General Custom Cards: The Lab

Chris Taylor

Contributor
wotc decided to make him a human warrior, for whatever that is worth.
Ah crap there is a card for this guy :p
Supposedly that's what he was doing before he retired, according to the lore, so that makes sense.
fun hillbilly facts: at least in my neck of the woods, only cities have mayors. towns (there's a population threshold between the two) are governed instead by a small town council. usually one member sits on the council per "district" of the town.
Sure, the designation of who leads that council might be something other than "mayor", but you get the idea
 
I think basically any town needs a mayor, even if maybe in smaller towns they're not all that big about it.

I just read up on some Eldraine lore and it turns out that Edgewall Keep is a hovel. So a cottage, shack or hut. I don’t think they have a mayor. It’s probably only an inn and nothing more.

When I say D&D inspired I don’t actually mean Faerun. Not the actual characters and places per se. I am more thinking of the feeling of adventure that we have seen on Zendikar, Forgotten Realms, Ixalan and Eldraine.

Keywords are stuff like:
Adventure and venturing into dungeons.
Inns and taverns.
Rumours and quests.
Party and heroes.
Foes of evil minions and scary dragons.
Traps and dangers on the road to riches.
Loot, rewards and treasures.
Levering up classes and players with experience.

I am trying to avoid legendary characters from the D&D sets we’ve had. But I am happy to include stuff like Bag of Holding.

Thank you again for helping. If anyone else also wish to help I am mostly looking for art. Currently I am happy about the designs I have (I will upload them here once they are complete and in my hands) but I still need better art.

1: Art for a humanoid emissary, noble or mayor.
2. Art for a humanoid warrior going on adventure or into dungeon.
 
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wotc decided to make him a human warrior, for whatever that is worth.


I am aware of what you said, my point is that it's not really meaningful when conceptualizing interactive gameplay. Emotionally it might feel annoying to look at this immortal piece of cardboard, which is an important part of game design, but from a mechanical standpoint it really doesn't deserve to be called uninteractive. It essentially just turns your cards into a complicated modal spell, but you wouldn't make any similar complaints that charms are uninteractive because there's no way to interact with your opponent choosing mode to play.

Secondly, I really don't think it matters. Let's say they printed a card with "Target opponent leaves the dungeon" or "Target opponent ventures into jail (it's a dungeon with three empty linear rooms)", would that make it more appealing to include in a cube? You probably wouldn't add the aforementioned cards because of how narrow they are, even though you could now technically interact with dungeons. If you support Ajani's Pridemates in cube, do you also add cards that explicitly prevent life-gain? If you cube cards with rebound, do you need Rift Sweeper to deal with the card in exile? Is graveyard hate an essential inclusion in cubes with flashback cards?

In practice, most mechanics in magic can be interacted with meaningfully through the normal attack vectors, and dungeons aren't an exception. And I would guess that most cubes have a lot of gameplay elements you can't interact with in the context of that cube, that nobody is particularly bothered by. As an example, I play a lot of Suspend cards, and there's no way to manipulate those cards while they are suspended, but it's fundamentally just a different way to play the spell, it's not an aspect of the game you need agency over. Likewise, you seem to play a single copy of Carrion Beetle as the only way to interact with the numerous recursion effects in your cube like Yawgmoth's Will, Replenish and Karmic Guide, and you play cards like Mother of Runes and Argothian Enchantress that is way more likely to make me go "how the fuck do I deal with this" than any deck venturing into a given dungeon that's not called The Undercity.
Monarch/emblems et al do something every time and are hard/impossible to get rid of. Yes they/we can create cards that do just that, just like cards that interact with suspend (those exist already). However, monarch et al is not comparable to suspend, which is nice, could be interacted with, and signals what is going on.

Similarly, there are permanent cards which can not easily be interacted with. As long as those are not a threat and require hoops to be worth it, I am game.

In the old days there where threats and answers. The threats were expensive and the answers relatively cheap. The balance was that an answer was often a dud. shatter is not worth it in your deck, and your cube, unless you are heavy on the artifacts. That’s the reason there is no graveyard hate in my cube. The available hate in urza block is not worth the cardboard which it is printed upon and the amount of reanimate is so low that the answer card is to often a dud. If my cube has a lot of flashback, then the value of graveyard hate goes up significantly. I would love the play and counterplay involved (but hey I think staxx is fun so…).

There are plenty of ways to help mom to her grave in my cube.
 
Monarch/emblems et al do something every time and are hard/impossible to get rid of.
I agree, which is why I at no point argued in favor of those mechanics, and talked exclusively about venturing into the dungeon, the mechanic featured in Velrun's designs.
 
