Beacon Of Creation Podcast

Crossovers are back! This time Otter jumps on the pod to explain the board game Spirit Island to Tim. Despite being an area-control cooperative game, it has a ton of cool rules to adapt over into Magic. These Crossover eps are a great way to get the best tidbits from another game while also brainstorming tons of new Magic ideas! Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com

Tim and Juliet enter their joker phase as they barrel through the final dozen submissions to THE Horse challenge. Put on your stirrups and listen to us break down all of your great saddle cards. Tons of creativity! There's even some innovation in... flavor text? Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com

Our massive "Year of THE Horse" challenge review continues! You sent us way more submissions than ever before, including mount[ain] kings, the biggest lore dragon, a goat, and many horses. Continue learning along with us about all the nooks and crannies of the Saddle mechanic.  Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com

You better be ready for extensive horse content!!! We got a beyond-huge amount of submissions this month for our Design Challenge, so this episode can only tackle the first THIRD of that bumper crop! So much saddle content, from more traditional beasts to a doting dad. Come get your fill but be ready to come back for more next week. Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com

Last week's episode about color-shifted "Fractured" planeswalkers set off a firestorm of design in the Discord! This week we're going over a bunch of those cards. So many cool twists on existing characters in new roles, elements, and themes! GrandNagus aka Weasel joins us on the pod for the first time to share their card, too. Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com

Orzhov Ral Zarek is just the beginning! Khord and Tim collaborate on the idea of switched up colors for planeswalkers. Water wizard Chandra? Tezzeret with wooden limbs? Kaito the samurai? It's not just about changing color, it's also important to find that character nugget to keep the same. How do you keep Liliana's sass while giving her a white mana power set? Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com

Juliet and Tim review your submissions for the 4/4 flier challenge. Along the way, they dive deep into what makes a keyword plausible, an ability word worthwhile, and randomness in gameplay fun or unfun. Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com

This month's challenge standardizes the cost and size: 5 mana, 4/4 flier. From there, our designers could go wherever they want! Plenty of fun designs and great discussion, plus a thorough look into the nature of humanity. Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com

Juliet poses a philsophical question on the nature of identity and gets a crash course on TMNT from turtle-expert Riley Hopkins. In the face of Ooze, does patience or pizza win out? Did you know that Splinter is a cross-universe pun the whole time? Along the way, they design a quartet of fun new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Magic the Gathering cards. Check out Moonshot streams at: https://www.twitch.tv/moonshotnetwork Get even more Moonshot (including more Juliet) at: https://www.patreon.com/moonshotnetwork Watch their Silent Hill f vids too: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIhnR2aPYXj_A6pUjNdq8_1-GY0B-MbL1 Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com

Our usual Following Signposts faces its biggest challenge yet: Lorwyn Eclipse's crazy draft structure! Part traditional set, part hybrid nonsense, with 8 archetypes instead of 5 or 10. Tons of hybrid talk, which is looking to be a key part of the UB small set era. Khord's stuff: https://linktr.ee/Khord22 Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com Intro music by Dee Culp

Flip over last week's episode because we've got a whole extra pod on the back! More of your two-sided noncreature cards this week. We've got references to Alpha, 1500s paintings, multiple Rakdos goopy trash cards, and a Battle for the finale. Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com Intro music by Dee Culp

This month's challenge asked you to submit double sided cards where neither side is a creature. The star of the show, though, is the bonus challenge, which was to also make the card easy to read! Along the way Juliet talks about reading Tolstoy, Tim asks for a famous web app, and Guff rewrites history. Check out community member Xena's new game, Surreality Check: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2758010/Surreality_Check/ Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com Intro music by Dee Culp

Juliet and special guest horror author Nat Silveira talk about what makes horror as a genre work in speculative fiction and Shadowmoor as a setting, then design two different Shadowmoor-themed body-horror cards! You can check out Nat's new book The Chrysalis Body at https://books2read.com/thechrysalisbody or https://lost-signals.itch.io/the-chrysalis-body Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com Intro music by Dee Culp

All this Lorwyn in the air has got Juliet thinking about the works of 1894, which also leads to thoughts of nonviolence. Follow our train of thought to hear a discussion of new player's aversion to combat, the joy of changelings, and the diet of Mirrans. Then we each design a new Lorwyn card building on all we talked about! Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com Intro music by Dee Culp

Power Cube is back on Arena and as wild as always. There's lessons to take away from designing high powered cards and formats. Also make sure to stick around for our fun new game of "B or F?" where Peter has to guess whether a card is 60% winrate or 50% winrate in Power Cube data from 17lands. Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com Intro music by Dee Culp

Another hefty design review ep for all of you! Hear our reactions, feedback and insight on the latest crop of submissions. This time, we're getting cards that (mostly...) have the "enters or attacks" titan text. This is the souped up merger of the "value now" and "value later" angles to creature design, and it leads to some powerful cards. Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com Intro music by Dee Culp

Every amateur designer is tempted to mess with the past... What if you could change broken cards? Customize a draft format more to your liking? Provide the perfect on-ramp for new players? Tim brings Peter on to go in-depth on his long-simmering project of overhauling early Magic through the lens of Revised aka 3rd Edition. How do you create the feeling of awe and mystery of early Magic? What cards can change and what have to stay the same? Can we bring back Ante?? Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com Intro music by Dee Culp

This week Gaby is on the pod to talk about a deck swap we're doing with our local friends. Like a Secret Santa, we were each given a mission, and needed to build a deck to that spec. After finishing our decks, we couldn't help but think of what we'd do with some custom magic energy.  Join us as we each design a commander, first for "Mischievous Chaos" and then for "If you've got the money honey i've got your disease".  Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com Intro music by Dee Culp

Juliet's new game has us picking costs from cards, but we don't have all our options available! Can we get a mono-red double striking defender? Abzan direct damage? WB creature stealing? Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com Intro music by Dee Culp

Juliet and guest-judge Andrew Sherman finish reviewing the the red-mana-dork Design Challenge, asking fiery questions about whether a Mountain is a card, whether a Creature is a Mountain, and whether Pierre Menard is a better author than Cervantes when it comes to three-drop magic design. Check out some of Andrew's Magic and other game projects: https://acsherman.github.io/sets/TPW https://acsherman.itch.io/ Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com Intro music by Dee Culp