Making of Magic, Swords, and Suns
Growing up, I was fascinated by the intricate rules and captivating artwork of popular trading card games like Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pokémon, and Magic the Gathering. I loved how many cards there were to choose from and how you could build your own unique decks to use against your friends. I remember spending hours organizing my card collections into binders and trying to build unstoppable decks.
Unlike most other games, collectible/trading card games don’t begin when you sit down to play. They are more personal and require preparation. You need to collect cards, decide on strategies, build a deck based on those strategies, test your deck against your friends, then start the process all over again! It might sound silly, but these games are kind of like sports. The amount of work you put in before the game determines how well you perform on the field. As I learned from play testing with my friends, different people have very different strategies and approaches.
While I love all the games that inspired me, none of them offered the exact kind of gameplay I was looking for. I loved when matches lasted longer than 30 minutes and the gameplay felt like a back and forth exchange between two players instead of a one-sided beat down. I wasn’t a fan of doing a lot of math or grabbing a notebook to keep track of points. And, while I loved to collect new cards, I found it hard to keep up with games that changed their core mechanics every few years and released increasingly complex cards in new sets, making my older decks obsolete.
When I was 12 years old, I decided that it would be fun to create my own card game. One that added my own personal spin to the elements I loved from other collectible/trading card games and would be fun to play for everyone in my eclectic group of friends. Magic, Swords, and Suns started with a simple idea and a pack of index cards. I introduced the game to a few of my close friends, who played with me after school and over breaks to refine the rules and think of fun, new card ideas.
By the middle of high school, my idea had transformed into a full-fledged game, school project, and fun tradition for me and my friends. However, at this point, the cards were still just blocks of text and ultra simplistic images printed on index cards. When I went to college, I put Magic, Swords, and Suns on the back burner for a few years.
Then, in 2011, I discovered The Game Crafter (an independent game-printing company and online marketplace) and Paint.NET (a free and easy-to-use graphic design software program). I realized that I could use these services to create a more professional version of Magic, Swords, and Suns and try to make my childhood dream of creating my own collectible card game into a reality.
Over the course of eight years, I spent hundreds of hours deciding which cards to include in the official version, figuring out how to balance the two card sets, designing professional images, and working out issues in the rules by play testing the game over and over again. In the end, the finalized game surpassed my wildest expectations.
I am so proud of what I managed to accomplish since my original concept back in middle school and I am incredibly thankful to all the people that helped me improve the game along the way. It’s been a long and rewarding journey, which makes me even more excited to finally share Magic, Swords, and Suns with all of you. And, of course, I can’t wait to create more card sets in the future!
Thanks again for checking out Magic, Swords, and Suns! I hope the game brings as much joy to you and your friends as it has brought me over the years.