I dipped an experimental toe into the world of double-faced magic cards a couple of print runs ago and have been testing them in the homemade cube since. While I think it is a bit of a logistically fiddly mechanic it did transpire that a lot of people's favourite cards, myself included, are flip cards. This is because they are able to cleanly show a narrative and "do the thing"- a neat summation of what is most fun in a magic card. A flip card allows for arc in a way that most cards do not. With that being the case it felt necessary to master the art of designing double faced cards.
With designing double faced cards you have twice the real estate to work with for more art, names, card types, and of course mechanics allowing for much more combinations of things going on, all without risk of the card getting busy too quickly. Obviously the more moving parts you add to a card the more of a challenge design and balance becomes. I learned this the hard way with planeswalkers and companions. I also generally learned that when you don't know something you get it more wrong. This is why the double faced cards I designed have been lurking in the background for so long. I made them to experiment. I knew I would get a lot wrong about them and need a long time using them to learn how to do it right, or at least better. As such I designed a spread to cover various bases and probed a bunch of avenues. I also designed relatively few, in part because you never want lots of these kinds of card slowing down games and drafts. Also because I simply didn't know what I was doing.
I made around 25 total cards. a bunch of which ended up just being riffs on real cards I liked. It is hard to go bottom up design on these cards as there is so much going on and that made it harder still as that had been my main design process. I think in hindsight it was my biggest stumbling block. When a double faced card fails it can be because the card is bad or because the flavour doesn't work, it needs both parts to work together much more so than a normal magic card. In many ways you need it to justify the extra logistical component with the flavour. When you have no specific story you are trying to tell the inspiration for these kinds of cards is elusive. In the end I just wound up picking real world examples of things and doing a top down design tribute. This lead to some cards that worked in a flavour sense but were often not suited to cube play.
Righto, lets look at the cards one at a time as see what is good and what is not so good and why!
Amenemhat the Returned // Interred Open
Design 8
Balance 4
One of the more fun cards. The flavour and art all work together and the bonus discard ability temps you to find ways to have a good time with it. This was all a bit of an accident, it somewhat made itself once I had the notion of a black creature that flipped into a saga and back again. The card plays pretty well and it is pretty fun but it is a touch over tuned. I toyed with adding another stage to the saga to keep him away longer but think losing a toughness and 3 life instead of 2 on stage one will be enough to get him to the right power level. Obviously with an ability that is so scalable this one will be more sensitive to the quality of discard effects in the meta. Even with both the suggested nerfs the card will be very much on the upper power level of my cube. I am pretty happy with this for several reasons. One is that this card is not super direct. Power is safer when it is spread out doing different things. Secondly much of the power is locked within synergies, and you need to pony up for double black on a three drop as well, all somewhat gating the power. Lastly however, I think you just want your flashier flagship cards to have a little more zest under the bonnet! Flip cards want to be flashy and thus command a little more liberal spreading of the power.
Design 4
Balance 6
Here is a card that attempts to "fix" Delver of Secrets, and in that vein it does an OK job. If this were red or white, or even blue, it might be a bit too good as those colours are all quite strong at leveraging cheap efficient threats with evasion. In green this is just small and slow. It is fair but because it is not super useful rather than because the power level is right. The flavour is nice but this card still misses the mark. This is because the grandeur is lacking. A flip card wants to be a bit more exciting than this, it wants to be the big event and not a supporting act opening things up. Flipping this is too much effort for the excitement it brings. Delver of Secrets is more egregious in a lot of ways but the top of deck lottery does at least add some excitement to the situation that this fails to do. Caution - when fixing bad cards one may find more problems than are immediately apparent! This is a neat enough card that might have been a failure as a card design but was a great success in being a learning experience. It isn't a problematic card, it just isn't an exciting or great one. I'll leave it in the cube while there is space but it doesn't have long term prospects.
