Cliques of Nylin: Lessons Learned

Written by StasisBot

I joined the Custom Magic community in July 2020 and the Discord server only a couple of weeks later. Over the next couple of months, I started working on multiple projects that–in all honesty–didn’t mean much to me. Reflecting back upon it, I think I was trying to ‘speedrun’ my enfranchisement in the community. I made my first set of commons just to say that I had. I applied for and received my first project channel just to prove to myself that I could. I ran my first draft just to show off the project in question. One by one, though, I dropped these projects because they were only valuable as a way to help me check off all of these Custom Magic achievements.

Now, I’d like to stress that starting projects for reasons such as these has its uses; after all, everyone needs to start somewhere, and not everyone starts out with a project idea they’ve been dying to make for ages. Sometimes, these ideas are discovered in the process of learning more about the hobby (as Cliques of Nylin was!). My advice, and this article’s first lesson learned, is to...

1: Be honest with yourself about your motivation

What frustrated me so much about the previous projects I had started was that I held them to the same standard as the most successful custom sets out there, but I had little interest in getting them there. My motivation was solely to become a better designer, not to make a great set.

Cliques of Nylin was the first project that I took seriously. I knew what my ludonarrative goal was from the start; I wanted to immerse players in the decision-making world of politics through the medium of this card game. I had no idea how to achieve that goal yet, but referring back to it helped keep the core concepts intact through countless changes. For example, the project started off with a traditional fantasy aesthetic, but has since undergone a radical shift towards something more contemporary/futuristic. 

What helped me through this and many more changes wasn’t my experience as a designer (or lack thereof), but my ability to refer back to my original motivation. Through trial and error, I matched mechanics that play well with ones that met my ludonarrative goal. As long as you’re honest about your motivation, the foundations for your project will be stable.

2: Don't use collaboration as a crutch

With that being said, a foundation doesn’t accomplish much by itself; you need to know how to build upon it correctly, and I didn’t. I had a loose set of mechanics and a couple of commons and uncommons in each color. Luckily, around this point in the project, IgnitedxSoul (known for their work on the Rakoa and Hyperpop projects) reached out to me to see if I was looking for a collaborator. I was a completely unknown and inexperienced designer at the time, and Ignited was held in high esteem by most enfranchised designers. Needless to say, I was thrilled to collaborate!

We used the next couple of weeks to establish expectations of each other, build up a set skeleton, and prepare for an upcoming playtesting event. Having a playtesting buddy and an extra pair of eyes on cards was a huge boon for our productivity–that is, until Ignited had to leave the Custom Magic community for personal reasons.

This left a gaping hole in the project that I was eager (perhaps overeager) to fill as quickly as I could. Over the next several months, I collaborated with two other people, each ending similarly. While my opinion on collaboration was soured a bit by this experience, it might’ve been a blessing in disguise. Collaboration can be a catalyst for a project when done correctly, but I jumped into collaborative relationships prematurely because of my own insecurities as a designer, not because I’d determined that it would be mutually beneficial. If you’re thinking about collaborating with someone, make sure it comes from a place of mutual benefit, not codependency, and discuss expectations with your collaborator beforehand as Ignited and I did.

3: Playtest early and often

Unfortunately, as a result of the hiccups in collaboration, I didn’t meet the deadline for the playtesting event. “Not too big a deal,” I thought. “How much of a difference can a couple of games make?”

Turns out, a huge one.

After completing all of my commons and around a third of my uncommons in the coming weeks, I decided that it was finally time to get around to playtesting. I made some basic decks, got in touch with a friend, and tested for a couple of hours. Not only did we find some unbalanced designs, but we also uncovered fundamental issues with how the current mechanical layout approached my ludonarrative goal. Specifically, we found that the project’s 2brid mana cards didn’t provide nearly as much help for the centrist-themed five-color decks as we’d hoped.

Individual cards are easy to tune based on playtesting data, and reworking them is inevitable. Entire mechanics, on the other hand, take a lot more time. I’d spent weeks creating designs and finding art for Appoint (the set’s five color mechanic) and 2brid, and now I had to rethink their place in the mechanical suite entirely. This showcases just how important it is to get playtesting data early. Think of how much time I could have saved if this problem was discovered before I designed over 100 cards. Don't wait; make some basic decks from key cards and mechanics and test them before pushing onward too far. You'll thank yourself later.

4: Your goal should never hinder your project

It would take me almost a year to completely remove Appoint (later Elect) from the mechanical suite, but the problems with its binary nature were apparent almost immediately. In draft, players were uncomfortable picking these cards despite their huge upside because, if they weren’t able to support them, the cards would be significantly below-rate. Just making the cards better when Appoint/Elect wasn't active didn't work, as drafters not in those strategies started to pick the cards up, creating artificial scarcity while not solving the actual problem.

