Gunnerkrigg/MTG card thread

[tpman]

So this is happening then? alright!
Here's some random GKC stuff i put together.
I'm unhappy with Joneswalker's second ability gameplaywise but it does fit the story and I haven't found anything better. The only reason she's Lady Elizabeth is because it made for some good walker art. The bulletproof nanny bit helps enhance the +2's flavour though.

Attachments:

[tpman]

I'm going to need somebody to tell me how to upload more than one image in a post
Hmm that second ability could cost a little less.

Attachments:

[tpman]

One more for now.
No man on this earth has ever captured the essence of a wimple so quite so eloquently in a fantasy trading card if I do say so myself. I'm a true pioneer.

Attachments:

[gkfan]

alternate version of reynardine

[oglokoog]

Morpheus, your cards are great. Love the flavor texts, too.

[tpman]

Couple of important points:

• Are we going to make all cards with proper names legends? That would line up w/ how MTG works but I can see how it might create a bit of a legend glut.
  
• Can we reprint old MTG cards with GKC relevant art? For example the card "Arrest" with a pic of Jones being arrested.
  
• Annie is not blue in any significant way that I can see. Most of her "blue" traits like the reserved demeanor fit much better under white in her case. Heck in some cases detachment can fall under green.
  
• I'm available for help with proper wording. I do a lot of custom MTG and frequent Wizards' You Make The Card forums so I have plenty of experience there but I'll try not to be too anal about proper wording.
  
• I vote that robots remain colorless but the Court gets cards that interact positively with artifacts.
  
• Please everybody use MagicSetEditor. It's free, it's easy, it looks good and it keeps everybody on the same page.
  

@morpheus: I don't see why your Paz is blue. She seems pretty green or green/white to me. Some of the wording is a little rough but otherwise the cards are great.

[tpman]

Just occurred to me- If we're going to double up on lots of characters we shouldn't just give the cards that characters' name. THe cards name should relate to the art of the character and the mechanics of that card. For example Morpheus' Janet Llanwellyn be something like "Janet, Archery Prodigy".

[Morpheus]

Jan 5, 2013 0:24:38 GMT oglokoog said:

Morpheus, your cards are great. Love the flavor texts, too.

<3

[Morpheus]

Jan 5, 2013 2:39:28 GMT tpman said:

Couple of important points:

• Are we going to make all cards with proper names legends? That would line up w/ how MTG works but I can see how it might create a bit of a legend glut.
  
• Can we reprint old MTG cards with GKC relevant art? For example the card "Arrest" with a pic of Jones being arrested.
  
• Annie is not blue in any significant way that I can see. Most of her "blue" traits like the reserved demeanor fit much better under white in her case. Heck in some cases detachment can fall under green.
  
• I'm available for help with proper wording. I do a lot of custom MTG and frequent Wizards' You Make The Card forums so I have plenty of experience there but I'll try not to be too anal about proper wording.
  
• I vote that robots remain colorless but the Court gets cards that interact positively with artifacts.
  
• Please everybody use MagicSetEditor. It's free, it's easy, it looks good and it keeps everybody on the same page.
  

@morpheus: I don't see why your Paz is blue. She seems pretty green or green/white to me. Some of the wording is a little rough but otherwise the cards are great.

The colours of the factions as I see them are Blue for the Court with Red and Green for the Forest, both factions with Black and White in it, though those two would be more prominent in the Court. So Paz is blue because she's assosiated with the Court and she's going to be one of very few Green cards from the Court.

1: I don't think all properly named cards should be legends, that would make for WAAAAY too many of them.
2: Reprinting is fine I'd say, albeit possibly a bit boring if it gets used too much.
3: Completely agree that Annie should never be Blue. Red should be her main colour of course, with White, Black and Green as auxiliary colours. (White and Green for her normal moods and Black for her extreme mood in Fire Spike.)
4: That sounds good, you're welcome to correct any wording mistakes I've made in the cards I've shared. I think they're mostly correct, but there's bound to be mistakes, and there's some wording in there I'm not too sure about either. They're all just made really fast though, so I don't feel too bad about it.
5: Agree. Robots are colourless and the Court should be able to make better use of them through cards like Kat and her parents, while the Forest should have cards like Ysengrin and Coyote who can destroy or counteract them.
6: Yep. It was posted earlier too, but I'll post it again. Download link is here: magicseteditorsourceforge.net/download..

