Schwa77
2/2 Zombie
Posts: 108
Favorite Card: Gishath, Sun's Avatar
Favorite Set: Ixalan
Color Alignment: Blue, Red, Green
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Post by Schwa77 on Jan 24, 2020 0:44:23 GMT
As a lifelong comic fan and a much-more-recent fan of MTG, I've decided to try my hand at some card designing with Marvel-themed cards. This is something I definitely want to expand upon in the future, both in terms of adding more cards (especially instants, enchantments, and sorceries) and rebalancing a lot of the broken cards I made. If you guys have any ideas, be sure to let me know and I'll do my best to get them incorporated. www.planesculptors.net/set/marvel-the-gathering |
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Post by collex on Jan 24, 2020 2:44:02 GMT
Hello there. I'm a huge comic fan myself, so I figured I'd take a look at your cards. Now, I have a lot of comments I could make, but first I need to know a few things about your goals here, because that will change what feedback will be useful to you.
A) Are you interested in just making a bunch of individual cards with the Marvel theme, or would you like to make a Marvel set? Both answers are valid, but if you wanna make a set, I can give you some pointers that would be useless if you just want to make cards.
B) How self-contained do you want your set to be? Are you trying to make cards that could hypothetically be slotted into a normal Magic deck, or do you want your own little alternate version of Magic to play with? This will influence things like creature types, keywords, and, most importantly, templating.
C) Do you want this to be a black-bordered set, meaning that it has to works within the rules of Magic as is, or a silver-bordered set, where you can do pretty much whatever? Each would give you different tools. For example, silver-bordered sets can care about Watermarks, which I think your cards would love. By contrast, doing it black-bordered would allow us to tighten and streamline your cards a bit, which would leave you space for components like Planes card, from the Planechase sets, to execute your "universe wrap" concept.
So once you answer these questions, I can give you more feedback. But in the meantime, I do have a few general pointers:
A) Creature subtypes (or any subtypes for that matter) are always capitalized, including when referred to in text box. So, if you take Black Widow for example, it should read "Black Widow cannot be blocked by Walls" and Assemble should read "all Avengers gets +1/+1". (By the way, Assemble only needs to say "enters the battlefield."Under your control" is unnecessary since the ability already only affects creature you (i.e.the controller of this card) controls).
B) Tying keywords explicitly to a single creature subtype is not a good idea. It makes your keyword very narrow and asks the player to remember a bunch of words that don't do much. A better way to do Galactic, for example, is to have it be an ability word under which you gather all kinds of effects that trigger off a Guardian entering the battlefield. Or you can just make Guardians care about other Guardians without keywording it.
C)Symbiotic just does not work as written. It is very similar to Bestow from the original Theros, but Bestow came with an alternative casting cost - you could either cast the card as a creature (for the mana cost listed in the usual top-right corner) or cast it as an Aura by paying the bewtow cost instead. Symbiotic, by contrast, does not indicate when the creature can become an aura, if you need to cast the card as a creature first and then it becomes an aura, or if you can cast it straight up as an aura. I think the ability as a form of activated Bestow rather than on cast could be interesting, but it needs work.
Ok, that is what I have for now. I will be awaiting your answers to delve deeper into it.
Cheers and welcome!
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Schwa77
2/2 Zombie
Posts: 108
Favorite Card: Gishath, Sun's Avatar
Favorite Set: Ixalan
Color Alignment: Blue, Red, Green
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Post by Schwa77 on Jan 24, 2020 19:09:07 GMT
Glad someone took the time to look over these! Answers to your questions can be found below.
A1) Honestly, I made these as a bit of a novelty/collector's item just for fun. I guess the answer to your question is kinda split. I'm trying to make these into some sort of workable, playable set, but also only making cards I want to make instead of what would logically work in a set, plus whatever works well in the Marvel theme.
B1) The set would ideally be self-contained aside from adding some basic lands.
C1) Again, kinda a combo here. I'd like to keep the cards themselves black-bordered solely for aesthetic reasons, but in terms of game design the cards seem much more silver-bordered with all the new mechanics and such.
B2) Makes sense. I was trying to figure out how to use some unique abilities as keywords (ex. Speedster on Quicksilver) but I too think they'd probably work better as written-out abilities as opposed to specialized keywords. Also, in relation to Galactic, are you suggesting a keyword similar to Enrage, which isn't completely locked in but follows a certain guideline?
C) Agreed, the Symbiosis mechanic needs a rework. I was trying to think of something different from Bestow since the symbiotes are always changing between being their own entity (or having a host that wouldn't make a cool card) and attaching themselves to other characters, so I wanted to try and recreate the changes. If possible, I'd like to keep the changes between Aura and Creature. Do you have any ideas how I could reword this.
Hopefully this clears up most of your questions. Thanks so much for the feedback!
