Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
See, I do have this nagging feeling I was missing something as well, but I don’t remember either.
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Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
With some sleuthing I discovered what my original gripe with Scryfall was! (thanks http://t-a-w.blogspot.com/2016/10/review-of-scryfall-mtgwtf-competitor.html?m=1)
Color identity used to work really wonky on the first iterations of Scryfall. They long since fixed that though! In fact, most of the shortcomings of Scryfall mentioned in this blogpost, if not all of them, were corrected over time. Scryfall now is probably better than Magiccards.info ever was
I don't know if anyone else here frequents BoardGameGeek, but there was an interesting article there today about game balance, by none other than Richard Garfield.
I miss it took. I write a long write about the difference.
But scryfall and Cubecobra are still better in most ways for me.
A shining bit of good news!
To summarize: Scryfall had some extra hosting space and is now hosting an ad-free fork of the MTG wiki. Look at it! It's so pretty!
To summarize: Scryfall had some extra hosting space and is now hosting an ad-free fork of the MTG wiki. Look at it! It's so pretty!
Thank god, now I can learn about Loot (the other one) without ads
My LGS had it's Aetherdrift prerelease tonight, and they ended up with all the delicious commons and uncommons I wanted for my cube. Rejoice!
I'm going to be doing an interview with @Chris Taylor tomorrow discussing custom cards. Are there any questions you all would like to see me ask?
Need to know who Chris's favorite pop star girlie is.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Overtune cards and dial them back after testing, or try to get them right the first time at the risk of no one picking the card during the draft?
biggest question I need you two to talk about is using custom cards to raise the power level of a pet theme or mechanic. like when Chris had all those broken Clue cards. thanks!
Do you prefer to go for clean designs or complicated new mechanics?
Do you prefer to complete unfinished cycles or design new cards?
Chris Taylor
Contributor
In that these made it in after we stopped recording, I'll answer them here:
The goal for every card I make is strip away as much as I can while making sure:
-It still is powerful enough to be in dialog with the rest of the cards in my cube
-It still ties into the themes I'm trying to support
-It still works as an aesthetic whole
Sometimes I make cycles and sometimes I make one off cards?
Each colors needs in a cube are different, and there's some things I'm confident that every color needs access to (Fixing, draw smoothing, interaction, threats etc) but that isn't true of everything.
Technically my cube does have a "cycle" of smoothing cantrips in Crack the Case/Consider/Tomb Pillage/Ancient Mantra/Tracking, but I don't really think of it that way because there's differing numbers of each, and there's a wider variety of blue and black cards slotted into that mechanical space
Goal one: Synergy
I highly value the decks you draft having some kind of mechanical cohesion beyond just being "An aggro deck" or "a control deck" or "a midrange deck", I'd much prefer your cards interact with each other based on what's in the text box or type line and not just "how good are these, where do they fit in my curve"
Given that desire for synergy based gameplay, two common questions come up:
-What is this card asking of me?
-What is the payoff if I can do what its asking of me?
To make a bold statement with the player brain, ideally none of the cards I'm playing would give a shit about any of the other cards in my deck. You would much rather have cards that are powerful all the time than ones which were sometimes powerful and sometimes not based on like, the number of artifacts you control (Which gasp, your opponent can mess with? Worrying stuff)
The player probably wants Lightning bolt over Galvanic Blast every time. But that's really boring.
Custom cards let you modulate the rewards and the asks of a given magic card to where yeah you can pick lightning bolt, but based on these other 15 cards I have already, Galvanic Blast might actually be better. (I'm exaggerating here, pick lightning bolt, but you can see where I'm going with this)
We've all found some sweet card we really loved, but just cost too much or didn't do enough or had some other problem where it couldn't hang with other cards you loved. Custom cards let you run both, and they let you either bring the weaker card up to the power level of the stronger one, or adjust the power level of the stronger card down to where it's not shouting over all the other cards in your cube.
It is extremely rare that there is something so fundamentally good/bad with a card that it can't be modulated up or down to play with other cards you want to play with
It also lets you solve problems of density, where like maybe there are some cool cards to support a deck idea, but they're all 4 drops and you can't run them all in the same deck without your curve tripping over itself, or there's only like 3 cards and even if you get all 3 there's still not a whole deck there.
Goal two: Elegance
To pick a low hanging fruit, raise your hand if you think there's too many words on magic cards these days?
I love magic, and I'm really dialed in to what's going on with this game, but even I think some cards are too much.
Unfortunately, some of those cards are also cool as hell! Questing beast is kind of an abomination (It's got fake trample because they couldn't give it real trample because of all the other words they jammed on it), but I really like what it does being a hasty green curve topper, a way to pressure planeswalkers and life totals, and also playing well defensively. But you can fix how hard it is to understand with some visual tweaks:
I really like Adeline, Resplendent Cathar, except for some reason it makes human soldiers, and they wanted it to be better in multiplayer so it uses extra words in the token creation trigger. Also this card having vigilance is mostly irrelevant, and I think it would benefit from a bit more thought being put into should I swing with my 7/4.
