NaGaDeMon #04 — Reprints

Bradley Rose
Nov 4 · 3 min read

For National Game Design Month, I’m designing a Magic: The Gathering Core Set in a month! This devlog chronicles that journey.

Previous NaGaDeMon 2019 Devlogs:
#01 — Scope
#02 — Tribal
#03 — Archetypes

Since the last post about archetypes, I realized something:
- green-blue = flash + probably instants
- red-white = Auras & Equipment
- blue-red = …synergy with above if theme is “noncreature spells”

Anyway, before I start designing commons, some existing Magic cards make for fine reprints. Here are some potentials I found…

Red-White Auras & Equipment

Heavenly Blademaster is pretty great since I needed a non-legendary Angel slot to be filled.

Champion of the Flame has a slight Dominarian tinge instead of a plane-or-story-agnostic card name, but that’s all right! It’s slim pickings anyway for cards that care about both Aura and Equipment.

Ironclad Slayer is nice to have at common, but it’s odd to only return from graveyard, for a set that doesn’t have self-mill like Shadows Over Innistrad block.

Open the Armory is a perfect white uncommon card that can mirror the red slot’s Champion of the Flame. If there’s enough room.

Blue-Red Noncreature Spells

So many to choose from!

Green-Blue Flash/Instants

Instead of listing all the creatures with flash (there are a lot of them), here are potential reprints that have good synergy with instants/flash strategy or are noncreature, non-instant cards with flash.

Some of these are pretty powerful and some are really bad. But let’s not count them out at this stage, yet!

Next, here are a couple cards that don’t work — one is a black card (and the mythic multicolor commander cycle doesn’t have a good combination to allow for Sultai flash) and the other references flashback.

Though, it might be nice to do a card that is Mystical Teachings without the flashback. Would definitely want to only limit it to uncommon — too much tutoring for Limited!

And that’s all I got for reprints for now — these are a nice base for knowing what new cards I need to design. :)

Catch ya next time!

Milling for 53

Magic: The Gathering game design

Bradley Rose

Written by

Magic: The Gathering and card game design.

Milling for 53

Magic: The Gathering game design

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