Stealth Elf // Murmuring Woods
Design 7
Balance 4
I made this mostly to troll one of my playgroup who takes real issue with me placing any nonland, specifically creature mana source like a Llanowar Elf, with my lands. I get it but old habits die hard and so it still happens. Turns out this troll card is one of the cooler cards. Indeed, it is also one of the more powerful and rather needs dialling back. A tap cost added to the front flip and a mana to the return flip should get it inline power wise. As printed this card was just tedious in combat being able to fog an attacker and dodge removal and generally be a real pain all on top of being pretty decent acceleration. It is basically super Sakura Tribe Elder. The design idea was that you would flip it over once early to have it be mana then back late to be some chump body for something. In reality it was cost a little too efficiently and spent all day long flipping back and forth! Despite being quite a low key support card there is something about this that carries it as far as deserving on of the few slots I want to have for dual faced cards. I think it feels safe and homely and elvish which is perhaps enough.
Daphne // The Laurel
Design 2
Balance 5
A fail similar to that of the Fox. The mana source is not quite so tedious in use as the Fox's, and the Laurel offers rather more power. That being said, you have even less agency over flipping Daphne and that is a big part of the narrative enjoyment of the transform cards. It is well known that most cards in magic where you give a choice to the opponent are sucky and I had managed to do that here without even noticing! Regardless, this is a low impact card that isn't exciting, isn't really doing anything much of much or directly, and just gums up a game in an annoying kind of way. This is an example of a card I went full top down on and in doing so missed creating a card with mechanical cohesion or relevance. I have no real notion of how to fix this, only that doing so would involve significantly different looking end result so much so that it probably couldn't be considered the same card. It is funny that a card that isn't that problematic in a power sense from any perspective could be such an impressive fail from a design perspective.
Orpheus // Apollo's Lyre
Design 5
Balance 2
Despite the low ratings I have bestowed upon this one I think it might wind up lasting if I rebalance it properly. It is simply rather over tuned in addition to being quite tedious to play against! All sorts of unkillable on the dork end with hard to interact with tedium that really messes with your shit on the back end. Orpheus would come down and control the early game to some extent and when you were beyond just needing some sticky stats you can upgrade into the powerful board control tool that is the Lyre. This was fully top down design, I had no notion of what I wanted the card to do mechanically and the result is something that really dominates other creature strategies. I think I am effectively going to hit every aspect of this card with a nerf and that should result in somewhat interesting little tool for green to use. It reminds me a bit of Bow of Nylea, a bit of a mess of a card but surprisingly useful in a wide array of novel green builds. To fix this I will make the discard to bounce ability sorcery only, remove the stun on the tap, and add a mana to the goad/provoke mode. It might still be tedious when properly balanced but I am holding out hope that it will do more good than harm.
Overly Curious Physician // Queen of the Dead
Design 8
Balance 7
This had been a huge success somewhat across the board. Design wise it is just a cobbled together array of mechanisms and flavours that are well worn paths. I didn't feel this card was super original nor really much my work. At best I packaged this. Regardless of how it came into being it is one of the more enjoyed, played, and explored flip cards. It also feels most like a real magic card, likely in part because I went fairly ham on the text here and used quite a lot more than normal! The card works in a lot of places being a somewhat innocuous low end support card that offers decent late game payoff. I was quite pleased to have found a reasonable way to sneak the monarch mechanic into the format without it being too present or problematic. I may well increase the dork count needed to flip from five to six if needed. Presently it seems fine but I do have a self mill synergy package coming to black in the fifth print run and this is set to get a whole lot better with that. Self mill is actually mostly just a risk in the homemade cube for most slower decks and this has absolutely caused a loss from the self mill already! With that set to change I can easily see a presently balanced card shooting to being unreasonable.
