I spent a little over 2 hours copying this from Gleemax and reformatting it in notepad. All of the text here was either composed by tyranno6 or Imidazoline, all I did was format, change a few board-specific references and add a new contest example. Massive shoutout to both ty and Imi for putting together this excellent guide...

but an even more MASSIVE shoutout to Ogre staying up very late (5am!!!) to help me format this and point out my stupid mistakes! (seriously, I missed an entire section of the primer in my first pass)

- Ko

Additional note from Ogre: The original article included several additional reading sources, which unfortunately appear to have been lost over the years, returning a 404 error. If you by some fluke happen to have any versions of the following posts, please contact me:

● zammm, "zammm's Card Format, Wording, and General Syntaxery Guide"
● tyranno6, "The Colour Wheel"
● Mistform Dragon, "Costing"

Let's try to make a card in the You Make the Alphabetical Card! game thread (as described in ‘Games’ above). In this game, I have to post a card of the same colour as the one before it, but its name must start with the next letter in the alphabet.

► In this case we're making a white card that starts with 'C'. The great thing about game threads is that they're so casual - it's a great place for us to try out a card and do pretty much whatever we feel like within these constraints.

► For our first card, let's choose a pretty common 'C' word for white, like 'Celestial'. When you're starting with a name, the best thing to go for is a 'top-down' design (see Additional Reading). Try to get a concept worked out, and iron down features from there.

► Let's go with 'Celestial Champion'. From our card name, we can see it's probably going to be a creature, maybe a Knight of some sort. It doesn't seem to be a normal knight though - possibly something that's divine, or deals with magic in some way. Maybe a Spirit Knight?

► Celestial Champion is a 'Creature - Spirit Knight'. What would a Spirit Knight do? The most classic knights in Magic are 2/2 first strikers for ; that's a good baseline if we're not sure where to start:

Celestial Champion |
Creature - Spirit Knight
First Strike
…
2/2

► But how to work in the Spirit side of the ability? Kamigawa established the theme of 'Spiritcraft': abilities that triggered off Spirits and Arcane spells being played. Spiritcraft seems like a good idea - remember we wanted this creature to deal with magic somehow?

Celestial Champion |
Creature - Spirit Knight
First Strike
Spiritcraft - Whenever you play a Spirit or Arcane spell...
2/2

► But what sort of abilities would a Spirit Knight grant? One of white's longest-lasting spirits, Angelic Page, grants attacking or blocking creatures +1/+1. It seems relevant that a Knight would grant a combat ability, so that's good. What else does white do in combat? It has 'ranged' abilities, which let it deal damage to attackers or blockers, and it also outright destroys attacking or blocking creatures. Since we're talking about a champion of armed combat, a ranged ability would fit well, I think. Since we're limiting the ability to be centered around combat, it's only going to trigger from instant spells and flash creatures - so we can make it a little powerful, if we want.

Celestial Champion |
Creature - Spirit Knight
First Strike
Spiritcraft - Whenever you play a Spirit or Arcane spell, Celestial Champion deals 2 damage to target attacking or blocking creature.
2/2

► Now it's pretty much ready for posting! Maybe we could add flavour text, if we're feeling particularly imaginative:

Celestial Champion |
Creature - Spirit Knight
First Strike
Spiritcraft - Whenever you play a Spirit or Arcane spell, Celestial Champion deals 2 damage to target attacking or blocking creature.
His ghostly steed gallops across the starry heavens as he searches for anyone who dares to challenge his worth in battle.
2/2

And we're done!

Now let's make a card for a contest; why not my own contest, YMtC Idol? The Audition criteria for YMtC Idol 5 was "Create a card that changes the costs of spells in some way." When we start with a mechanical focus for our card, we usually follow the same path - brainstorm all the possible ways you could fulfill that task, and choose the one you think you like the most. (Or, if you're in a cynical mood, choose the one which the judges of the contest will like the most.)

► There are two basic ways to change costs - increasing opponents and reducing your own. We could flip it around, and reduce opponent's spells and increase ours. We can also impose non-mana costs like discarding cards and sacrificing creatures, or we can flat out change the cost of a card directly to what we want it to be. We could also go with a mechanic which needs extra mana to work. If you're not sure which to pick, go deeper into this process - don't just look at the broad categories of changing costs, but get an example of each and see which you like best.

