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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Almost at 10,000 battles already, and a new 4-card battle mode is available now!

rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Want to help find the most iconic and memorable Magic The Gathering cards in history? Check out #MTGVS! Vote in quick 1v1 matchups for the #mtg card you are more familiar with, and explore the evolving community-driven ELO ranking with basic Scryfall-like filtering! mtgvs.vercel.app/vs.html

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

I'd also argue that +1/+0 here would also create unintuitive board complexity since getting one of your creatures removed doesn't usually lead to another one getting buffed outside of death triggers. But, overall, it's a downside mechanic with no flavor, and they've always stated that these miss

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

I personally don't like it from a design perspective. It's tricky to design around since you have to find a small effect that properly fits each individual card. It's going to eat significant complexity/rules text budget of cards without providing any structural support to set themes and archetypes.

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 18/01/2026

I think the utility 1/3s (and 0/4) are great complements to the creatures with dies triggers or with the counter-removing AAs. I think they enrich the overall blight theme and facilitate cross-pollination. I can really appreciate how precise the design of this card is in this set.

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 18/01/2026

The way convoke and blight overlap is really nice, despite not being obvious at first glance. They push you towards evaluating (some) early creatures in a way that you can mostly disregard their attacking value. A 1/3 that dies into a card fits well with convoke and as a carrier of -1/-1 counters.

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

"on it" after "~ enters with N counters" is probably the most custommagic-esque thing to omit... and it's now becoming a thing?

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

I guess players didn't get the Clue because it wasn't done on an artifact.

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

When omen was spoiled I was a bit confused. My first reaction was "But this mechanic provides no tangible structural support!" That is, no gy interaction, no cast-from-exile, not explicitly helping flurry, etc. So what's its role in the format? Yet playing with it felt good. It quickly grew on me.

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

My wet dream is a set with an animate artifacts mechanic and with some artifacts that have combat-relevant abilities. This one's pretty close to that though I wish we could get that sort of limited archetype at some point.

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 11/10/2025

Oh, I stand corrected! I don't know why I thought the rules didn't support it. Probably some un-cards.

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 11/10/2025

The record of longest type line in number of characters still belongs to these three cards, with 49 characters each. (Brudiclad got errata'd to Phyrexian Artificer). Leonardo comes closest, with a type line of 48 characters.

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 11/10/2025

Donnie & April and Leonardo would also become only the second and third ever cards reaching a total of six supertypes, types, and/or subtypes, the only existing one so far being River Song. Note that I'm not counting creature types gained via changeling.

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 11/10/2025

If I'm not mistaken, Donny & April and Leonardo would become just the 10th and 11th cards with four subtypes. Full list: scryfall.com/search?q=t%3... Notably, the only other cards with four printed types are River Song and Druid of the Sacred Beaker (silver-bordered). Others gained via errata.

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

Two other good candidates for me because of format context. I'm thinking there has to be a fun RG or BR deathtouch design that hasn't been made yet... Like a creature that deals 2 damage on ETB and has deathtouch as long as some condition is met.

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

Sticktwister lifelink is a beautiful way to balance the modes leveraging Black's tools in the color pie. I think the design premise of Turbodrone is brilliant in the context of the EOE RW archetype, even if the card wasn't very good.

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 28/09/2025

Haven't honestly stopped to think about what would be the structural implications for set design, but one of my favorite parts of draft is the dynamics between how many players stay open vs lock early in a table. Sure with 5 archetypes it's "harder" to pick two cards that don't go together but still

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 28/09/2025

I was a bit surprised how much the assumption was that players would lock into their colors early and survive/pivot from there as needed. But wouldn't drafting be healthier if staying open was embraced also in pick-two format? I've first picked 2 cards that can't go into same deck many times myself

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

I thought W and G looked by far the best colors, and I was pleasantly surprised about UB. I think the hybrid dork is critical to G decks. I prefer to start in W or U and be UW, UB, or WG. WG arcuns are very good. Otherwise lean big into +1 counters, with connive/gy flavor if UB. Aerialist is insane

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 15/09/2025

While I think 5 archetypes only is a must for 4-player pods unless you design archetypes with tons of overlap, I don't think the opposite is critical. Openness is still a factor, just the numbers are different. What likely scales poorly in this case though, is legendary commons, as you say.

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

Highly doubt they'd consider letting this put a stun counter on something untapped because it's unintuitive (especially for a common). This is a slightly downgraded tapping, less useful on offense. But potentially finds more targets than usual in a set with station.

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

Jamuraa: Mirage War (JAM) is a custom set that borrows assets including storyline, card art, card names, and flavor text from the original Mirage and Visions sets.

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

For anyone that might be interested (and somehow doesn't have enough with EOE!): Tomorrow I start previewing a custom set in the MSE discord server. You can also follow along the cards as they are previewed here: custom-magic.gitlab.io/custom-magic... Here you have the teaser and a welcome card!

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

The way I see it: - Being egendary is mechanically relevant in the set, even if not critical. - There is enough text box space and budget for "extra words" considering the rest of this card, in my opinion. Only exception would be if it prevented you from fitting some very important flavor text.

