FUR: Card-by-Card Designs, Pt II

     Welcome back to TwistedSpoon Studio! Last week in our series on Festival of Urbestia, the custom Magic set about a world of beast folk, we discussed the relations between the tribes and saw the map of Urbestia for the first time. This week we're back on the design side with more card-by-card designs! (If you missed it in the last Card-by-Card article, the current card file can be found here.)

CW14 - Vivid Bonds

{2}{W} Enchantment - Aura

Enchant creature 

Enchanted creature can't attack or block.

 

Vivid-- When [Cardname] enters the battlefield, if three or more colors of mana were spent to cast it, create a 1/1 white Rabbit Folk creature token.

 

    CW14 is the white entry to the common Vivid cycle. The intention for the cycle was for each card to have a different card type. White seemed like the best color to do an enchantment, but it turned out to be a bit tricky. Because of the artifacts-matter theme, the common positive aura that each color gets at common was replaced at by the Mask cycle. That left the Pacifism slot-- white almost always gets a common enchantment that prevents attacking or blocking, and it varies between two and three mana depending on the set. 

    The next hurdle was flavor-- how do you combine a removal effect with art? The Wall Folk have a pastoral aesthetic, so the famous American Gothic came to mind. (That's the one with the very stern-faced farmer and his daughter.) The Wall Folk also have family as a core theme, so this turned out to be a good fit.

CU09 - Ceremonious Swallower

{4}{U}{U} Creature - Whale Shark (5/6)

Defender 

When [Cardname] enters the battlefield, you may enact a tradition. 

Tradition: Until end of turn, [Cardname] may attack as though it didn't have defender.

 

    CU09 was a fun one. After green, blue is the color of big creatures-- leviathans, giant sharks, sea monsters, and the like. At common, though, there's usually a drawback that keeps you from going too crazy with it. This was an interesting opportunity to tie in the mechanical theme of the set. It also plays into the alternate archetypes for WU and UG-- tradition blink. If the idea is to recur creatures that trigger traditions when they enter the battlefield, then you need god payoffs to reward doing so. At common, a 5/6 is a pretty good payoff, and it gives you a reason to trigger traditions several turns in a row. Also, Whale Shark is a fun typeline. Notably, I think this is the only non-folk animal in the set so far. How did that not end up in green?

CB17 - Artist's Block

{2}{B} Sorcery

Target player discard's two cards, then mills 2. 

    One of the challenges of this set is flavoring negative effects, especially in black, If the goal is to create the feeling of a vibrant, lively festival, how do you contextualize mechanics like discard, mill, and sacrifice? One of the sources I turned to was Strixhaven; while it does have darker elements, it's overall tone is lighter than most sets because war has been abolished on the plane. Here, the Mind Rot effect is Go Blank. In addition to gorgeous artwork by Wylie Beckert, it features a clean, simple design and a relatively benign flavor to its discard. It doesn't represent something that another person is doing to the victim; it's just something that happens. Sometimes you just... go blank. This approach contributed to the flavor of a couple of cards in the set. It just goes to show that you don't always need a splashy, complex design-- sometimes a little bit of flavor goes a long way.

CR19 - Inspiring Pendant

{2}{R} Artifact

Vivid-- When ~ enters the battlefield, if three or more colors of mana were spent to cast it, creatures you control gain first strike until end of turn.

{T}, sacrifice [Cardname]: Creatures you  control get +2/+0 until end of turn.

 

        We've already touched on the Vivid cycle today, but I wanted to get the other weird one out of the way. White got an enchantment, blue got an instant, and green got a creature. That left sorcery and artifact for black and red, and I felt that red cared more about artifacts than black. To make it fit, I took the red team buff slot-- usually dedicated to cards like [example card]-- and translated it into this design. Ironically, the red vivid card takes inspiration from a black colorless-matters card: Swarm Surge, from Battle for Zendikar. It felt more appropriate in red, so here we are.

CG02 - Festival Tagalong

{1}{G} Creature - Rabbit Folk (1/1)

When [Cardname] enters the battlefield, create a 1/1 white Rabbit Folk creature token. 

    We're all familiar with Raise the Alarm. White and green trade off on common token creation effects; usually one color makes tokens and the other makes them bigger. In this case, white has a common team pump effect, so green gets to make the tokens. Normally this effect is on an instant, but FUR has a subtheme around recurring creatures. Being able to recur it comes at the cost of losing instant speed, which seems fair to me. Other than that, the decision to make the creature tokens Rabbit Folk comes from a) the small creature theme of the Wall Folk, b) the fact that rabbits multiply like... um... rabbits, and c) I actually have a pet rabbit!

Say hello to Flepperjack!

Out of Design

    That's all we have for this week. What have you designed lately? Feel free to show us your designs on Reddit or Imgur by posting the link below!

    We're nearing the end of Vision Design-- at Wizards, this stage takes four months. We started in late September, so things will be wrapping up near the end of January. I'll talk more about what that means as it draws closer. Next week, we'll put on our creative hats and talk about story and conflict in FUR. And don't forget to tune into Design Talks this Wednesday for another designer interview! Until then, check out Blogatog, Mark Rosewater's Tumblr blog where question mark meets explanation point.

See you soon!