Getting Custom

Hello everyone and welcome to the first installment of Getting Custom. Getting Custom is about players creating homebrew Magic cards. I hope that I may be able to write an article each week on certain card designs. I even hope to be able to find some other custom card creators to help us through the design process.

So as I have told before, I surf the forums at MTGSalvation quite a bit. I am know to that community as 'jfdep'. I have had quite a few comments over the past few years on my games that I create for the forum games. In fact, it was because of those first comments that I went on and developed my own Magic Block called 'Falling Star', but more on that later in upcoming Getting Custom.

Recently, I came across a forum game called "The Fantasmigorical Cube Creation Contest!". The user is putting together a Cube of custom designed magic cards, so I thought that maybe I should give it a try.

The stipulations was the following:

• Had to be an artifact or land card
• Had to accelerate mana generation at the cost of another resource

Sounded easy enough. I sat and looked through all the art I have collected over the past few years trying to find something that make for a good land or artifact. At the time this article was being made, I have 3,194 image files in my Magic art folder and I continue to obtain more. As I was scrolling, I came across this piece of art and knew that I had to create a land around this piece. Take a look.

Just beautiful isn't it? I was very well done. The artist is know on DeviantART as Angela-T. Many of her works are beautiful and very well done. I would like to thank her for the art that inspired me to create this card.

Very elegant and simple. One user on the forums described it like this.

I like this card so much. Terrific name. Terrific concept. Terrific playstyle. Terrific flavor text, and terrific render. I would love to see a cycle of these, each with color related drawbacks. -- Alabran

I was happy to see that others liked my land card, and Alabran's comment made me feel like I wanted to continue the cycle. Now, this is where the work starts. How do I make a cycle of these lands that has appropriate backdraw from each with still being balanced?

Again, I turn to my Folder-O-Art and looked for some art for the next color pairing which was going to be green, white, and blue. About three quarters of the way down I find this little piece of art. Looks fantastic and I thought captured white rather well.

So, I had the art now what? Well, that was simple, add all the needed text. The hard part was the drawback. So the point of this cycle of lands is to help the opponent out when you help yourself. The more opponents you have that worse it is for you to use it. The Grove's primary color was green and that gave the opponent life. I didn't want to give this one life gain, since I wanted them all to have different effects. Then it dawned on me. White does like to exile cards, but how many cards is enough to exile. Again, I turned to the first card. The more players the more unfair it gets. The final result of the card looked like this.

It took awhile, but I was able to create a whole cycle. Each has their own unique drawback that is indeed color appropriate. Take a look for yourselves.

Color Shard: White/Blue/Black

Color Shard: Blue/Black/Red

Color Shard: Black/Red/Green

So, I think that is enough of my talk for now. I would like to know what you think about these lands. But until next time, this is Deppe passing the turn.

Rumors, Speculation, and Discussion

Hello everyone, I want to spend a little bit of time today on new set rumors, speculation, and discussion. Before the release of a new set, we have a time period where these three words have a whole lot of meaning.

I spend a lot of time each day on the MTGSalvation Forums. I mean like a lot of time, like I always have a few threads open in my browser when I'm online. So lately, there have been a few cards being spoiled by Wizards of the Coast for the upcoming set Zendikar. This set is said to house a crate full of magic flavor and brings back a mechanic that players love to play.

One Wizards announces the new set, speculation starts to happen. People start new threads in the Speculation forum at MTGSalvation. This speculation season started off with hardly anything to work with except for two sentences, "Priceless Teasures. Deadly Perils". This is all that people had to work with for a few months. many started to browse through all the futureshifted cards from Futuresight to see what cards may fit the tiny spoiler we were given.

Not much time later, Mark Rosewater wrote an article about card design and gave another tiny spoiler. He wrote "you wouldn't believe us if we said we were doing ______ without ______." He did not give anything away, but what he wrote started even more speculation. There is so many things that can fit into the spoiler he gave us. Threshold without 7 came to my mind. Other things that can fit are "Affinity without Artifacts" and "Splice without Arcane".

