The CCC Mailbag - Edition #3!

[void_nothing]

Difficult to believe that the last CCC mailbag column went up almost a year ago, and the questions thread for it was posted a year ago today. I'm going to sound like a broken record if I say that 2023 was a huge year for Magic, but the pace of change in the game we all love (and the pace of product releases) is faster than ever, so I'm sure we all have a lot on our minds as a custom card creation community.

As usual, either reply to this thread with a question you have for me on MTGNexus Custom Cards-related matters or send me a PM with the subject line "CCC Mailbag". I'll respond to everyone, credited by username, in an upcoming front-page article on the site. Looking forward to hearing what everyone has to say!

[Ryder]

First to the party!

How do you feel about The Desparkening? What do you think are its implications from the design (and narrative) standpoint?

[Sporegorger_Dragon]

The most awkward tricolor group; the blue Wedge (Temur). So very awkward. In my opinion, the two most successful archetypes that embody the wedge in recent memory have been Eldraine Adventures and DnD Chromatic Dragons. What kind of archetype, Limited or otherwise, you'd like to see or suggest for Temur?

[OneAndOnly]

What's a Universe Beyond franchise you think would make a surprisingly nice fit with Mtg, and why? Which IP do you think should never ever ever be allowed near MtG?

[Ryder]

The most awkward tricolor group; the blue Wedge (Temur). So very awkward. In my opinion, the two most successful archetypes that embody the wedge in recent memory have been Eldraine Adventures and DnD Chromatic Dragons. What kind of archetype, Limited or otherwise, you'd like to see or suggest for Temur?

I'll pitch in if I'm allowed! I've recently developed a method for creating factions. Each color has several concepts associated with it, MaRo listed quite a few in his Making Magic articles. These concepts can be then mixed and matched to create something unique. Let's have a look at GUR (this is from Making Magic, every concept is thoroughly explained there):

Life, Growth, Nature, Reality, Community, Interdependence, Spiritualism, The Past, Wisdom, Ancestry, Tradition, Instinct, Animals, Plants
Academics, Books & Other Repositories of Information, Mind/Thought, Memory, Telepathy, Telekinesis, Messing with Time, Control, Manipulation, Trickery, Subtlety, Complexity, Artifice, Illusion, Construction/Technology, Artifacts, Man-Made Items, Passivity, Cold, Water/Air
Emotion, Mood Swings, Impulse, Might, Violence, Brutality, Destruction, Chaos, Randomness, Spontaneity, Humor, Mischievousness, Fire & Earth, Romance, Hedonism, Barbarism, Fighting

Temur could be seen as:
Instinct, Tradition, Might/Violence, Barbarism, Cold, Water & Air

I'd be curious to see something from the opposite end of this spectrum:
Community/The Past, Emotion/Romance, Memory/Man-Made Items? A society romantically obsessed with what is long gone, desperately trying to restore it?

[MonoRedMage]

So it used to be that set keywords granting evergreen keywords was restricted to haste, usually for functional reasons like suspend. Now, with the mechanics that were just revealed for Murders at Karlov Manor, R&D is showing more willingness to embed evergreen keywords into entirely new mechanics. What's your take on that?

[slimytrout]

Do you have any advice for how to stay enthused all the way through making a custom set? I can't be the only one who has started a project while the ideas feel fun and exciting, designed the mechanics and some splashy rares or signpost uncommons, and then kinda sputtered out as the full scope of designing 250+ cards, including 100 commons, became clear.

[OneAndOnly]

If you had to create a new core set for Magic, and not use any existing evergreen mechanics, which other existing mechanics would you promote to evergreen? (Let's just eliminate all of the named mechanics from Alpha to Ice Age, just to be sure.)