[No spoilers] Are there any Magic: The Gathering players out there? We're making some Stormlight Archives decks, and need some artwork/opinions!

I like the idea with the stormlight counters, but making any deck that relies on an artifact so heavily is dangerous. All it would take is one 'destroy artifact' card to completely ruin the whole deck.

While this is completely true, the same argument could be made for any creature by saying 'dies to Doomblade', or any other spell by saying 'dies to Counter'. Only two colors have good artifact removal, and neither of them run them constantly enough to be more of a threat than killing creatures or countering spells. Expanding on the stormlight counters idea, yes, there would need to be something that could generate stormlight aside from the Spheres. A Legendary Spren named Stormfather would be one way, by putting a stormlight counter on each permanent you control (or even all permanents) when it enters the battlefield. A sorcery named Speak Ideal could do the same but only for artifacts and creatures. KR cards could possibly have an ability like "Double the number of stormlight counters placed on ~." All spren creatures could come into play with a stormlight counter on them. There are several ways to mitigate the issue.

We talked about this too. We would definitely make the KR spren different from just normal spren. We were just thinking any KR spren can be bestowed onto a KR.

Shardplate- Perhaps indestructible is too powerful. But maybe give them +0/+5? I mean, shardplate doesn't make someone indestructible.

This is the point at which I have to tell you to not to be too strict with lore interpretation when using the already established mechanics. While shardplate in the books doesn't make you invincible, the ability indestructible in MTG does protect you from deathtouch, which is the idea that I was trying to get across. A creature with deathtouch doesn't care about a +0/+5 armor, but it will care if the armor means the creature won't auto-die from even miniscule damage. Also, while it might be nice to restrict what Knight-level spren can be bestowed onto by lore, mechanically speaking, it means that you just neutered your best means of offense and requires you to have a KR on the battlefield for something to be useful rather than just a dead card in your hand. The same can also be said of legendaries, as having two cards of the same named character in a set is indeed weird. Build both the normal versions and KR versions into one card and just have the KR abilities trigger when enchanted.

We're also mostly trying to make the cards from scratch, but obviously trying to make aspects from cards we already know. We're not going to come up with our own effects, though may change the name of some effects to fit the series better.

Using pre-existing cards as a starting point is a great idea, but don't be too afraid to put in one or two abilities or keywords you've created, as you're going to be making cards with similar mechanics anyway. Keywords and abilities just make it easier to group things together really.

/r/Stormlight_Archive Thread Parent