Big Update!Hello people of Deckstats! I have news for you all who’ve been eagerly awaiting it (and for the rest of you too)! I finished the first draft of the set, built a few booster packs and ran a few playtests. It was fun, and I was happy with a lot of the cards I created on their own. However, the set as a whole underwhelmed me...
But WHY?I’m glad you asked, I have a few thoughts on this. First of all, part of it is just the natural
crash of being done with such a large project. For a fair while I always had new ideas and tweaks running through my mind, and labeling the set as “done” took that away. Second of all, labeling it as done was setting myself up to be disappointed, the first draft was never going to be as fun as playing a brand-new set of actual professionally-designed magic, and yet I still hoped it would be in the back of my mind. Third, I had a good approach to card design, but a very bad approach to set design. Only about halfway through did I actually start doing any real math with regards to card type distributions across colors and rarities, tracking average CMCs across card types, etc... And I never even got to tracking specific type of effects. I couldn’t tell you for sure how many ETBs are in the set, how many cards gain life, how many combat tricks there are, how much removal there is, etc... I have a gut feeling about all of these, and I’m sure the answers are buried in my subconscious, but I don’t have them right now. Throw in a whole lot of flavor that feels like it should tie in somewhere else but doesn’t and the
nightmare of balancing the power of five tribes, and I’m pretty close to nowhere. With all that lacking, it’d be incredibly hard to happen upon a well-balanced set that’s comparably fun to play. Still, with all of these problems, I’m proud I managed to grind through this process, the last 50 cards really felt like a slog. My spirit is not broken!
So, now what?I’m glad you asked that too! To be honest, the prospect of going back and doing a giant data-entry grind to document all the info I need makes me want to puke/
Lightning Bolt someone, and I think that while there are good cards in the set, the set as a whole is far enough from balanced that I want to just
cleanse the whole thing and start again. I’ll keep the cards I’ve got designed so I can slot them into the set if they still fit, but I’m going to do a big set design push with as close to 0 specific card design involved as possible. This is how I should’ve started in the first place, but I got caught up in the fun parts of making a set and I forgot to do the actual important bits. This time I’m also starting at common. Coming up with the main characters of the story and overarching themes is great, but I’m going to hold off on turning those into cards until I get through the commons, uncommons, etc... I will try to keep you all updated more regularly this time (perhaps a daily/weekly brief of my progress) as this will also help make sure my ideas are at least organizable enough to put into a post here.
How can I help?Well, first of all, send good vibes my way. Going from the high of designing bomb mythics and rares to slogging through commons to having to enter like 20 data points each for 275 cards to finally playing the cards and being kind of disappointed has left me a bit burnt out, so all positive energy helps! Second, keep the ideas coming. Even those I don’t respond directly to, I read and file for future use. Especially useful are ideas for mechanics or effects that you would like to see again/for the first time. Third of all, let me know your thoughts on the following big mechanics for the set:
BerserkerThis is where it all kind of started and I still like it. At the very least I’m not ready to cut it quite yet. The biggest problem is how to
balance it so that it’s not overpowered at common or meh and rare. I’m also still deciding how many cards I want to even have the ability. It’s not going to be anywhere near the way constellation was for Theros, but maybe something closer to the new heroic cards? In its current form, the berserker ability says:
Berserker X (This creature enters the battlefield with X rage counters. A rage counter may be removed at any time to prevent lethal damage. If this creature would be dealt any damage while it has no rage counters, sacrifice it.)Let me know your thoughts!
MutateThis ability will be in Ikoria, but as of this post we don’t know what it will do. My money is on it granting or removing keywords from cards, perhaps for a mana cost as an activated ability like adapt or maybe as an alternate/additional cost to casting (I’m imagining like a
hydroid krasis that enters with abilities instead of counters). Maybe it’ll even be a flip/transform effect. Once we see a preview I guess we’ll know for sure. For now, though, I want to try to play with it could be like, so here’s what I’ve got:
{x}: Mutate N. This creature gains N of the following abilities chosen at random. Mutate each creature only once and only at any time you could play a sorcery.ChannelThis one is
brand new. It wasn’t in the first draft and it hasn’t been put on any cards yet but I’d like to toy with it a bit. This has the potential to be THE flagship mechanic for the set like landfall for Zendikar or constellation for Theros. Right now it reads
Channel - Whenever N or more lands are tapped for mana to pay for a single spell, X happens.This ability would sometimes do good things, sometimes bad things, sometimes just weird things. Flavor-wise I like how this reflects the untamed nature of mana on the plane and design-wise I feel like I’d have a lot of freedom to just toss in effects since only the trigger is consistent across cards. Rules wise it’s very close to just being a cast trigger right now, but I like the fact that using artifacts or creatures to create your mana helps control the effects of the plane’s kooky mana. I’m also not married to the ability’s name, so I’m definitely taking suggestions on that as well as the actual functionality of the mechanic.
RippleRipple is nothing new, it’s from Coldsnap. I liked it a lot, and I always like number of this card matters effects like
goblin gathering,
rat colony, etc... It reads:
Ripple N (When you cast this spell, you may reveal the top N cards of your library. You may cast any revealed cards with the same name as this spell without paying their mana costs. Put the rest on the bottom of your library.)
You made it this far, yay!Hey, good job, you made it to the end! A few final notes to wrap up this update: Like I said, my spirit is not broken, I’m going to return to the drawing board stronger than ever and start fresh. I’m currently working on becoming an L1 judge so hopefully that’ll make me a better designer as well, but I’m far from having all the information there is to have. Your help (yes, YOU) is always much appreciated. Other stuff I’m working on: considering adding another element to my dev sessions by streaming them on
twitch or something and maybe starting a patreon (probably not a kickstarter since that’d DEFO get me in hot legal waters with wizards) to help finance all the play testing I want to do, eventually commission real art for some cards (not that Pinterest hasn’t been good to me). If you have experience with either of those types of things I’d appreciate any thoughts you have on this kind of endeavor. Enough non-magicky stuff though, thanks again for reading through all this, make sure you check back for more updates.