M13 Party with Top Down

I was originally going to make the next major group task a discussion about the strategies and sub-themes we should enable within and across colors, but Mr. Marques' article about our project prompted another idea that should be both fun and productive. He explained that the first thing R&D does when designing a new core set is to choose the reprints (which we've already mostly done informally) but the second thing is to brainstorm a mess of resonant top-down cards. Such is the genesis of recent core set homeruns like Reassembling Skeleton, Prized Unicorn and Ice Cage. We haven't really done that yet.

I don't remotely regret the route we've taken so far (and I'm not sure it wasn't better, at least for our purposes), but I am sure there's still quite a bit to be gained from that exercise. Doing it now can help inform the upcoming thematic discussion. I hope that those of you who have been reading along casually with us will participate on this one. I want to see well-known fantasy tropes represented on resonant cards. Remember, if your audience sees your card and thinks "cool, that's exactly what a centaur would look like on a card," it's resonant and probably top-down. If they see it and think "that's a neat ability, I'd like to play with that," it's probably a bottom-up/mechanical design. There's nothing wrong with bottom-up design, but we've already got plenty from the skeleton and plenty more will come during development.

Try this: Make a list of cool things you've read or seen in a Fantasy book or movie. Go through the list and find the things that haven't been done to death and try to imagine what that thing would like as a Magic card. It often helps to identify the core elements that make that thing special. It doesn't have to be a creature. It could be a spell, a place, a magic item or even an event. One example:

Cyclops. They've been done a few times in Magic, but not too often. People expect a Cyclops to be big (bigger than a human but smaller than a giant), dumb, one-eyed and a little emotional (they're very sensitive about their monocled nature). A red 3/3 feels like the right place to start and I seem to recall that's what most have been so far. We could focus on the eye. If Two-Headed Giant of Foriys can block more creatures than normal, maybe our cyclops can block fewer, but Hulking Cyclops has been there already. Tar Pit Warrior sort of covers the easily-blinded (to death) approach. Let's investigate their emotional nature. Maybe they're easily provoked. Bloodrock Cyclops and Ekundu Cyclops seem to have the simple executions of that concept handled.

What else do Cyclopes do? I visualize one uprooting a tree and swinging it as a club. Not sure why, but let's trust that for a moment. How would we do that? Trees come in two forms in Magic: Treefolk and Forests. The former is not what we're looking for so this Cyclops needs to care about Forests. He could sacrifice them for temporary power boosts or for +1/+1 counters, but that feels like a lumberjack. This is kind of a natural fit for Lair.


That feels decently resonant but not amazing. Not worth pushing for another implementation of Forest Lair when our competition is Kird Ape. Let's look at how Odysseus defeated the Cyclops. They tricked him into a stupor and used a big old log to jab his eye out (that might explain my tree association). On a card, I feel like we're giving our opponents a way to turn their equipment into a serious weapon. Putting that on a card, well, it fits the story okay, but it just reads quite strangely and doesn't make all that much sense as a card.

Okay, forget about what they did after he was asleep, maybe we can focus on the Cyclops' drinking problem. What does he do all day? He smashes, he drinks and then he sleeps. Kind of a nice, simple life in some ways... Er, I mean, what a bastard!

This build is pretty straight-forward:

Where do we find Cyclopes? They live in rocky caves (aka Mountains) on Islands (aka Islands). We could make an actual Mountain Lair or Island Lair card here. Mountain Lair is redundant on a red card and I'm terrified to think about what a blue Cyclops would be up to. (Apart from trying to philosophize his way back into normal society.) A red Cyclops with Island Lair, on the other hand, could work. I found this picture of one throwing a rock at a boat.Throwing, eh? If only there were something red and blue have both done that could represent that.

None of these are brilliant. Frankly, half of them are terrible. But that's the life of a designer. You can't be afraid to fail and you can't overvalue ideas. I'm only going to choose the best among these to share as an actual submission and I'd say the Apes of Rath execution is the only printable one: It's simple, respectful of the color-pie and doesn't stretch the choices we've already made for Lair. Honestly, most top-down designs shouldn't use Lair at all since it's primarily a bottom-up mechanic. Is Drunken Cyclops good enough to take a slot in M13? Maaaybe. If we find something better to replace it, everyone wins.

Post your submissions on the wiki in the top-down design submissions section. I'll select the best with the help of my design team and your opinions. Don't just spam us with everything you can think of. I showed the four cards above to demonstrate process, not as an example submission. It's also important to remember that everything submitted on this site or in the google docs associated with it is public property. Anyone, especially Wizards of the Coast, can print them and owes the original author nothing. We're not here for profit or glory, but for fun and learning: If someone from Seattle should happen upon a few of our designs and decide to print them, all the better.

Now go, my wayward minions! Design and conquer!