"Of twenty yeer of age he was, I gesse./ Of his stature he was of even lengthe,/ And wonderly deliver, and greete of strengthe."Oh Chaucer, had I never played Magic: the Gathering there might have been hope that I would have been able to enjoy reading The Canterbury Tales. All I could think about in my Sophomore English class was the terrible card from The Dark, Squire. I am sorry sir but your unfinished tails of travelers telling stories on the way to Canterbury never stood a chance when all I could think about was this
-Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
I know creatures have come a long way over the years but even for when it was released this card was bad. Give me a Savana Lions or a White Knight over this creature anyday. A Squire brings on imagery on someone rising to nighthood not a boring vanilla 1/2 for 2. Youthful Knight is even more interesting than that and even he is pretty boring by most people's standards as well.
Come to think of it from the name and theme maybe he was an attempt to try fix squire. I had always assumed that he was a watered down White Knight but I could see how inverting the power and toughness of squire and giving him first strike would bring his power level playable. This is already a fix that wizards explored though so we have no interesting in fixing the card buy going down the same road that they have already traveled. Lets take a look at the problems with the card.
PROBLEMS
1) Underpowered
Plated Sliver is a 1/2 for W that provides a +1 toughness bonus to all other slivers. it only costs one mana and is already leaps and bounds better than squire with the same power and toughness.
2) Boring
Vanilla creatures are boring and in this case simply adding an ability to our redesigned creature is also a bit boring since this is a design article and not just another printed common that people will pass over. If we were looking to take the easy way out we would just drop the mana cost to one, call it unplayable in anything but limited, and then be done with it. I am in the mood to put my thinking cap on so that means we will explore what it means to be a squire.
While I am not the biggest fan of cards being designed around theme, having knights getting some sort of bonus from a squire or having a squire itself be able to become a knight seems likes a fun theme to build into this card. I would say that design by theme has been the cause of some strange and often underpowered cards. Often it also it has ended up with cards that have abilities that are out of color (erosion comes to mind). Never the less if we keep this in mind while designing the card I think we can come up with a fluffy and in color type of ability.
3) The laughing stock of the Magic community
I will just leave it at this: From the Vault: Squire.
Solutions
Forgive me me if the wording on any of the cards I post is a little off from the printed grammar on modern cards. The majority of cards I own are older so wizards might have rephrased the way that they state some play mechanics now. That being said, dere is my first attempt at making an interesting squire card:
I like this card a lot from a thematic perspective. He starts out as a simple square that aids a knight more so than being useful on his own but then when he becomes a knight himself and can take on his own squire (hence the returning the card to your hand). Even though the card itself could ironically die to the card we are redesigning that is terrible I feel this card would be great in a tribal knight deck.
Sadly though this card seems to play too much like a blue card to fully make me happy. I decided to hit the drawing board once more and came up with this:
Ultimately I am pretty happy with this design. Normally this sort of ability is seated pretty deeply in the Red or Black parts of the color pie but we can make an exception for the theme we are going for. I like the idea of white having a "field promotion" type tutor that allows them to replace current creatures in play. For this creature, combat damage seems like a good trigger for the ability since he is being promoted to a knight for a job well done. Perhaps this is an idea I will explore further when designing sets for my custom card article.
The only adjustment I feel the Aspiring Knight needs is a limit on the converted casting cost. I think a limit of 3 would be a good number. It would allow for the possibility of indirect mana acceleration for white in a way that no other color really has a strong hold over yet. I suppose both cards could also use a rarity bump up a level as well but since I do not work on the wizards team it isn't quite as important to nail down the rarity level.
So readers, is this a good thematic fix? How would you fix try to fix squire?
The two "squires" with exalted are pretty good flavor things.
ReplyDeleteAspiring knight is quite wordy, and having a 1 drop that can get you massive tempo advantage seems overpowered. The bloodthirst effect doesn't seem very white.
Sword boy is kinda bad, as a conditional perm +1/+1 buyback card isn't all that good, particularly when it runs counter to the theme.
That is a pretty fair assessment. In some ways i still feel like I feel into the trap of out of color effects from designing by theme but at the same point I was trying to explore potentially new dynamics that haven't fully been locked down by other colors. The effect did feel a little off color to me at first until I thought about it in terms of exploring the field promotion mechanic. As someone who design cards I like to try to innovate and push the limits of the color wheel without completely destroying them so I felt like I could explore it with this card.
ReplyDeleteThe sword boy is certainly the weaker of the two cards but I feel like if the limit CMC 3 was put on the Aspiring Knight that he would not offer too much of a tempo swing, as a matter of fact the tempo swing was actually part of the design of the card. On a first turn drop it would only put white ahead 1 turn on the mana curve one time if an opponent had no removal for it. With the 3 CMC restriction I feel like the power level of the card would be about right to start testing it.
Both these cards are really first iterations though that haven't been tested so it is hard to say how balanced/useful they are. As a Johnny myself some of my cards are going to be designed in a way where you can't fully look at them in a vacuum to judge their power level. Thanks you for your feedback. It has been helpful.