I'm sure we all have plenty of gripes with the design of venture but considering Velrun is trying to build a DnD themed cube and the mechanic is from the DnD set and called "venture into the dungeon", if there's anywhere to try to make it work, its in that cube. Seems a little silly to me to argue about it in that context. I think we all know that outside-the-game mechanics are a little clunky and silly.
 
@Rusje
So would you now agree that venture into the dungeon does not belong in that category of cards?
Yes and no. Venture yes, you take the initiative not. Pulling venturing off, is quite a feat and adds to the game. Taking initiative (or something akin) is really not fun.
 
Yes and no. Venture yes, you take the initiative not. Pulling venturing off, is quite a feat and adds to the game. Taking initiative (or something akin) is really not fun.

You were strictly commenting on THIS:

Whenever you cast an Adventure, create a Food token.
Whenever you venture into the dungeon, create a Clue token.
Whenever you complete a dungeon, create a Treasure token.

Short Rest // Prepared Adventurer
Sorcery - Adventure: Create a Food token, scry 1.
When Prepared Adventurer enters the battlefield, venture into the dungeon.

You were not commenting on anything with initiative. Can you confirm that you have changed your opinion after hearing our arguments that dungeon is not in that category?
 
Sure, the designation of who leads that council might be something other than "mayor", but you get the idea
pp,840x830-pad,1000x1000,f8f8f8.jpg
 
here's some cards that care about dragons and also some set-dressing for my version of Tarkir
 

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Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Hoo boy! You're gaming at a different power level than me :p Even though I'm not in love with the idea of a turn 1 4/4 flyer in my own environment, I do love the concept of Force of Hierophany. I'm less in love with The Passion of Tarkir straight up doing nonred stuff, like countering spells and destroying enchantments.

PS Dragon's Fire has some templating errors. In addition, I believe that removing the Dragon will also mean the spell deals no damage, because the dragon deals the damage. I think I would personally template it off of Monstrous Onslaught and do this...

Dragon's Fire deals 2 damage to any target. You may have Dragon's Fire deals X damage to that target instead, where X is the greatest power among Dragon creatures you control as you cast this spell.

or this...

Choose one —
• Dragon's Fire deals 2 damage to any target.
• Dragon's Fire deals X damage to any target, where X is the greatest power among Dragon creatures you control as you cast this spell.

You lose the dragon itself dealing the damage, but the templating works, and this way the damage still goes through if they remove your dragon in response (since X locks the moment you cast this spell).
 
Yeah, I think Safra and Onderz are correct. How people categorize initiative Vs. venture dungeons really doesn’t matter, because it’s super subjective. Additionally? many people hate both mechanics with such a guttural passion to the point where rational conversation about the topic outside of a specific context becomes a fruitless endeavor.
 
For me it feels like it was almost pointless to ask for help in here. Only @Chris Taylor was giving help. Which was very nice of them. But Rusje started a talk about something else and they were initially objectively wrong. However we all had to talk about that. Now I just want Rusje to acknowledge so I can get the help I was seeking if anyone wants to. For me it’s a passionate project.
 
You were strictly commenting on THIS:



You were not commenting on anything with initiative. Can you confirm that you have changed your opinion after hearing our arguments that dungeon is not in that category?
Undercity is a dungeon… (which you enter using initiative), hence my mind went to ouch, be careful with those things.
Even taking undercity out of the equation, as I said before, it all depends on the dungeon you provide whether it is fair/fun or not. It is likely difficult, but really fun to have balanced non-initiative dungeons. (My reference is vanguard, which is fun for a few times but not balanced at all.)

p.s. it is weird to attack someone and request to drop the discussion in the same post.

Edit: this was my post which started the discussion.
“I abhor card types that one cannot interact with like emblems, dungeon etc. Are you sure you want to go that route? The balancing is really difficult since you add another parameter and it depends on the power of the dungeon.”

Besides that I do no like those type of cards, that’s just an opinion. My main point was that balancing is difficult and that the cost of venturing depends on the power of the dungeons (and the power of a dungeon depends on the rest of the card pool).
 
Undercity is a dungeon…

I’m gonna stop you right there. You commented on this:

Whenever you cast an Adventure, create a Food token.
Whenever you venture into the dungeon, create a Clue token.
Whenever you complete a dungeon, create a Treasure token.

Short Rest // Prepared Adventurer
Sorcery - Adventure: Create a Food token, scry 1.
When Prepared Adventurer enters the battlefield, venture into the dungeon.

