MTG Salvation

UWx Skies



Aggro-control with flyers. Where Resplendent Angel is OP. Healer's Hawk is early target for the attachments. Its lifelink along with Deploy can trigger Resplendent Angel. Lyra Dawnbringer will trigger Resplendent Angel on her own; not to mention 10+ point life swing.

The Azorius split cards Depose // Deploy and Warrant // Warden are amazing. Early they can be tempo, and later they create tokens to finish the game. So they count as creatures, but also fill the grave for Pteramander. Furthermore, they can be flashbacked with Mission Briefing--it's absolutely sick. Recast Deploy to gain more Thopters and gain huge amounts life; or recast Warden for another 4/4 flying vigilant.

Shalai, Voice of Plenty will protect you and all your creatures, and Siren Stormtamer has similar effect if holding U.

Curious Obsession for cheap draw engine. Since all we have are flyers, good chance of it triggering for free draw. Favorable Winds pumps every creatures in this deck, since we only use flyers. Win on turn 5 more consistently. Dowsing Dagger can be both faster kill and ramp into bigger threats.

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This Bant version is pure aggro, but still the same ridiculous midgame and endgame:



Playtest Bant Skies

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Esper is more controlling, but Azorius/Bant is more explosive. Where Resplendent Angel is OP.

However, Azorius version is harder to afford the discount to Pteramander; hence removed Pteramander in Azorius version. slight change to improve early game for UW:



Playtest Azorius Skies

Sphinx of Foresight will smooth out your opening hand, especially since this deck is low on lands, and great P/T for its cost. Prying Blade, then, creates extra sources of mana, to ramp into the more expensive spells--especially if wanting to flashback spells.

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Playtest Dimir Skies

Esper aggro-control with focus on Surveil and filling graveyard with instants and sorceries. Finishers are Pteramander, Dimir Spybug, Warden--all of which can become dangerous 4/4 or 5/5 flyers; or a bunch of flying Thopter tokens via Deploy.

The spells perform one or more of these:

- surveil to improve your next draws
- control ala countermagic, discard, removal
- tempo to slow down opponent
- protection via counters (Siren Stormtamer), hexproof
- creature tokens as finishers

Warrant // Warden is easily 4x in any Azorius deck, whether it's aggro or control. Never dead against any matchup.

I'm building Esper Skies (tempo deck), and this card is going to be awesome as tempo and as finisher:

The Azorius split cards Depose // Deploy and Warrant // Warden are amazing. Early they can be tempo, and later they create tokens to finish the game. So they count as creatures, but also fill the grave for Pteramander. Furthermore, they can be flashbacked with Mission Briefing--it's absolutely sick. Recast Deploy to gain more Thopters and gain huge amounts life; or recast Warden for another 4/4 flying vigilant.

The real problem is you are too generous to players. You see, MtG is all about the gambling / lootbox effect. Putting good, desirable cards at common would undermine the entire booster addiction that revolves around chase rares.

Esper tempo with focus on Surveil could work. Finishers are Pteramander, Dimir Spybug, Warden. Prototype deck:

2018/11/08 - 11/18

; Vogon HD ; Planeswalker art full height, with mask on bottom
; Vogon HD ; Planeswalker rules box and starting font size shrunk
; Earth and Space genres ; Emblem type becomes Paradigm
; PW rules box abilities height proportional to text length
; Scenes rules box, loyalty like Planeswalkers
; resize fields to fit within specific widths if too long (such as names, type, p/t, artist, creator)
; rules text ; can now bold text between angled brackets <>

Ex. <First strike> will bold, and become First strike

can be used in conjunction with italics

Ex. [<First strike>] will bold and italicize, and become First strike

Notes:
Planeswalkers' abilities' height now proportional to amount of text to total text length. So longer abilities should have bigger font size than before, thus more readable. However, this could mess up some cards and cause unexpected overlaps between abilities.

So, I want opinion if I should revert back to before when every PW ability has equal heights; thus safer and no chance of overlap.

