Custom Magic cards
In 1996, around the time that the Magic: The Gathering expansion set Mirage came out, I sat down and designed some of my own Magic cards. I had been doing this on and off for a couple of years by that point; in fact, I had written a computer program called SetMaker (née MagiCard) to help manage custom expansion sets, print proxies of these cards, and so forth. Today I found the old notebook from 1996. I took the cards, re-phrased them in the rules style used today, and entered them into the great program Magic Suitcase, which (among many other features) will produce graphical proxies of Magic cards. If you play Magic, please take a look and let me know what you think at the QuickTopic page. If they suck, I can always fall back to saying that I came up with them six and a half years ago. (Note: Modified under good advice 24 Feb 2004.)
Crystalline Moth
{1}{G}{G}
Creature — Moth
Flying
{T}: Tap target flying creature
{G}: Regenerate
0/1
Escape Artist
{2}{U}{U}
Creature — Wizard
{T}: Return Escape Artist to owner’s hand.
{T}: Escape Artist phases out.
{T}: Place Escape Artist on top of owner’s library.
If Escape Artist would be put into a graveyard from anywhere, reveal Escape Artist and shuffle it into its owner’s library instead.
1/2
Hill Wurm
{1}{G}{G}{R}{R}
Creature — Wurm
Upkeep: Sacrifice a mountain or forest or bury Hill Wurm.
Mountainhome, Foresthome, Mountainwalk, Forestwalk. If Hill Wurm attacks and is not blocked, bury target mountain and target forest opponent controls.
6/8
Hollow Tree
{1}{G}{G}
Enchantment
{1}{G}{G}: Target Creature you control phases out.
“Gellrog dodged the well-aimed arrows just in time, securing himself within the trunk of a great oak.”
0/3
Llanowar Mystic
{1}{G}{G}
Creature — Elf
Whenever a creature you control is tapped for mana, it produces one additional mana of any color it could normally produce.
1/1
Perimeter Defense
{1}{W}{U}
Enchantment
Whenever a creature controlled by an opponent uses an activated ability requiring it to tap, tap another target untapped creature that opponent controls.
Precipitate Orangutan
{2}{B}{G}
Creature — Ape
Trample, Rampage 4.
If more than two creatures are assigned to block Precipitate Orangutan, sacrifice Precipitate Orangutan.
3/3
Prismic Vale
Land
{T}: Add 1 to your mana pool.
{5}, {T}: Add {B}{G}{R}{U}{W} to your mana pool.
(Note added 9 April 2003: A friend informed me that Wizards of the Coast published this exact card as Crystal Quarry in Odyssey. To my knowledge, this is the second time I have designed a card that was later independently designed and released. The first was the Antiquities card Wall of Spears. In that case, everything was the same: card name, casting cost, power & toughness, and abilities.)
Scintillate
{0}
Instant
Target spell or permanent becomes white, blue, black, red, and green. (This effect doesn’t end at end of turn.) Scintillate is white, blue, black, red, and green.
Sharkhawk
{3}{W}{U}
Creature — Bird Shark
Flying
{W}{U}{U}: Sharkhawk loses flying until end of turn and gains +2/+2 and islandwalk until end of turn.
“The legend of a ferocious raptor that feeds on whales exists to this day.”
3/4
Spectral Form
{U}{U}
Enchant Creature
Target creature gains phasing and “T: Target creature and Spectral Form phase out.”
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