Guides

Articles

Long-form guides on the craft of custom card design — templating rules text, mana symbols, balance, frame history, and community challenges.

June 23, 20268 min read

An MTG Templating Cookbook: Common Rules Text Patterns

A cookbook of correctly-templated MTG rules text patterns: ETB and dies triggers, tap and sacrifice costs, modal, anthems, and replacement effects.

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June 23, 20269 min read

The MTG Guilds and Color Pairs Explained

The ten MTG two-color pairs and their Ravnica guild names, allied vs enemy colors, each guild's identity, and how to use them in custom card design.

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June 23, 20269 min read

MTG Card Types Explained

Every Magic card type explained — land, creature, artifact, enchantment, instant, sorcery, planeswalker, battle, and tokens, with a quick reference table.

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June 23, 20268 min read

MTG Card Layouts Explained: Split, Adventure, Saga, and Double-Faced

How non-standard MTG card layouts work — split, adventure, saga, and double-faced cards — and when each layout earns a place on a custom card.

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June 23, 20269 min read

MTG Ability Types Explained: Triggered, Activated, and Static

A clear reference to MTG ability types — triggered, activated, and static abilities, plus spell and keyword abilities — for players and custom card designers.

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June 23, 20268 min read

How to Design Custom MTG Lands

Design balanced custom MTG lands: why lands are costed by downside not mana, dual-land levers, utility and creature lands, and land color identity.

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June 23, 20268 min read

How to Design Custom MTG Enchantments and Artifacts

Design custom MTG enchantments and artifacts: Auras, Sagas, Equipment, Vehicles, and mana rocks — the color pie, costing static effects, and giving lock pieces counterplay.

enchantments artifacts card design

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June 23, 20266 min read

How to Design a Custom MTG Set

How to design a custom MTG set — scoping, the set skeleton, color balance, rarity, the ten draft archetypes, and playtesting your Limited environment.

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June 23, 20268 min read

How to Design a Custom MTG Cube

How to design a custom MTG cube — cube size, power level, the ten color archetypes, singleton tradeoffs, and the draft-test-iterate loop that tunes it.

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June 23, 20267 min read

How to Design a Custom MTG Creature

Design balanced custom MTG creatures: the power/toughness baseline, the stat-vs-ability tradeoff, keyword budgets by color, tribal synergy, and rarity.

creatures card design power and toughness

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June 23, 20268 min read

Designing Multicolor MTG Cards

How to design multicolor (gold) MTG cards that earn both colors: gold vs hybrid costs, the color pie, costing, color identity, and a worked example.

multicolor color pie card design

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June 23, 20267 min read

Designing Custom MTG Tokens

Design custom MTG tokens that play right: what a token is, the traits that define one, balancing the maker card's cost, and token-matters synergies.

tokens card design

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June 23, 20268 min read

Designing Custom Commander Cards

How to design custom MTG cards for Commander (EDH) — the color identity rule, building a legendary commander, multiplayer balance, and singleton.

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June 22, 202611 min read

The MTG Color Pie Explained for Custom Card Designers

The MTG color pie explained for custom card designers: each color's philosophy, strengths and weaknesses, allied vs enemy pairs, and breaks vs bends.

color pie card design

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June 20, 20268 min read

MTG Keyword Abilities: The Complete List by Color

The complete list of MTG keyword abilities by color: all 18 evergreen keywords defined, color-pie distribution, and evergreen vs deciduous explained.

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June 19, 20268 min read

Designing Custom Instants and Sorceries

How to design custom MTG instants and sorceries — timing as a cost, card advantage math, color-pie-correct removal, spell archetypes, and clean templating.

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June 18, 20267 min read

How to Design a Custom Planeswalker

How to design a custom Magic planeswalker — starting loyalty, plus/minus/ultimate abilities, loyalty math, templating, and a full worked example.

planeswalkers card design loyalty

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June 17, 20268 min read

Common Custom Card Design Mistakes (and How to Fix Them)

The seven mistakes that mark a custom MTG card as fake — undercosting, sloppy templating, color-pie breaks, kitchen-sink design, strictly-better cards, parasitism — and a concrete fix for each.

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June 16, 20268 min read

Anatomy of an MTG Card: Every Part Explained

Every part of a Magic card explained top to bottom — name, mana cost, art, type line, set symbol, text box, power/toughness, loyalty, and the legal line.

card anatomy reference card frame

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June 15, 20267 min read

MTG Rarity Explained: Common to Mythic Rare

MTG rarities in order — common, uncommon, rare, mythic — what each expansion-symbol color signals, and how to use rarity as a custom-set design tool.

rarity reference card design

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June 14, 20268 min read

How to Playtest Custom MTG Cards

How to playtest custom Magic cards: goldfish solo, play real games with proxies, read your playgroup, iterate one change at a time, and test a whole set.

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June 13, 20267 min read

How to Print Proxy MTG Cards at Home

Print MTG proxies at home the right way: design a card, export a print-ready PDF, print at 100% scale, and cut to a true 2.5 × 3.5 inch size.

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June 12, 20264 min read

How to Write MTG Oracle Text That Reads Like the Real Thing

The templating conventions behind Magic's rules text — keyword capitalization, trigger words, activated-ability syntax, reminder text, and the phrasing patterns that make a custom card feel printed.

oracle text templating card design

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June 11, 20264 min read

The Complete Guide to MTG Mana Symbols

Every mana pip explained — generic, colored, hybrid, twobrid, phyrexian, snow, energy, tap and untap — what each one means in a cost, how color identity works, and how to build them on a custom card.

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June 10, 20265 min read

Designing Balanced Custom MTG Cards

A practical framework for costing custom Magic cards — rate baselines, the color pie, downside design, rarity as a balance tool, and the playtest questions that catch broken designs before your playgroup does.

balance card design playtesting

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June 9, 20264 min read

MTG Card Frame Eras Explained: 1993 to Showcase

How Magic's card frame evolved — the 1993 original, the 1997 'retro' classic, the 2003 modern redesign, the 2014 M15 holofoil era, and today's showcase treatments — and how to pick an era for your custom card.

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June 8, 20264 min read

How to Run a Community Card-Design Challenge

A playbook for design challenges that people actually enter — writing briefs with creative tension, sizing the window, picking tags, judging by community vote, and keeping a weekly rhythm alive.

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