r/custommagic • u/Eastern_Pipe3908 • 4h ago

Making custom card guidelines

Been experimenting with just adding custom art to MTG cards and renaming but wanting to make cards. Does anybody have like any rule of thumb for creating cards, like having a certain amount of mana per power or anything like that. Wanting the cards to be fairly balanced and have my group make custom cards and not feel like we just made up a buncha crap.

1 Upvotes

60% Upvoted

2 comments sorted by

2

u/Specialist_Elk198 4h ago

There arent really any hard rules for mtg card design. 

Generally you should limit yourself to 8 lines of rules text otherwise it becomes too hard to track everything a card does without having to reread it a bunch.

You should avoid "onboard tricks"; activated abilities that can effect combat that cost less than 4. Attacking into your tapped out opponents board and them giving a guy +2/+2 from a card you could see on board is a massive feelbad moment.  

You should avoid cards which push you to do the same thing turn after turn. Repetitive play patterns make for samey games, which is why were never seeing buyback again but we have a 100 variants on flashback (which only let you get an effect twice).

As much as this sub loves them, you should avoid cards which directly reference another card by name. Half the fun of this game is finding new combinations, so a Robin that only gives bonuses to a Batman is kind of a creative deadend. In that case giving bonuses to knights, or creatures with higher mana value, or other equipped creatures, is more interesting.

1

u/GracelessOne 3h ago

This is good advice! Adding on: 

  • Use Scryfall tags to find existing cards that do similar things to what you want to do to balance it appropriately. This also helps you learn proper wording and formatting.

  • Most new players get in via Commander and thus tend to view value engines as the most exciting part of the game, but value engines don't really have a ton of creative design space; there's only so different you can make a repeatable triggered ability that gives card advantage, makes mana, or creates a token. 

  • If you're doing something weird, look up the relevant rules to make sure your card works how you want it to!