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

The other option is that each is some top-down triggered ability, I assume one that clearly engages in combat. The main argument I see against this is that if they are remotely unique, it'd be 4 unique mechanics eating the complexity budget of limited (unless they're rare+ exclusive). [3/3]

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

so for example each bending ability could be a slightly different flavor of the same mechanic, like creating some temporary (attacking) token with different features, and each invovled color pair leveraging them in a slightly different way (go wide, sacrifice, some ability of the token, etc.) [2/3]

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

I assume something related to combat. I guess not directly mapped to colors/lands because of different names and only 4 elements. Yet each element only makes sense in certain colors, perhaps only within GUR. It's possible to have a mechanic dictate three adjacent color pair archetypes, [1/3]

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

One of the many cool things about landfall is that it can be used to implement a dedicated lands archetype that can replay lands, as well as a tool to reinforce a grindy archetype that just aims to ensure a steady flow of lands. You just need to tinker with the triggered abilities you design.

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

When I see a new mechanic I love thinking about the design space of positive interactions in limited: - Undercosted high pw (defender, lopsided stats, other downsides) - Becomes tapped, control tapped creatures - Vigilance, untapping - Interacting with (charge) counters Expect at least the first 3

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

The bad? I guess I'm a weird player profile in that from a set I basically enjoy spoiler season (to appreciate design) and the first couple of weeks of limited. Higher prices make me very unlikely to attend physical prereleases (though I guess you got UB sales more than covered...)

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

Mechanically/functionally it's indistinguishable from a UW set. An UB set allows me to appreciate from design perspective how a fixed setting and characters were converted into Magic designs. FIN introduced nice mechanics. Cards with Job Select make themselves and yet they feel uniquely flavorful.

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 10/05/2025

This makes me wonder... Does Rot-Curse Rakshasa (the 121st card in this sheet) show up 7/6 as much as other mythics, or are there other mythic rare sheets? I imagined that with 20 mythics in play booster sets, the 121st card of the mythic sheet would be a filler.

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

Bold of me to assume it had a precedent! I would've been too easy in that case😂

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

I believe it would be "When", right? Avoids any potential misinterpretation of the reflexive trigger being a separate ability.

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

Congrats on a fantastic set! Love limited design so do you have any cool story about a C/U card that was hard to nail? Or a last piece for some archetype/mechanic as-fan hard come up with? E.g. comes to mind that only 1/5 of devotee cycle using set mechanic was maybe by necessity, not by design. Thx

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

In any case, keep in mind that this is only my own opinion and only based on my own personal experience! Still, I hope that this thread might have helped some fellow amateur designer even if I only know enough to scratch the surface. And if you have any thoughts about this, let me know!

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

Ultimately though, mechanics aren’t black and white in this classification. Cycling for example would be somewhere between “producer” and “tool”; flashback, while "consumer" of graveyard, could also act as "producer" of a mechanic like flurry (precisely what Harmonize does in Tarkir: Dragonstorm).

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

... based on the mechanic, like kicked spells matter. Incidentally, I've also found "tool" mechanics to be great prompts for card designs when you are not feeling particularly inspired to design a card from an emptier canvas.

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

In my opinion, “tool” mechanics fit best in a set as horizontal mechanics, i.e. distributed more or less evenly across all colors. This way, all colors get access to the extra design space they provide, enriching the set. Of course, you can still have an archetype ...

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

Thus, the exhaust ability enables designs that would not be possible or feasible otherwise. This additional design space can be leveraged to design cards that feed arbitrary archetypes, even if "tool" mechanics barely do anything by themselves to materialize specific archetypes.

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

To illustrate what I mean about increasing design space, you can consider Stampeding Scurryfoot from DFT versus Thought Shucker from BLB. The latter has a “Activate only once.” that we are not used to, especially at common, but the former feels natural because it’s standardized as a set mechanic.

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

Rather, "tool" mechanics increase design space in a general manner. Unique card types like Battles, Sagas, and Rooms tend to belong here too.

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

Finally, there are mechanics that I call “tool” mechanics. For example, kicker, spree, and exhaust. These are like “producer” mechanics, but what they produce isn’t targeted at specific themes (outside of caring about the mechanic itself, like Roost of Drakes from ZNR).

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

You need “consumer” mechanics to spice things up and introduce distinctive ways to interact with the “producer” mechanics. One of my favorite, seen in the recent Duskmourn set, is manifest dread with delirium. Manifest dread produces somewhat selective graveyard filling, and delirium consumes it.

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

For example, if you have straight GW go wide, UW artifacts, and UG counters, built entirely around fabricate, and a similar layout for all other color pairs, the result will perhaps lack a bit of inspiration. Furthermore, you may end up with too many cards that work well in all or many archetypes.

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

For example, fabricate brings counters, artifacts, go wide, and sacrifice synergies all in one. In my experience, however, if you overdo with “producer” mechanics, you risk that your set becomes too dull and homogeneous, with archetypes that don’t have a well-defined identity.

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rst38 @rst38.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

On the other side of the coin, we have “producer” mechanics. Examples are endure, fabricate, manifest dead, investigate, and Map tokens. In contrast to “consumer” mechanics, these ones enable archetypes by providing the structural support they need.

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