I enjoy making my own Magic cards as much as any other Magic enthusiast. While creating single cards is a fulfilling exercise, one may become motivated enough to attempt what employees at Wizards of the Coast do: design and perfect a custom set of their own. I've been wanting to write some blog articles that might aid others in set creation, or at a minimum push others toward thinking about what goes into making a set. Although it seems a bit of an odd topic to start with, I thought I would begin by discussing a tool which aids in the creation of a set: the Skeleton.
When you begin to write essays in Middle School English, the teacher may want you to start your paper by writing an outline. For Magic Sets the Skeleton is the outline. How complex a creator makes the Skeleton can aide or deter the set's progress from idea to completion. The first thing the Skeleton defines is how many cards the set will contain. I've made very small sets that have had only 50 cards, but most small sets range around 150 cards, while larger sets contain around 250 to 300+ cards.
The second thing the Skeleton define is how these cards are spread among the five colors and multicolor/colorless cards. Most sets will strive for an even spread among the five colors and a spread among the multicolor cards. The number of colorless artifacts and lands will tend to remain fluid in order to aide in maintaining this balance. The balance in the five colors isn't always necessary, as a designer may desire to make more cards for one color than for another.
Our third level of the Skeleton is rarity, which happens to be one of the trouble points for myself in the skeleton. Rarity is a difficult matter to design into a card, because often people mistake uniqueness for power level. Look at Fork, Twincast, or other "copy target spell" cards for example. These cards however are rarely used in mainstream tournament decks, so they aren't OP. So why are these cards rare? Every one of these cards are rare because copying big spells for little mana is unique. The problem in designing cards to fit into a space in the third level is that those cards are often OP instead of Unique, which often leads the card to be thrown out later in design.
The lowest levels are design choices based on how the designer wants to push the set. For example the set may contain any number of two-color factions, such as a group of red-green barbarians. The designer may then set aside half of the red cards and dedicate them to being part of the barbarian faction. In this case a designer may be forced to design a card that is sub-par or broken.
There are of course easy ways to fix the problems that the Skeleton creates. The most obvious solution of course is to just design more cards than are necessary for your set, then whittle out the bad cards. If creativity is not your strong suit (or you just plain run out of ideas), it may be necessary to allow some flexibility in the skeleton. While you may need six good cards for your faction, you may find that only five of the cards you made are up to par. You could always bring in another card and change up its flavor to match your skeleton, but it might be a more suitable solution to maintain the card as-is and change your skeleton.
In final note I will point out that the Skeleton is a powerful tool in the design of a Magic set, but a player should be wary of the Skeleton's negatives and not force undesirable cards into the Skeleton.
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