Baby Steps

I figured I would start off small, since the set is still incomplete and there's still a lot I want to hold back until it's done. So I'll begin with how I decided on the first few creatures' abilities.  Before showing you a new card, let's take a look at our starters, since I know a lot of people will find them the most popular.

Bulbasaur | Artwork by Eric Chan

 The way I start with most of the Pokemon, and the starters were no exception, was to look at their bodies and assess how that translates into power and toughness. If it's hard to get a good feel just by looking at the creature, I'll base it on their attack and defense statistics from the GameBoy games. Using the example of Bulbasaur, I determined based on its body that it shouldn't be larger than a 3/3. The creature is heavy-set, but it certainly doesn't feel threatening. The rather innocent look about it made me want to give it higher toughness, since I imagined that it would want to be more defensive. Before going any deeper than that, I settled on 2/3. If you read my previous article, you'll know this wasn't the final decision. Let's keep going and see why I changed it.

Charmander | Artwork by Molly Gur

After giving an estimate of its power and toughness, I move on to the next key factor, converted mana cost. Knowing how much a creature should cost to play will determine a baseline of how powerful its abilities are, which is extremely important when working with Pokemon. Many of these creatures tend to look little or adorable, but their powers suggest the opposite. In order to control for that, we need to find a middle-ground, and the best way to establish that is through changing the cost. For Charmander, we begin with this tiny salamander that can incinerate anything with its tail. Obviously we can't let it kill everything, and the way to prevent it from having that potential is by making it weaker by means of a lower mana cost. If we made Charmander cost 3 or 4 instead of 2, we would need to make it more powerful to match the cost. Those who know Magic know that this isn't always true, but when dealing with a creature that people expect to be powerful, it's important to scale it accordingly. Once I decided that I wanted Charmander to be only big enough to kill most things at the beginning of the game, I knew that he couldn't cost more than 2. 

Squirtle | Artwork by RJ Palmer

Once we have our base creature set, we need to give it an appropriate ability to match the body and cost we've established. Of course, this step doesn't always happen; there are plenty of creatures with just power and toughness, especially at the common level of rarity. We couldn't do that for something as exciting as a starter Pokemon, though; nobody would want to use them if they didn't have something special. However, like I said above, it's important to keep cost in mind so that they don't become overpowered. Let's take a look at Squirtle.  At this point he was already a 1/3 for 2, which by itself isn't anything to write home about. There are plenty of creatures in Magic with these statistics (Martime Guard, Straw Soldiers, and Talas Merchant to name a few), so we needed to find a way to use Squirtle's abilities in Pokemon to make him stand out. When thinking about Squirtle, I always imagine it using Bubble, which is a very simple move with a flavorful visual effect. The best match to a Magic creature using something similar is Watercourser, whose ability works great with creatures of lower power and high toughness. This creature costs one more mana than Squirtle, but it had an extra point of power, so it balanced out almost perfectly. 

Artwork by Eric Chan, Molly Gur, and RJ Palmer

So now that I've walked you through the process, why do you think Bulbasaur ended up as a 2/2 instead of a 2/3? Well, there are a couple reasons, the first of which is cost. A 2/3 for 2 has only happened twice in green, and both times they were given a more restricted cost. I wanted all three creatures to cost the same, and adjusting all three just for the sake of Bulbasaur didn't seem worthwhile. And as you might have guessed, rarity is another key factor. Given the popularity of the three starters, I wanted them to come up often enough for everyone to get a chance to play with them. Similar to how Magic often has spells with names connected to Planeswalkers, I didn't want people who couldn't afford to hunt for the higher evolutions to be left out of the fun of using such iconic creatures in the game. 

Let's see if you can apply this process to our preview card for today. To make it simple, I've selected one with the same cost and rarity. How would you rank its power and toughness? If it has an ability, what would you give it? Here's the artwork.

Artwork by RJ Palmer

Have any guesses?

Click here to see if you were right:

That's all for now. I hope this process will help you understand the decisions I make on cards as we move forward, and maybe it will even help you in your own card design endeavors. Until next time.