MOXTOBER - Bones: A Google Sheet Template for Set Skeletons!

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It’s #MTGMoxtober! A month of design prompts for the Magic creatively inclined. Today is October Twelfth, which means the prompt for today is Bones

What do people think about when they think of Bones? Skeletons! And what is the scariest kind of Skeleton? Set Skeletons! 

Today, instead of designing a new Skeleton card, I’ve created a new tool for looking at and designing your own set skeletons in a Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1G5E_Klct4tyHn2eKvgU_5zoCfzWpyaNWpCkkq_cSRKE/

The previous top link for “Set Skeleton Google Sheet” pointed at this template from Flying__Penguin, which this is based on. It’s really useful! However, that template was made 6 years ago for 150 card sets. The updated version reflects the feedback from Maro’s Nuts and Bolts article from last year and the larger size of modern sets, which is far more detailed that the previous version. You can copy this template to use for your own sets

I’ve also included at additional tab that uses Cube April’s brilliant Scryfall google sheets plug in to (more or less) automatically populate a set skeleton that you can view along side the skeleton template provided in the article. This helps you to see where recent sets have deviated from the skeleton in creative ways! 

This document is certainly a work in process, so please let me know how else I can improve the design or how you’re tweaking it to be more useful!

You can find me on Twitter @wobbles

or in the Beacon of Creation discord https://t.co/WXoiKIC1qf?amp=1

Or on my Tumblr where I post other small and cheap game design ideas: brokeboardgames.tumblr.com

Honk! Honk!

The Many Faces of +1/+1 Counters

There are a number of evergreen archetypes that Wizards goes back to when a color pair doesn't have anything in particular it wants to do in a set. These are especially visible in core set Limited environments, which are designed to both teach new players what color combinations usually do and to "reset" enfranchised players back to basics, so to speak. While there are a number of these with enough history to write about – U/R spells, W/B lifegain, and so on – what I wanted to focus on in this article is the +1/+1 counter archetype, which sets itself apart from its coworkers by its flexibility. What we think of as a "counter theme" is actually several themes that happen to use +1/+1 counters, each of which is worth exploring in some depth.

Trading Card Games and the Paradox of Choice

Magic brought with it an enormous boom in the then-new trading card game genre, with dozens of competitors beginning and ending in the 1990s alone. As the genre's solidified, we've seen the benefits (creative) and downsides (largely financial) of having random components and uneven player access to your game. One benefit that I haven't seen talked about, I think because it's subtle, also has something to do with how Magic has an enormous player population for a game of its complexity level – that incomplete
access to components helps dodge the Paradox of Choice.

The Perfect Storm: Vanishing, Allies, Ferocious, and Monarch

 Welcome to the next installment of "The Perfect Storm", a recurring article series where I randomly choose four mechanics rated between 5 and 7 on Mark Rosewater's Storm Scale and write about what environment those mechanics would need to return. This week: Vanishing, Allies, ferocious, and monarch. Check out the first installment of The Perfect Storm here.

The Usual Suspects: The Tapper

Welcome to a new installment in my series, The Usual Suspects. For those who haven't seen the first edition, in The Usual Suspects I take a deep dive into a card archetype that has seen repeated designs across Magic's history and analyze its purpose, its variants, and what makes it good (or bad). This week: One of the most archetypal white effects, the tapper – a creature that can tap itself to tap one of your opponent's creatures.

Don't Make Me Think

Part of being a good game designer involves knowing when to do things your players don't like. Sometimes this is because your responsibility is to give players enough challenges that they have fun while suffering at the same time; sometimes this is because you genuinely know better than your players in how to give them a fun time. There are many cases where you can't give players what they say they want because it will make the game worse for them in practice: In this article, I argue that although people say they want more control and decision points in Magic, Magic's lack of them compared to other trading card games is what has made the game both highly accessible and long-lasting.

Designing for the Kitchen Table

Common knowledge among those who pay attention to Magic design is that the most-played format isn't really a format: It's "kitchen table" or "cards I own", where casual Magic players assemble decks from the cards they have on hand and slam them against each other. However, there hasn't been much of a discussion about what it actually means to design for kitchen table Magic. Let's take this opportunity to explore the implications of truly casual Magic formats and what that means for design teams.

The Perfect Storm: Rally, Adventure, Manifest, and Adamant

 Mark Rosewater's Storm Scale is an unofficial measurement for how likely a certain mechanic is to appear in an upcoming set. He has described in detail what every numerical rating from 1 (evergreen mechanics) to 10 (broke the game in half the first time) means; many of the ratings in the middle are things that "require the right environment" in order to return, but their return is plausible. This made me realize: Wouldn't evaluating exactly what these mechanics would require to come back be excellent knowledge for Magic design scholars?

Welcome to the first in my new series: The Perfect Storm. I have collected every mechanic worth writing about that were rated a 5 ("We need to find the right place to bring it back, but I'm optimistic"), 6 ("We need to find the right place to bring it back, but I'm a little less optimistic"), or 7 ("It's unlikely to return, but possible if the right environment comes along") on the Storm Scale as of 2020. Each installment, I will select four of these mechanics at random and write about what environment they would actually need in order to be reprinted. I ended up with rally, adventure, manifest, and adamant for my first outing – let's get cracking.