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Post by collex on Jan 25, 2020 1:23:00 GMT
Hey there! Hope you had a good day! Mine was madness, and so was the whole week. Which mean it is now time to lay back and unwind with some fun coaching and Magic design talk! 1. SET VS CARD: Okay, so for the time being, I will focus on helping you on card by card design rather than set design. We can get into set design at a later date. Two things you might want to keep in mind right now, however, is three basic problems you will have into making your cards into a set: 1.1) Legendary overload. This is an aspect where the needs of Magic and the needs of the superhero genre clash. Simply put, while superhero stories want a lot of unique, named character, Magic sets just cannot support that many cards with the Legendary drawback. Even in a post-Dominaria word, where Wizards is happy to make Uncommon legendaries, all of Standard right now has 172, which is less than what you have. So how do we solve this problem? Well, having more minions and extras (Shield Agents, DoomBots, Asgardians,etc) is a good start, but the main solution is to bite the flavor bullet and just make some minor heroes/villain non-legendary. It's what Throne of Eldraine and Theros both did - Flaxen Intruder is not legendary, even though there is only one Goldilocks. 1.2) Rarity. Right now, all your cards are either Mythic or Rare. I get why - these are all superheroes and supervillains, so they are all exceptional characters! But Magic needs cards at all rarity. Luckily enough, this problem has an easy solution: just lower the rarity of simpler/weaker card. 1.3) Keyword overload. Right now, your cards as a whole are reaching Future Sight/Modern Horizons level of keyword soup, with a bunch of keywords appearing only once or twice. While this is a ton of fun, it would make your set very complicated. So when I go card by card, if I see a way you could do the card concept without the keyword, I'll let you know. See also 2.2 below for another trick to help with this. 2. KEYWORD VS ABILITY WORD: Yes, Enrage is exactly what I was thinking of for Galactic. See, what we players casually call a "keyword mechanic" actually mix together two different concepts, rule-wise: Keyword and Ability Word. 2.1) Keywords. Keywords always do the same thing: First Strike,Trample, Flying, Bestow, Fabricate, etc. Keywords can be referred to by card text - you can give keywords to creature (or other types), you can give bonuses or penalty to creature with a certain keyword or you can do something like Gingerbrute. Templating wise, keywords are written in standard type, and are capitalized only if they are the first word of a sentence/line of keywords. 2.2) Ability Words. Ability Words regroup together abilities that work similarly but not identically from card to card. They are often used to link abilities that have the same trigger: Landfall, Enrage, Constellation, Raid, etc. Ability Words have no existence rule-wise - other effects cannot refer to them. You cannot give a creature Constellation, nor can you have a card that gives +1/+1 to all creatures with Landfall. Ability Words are only there to help you, the player, notice that a bunch of cards have the same trigger. You can remove the ability word and just gives the creature the ability itself, and it would work. And you may have notice that Wizards has started doing that regularly: Makeshift Battalion, Hero of the Pride, Evolution Sage, etc. 3. BLACK BORDER VS SILVER BORDER: Allright, let's design for silver border - the color of the border itself is not really the point, though you if you ever post your set again as a completed set, you may want to mention it is a silver-border set designwise. Now, new mechanics is not what makes a set silver-border. What makes a set silver-border is that it does things that the rules simply will not allow. Most of your new keywords, for example, are perfectly fine in black border. However, cards like Absorbing Man and Diablo do things that, while easy to understand, are simply not allowed by the black-border rules. And this is where silver-border is your friend. Note that being silver-border is not an excuse for bad design - Gotcha is stil a disaster of a mechanic, even in a silver border set. 4. FACTIONS: Superhero stories love factioning. So of course you want factions. Usually, Magic makes faction by color, but that is not really feasable here, since a lot of your factions want to play into the same colors. Right now, you have tried to define your factions with subtypes, but the problem is that your faction subtypes, which are mechanically relevant, are fighting with your Villain/Hero subtypes, which are also mechanically relevant, causing a lot of X-man and Avengers to not be hero, which really doesn't work - if I'm building a deck that mechanically cares about heroes, I want Captain America in it, dammit! There are two ways to solve this. One black border, the other silver border: 4.1) Batching. This is the black-border version. Batching is a new tool is MAgic arsenal. It has been used only once, with great success: Historic,in Dominaria. Basically, when batching, you define a word as new rule term as encompassing a subset of cards, and then always refers to this subset with said word. So historic spells, for example, always mean Artifacts, Legendaries or Sagas. In your case, you could have two batch word: Hero and Villain (which would not be subtypes anymore). Hero spells would be, say, Avengers, X-Men, and Defenders, while Villain spells would be Hydra, Sinister Six and Brotherhood. (It doesn't have to be three things, but you don't want it to be more than 5). The drawback of this is that you need to make all your heroes and all of your villains from these factions, and have other characters as "neutral" (and thus not affected by effect that targets heroes or villains.) 4.2) Watermarks. This is the silver-border version. Silver-border can care about watermarks and refer to them as if they were a subtype. So you could have Assemble affects all creature with an Avengers watermark, for example. MSE allows for 5 custom watermarks, which should be enough to cover the main Villain and Hero factions (see this link, under the Mainframe section, for how to make custom watermarks: magicseteditor.boards.net/thread/77/cajun-templates-updates-sorting-update ). Then, look at cards from the set Unstable to see how you could refer to them. The drawback of this is that you could not have characters with two or more watermark, unless we jumped through some really big technical hoops. Ok,that will do for now. I wanted to start card-by-card comments, but this is already very long, and I need to cook myself some food. So read this, tell me what you think, and then we can get into the nitty gritty. |
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Schwa77
2/2 Zombie
Posts: 108
Favorite Card: Gishath, Sun's Avatar
Favorite Set: Ixalan
Color Alignment: Blue, Red, Green
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Post by Schwa77 on Jan 25, 2020 3:16:10 GMT
Hi! Glad you're finally getting a break from the hectic real world, and what better escape than coaching a novice card designer?
