Card Design Guide

In case you didn't know, there's more than one way to play Magic. Constructed tournament formats exist, such as Standard, Modern, Block Constructed, Legacy and Vintage. Casual constructed adds Commander, Singleton, Two-Headed Giant, Emperor, Planeschase, Archenemy and more. Limited formats include Draft, Sealed and Cube, among others. And, of course, you can always just build a deck with whatever you have and play against your friends, which is the best of all.

But when Wizards of the Coast designs new cards, they take all of these formats and playing options into account. And if you open a pack of cards, you are going to see cards designed for each of them. We're going to focus on two player dueling today, so watch and I'll demonstrate.

Do I like what this card does? Yes.
Do I like what it costs? Umm, sometimes.

Flesh to Dust is designed for Limited. Most of your commons are, especially the expensive ones. If you've only got 3 or 6 packs of cards to build a deck from, a non-conditional kill spell that costs 5 mana is worth much more than if you've got an entire format worth of cards to pick and choose to build from. Many better, cheaper and more efficient answers exist than Flesh to Dust, but if you're playing Sealed at a pre-release or drafting M15, this is a dependable card you'll likely slip into your black decks every time.

Do I like what this card does? No.
Because it's always in my opponent's deck and not mine.

Doom Blade is designed for Constructed. Yes, it's a good Limited card as well, but because it's an uncommon, you'll see it much less often then Flesh to Dust and you can't depend on it being available. But rarity isn't restricted in Constructed formats, so you can play just as many Doom Blades as you can Flesh to Dusts, and you should play more Doom Blades.

My job is to make your opponent hate you. A lot.

Now Hushwing Gryff is also a constructed card, but with a different purpose. Almost every black deck considers running Doom Blade or some thing similar, but this is not meant to be played in every possible deck. Hushwing Gryff is what's known as a "hate" card. It has very little purpose in Limited, but you would play it in Constructed if you knew that your opponent had lots of creatures with enter the battlefield effects. Formats like Modern and Legacy, with massive amounts of possible cards to choose from, use these types of "hate" cards to hose your opponent's creatures or disrupt their combos.

Learning to see what type of role the cards you have are going to fill is a huge step in becoming a better Magic player. I'll keep talking about these as I go into more detail on the specific formats, but it's good to recognize which cards you want to put into your Constructed decks, and which were meant for multiplayer formats, and which really only serve a purpose in drafts.

Guys, why aren't you playing with me? Guys?

And lastly, Bountiful Harvest is an example of the final card type I'm going to talk about today, which are "bad" cards. Now, sure, if you play this card on turn ten with eight lands in play, you'll gain a large amount of life. But there are so many other things that you should be doing with your mana, like things that will actually win you the game. This card does nothing but stall out the end of the game without giving you any actual advantage with strengthening your creatures or your position on the battlefield. This looks harmless, but in reality it's a terrible, horrible card that you should never play with. You have better things to do.

Wizards develops these cards as a way to separate skilled from unskilled players, and give an advantage to those who realize that certain cards are a waste of your time. The more you play, the more you'll see other "bad" cards and realize that if you can avoid putting them in your decks, your game will improve immensely, no matter the format.