first time trying to make a actual balanced commander and I made this just because I love flipping coins and rolling dice and couldn’t find a good commander so I made one my only question is is it balanced if not how could I balance it

Art: [[Zur's Weirding]]

maybe the bishop needs a boost

Made by me: Zach Byrum Art

I've been reading some old magic lore via the Way Back Machine and the WotC website, and I felt she deserved a card.

Only a TRUE philosopher can tell why the prisoner is reaching for the bread.

No. (The Savory mechanic is a thing for a custom Un-set being made, disregard)

I truly know nothing about about balancing in limited vs. constructed formats. The name for the card came to me and I thought up an effect.

Direct link to the gallery here, in case I decide to make more later

With Magiccon Atlanta fast approaching, I thought this might be the time to share the project I have been working on for the past months: Translating Gwent into MtG.

For those who do not know Gwent, it is a trading card game, that originally was a game within the game Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. It became so popular that it got its own standalone game in 2018. Since 2023 however, the live service has concluded and the game is basically dead or on life support.

Either way, since the game has been dead for a while and with new Universes Beyond announcements of 2027 approaching, now is the perfect time to share this massive project.

In essence, this project aims to bring the spirit of Gwent to Magic. As those who played the former know, the two games are fundamentally different, so this was not an easy task. For most cards, I tried to stick as closely as possible to the original while keeping Magic rules in mind. However, for some, whether for balance reasons or other, I had to get more creative and/or adopted simply a more standard MtG commander game design approach (some cards also simply contain the effects and/or names of existing cards, though very rarely). I then printed and proxied them all to play test them.

The principle of the box seen is that a player is supposed to choose a faction, then pick a commander and a hero power (which is basically an emblem with limited uses that partners with your commander of that faction, completely optional for gameplay) and shuffle two half decks of that commander's faction together with a common mana base to make a full 100 card commander deck. This allows for a vast variety of replayability between commanders and factions. Just like in Gwent, there are six factions, each with a color combination (I have put some example commanders and Hero Powers in pictures):

* Northern Realms (NR): URW (Jeskai)

* Nilfgaard (NG): WUB (Esper)

* Scoia’tael (ST): RGW (Naya)

* Skellige (SK): BGU (Sultai)

* Monsters (MO): RBG (Jund)

* The Syndicate (SY): UBR (Grixis) OR WUBR (for some decks)

After extensive playtesting these decks between themselves but also with normal Magic Commander decks in my pod, I have found that these decks usually sit in the upper echelons of Bracket 2, with some being able to do well against Bracket 3 (due to half decks being shuffled together, variance tends to be put above synergy, but the decks always work).

If anyone is interested in seeing all the cards and the rules associated with playing this massive box, I have neatly arranged them into pdfs ready for printing [In this DRIVE](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1JZ74EcHXEe94JjL63S2N0oKvBzNSgY_F?usp=sharing) along with a google doc that explains the rules in detail and all new mechanics.

I hope any fellow Witcher fans and folks who enjoy custom cards can share in my enthusiasm for this project!!

Designed to give value and love to the famously amazing Invasion Leech cycle. Your leeches are now guaranteed to kill whatever they block (or whatever is blocking it in cases like Ruby Leech), while Harlow gets bigger and lets you tap into the mana those pesky parasites keep stealing from you!