Homework 4

This week's homework revolves around a practical exercise in balancing numbers in a game. The game we looked at this week was one many students were familiar with: Magic: the gathering.

The cards I created were strictly following the rules outlined in class, as some cards that could be made were not very balanced in the actual game of Magic (for example: with the rule set outlined, you could make a 3/1 creature for 1 red mana, which is slightly ridiculous). Also, the idea behind some of the cards would be much better realized if I was able to attach special abilities to creatures, as that was not allowed in the homework. This way, I have 2 versions of each card. One abiding by the homework rules, and one design that makes more sense in the context of the actual rules of Magic: the gathering.

The art on each card is not mine, and I credited the usernames of the respective artists (off of Deviant Art) on the bottom of the card where the artist's name is usually on all other magic cards. Even though I'll lose 2 marks for this, I do not see myself doing hours and hours of artwork for a simple exercise like this. In the end, the design is what matters, and I think the artwork I picked reflects the theme of the card well (definetly portrays the theme much better than what I could've done).

Card 1: Engulfing Soul

Deviant art username: RuslanKadiev Art: Fire Elemental

The first card I designed was meant to be a creature for devastating offensive strikes, but with a critical weakness to hold it down. The total benefit points gained from mana & other baseline costs is 12 (+1 baseline, +6 from coloured mana, +3 from colourless mana, +1 for being red, and +1 for being over 5 converted mana cost). I could have split it evenly at 6/6, but with the theme of red creatures, they are all about offense. So I decided to ramp up the attack to 10 while sacrificing the toughness and leave it at 2.

The 3 red mana was meant so that you could not simply splash this kind of power into multicoloured decks and to reinforce the fact that this was meant to be mostly a pure-red creature.

The theme behind the creature was that it was supposed to be the soul of a powerful, albeit tyrannicaly gluttunous being. As the flavour text suggests, his gluttony in life is what sets the soul ablaze in the afterlife. These fires are what creates his power, but the torment has caused this soul to be very brittle.

This is the re-design of the above card to make more sense in a Magic context. This card is quite expensive for a mono-red deck, esepcially since 6 converted mana cost is pretty mid-late game. There needed to be more benefits to this card for it to be more useful.

The first and most obvious addition was trample. This is a vital addition, as a meager 2/1 creature could simply block this guy and get away with it. The second addition I thought was neat, and goes well with the theme. When he dies, his flames spill all over the battlefield and cause any weak creatures to die, thus further raising his value as a board-wiping card, plus with the addition of doing trample damage to the enemy's health.

Card 2: Charnel Stormcloud

Deviant Art username: totmoartsstudio2, Art: The Storm

The second card is meant to be a cheap, defensive creature. With the art suggesting a very dark, and chaotic setting, I decided that it should be a black creature. The total benefit points gained from mana & other costs is 5 (+1 baseline, 2 for black mana, 2 for colourless mana). 1/4 is a relatively even split in favor for defense, as it leaves room for the creature to damage the creatures it's blocking, but also having a high toughness so that it is hard to get rid of. This makes sense in the context of the theme, as this is supposed to be a stormcloud. These tend to not be very mobile, and any creatures caught in it's range would at least suffer some penalty.

 The re-design of this card is a more powerful version of the one above, and a meaningful and powerful blocker in its own right. The change is that it is now a multi-color creature which justifies the newfound power, although it might cost a little too much for a multi-colour card. I tried to create something faithful to the art depicted (flames and death, red and black respectively), while also capturing the power depicted with the addition of deathtouch.

Card 3: Thousand-legged Serpent

Deviant Art username: superpauloitalo Art: Colored version African Dragon

This card started out as purely an experiment as to what I could get away with by having a green creature get the +2 bonus from costing 5 converted mana or more. The benefit points total from mana & baseline is 10 (+1 baseline, +4 green mana, +3 colourless mana, +2 for green & mana cost over 5). Considering I've already done an offensive and a defensive creature, this time around an even split seemed logical. Being 5 mana for 5/5, this creature seemed like the most standard creature I could think of, with no special benefits or things that make it unique.

The title of the card is an inspiration from an actual card in magic called the Thousand-legged Kami:

I noticed it has very similar stats in terms of mana and toughness, so I'm on the right track. It has a special ability however, so that is going to skew the mana cost. I felt that the original card I designed is actually pretty fair, and doesn't need a redesign in my eyes.

Other Designs
I figured I'd indulge myself in a few more designs, as I found this exercise to be rather fun. The first card is obviously broken, but I actually never knew that Magic had a symbol for infinite mana. Where could they possibly use it? I don't know of a card that uses that symbol, so I challenged myself to balance a card that could potentially give the user infinite mana for 1 turn. It is rather hard to punish the player properly for that kind of gain, but I think that the current design I did is somewhat fair. It's probably better to increase the mana cost for untapping the artifact, but the idea was once you've played this, you hope to draw at least 1 land to get a shot at getting infinite mana again.

Kickass art by Sam Burley (taken off of Deviant Art)

Another card design was me fooling around with variable power/toughness. I never saw this type of card that relied purely on luck, so the initial design was that players roll 20 sided die for the P/T. I realized that not only would this be overpowered, but not all players have access to 20 sided die. If you play magic, you probably should, but considering all options, it was best to do something else. I figure converted mana cost of random cards in your hand to be a good idea, as you'd know when you want to cast the card (a lot of high cost cards in your hand). As a bonus, this card will probably never go above 7-8 for P/T, as having more than 1 card in your hand that costs more than 8 mana is relatively rare.

Deviant Art username: Zyklon8B Art: Warrior Concept