Lifeless Orb // Despair
Design 3
Balance 2
Much as I still find this card interesting and cute, with the benefit of hindsight it is quite easy to see how it is pointless and unplayable. I am not even sure how exciting this would be in some kind of Death's Shadow synergy deck. Still probably pretty bad and there is nothing in the homemade cube to benefit from having a low life total! I have tried a few times to design stax style cards but they always come out unplayable. Being an older player the various low econ resource denial decks somewhat feel like one of the fundamental strategies in the game. It was a great choice to phase out cards like Armageddon, Balance, (Small)Pox, Wildfire, Smokestack, Braids, etc etc. They are rarely fun to play against. If you make them reasonable then they lack the required power to be playable and if not then you have just made a bad card that players will not appreciate. This pretty neatly falls into the bad card camp and I am fairly sure there is no cure where it stays cute and innocuous but somehow becomes playable. It could perhaps be made a constructed card but things like this are rarely for limited play.
Xenagos // Temple there of
Design 6
Balance 6
I loved the idea of gods becoming a land when slain and slowly returning to power. Very Sauron. A perfect flavour and mechanic win from wizards that I wanted to steal and have a play about with myself. These cards came out as I was moving from real magic to my homemade stuff and for those cards and mechanics I became a lot less fussy about finding open design space and would essentially just do my own cover versions of cards I liked or found interesting. This is one such card. I like it, it is fun and plays reasonably well but it is a little out of balance. Nothing here is original but it does work quite neatly as a very real feeling card. The front end hits a little hard and the back end is perhaps a little slow. I am working on a way to take a small amount of power out of the card and also smooth that power return out over time a little more. As yes the game ends before it Xenegos transforms to the temple by a margin and he has not yet flipped back to life from the temple mode. Certainly not something I want to see often but more than never is desired from the final iteration.
Firestarter Flint // Keith, Twister Firestarter
Design 7
Balance 4
The Origins flipwalkers are some of the most beloved cards in our playgroup. I would have gone pretty ham making these, likely a full cycle, had I trusted myself to get them right. I trod pretty carefully with this one, not straying too far from the beaten path! If you examine this closely it is quite akin to Jace, Vryn's Prodigy. I have even toyed with making it a 0/2 rather than a 1/1 so as to reign in the ease of flipping a bit. Mechanically I think this would be better but it just felt a lot less red. Regardless, this card is pushed. It is a bit vulnerable, a bit slow, and a bit conditional, all of which help keep the card slightly in check. And make no mistake, this is a lot of card. Flashing back cards is a lot more powerful in red than other colours as red has burn! Flipping this can also be quite a powerful swing, extremely so early, akin to the likes of Arc Trail. If you drop this on turn two, follow it with some Shock type card, flash that back flipping him then immediately using the -3 you have spread about 6 damage over upto 3 targets and only cost yourself 2 mana in the process. So far this has not been a problem as it can be seen coming and thus somewhat easily played around. If it does start to cause problems I might tinker with the loyalties, give a bit more + to the rummage and either add cost to the Shock or remove starting loyalty so that it can't happen all right away. This latter suggestion seems most wise, 2 is prently for something you can flip so quickly on the back of high tempo plays. I don't like walkers that offer minimal choice when you play them and so I initially avoided this. The cheaper flip cards are a little harder to get sufficient excitement and potential for power all packed in fairly but this little Prodigy tribute didn't disappoint. There is a trend here in the cards I copied and emulated more from Wizards did rather better than those which I branched out and explored my own ideas.
Horn of War // Mars
Design 7
Balance 4
A bit over tuned, although comically mostly so on the front end. This is just far too good of a mana rock, you get to use it while you need it then return it to hand for value and have a relevant threat on the back of it. The Horn needs to come in tapped and perhaps even pay life to obtain red mana. Indeed, perhaps it would be a fairer card if it did something other than producing mana. The returning it should also cost more and given that this is not a picture of a horn one blows I should probably change the mechanism by which it is being returned! I like Mars himself, the card is a flavour win overall and Mars adds to this with good mechanical flavour. This is a good mana rock in any setting and the homemade cube turned out to be a format where mana ramp is really potent.
