NaGaDeMon #05 — Finishing

Bradley Rose
Nov 6 · 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
#04 — Reprints

On the train, I got to work to thinking about how to fill in the rest of the color pair archetypes of the set. Here’s what I scribbled into my notebook:

WU — Unblocked creatures matter
UB — Pirates tribal
BR — Two creature types matter
RG — Ramp and/or Werewolves
GW — Having more power/toughness than base power/toughness
WB — Caring about permanents being destroyed

UR — Noncreature spells
BG — +1/+1 counters
RW — Auras & Equipment
GU — Flash / instants

The color pair archetypes in bold here are completely fresh. The others were either figured out completely or teased a bit and/or more solidified.

White Walker

The white planeswalker in this set is Kaya. Kaya has a couple things she’s known for:
- She has ethereal / ghostly powers
- She can assassinate

With this in mind, I drew inspiration for the white-blue (ghosting) and white-black (assassinating) archetypes. Though, this set is really about Ral — it’s still neat to have some loose ties to the other planeswalkers.

With white in Auras & Equipment, and with blue overlapping with noncreature spells mattering ; there’s a lot of potential for your attacking creatures to go unblocked. Whether you’re doing flicker, banishing, or tap/freeze effects, or your creature is just too big for your opponent to value-block, that’s also another way your creatures to get through.

Dual Direction

For a simple expression of Werewolves changing form, I figure playing with +1/+1 counters is the way to go. One execution borrows from Eldritch Moon’s Eldrazi Werewolves approach — paying a high mana cost to finally “transform” (in this case, it’d be to place +1/+1 counters on it and, for some, gain extra abilities like trample, menace, etc.). Another approach is to use +1/+1 counters that ebbs and flows as turns pass to simulate that “transform back and forth” that standard Innistrad Werewolves had.

I’m leaning toward the simpler approach of a one-time “transform” activated ability. This synergizes with having a ramp strategy (yes, we landed at Core Set 2019 after all, only with Werewolves instead of Dragons). With a ramp strategy, we can do a loose tie with Koth here with caring about lands or basic lands.

When going red-green you have the option of leaning toward Werewolf tribal — but you don’t have to. There’ll be other rewards for going this color pair.

Green Growth

With +1/+1 counters in mind for green Werewolves, and with white Auras & Equipment beefing up creatures — having a green-white archetype that cares about creatures getting bigger than they normally are is something I’d like to pursue!

Again with the +1/+1 counters from the Werewolves, the idea of growth (green) or gaining power (black) can make sense for black-green. Let’s focus on caring about those counters for this archetype.

With this established — that means more potential reprints to choose from. Some cards that would be ideal for some archetypes were already picked up in the previous post for reprints, for overlapping with other archetypes (for example, Sea Legs).

…to be shared another time. Catch ya then!

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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