1) I'm definitely going for card-by-card design instead of a set (again, this is more for fun than actually creating something serious/professional), so let's focus on card-by-card for now.
1.1.) Agreed, the legendary overload was a conscious choice since I figured all the characters are one-of-a-kind. While this obviously causes problems for a practical set, it's kinda solved by the fact that I'll probably only print one of each card, so the legendary drawback in games won't be a huge problem.
1.2) See 1.1
1.3) Definitely starting to run into keyword soup problems. I think I'm just trying to make sure every character, much like in the real Marvel universe, be unique, but I definitely think it's starting to hurt the cards more than help.
2.1/2.2) So keywords are standard across the board, and if I'm reading this right, ability words are mainly for flavor/ease of play reasons?
3) Sounds like silver-mechanics with black-aesthetics is the way to go. And now I'm determined to use Gotcha somewhere.
4) Great points brought up here. Is there any way to determine Avengers, X-Men, Guardians, Fantastic, etc. as Heroes outside of the game?
Sorry for spamming with questions again, but I want to make sure we both start on the same foot before getting into card-by-card design.
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Post by collex on Jan 28, 2020 2:40:56 GMT
Hello again. Sorry I didn't respond quickly this time - I basically spend my weekend sleeping. Anyway I'm here now. Let's cover your questions briefly before getting into card to card. {Keywords and Ability Words:}
Ok, so something you said jumped out at me. You said you used a lot of keywords because you were trying to make all the characters feel unique. That's the opposite of what a keyword is about. Keywords are shorthand. They are there to uniformize ability, not distinguish them. A lot of keywords we use now, like haste and vigilance, started out not as keywords, but as written out unique abilities. But one day Wizard realized they were using that ability a lot, and thus could save space on the card by keywording it. But a player's memory has a limited storage space, so keywords are a limited ressource. There are only so many effects you can ask a player to remember by heart.So when designing a keyword for a set, you want to use it in large quantity so that it is worth remembering its effect. Now this is card-by-card, so it is not as big a problem, but I wanted to make sure you understood what your tools do and when to use them.
As for ability words, even more than keywords, they are indeed there for ease of play reason - it allows the designer to flag cards that are fundamentally similar, so players can create shortcut in their mind. They are also there to highlight set themes, giving every player a chance to understand what the set thoroughlines are without having to study the set like a pro player. And by highlighting the set themes, they also help with marketing the set. But if you only have one effect in your set that triggers of the creature being dealt damge, you don't need to write Enrage on the card. {Heroes and Villains}
Now, before I say anything - I am neither a proplayer nor a judge, so I may not be 100% accurate here. But, from the way I understand it, the way you determine what a word like "Hero" means, would be to create a new rule in the comprehensive rulebook thaNow, obviously you cannot edit the official rulebook, so what would you do? Well, when you present your set, you explain your new mechanic, and thus tell people what hero means. You can also use reminder text onto lower rarity cards (or, in your case, whatever card that has space for it.) That said, if you use the watermark idea, you don't need to use batching here - you can just make hero and villain subtypes. {Singleton and Rarity}It is a very good thing that you tell me that you want your cards to be played in a singleton format, because that will impact the design considerably. There are things you can do in singleton that you can't do elsewhere, and there are things you cannot do in singleton that you can do elsewhere. Seven Dwarves or Charmed Stray, for example, do not work in singleton. However, I do think you should have all rarities, even in a singleton format. Why? Because having simpler cards (common and uncommon) will allow you to make your rares and mythic really shine. If every card is complex and powerful like a mythic, than they all just blur together. So if I see a card that could be be a common or uncommon, I'll tell you. Okay, let's go card by card now. I'll just do a couple for tonight, since I am very tired. I'm gonna skip the Universe Wrap cards for now, because the whole mechanic here needs a rework, and as such we'll keep it for later. Also, keep in mind - I am what they call a "vision designer". In other words, I don't do power level or costing. So I can't help you there much - I can give you a bit of advice, but that is it. So this will be purely design comments. {A-Bomb}Full disclosure - this is one character I do not know. Gamma has a type works well. However, I think vigilance should go. It negates at least half the "must attack each turn" drawback, making that line of text mostly pointless and making him way powerful. {Abomination}So at first blush Rampage + Trample + his triggered ability seems like a great combo. But looking at it more closely, I see a problem - why would your opponent ever want to block it? Unless they have an 8-toughness creature, they lose more by blocking him than by not blocking him, since his rampage will activate and thus he will do more trample damage, and boost your other Gamma creatures no matter what. So they will just never chum block it, and thus rampage will never trigger. What I would do is remove trample, and make the triggered ability an until end of turn instead of a counter. If you do want to keep it as a counter, however, your templating is wrong. It should be "put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control." {Absorbing Man}As a silver border card, this works, and this "modular power" mechanic should probably used a lot more, since it is perfect for the superhero genre. I think he should cost :1: or :2: more, however. But my real problem is - he should not be mono blue. That first ability is blue, but that second is either green or red. So he should be either Simic or Izzet, at minimum. Though I'll admit, Absorbing Man as a character does not strike me as blue at all. So I'd think about redoing his first ability to shift him either mono-red or red-green. Maybe allow him to copy the abilities of any artifact, not just those you control, but he destroys the artifact he copy. So his first ability would serve as artifact destruction, which is red and/or green. Templating wise, his second ability should read: "Tap target artifact you control : CARDNAME gains trample and +X/+X until end of turn, where X is that artifact's converted man cost." Ok, that's it for now. See you later! |
