Dev Pile 2025-45 — Customs Depot, Episode 2: Gauging Power Level
This time, Dev Pile is dedicated to trying to give some advice about how to properly construct a game piece in a meaningful context.
Script and thumbnail below the fold!
(Opening Slides♣0 ♣1)
♣2Hello and welcome to the Customs Depot, a semi-regular video series that tries to present foundational lessons for the construction of better custom Magic: The Gathering cards. Today, we’re going to talk about how to gauge the power level of individual cards in the hopes of helping you dial♣3 in what you want cards to do in your designs.
Remember we’re talking a Jesse Schell [♣4] model of design, where a designer is someone making choices for the thing they are making. A strong design fundamental is to make sure you can explain why they chose all the elements in their card.
First, a definition of terms. For the purpose of this discussion, and, in general when I use the term, power level ♣5of a card is an estimate the impact the card will have when used in a play environment by players who have no reason to value a card but for its ability to make you more likely to win.
This is, note, an estimation♣6; we can’t be certain. It’s also capable of being further confined; if you design a card that’s meant to go in a ♣7Hats Facing Left typal deck, then that’s part of its play environment, and should be considered as such. This definition is not perfect but it is usefully formal and hopefully clear. It’s about how good a card is when it’s being used to try to win. Power level does not care about art, flavour, name, or in almost all cases, rarity. ♣8Players in competitive environments will, over time, in a large enough sample size, gravitate towards strategies that are most likely to let them win the game and it doesn’t matter if that makes the game unfun or too fast. ♣9
Some of this stuff is going to be very intuitively obvious to you if you’ve played the game. And indeed, the more you play the game, ♣10the better you will understand the power level of cards, even if nobody’s perfect at it. I know that there are custom designers who don’t care about playing the game, and indeed, I was one of them during dry periods of Magic the Gathering availability for me, but the actual power level of the game is something that you will build an understanding of the more you play it. ♣11
In determining the power level of the card, we consider its impact♣12, its cost♣13 and its role♣14.
15♣First things first, cost. Anything is overpowered if it’s too cheap. Anything is underpowered if it’s too expensive. Ancestral Recall♣16 is one of the best cards ever printed, while Jace’s Ingenuity♣17 isn’t very powerful at all. The cost of a card is the majority of how a card is balanced. ♣18Consider these three creatures, a 2/2 that has T: Add G. At three mana it’s a little weak. At two mana it’s probably fine as a core set common. At one mana it’s pretty ridiculous, because it’s comparing to one of the best one-drop creatures of all time in Llanowar Elves.♣19
Next, there’s the impact♣20 of the card. Your impact is how much you affect and how quickly. The game has three broad types of timing for impact; it can happen immediately, it can happen in your next turn, or it can happen sometime later out of your control. To just use direct damage as an example, you get the first type with a ♣21Lightning Bolt, the second type with a ♣22Hobgoblin Captain, and the third type is something like ♣23Mudbutton Torchrunner. Creatures typically are the second type, unless they have haste, or an enter-the-battlefield effect. ♣24
Finally we have the role of a card.♣25 You probably have noticed that spells that kill creatures ♣26can be pretty cheap. There are plenty of ♣27expensive creatures that can be killed for ♣28way less than it costs to cast them. This is because the role of those spells is to respond to those creatures. Cards that fit into these responsive, reactive roles, if all they do is respond, tend to be stronger than the things they respond to, because they are rarely able to win the game on their own. Creatures on the other hand can win the game on their own, and they tend to be less effective, even if they’re primarily responsive. ♣29
These are the ♣30 three things to look for on a card when you’re asking yourself about how to balance it. With these things in mind, you want to look for precedent where the game has done your card or something like your card, in the past. You might be surprised to find this, but even the most unique mechanics have at least been sort-of-precedented in the game, even if not directly.
When you understand what your card is doing, broadly, you can probably find something that does something pretty similar. This is where I recommend you learn how to use ♣31Scryfall, which I’ve linked in the description.
Scryfall lets you, with the “o:” modifier, search for almost any phrase you could find on a card. What you want to do is try and find when other cards have done what you want to do, or something like it, and then ask yourself how what you’re doing is comparing. Your environment is a factor but we’ll talk about that next time. You want to look for a few details in power balance:
How often does this effect show up?