Esika's Chariot is one of the sweetest green cards of the last decade because it plays so well on its own AND it gives you this little quest to go on where copying a 2/2 is fine, but what's the sweetest thing you could copy? Hell they were nice enough to let this copy noncreature tokens, so you can copy like a clue or whatever because you really need to draw a card.
But it's 100% the only thing in my cube that makes 2/2 cat tokens. That is also fixable!
Goal Three: Agency
As a player and game designer, I hate non-games. I do love the amount of variance magic has (having played games with more and less variance) and I know the land system is a good thing.
I don't want anyone to lose in deckbuilding.
I don't want anyone to lose because their top 10 has 2 lands in it, or 8 lands in it.
But I recognize its impossible to eliminate that, so I try and mitigate it wherever I can.
Everyone has the same one card a turn draw step, but preordain and cards like it help you cheat the dice a little and exert some influence about what you're going to draw.
Problem is, this style of effect is REALLY powerful, especially when it's one mana, so WotC hasn't really printed anything like preordain in any other color to keep constructed at least slightly different draw to draw.
I don't have that problem, none of my cards are ever going to be influencing the legacy metagame, so I can print whatever I need.
What's more, going back to Goal 1, I can tie them into my synergy decks:
White plays with artifacts and card types, so the clue is important. Black plays with the graveyard, so the mill is important, and often focuses around using a single strong threat multiple times, so it gets the regrowth. Green also plays with the graveyard, but also a lot of green's staple effects are on permanents, so it gets to chose between removal or threats or even filling out types.
Red...often has too many lands IDK You could certainly tie this into your decks more than I have.
Goal Four: Aesthetics
I mean I think if you don't think this is a goal for your cube, you might be hiding from yourself? Like yeah I'll say it I love this project, and I want it to look good!
I don't have a unified aesthetic theme the way that like, some desert cubes or Roja's rusty box of goblins might, but I still want all the cards to look good from my perspective, and sometimes I like a cards rules text but I don't like the cards art or frame.
So I fix it:
Sometimes a card is great, it does exactly what you want, but it has Dennis Nedry in a plastic branded raincoat in the art.
Sometimes you just think Taigo Chan's original art for snapcaster mage would look dope as hell in the FANG frame from Innistrad: Crimson Vow.
AND YOUD BE RIGHT
Okay that's probably enough manifesto for now
Clean designs, 100%. I spend much of my time uncomplicating cards, honestly.
The goal for every card I make is strip away as much as I can while making sure:
-It still is powerful enough to be in dialog with the rest of the cards in my cube
-It still ties into the themes I'm trying to support
-It still works as an aesthetic whole
Sometimes I make cycles and sometimes I make one off cards?
Each colors needs in a cube are different, and there's some things I'm confident that every color needs access to (Fixing, draw smoothing, interaction, threats etc) but that isn't true of everything.
Technically my cube does have a "cycle" of smoothing cantrips in Crack the Case/Consider/Tomb Pillage/Ancient Mantra/Tracking, but I don't really think of it that way because there's differing numbers of each, and there's a wider variety of blue and black cards slotted into that mechanical space
This is a great way to phrase this question, and I tried my best on the pod to talk about custom cards from a more general perspective and less about my cube in specific, so I'm gonna go kind deep here.
Goal one: Synergy
I highly value the decks you draft having some kind of mechanical cohesion beyond just being "An aggro deck" or "a control deck" or "a midrange deck", I'd much prefer your cards interact with each other based on what's in the text box or type line and not just "how good are these, where do they fit in my curve"
Given that desire for synergy based gameplay, two common questions come up:
-What is this card asking of me?
-What is the payoff if I can do what its asking of me?
To make a bold statement with the player brain, ideally none of the cards I'm playing would give a shit about any of the other cards in my deck. You would much rather have cards that are powerful all the time than ones which were sometimes powerful and sometimes not based on like, the number of artifacts you control (Which gasp, your opponent can mess with? Worrying stuff)
The player probably wants Lightning bolt over Galvanic Blast every time. But that's really boring.
Custom cards let you modulate the rewards and the asks of a given magic card to where yeah you can pick lightning bolt, but based on these other 15 cards I have already, Galvanic Blast might actually be better. (I'm exaggerating here, pick lightning bolt, but you can see where I'm going with this)
We've all found some sweet card we really loved, but just cost too much or didn't do enough or had some other problem where it couldn't hang with other cards you loved. Custom cards let you run both, and they let you either bring the weaker card up to the power level of the stronger one, or adjust the power level of the stronger card down to where it's not shouting over all the other cards in your cube.
