| Overcompensation |
[Mar. 27th, 2009|09:01 am] |
Now is the time of year where the old clan gathers, usually in Phoenix, for some Spring Training action, along with Rock Band, socialization and sitting around in a property that could pass for a cult complex. Sadly, with a vacation balance of -14 hours, and a Sunday - Saturday rental preventing a weekend barnstorm, we had to pass on going this year.
So, since we obviously needed to do something crazy in honor, we bought a house. I'm guessing Phoenix would have been cheaper.
More specifically, we bought a kitchen that had a house wrapped around it (and doors to the outdoor kitchen). Oh, and there's a game room. It's a mere block and a half or so from... um... charming downtown Los Altos, aka "Heart of the Heart of the Suburbs" (but, to be fair, less than a mile from the location of the first semiconductor foundry. This is Silicon-Valley suburbs.)
Close in about 30 days, then a few weeks for fixing the minor crap that came up in the inspection, then party time. |
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| Annual Magic Set - now with more color |
[Mar. 24th, 2009|02:55 pm] |
When Conflux came out, I thought "what wacky in-theme thing could I do that Wizards wouldn't dare?", to which the answer was "Hey, let's make every non-land card multicolor". I started work on that and had to push up the production schedule suddenly when the first thing they leaked... was an all-gold set. Sigh. The first couple cards spoiled had enough thematic similarities that I really had to push to the finish (Knight of New Alara is thematically similar to Primatic Anthem).
An all-gold set poses some interesting challenges. How do you do 1-drops? Hybrid would have been cheating. I figured out one way and will be interested to see how WotC does it. Making sure that I balanced the colors appropriately was far too overwhelming for the set editor I was using, and the last 30 cards were effectively a big hole-filling campaign.
As always, I lean more heavily on set mechanics and themes than a real set would - I can make a vanilla 3/1, or throw in a reprint (and I was sooo tempted to throw in Terminate), but what's the point? There's also a cycle of 4-color legends, just to... encourage... Wizards to do the same. I also wish I'd managed to throw in more cards that benefitted you if you controlled a permanent of the right color. I put in the enablers to support the ones in Conflux, then put in some reverse-enablers, then ran out of room. Oh well. That would be for Development to fix.
Big props to Eli Shiffrin and the rest of the gurus who helped fix some of the templating on these cards. Their ability to keep "gets", "has" and "gains" straight, and know the order keywords are supposed to appear is downright impressive.
Alara Rebirth
Time to hibernate for another year. |
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| New Magic Set |
[Mar. 26th, 2008|02:02 pm] |
This year was a little weird. Since Wizards isn't releasing a "third" set in the traditional fashion, I didn't have a lot to go on. I couldn't try to guess what they would do, and since they set it up as a 2-set block, they closed off a lot of design space.
So, I tried to do it as a set to bridge the gap between the theoretically discrete Morningtide and Shadowmoor. That meant taking the little flavor that had leaked about the upcoming set, coming up with a little backstory and going from there. Thus, a tribal set with a little more focus on the graveyard than the past two.
In story terms, the idea is that the goblin scout Thark, with manipulation from Oona and Colfenor has stumbled into Velis Veil. There, he discovers the source of the Changelings and, being a good goblin, plugs himself into the energy. The resulting discharges - the Aurora - radiate out, warping the plane.
Not too much in here that would make the rules manager cry. We'd need new rules for splice (splicing onto permanents just gives them a comes into play ability), clash (how the "numbers" work) and a few individual cards. The usual caveats apply - focus on limited, may break in constructed (I was pretty good this time, I think). Think of it as the file to be handed off to development, who will immediately point out that Grave doesn't work at all. Still messing with that one...
Here they are. Thanks to the irc guru team for their fixes. Feel free to post comments in the forums. |
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| New Magic set - Now with 100% more Substance |
[Apr. 2nd, 2007|09:39 am] |
Another year, another 165 card set exploring the theme of the year's block.
