In General: Design by Request

Welcome to In General, the column where we discuss just about anything relating to the game of Magic. A couple of weeks ago I wrote about designing your own cards to fill specific holes in your Cube designs. The example I used in that article was a Black Disenchant. This was meant mostly as a challenge for players to think outside the box, consider design principles objectively, and take some initiative in crafting great experiences for your cube.

I want to make the point that I don't necessarily condone going off the rails and just making your own cards all willy-nilly. You might as well invent your own game at that rate. But at the same time, I think of all the great things that the community has contributed to the game: Invitational cards, You Make the Card promotions, the new outsider designs in M15. New formats like Cube, Winston draft, and Commander - some of my favorite things about Magic didn't come from Wizards at all. From that perspective, there is definitely room to create new experiences, especially in a format as unique and personal as Cube.

Since writing that previous article, The Disillusion Problem, I have been asked the same question many times in my personal life. My friends and readers all wanted to know some variation of the same thing: "What 'fake' cards do you think need to be a part of your Cube?"

That is a tough question to answer because in theory, all possibilities are correct, and those possibilities are infinite, it is just a question of finding the correct place to apply your design. Once you have looked thoroughly at your format and decided conclusively that something is missing, it should be obvious what effect you need to fill that hole.

What I just said requires one to think about a specific context. Which would inherently preclude me from thinking about any of these cards in a vacuum. All design is bad in a vacuum. Context provides the constraints that allow for the possibility of good design. Without that these are just some random cards that don't exist. Look at this meaningless collection of meaningless things!

I was always enamored with the card Fluctuator. Not because it was particularly good, but because it didn't do what I thought it should do. Mental Discipline was a Blue card in the same block and this always struck me as odd. Cycling is in every color. Why then, is the ability to cycle any card in your hand Blue? For mechanical reasons, I always thought this should be colorless. For flavor reasons, I thought it should be a machine, and thus an Artifact, instead of an Enchantment. The name I wanted to use however, was taken, so I had to simply reference it.


Duress has been printed a dozen or so times. There have been approximately a hundred variants of it. Why then, has there never been a spellshaper that produces the Duress effect? There are nearly a hundred spellshapers that create functional copies of all sorts of cards. I find it strange and dissatisfying that this isn't a real thing.

Also, Glengarry Glen Ross is a sweet movie.


I alluded to this design gap in my previous article. I see the formation of a super-cycle that gives each color access to its own version of this effect at the same converted mana cost, all at instant-speed. I don't see why not.


Brian David-Marshall once wrote an article that simultaneously lamented the fact that this card does not exist and predicted that it would never see print in the future. I can agree with his sentiments on both accounts. Many would find this card disturbing given the current direction that Wizards is taking Magic in. Remember though, in the early years of the game, there was no Negate, there was only Remove Soul. It was that way for many, many years. During those times it would have been equally sacrilegious to print Spell Pierce.


As you can see, many of these card ideas harken back to an earlier point in the game's history. It would be impossible to print this in modern Magic, but in the early days, things like this were quite common. It never sat right with me that only Blue and Red got elemental blasts. Particularly when Black and White are the colors where players would be most familiar with this archetypal hero/villain dichotomy.

It would be equally awkward to print 'WEB' and 'BEB', and then leave only Green out. It would be most awkward however, to give Green a card that counters spells and destroys permanents. Two things that, at the time, were completely outside of Green's color pie.

It is clear in modern design that this would be a Green card. Keep in mind though, that during the early years of the game Red blew up the lands, Red punished playing nonbasics, Red rewarded you for playing Creatures. It took years of design work to change peoples minds on this issue. When I first saw Silence in Mirrodin era standard, I was curious about what it would look like in other colors and, at that time, this iteration could very easily have been Red. Perhaps, a symmetrical effect like: This turn, players may not cast noncreature spells.'




There was a large theme in Magic for about the first five or so years that there were ways to change things about cards. Spells like Deathlace or Whim of Volrath were quite common. This is a new twist on an old idea. One that has fallen far out of favor in design because of its complexity and lack of intuitive conveyance. The current game though, would make this a very interesting card, given the new card types that have been created and the new interactions you can create with them.

Well there you go. I showed you some more fake cards. I think that is what you guys really wanted all along. There is no real way to establish that these are good or bad designs. Similarly I can't advocate including them in any design file because every format is different. Every designer has different goals. Every set has different needs. I cannot simply say, these should be in Cubes, because that statement is inherently flawed.

I hope you have been enjoying M15 spoilers. You can look forward to full coverage including set reviews and in-depth card analysis of all the Legendary Creatures in the set coming up in the next few weeks, so stay tuned to the blog.

-GG