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jverse
3/3 Beast
Posts: 195
Favorite Card: Animar, Soul of Elements
Favorite Set: Shadowmoor
Color Alignment: Blue, Red, Green
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Post by jverse on Jan 29, 2020 1:40:13 GMT
Hi! Interesting coincidence that I'm also making a Marvel the Gathering set right now. I'll share some of my design philosophies and challenges which will hopefully help you on your way, as I see a lot of crossover in our designs. I started with >1000 cards and have whittled the set down to around 450, with the hopes of getting it to between 360-400, which should be pretty good for multiplayer drafting. The set is designed to be used in multiplayer drafts. As such, it is totally self-contained and has a higher power level than standard. Individual cards are probably somewhere in the realm of Modern right now, but obviously will never be that powerful since decks aren't curated or optimized. I plan to make a short rules guide to accompany the set, but one of the biggest rules will be that life totals are 20 with 2 players, 30 with 3 players, and 40 with 4+ players. We'll see how that goes when I start doing extensive playtests. I knew as soon as I started making cards that the Legendary type was going to be a problem. Aside from a few soldiers and agents, everything was looking unique. The fix I arrived at is the same as the one you proposed - to design the set for singleton play. The only issue I continue to have is huge creature type names, but MSE can fix a lot of that with size adjustment and a bit of creative type selection. I selected the creatures before working on any of the other card types. I chose 180 characters (half of the intended 360 set total) and assigned their colours based on the character's alignment and potential abilities, completely ignoring balance at first. Many of them ended up in two or three colours, but very few had just one. That was fine, but when I compared the colour distribution at the end, there were a disproportionate number of red, black, and blue cards, with far fewer in white and green. I then decided to make lists of cards that fit roughly into each of the 10 two-colour pairs and see how things were going. That looked a little better, and I made a few small colour adjustments so that each would be balanced. At this point, I noticed that certain types of creature were ending up in each colour pair, so I decided to focus on that a lot more. As such, I created another set mechanic where players would be randomly assigned an Emblem to be utilized throughout each game, even before they begin drafting cards. These are named and aligned with one of the 10 colour pairs. They provide a persistent trigger effect ("Whenever...") that should be powerful enough to impact their draft decisions, but hopefully not game breaking (we'll see... These are subject to significant adjustment). As far as creature types, I added a few that weren't present, such as Agent and Scientist, but I tried to keep as many known creature types as possible. Teachers, lawyers, and mentors are Advisors. Engineers and inventors are Artificers. Telepathic and psionic creatures are Mystics. There are also plenty of Mutants, and I used the Cosmic creature type for aliens and extraplanar beings. The distribution of creature types, along with the release of Throne of Eldraine gave me another idea for a deck archetype - Humans vs. Non-Humans. There are plenty of cards that reference these broad categories of creatures and I think it makes for some interesting card interactions. {Spoiler}  The power and toughness values for creatures in the Marvel Universe are difficult to balance. I wanted them to be accurate to the source material, but still fair and playable in the world of Magic. I decided to use the Strength and Durability values from the Official Marvel Handbook. This gives each character a score from 1-7, which I used directly as power and toughness. It seems pretty fair, although the only major downside to this is that a lot of the strongest creatures are 7/7. To make things more interesting, I gave a lot of the biggest creatures additional strengths of weaknesses so that they would feel different from one another, in the form of +1/+1 counters and conditional abilities, among other things. {Spoiler}  Another thing that becomes super-obvious if you look at character bios is that most of them have experienced significant changes over time in the form of mutation, augmentation, body-switching, empowerment, depowerment (not a word), and so on. To show this, I made nearly every character as a double-faced card that can transform. Some creatures, like the Hulk, can transform both ways, but others, like the Thing, only go one way. Some creatures don't change much, and therefore only have single-sided cards, but the vast majority can flip back and forth, and hopefully will do so a lot in any given game. {Spoiler}   Now for keywords and mechanics. More than any magic or spellcasting in the Marvel Universe, energy is probably the most ubiquitous form of power. As such I knew I was going to use the energy mechanic from Kaladesh, although it is difficult to design and balance. I also found that most of the current energy cards didn't work for my set, and because the set is drafted I needed to find a way to make players generate a significant amount of energy reliably. This lead to several keywords, including Generator (at the beginning of each upkeep, you get E.), Radioactive (At the beginning of your upkeep, you get EE and lose 1 life.), and Absorb (Prevent all noncombat damage that would be dealt to this creature. You get E for each 1 damage prevented this way.). These are mostly confined to creatures themselves, so players should be able to make plenty of energy to fuel their hero's abilities. {Spoiler}  To support artifacts, I created Invent (Create a colorless Invention artifact token with "2, Sacrifice this artifact: Draw a card."). Yeah, it's a renamed Clue token, but it made perfect sense in the world of scientists and inventors. As a side note, Marvel