[Morpheus]

Jan 5, 2013 3:05:45 GMT tpman said:

Just occurred to me- If we're going to double up on lots of characters we shouldn't just give the cards that characters' name. THe cards name should relate to the art of the character and the mechanics of that card. For example Morpheus' Janet Llanwellyn be something like "Janet, Archery Prodigy".

As for this, I figure the easiest way is to give each character a base, preferably non-legendary card, and then add more for the same character for different situations, like Annie in Fire Spike deserves a card for herself for example.

[Sivo]

Jan 4, 2013 11:28:30 GMT Morpheus said:

<3

[GK Sierra]

Goddamn! I cannot get over how awesome these cards look! Makes me sad that all the friends I have who play Magic don't live near me. I'm totally going to make a deck out of these and bring it up when I next visit.

I was thinking though, that maybe you want to put the "possession" power that Sivo has onto another Reynardine card that is him in his spirit form. Maybe Rorgat Orjacks should be their own card using Sivo's art, so there's one more plain vanilla damage dealer. Just a thought.

Some of these look unfinished. Are you updating them as you go? I'm curious as to what Lindsey's stats are. She strikes me as a rather like the Leviathan, although I don't know if she would have Landwalk.

[Morpheus]

Jan 6, 2013 8:25:35 GMT GK Sierra said:

Goddamn! I cannot get over how awesome these cards look! Makes me sad that all the friends I have who play Magic don't live near me. I'm totally going to make a deck out of these and bring it up when I next visit.

I was thinking though, that maybe you want to put the "possession" power that Sivo has onto another Reynardine card that is him in his spirit form. Maybe Rorgat Orjacks should be their own card using Sivo's art, so there's one more plain vanilla damage dealer. Just a thought.

Some of these look unfinished. Are you updating them as you go? I'm curious as to what Lindsey's stats are. She strikes me as a rather like the Leviathan, although I don't know if she would have Landwalk.

The Reynardine has a possession ability too, I just felt the "sacrifice Sivo, gain control of target creature" was incredibly appropriate, so I gave one to him too. There is going to be (at least) one other Rogat Orjak card, Mr. Thorn's Orjak, whose name escapes me at the moment. And yes, they're just made up as I go, it's really quite a lot of fun and you should try it yourself too, even if you have no experience with it. (I have zero experience with making magic cards, so I say this with confidence.)
I måde Lindsey already too, she's just a 4/4 for 4U with nothing special though.

[http404error]

Jan 5, 2013 2:39:28 GMT tpman said:

Couple of important points:

• Are we going to make all cards with proper names legends? That would line up w/ how MTG works but I can see how it might create a bit of a legend glut.
  
• Can we reprint old MTG cards with GKC relevant art? For example the card "Arrest" with a pic of Jones being arrested.
  
• Annie is not blue in any significant way that I can see. Most of her "blue" traits like the reserved demeanor fit much better under white in her case. Heck in some cases detachment can fall under green.
  
• I'm available for help with proper wording. I do a lot of custom MTG and frequent Wizards' You Make The Card forums so I have plenty of experience there but I'll try not to be too anal about proper wording.
  
• I vote that robots remain colorless but the Court gets cards that interact positively with artifacts.
  
• Please everybody use MagicSetEditor. It's free, it's easy, it looks good and it keeps everybody on the same page.
  

This set will have a lot of legendary creatures. That's just what's gonna happen.
Reprints are definitely on the table. Crushing Vines, for instance.
We can worry about individual cards later. More importantly though, personality and ideals trump alignment in terms of defining color.
Wording is also to come later, and between the two of us, I'm sure we can nail it pretty good.
While I formally have no opinion, I think colorless robots will help avoid a glut of blue cards. Besides, the forest has no problem using robots for its own ends when needed.
And yes, MSE is nice.

