Need Advice: How To Design Cards that are Stronger In Limited

[ConShonnery]

Hey everybody,

I have a seemingly simple pair of questions:
What techniques can be used to design cards that are stronger in Limited than they are in Constructed?
What can a set designer do to make Constructed less reliant on rares?

And the related followup question: what are some existing cards that you think meet this requirement?

(For context, I have made and printed a custom set in the past, where we did meetups of one three-round Draft followed by trading and three rounds of Constructed. **EDIT FOR CLARITY: The Constructed rounds were using decks built from players' collections of all the cards they had ever opened/traded for.** One problem we ran into was that all the best cards in Constructed were rare (surprise), which meant that the best Constructed decks were possessed by those who had said cards, and given the limited print run, no one else could then get their hands on said cards. So I want to alleviate that this time around, by emphasizing the rare slot for Draft instead of Constructed.)

Here are some possible answers to these questions, ranging from massive set architecture decisions to small card-by-card decisions:

1. Flat-out swap the power level of rare and uncommon (obvious downside: people get less excited about rares)
2. Separate power level from rarity entirely and have it be exclusively about complexity (oddly tougher than it sounds, a 4/4 flying/haste dragon for 3RR at common just feels wrong, even though it's dead-simple)
3. Attempt to steer expected Constructed archetypes towards needing cards that can be at common/uncommon but whose critical mass cannot be reached in Limited (one-drop creatures, e.g., often go in Constructed but not Limited decks; maybe artifacts or engine decks that require several pieces?)
4. Use rare slot for expensive cards in colors that don't get ramp (many 7- or 8- CMC cards are okay for Limited but may not be top-tier in Constructed; haymakers like Plague Wind level effects or Mass Manipulation)
5. Use rare slot for goofy buildarounds that just aren't mechanically consistent enough for Constructed (maybe like Dance of the Manse, although I think that got some Constructed play?)
6. Use rare slot for strong artifacts/enchantments which can often go unanswered in Limited due to reduced removal for non-creatures, but in Constructed everyone has efficient answers for
7. Similarly, increase quantity/quality of planeswalker removal in the set so that planeswalkers are very strong in Limited but more easily answered in Constructed (I'm not sure this is fun Limited though)

I suppose another lens to look at this problem might be how do I design cards that are exciting enough to fill the rare slot in Limited but are unlikely to be powerful enough for Constructed? Some examples might be Mass Manipulation, Plague Wind, Dance of the Manse. Maybe cards like Tatyova, Benthic Druid or Slimefoot the Stowaway could have been at rare?

And the flip side would be how do I design cards that are good enough for Constructed but not more powerful in Draft than many commons/uncommons? Some examples might be Bomat Courier, most dual lands, Cauldron Familiar, Claim the Firstborn or Kari Zev's Expertise, 2-cmc mana dorks, extremely color-committing cards like Frilled Mystic (UUGG), taxing spells like Quench, cards with critical mass requirements such as Young Pyromancer, many Thoughtseize/IoK/Duress effects.

Does anyone have additional answers to the questions in bold? Any insights on the listed options I've come up with? Thanks in advance for taking the time to read this and think about it, I really appreciate it!

[Mookie]

To me, a lot of what defines 'good in limited' vs 'good in constructed' is specialization. If there is a card that is amazing in 10% of situations and useless in 90% of situations, you can build a constructed deck around it to be amazing 100% of the time. Consider Daybreak Coronet as one situation - it's extremely difficult to draft enough auras to make it good, but it's a powerful tool for Bogles decks. Similarly, something like Emrakul, the Aeons Torn is unplayable in limited, but sees play in Legacy.

On the other hand, there are generically good cards like Serra Angel that are fantastic in limited, but unexciting in constructed. This is partially because of how much removal is available - if you expect your creature's lifespan to be short, you want immediate value more (ex: Mulldrifter). Meanwhile, if you expect your creature to stick around for a while, raw stats and repeatable value are better (ex: Arcanis the Omnipotent). This is why creatures with tap abilities almost never see constructed play.

A third thing I'll point to are basic effects done efficiently. Doom Blade, Llanowar Elves, and <insert banned one mana blue cantrip here> are all format-defining cards despite their simplicity. These cards are all pretty much the platonic ideal of what they represent - everything extraneous is cut away, leaving you with a simple but extremely efficient card that is printable at common, but also really hard to make strictly better.