As you can see: No initiative mentioned anywhere.

So do you still think venturing into the dungeon is in the same rule-breaking category as the rest of your examples like Phyrexian mana, free spells, monarch, companion?
 
Even if Rusje does think that ... why does it bother you so much? Please don't take this as offense, but sometime you just need to accept (very) different points of view, even when they seem "objectively" wrong to you.

I remember when @Landofand and I disagreed in a discussion about the flexibility of gold and mono colored cards, and I probably had a similar feeling than you: I couldn't agree with him and still don't, but why should it bother me? Parker respectfully expressed his opinion, he didn't force me to adapt my cube. In the same way, you could've just stated that you disagree with Rusje and want that mechanic in your cube. Instead of demanding answers and shit.
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
No it’s objective true that venture into the dungeon doesn’t do anything on its own. It’s the creatures and spells doing the scrying, life gaining etc. and initiative doing something on their own and there is no real answer to these powerful abilities. However Rusje doesn’t want to acknowledge this so we cannot move on. Rusje your diluted the topic from the help I was searching by creating an off topic to talk about so can you at least see the objective truth now that we have explained it to you in depth?

I would have liked if we could stay on topic because I still have no good art for the cards I was searching for. I would like if we could return to this subject thank you all.
See, I agree with you that Venture doesn't add anything, other than a little bit of complexity due to outside tracking. But why can't you move on without Rusje acknowledging that? It might bring you, as a person, a bit of satisfaction and closure, but meanwhile aggressively demanding an answer only dilutes the topic further. If you had instead chosen to agree to disagree, you could have refocused the discussion to the topic at hand, namely your custom designs. For the forum as a whole, this would have made for a much, much better read than the whole back and fourth over minutiae culminating in a rather passive aggressive post demanding an anwer. On top of that, Rusje gave the answer in the previous post. Who cares that they also commented on initiative, when they clearly agreed that Venture does not belong in the same category in the same sentence?

In the end it's not just Rusje's off-hand comment on Initiative, Monarch, etc that derailed the conversation, it's also (and mostly, I would argue) your persistent crusade to get Rusje to admit that they were wrong and you were right. It's something I have seen you do more often, and frankly, I think it's healthier if you weren't so hung up on being right and, especially, others admitting they were wrong. In 99% of the cases it's more efficient to just move on and accept that not everybody agrees with your point of view all of the time. The upside of that approach is that it makes you look a lot less like a petulant pedant, and refocuses the topic. Your contributions to this forum have been many and great, but (and I say this with love) if you dropped the (frustrating) "I want you to admit you were wrong" attitude, they would be appreciated a lot more.
 
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I’m gonna stop you right there. You commented on this:



As you can see: No initiative mentioned anywhere.

So do you still think venturing into the dungeon is in the same rule-breaking category as the rest of your examples like Phyrexian mana, free spells, monarch, companion?
Yes I mistook venture with initiative since the last dungeon was with the initiative. Oops.

To get back on track. I like the designs of Chris, but why not:

Card 1: Uncommon rarity creature. Monocolored. Signal card. I am thinking either white, blue or green.

Whenever you cast an Adventure, create a Food token.
Whenever you venture into the dungeon, create a Clue token.
Whenever you complete a dungeon, create a Treasure token.

Missing: Name, Cost, creature type, power, toughness, art.

Name:loyal hound
Cost:g
Creature type:dog
P/t: 2/1
Art: a dog running in the centre of the picture with an adventurer far behind.
Why? The sooner this cards gets into play the better. Each of the three abilities is not really strong, but are great signposts.
--

Card 2: Common rarity creature. Monocolored. I am thinking green.

Short Rest // Prepared Adventurer
Sorcery - Adventure: Create a Food token, scry 1.
When Prepared Adventurer enters the battlefield, venture into the dungeon.

Missing: Cost, creature type, power, toughness, art.
I would change nothing to Chris’s great design. Only the art where it is the same adventurer and dog, but then the adventurer in the front with a caught rabbit and the dog sniffing in the background at the entrance of a dungeon.
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Fine I move on.

Thank you @Chris Taylor for being the person who wanted to help <3
It's hard to find art that really fits for Prepared Adventurer, but maybe one of these works for you? The tough part is finding art that works both for the adventure (food themed) and the creature (dungeon themed).

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/X1zqq0 by Alexander Gustafson.
https://deathsave.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/taking-a-short-rest-using-hit-dice.jpg (couldn't find the artist)

Or... I could try to have the AI generate something appropriate...

YeuJkzn.png

Prepared Adventurer.jpg
 
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