AlexChurchill/MagicCardGenerator

Click on BNF: AlexChurchill/MagicCardGenerator to see completely randomly generated text that could (almost) appear on a MagicTheGathering card.

References Elsewhere

Wow, cooool!! :)  Let the disjointed, overpowered madness continue!

Cool - thanks! :) By comparison, here's a genuine Generated instant that reminded me of this:

As well as the official discussion page, there are a bunch of other threads online discussing the creations of this generator. Those who enjoy reading people's reactions to the zany creations may find some threads here: [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]

In fact, people are playing a crazy game using the Generator on [this thread]. They each hit the Generator for one card and are forced to play it, generating a random colour and P/T if applicable, and having 5 mana of any colour available each pair of turns (from untap to untap) for activated abilities. No libraries or graveyards, and cards "drawn" are in hand but only usable to pay discard costs (all Generated things are considered to be tokens). Predictably, it's come out rather silly. So I rigged up an alternate shell around the generator to create creature P/Ts?, so people can play a similar game here on /TypeFourGenerated. See that page for the ensuing silliness. There are also Type Four games running [here]. --AC

On the tiny Magic forum Ultros hangs out on, there's a card making thread running where the previous round's winner posts a criteria for the card to be made for the next round, and everybody makes something for it.  On the last one he did, he had them get a generated card that they liked, and clean it up.  That post is here: [11]

Implementation

Costs and Mana

Modifying Permanents

Trigger events

Player words

Power and Toughness

Miscellaneous

Colours

Numbers

Stacks

Verb Suffixes

Card Prefixes and Suffixes

Flags

Punctuation

Concepts Not Being Used

To Do

• Black keeps getting "you reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a card" effects.
  
• Flip cards' flipped forms can have kicker costs, which are useless. Although it'd work if the kicker went on the first half.
  
• Cards can have "When ~this~ comes into play, flip ~this~" which is fairly pointless. Or "When you control no permanents, flip ~this~" which is even more pointless.
  
• "When ~this~ leaves play, target player may Sacrifice a permanent. If that player doesn't, distribute the sacrificed permanent's mana cost +3/+3 counters on..."
  
• Similarly, "Sacrifice 3 Myr: each player gains the sacrificed creature's toughness life"
  
• Not so much a bug as an unforeseen interaction. Global Enchantments can flip into Auras. Seed: 1037851922, if you're interested. --CH
  

I don't have too much of a problem with that. I'd treat it like MTG: Copy Enchantment: an enchantment already in play suddenly discovering it needs to enchant something. That came up in [my current game on the CMC forums]. The card-global variable enchanttype means that it can't switch what it enchants. --AC

OK, technically under the rules this doesn't work. But I suggest we play it as if it does work, until I fix it. --AC

• "~this~ deals X damage to two target creatures with both power and toughness not equal to Y, where Y is the number of basic land types among lands you control, where Y is the number of red creature spells played this turn." No seed, sorry.
  
• If you paid the kicker cost, ninjutsu 4
  

• "target with-a-CMC-less-than-3 spell" should be "target spell with-a-CMC-less-than-3"; "from a permanent you control source" should be... what?? Not possible, I guess, and use "from a source you control" instead.
  
• Creatures can have trample twice. And I should do something about the "All Slivers become Slivers", "All basic lands become lands" etc if I can.
  
• Similarly, "any number of target creatures with flying get -3/-0 until end of turn and those creatures get -2/-0 until end of turn"
  
• Guild mechanics can get generated on gold cards with only one of the guild's colours on. For example, transmute (the UB mechanic) can appear on cards that are WU, BR, or suchlike.
  

• Is it a bug that so many cards being generated with so much rules text?  There are few magic cards which have more than (say) three segments of rules text, and those that do tend to effects which are small.  The cards with excessive rules text also are ones which are most likely to be broken from a plausibility standpoint.  --Angoel
  

A wise question. I think my answer is no, it's not a bug, because it's pretty much WorkingAsIntended. The cards are just more fun when they're more complex. However, I agree the eight-ability mammoths are fairly unwieldy, and so I've edited it to make them more unlikely. --AC

Are they 'just more fun'?  Let's take random (how else) example from the generator:

Creature - Sliver (3/2, blue)

U: target Wizard gains All green creatures gain ~this~ comes into play with 2 +1/+1 counters on it

~this~ comes into play with 2 +1/+1 counters on it

Discard a card, T: put a +1/+1 counter on ~this~

~this~ comes into play with 2 +1/+1 counters on it

UU: put a +1/+1 counter on ~this~

Remove a +1/+1 counter from ~this~: any number of target Dragons gain All Slivers become a Slivers until end of turn

T, Pay 2 life, remove 4 +1/+1 counters from ~this~: two target Elves get -X/-0, where X is the number of permanents in play (This effect doesn't end at end of turn)

U, remove 1 +1/+1 counter from ~this~: put 1 1/1 colourless Sliver creature token with trample into play

Remove a +1/+1 counter from ~this~: attach target Equipment to target creature. (Control of that Equipment doesn't change.) until end of turn

All creatures with toughness less than or equal to 2 can't be blocked

Is this any fun to play?  Or are you going to be spending your entire time with the creature thinking 'hang on - what does it do again?'.  And given that you're only going to be using the strongest ability or two, what's the point in the extra ones?  Speaking personally, if I want lots of abilities, I'd prefer them to be spread over a number of cards; it's easier to understand, and feels more creative to combo them that way.  --Angoel

Hopefully when those abilities do come up now, they'll at least be easier to comprehend.

