Beacon of Creation

Bloomburrow's rules change to "enters" has us hungry for more! Can we shorten "once a turn", "flicker", "end of turn", and more? Join our tour of rules text minutiae. Join our Discord:  https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes: https://beaconofcreation.com

Bloomburrow is here! We've had a look at the archetypes, and it's time for us to break down the design of each of them. For that, we have our four categories: Excitement: Is this a cool new strategy? Do these two cards inspire us? Accuracy: Do we believe decks will actually be able to play this strategy? Synergy: Does this make unused cards great? Are these cards only good in the right deck? Raw S...

This month's challenge is all about making a mana fixing card! Even better if we can get some heist flavor in there. From jewels to rads to chains we've got a pile of cards to dive into! Join our Discord:  https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes: https://beaconofcreation.com Music by Dee Culp

We're making good on June's "Halfway There" and designing cards to go with our favorite submissions from that challenge! Finding the right balance of flavor, deckbuilding, and explosive commander fun is a big challenge! Join our Discord:  https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes: https://beaconofcreation.com Music by Dee Culp

Tim liked what he saw in Bloomburrow previews ordered up a frog burger with a side of flies and Juliet serves up the A-B-Cs of F-R-O-Gs! We talk a little Bloomburrow, dive deep on the history of frogs in Magic, then explore some design ideas for frogs in the future. Juliet's July/December Christmas pod: https://moonshotpods.com/ill-be-pod-for-castmas/ Join our Discord:  https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh...

Our competition, the Design League, just finished its first half. Come listen to the great cards designed for this competition. Along the way you'll also get the POV of both a competitor and a judge for the league. Join our Discord:  https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes: https://beaconofcreation.com

This month's challenge review takes on Partner With commanders. We've got a whole bunch of great submissions from Kithkin to Moby Dick! Lots of crazy flavor, technology, and even some mystery. Join our Discord:  https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes: https://beaconofcreation.com

We built a pack together and it came out very Lorwyn-y! Patrick and khord22 hop on the pod to tell Tim all about it. Listen in to learn about collaborating on Magic designs! Join our Discord:  https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes: https://beaconofcreation.com

We bring the past into the present! Returning guest thesixthroc describes how they tried errata and custom cards to bring original Kamigawa to the present. Along the way we dive into designing for an audience, the cost of errata, highlighting hidden themes, and... Channel—Mutate?? thesixthroc's Kamigawa list: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/kamigawa_block_revisited Join our Discord:  https://disco...

We asked for your gold Cascade + Discover designs and you responded! A full seventeen submissions for this challenge, all inspiring fun ways to play with cards off the top. Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes: https://beaconofcreation.com

Coming off fedoras on Faerie Detectives and Stetsons on Homarids, Redbay cooked up a "hats for legends" generator! He and MonoWhiteBorder grab some hats, put them on some fan favorites, and do some live design. Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes: https://beaconofcreation.com

Modern Horizons 3 is bringing back the broods and titans, so it's time to venture back into the Blind Eternities! The Eldrazi are a super-cool creature type that has gotten some, but not a ton, of exploration over the years. We break down all the lessons learned so far, then dive into some "character pie" between the titans. As a wrap up we try to assign a variety of keywords to different titans....

Design League starts back up May 26th, and to get you ready we've got League Emperor Redbay and longtime judges Juliet and Tim. They talk through the process, their judging styles, and even live design and judge a card on air! The challenge we revisit: https://www.beaconofcreation.com/2023/06/21/design-league-season-2-qualifier-5-results/ See Juliet on the Moonshot Moongarita charity drive: https:...

Heat up your cauldron and practice your hexes because we're going goth! We're looking at the videogame Midnight Suns and seeing what we can carry back into Magic. This card-based strategy game is by the same studio as the Civilzation and X-Com games, so it's coming from a different starting point. Tim and Peter talk through the gameplay and extrapolate where Magic could take those ideas. Join our...

We're taking your submissions one day (and night) at a time! We asked for your common day/nightbound cards and we got a bumper crop! Hitting that common rarity on a double face card is a narrow target, ESPECIALLY for our listeners who love to pack innovation into each card. Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes: https://beaconofcreation.com

Time to bring the cows home! We've got the second half of our new episode format, where we check out all the draft archetypes of a set. This is focused on the gold cards and on Wizard's description of the pairs. Our categories are: Excitement: Is this a cool new strategy? Do these two cards inspire us? Accuracy: Do we believe decks will actually be able to play this strategy? Synergy: Does this ma...

New set! New mechanics! New episode format??? We kick the tires on a new way to break down arcuns, those gold cards we get every set that help define draft. Rather than going for power rankings or in-depth numbers on a whole set, we're trying to model how people see these cards for the first time. To do that, we've got four categories: Excitement: Is this a cool new strategy? Do these two cards in...

This week we are Beacon of Tomorrows, a podcast about time! We look over all the ways Magic has to take extra turns and try to brainstorm some new directions. From Alpha to Dr Who there are many ways to keep it going. Moonshot Patreon Pledge Drive: https://www.patreon.com/moonshotnetwork Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes: https://beaconofcreation.com

March's challenge was all about designing new twists on the elder dragons! Nicol and family, Tarkir dragons, Strixhaven, and a few other twists. Guest Cole AKA EclipseMeteor hops in to gush about all these sweet designs! Cole's new pod: https://twitter.com/HBVC_MTG Join our Discord:  https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes: https://beaconofcreation.com

Super fun ep!!! We strategize, agonize, and finally pick mechanics from Magic's past, one at a time, snake drafted between Tim, Gabe, and Peter! What starts as a simple exercise turns into a thrilling competition. Everything from the pre-Modern era of Magic is on the table except for those pesky evergreen keywords. Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes: https://beaconofcreation.c...

This week we are looking at the custom set Settling Idyll by Provocative! As usual with Unpacking, we know next to nothing going in. We only know a single image: a heroic mech guarding a town. Settling Idyll PS: https://www.planesculptors.net/set/settling-idyll Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh YouTube videos: https://www.youtube.com/@BeaconofCreation

The Beacon community finished a second You Make the Pack, where we build a 15 card pack together. This week Kayiu brings on guest Dodger to see how we did! Hear about the new mechanics, get Dodger's insight, and maybe even design a bonus card for the pack at the end. Join our Discord:  https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh YouTube videos: https://www.youtube.com/@BeaconofCreation  

Mark Rosewater dropped a huge design article about Play Booster set skeletons this week! Skeletons are the outline of a Magic set, so we had to convene a pod to dissect all this new info. Design League champ platypeople and new guest Gabe Lincoln help Tim break down all the cool details of the article. Maro article: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/nuts-and-bolts-16-play-boosters Gab...

Jump in to these great submissions... or LOSE THE GAME! We've got 13 great designs for our February challenge, which asked people to create cards with the text "lose the game".  Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Recaps and card images at: https://www.beaconofcreation.com YouTube videos: https://www.youtube.com/@BeaconofCreation

We've got Gaby back on the pod for more live designing! You don't need to know anything about the game to listen... we cover what you need! We take a look at the cards for Halsin, Minthara, and Jaheira from the Magic set and give each a facelift to match them to their personalities in the videogame. Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Recaps and card images at: https://www.beaconofcreatio...