| 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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| Magic Great Designer Search: Test #3 |
[Oct. 27th, 2006|09:03 am] |
So I fell fairly early in the Great Designer Search. There was a test on which I scored 29/35 and the cutoff was 30. Normally I would lose a lot of sleep over this, but a) I'm convinced two of the 'correct' asnwers were totally wrong so feel justified and b) realistically I realize that I was going to have to bow out pretty soon anyway. Being a magic designer is my dream job, but I'm not in a place where I can make that happen at this point.
I thought it would be fun to play along anyway, assuming I have the time, once they announce each round. Comments welcome. Here's my entry for the design 6 cards stage (a few are tweaked ones I've created before, some are totally new):
( Cut to spare people who don't care about Magic cards ) |
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| Alias Finale |
[May. 22nd, 2006|11:08 pm] |
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Wow, that was wretched. |
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| Annual Magic 3rd set |
[Mar. 20th, 2006|06:47 pm] |
For the past couple of years, I've been creating Magic sets to be the "fake" third set of the block. The first year was as part of a team, and last year was a solo effort.
I finally finished this year's (another solo effort). It turned out to be quite challenging this year. Instead of a mechanical framework to build on (coming up with new twists on, say, Soulshift), Wizards gave us an organizational framework. I thought it would be freeing, but it actually turned out to be much harder. I had to come up with mechanics, make sure I had the right numbers everywhere, and otherwise had very little guidance. Capturing flavor was trickier.
Normally, I would just point you at the cards, but I figure I should give you a rundown of the guilds and mechanics first:
Cult of Rakdos (B/R): The cult are the jailers and torturers of Ravnica. The Dimir may be collecting information, but these are the creatures responsible for extracting it. They are violent and amoral, and as a result of their line of work, more in the know than you might expect.
The Rakdos mechanic is Thrall. You may reveal a card with Thrall in your hand at any time. At that point, all cards in your hand of the same type become copies of that card until you play that one (and stay so; yes, the rules need a little tweaking for it). If you reveal two thrall cards of the same type, all the other cards of the appropriate type can be played as copies of either. (Note that this mechanic would be even better online - as soon as the card entered your hand, it would take over...)
Simic Combine (U/G): If Izzet are the mad scientists of the mechanical world, the Combine are their match in the biological world. Working with a variety of oozes, shapeshifters and other creatures they can tweak or control, they seek to improve upon their creations. They are also, logically, in charge of the food supply for Ravnica. The minimal farmable land means that other means for sustenance must be discovered.
The Simic mechanic is Evolve. Evolve is very simple - it's an ability that each permanent with it is only able to play once. If the permanent leaves play and returns again, it's a new permanent and can play the ability again.
The Azorius Senate are the politicians of Ravnica. They represent the "official" ruling council (as opposed to, say, the Orzhov) and run the government and all it's associated bureaucracy. Though they do not seem dangerous, they can sometimes leave you wishing they'd just do something straghtforward like attack.
The Azorius mechanic is Taxation. Certain creatures they control can have their abilities turned off if an opponent is willing to not untap certain permanents during their untap. Note that the permanents must already be tapped in order to be used to pay the taxation. A land is easy, but other types of taxation may be harder.
Having gone over all that, here are the cards. I've tried to template them correctly, though there's always one or two I revisit a year later and cringe at. I'd love any comments anybody has about these. |
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| The view from Haleakala |
[Mar. 12th, 2006|10:25 am] |
So, since we are intrepid tourists, we braved the windy switchbacks and drove up the 10,000 feet to the top of Haleakala, the larger of the two dormant volcanos that make up Maui. I figured I should share the vista with you all.
( Behold the glory ) |
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| God hates me |
[Feb. 27th, 2006|10:43 pm] |
I'm off to Hawaii on Wednesday for 11 days, for the Pro tour and an actual vacation with just Jen (basically the first since our honeymoon). Woo hoo!
Thomas Dolby is playing in San Francisco on the 9th. |
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Will probably need two copies (one for me, one for ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) boylawyer) |
[Feb. 13th, 2006|10:29 pm] |
Unlike that hideous Disney-Devo thing I unleahed on him last time, this one is the pure awesome. What is it about Sweden that just makes all music inherently cooler?
Oh, and Pop Justice is pretty cool, too. |
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| The collected wisdom of lockoutlass (first in a series) |
[Dec. 18th, 2005|09:31 pm] |
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A kipper is not a pancake. |
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