Another hint came from yet another article on the Magic website. we were told that heavy multicolor would not happen again for a while. After this tidbit, players started talking about how Zendikar would be a monocolor themed block. This is something that I could agree with, more so after the new dual lands were released with Magic 2010. The dual lands from M10 deal with basic land types. So the only way they could be used most efficiently would be in a two color deck with many basic lands. Another thought came to mind not too long later. Maybe there will be nonbasic lands in Zendikar that have basic land types. They make the M10 duals great and they help support a mono color theme.

So last week, we had Gencon. The Convention for games. At Gencon, Wizards released a few products before they hit the streets a week or two from now. Planechase and From the Vault: Exile was released to a very limited amount of people. Each Planechase deck has a card from Zendikar in them. All of these cards were common, but four commons were better than not having anything. Each card displayed good flavor and revealed a possible sub-theme for the set.

Currently Wizards is slowly spoiling Sorin the new planeswalker from Zendikar. Not much is know about Sorin, but we do have the art, name, type, and loyalty. And as one can imagine, the forums went nuts. Speculating abilities, colors, and playability. Today, Wizards spoiled another planeswalker that will be in Zendikar. The new Chandra has been revealed, and just like Sorin, we only know the color, type, and art. And during my browsing of the "New Chandra" thread on MTGSalvation, I came across this picture:

Could this be the new Chandra? Could it have been leaked? The answer to those questions is no. Why you ask? Because a few days before I was browsing and saw this picture:

At first glance, the card looks real with the counters and things on it, but once you take a closer look, its clearly fake. As you can see, both cards are the same except for a few things. For one, Chandra's hair is coming out of the border just like the planeswalker art should. Secondly, one picture has two +1 abilities and the other only has one +1 ability. Thirdly, the picture of the cards on the table, the cards have no depth and just looks like they were copied and pasted on the background.

So, why do people do this? Why do they try and create fake cards to put on display? Well that's an interesting question to answer. Because these people think that they can fool others. A lot of times these attempts don't work, but sometimes they do. If you can create a card that looks perfect in every way and I believe it, I say more power to you and good job. But these attempts keep people thinking and gives them more to talk and speculate about.

This card here is one that mocked up for my own custom set.

I think I did a relatively good job with this card, but I do admit that this is far from perfect.

In the end, people just want their handy work recognized and they want something more to talk about. So I how you link back next week when I talk a bit more on Rumors, Speculation, and Discussion. This is Deppe passing the turn.

And here is another little goody that I think you all will enjoy.

Runescape Taste

Runescape has a unique design and storyline. There are a couple of cycles of cards. There is one rare cycle that I know for sure that will get players hopping.

Take a look at Devastation.


What do you think about that? Six black mana to restart the game almost. Is that affect worth six black? I would say yes, because Damnation can destroy all creatures for 2BB. So, six black should be able to destroy all permanents without a problem. This card is kinda a last ditch effort to get back in the game. Maybe it could be part of a combo.

If you likes that little gem take a look at this card.


Oh my god! Its like Flame Javelin but better, well sort of. A better Flame Javelin could be cast for less than three red mana, but think about it for a moment. You can deal 4 damage as soon as you have three red available and then when you have five red available you can hit for 7 damage. Mono-red decks would be eating this card up if Wizards ever printed this card.

Until next time, this is Deppe passing the turn.

Runescape

In 2007, I decided to create a custom Magic set. About 700 cards later, I had created an entire block. An entire Magic: The Gathering block! Was a large endeavor for one person to do.

Using the nifty Magic Set Editor, I was able to mock up the cards rather well and print out proxies for drafting and such. My sets became hits across campus. I held "release" tournaments for my sets that included promo cards as well.

In 2009, I have decided to go down this same path once again. I would like to announce the newest Magic: The Gathering custom set block from Deppe Gaming. The 2009-2010 block will be the Runescape Block.

And here's just a little preview of what's to come.



By the Start of the next academic year, the set should be completed and the design phase for the next set will be starting.

Until next time, this is Deppe passing the turn.