My Custom Cards

I like to make custom magic cards because MTG is my favorite game of all time and I find that it is a semi-infinitely extensible game system. Below are some of my favorites!

Fishmonger is one of my attempts to make “Gift a Card” do something without explicitly telling the player what it does (like kicker). This was a pretty successful card, and I am happy that it can be built around in ways that aren’t written on the card.

Another very succussful card that occurred to me as I was in the middle of a game of commander. Obviously this breaks devoted druid and persist/undying, but I think as a 4 mana creature with no protection it offers an interesting alternate use for your many, many counters.

Here is a more experimental card that showcases a typeless battle. I believe that this is correct rules wise. To me, typeless battles just represent much stronger enchantments, since they do something very similar, but can be killed.

I really, really like exhaust. I made this card as a showcase for some of the design space for exhaust. I see now that it is a little overpriced, but exhuast gives permanents the really interesting and powerful ability to also come with an instant/sorcery attached.

My most popular card by leaps and bounds. This one recieved almost 2000 upvotes on the custom magic subreddit. Funnily enough, I dont really care for it, and I don’t think its particularly strong either, but I suppose its something about the flavor and simplicity that redditors like.

This is an example of a very common occurrence for me, I thought of a very fun and interesting concept, and I struggle to make it work in the context of a full card. For this one, I thought “Sacrifice a creature: put a loyalty counter on this planeswalker”. Thats it. The rest is just me trying to justify/use the ability. Luckily it landed on its feet, but I think there could have been more here.

This was a less popular card where I played around with more types of cycling. It is probably too strong, but its very clean, which I like.

Here is a card that I am very proud of. She stabs people! And makes stab wound tokens! Unfortunately, I stumbled a bit with the ward cost, which probably should have been enchanted creature. But otherwise, this card is dripping with flavor.

One of my wackiest cards. This triggers not on landfall, but whenever you get a landfall trigger. Its win-more in that sense, but I like it as an experimental piece.

Just a big stupid beater. Many people found this card too strong, but I think there is a subtle self balance here. If the ward cost is unpayable, then the menace didn’t matter much in the first place. ideally, this creature is great against control decks, and just good against rival creature decks.

Here is what I mean by a “semi-infinitely” extensible game system. First, there are neither finality counters nor cards that interact with them. Then, finality counters are created. Now we can have cards that care about finality counters! This card is inteded to be a fun limited bomb, and probably not much more. It has a cool extra functionality of preventing death triggers, but that is pretty minor.

What if day / night wasn’t kinda bad? This card attempts to fix that and make a 1 mana banishing light that forces your opponent to make a difficult choice.

My second most popular card of all time for good reason. Amazing flavor and an entirely unexplored design space. It is a narrow design space, but it is sick.

Spree on a permanent. There are memory issues here, but it could be an interesting space to play.

The best mechanics reward moving the game forward, and risk taking. Boast does both! This card gives you a very powerful and above rate mana dork, but you have to attack to get the full power. It has the same name as an existing card, so ignore that :p

A very simple aura here. I tried to solve the age old card disadvantage problem that auras have. It doesn’t quite put you up a card, but it helps prevent blowouts.

Bam! Planeswalker aura! Kind of a weak card that I made before the aetherspark played in the same space.

What if Bolas was a sorcery? I really like spree and this came to me as a divine revelation. The colors themselves are slightly questionable, but this is how a multicolored spree card should be done.

It’s a beater. It’s a protection spell. It’s a blink spell. It’s boardwipe protection. This is a card I’m very proud of due to its versatility and simplicity. Also, both mechanics came out in the same block, but they were never on the same card!

This is another multicolored spree card, but this time it seperates the abilites of cruel ultimatum into the options. Its pretty similar to return of the god pharoah, but it has its own uses.

A big dragon that scorches the earth beneath it! The flavor is amazing. This is like my Sorin card, where I thought of Devour Land first, and the rest of the card followed. Unlike that card, this one seriously stuck the landing.

White has had zombify since alpha, which I didn’t know until recently. This is my attempt to go 1 mana cheaper by not allowing the creature to attack or block. Often times its not much of a downside because you’re reanimating vorinclex or something.

Expend felt much more like a white mechanic to me than a gruul one. It has a built in once-per-turn limit. I can see how making lots of mana is more green than white, so perhaps expend feels more like a selesnya mechanic to me.

Here is a much older attempt to make gift a card work less like kicker. I really like this one, but it should probably have a scry tacked on or something.

Twice upon a time in the doctor who set gave us the first adventure on a non-permanent. This is my attempt to play in that space. I do admit that the second half would be better if you didn’t almost always cast it after the adventure.

My take on an elegant prototype card. Most, if not all, of them cared about power and toughness, but this one cares about color!

Similar to sorin, I think I will call it the sorin effect. Offspring and exploit were the inspiration here. The costing was pretty difficult, but I think 5 mana is reasonable for a 2 for 1.