Future Sight (the real one) will be about the future, whatever that means to Wizards. Time Spiral was about nostalgia (the past), Planar Chaos about alternat presents. While it wouldn't surprise me if Wizards snuck some future set cards into Future Sight, that approach didn't really interest me.
Instead, I tried to think of ways in which mechanics could combine or evolve to produce new ways of thinking about them. The core themes of the block - Madness, Rebels, Morph, Echo, etc - all got lots of explanations, but almost every mechanic ever printed in Magic (except some of the obviously abandoned ones - Banding, Phasing, Fading) shows up in some weird combination. The keyword density of this set is insane, probably more than Wizards would be comfortable printing. Several of the mechanics (notable Rebels ad Morph) would need some rules changes. Like that never happens.
With a few exceptions that are focussed on a temporal theme, every card has references to past cards in Magic. This actually represented an interesting design constraint, especially as I couldn't really coopt the ones TS and PC had already referred to. By the end, I felt that there were very few interesting reference points left to mine. There's also more bad puns in this set than usual...
Enough preamble. The cards are here. Feel free to post comments on the set or individual cards below. Usual caveats - mostly designed with limited in mind; tried not to break constructed and may have failed (or may be sneakier than you think). Thanks to Gavin for doing a quick beta and catching my more egregious mistakes. |
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| Magic Great Designer Search Test #8 (last) |
[Dec. 9th, 2006|09:41 am] |
And so it ends. The final challenge - create all the commons for one color in a 180 card expansion set (so 11 cards) and an appropriate rare for the prerelease card.
Once I came up with the theme I wanted to explore, the cards were very easy. Fully 3/4 of the time I spent on this challenge was coming up with the theme, discarding lots before I found a design space I wanted to work in.
Now it's over, and the whole thing was a fun exercise. I enjoyed designing with different constraints than I usually do (ironically, this last challenge was the most 'normal' for me). I guess I'll be back in Februaryor so with my now-seeming-traditional third set. Whee...
( Land Ho! ) |
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| Magic Great Designer Search Test #7 |
[Dec. 7th, 2006|11:23 am] |
My other Magic duties and lack of internet access at Worlds meant a delay on getting this one done. Still did it in a bit over a day.
After the hilarity and looseness of Un-cards, this one was like designing in a straightjacket, and probably the toughest challenge yet. Not sure if meeting all the requirements was even possible on a couple of them.
The original spec is here. Eight cards, then up to 50 words on each talking about the design. I've kept them in order and tried to keep the names similar so that it's possible to follow along.
Only one more to go... Will go read that after I've looked at what the competitors came up with.
( Eight more cards )
ETA: Wow, apparently Alexis Janson and I think a lot alike. I'm rooting for them |
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| Magic Great Designer Search Test #6 |
[Nov. 16th, 2006|11:56 am] |
This week, Un-cards! Almost no other restrictions, except that they had to be multicolored and rare. You couldn't repeat a color combination. Oh, and now you need names, flavor text and descriptions about the cards.
Desiging Un-cards is great fun.
( cards, only insane ) |
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| Magic Great Designer Search Test #5 |
[Nov. 10th, 2006|05:46 pm] |
This was a great challenge and a lot of fun. It forced me into top-down design mode and I pretty much had to come up with entirely new cards.
Wizards gave the designers 10 "holes to fill" and the details on what needed to go into those holes. The catch - art had already been done for the cards. The full art (which is worth checking out along with my answers) is at http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/designersearch/episode3
I hate these challenges. I sleep like crap the night after they're released. Off to read what the real candidates did...
( Yep, more cards ) |
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| Magic Great Designer Search Test #4 |
[Nov. 3rd, 2006|01:20 am] |
Test #4 got released. In it, the designers were randomly assigned 1 cycle each of rare, uncommon and common. At least 1 had to be tight and 1 had to be loose. Then, at most 50 words to talk about each cycle.
I got out my trusty die, and randomly assigned myself instants, creatures and enchantments.
( More cards behind the cut ) |
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