HomeMadeMagicCards/StarCraftCardsDiscussion

General cardset discussion

I'd particularly like thoughts on how I can make the set a bit bigger without diluting the units from the game too much.

Well, there are how many Terran sides? Four? Five? You could try being less lazy than Blizzard and differentiating them a bit. --SF

Hmm. As in, "Dominion Marine", "Kel Moria Siege Tank", etc? Yes, there's something to that. I guess I could use things like that to achieve some rarity balancing - there's no flavour reason why Corsairs should be more common than the other two air-support units. It does carry some difficult parts, though. I either have some units that only have one interpretation while others have two, which seems very problematic, or I need to make two-or-more versions of each card. I either have to tie those variations in to the flavour of the sides - which is doable for Terran factions and Protoss groups, but rather harder for Zerg broods - or just express the unit in several different ways on different affiliated cards. This is doable in many cases, such as the ones where I've got "(or)" at the moment, but might get tricky in some other cases. I also have to decide if I want to do the same division with spells. But... yes, there definitely could be something here. Thanks for the suggestion! --AC

Well, it's not as if Wizards feel the need to print absolutely every element of all the opposing forces from their storylines in their cardsets, so I don't see why you have to. --SF

: This is also true. I guess there's not actually any problem with printing a Conclave Archon and no other forms of Archon, even if they exist in the storyline. Good point. --AC

You could make more specific versions of units as well as the base ones, eg another type of Ghost, that can tap down an artifact when it attacks' --Edwin

: Indeed. It would make sense to combine this with SF's suggestion above - have, say, the UED Ghost have a built-in "lockdown" of some form, and the Terran Dominion Ghost have an ability to cast Nuke somehow. What I'd really like to do is get a list of which units from which affiliation in the game have certain abilities turned off, so that I could match the names more accurately than close-to-random, but even if I can't this is definitely worth consideration. --AC

It also occurs to me that you've only got one card reflecting a strategy at the moment. You could do something with that.
This sort of thing:
Creeping Barrage
1RR
Tribal Enchantment - Terran Strategy
Creeping Barrage comes into play[1] with three artillery counters on it
Whenever a Siege Tank comes into play under your control, add an artillery counter to Creeping Barrage
If a creature you control is attacking and unblocked, you may remove X artillery counters from Creeping Barrage. If you do, Creeping Barrage deals X damage to target creature or player.

Protoss strategies will require someone who has actually played the Protoss.

1. What? No, I can't see anything out of date with this wording. Looks just fine to me

: Oh, yes, very good point. If I'm having things like Decoy Attack, then I could definitely do things like this, and I'd quite like to. (I think in fact I'd meant to, at one point, and the idea had got lost.) I also agree that I'd like to make them connect to specific strategies in the game, like your one above, rather than the StarCraft/BoardGame's generic "Aggressive Strategy" or suchlike. --AC

Specific cards discussion

I'd welcome any thoughts on cards where I've got a couple of alternatives separated by "(or)", as well as much more far-reaching comments...

Sarah Kerrigan/Queen? of Blades should be a flip card. I don't know if there's any precedent for a card that changes colour when flipped, but do it anyway. --I2?

Should White Kerrigan perhaps have vigilance?

: That'd have nice mechanical synergy, yes. --AC

Spawn Broodlings in the game gives you two broodlings. Is it deliberate that the spell here only gives one (albeit permanent)?

: One answer is that I was following the board game's lead of combining two low-power units into one creature, as I did with Scourge, though I wanted to avoid that for Zergling. An alternative answer is that I'd forgotten you got two broodlings :) --AC

SF's brain thinks that the following card is an integral part of the StarCraft experience:

Argh No, Not Those Units!
1W
Enchantment
Whenever a creature attacks or blocks, put an interface counter on it.
Whenever a creature uses an activated ability, put an interface counter on it.
If a player controls twelve creatures with interface counters on, creatures that player controls cannot attack or block and their activated abilities can't be played.
At the end of target opponent's turn, remove all interface counters from all creatures.