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Rabrandt, Sage of Etheirys

That artwork by Seiryuuden was commissioned for the express purpose of being on this card, representing my character as a Sage from Final Fantasy XIV. In game, Sage’s a healers that primarily make use of shields to protect allies as the busy themselves mending wounds.

At the time this card was designed, Streets of New Capenna had already been released, and with it came shield counters as a design concept. The analogy was practically one-to-one, so I made that the primary mechanic for the card.

But I was not content to stop there. Since I am the one who would playing it, and exclusive in Commander with my friends, it had to be tailored to my playstyle and interests. And as you might surmise from the many, many custom cards on this blog, one of my favorite playstyles is political control. I love manipulating the board to curry favor with others while I slowly build up my own ways to subvert them and win the game.

Thus I hit upon this design principle. While the shield counters can certainly be used to protect your own creatures, the player is encouraged to use their shield counters to protect other player’s permanents in exchange for favors and card draw. This is one of the rare designs that survived play-testing largely intact, only needing to adjust a few wordings to protect against edgecases.

For example, the draw ability was changed to “one or more” because I did not realize that would trigger when a planeswalker used a – loyalty ability. And to ensure that the player had full autonomy over who could get extra cards, they have to choose to draw before the person who removed counters does. It gives Rabrandt’s owner the opportunity to deny assistance to the person already farthest ahead.

Looking at it now makes me want to dust it off and rebuild the deck. I’m proud of my work on it.