[http404error]

Jan 4, 2013 23:40:49 GMT tpman said:

I'm going to need somebody to tell me how to upload more than one image in a post
Hmm that second ability could cost a little less.

Host them on another site such as Imgur. Then use an image tag (second row, fourth button) to link them in. This also reduces the load on the forums.

So yeah, I'm going to see if I can't link the doc in my sig so it doesn't get buried and never seen. Y'all should do the same if it works..

EDIT: Yes! [`url] tags are hashed in sigs!

[GK Sierra]

Here are the cards I'm working on so we don't double up:

Blinker Stone
Homemade Trickery (Jack's Bugs)
A colorless land card (although post-industrial skyline might already have this covered to some degree)
Jack
Springheel Jack
Forest Signal
Court Signal
Jeanne
Jeanne's Tomb
Microsat 5
Mr. Donlan's Portable Door
Power Station
Ether Transmission
Skywatcher
War Horse
Prompt Delivery (Package for you Mizz Donlan, go ahead and shuffle through your deck until you find a robot card)

I'm still figuring out this program, but I'll post 'em up here when I'm done.

[http404error]

Feel free to make your own cards! After all, that's what the thread is all about. We can get some great ideas brewing.

But at this stage in the set, we aren't ready to make calls about the cards we want to be in the set quite yet, and the mechanics are still unknown.

We will certainly make generic nonlegend creatures (give the background characters time to shine). Multiple versions will depend on the importance of the character and how much the colors need to be filled out. The set skeleton element is detailed more in the articles I linked at the end of the set document (see the fancy sig!). The most important part is knowing what makes a card a certain rarity.

There are going to be a lot of legends in the set. Most of them will be rares, with a few exceptional uncommons POSSIBLY. I can't see us making a common legend under any circumstances.

[GK Sierra]

Hey Morpheus, you might want to change some of your cards. Katerina is spelled with an E.

[Morpheus]

Jan 7, 2013 7:53:45 GMT GK Sierra said:

Hey Morpheus, you might want to change some of your cards. Katerina is spelled with an E.

Yep. I noticed that yesterday, just hasn't gotten around to changing the uploaded ones yet.

I made a new slew of cards too, but most of them doesn't have art yet, so I'll post them a bit later when they do.

Oh, and I have like, 40 cards in the works or something stupid like that. I'm up to ~40 (semi)finished cards already too.

I made Tom, Tea, Torus & Ogee (one card), City Face, Bobeyes, Annan Waters, Annan Bridge, Young's Park, Gunnerkrigg Powerplant, The Court, Gilitie Woods, Good Hope (those 7 are lands), Muut, Ketrak, Moddey Dhoo, Malt-y-nos, Andrew Smith and William Winsbury. (And there might be more at my PC at home too, but I don't remember which ones.)

[GK Sierra]

Awesome, can't wait to see Moddey Dhoo and those land cards.

I almost feel torn choosing which of Tom's post-industrial landscapes to use. There are so many good ones.

[Morpheus]

13 cards more are done! 7 named lands, 5 of which are two-color, 1 black legendary and 1 colourless, 4 psychopomps, Smitty and William WINsbury! (I had to make him that way and I'm not going to change it. Don't even try to argue.)

Here's all finished cards until now. imgur.com/a/t3Ijd#0

Whatcha think?

Edit. Erk. I already noticed at least two mistakes (Young's Park's rarity was common, which I fixed and Muut has a wording mistake which I'll fix when I get home. Along with all the mistakes on the earlier cards. Which will probably still have mistakes on them when I'm done with them, because that's how it works. Ugh.)

[Jamie]

Jan 4, 2013 11:28:30 GMT Morpheus said:

Also, response pls!

Hi! Your cards are supercool and I especially love Gamma's ability.

Here are my thoughts:

• I don't think Annie or Kat should be legendary creatures. I know that in MTG, basically all named cards are legends but here I'd probably limit the legendary type to well, Coyote's Tooth and Jones.
  