How many costs does it show up at?
Is there something these cards seem to all do?
You can use this to find the cheapest version of a card and the most expensive version. Chances are the most ♣32expensive version isn’t very good, and chances are the ♣33cheapest version has been the best one. This is how you build up fluency in card effects. Notice that you’ll almost always ♣34find a three mana spell that just kills a creature in almost every set, which is what we tend to refer to as ♣35’a murder.’ There are a lot of effects that grant an ♣36extra combat step, but they only tend to get printed at a rate of about one a year. Most effects that give you an ♣37extra turn exile themselves, or have some other way to stop them being repeatably usable.♣38
When you’re considering the role of the card I recommend dividing it into the following five categories:
Threats♣39
Responses♣40
Engines♣41
Recovery♣42
Big Dumb Idiots♣43
A threat ♣44is usually a creature card. Threats are there to limit your opponent’s options and cause them to respond in order to avoid losing the game. Creatures are the most obvious threats, but they aren’t the only ones. Lightning Bolt is a threat, if your deck is full of them, for example. Millstone is a threat, Stormbind is a threat. Threats are things that are meant to end the game, and any time you design a threat, you want to consider if what it does represents a threat that is too hard to stop or ends the game too quickly.
I know you amy want to make your cool monster a flying, indestructible, hexproof creature. You shouldn’t. We can talk about that more in the future.
A response♣45 is usually some kind of creature removal, but it can be any kind of card that only is useful when there’s some part of the game state it’s trying to change. Creature removal does nothing without creatures. Counterspells need spells to respond to. Responses tend to be cards you don’t ever want to cast unless there’s something for them to effect.
An engine♣46 is a card that converts one resource into another. While there are some really famous engines, and indeed, some of the most busted cards in the game are engines, it’s worth remembering that this category is deliberately very broad because even giving a card cycling can make it an engine, turning a card in hand into a draw. Any time you’re looking at an engine card you want to consider how easily, conveniently, and often it can convert things from one thing into another thing.
A recovery♣47 card is a card that lets you restore resources lost throughout the game. You don’t want to cast Raise Dead on the first turn because there’s no resources for it to get back. This is things like drawing a lot of cards, getting a bunch of creatures out of your graveyard, or just gaining a lot of life. Recovery cards can be really strong, but they’re primarily there to help you address problems.
And finally, the catch all of big dumb idiots♣48. Big dumb idiots are great. Big dumb idiots are usually but not always, creatures that do something pretty big and remarkable, but are also so expensive, they only show up when the game is probably due to start ending. ♣49Massacre Wurm is my favourite example of a big dumb idiot. Yes, it’s ridiculous to have such a huge creature with such a huge effect; but that costs a lot and it’s meant to close the game out. Often when you’re designing a creature card that’s meant to be something big and splashy, the impulse to make it cheap means you miss an opportunity to design a beautiful big dumb idiot. Also, if you have a weird rules problem or a potential weird interaction just putting it on a Big Dumb Idiot means the card can be fun even if it’s not necessarily doing its thing. There’s a reason ♣50Panglacial Wurm is a 9/5!
♣51These roles are also, notably, fluid. A big dumb idiot with landcycling can be an engine when it’s needed and it can be a big dumb idiot when it’s needed. I consider most ‘lock’ cards to be engines, things that convert one resource into something else. Ensnaring Bridge turns cards in hand into danger, for example. Ravenous Chupacabra is a removal card, and a threat. What you’ll notice is that cards that do both pay for the privilege.♣52
This is a lot and it’s very much about theory rather than the actual specifics of any card examples. It’s also being done about gauging individual cards against all cards that exist, and that neglects to consider the importance of ♣53environment.
That’s what we’ll talk about next time.
♣54In the mean time, thank you so much for your interest and I look forward to doing more. If you’d like to suggest a topic for Customs Depot going forwards, please, let me know in the comments. I am considering doing some smaller videos between these ones to review people’s cards and to try and talk about things I like about them, so if you’ve got stuff to show me, I will happily come look at it where you’ve posted it. ♣55 ♣56
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