[SecretInfiltrator]

(For context, I have made and printed a custom set in the past, where we did meetups of one three-round Draft followed by trading and three rounds of Constructed. One problem we ran into was that all the best cards in Constructed were rare (surprise), which meant that the best Constructed decks were possessed by those who had said cards, and given the limited print run, no one else could then get their hands on said cards. So I want to alleviate that this time around, by emphasizing the rare slot for Draft instead of Constructed.)

It should be noted that the generally accepted definition for Constructed usually means "You are not restricted in your choice of cards except by legality" i. e. there is no limited card pool (hence not "Limited"). In Constructed you "construct" a deck-list and acquire the needed copy of cards as demanded.

A true Constructed play test would not revolve around "who had said cards". That's at best "Casual Constructed" which is technically "Limited with trading" as you describe it. The difference here is that depending on how you set up your "Limited with trading"-"Constructed" some rares might not exist at all and some rares might be defining to the speed of the format if used as 4-ofs. Especially Combo decks depending on a rare will be significantly weakened if restricted by the supply a single Draft-event provides. Constructed decks play towards consistency; consistency requires free access to play-sets if they are what the deck calls for, so responses might address your issue more or less well with regards to applicability. Maybe you want to expand on that issue a little?

Simply swapping uncommons and rares cannot be the correct solution if you are using rare for cards that are problematic in Limited. All you do, is move more problematic cards into your draft.

I suggest less variance in power level between rare and uncommon. Try to create some redundancy between uncommon and rare with regards to the deck types supported. Draft signpost uncommons will often be Constructed-worthy if the theme they are supporting is, so doubling up on those in rare and maybe support some cards that require you to go deeper on a theme.

[folding_music]

good luck with this :3 re: limited design and rarity mattering, check out Invasion block - incredibly warmly received in sealed and draft at the time because the theme enablers (the theme being dipping into multiple or even all five colours) are in the common slot and they gave you incredible options. (Harrow, Wordly Counsel, Quirion Elves) Rares in Invasion block can be fairly specialist or sometimes just plain bad but it had those "signpost" two-colour enchantments (Sterling Grove, Fires of Yavimaya et al) at uncommon as well as Chromatic Sphere to make everyone's life easier. I feel like Chromatic Sphere or something like it should always be standard legal, controversial? Also, the creatures were not overly powerful but instead bore simple activated abilities (Benalish Trapper, Thunderscape Apprentice) or feasible kicker options (Pincer Spider, Urborg Emissary)

You could still get blown out by a few bomb rares (Rout, Rith, the Awakener) but most INV rares looked like this: Andradite Leech, Crystal Spray, Stand or Fall giggle

Planeshift extends these traits and to this day is one of the most underrated sets, simply because most of its powerful cards (Meddling Mage not withstanding) sit at common and uncommon. (Flametongue Kavu, Rushing River, Sunscape Familiar, Horned Kavu, Terminate, Allied Strategies)

basically as a conclusion, make rares tend towards the specialist and make commons tend towards the easily-applicable. not sure how easy this actually is and it seems like a philosophy that WOTC have abandoned given how absurd the average rare creature is nowadays, lol

[void_nothing]

As [mention]SecretInfiltrator[/mention] has correctly touched upon, the "Constructed" you describe isn't Constructed. What Constructed means is everyone makes their decks at home beforehand, card choice determined only by format ideally and also to a degree by finances realistically.

So let's look at what (just about) every Limited format has in the current era:
1) Heavily redundant versions of the most useful and simple effects - blue has several counterspells, black has several pieces of creature removal, green has several "mana dorks" (and probably a common one to two mana one), et cetera.
2) Ten bicolor themes. With eight players at the table this should make everyone's deck somewhat different despite the probable overlap in commons between decks that share colors.
3) Ten uncommon bicolor "signpost" cards - seeing these cards should indicate to you that no one "upstream" from you is picking that archetype and it is safe to try and draft without fear of it being overpicked.
4) Plenty of cards that can fit the first three letters of the BREAD mnemonic - bombs, removal, and evasion. Draft decks broadly tend to be either aggro or aggro-control and thus there should be lots of ways to close out games and conversely to stop single and group threats from immediately taking over the game.

If you're designing a set to current design principles, you should design the Limited environment to have all of this.

[ConShonnery]

Hey, thanks for the fast responses! Much appreciated.

