couldn't be helped, at least with the knowledge at the time. But one of the contributing factors that could have been avoided was the lack of general-purpose answer cards like Pithing Needle to fight problem cards.

In today's post, I'd like to discuss designing cards that answer other cards.

21 Ways to Design a Card: Part 7 — Read R&D Articles

In this series so far, I've often discussed ways to get random stimulus that sparks off free association of some kind. But once you get that stimulus, the direction in which you take that design is often guided by your understanding of what you think is good in a card.

Oftentimes, I'll look at the initial stimulus and see something that connects to a design question I've been thinking about (such as "how do I make mill spells interactive and strategic?"), or a category of fun that I want to cater to, and that guides me to the final design.

When designing cards, it's important to have this sort of perspective on what you think cards should be like.

21 Ways to Design a Card: Part 2d - Hand, Battlefield, and Exile

I've been making cards inspired by game terminology and jargon. Today's cards for the Hand, Battlefield and Exile.