Blog

Rabrandt, Prodigal Detective

I had spent years, starting in September 2021, and ending with this submission in October 2023, cooking up the concept of an Enigma “Sparker” card, a legendary creature that transforms into a Planeswalker. Because he’s a detective in lore, I knew I wanted him to interact with the Investigate mechanic in some fashion, and I wanted to lean into my signature strategy of incentivizing other players to kill each other for me.

I don’t have all of the different versions of the card saved in my files, but I do have the earliest.

Back then, I was still struggling to remember that Planeswalkers could have static abilities, and still stuck in this paradigm that all their abilities had to be loyalty abilities, even though it had been some time since War of the Spark. Even worse, since it only applies until the end of turn, it’s a huge downgrade compared to the creature version, which isn’t ideal since players should want to transform the card.

Next, the ultimate needed to be adjusted. The original idea was that Enigma was using clues to stop enemy plans from reaching fruition, but honestly I could never get this ability to a place I was happy with. That’s when I remembered the Tezzeret from War of the Spark, which dealt damage based on the amount of artifacts his controller had in player, and created a spin on that ability. It would be global, but focused on token artifacts to provide synergy with all the clues players should be generating through combat.

The last major change change was to the way young Rabrandt flips into Enigma. The reason Sparkers normally get exiled, then entered the battlefield transformed, is because there loyalty is an effect the allows them to enter with that base loyalty. By the rules of the game, if they just flipped over like werewolves do, they would have zero loyalty counters on them and then die via state-based actions. With that in mind, I hit upon a stroke of genius by turning “discovery counters” into loyalty counters. Not only does this eliminate the need for a starting loyalty and let Enigma just flip over, but it also means that players can hold onto him and build up loyalty before making him transform.

With some adjustments to the +1 ability, to make it more broadly useful, the design was finalize, but without any art to go with it. It stood that way for about half a year, until I contacted by friend Deriaz to see if he was willing to give it a shot. He’s the person I tend to turn to when I want art that looks like it belongs on a Magic card, and this was no different. Lucky for me, he was more than willing to take it on.

The first piece depicts a young Enigma, still a mere student, getting embroiled in a murder investigation by pure happenstance.

Not long after he enrolled as a student of the Theorum Magistrum, learning to refine his natural psionic abilities, the young wizard Rabrandt stumbled onto a terrible tragedy. Though the adults around him were quick in their attempts to allay his concerns, dismissing the death as a mere accident, something was amiss with their explanation.

It was true that a simple accident would explain the surface details, but his powers allowed him a deeper understanding. The brain activity of the recently deceased wasn’t reading as the kind of shock or surprise that might accompany such unfortunate circumstances. There was dread and a sense of creeping inevitability.

Rabrandt may have been a neophyte, nowhere near skilled or studied enough to earn his Master’s Mark, but he wasn’t going to let them stop him.

He thought silently, “I can do this. It’s just like a puzzle. I just need to find all the pieces and put them in place.”

It was the day a detective was born.

And the second piece was him as an adult. I worked closely with Deriaz to achieve a concept that worked well artistically. He gave a number of excellent pitches that would have worked in their own way, but I ultimately chose this composition inspired by Tommy Arnold’s Syncopate. (Deriaz had no way of knowing this ahead of time, but this particular art happened to be a personal favorite of mine in terms of official MTG art.)

It also best fit the concept, since Enigma is a character who often likes to fight by disrupting the enemy and fooling them with tricks and illusions. The final piece captures that sense by distorting the angles and perspective of the viewer, making them question their own perspective.

As a aside, with my blessing Deriaz sells prints of this art on his Inprint if you’re interested in both having Enigma on your wall and supporting an excellent artist.

Once his first case was solved, with the murderer sent to the Rehabilitation Center, the sense of victory and satisfaction triggered something in the young mage. He was hurled into the great expanse and transported to a completely different world, separate from his own. Having grown up on the stories of Planeswalkers and their influence on the multiverse at large, Rabrandt quickly deduced what this meant for him.

He threw himself into his studies and training, both as a mage and a detective, rising through the ranks of the Magistrum until he had finally earned the Master’s Mark, a tattoo that graduates of the Magistrum receive upon proving mastery in their chosen field.

No one is sure when people started referring to the young prodigy as “Enigma”, but in recognition of his abilities the name began to stick, and Rabrandt embraced it as the alias under which he would take cases and explore other worlds.

Novice no longer, this master detective is ready to explore the multiverse. And when he fights, his foes can rarely trust their own eyes and ears.

And here’s what the final product looks like without the distortion effect.

This is one of my best cards designs in my humble opinion. I’ve played it more than a few times, and I liked it enough that I went ahead and proxied a deck for it in paper. To add Deriaz’s incredible art on top of it only sweetened the deal all the more.

I couldn’t be happier to preserve it here, both the card and the logic behind it’s final iteration.