characters are interested in things that Magic characters often are not. These include money, which Magic typically represents with card draw, and happiness, which is shown by lifegain. Inventions represent learning or information, which I thought might be more appropriate to represent with some kind of scry mechanic, but I thought card draw was as good as anything. I might change it later if I can think of something better. Many creatures have superior combat skills, but not in a way that would make sense for first strike, trample, or other evergreen keywords. I added the keyword Agility (Whenever this creature blocks or becomes blocked, it gets +1/+1 until end of turn.), which is just reworded Bushido in order to support this. Other characters, like Deadpool and the Punisher, are well known for their weapons prowess, so I made the keyword Arsenal <number> (Aura spells you cast and equip abilities you activate that target this creature cost <sym>{param1}</sym> less to cast or activate.). It's a little clunky right now, but it provides the function I'm looking for in helping to equip and empower these creatures. I didn't want to limit it just to equipment as there is a good chance you'd never get to use their ability in any given game, so I opened it up to Auras as well. Other mechanics I created include Unstable (At the beginning of your upkeep, flip a coin. If you win, this creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn. If you lose, it gets -1/-1 until end of turn instead.), which represents characters with mental illnesses and fractured personalities, such as Legion and Polaris. Some villains also have Cruelty (Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, that player sacrifices a permanent.). I also modified a keyword called Capture (Create {english_number_a(param1)} 1/1 white Hostage creature token(s) with "When this creature dies, each player loses 1 life.") from another Marvel set which is really worth checking out over here. I don't agree with all his designs, but there are some interesting cards and it plays pretty well overall as a cube draft. As you can see, I have a ton of mechanics, and I utilized plenty of existing mechanics on cards where it made sense in terms of flavour as well. I'm a seasoned Mtg player and my friends are too, so I'm not worried about a Modern Horizons level of complexity in the set. Newcomers would find it difficult to keep up though. As I continued designing cards, I noticed a lot of other trends that appear in the comics that lend themselves to specific themes and mechanics. One was Sagas, which are a huge part of the Marvel Universe, as you know. Although I've read thousands of Marvel comics, I haven't really kept up with the recent story lines (after ~2010), so I tried to select the most iconic story arcs from Marvel's history and make them into compelling Enchantment - Saga cards. These include Maximum Carnage, Days of Future Past, World War Hulk, Secret Wars, etc. Designing these cards has been very fun and flavorful, but difficult. {Spoiler}  Other things I've included are Vehicles, although only about 10, and a significant number of Equipment cards, such as Captain America's Shield, etc. There are plenty of artifacts as well, including a cycle of rare metals from the Marvel Universe, including uru, adamantium, cavorite, vibranium, and carbonadium. As the number of artifacts in the set is quite high, that ended up being a major deck archetype I focused on. Lastly, with all the mechanics and complicated creature designs, I decided to make the remainder of my cards reprints. I scoured every card in Magic's history (took a good while) and made lists of any card that made sense in the Marvel world. Then I narrowed this down and slotted each card into the colour pair it most closely matched. You'd be surprised how many really appropriate cards already exist, and they've already been balanced by WotC so I don't need to spend ages designing them all. Glimmer of Genius, Shifting Loyalties, Hijack, Biogenic Upgrade, Act of Heroism, Unmask. The list goes on and on. I chose cards based on their effects and flavour more than their power level. I also decided against any card that would totally hose the opponent, since fun is my main goal here. |
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Schwa77
2/2 Zombie
Posts: 108
Favorite Card: Gishath, Sun's Avatar
Favorite Set: Ixalan
Color Alignment: Blue, Red, Green
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Post by Schwa77 on Jan 31, 2020 0:48:56 GMT
Apologies for the late reply, just been caught up with the Star Wars The Gathering project. collex Thanks for helping to clear up the keyword questions. Also, I like your idea for heroes/villains via watermarks, but I'm stumped on what to actually do as the watermark. Any ideas? I'm terrible at determining rarities in cards, so if there's anything you think is jarring (besides everything being mythic rare/legendary), be sure to let me know. jverse Crazy that someone else started this big of a project. I love the idea of the emblems, but I think it'd be way too hard to implement into my already-pretty-complex set. I too was considering going with the Power Grid for P/T, but didn't like how everything was capped at 7, though I think you came up with a good solution around it. In terms of the two-faced-cards, I think I'm going to use them a few more times (currently on Emma/Diamond Frost, Angel/Archangel, and Sentry/Void), but I like having them all as one creature instead of "alter-ego/superhuman." I thought about the energy counters, but as you said, it's really hard to keep balanced. And now that I've finally figured out how to do Sagas, I definitely want to get some big Marvel stories as Sagas. Overall, thanks for the awesome advice and I can't wait to see your set completed! |
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jverse
3/3 Beast
Posts: 195
Favorite Card: Animar, Soul of Elements
Favorite Set: Shadowmoor
Color Alignment: Blue, Red, Green
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Post by jverse on Jan 31, 2020 1:12:34 GMT
Thanks, good luck to you as well! You're obviously more knowledgeable than I am about much of the Marvel Universe, so I may pick your brain later for ideas on some characters I am less familiar with. I've read virtually every Spider-Man, Hulk, and X-Men comic as well as major events, but I don't know the Avengers and many of the other properties very well. The Star Wars project seems like it's coming along nicely as well. Glad you have lots of support.
