(orig. published Dec. 27, 2023)
This project started as a simple idea:
“I want to create new Magic cards I can play with friends, based on the world and characters of our shared D&D campaign.”
I knew this would be a massive undertaking, but at first, I didn’t know HOW massive. A blank canvas can be a terrifying thing, so I set off researching and defining scope. This brought me to several realizations, which became my guiding pillars to start making cards…
1. This will need to be an entirely self-contained set.
I do not have professional design and balance teams at my disposal. Rather than attempt to slot my cards in with 30+ years of existing Magic, I knew my best chance of creating fun, playable cards was to keep them self-contained. However! This meant I also needed to commit to a full-sized set, to ensure there’s a deep enough pool for a proper sealed/draft experience.
2. I don’t want any reprints of existing Magic cards.
This one’s selfish, but it wouldn’t feel right to simply re-skin real cards. Of course there will be staple effects in each color (burn, counterspells, ramp, etc), but a huge incentive to start this mad journey was to give my design chops a good workout… I would quickly learn that this is easier said than done. Turns out it’s very easy to think you have a clever idea, only to search online and find that clever idea on a decades-old piece of cardboard!
3. I want to design new mechanics.
This goes hand-in-hand with #2, but it wouldn’t feel like a proper set without a few flagship mechanics to call its own! These came surprisingly quickly, and became invaluable tools to structure the entire set. Look forward to deep-dives on each of these in the future.
4. I want to celebrate art we’ve already made.
Our D&D group is comprised of a bunch of artsy folks, and we’ve got over 5 years of stories to draw from (literally). I’ve made sure to get everyone’s blessing to use their art and characters, and I hope it makes the set feel more personal. We even put together a zine-style artbook for it during the pandemic, so there are already some great pieces ready to get slapped onto cardboard.
5. I’m going to need a LOT more art.
Even counting all our existing work, I knew I could only count on those to cover a fraction of the cards. The good news is, I love to draw. But the honest truth is that this will be the longest part of this endeavor. At the rate I’ve been drawing so far, I’ve probably got another two-ish years to go.
(NOTE: I will absolutely NOT be pilfering art from strangers online or using any sort of AI-generated content. This project is a labor of love, and I’m in it for the long haul – not looking for unethical shortcuts.)
6. I want to leverage my custom token template.
I’ve printed off several batches of custom tokens recently, and that’s helped me develop a Photoshop template for stylish custom cards! It would need lots of tweaks to accommodate all the card types in a full set, but at least in this aspect, I wouldn’t be starting completely from scratch.
7. I don’t actually know how to build a set cube!
Cards on the table, I only started playing MtG a couple years ago. I’ve got a decent grip on the fundamentals, but I’ve certainly never tried to build a cube before. This Lucky Paper article was a perfect primer for me to get ballpark numbers, and I cross-referenced it heavily against recent set cardlists to create my own.
….And with all that in mind, it was off to the races!
🔮NEXT TIME – New Mechanics in the Unwell Kingdom