[mention]SecretInfiltrator[/mention] [mention]void_nothing[/mention] :egg_on_face_emoji: Oof, I've poorly explained what I meant and now it looks like I have no idea what Constructed is. Sorry, let me clarify. We printed a custom set. Every session, we met and did a draft. After the draft, each person took the cards they drafted, **added those cards to their collection, performed any amount of trading they wanted, and then made decks for rounds of Constructed **from their entire collection of the custom set. ** = details omitted from original explanation

Which means that every "Constructed" session, each person theoretically has "available" to them every card that has every been opened in the set, but throttled by their trading power. In other words, it's 1993 "Constructed" magic, where you could open more packs or trade with friends, but buying singles wasn't fully a thing yet. So it's Constructed in the sense that you can make a decklist in advance, but it's a real pain to track down all the cards

if restricted by the supply a single Draft-event provides

Hopefully it's more clear now that this was not the case. (Well, after the first session it was the case, but after every following session we had more and more cards to choose from.) However, the end result after several sessions was that there were effectively enough playsets of rares in circulation for 1-2 decks in a particular archetype, but once cards were revealed to be "top performers in key archetypes" no one would trade them away, and other players who hadn't already built top-tier decks could never really catch up. So I'm trying to alleviate this problem the next time around.

the "Constructed" you describe isn't Constructed. What Constructed means is everyone makes their decks at home beforehand, card choice determined only by format ideally and also to a degree by finances realistically.

Just to make it extra clear, this is effectively what happened, except instead of being limited by finances, we were limited by trading power. Players would still take their collections home, playtest different builds against one another, and show up with decklists of what they were hoping to trade for so that they could enter the Constructed rounds with the strongest possible deck.

I'll note that I have some non-card-design solutions to this problem (changing the rarity distribution in packs, possibly introducing a wildcard system where proxies are allowed), but I was also curious in card-design solutions.

If there is a card that is amazing in 10% of situations and useless in 90% of situations, you can build a constructed deck around it to be amazing 100% of the time

[mention]Mookie[/mention] This is a great way of putting this concept into words and exactly the type of thing I was hoping for in asking these questions

I like these two examples -- Serra Angel, a fantastic uncommon for Limited, and Daybreak Coronet, as a fantastic rare for Constructed. What are the consequences of swapping their rarities so that for a custom set with limited availability, more copies of Daybreak Coronet end up in circulation? Are players then disappointed to open Serra Angel in their rare slot? Or maybe it's okay, especially since we know that all packs get used for draft first for this custom set. Of course we also have to be careful of Coronet at uncommon being too swingy, but I think that's solvable in set design.

Simply swapping uncommons and rares cannot be the correct solution if you are using rare for cards that are problematic in Limited.

[mention]SecretInfiltrator[/mention] Agreed 100%... Maybe to rephrase, I think the real problem I had with the previous set was that the cards which were problematic for Limited were the same cards as the cards needed in 4-ofs for Constructed. So I'm trying to figure out good solutions to make it so that the overlap in the Venn diagram of those two groups is slimmer.

I suggest less variance in power level between rare and uncommon. Try to create some redundancy between uncommon and rare

Hmmm, I like this idea. I can pay conscious attention to rares that I think are likely strong role-players in constructed and make sure that some uncommons exist to fill a similar role -- the trick is to not just make it so that the deck wants to run 4x of each.

good luck with this :3 re: limited design and rarity mattering, check out Invasion block

Hmm, I think I need to try some Invasion/Planeshift Draft. I started playing around the time of Invasion but the concept of draft or even sealed at that point was wholly foreign to me -- I don't think I ever did a draft until... Shards of Alara? That said, I like a lot of these examples, I just have to be careful not to make quite as many rares that are entirely useless as some of the Planeshift ones I've got a buddy who would love to do an old school draft like this, but the practicality of how to do it as trickier

If you're designing a set to current design principles, you should design the Limited environment to have all of this.

I was actually pretty happy with how the Limited of the previous set played. I actually had 20 two-color cards at uncommon, one creature and one non-creature for each color pair. I vastly prefer Limited at heart, so the struggle is coming up with cards for Constructed that will make it feel different from Limited, e.g., the constructed decks aren't just the same archetypes as good draft decks (sometimes that happens with official Standard-legal sets, but often times to me they seem vastly different). Maybe I don't need to put intention behind that and it will just happen naturally? I'm not sure.

Again, thanks everyone for the help, I really appreciate the insights and ideas!