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Schwa77
2/2 Zombie
Posts: 108
Favorite Card: Gishath, Sun's Avatar
Favorite Set: Ixalan
Color Alignment: Blue, Red, Green
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Post by Schwa77 on Jan 31, 2020 1:38:24 GMT
If only MSE had some sort of multi-contributor feature. We could blend our two sets together into the ultimate mega-set! And while I may have more Marvel knowledge, you're definitely more organized than I am. You have a whole ratio system whereas I have "hey, that's a cool idea, wonder if I can make a card of it." And it's great to do this alongside SWTG since it gives me a chance to steal from both sets take inspiration from one set to the other and make some cards I never would have imagined for just the one.
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Schwa77
2/2 Zombie
Posts: 108
Favorite Card: Gishath, Sun's Avatar
Favorite Set: Ixalan
Color Alignment: Blue, Red, Green
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Post by Schwa77 on Feb 5, 2020 0:49:44 GMT
jverse I'm looking for some advice and it seems like you're a good person to ask. When adding instants/sorceries/enchantments to your set, did you have any process behind them? I'm currently struggling with finding inspiration for mine, and since you apparently have over 100, you seem like the right one to ask. Was there any specific process behind it or was it sort of just "choose a random idea and turn it into a card?" Also, do you mind if I steal Invent? I love the idea, and like you said, works perfectly in a universe of scientists.
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jverse
3/3 Beast
Posts: 195
Favorite Card: Animar, Soul of Elements
Favorite Set: Shadowmoor
Color Alignment: Blue, Red, Green
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Post by jverse on Feb 5, 2020 7:56:30 GMT
When adding my spells, I looked at the color pairs and what my creatures in each pair were like. I then assigned a few mechanics and deck archetypes to each pair. For example, blue/green was full of mutants and genetic manipulators, like the Simic, so I went with +1/+1 counters, cloning, and proliferate as the main mechanics. Then I chose effects that either directly supported the archetype or at least fit thematically with the group. I wasn't too strict on the effects though. Otherwise a player drafting it would just pick every blue green card that came up.
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jverse
3/3 Beast
Posts: 195
Favorite Card: Animar, Soul of Elements
Favorite Set: Shadowmoor
Color Alignment: Blue, Red, Green
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Post by jverse on Feb 5, 2020 8:00:09 GMT
Also, go ahead and use invent. I recently changed it to "2, sacrifice this artifact: you get EE (energy); or put a +1/+1 counter on target creature." This differentiates the effect from investigate, which I also used on J Jonah and a few other cards, as well as helping out with my energy and counter mechanics. Use whatever version you like though!
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Schwa77
2/2 Zombie
Posts: 108
Favorite Card: Gishath, Sun's Avatar
Favorite Set: Ixalan
Color Alignment: Blue, Red, Green
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Post by Schwa77 on Feb 15, 2020 17:05:36 GMT
C)Symbiotic just does not work as written. It is very similar to Bestow from the original Theros, but Bestow came with an alternative casting cost - you could either cast the card as a creature (for the mana cost listed in the usual top-right corner) or cast it as an Aura by paying the bewtow cost instead. Symbiotic, by contrast, does not indicate when the creature can become an aura, if you need to cast the card as a creature first and then it becomes an aura, or if you can cast it straight up as an aura. I think the ability as a form of activated Bestow rather than on cast could be interesting, but it needs work. Apologies for this being incredibly late, but I've only recently gotten around to reworking (or rather, removing) Symbiosis in favor of a potentially smoother and more flexibile ability. Currently, the idea is to have double-faced cards with the creature on one side and an enchantment on the other (see Venom below for an example. Ignore costs and such, just the concept). While I think this lets the cards themselves flow a little better, there's a pretty obvious problem in that this doesn't allow all the Klyntar to have this ability due to lack of art. On the flipside, this isn't a huge problem since characters like Anti-Venom and Riot haven't had a lot of hosts in the past, so lack of enchantment makes sense. Do you think this makes for a better version of Symbiosis, or should I try to rework Bestow into some sort of new ability?  |
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Post by Lady Mapi on Feb 15, 2020 17:11:29 GMT
Schwa77 I'm not a comics guy by any stretch of the imagination, but what would stop you from using Living Weapon (or the variants we kinda-sorta got in M20) and just making Venom (and other symbiotes) colored equipment?
