On Monday, Wizards of the Coast announced the You Make the Card 4 program for Magic: the Gathering. Obviously this isn’t the first time they’ve done it, but they have changed things a bit to make the entire process more interesting. Major Spoilers will tell you after the jump.

Wizards made the announcement and you can take a full look at the article and find the initial poll in that link, but we have some things to discuss first, starting with the differences.

THE PITCH

Thanks to the internet, social media, and websites like Major Spoilers, the world has become a much more interconnected place where ideas and discussion can occur through people across the globe, even within our weird niche activities. For the three previous cards, discussion and arguing was mostly done through the Wizards of the Coast articles and websites, for this one however, Wizards is not only acknowledging the need for talk, but distinctly encouraging it within the bounds of the program. In the announcement article, Ethan Fleischer specifically states that time will be allowed between polls and suggestions for the Magic community to argue and create what they want to see out of the card. The first poll closes on Friday, March 15 at 9 a.m. PST and the poll here is for the type of card. Now, we here at Major Spoilers, specifically myself and Rodrigo, are going to join in the fun and present our arguments on each step of the process starting today.

OUR ARGUMENTS

Rodrigo

Creature. 100%. Of the available card types it’s the one with the most potential, since creatures have the most stats. Instants and sorceries have color, cost and effect; Artifacts have cost, subtype and abilities; lands only have abilities; but creatures have cost, color, effect, subtypes (often more than one), power and toughness. Also their involvement in combat allows for more specific abilities: attacking and blocking triggers, for instance. So for my money I’d rather design a creature.

Rob

My vote for card type went to Land. Part of why I chose this is because my first choice was not allowed, Planeswalker, and so I settled for the second best. But why is Land the second best then? The previous three cards made by the community as a whole were a Creature, an Artifact, and an Instant, in that order. This leaves us with two options in the poll for something new, Enchantment or Land. In Magic’s distant past, Lands were once an item of strange and crazy happenings, powerful effects that can’t be countered, and just oddities that are hard to deal with. That time has long passed and for awhile lands rarely did much more than just make mana. In recent years we have seen an upswing in the types of abilities lands can have, with at least one being directly related to a few different tournament staple archetypes, and that is what I want to create. I want to bring something wholly new and interesting to the game of Magic and feel Land is the best place to do it. That said, I would not be upset to see Enchantment make the cut either, because all sorts of crazy things can happen there.

Now that you’ve heard our arguments, we’d both like to hear yours and have you head over to the polls and cast your vote. And we will be back with more as we get the information.