Knowledge from the Helvault (Part One)

Though you may have come to Magic design as an extension of previous and/or concurrent game design experience, one of the more challenging aspects of designing for this particular game is that much of what we consider to be "good design" is defined in less-than-equal parts by:

• Personal play-style / psychographic profile
• General game design philosophy
• Awareness of what Wizards of the Coast tells us is good design

It's this last quality that might be the most uniquely troublesome: having access to the actual designers and developers of the game is often a boon to our productivity, but it can also lead us to false conclusions and rigid behaviors, because as educational as Mark Rosewater and company can be, they can never give us the combination to the safe. So while we're operating from the perspective that the most recently released set is the One True Document and the Word of MaRo is absolute, each spoiler season has a habit of betraying our dogma.

It is with that in mind that I'd like to take a look at what we know of Avacyn Restored and pay attention to the designs and themes that are reshaping some of my design philosophy and get us all thinking about what the set might suggest about our future in Magic design.

M13 Trajectories: Sirensong Rapture

This is a series where I pick a card from our fan M13 set and discuss how the design changed during the design process.

Today's card started out like this:

The Magic Ecosystem

Zac Hill's article today revealing Cavern of Souls and Ian's discussion of same both relate to and expand upon a conversation that has been bubbling up for many years. I touched the tip of this iceberg a few months ago when I wondered if removal shouldn't cost more.

For the first decade of Magic's existence, spells were largely better than creatures. Wizards R&D has been trying to make the game more fun to play. Because players will play what is strong, regardless of how fun it is, they are now trying to make what is fun strong. Creatures and combat are (arguably) the heart of the game, so players will have more fun playing if creatures are better and combat happens more often.

Learning Duel Masters (1)

I've been curious about Duel Masters since I first heard it existed, but I've already got a CCG addiction and how could anything compete with Magic? So I've never checked it out. Even so, little nuggets have dribbled down through Magic articles highlighting some interesting differences.

This biggest is that there is no land, you can play any spell in your hand upside-down in place of a land. In Magic terms, all spells have "Exile CARDNAME from your hand: Put a basic land card that produces mana of this card's color onto the battlefield from outside the game." That's huge. You will never be land-screwed or land-flooded (though mana-screw is still possible, if you try real hard or get particularly unlucky). I'm concentrating on differences, but it's helpful context to know that Duel Masters has five colors that align directly to Magic's.

M13 Trajectories: Brain-Eating Zombies

Welcome to M13 Trajectories, where I pick a card from Goblin Artisans' fan M13 design files and discuss how it changed over the course of design.

Oftentimes, card designs go through many twists and turns until they become something different in the end. Today, I'd like to talk about two cards whose flavor changed through the design process for one reason or another. The first one is:

M13 Trajectories: Balefire Phoenix

Welcome to M13 Trajectories, where I pick a card from Goblin Artisans' M13 design files and discuss how it changed over the course of design. In our work on this virtual M13, many cards were completely transformed from their original design through the contributions of multiple people. I think it would be fun to follow the different iterations they went through. Today, I'd like to talk about a card that began its life like so:

CCDD 041012—Sunset Veil + Sunset Field

Cool Card Design of the Day
4/10/2012 - I was reading Steve Sadin's article about drafting black-white in Innistrad, and that you have to choose one color to be dominant so that you're not looking at two plains and a pair of Highborn Ghouls in your hand, and as I often do, that made me wonder if we could make some cards to change the exclusivity of CC cards for a while.