I eventually found the solution: changing Appoint/Elect from a binary mechanic to one that instead scaled with the number of colors you had. But Appoint/Elect’s flavor met my ludonarrative goal so well; I couldn’t just remove it! There’s no reward for second place in democratic elections–you either win or you lose–so the binary version of the mechanic fit better in theory.

In practice, none of that matters if players never experience it in drafts or games. My goal wasn't to create a showpiece, but to immerse players in an environment that really put them into the throes of politics. I had to reevaluate how my goal was informing my project in order to not have it become a roadblock to the project's development. Eventually, I swapped the binary Appoint/Elect mechanic for the scaling Approval mechanic. Lo and behold, I saw an immediate uptick in the number of four and five-color decks drafted.

5: Bad cards have their uses, but aren't a panacea

You might’ve seen people advocating for intentionally putting underpowered cards in one’s limited environment before. There are some notable reasons to do so. First, they reward player experience, as those who are more knowledgeable can more easily identify power level. Second, in insular/parasitic archetypes, these cards make their way to the player in that archetype far more often. Third, they make other strategies that may need support seem stronger by comparison. 

All of these points made a lot of sense for Cliques of Nylin in theory. I soon found, though, that its particular environment valued something else even more. Specifically, I found that the larger hurdle with tuning the environment was enabling four and five-color decks. To accomplish this, I would need to make the environment more lenient towards drafters who might want to switch color combinations or strategies. Bad commons counteracted this goal, as whenever there are notable deltas in power between cards in the set, drafters tend to play it safe, grabbing up strong cards before they're all washed up and discouraging them from branching out from their early lanes.

I decided to give every common another pass-over to even out the power level a bit, and the change saw a small but significant increase in four and five-color decks. I think the lesson learned here can be extrapolated onto other traditions of custom design.  Every design paradigm exists for a reason, and rather than blindly accept that reason, you should examine whether or not its assumptions hold true for your project. Usually it will, but in the case that it doesn't, spending time finding an altered paradigm that best suits your project will pay itself off in dividends.

6: People can give bad feedback with good intentions

At this point, Cliques of Nylin had gained a (relatively) sizable audience, and sifting through the feedback I received after every draft or playtesting session became an event in and of itself. A large portion of this feedback–mainly syntactical and balance mistakes–was immediately helpful, but another portion of this feedback was a bit harder to manage. 

At first, I tried to be much more receptive to this more subjective feedback. For example, I received multiple comments that the red-green 4+ power deck was too strong. I agreed with this statement, and I decided to nerf some of its low-to-the-ground creatures. At a later point in development, I also received multiple comments that the set had too high a density of lifelink, but I disagreed, so I ignored it entirely.

The problem with addressing subjective problems in this manner is that it fails to acknowledge the root of those problems. Sure, the red-green 4+ power deck might’ve been too strong, but which aspect of it was problematic? Although I disagreed with there being too much lifelink in the set, the fact that I received multiple comments indicates the presence of some type of issue. In both cases, even if the feedback didn't feel helpful, it wasn't useless. It's important to put yourself in their shoes and try to understand not what they said, but why they said it.

Later on, I received feedback that the set's black uncommons were providing too much card advantage. Though I didn't agree with the statement, I dug deeper into why it was said: the uncommons in question were played almost exclusively in the black-red sacrifice deck. Over the next couple of months, I kept my eye on that deck, and I eventually ended up making a much more informed change to the set than if I had either completely dismissed the original concern or knee-jerked changed cards in response.

7: Burnout isn't beaten, it's outlived

Let’s take a step back. I started working on Cliques of Nylin in March 2021. At the time of writing this article, it’s October 2023, and I’m just now putting the finishing touches on the project, meaning Cliques of Nylin will have taken more than two and a half years from start to finish. What gives?

I–like a lot of other members in this community–struggle with burnout regularly. In this project’s early stages, I went through periods of inactivity that lasted for weeks. Complete radio silence was only interspersed by an idea for a rare or a pretty new piece of art that I’d found every couple of days. I continued to push myself to fight through the burnout. I researched the topic extensively and found countless supposed “hacks” that really boiled down to generic life advice: practice mindfulness, exercise more often, get good sleep, and so on. Nothing worked because I only practiced these habits with the express purpose of overcoming my burnout and returning to the project as soon as possible.

Burnout is natural for us creative types in this community, and I’d argue that it’s even an important part of the creative process. It gives us perspective on our projects. Trying to avoid it or overcome it will only serve to make it worse. If you’re burnt out, accept it. Step away from whatever endeavor caused it and focus on yourself, not the project. Everything will work out in due time, as it did with Cliques of Nylin.