How I’d Do It: Episode 4

First of all: sorry this is so late. The article just kept growing bigger and bigger, ending up a good 50% longer than usual. Plus, I wrecked my clutch yesterday, and had to deal with that instead of finishing this up.

So, yeah. Moving on.

This week, as promised, we’re looking at Keywords. This is going to be a more technical excercise than the last few; the last couple times, I talked about mechanics just so that I could show you some cards. This week, I made some cards just so I could talk about mechanics. This article is one of three I eventually plan on doing that were the original reason I decided to start this column; there were three major issues I saw with the vast majority of fantasy cards and that I really felt other designers could benefit from reading about, and “bad keywording” is the first (though, the least pressing, now that I think about it). I’ll try to limit these “nag rants” to one every couple months to avoid alienating my readership.

How I’d Do It: Episode 3

This isn’t the topic I originally planned to cover this week. My original plan was to write about the whys and wherefores of inventing new keywords, but partway through last week I had a great surge of inspiration on a different topic, and, ADD being what it is, I couldn’t let go of it. So, I’m going to postpone the keywords article until next week, and instead, I’m going to completely gut and rebuild from scratch the central theme of a team that’s always just felt wrong to me.

That team is, of course, the Sentinels.

How I’d Do It: Episode 2

By Captain Spud

After spending last week talking about a character I don’t give two farts about, I figured I’d give myself a break this week and do something fun. I was a huge fan of the X-Statix comics, and I was pretty shocked– and delighted, of course, but mostly shocked– to see them appear at all in VS, never mind being a fully featured team in the game’s first year. I can only conclude that someone on the design team was a big fan, and nagged them in, because let’s face it– no amount of rational argument would be enough to get them included.

What made me even happier was when it turned out that they had a really interesting mechanical concept for the team– they strive for, and benefit from, having exactly one guy on the board. Considering the extraordinarily curve-based meta that existed at the time, with most decks using some variation on “my 4 into your 5, my 5 into your 4″ with the goal of outnumbering your opponent, the X-Statix strategy seemed, to say the least, ill-advised. And yet, it worked.

How I’d Do It, Episode 1

Heya, folks. Welcome to the inaugural edition of How I’d Do It, a (hopefully) weekly look at the art of fan card design. Each week, I’ll pick a subject, and walk you through how I’d go about designing cards to fit that theme. (I’m also going to try to do as much of the art myself as I have time for). Along the way, I’ll try to explain some of the theory behind it all, to help other aspiring card designers improve their craft, and give those who have never given it a shot some guidelines to help them get started. Before we get into the meat of today’s article, I’m going to own up to my biases.