2018/11/01

; added Pokemon genre and energy symbols:

{c} Colorless
{d} Darkness
{o} Dragon
{y} Fairy
{f} Fighting
{r} Fire
{g} Grass
{l} Lightning
{m} Metal
{p} Psychic
{w} Water

With extra room in the rules box, allows more variations and creativity. Including planeswalkers and leveler cards with many tiers/levels/abilities that stack neatly on the card.

how about leveler card with 4 tiers? or artifact that toggles between on and off? see examples in attachments.

notice versatility, availability, and spaciousness of the left margin's bottom half. whether it's creature's P/T, planeswalker's loyalty costs, or leveler's helpful information.

2018/10/13

` leveler cards under Vogon HD and Vogon Full Art frame ` P/T and levels separated by double semicolon ;; ` level values set between brackets [](){}
` hints and example for leveler

Examples: see attachments

2018/10/05 - 10/10

- new frame: Vogon Full Art - art takes entire card - see examples in attachments
- improve Vogon frames aesthetics - land - seams - blend - type icons
- PW abilities accept more bracket types - [](){} or bracketless
- reorganize Frame dropdown selection - Vogon HD and Vogon Full Art near the top

Here the full art version. The focus is the art, so the box for rules text is shrunk and the margins are made transparent.

Just like the regular Vogon frame, the art is well-supported by the surrounding elements. (Unlike the standard Magic frames, where the card type box intrudes and vandalizes right through the center of the art.)

See examples in attachments.

Test the new frame at http://bit.ly/sfocc . Select Frame => Vogon Full Art, fill in other stuff, and press submit button.

You have valid concerns. But as you said, mostly we are used to Magic's standard layout due to habit, not necessarily because it's optimal.

The flow of Magic card is all over the place. You have to scan every corner of a card in order to receive the most critical informations. Card name and card type starts on the left, then zigzag your eyes all the way to the right edge for the mana cost and P/T. That excessive unnecessary movements. Overall the frame feels constricting, convoluted, and disorderly. (Not to mention the art feels boxed in by the intrusive bars above and below; addressed below.)

Reading mana is also a matter of habit. The most popular cards played in history--poker cards--have their symbols in the left edge vertically. Because that's the most optimal arrangement and location when fanning the cards in hand. Hence many other CCGs have also adopted this design of putting costs on the left edge downward. Even MaRo admitted he would have done it this way if they could start over.

My layout the important data is found on the top row and the left margin. Thanks to your input, I have now put card type icons on the top left corner, like Futureshifted frame. Now, you can get all the major data from just the top and left edges of the card. This makes it easier to sort and arrange cards--such as cascaded or fanning to reveal not more than the top and left edges of each card, by which you can see Card name, Mana Cost, Card Type icon, P/T, and Loyalty. Even online games including MTGO cascade or tile them suchly, and my layout is way more effective than official frames for this purpose.

In other words, I can hide 90% of a card, and still be able to acquire four important pieces of information from that card. In comparison, you can get at most two important data pieces from standard Magic card when obstructed in the same manner.

With even, plain bars around the art, it feels well supported and celebrated. Like a good physical art frame, it doesn't try to clash with the art piece, but rather allow the art to dominate its space. Thus the artwork stands out more--despite its imperceptible size reduction.

I too realize people don't like to read words at an angle; it can be jarring. But frankly, subtype is only secondary information that has little or no impact in most games. When it most matters is probably during deck building. As such, rotating them outside of a match should not be distracting to yourself or opponent. That's really the only major issue with my layout. But a worthy sacrifice to improve every other area by leaps and bounds.

Introducing Vogon HD card frames: high resolution frames: more room for everything

As the creator of one of the earliest online card creator website (http://bit.ly/sfocc), over the last decade I observe many shortcomings of the modern Magic frames (actually I always detested them since inception), and other frames in general. Based on the actual usage in official and home-made cards, they desire more room to fit long card names, long card types, long rules and flavor texts, long mana costs, and even long stats (in place of power/toughness).

I generally observe these issues:

1) Rules box is too small to fit the verbose text that people tend to input. Furthermore, wide text box wastes a lot of horizontal space; many lines do not take up the entire width, or even half the width. Also consider that each additional ability requires additional rows, not necessarily a wider box.