Ferocity in the Forest // Reclaimed by Nature
Design 5
Balance 5
I tried to make a cycle of battles so as to understand them better. Fundamentally the mechanic is flawed. It is so hard to get the back end where you want it to be without breaking it in some way. The in game window for a battle being worth trying to flip is fleeting to say the least. The battle mostly ends up as all front end and becomes somewhat pointless. This green offering is my most normal of the five and it is the best and most played too, which is still not all that often. The front end is just quite good, it is in some ways a super Nissa as it ramps as well. Because the front end is so reasonable the battle should probably be 6 and not 5 to flip. Obviously with that fleeting window I spoke of the difference between 5 and 6 has yet to make itself known! If I am keeping battles I am fine with this one but battles are a bit sucky and silly. It is a lot of extra rules and phaff for negligible gain.
The Hordes of Balduvia // Spoils of War
Design 4
Balance 6
Mostly I made this as a joke. A tribute to one of my first obvious big mistakes with this whole project. I had a saga using Balduvian Horde art that made three asymmetrical token creatures with different keywords, each of which also came with a different noncreature artifact token! It was such a mess of tokens. I even made tokens for it to help solve it but it was still a logistical nightmare! Shame as the card was really enjoyable to play with and felt great. The front side of this is a little fixed, generally producing 3 tokens of the same flavour and no non creatures coming with them. Significantly reduced noise! The backside is a mess and intentionally so as it is almost never getting flipped. It is just so rarely worth the damage outlay. This card, with all its "fixing" just becomes boring. It might as well be a five mana sorcery than makes three 2/2 haste dorks and that would be a good 95% the same. This is something I have found again and again in magic - there is a card I really like that has some design flaws, however once you iron out the flaws you so often lose whatever it was about the card that was so fun and magical.
Battle at the Wall // Treasures of the Keep
Design 6
Balance 8
Simple flavour for a simple card. I like cheap card quality that can become card draw. I love a nod to the orgasmic textbox of "draw 3 cards". This sits well in most shells and plays fine. The quirky experiment on how this may be attacked proved fairly fruitless. It is some flavour but it doesn't meaningfully change the card that much, adding another defense counter or two probably just a cleaner way to go about things, if not quite as clever feeling. I tried to push out the boat and mostly just wasted mental energy and ink. Despite that this card is perfectly fine. Broadly playable and well balanced with an appropriate flavour. One pitfall is being two mana sorcery speed card quality in a format where consistency is not that big of a deal and over drawing can be! This is a card that would likely do better in other formats than it does here.
Besiege the Castle // Castle
Design 3
Balance 5
Much like the blue offering this is a small support card that is more nod and nostalgia than it is pertinent mechanics. Mostly this is Gather the Townsfolk. It is a lot of words and silliness just for a flavourful Gather the Townsfolk. Much like the blue offering, the attempted flavour of the absorb isn't interesting so much as it is tedious. Once you take the castle it is hardly exciting either. The flip side is a flavourful one but mechanically it is off, it is not what the deck that wants Gather the Townsfolk wants. It isn't so much the dull back end that is the problem here though, it is the lack of general playability. Only a white based aggro deck wants this and that makes it narrow on top of low powered and excessive.
Hold the Door // Hodor
Design 5?
Balance 1
Unlike the last two attempts at making a different battle this one really pushes the boat out. The notion of a battle that will complete itself if left unchecked eventually but at some cost is appealing. It is indeed quite interesting conceptually but an absolute chore to balance. There are just so many antagonistic moving parts in a card of this ilk. If you roll this out and ignore it you probably die to your own card. Roll this out and flip it immediately and you are doing very well thank you very much. That is not the range you are looking for ideally! I should perhaps have gone for something a little calmer like a point of life less or mill per ticking down counter. I might have another crack at a card like this but the lessons have been learned. This card was woefully underpowered and way too risky while still managing to be dangerous. While it was mostly a failure of a card it did seem to grab peoples interest.