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Schwa77
2/2 Zombie
Posts: 108
Favorite Card: Gishath, Sun's Avatar
Favorite Set: Ixalan
Color Alignment: Blue, Red, Green
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Post by Schwa77 on Feb 15, 2020 17:23:49 GMT
Schwa77 I'm not a comics guy by any stretch of the imagination, but what would stop you from using Living Weapon (or the variants we kinda-sorta got in M20) and just making Venom (and other symbiotes) colored equipment? I did try these out with Living Weapon, but I struggled to find a centerpoint between having the Symbiotes powerful as their own creatures and not making other creatures incredibly overpowered. The M20 updates could work (i.e. create a 2/2 and attach to it, equipped gets +2/+2), but I also don't love the idea of Symbiotes creating their own creatures since flavor-wise it doesn't really make sense. It's definitely a great idea, but I can't really seem to balance it in this set and doesn't relate as well to the source material. |
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Post by Lady Mapi on Feb 15, 2020 17:34:36 GMT
Schwa77 I'm not a comics guy by any stretch of the imagination, but what would stop you from using Living Weapon (or the variants we kinda-sorta got in M20) and just making Venom (and other symbiotes) colored equipment? I did try these out with Living Weapon, but I struggled to find a centerpoint between having the Symbiotes powerful as their own creatures and not making other creatures incredibly overpowered. The M20 updates could work (i.e. create a 2/2 and attach to it, equipped gets +2/+2), but I also don't love the idea of Symbiotes creating their own creatures since flavor-wise it doesn't really make sense. It's definitely a great idea, but I can't really seem to balance it in this set and doesn't relate as well to the source material. Forgive my ignorance, but do Symbiotes normally walk around on their own? Or do they rely on having a host to get things done. One thing you could do is create a 1/1 Human as your "baseline". That's the previous host the Symbiote is attached to, and then transferring them to a different creature is them finding a better host. |
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Schwa77
2/2 Zombie
Posts: 108
Favorite Card: Gishath, Sun's Avatar
Favorite Set: Ixalan
Color Alignment: Blue, Red, Green
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Post by Schwa77 on Feb 15, 2020 17:51:54 GMT
The rules for Symbiote independence (alone vs host) varies from comic to comic, but typically they remain with their one main host (for example, Venom and Eddie Brock) and occasionally transfer to different hosts (for example, Venom and just about every Marvel character to ever exist). The biggest problem with "1/1 Human, attach, etc) is typically the Symbiotes are represented to be at their strongest with their main host. Maybe with different starting creatures for each Symbiote (to keep power balanced) the idea would work, but I think I'd rather keep the ability consistent across all of them, and since a lot of my creatures interact with tokens, it might start to get a little too overpowered.
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jverse
3/3 Beast
Posts: 195
Favorite Card: Animar, Soul of Elements
Favorite Set: Shadowmoor
Color Alignment: Blue, Red, Green
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Post by jverse on Feb 15, 2020 20:57:44 GMT
For my set I used graft on symbiote tokens. For example, when venom dies, create a 0/0 black symbiote creature token with Graft 2. This eliminated a ton of complexities associated with auras while still keeping a "bonding" sort of flavor.
As a side note, I've finally finished the draft of my set and have begun play testing to identify creature and balancing issues. My art, rarities, and abilities are all very rough or nonexistent so far, but I'll post what I have soon so you can have a look.
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Schwa77
2/2 Zombie
Posts: 108
Favorite Card: Gishath, Sun's Avatar
Favorite Set: Ixalan
Color Alignment: Blue, Red, Green
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Post by Schwa77 on Feb 15, 2020 21:18:29 GMT
jverse Smart idea with Graft. I'm not sure that works in my set, but that's the beauty of design in that everyone does it a little differently. Can't wait to see what you come up with! Also if you're looking for art, I'd recommend finding the character you need on the Marvel wiki, scrolling down to "character gallery: [name]" and finding an image that would work for you. Typically they don't have the text that can make cards look cluttered. And if you need some drafting/playtesting help, I'd be more than happy to lend a hand.
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jverse
3/3 Beast
Posts: 195
Favorite Card: Animar, Soul of Elements
Favorite Set: Shadowmoor
Color Alignment: Blue, Red, Green
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Post by jverse on Feb 15, 2020 23:54:32 GMT
Art has been a little harder to procure than I'd like. I want to credit individual artists where I can and highlight some of the best that have worked for Marvel. I may end up doing a lot of screenshots from CBRs. I'll check out the wiki though.
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Schwa77
2/2 Zombie
Posts: 108
Favorite Card: Gishath, Sun's Avatar
Favorite Set: Ixalan
Color Alignment: Blue, Red, Green
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Post by Schwa77 on Feb 16, 2020 1:26:36 GMT
jverse Good luck with that! Glad that you're trying to highlight some of Marvel's best and brightest. Also, random side question: How did you manage to do the full-art emblems? Is it a different format or a specific option within the style? I'm debating adding some starting emblems of my own (with permission, of course, obviously different from yours since our sets are so different) and the silver ones don't look nearly as good as the full-art. Could you let me know how you made them?
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jverse
3/3 Beast
Posts: 195
Favorite Card: Animar, Soul of Elements
Favorite Set: Shadowmoor
Color Alignment: Blue, Red, Green
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Post by jverse on Feb 19, 2020 3:48:30 GMT
The frame I used for the emblems is called Nokiou custom. I can't recall where I got it from. Might have even been the old forums, but it's around if you search for it.
I'm in the process of choosing all the art for my cards, and having a hell of a time with the double-faced ones. It's tough to find good art of many mutants pre-manifestation, so much so that I'm thinking of dropping many of the double-faced cards for simplicity's sake. I figure they will be a nightmare to print and play with anyway. Another issue is that I want the same artists for the front and back, just for consistency, which adds an extra layer of difficulty for me in finding appropriate art. In any case, I'll post what I have once everything has some art attached to it. I haven't even started designing many of the artifacts, but everything else at least has some text on it. I thought this was going to be a quick side-project in between custom sets I'm working on, but it has turned out to be quick an undertaking, even with all the reprints I'm using for spells!