2) Card names overlap with mana cost. These two properties are in inverse proportion and invites conflict.

3) Card types can become too lengthy when all kinds of supertypes and subtypes are tacked on. Also the set icon obstructs the right end of the card type.

4) P/T box is tiny and confining. Even for Magic's simplified stats, it looks claustrophobic. Moreover, custom card creator apps are not only used for custom Magic cards, but also for other games and nongame content. These tend to put larger numbers and stats; such as stats starting in the 100s or 1000s. ex 9000/9000 will not fit in the wee P/T box.

5) Each Planeswalker's additional ability demands exorbitant vertical dimension.

6) Hard to discern and sort cards by color. Borders too thin, text background pastel too light and similar. When zooming out such that card images are small, it's very hard to tell one color from another with the modern Magic frames. One of the reasons I hate looking at them (especially on MTGO, hurts my eyes).

Thus I sought out to create my own custom card frames that will match the needs of custom card creators. These are my solutions:

1) Rules box will have bigger area than most card frames, and be taller than it is wide. This allows more lines, thus more abilities and paragraphs. This minimizes the need to reduce the font size in order to fit all the text inside the box, for better legibility. Tall over wide is also more aesthetically pleasing to read.

2) Mana cost is moved to the left margin and arranged vertically downward. This move allows the card name to fill the entire top row; also names are centered. Mana cost can now be much longer without worrying about obstructing the name at all.

3) Card type is spanned along the entire right margin from top to bottom, so you will not likely run out of space for complicated card types. This text is turned 90°. The set icon is stowed out of the way in the bottom right corner.

4) P/T or related stats own the left margin's bottom half. Plenty of room for stats for Magic and non-Magic games. This text is turned 90°.

5) Planeswalkers will welcome the taller rules box. Easily accomodates 3, 4, 5, or more abilities neatly without sacrificing readability, nor feel cramped.

6) Easy to tell colors apart. Colored borders are thick, thus easy to discern and sort cards by color when far away (in real life) or zoomed out and small (on screen).

Disadvantages of Vogon HD frames:

1) Slightly smaller arts.

2) Angled texts.

3) Takes time to accustom.

Here, view the sample cards created with the new card frames, dubbed Vogon HD:

https://imgur.com/a/mBJemFt

It is a work in progress. I'm not an artist, so these look pretty bland. If any artist wants to help improve the aesthetics, feel free to download the GIMP or PSD file that you can work on:

https://shenafu.com/magic/ccimages/frame_vogonhd/cardback.xcf
https://shenafu.com/magic/ccimages/frame_vogonhd/cardback.psd

Test the new frame at http://bit.ly/sfocc . Select Frame => Vogon HD, fill in other stuff, and press submit button.

2018/09/28 - 10/03

- form redesign: dropdown selectables: color, border, frame, symbols
- added choice of symbols (mana aesthestics)
- new mana symbols: 'f' for infinity, 'k' for planar chaos

- added aliases:
= @dcd@ = deals combat damage

- font for card name, type, artist, creator: Fondamento
- font for power/toughness: Amiri
- playing card frame: mana cost vertically : added watermark
- FPM frame: reverse mana cost order : center card name
- tweak artist and creator texts

- replace card types for Earth genre: Villain, Power (were Conspiracy, Phenomenon)

Pro-tip: Choose Earth genre to get types like "Super Villain", "Super Power", "Super Villain Power".

- new page: Random list of created cards

- new frame: Vogon HD: large, high resolution, more space for texts, including card name, type, rules, and P/T. mana vertical on top left. P/T at bottom left margin. set icon at bottom right corner. work in progress. see examples in attachment.

most sets have a mechanic to smooth out draws. like cycling and scry. in this set it's surveil. since it's a multicolor set, other guilds that share a color with UB will also benefit from surveil. which is apparent when other guild mechanics even combo well with surveil. hence it's not surprising to see so many cards with surveil.

unexpectedly Shaft appears on Magic booster wrapper