• I think Coyote would fit a planeswalker better than a creature, since planeswalkers in the MTG multiverse are basically demigods anyway. (Yes, I know Nicol Bolas and Venser were printed as creatures at one point, but that was before the planeswalker card type was introduced).
  
• Maybe add the Human subtype to Annie's card (to become "Human Elemental" or "Elemental Human") because she is more than 50% human after all, and considers herself more human than otherwise.
  
• I'd probably have Reynardine green to emphasise his connection to Gillitie Wood. I don't *really* see him as a red guy at all. I also don't see Parley as blue but I don't know what to suggest instead. =/
  
• Jones would probably have shroud rather than hexproof as she herself cannot manipulate etheric objects (e.g. the blinker stone).
  
• Your lands should probably have "tapped when enters play" or some other drawback so that it doesn't obsolete basic lands like the original dual lands did.
  

[Morpheus]

Jan 7, 2013 11:11:42 GMT Jamie said:

Hi! Your cards are supercool and I especially love Gamma's ability.

Here are my thoughts:

• I don't think Annie or Kat should be legendary creatures. I know that in MTG, basically all named cards are legends but here I'd probably limit the legendary type to well, Coyote's Tooth and Jones.
  
• I think Coyote would fit a planeswalker better than a creature, since planeswalkers in the MTG multiverse are basically demigods anyway. (Yes, I know Nicol Bolas and Venser were printed as creatures at one point, but that was before the planeswalker card type was introduced).
  
• Maybe add the Human subtype to Annie's card (to become "Human Elemental" or "Elemental Human") because she is more than 50% human after all, and considers herself more human than otherwise.
  
• I'd probably have Reynardine green to emphasise his connection to nature and Gillitie Wood. I don't *really* see him as a red guy at all. I also don't see Parley as blue but I don't know what to suggest instead. =/
  
• Jones would probably have shroud rather than hexproof as she herself cannot manipulate etheric objects (e.g. the blinker stone).
  
• Your lands should probably have "tapped when enters play" or some other drawback so that it doesn't obsolete basic lands like the original dual lands did.
  

• Annie is, in her base card, not a legendary, but her "enraged" and "ascended" cards are, both because I found it fitting and because I don't want to see decks with only Annie, Annie and Annie as creatures. (Which wouldn't work anyway, since she's semi-expensive, but you know what I mean.) So Annie's mythicals doesn't necessarily need the legendary status, I just think (more) stupid situations would arise if they weren't. Kat is legendary because I figured it'd be much too powerful to be able to play more than one pumped robot per turn, each for only UU. Angel Kat is just a more extreme example of the same.
  
• Coyote would indeed fit very well as a planeswalker, but I haven't ever played with planeswalkers and I don't even know entirely how they work, so I stick to more basic stuff instead. Besides, I never really liked the concept all that much.
  
• Annie's base has the human subtype. The two others don't, simply because her type would become incredibly long, and the other two subtypes are more important.
  
• Renard (Reynardine when he lived in Gilitie in his fox body) is green. Reynardine (His pure spirit form) is black/red because it fits the selfish, impulsive nature he seems to have at the start of the story. Reynardine, Cotton Wolf is red because it represents his more emotional side.
  
• Hmm. That's a good point, but I'd have to make her a 4/4 or give her some other buff instead then.
  
• Also a pretty good point. I'll fix this when I come home too.
  

Glad you guys notice the combos I put in there. Did anyone notice the potential for using Shadow Two (0/1 unblockable) with Coyote's Tooth and Paz? (Shadow goes through any defense to deliver the summoning blow, but without any power he doesn't deal any damage and thus doesn't trigger the summon, which is where Paz helps. Paz works well with Annie's base too, she prevents the damage Annie deals to herself so she can both attack and tap to blast, even if she took damage in the attack. I like Paz. I'm also kinda ranting now, so I'll stop.

Thanks for the feedback by the way!

[Morpheus]

I have too many cards spread out too much over this thread, so I'm taking every single image down (Except the very first Annie) and replacing them with a link to my Imgur album, which is here: imgur.com/a/t3Ijd#0

New cards: Tea, Tom, Alistair, Renard, Smitty, Bobeyes, City Face, Boxbot, Robox, Tic-Toc, Torus and Ogee.