It is extremely rare that there is something so fundamentally good/bad with a card that it can't be modulated up or down to play with other cards you want to play with
It also lets you solve problems of density, where like maybe there are some cool cards to support a deck idea, but they're all 4 drops and you can't run them all in the same deck without your curve tripping over itself, or there's only like 3 cards and even if you get all 3 there's still not a whole deck there.
Goal two: Elegance
To pick a low hanging fruit, raise your hand if you think there's too many words on magic cards these days?
I love magic, and I'm really dialed in to what's going on with this game, but even I think some cards are too much.
Unfortunately, some of those cards are also cool as hell! Questing beast is kind of an abomination (It's got fake trample because they couldn't give it real trample because of all the other words they jammed on it), but I really like what it does being a hasty green curve topper, a way to pressure planeswalkers and life totals, and also playing well defensively. But you can fix how hard it is to understand with some visual tweaks:
I really like Adeline, Resplendent Cathar, except for some reason it makes human soldiers, and they wanted it to be better in multiplayer so it uses extra words in the token creation trigger. Also this card having vigilance is mostly irrelevant, and I think it would benefit from a bit more thought being put into should I swing with my 7/4.
Esika's Chariot is one of the sweetest green cards of the last decade because it plays so well on its own AND it gives you this little quest to go on where copying a 2/2 is fine, but what's the sweetest thing you could copy? Hell they were nice enough to let this copy noncreature tokens, so you can copy like a clue or whatever because you really need to draw a card.
But it's 100% the only thing in my cube that makes 2/2 cat tokens. That is also fixable!
Goal Three: Agency
As a player and game designer, I hate non-games. I do love the amount of variance magic has (having played games with more and less variance) and I know the land system is a good thing.
I don't want anyone to lose in deckbuilding.
I don't want anyone to lose because their top 10 has 2 lands in it, or 8 lands in it.
But I recognize its impossible to eliminate that, so I try and mitigate it wherever I can.
Everyone has the same one card a turn draw step, but preordain and cards like it help you cheat the dice a little and exert some influence about what you're going to draw.
Problem is, this style of effect is REALLY powerful, especially when it's one mana, so WotC hasn't really printed anything like preordain in any other color to keep constructed at least slightly different draw to draw.
I don't have that problem, none of my cards are ever going to be influencing the legacy metagame, so I can print whatever I need.
What's more, going back to Goal 1, I can tie them into my synergy decks:
White plays with artifacts and card types, so the clue is important. Black plays with the graveyard, so the mill is important, and often focuses around using a single strong threat multiple times, so it gets the regrowth. Green also plays with the graveyard, but also a lot of green's staple effects are on permanents, so it gets to chose between removal or threats or even filling out types.
Red...often has too many lands
IDK You could certainly tie this into your decks more than I have.Goal Four: Aesthetics
I mean I think if you don't think this is a goal for your cube, you might be hiding from yourself? Like yeah I'll say it I love this project, and I want it to look good!
I don't have a unified aesthetic theme the way that like, some desert cubes or Roja's rusty box of goblins might, but I still want all the cards to look good from my perspective, and sometimes I like a cards rules text but I don't like the cards art or frame.
So I fix it:
Sometimes a card is great, it does exactly what you want, but it has Dennis Nedry in a plastic branded raincoat in the art.
Sometimes you just think Taigo Chan's original art for snapcaster mage would look dope as hell in the FANG frame from Innistrad: Crimson Vow.
AND YOUD BE RIGHT
Okay that's probably enough manifesto for now
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Honestly, you cover almost the reasons why my vintage cube is full of custom cards well. I've been making some that are just cleaner versions of a card (like dropping the commander text off 
. I feel like a lot of the discussions on custom cards revolve around the complexity of them and that misses the huge potential for streamlining a cube.
But also sometimes an idea is just super cool and you just want to play with it.
. I feel like a lot of the discussions on custom cards revolve around the complexity of them and that misses the huge potential for streamlining a cube.But also sometimes an idea is just super cool and you just want to play with it.
@Chris Taylor
Wow that vampire frame from Innistrad is perfect for that Snapcaster Mage wow!
Wow that vampire frame from Innistrad is perfect for that Snapcaster Mage wow!
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Any thread's the custom thread when I'm here
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Poor WotC, can’t even eavesdrop on us safely outside of the clearly labeled Custom thread!Any thread's the custom thread when I'm here
Still have barely played DFT and haven't even finished FIN. Too many sets. Too much overlap.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
IIRC final fantasy set is coming out AFTER this, the earlier previews were the little teaser they give investors FWIW
Still agree, but some saving grace there
Still agree, but some saving grace there