MTG Cardsmith Community Forums
I Might Have Found A New MtG Card Maker...
So, some of you probably know this, but there’s three main MtG card makers out there: MtgCardsmith, Mtg.Design, and the big one: Magic Set Editor. (Also Artificer, I guess.) But I recently stumbled across an older one that I didn’t know about, and I doubt you did either.
It’s called: mCardstock. Not a very imposing name, true, but it is a good editor. Though it’s harder to learn to use than Cardsmith or Mtg.Design, it has lots of interesting features. Just thought I’d let you guys know it was there. Also, if you do happen to know about it and have any tips on using it, please tell me!
Here’s a link to the website:
http://www.mcardstock.com/home
It’s called: mCardstock. Not a very imposing name, true, but it is a good editor. Though it’s harder to learn to use than Cardsmith or Mtg.Design, it has lots of interesting features. Just thought I’d let you guys know it was there. Also, if you do happen to know about it and have any tips on using it, please tell me!
Here’s a link to the website:
http://www.mcardstock.com/home
Comments
@joemamajoe I'm with RandomFandom on this one. While some contests do ask that entries are specifically made using CS, that's about as far as medium bias tends to be worth bringing, I think. It isn't as though the site's got a forum or whatever for people to vanish into, and the Cardsmith forums can first and foremost be argued to be about the community ideal of creating custom MTG cards, not forcing people to conform into always using the same editors and methods.
For example, MSE is something that people recommend to others here every now and again. I personally use MSE to document the vast majority of my ideas, and then skim off a small number of them to put up on CS for contests and stuff. I get where you're coming from, but it would be foolish to try and gatekeep or force out what might prove to be a handy tool for some of the creators here.
I'll share a bit more advice to anyone reading: If you're not mandated to using MTGCardsmith for a contest or challenge, I would recommend using either MTGDesign or Magic Set Editor. The former has slightly less hassle in setting up, but the latter has a bunch of customizations like purple mana, full art, 4 ability planeswalkers, Planes for Planechase, eta. It's a useful tool.
Official Challenges are always MTGCardsmith Cards exclusively, but we've never limited you from allowing them to be used in your own challenges. We know that we're behind on frames and some features, but the team is actively working on making that better, it's just taking some time and we've appreciated your patience!
Also, I don't believe they are actively working on the site over there. It's not a secure site and it's missing quite a few recent set symbols
In fact, I'll list a long list of things that make the card engine itself abysmal, since there are so many and the mtgcardsmith team needs to step it up:
Keep in mind that barely anything was added since 2017, and that nearly all of these features are fixed on other sites and programs.
The forms are certainly great, but crippled by the card engine itself. If they genuinely expect us to want to participate in challenges, then they need to give us apt tools and not, in all honesty, a terrible, limited and aged card creation program.
XD
Did you know there originally was no forum? If you wanted to have people make cards for a challenge, you would make a "Challenge" card and hope that people would search for it, read the rules on Disqus, enter your challenge and post a link to their card on that challenge card.
Then we made a "Challenges" card, and ALL the links to the various challenges were gathered up and hosted in the Disqus comments with short descriptions and end dates.
And in order for everyone to keep that card in their favorites section, and in order to attract new participants, we made the "Hey Look" card every day, boosted it with favorites so it would stay on the front page, and posted a link to the "Challenges" card
(I've kept these cards in my collection because people asked me not to delete them, but the comments have long ago disappeared!)
Thankfully we didn't have to do that for too long (I made 107 "Hey Look" cards)
just some MTGCS trivia for you!
Current site's coding is like "tangled Christmas strings" for them. (That's what the new CS team calls it.) So they are recreating it. I think card editor update is after that.
Also, I think good balance is not the only factor to pick featured cards. If the site only feature balanced cards, we see same creators' names in the featured section over and over again.
First off, I think the editor itself is fine. I still prefer MSE, but that's primarily for the insane customization options it offers on nearly all fronts. I also think MTG.Design has a bit more of a presentable UI for similar results in terms of the quality of the custom cards.
All that being said, my main draw to MTGCS as a site is the community as a whole. MTGCS, in my opinion, has the most welcoming, invested, and helpful community of any card creation site I'm familiar with, and sites like MTG.Design and this one don't even have forums or dedicated communities that I'm really aware of. That being said, the editor does leave some things to be desired, as others have already pointed out, even on this thread. However, it still is functional and straightforward, and relatively easy to use until your designs start getting particularly wordy and/or ambitious. I can't really complain about it, and I think it hits all the basic points an MTG card design program should hit. Aside from the customization and small tweaking options, which I could more or less do without, the main draw to MSE is that it is first and foremost an MTG set design program as opposed to an MTG card design program. It makes cards, and it makes them well, but it's meant to assemble entire MTG sets of those cards, not produce of a gallery of one-off designs to share with others. MTGCS as a whole site is much better for putting your face out as a fan designer in a community and for showcasing your individual designs, even if its editor and overall set design capabilities aren't as strong, which tied back into my central "MTGCS is a community as much as it is an editor" thesis. I merely use MSE as my primary editor because it best serves my needs as a user, which is to design whole sets. My MTGCS gallery is still full of the one-off designs from the nearly five years I've been here and it a user's MTGCS gallery is as critical a part of MTGCS as the editor itself.
Really, all of this is to say that, in my opinion, MTGCS is a community site, and excels at cultivating a social community of custom cards. Sure places like the Custom Magic discord exist, but they don't truly have a card creator and image gallery feature surrounding their community like MTGCS does. I am hopeful and excited for an editor overhaul, but at the same time there's no pressure or criticism from me to see it happen. MTGCS is already great the way it is, no need to make it worse by rushing out some half-finished editor that lacks key features, has bugs or glitches, or is awkward to use. I trust the MTGCS team has what's best for the site and its users in mind.
Seriously. If there was to be anything done with a site revamp, it would have to be allowing non-premium users to edit cards.
Something Grant did that helped us out when we used to make cards over and over again (pre-editing) was creating the Oracle Text next to the card. You can copy/paste that to the card remake, and this reduces the amount of typing you have to do.
I also have to agree with @Tomigon about the Featured Card System... We've been allowed to give people a way to earn a featured card through the monthly themes, but prior to that the whole process was a complete mystery. The best we've determined is the featured cards are, if nothing else, selected to create discussion and include some people who don't participate in any other way than just strictly making cards. In no way do we believe they were ever meant to be perfect representations of what a Magic card "should" be, and I think I speak for @Tomigon when I say that we hope it stays that way when the new updates are made.
The featured cards were never meant to be the "Best" cards. They're cards made by the community. Cards that make us think. Maybe about balance or creativity.
I'm not sure if you knew, @Potato13, but the site for the longest time was being paid for out of the owner's own pockets.
https://scryfall.com/random?q=is:commander