Beacon of Creation

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://beaconofcre...

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/t88V...

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 card...

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'...

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://acsherm...

Juliet and guest judge Andrew Sherman tackle Mono-Red Mana Dorks for this month's design challenge review. Treasure, One-hit wonders, and Blitz (but not blitzball) all make fiery-hot appearances. 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 Image...

Inspiring episode this week! Khord and IgnitedxSoul hop on the pod this week to tell us about Beacon Constructed, a Standard-like format composed of sets from the Beacon of Creation server. This contained setup has a lot of advantages and helps them playtest with each other.  Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images:  https://beaconofcreation.com Intro mu...

We're back again on the trail, following where the signposts lead us in draft. This new Avatar set has some new twists on the uncommon gold "archetype" cards and overall has some new ideas on structure. How do you structure a set with four types of elements in a game with five colors and ten color pairs? We dive in and give our breakdown. Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vp...

We've got a combo episode this week. Part project showoff, part live design, and all weird old mechanics. Rexxer2 aka Spencer hops on the pod with Tim to talk through this mechanic-a-day project and then dive in to design three of the cards! Fans (if they exist??) of Frenzy, Grandeur, and Gravestorm gotta listen to this one. The Year of Mechanics gallery: https://flareporeon.github.io/previews/YOM...

Spooky season meets rhinoceroses in our monthly challenge! We got your best card ideas submitted throughout the month and we cover the entries in this episode. Lots of great designs, plus Juliet's twist on anagram card names! Charity stream for Moonshot this weekend: https://www.twitch.tv/moonshotnetwork Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images:  https://...

This week we're headed joining heads to brainstorm a ton of new ideas for 2HG draft! The episode starts with a recap of Battlebond along with cracking a sample pack. Once the table it set, we settle in to the big brainstorming session, sharing over a dozen ideas for a Battlebond followup.  Brad's stream: https://twitch.tv/bradleyrose Join Beacon of Creation's Discord:  https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh S...

This week Gabe's bringing the Mark Rosewater's State of Design 2025 article to the pod. We've picked our favorite points from the article and talk through the implications and lessons. Some of these sets aren't that old but feel ancient now! It was fun to re-live these sets and find some takeaways now that we have some distance. The article: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/state-of-...

This week we're putting aside our usual design goals and focusing on a new one: creating cards good enough to hang in a high powered cube! Selesnya hasn't gotten as much love as the other color pairs in high power formats, but our community is here to the rescue. Local cube organizer Eric is back on the pod to evaluate all of your great submissions to this tough assignment! Join Beacon of Creation...

This challenge review dives into "spellbook" technology from Arena. What cool cards can you design when that card has access to three other cards? We got a ton of submissions again, so you'll learn all about the possible tech! Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images:  https://beaconofcreation.com

Big episode! Alexis Janson breaks down their game and helps brainstorm how to steal some of that technology for our own Magic designs. Alexis was a Beacon host way back in the day, so you know they're ready to go deep on the design and ideas behind Galaxy. Check out the game: https://galaxy.fun The dev twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/playgalaxygame Yukmouth streams the game daily:  https://w...

Kayiu and Juliet walk through the basics of Moxtober 2025, the yearly community custom Magic event! Join Beacon of Creation's Discord:  https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images:  https://beaconofcreation.com

Juliet is joined by Gabe Lincoln to ask to borrow a cup of one of Magic's oldest flavors, Giant non-Lizard-Wizard non-Hero-Villain Spiders. How do the arachnids that predate the keywording of reach differ from the ones that come after? What is the anatomy of a two-color gold Spider? Why does Ravnica get the most Giant Spiders of them all? Join Beacon of Creation's Discord:  https://discord.gg/t88V...

Wizards is releasing Through the Omenpaths, a full reflavoring of their Spider-Man set. That got us curious how the existing Universes Beyond sets could be redone too! Khord jumps on the pod as we tackle cards from LotR, 40k, Doctor Who, and more. Join Beacon of Creation's Discord:  https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images:  https://beaconofcreation.com

Our packed court of Objection! submissions wraps up this week with another packed ep full of great cards! This wide open challenge asked submitters to design a mechanic called "Objection" and we got SO MANY versions. Listen in for our thoughts on all these cards, including three more new submitters! Submissions from: Xena, MWB, JamesDaltonBell, Juliet, Keith^3, Pat, Inte, Selkie, kuyashiiPlays, Ma...

You won't hear me objecting to so many design submissions, but you WILL hear all about the first half of our cards with the Objection mechanic! Keywords, ability words, and flavor, this challenge is all about defining "Objection!" as a Magic mechanic.  Due to some Discord issues and due to the huge number of submissions, this week's ep just covers the first half, from: Dragon of the West Auxiliary...

We've told you about You Make the Pack, now it's time to do it!! We've got some live design this week, making submissions for the YMTP event. We brought on new community member KennaKhaos to help and it was definitely the right choice! We tackle both a rare and a common for this emerging project. Join Beacon of Creation's Discord:  https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images:  https://beacono...

Juliet and game designer Brendan McLeod dispel Ondore's lies as they talk about Final Fantasy XII's sparse appearances in the canon "Magic: The Gathering–FINAL FANTASY", and set out to make a jeskai Commander deck with all new designs for the game's biggest hitters and most memorable moments and characters. Brendan's bsky with links to Paper Labyrinths and The Prisoner's Dilemma: https://bsky.app/...

How do you make your own set in a month? The power of friendship! Beacon regular Brad (aka Redbay) breaks down the schedule he and Peter (MonoWhiteBorder) used to finish and release an entire set in a month. There's a TON of great tips for making sets in this ep, so you won't want to miss it! Check out the set here: https://rrredbay.github.io/sets/SOC Join Beacon of Creation's Discord:  https://di...

Signpost gold cards are a great way to teach your drafters what archetypes and decks can be drafted in limited. By learning from retail Wizards sets, we can improve our design skills and make more fun sets ourselves. In our Following Signposts episodes, we break down what we learn JUST from the archetype card and the uncommon gold cards. Your drafters won't know the whole picture, but what can the...