Up until now, I stopped designing and writing for my Daily Card Redesign series on this blog after the first half of 2013. I dropped off the radar of Magic: The Gathering design and continued to do so during 2014. I no longer kept up on Goblin Artisans' Cool Card Design of the Days, Weekend Art Challenges, and other updates. I didn't stay current with Mad Olaf's daily card designs. Finally, I disappeared from the #mtgdesign Twitter scene. That changes this year.
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| Chandra's Phoenix art by Steve Argyle |
While you'll be seeing my active participation within the Magic: The Gathering design community this year, you won't be seeing a return of the Daily Card Redesign. While it's awesomely fun to re-imagine the design of a randomly-selected card from among Magic's decades of past cards, I have other plans in mind for this year; which includes designing to completion a full Magic set.
Ever since I began the (ambitious) project of designing an expert-level Magic: The Gathering set that coincided with regular writings on Red Site Wins supported by reader feedback, I had the growing notion that I had made the mistake of not starting with a more simpler concept for a set. Granted, I was pursuing "four-color matters" as a theme, but something like a Core Set (besides the weird restrictions it has for being a set that serves multiple purposes/roles) would have been a better choice. I still want to accomplish the milestone of completing my first Magic set design, so this is what I'm going to do: I'll be designing a Core Set.
I wrestled with the decision to do a Core Set because of the announcement that Core Sets as we know them now will be no more, per Mark Rosewater's article, "Metamorphosis." What use would there be for practicing the art of Core Set design when Core Sets will disappear? Not only that, but what about those extra restrictions placed upon them, like how it should have fifty-percent reprints or how there should be cards that play nicely with the block preceding the set as well as the set that comes after it?
Ultimately, I decided that I still wanted to design a Core Set, deciding to not strictly adhere to those extra rules Core Sets have as well as despite the fact that Core Sets disappearing. The reason is because of one card I desire to make a reality: a red Phoenix card that has the mechanic undying.
From the moment I had seen the pattern of bringing back one mechanic for each year's Core Set, like with bloodthirst or convoke, I had kept in mind a particular mechanic that I knew would be a great candidate for resurrecting - undying.
Undying first appeared during the Innistrad block, and those sets took place in a world that didn't have Phoenixes. And it being a gothic horror set, the undying mechanic only appeared on creatures that were appropriate for that world, even though there are a host of other possible creatures that could exist as Magic: The Gathering card that have undying. And one way to get this cards to exist without needing to expand upon the keyword would be to bring the mechanic back in a Core Set. Thus, I had my mission - design a Core Set with undying as the returned mechanic.
For each year that passed after determining I was going to design a Core Set featuring undying, I sweated as I watched the unveiling of information and previews of that year's Core Set occur, hoping that undying wasn't a mechanic that was chosen for that year. That way, that design space will be "unmined," leaving me to explore possible card designs utilizing undying. And then Core Sets were announced to be ending.
Because of the last Core Set releasing this year, this is my last year to create an undying Core Set project. And thus begins my return to Magic: The Gathering design. The improbable goal of finishing designing this set I've established for myself is "before official previews for Magic 2016 begin." We'll see how this goes!
This is a solo endeavor I'll be taking, with weekly blog updates on my current status of the project. I welcome feedback and comments, of course, which may impact my decision-making, but I'm not holding myself or others to any kind of collaboration.
Once Core Set: Undying (that's what I'm calling this project for now) is completed, my next project will be pursuing the four-color set design I had attempted once before. I've got some new ideas for that kind of set, and I'm excited to explore those ideas. For now, I'll be working on designing this Core Set.
That's it for today's blog post, which I intentionally left devoid of any sort of design work for Core Set: Undying. I'm revving up and re-acclimating myself to the Magic: The Gathering design lifestyle, which includes getting back into the groove of blogging, posting to social media, utilizing MagicCards.info, and etc.
Catch me on Twitter at @bradleyrose! Let me know of any cool Magic: The Gathering design news I've missed over the past year, whether they're some awesome articles are interesting updates to the community.
See ya next week!
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