Magic: The Removing

For a long time, many Magic players advised players just getting into limited formats to follow the heuristic "BREAD". After bombs – the absolute strongest cards in a set, that could singlehandedly change a losing game into a come-from-behind victory – the acronym recommended that players draft removal.

Although BREAD is better used as a vehicle for butter and jam than as a Magic strategy, the fact remains that removal is the cornerstone of Magic by providing a necessary element of interactivity and allowing players to affect each others' plans. Entire colors are frequently made or broken by how strong their removal performs. However, while there have been plenty of set breakdowns based on their removal spells, I have not yet seen a breakdown of general removal effects at common in modern Magic and what they need to be effective. That's what this article intends to fix, color-by-color.

The Usual Suspects: The Green 4/4 for 4

Welcome to the beginning of what I expect will be a recurring segment on Goblin Artisans. In The Usual Suspects, I will analyze a card archetype common across multiple sets, exploring its history, variants, and value to the game. This week's suspect: The ruler of stats for the cost, the green 4/4 for 4.

Tibalt's Bag of Tricks

Tibalt's Trickery caught the eye of the Magic player base as soon as it was revealed. It was a counterspell in red, something that hadn't been heard of before; not only that, the rest of the text was exceptionally bizarre, involving milling, random decisions, and Chaos Warp effects. While it looks like it was added at random, this text is Wizards' best attempt at preventing abuse while maintaining a smooth pace of gameplay. But is it the optimal decision, and what else could have been used instead? Let's find out together.

Memorizing MDFCs: Kaldheim Edition

This is the second edition of my series on the inherent memory issues with modal double-faced cards and how different sets resolve them in different ways. Part 1, on Zendikar Rising, can be read here. I also wrote a companion piece for my personal game blog about why memorizing things in tabletop games is often a slog.

Designing for Spike

This is the third article in my series of designing for player psychographics. I encourage you to read my articles about Timmy/Tammy and Johnny/Jenny, as well.

Designing for Johnny and Jenny

This article is the second of my three-part article series about designing for the Magic player psychographics. Check out the one about Timmy and Tammy, as well!

Designing for Timmy and Tammy: Reloaded

A couple years ago (gross, I can't believe it was a couple years ago) I wrote an article about designing for the player psychographic Timmy/Tammy. I decided to get around to writing the other two psychographic articles, but I'm a bit unhappy with the previous article because I felt like I made some points for the sake of being contrarian. This is the redo of that article.

Signpost Uncommons: A Critique

Besides New World Order, the largest structural change to Magic sets in the last 10 years is the introduction of "signpost uncommons," two-colored uncommons that mark the particular archetype those two colors are associated with. This comes alongside a larger shift in set design from looser draft archetypes to tighter two-color pair strategies (which I will call "the signpost uncommon system".) This has become so ubiquitous that Limited Resources begins every set evaluation by looking at the signpost uncommon cycle. My issue isn't with this structure on its own, but its use in every set, which unnecessarily constrains Magic sets and limits their potential to be great formats.

Memorizing MDFCs: Zendikar Rising Edition

Zendikar Rising was the first set to introduce modal double-faced cards (MDFCs), cards that had two sides where each could be cast from your hand. MDFCs offer a unique challenge to designers through the memory problems they naturally create, but also represent innovations in reinforcing player recall. This is the first article in a three-part series about how Magic R&D designed MDFCs to get around their inherent memory issues.

The Three Immutable Laws of Magic Design

One of Magic's defining features is its mutability. Every format and every set brings with it new opportunities for players to redefine the game. Mark Rosewater calls this process of constant renewal and discovery "Crispy Hashbrown Theory" and posits that it's one of Magic's core strengths. While I generally agree with this, I have two objections. The first is that hashbrowns aren't the best example of a breakfast food you get sick of partway through and that it should be called "Pancake Theory" instead. The second is that while constant change is the lifeblood of the game, Magic has a set of qualities that should never be changed, no matter how weird or experimental you're getting. These are the three immutable laws of Magic design.

Impact Tremors

My defining guideline for game design is impact. Broadly speaking, impact is how much a game sticks with you: How much you remember a game after you played it ("that was a good game" versus "I blew up an alien spaceship with my kicks"), how excited it makes you, and how much you want to tell the stories of the game to your friends. Well-designed games don't necessarily need impact, but a good game without impact is dry, inaccessible, and hard to pitch to your gaming group. I make sure that every game I design is as impactful as possible.

Until now, my writing on impact has focused on general/"hobby" games because my game company's blog is aimed at a general audience who might not know that much about Magic. This article views impact through the lens of Magic design: What makes individual cards, and Magic as a whole, impactful, and defining guidelines for creating more impactful cards.

Note: Impact is a subjective topic, so your experience with what cards you find memorable may differ from mine. I hope this article provides you with something even if you disagree with the examples.

Bad Cards For Life

Why do bad cards happen to good people?