I'm up to 53 cards by the way. That's almost a deck. It's ~80 % creatures at the moment though, so there wouldn't be much play with it. Still, that's a lot of cards to make in four days. I'm kind of impressed with myself.

[Nnelg]

Hey, just stopping buy to say that I'm surprised that nobody's linked to the two cards which started it all: (Or have they? I've only skimmed the thread...)

gunnerkrigg.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=general&thread=21&page=98#75531

[Morpheus]

They weren't posted here before, but definitely needed to be.

[notacat]

Is this the kind of thing which could be hosted on the Wikia?

I don't know what kind of licensing issues there might be and how those might combine with licensing requirements on Wikia, so I can't say myself for certain whether it would be permissible.

[GK Sierra]

Edit: Here are all the new ones plus revisions to the old.

[Morpheus]

I'm not adding them - or any other peoples cards - to my imgur album. I'll make another album later if we need to compile all the cards in one place, but not now, and I'm not going to add them to my own.

Also, some tips and pointers for balance and stuff like that: Prompt Delivery is an instant and shouldn't have neither power nor toughness. Just leave the field empty. It is also incredibly overpowered and the wording is a bit off. Also, as a general rule, everything enters play untapped, rending the signal cards pretty useless, as well as making the wording of Prompt Delivery more awkward.
Jeanne's Tomb is a bit of a weird card too. It's not really a creature, so wouldn't it make more sense for it to be a land? Balance issues here too, it'd need some fairly radical changes too to be in line with other cards. Wording is a bit off too, "on the field" isn't a term that is ever used. It would just be "All robots gets +2/+2."
Homemade trickery is fine except it's a coloured artifact. Artifacts are (almost) never coloured. I can't remember any examples but I'm pretty sure there's a few. Coloured artifacts are an exceptional case though.
The opposite of the above is the case with both Ether Transmission and Prompt Delivery. Sorceries, Instants, enchantments and non-artifact creatures are with very very few exceptions (most notably the Eldrazi from the Zendikar block) coloured. Ether Transmission also seems to be missing any kind of effect. I'm not too sure about convoke either, the reminder text implies it's only supposed to be on creatures, but that doesn't necessarily mean we can't use it on sorceries/instants. It would need rewording though. (You can remove reminder text by right-clicking the "convoke" and ticking the "reminder text" box off.
The Signal cards, once they've been reworked, should probably be enchantments (and not the enchant creature type) instead of creatures, since, well, they aren't creatures. Or they could be instant/sorcery spells.
The rest are fine, except Jack and Sky Watcher, they're a bit too powerful for they rarity, so either make them rare and uncommon or hit them a bit with the nerf bat. And I think Sky Watcher should probably be a colourless artifact creature too, shouldn't he? Since he's a robot after all.

As for pointers for how to use the program, have these two:


Also, go check out some cards at gatherer.wizards.com/, every single MTG card ever printed is available there, so go look at some random cards, just to get the gist of how it works. (Alternatively, cardkingdom.com is good for easier looking at cards from just one block and it has a "other people who bought this card also bought these" function, often showing of combos or stuff that just go well together. gatherer.wizards.com/ has comments, often quite extensive, on pretty much all cards, as well as being able to sort by "community rating", giving you the most interesting, most well-made cards at the top.)

[Morpheus]

Oops, forgot to add one thing to the tutorial cards! If you want to make a different style of card like a leveler or a promotional art card, there's the "Style" tab along with Cards, Set Info, Keywords, Statistics etc.

Edit: Also a last thing, in the Set Info tab you can add Tom Siddell in the Artist box and "2005-2013 Gunnerkrigg Court" in the copyright box and it'll show up at the bottom on every card you make. If you use fanart for any cards you can always just change the artist name for that specific card.

Just thought of something else too, I want this one card to be shown here on the page too, just in case Tom pops by or something. Also, I just think it's kinda fun.