TwistedSpoon Studio

      Welcome back to TwistedSpoon Studio! Wednesday is when we talk about custom Magic designs, usually covering new custom mechanics. I say usually because this week we're doing something a little different.     While these designs are new, the mechanics might be familiar... because we're working through the signpost uncommons for Festival of Urbestia ! FUR might be on hiatus, but we're still working through the card file. Without further adieu, let's jump in! Sky Merchant     WU is here to play artifacts and swing with flyers. And they're all out of artifacts. Because they played them to trigger Commerce and give their creatures flying.     FUR's white-blue archetype is your standard flyers affair-- gum up the ground, swing in the air, profit. In this case, it's more tempo than control, using bounce and disruption to slow down the opponent while playing artifacts at the right time to secure an advantage. There's also a mild flicker su...

    Welcome back to TwistedSpoon Studio! This week, Workshop Wednesday is a little wacky-- we're doing silver-border, baby! After all, what's funnier than explaining your jokes?     Before we get started, I want to say that there are two different kinds of Un-designs in the world of custom magic. There are genuine, this-is-a-card-you-could-play designs and there are joke cards that are clearly never meant to come anywhere near a table. This article is going to cover a couple of both, but I think you'll be able to tell the difference. Be Cool, Dude     Do you remember those halcyon days of kitchen table Magic? Did you ever play at school over your lunch break, or during homeroom before first period? Ah, those were the days.  And if someone tries to get pedantic about the numbers, just read the title! Quit the Game Forever     Oftentimes, when I post a silver-border design, it's in response to a trend in the community. Sometime last year, r/Cus...

      Welcome back to TwistedSpoon Studio! Workshop Wednesday is where we share custom Magic designs and discuss the process behind them. This week, I thought it would be fun to look back at the Workshops that we've done so far! Cost Lands     Lands? With Costs? Witchcraft!      This was the first Workshop Wednesday and the design that inspired the series. Cost lands were extremely divisive, but the response was net positive. If you want to learn more about the design space, you can find the original workshop here . Prophecy     On the other end of the spectrum, prophecy was very  well received. My old college roommate-- the infamous Zuberan, for those in the know-- and I came up with this a while back, but this workshop explored the design space and found some interesting places it could go. You can find the original article here . Backup     These designs demonstrated the power of flavor, elevating a well-received mechan...

      Welcome back to TwistedSpoon Studio! It's Workshop Wednesday, which means we're going behind the scenes on custom Magic designs. This week, it's the Tragedy mechanic!     Tragedy is an alternate-cost mechanic that appears on instants and sorceries, allowing them to be cast when they're put into the graveyard from your library. That most often means mill, but it also triggers off of effects like Dark Bargain and Gifts Ungiven.     Tragedy is inspired by Miracle, a similar mechanic from Avacyn Restored that allowed you to cast a spell for a much lower cost if it was the first card you drew in a turn. Interestingly, cards can break their normal timing restrictions when cast with Miracle. The same loophole is intended for Tragedy (and technically, I think it has to work that way to work at all, but don't quote me on that).     Tragedy has some strange balancing concerns. On the one hand, it essentially allows you to draw cards by allow...

     Welcome back to TwistedSpoon Studio! Today we're talking custom design, and to continue the sci-fi theme of the last few articles, today we're talking power suits. Inspired by space sci-fi from Halo to Warhammer 40K, this cycle is intended for a hypothetical Commander preconstructed product. Gear Up     Suits are a new artifact subtype that acts like equipment, but attaches to players. The Don ability allows you to attach a suit to a player-- any player-- at sorcery speed. Each of the suits in today's cycle also has an enters-the battlefield ability.     While it may not seem strictly necessary, the etb-effects are actually what makes this work. After all, if you want an artifact that gives you abilities, those already exist: they're called artifacts. Putting those extra effects behind a cost begs the question, why not just make them more expensive?     Thanks to these spell-like effects, these go from artifacts with extra steps, to spel...

     Welcome back to TwistedSpoon Studio! It's Wednesday, which means we're workshopping custom Magic designs. With Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty on the horizon, there's no better time to talk about cyber punk. Inspired by novels like Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep and  Neuromancer , and movies like Bladerunner  and Ghost in the Shell , the cyberpunk genre is about two main elements: cyber (digital technology) and punk (anti-establishmentarianism).      Magic already has a Revolt mechanic, so today we're doing the other one. In meat space, I actually work in information technology, so I was very much looking forward to some sort of digital mechanic in NEO-- data, hacking, the Metaverse, anything long those lines. Instead, WotC focused on the transhumanist side of the genre, highlighting body modifications. To fill that gap, I tried a couple of different approaches:         The first was a rather literal take a data manipulatio...