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Schwa77
2/2 Zombie
Posts: 108
Favorite Card: Gishath, Sun's Avatar
Favorite Set: Ixalan
Color Alignment: Blue, Red, Green
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Post by Schwa77 on Feb 19, 2020 15:39:58 GMT
jverse I figured you'd run into a problem with the double faced since a lot of the characters would just be vanilla creatures and not very exciting. It would only really work if you did it for everyone and had to "upgrade" the creature to unlock the superhero. Also thanks for the tip on the emblems!
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jverse
3/3 Beast
Posts: 195
Favorite Card: Animar, Soul of Elements
Favorite Set: Shadowmoor
Color Alignment: Blue, Red, Green
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Post by jverse on Feb 19, 2020 22:48:41 GMT
Yeah, I'm doing a second pass through the creatures and removing any double-faced characters with minimal back story. Pretty much only keeping the ones with a significant transformation, like Beast, or characters that actively switch forms, like the Hulk.
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Schwa77
2/2 Zombie
Posts: 108
Favorite Card: Gishath, Sun's Avatar
Favorite Set: Ixalan
Color Alignment: Blue, Red, Green
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Post by Schwa77 on Feb 19, 2020 23:09:34 GMT
jverse Smart idea with Banner and Hulk. Somehow I didn't think of that. I figured most of your double-faced ones would be more work than they were worth, but it was definitely a cool concept. Have you considered keeping it for characters that use different sets of powers (i.e. Ant-Man and Giant-Man)? It kinda helps achieve the balance between having some transform but not having an overload of double-faced creatures.
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Post by collex on Feb 20, 2020 14:04:50 GMT
Hey there. Sorry I kinda went incommunicado for a bit here, things got busy. Anyway, I'll try to take a look at your comment about symbiosis later tonight and give you more detailed thoughts on it.
Funnily enough, last week-end I tried out Champions, the latest Marvel TCG from Fantasy Flight Games, and one of the main mechanic of that game that I though was really cool is that your main hero card is double-faced and can flip between superhero and secret identity, and each have different powers. Granted, it's a different game with different rules, but I think you could take inspiration from this - there really is no reason for the alter ego side to be a vanilla creature. You just have to be creative. Here are just a few ideas off the top of my head:
Iron Man, Hulk, Peter Parker, Mr. Fantastic, Beast: All these guys are scientific geniuses before adding any superpowers into the mix. You can probably do a lot of blue effects to represent each of their specialty. Iron Man is also rich and has a lot of stuff.
She-Hulk and Daredevil: Those guys are lawyers - white effects seems perfect for them
The Thing and Human Torch: Ben Grimm is a pilot. So is Johnny, in some versions. Ben Grimm is also tough even before being made of rock.
Doctor Strange: Life gain or reanimation. Dude is a surgeon.
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Schwa77
2/2 Zombie
Posts: 108
Favorite Card: Gishath, Sun's Avatar
Favorite Set: Ixalan
Color Alignment: Blue, Red, Green
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Post by Schwa77 on Feb 20, 2020 19:01:40 GMT
collexI agree that many characters can be a lot more than just vanilla characters, but a fair amount of them wouldn't be very different between normal and superhero. I like the idea of using it as a pseudo-secret-identity mechanic (especially with characters like Spidey). I worry about using Bruce Banner and Hulk since I have a lot of characters that place +1/+1 counters on Gamma creatures, and that might allow Banner to get a lot more powerful than he should be (unless I add "+1/+1 counters don't affect Bruce Banner" or some similar rule"). I'm definitely adding Matt Murdock though, since he'd be super fun to translate to MTG-style.
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jverse
3/3 Beast
Posts: 195
Favorite Card: Animar, Soul of Elements
Favorite Set: Shadowmoor
Color Alignment: Blue, Red, Green
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Post by jverse on Feb 20, 2020 23:51:11 GMT
You'll see when I post them that I've done quite a bit with the double-faced cards, already covering many of the ideas that you both have mentioned above. Some creatures like Ben Grimm can't transform back (it says so on the card). Others have the ability to transform any creature. I gave this to Sinister and a few others. Still others have benefits on both of their faces and you would likely want to use both, like Tony Stark who creates artifact tokens and Iron Man who benefits from them. Hoping to get the first draft out this weekend if I have time. Almost done with the art selections. I'll also make a small list of cards that I need help with, mostly because I don't know them that well. Sentry/void is one that I am not especially familiar with.
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Schwa77
2/2 Zombie
Posts: 108
Favorite Card: Gishath, Sun's Avatar
Favorite Set: Ixalan
Color Alignment: Blue, Red, Green
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Post by Schwa77 on Feb 21, 2020 0:17:51 GMT
jverse Fire away man! I've been waiting for a chance to put my extensive Marvel knowledge to good use. Sentry is one of the most powerful characters in the Marvel universe. Think about any superpower, and Sentry probably has it. A practical god, Sentry is commonly described to have the "power of a million suns." However, this power comes with a cost. If Sentry overexerts his power, he can get taken over by the Void, his darker half with even greater power. Essentially, Sentry and Void are what you get when you cross Superman and God/The Devil.
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