My main goal was to capture the flavour of SC2 within the constraints of Magic. This is more of a challenge than i first imagined. I came up with at least three different versions of Bunker, for example, before i settled on the current one. Tanks and Vikings caused similar issues but i opted for a Figure of Destiny-style which seems fairly good. Sadly the Viking 2nd mode seems fairly uselesss, but i guess it plays around Pistus Strike... meh.
Oh, yeah, i realise that i didn't format the token-creators properly but a lot of these cards were already very wordy and i think i can get away with it since this is just a fun set that nobody is actually going to play. Well, you could print them off i guess, but you can use common sense to realise that the Broodling token is probably the one used by the Broodlord, right?
The rarities may seem somewhat random, that's because they are... sort of. I was torn between rarity based on card power in Magic and rarity based on army composition in SC2. In the end i think it ended up about 50/50 but you can probably just ignore them.
The first thing i did was to give each race a colour identity. I had a feeling that it would help to define the races if they were limited to certain colours. This does mean that i sort of ignored the colour pie in some cases, but, as i said, this set is more about capturing SC2 than it is about strictly obeying the rules of Magic.
Blue/White seemed pretty obvious for Protoss because they feel very religious (Templars and Zealots) - something often asociated with White Magic (Clerics and Paladins). They are also viewed as a kind of 'higher race' and psionic energy melds very nicely into Blue.
I went with Green/White for Terran because, like Protoss, Terran are very much an ordered, hierarchical society which fits White perfectly. They're also human, which is mostly a White race in Magic. Green represents the fact that they come from Earth originally, and unforunately little else. Red feels a bit more terran-y but i wanted to save that for Zerg, since the chaotic nature of red seems much more appropriate there.
Zerg ended up with the dark/evil combination of Red/Black. I originally considered Black/Green for the corrupted nature aspect of the race but i just felt that, overall, the random, chaotic nature was more red than green. The swam style is at least well established in both red and green (goblins/saprolings/elves) so that wasn't an issue. Black seemed obvious since the Zerg are clearly the bad guys in SC2 and their units - all insects and slavering, hellish beasts - feel very Black.
I should probably explain the keywords in case they aren't clear.
Cloaking: "This creature is unblockable and receives no combat damage when blocking."
'Cloaking' is pretty self-explanatory but i felt i did a good job of capturing it within rules of Magic. It is obviously similar to effects like Fear or Intimidate but defintely keeps the SC2 style, i think.
Cliffwalk: "This creature can be blocked by creatures with flying but it can only deal damage to creatures without flying."
Colossus was another problematic unit to capture - in the end i invented a keyword (Cliffwalk) just for it. As you can see if you view the images, it can be blocked by flying creatures (since this is usually the best counter in SC2) but cannot attack them. I think that works pretty well.
Cloaking: "Creatures controlled by opponents lose Cloaking."
Reveal is just the answer to Cloaking. Although i haven't really designed this set with balance in mind, Cloaking would be pretty powerful without some kind of counter. Lukily, SC2 provides it in a way that transfers easily to Magic. I simply made it so that a permanent with Reveal removes Cloaking from other permanents.
Energize: "This creature enters the battlefield with N energy counters on it."
Units with energy were also quite a headache. To begin with i had a handful of cards that featured novels-worth of text refering to counters. A keyword was clearly necessary and i came up with Energize. This makes a permanent enter the battlefield with N counters on it. You can remove counters to activate an ability or you tap that permanent to add another counter - this mirrors the recharging of energy, though it is not perfect because most units in SC2 can still attack without energy, they just can't use their abilities. Overall i quite like this design, though it is not a perfect mirror of the SC2 universe.
Economy
Expansions are an important part of SC2 and it was something i wanted to do a good job on. It's very difficult, though, to make a land or artifact (these seemed like the best choices for bases/expansions) that represents its SC2 coutnerpart particularly well. I chose each race's colour identity early on (yes, i broke the colour pie quite a lot here, but that wasn't important to me) but just making a dual land for each race seemed pretty uninspired. I'm not sure if my solutions are perfect but they definitely 'feel' more Starcraft-y to me. The terran system in particular may be a little clunky but i like the idea of worker tokens and i think they work fairly well.
In case you missed the link at the top, here are the cards.
Next up, i'm working on a more ambitious WoW set. I'm trying to do what i did with SC2 - capture the flavour - while also making it balanced. This means roughly equal colour and, relatively balanced power levels among each race as well as colour. I'm also aiming for Eastern Kingdoms, as it's called, to have a full set of cards rather than just the 52 in SC2. Labour of love ain't the half of it.
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