► I'm going to go with reducing the mana cost of opponents' spells. Now we want to determine exactly what this is going to do. I normally proceed by working out what colour could get this effect. What sort of philosophy would offer to reduce the cost of other's spells? It seems kinda stupid to help your opponent - green might do it, but green would help everyone at once. Black would also offer the opponent a discount on his or her spells.... for a price.

► Let's try the black view: I'll make your spells cheaper, but you will pay for it. What sort of punishments can we attach to that? Remember if we're reducing the cost of opponents spells they will always have the option of not playing the spell, so we can't make the drawback too heavy. Since it's black, we have a whole range of drawbacks - sacrificing creatures, discarding cards, life payments: pretty much whatever we want.

► I like the life total thing, it's classic black. Okay, so we want some sort of spell or permanent which makes stuff cheaper, but costs life. And we want it to affect opponents. Remember that opponents don't have to play stuff! I can see three options avaliable (you might see more!):

A - We make it an instant which makes the next spell an opponent plays this turn cheaper. If the opponent doesn't want to play the spell, then they've wasted a turn.
B - We make it a spell which makes the next spell an opponent plays this turn cheaper - but at end of turn, if they didn't play anything, we impose a penalty anyway.
C - We make it a permanent which everyone is able to use in some way - maybe just the first player, or maybe everyone gets to use it once, or maybe it's always in effect.

► I like the 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' approach of B, so let's go with that. What sort of effects do we choose from? In monoblack, we can offer your opponent a cheaper spell for a certain amount of life. If he doesn't play a spell, he loses a bit less life in the end. Or we could go back to sacrificing creatures or something instead - maybe force a mage to sacrifice a creature to play his next spell, and if he can't handle that act of evil, we make him lose life? We could dip into other colours, too: black-white gives us the flavour of the Orzhov, who will give a favour but then ask for it back tenfold later. An Orzhov cleric could grant power in the form of cheaper spells for a turn - and then requires payment in blood for any foolish enough to squander that favour. Blue would probably mean we get an benefit at end of turn if they don't pay, and red would probably do the same, but flavoured differently. Green-black wouldn't really work here, I don't think. Let's try the blue-black effect:

[NAME] | Mana Cost
[TYPE]
The next spell an opponent plays this turn costs less and X life more to play. At end of turn, if that player didn't play a spell, draw X cards.

► We need to choose numbers for these effects, too. I'm partial to smaller, more elegant effects, but a lot of posters like to make huge 6 or 7 cc things. Just remember that your cards usefulness is bound to go down a whole lot if you increase its casting cost by a lot, even if you make it more powerful.

[NAME] | Mana Cost
[TYPE]
The next spell an opponent plays this turn costs less and 5 life more to play. At end of turn, if that player didn't play a spell, draw two cards.

►I think this would be fine as an instant - it gives us that flexibility we were talking about with option A before. Then we need to figure out the mana cost - for this effect, since our maximum benefit is either 5 life or two cards, sounds fine.

[NAME] |
Instant
The next spell an opponent plays this turn costs less and 5 life more to play. At end of turn, if that player didn't play a spell, draw two cards.

►And, finally, we need to figure out the flavour. Remember flavour is a very personal thing - what works for different people is going to vary a lot. I think we're pretty clear that this card is some sort of pact or promise, though. We probably can't use the word 'pact' because of the Pact cycle, so let's use the flavour of a contract. What you have the freedom to do in YMtC is to simply make up a race or faction (or even an entire plane!) just to fit your card. We want some sort of blue-black race (of wizards, maybe?) which thrive on malicious - but entirely legal - contracts. Malicious tricksters, maybe like djinni or faeries or something?

Ashwing Contract |
Tribal Instant - Faerie
The next spell an opponent plays this turn costs less and 5 life more to play. At end of turn, if that player didn't play a spell, draw two cards.

►I added 'faerie' as a tribal type just to add flavour - remember tribal has very little effect on a card, so you can feel free to add it if you think it makes sense flavour-wise. Now all we need is flavour text:

Ashwing Contract |
Tribal Instant - Faerie
The next spell an opponent plays this turn costs less and 5 life more to play. At end of turn, if that player didn't play a spell, draw two cards.
An idle childhood wish spoke to a soot-winged faerie may just become a deathly promise.

And we're done!