I'm a bit of a halfway point, I think. The cards that just have 1 line of text always strike me a little disappointing - especially when (as in my most recent game with Snapdragon) you get a reprint of an existing card! On the other hand, while the odd leviathian of rules is fun, too many do get very confusing. It's possible that Alex's change will get the right balance now - I think we need more Playtesting! (But I'm on holiday, and hence unlikely to wiki much, from Friday until 3rd Jan). --CH

Reprints of existing cards can be quite fun. For example, it's perfectly possible for the Generator to create MTG: Mind's Eye, MTG: Loxodon Warhammer, MTG: Dimir Infiltrator, MTG: Kokusho, the Evening Star, and any number of other funky cards. But things like MTG: Wind Drake will be an order of magnitude or two more common, of course... which, to be fair, is the way Limited should be. One possibility could be that I further reduce the average number of lines on a card, but make /TypeFourGenerated involve generating-and-playing two cards per turn. --AC

I've never played with them, but from the perspective of clicking refresh and seeing what's interesting, I'd rather see "All lands gain 'All Slivers gain 'whenever....' until end of turn'" than "All elves gain flying". But then, I've never had to really consider the gameplay implications seriously. --Edwin

Tough call. It can get quite confusing - but it can be in a good way. It does make bugs more likely - but I think my stack should help sort that. As a gut feeling, it might work best if there was some way of limiting granted abilities to be one-deep only (so a card with "All lands gain 'huge-long-multiline-ability'" is fair game, but we wouldn't get "All lands gain 'All slivers gain 'whenever an artifact leaves play, target beast gains '...'''"). Not sure how hairy that would be to implement. --CH

• Allow noncreature permanents to have permanentkeywordability options like echo, phasing, cumulative upkeep
  
• Regenerating noncreature permanents; make it easier for creatures to have "regenerate ~this~"
  
• Tricolour cards
  
• Come-into-play choices (a la MTG: Voice of All or MTG: Callous Oppressor).
  
• Affect one creature in more complex multiple ways à la MTG: Spinal Embrace or MTG: Induce Paranoia (although I won't be doing the "if you spent D on this" part)
  
• Number memory à la MTG: Artifact Mutation
  
• Knowing when something is beneficial and when it isn't, to improve things like "if you do" / "don't"
  
• Looking through at how things get done, the only Ravnica-block mechanics (thus far) unrepresented are Dredge and Radiance. Any chance?
  

They've both been considered. Dredge was rejected for power concerns in /TypeFourGenerated and other Limited settings. When you have an infinite library, it's too strong. Radiance is a bit fiddly, especially as it [applies wider than just creatures], and it would have to involve retroactively applying a prefix once the qualifiedtarget was chosen. Plus many effects won't work on multiple creatures ("Attach target Aura to target creature and each other creature that shares a colour with it"?). So it's not accidental that those two don't exist. Radiance is just about possible; Dredge I'd need quite some convincing to put in. --AC

Valid points. Radiance could, presumably, be added without the keyword, but no urgency. Dredge could probably be put back if the MCG was ever used for non-Type 4 purposes again, but I agree that it should sit on the sidelines for now. --CH

• Addition of race-class creature tokens as in Lorwyn - bring in from the /LorwynGenerator
  
• Addition of Hideaway
  
• Addition of general typecycling
  
• Formation of more Block modules like the /LorwynGenerator - pages with overrides for keywords and creature types, to allow generation of cards that appear to come from particular blocks.
  
• In the /LorwynGenerator, prohibit gold cards that aren't in tribe gold pairings
  
• Your suggestion here!
  

Ooh. Yes, that's yet more fallout from me introducing a third "category" of permanent types (lands, creatures/artifacts/enchantments, and now planeswalkers). Now fixed - thanks! --AC

Enchantment generator seems to be broken similarly, and any chance of getting an instant generator? Also, there have been a number of occasions where it seems to have dropped the card entirely...is this just a server load problem?

If what you're seeing is just "(...)", then that means the generation has taken too many steps, usually indicating an infinite loop. I'd guess Alex would quite like seeds for debugging if you see that. --CH

Never mind, I figured that out.  The problem was I was issuing "!gen" in IRC and sometimes absolutely no output, not even (...), was being relayed, but it turns out that was just a bug I had introduced that broke the response-dividing in case of a card that went beyond 400 characters.  It's no longer a problem.