Hello and welcome back to Magic Project: Omega!

A bit late on this one, but that’s probably a bit better to do so it doesn’t clash too much with the Daily Commander release, something to mess around with.

Anyway, we are back on making Common instants and sorceries in each color, this time looking at red.

So far out of all the other colors, red was the easiest to make cards for in this instance, and they aren’t all burn spells to boot!

Let’s take a look!

Design Approach

Like black, red had a nice mix of instants and sorceries at Common in ABU, which helped make things easier especially since there were actually a decent variety of effects in red.

While there were three burn spells, there were some other abilities to mess around with things in a very red way, along with a nearly equal balance of instants and sorceries, with there being four instants and three sorceries.

With that I decided to go with the even split of three instants and three sorceries again and this is where my work was made pretty easy.

Starting with the instants, there was the massive elephant in the room in making a reference to Lightning Bolt, of which the Boon Charm helped make that reference already, but I thought that there could be another way to pay homage to it.

Not only that, but there could also be a reference to another iconic spell at Common in ABU, that being Fireball. Now I didn’t make it an X spell, but I did take some inspiration of cards that were printed later on in Magic to help tie in the reference, and it is something that can be pretty strong at its current mana value.

The next instant that came up to make reference to was Red Elemental Blast, and this was an interesting snag to deal with. See red doesn’t get a lot of counter magic anymore, with the last red counter spell being Tibalt’s Trickery in Kaldheim, which proved to be quite strong.

While I could choose to not make a red counter spell or make it an Uncommon for later, I thought up a way that a red counter spell could be made in the modern day, and since this set is pretty strong I could have it at a decent mana cost as well.

The last instant was an interesting way to play with how to deal with creatures that, while not new, was a cleaner way to deal with things than the original card that is being referenced.

Two of the sorceries happen to share a similar ability, but done in different ways. One is part of a combination of two cards into one modal utility spell and the other is taking advantage of the new red initiative to have access to ramp in modern sets.

The last sorcery had to be a pure burn spell for a creature as a form of removal, and I was actually surprised that red had access to this particular version of removal this early on in the game’s history. For a bit of a power bump, I decided to add something a bit extra to differentiate it from the card it is referencing.

Cards

Here’s what I came up with!

Compared to the other colors, red was the easiest to make cards for, and while I do think that they are pretty nice overall, there may be a bit too much going on for one or two of them.

To look at Sparks, I wanted a reference to Lightning Bolt and Fireball, and rather than make some form of convoluted X spell, I decided that taking Lightning Bolt’s damage and combining it with Fireball’s ability to get multiple targets was a very clean way to get this effect working well.

Elemental Overload is my version of a red counter spell that I am surprised Wizard’s of the Coast hasn’t tried, or if it has I haven’t seen it before. Having a sort of Spell Swindle type of counter spell on a red spell where each player takes damage equal to the mana value of the countered spell makes me feel that this would be a decently “safe” common counter spell to make.

Misleading Decree was probably the hardest card to come up with because False Orders from ABU is a bit on the convoluted side. Instead I opted for a sort of sweeper type of card that would be useful against go wide decks if they focused on smaller creatures, but in this set would not go great against the Defender archetype in this set.

Stone Shatter is another double reference, this time to Stone Rain and Shatter where I decided that it would be interesting to blend the two cards together in order for it to serve the function of both.

Cauterize was a neat card because it references Disintegrate, which deals X damage to a creature and if that creature dies then it can’t be regenerated and is exiled. I decided that in order to put a twist to it, to have it deal some burn damage if a creature is exiled this way, and can help finish some games.

Eruption was the last one and this is where I decided to lean a bit more into modern design philosophy and added a way for red to get a bit more ramp, in this case through a version of Crop Rotation that is a bit more on the expensive side and can only search for basic lands. I may change the needing of a nonbasic target, but for now I think it is a nice balancing tool in order to make sure it isn’t too strong.

Overall I am pretty happy with all of these cards, maybe needing some slight tweaks in terms of abilities and mana values, but otherwise I think these are some of the better cards I’ve come up with so far.

When we come back to Magic Project: Omega, we will be finishing off the last of the colors for Common instants and sorceries by looking at green and seeing what they bring to the table, and let me tell you this may be one of the hardest ones out of all the colors.

Thank you for reading, see you all next time!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual