Mongolas, Lord of Proxy

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Otra de las cartas hechas por mi amigo Guy, esta vez de un amigo suyo que se especializaba en crear decks con proxys... Vaya forma de ahorrar, no?

Personalmente yo le habria puesto un flavor text que dijera "Si tan solo tuviera una 'Black Lotus'... espera... listo, ya la tengo." - Mongolas, Lord of Proxys.

Barbarian, Deck Fuerte

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Esta carta fue hecha por mi amigo Guy, es honor a un amigo suyo al que le dicen "Barbarian".

Cuenta la historia que estaba jugando en un local, con un niño, mientras su madre veía. Como Barbarian, le sacó la $%#@! al niño sin ninguna clemencia, la madre exaltada ante el imponente ser que destrozaba a su indefenso engendro, exclamó: "Uy, el chico tiene un deck fueeerte". Desde entonces hasta ahora, Barbarian fue conocido como "Barbarian, Deck Fuerte" y ese fue el inicio de una nueva leyenda.

Lucho, the Sad Little Emo Guy

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Yeap, that's me. Dressed as an emo... and no, I'm not an emo. That was my last year's Halloween costume. And I have to proudly say that I spent the hole party acting depressed and saying things like "Life sucks" and other popular emo phrases. It was fun... people got really freaked out hehehe... 'cause I'm normaly all the opposite, happy and cheerful.

I even painted cuts on my arm, to, you know, add to the atmosphere...

Quispe

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This is a popular game in Perú. The rules are a bit more complex actually, but I think explaining it would be too complicaded for a card xD

Jules, the Cake Warrior

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Now this here is Julio, another friend of mine. This was made sort of as conmemorative card, because of the cake joke. It so happens that on my last birthday some friends decided to surprise me at the University cafeteria. And Jules was holding the cake. The flavor text in the card is a hint of what happened there.

Oh, and there's a video of that, if anybody is wondering, plus it's a parody of the SNL Dear Sister spoof of the OC.

Enjoy!

Alan Frank, the Loony Wiz

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This is my friend Alan, he's a nice guy, and not as useless as this card actually, but he does look very loony.

I was thinking of many posibilities for the flavor text like "Ignorace is bliss, they say... well, he look happy enough", and "He would be very useful, if he weren't so useless", but I thought that most of them were a little insulting to my friend here, so I just just the paradox thing... I think it's alright.

Gus, the Wolfmancer

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This is my friend Gustavo, what can I say... he's like a wolf so it couldn't be anything else but a wolfmancer, whatever that means...

Rahoul, the Pimp Master

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The image is of my friend Raul, and he's no pimp.

Update: You can choose the color of your bitches, so you'll be the one stuck with the racial issues. Enjoy!

Harvest the Dead

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The picture on the card was made by Shulivra, a friend of mine who has allowed me to use it here. Thanks Shulivra!!! :D

The idea of this card is to use it with Aneesha, Tainted Princess.

Of course it also has other uses, for example, you can use it on your own blocking/attacking creature if it were to be destroyed. Just use your imagination.

King of Paradise

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The image in the card is a king of paradise bird, which is a kind of paradise bird.

I was not sure about the mana cost, the original "birds of paradise" card costs only one green mana, but since this card is capable of producing mana without tapping, I thought it should cost more. On the other side, since you need to pay with lives it's most useful at the beginig of the game, I thought it should not cost too much.

Also, considering that this kind of cards should be used on multi-colored decks, having to pay 2 green mana compensates for it's cost, since you would need to, necesarily, produce green mana to summon it. In a multi-colored deck it means putting two forests in play instead of another land. Of course, this can be solved by using other ways to produce green mana, like the Elves of Llanowar.

On the other side, it's not so much of a disadvantage considering that once it comes into play you can generate mana of any color, without the need of tapping, just as long as you have lives to spare.

Zoras, Elvenfist Hero

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I don't really remember where I found the image from the card's art.
If someone knows where it's from, tell me to add the copyright.

Aneesha, Tainted Princess

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I don't really remember where I found the image from the card's art.

If someone knows where it's from, tell me to add the copyright.

Ofellia, the Angel of Shattered Dreams

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The card's art is from the anime series Air, I just changed the hair color.

Creating MTG cards

As a Magic: The Gathering fan I've always liked the possibilities of creating my own cards.

Still, this is no easy task. First of all you need to have a good idea, then you have to think about mana cost, power and toughness (if it's a creature), and abilities, among other things.

One of the most important things you have to take in consideration is balance. This means that a MTG card must not be, in any way, ultra powerful, unbeatable or have a very low mana cost.

You have to think of a way in which a card will help mantain the balance of the game overall.

For example, if you have a very big creature (let's say it's a 6/6), it's mana cost can't be 1,2 or 3 converted mana cost. If it has skills or abilities the mana cost usually raises, unless you find a way to balance this with certain disadvantages. For example, that creature can't attack unless you sacrifice a land. Or, maybe, it comes with haste, but you have to sacrifice it at the end of your turn. There are many ways to do this.

You always have to keep in mind the advantage-disadvantage rate.

But creating a good card is much more than just that, you need to have knowledge of how the game works, and experience playing it. This way you'll know how a card can work, and how useful it could be.

Since I create my own cards just for fun, I experiment with many posibilities, and most of them are cards that, most probably, nobody would like to play with. Sometimes I even make card parodies or absolutely ridiculous cards (like in the Unglued of Unhinged series).

But I also try to create cards that could be useful, and try to make them as real as posible. Who knows, maybe some of those cards could be considered playable.

Tools

There are many ways to create cards, but I recently found a card creator program that I've found the most useful and I absolutely recommend it: Magic Set Editor.

This program offers many templates for cards (also for non-MTG cards). It also comes with a symbol creator, so that you can make your own sets, and there are many templates you can download from the page, and the forums.

It also comes with an ability and skill library, where you can find all the abilities found in MTG cards, and also the posiblity to automaticaly add the description of the skill on the card.

Probably one of the most useful features it has is the Statistics option, with many options to check how you're building your collection. Including card color, colored mana cost, converted mana cost, rarity, card type, and much more.

Plus, it's absolutely user-friendly. It's probably the best and easiest way to create cards.