Soratami Divination // Lake
Design 7
Balance 8
Lastly I did a cycle of MDFC lands with card advantage front sides. It seems like one of the purest forms of reducing a screw component in magic. The perfect antidote to screw and flood with the least capacity to be dead. I had been very impressed with the effect my one mana basic land cycling cards had on the format and wanted to push things a little further. The issue with card advantage on a land cycler is that both halves are bad tempo. You either have a land that cost a mana to get or an inherently tempo negative use of mana. I much preferred the chumpy low powered signpost dorks and cheap situational spells as things to have on the land cyclers, they felt right. The card advantage stuff not so much. Having lands that come in untapped at one end creates a much purer pairing. Draw cards or make mana at just ever so slightly sub par way! And these cards do play great, they get loads of play and are rarely anything other than healthy. They are however very marginal. They are low impact cards that are easily replaced, often with cards you don't even need to have picked or be in your pool! While presently I am happy with their inclusion, if I manage to make enough exciting and good cards I might really struggle to argue a case for taking up room with this cycle. In many ways this is the perfect magic card, and in the other ways it is a bit of a waste of card.
Ancestral Harmony // Hills
Red gets the punchier Harmonize level of card draw but it comes with the typical red time limit clause and never actually gets the cards to hand. Seems on point for flavour and power level. The only qualm here remains the cycle wide one of these cards being rather low impact.
Design 7
Balance 8
Necroboost // Bog
Design 6
Balance 6
This one is a little dodgy being as it scales at your command! The power of the card was also determined by how much pressure the opponent was putting on your life total. Suffice it to say this has been a bad swamp in a lot of games and outright unreasonably dominated some others. My gut reaction was to just up the cost to XBBB. In reality it might just be best to lock it into an X mana for X-1 cards and life loss. Anywhere in the 4-6 mana range would be fine for that. Could probably even look at 3 for 2 at instant or 3 for 3 if pushing it. Going with an X on this one was asking for a lot to line up. Especially when you look at how simple this line of cards is trying to be. Along the right lines but running before we can walk in the design process here.
Abundance // Woods
Design 6
Balance 8
This played fine but had a built in feel bad. Obviously my unlucky friend hit three land with this on their first cast. He didn't want the Woods, 'tis why he cast Abundance. Going triple up on the thing you don't need and getting none of the thing you do need is not a recipe for a good time. I will likely drop it to 4 mana finding 2 cards but they can only be creatures. The alternative is a couple of cards at random returned from the graveyard... or perhaps by the opponent! I thought it would be fine drawing lands with this as all the other cards also can just draw lands. Turns out the fact that they are named in the mechanic makes all the difference. The land chance is artificially greater than it would be with normal draw and that brings with it resentment.
The Inquisition // Fields
Design 6
Balance 7
This is clearly the lowest power of the cycle, and I tried to remedy that with instant speed... and failed. We were making clues, the lions share of the cost was already instant speed. That wasn't the issue, the shocking 3X +1 mana per card ratio is the issue. In the super late game where tempo is meaningless this can be pretty game breaking. Before then it is a lot less useful as card advantage. Being able to drip feed the clues over several turns helps with it being useable, but it doesn't do much for the raw power of the card or its tempo. There is also the issue with this card in that it is quite good at just making a lot of artifact tokens, The is is a one shot affinity super support card. With something like Urza or Tolarian Academy this is obviously nutty. There is nothing quite like that in the format but I am sure this card will limit design space or become problematic at some point. The fixes are all things that are sad and depressing. Like, it could go find X plains from the library, or it could cost XWW at sorcery and just make 1/1 Soldier tokens! That is after all how white sets about getting advantage much of the time. Basically X spells are just a little harder than normal cards to design, and the same is true of MDFCs, and they manage to be a multiplicative effect!
