What I’m doing with this project is creating playable Magic the Gathering cards based off of the Valve series’ Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Half-Life. Team Fortress 2 will act as the base set, with the other three titles serving as expansion sets. I’m currently looking in to finding a program that can be used to actually PLAY with these cards. So far Cockatrice is looking likely, but the process of creating a usable deck is a long one, and I’d rather sort out any balance issues first.

I doubt many people would bother trying to play with them anyways, but I still would like to make that happen at some point, and when I do I’ll post them up for others to use. Until then, they’ll just be for viewing :p

As of my writing this, the Team Fortress 2 set is the only complete set at a total of 191 cards. There is already progress on the Left 4 Dead and Portal sets, so those will be along when they’re ready.

I tried to incorporate a wide variety of aspects involved in playing these games. It’s not just the characters and equipment from the games, it’s also outside things such as lag or the recent hl2.exe error that has caused so much trouble. It’s things like trading, changing classes, switching servers, etc. I wanted to represent a variety of effects, and somethings, such as destroying all creatures or buildings or what have you, only make sense if you’re joining a new game or something like that. And so it was decided that I would incorporate elements not strictly built in to the gameplay itself. I think it adds a good bit of variety :]

One thing to keep in mind with these sets is that they’re NOT meant to be played with the actual MtG card series that has been in circulation for ages. I designed these cards to work with each other, but I paid absolutely no heed to how they would interact with the actual cards in the game. So don’t try and compare any of the removal spells such as Headshot or Backstab with things like Go For the Throat or Doom Blade. Go For the Throat and Doom Blade are clearly better cards over-all, but that’s not the point. They weren’t designed to work in theme with these sets, so don’t try and compare them.

These sets also make use of a few custom keywords which I will explain now:

+Keyword – Build Tool – ‘X’ (Activated Ability)

-When the “Build Tool” ability is activated, that creature’s controller puts a copy of the designated building in to play under his or her

control. Where ‘X’ is the name of the designated building to be brought in to play.

-Buildings are a new type of card. They are kept outside of the library and brought in to play when the appropriate “Build Tool” ability

is activated. This is similar to how token cards aren’t kept inside the library, and are only brought on to the field when summoned by

a card effect.

-Though they take the appearance of leveling cards, buildings differ from your standard leveling card in that they cannot level

themselves. A building’s level is equal to the number of build counters on it, which are created by other creatures, typically Engineers.

-Though buildings are technically not considered creatures, they may still attack and block as though they were.

-As a building levels up, it gains new abilities, adding to it’s previous abilities instead of replacing them.

+Burn Counters:

-If there is one or more burn counter present on a creature you control, during your opponent’s upkeep, you may remove up to one

burning counter from it. No matter how many burning counters on are your creature, you may only ever remove one at a time. This

applied to all of your creatures. If you have multiple creatures with burning counters on them, you remove up to one burning counter

from each of them during each of your opponent’s upkeeps.

I tried as well as I could to keep everything somewhat balanced and interesting, but I’m just one man. I’m pretty experienced in the game of Magic, but I’m sure there are things I overlooked. I would really appreciate help in pointing out any glaringly obvious balance issues. Any cards that are simply over-powered or even under-powered. If there are any issues with the way I worded things, I very much would like to know. Again, I tried my best to make sure things were worded correctly, but some of the text was tricky, so it’d be really helpful for people to point out any issues so that I may fix them. Thanks!

Another important point I should make, these properties are very clearly NOT mine! I had absolutely nothing to do with the development of any of the games involved. Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Half-Life are all Valve properties and I take absolutely no claim over them. Same goes for Magic the Gathering which is a property of Wizards of the Coast. I have nothing to do with any of these companies, unfortunately. All I’m doing is making playable designs based off their properties.

And one more important note, is that some of the artwork for these cards are not simply screenshots generated from the games. There is REAL artwork used for quite a few of these cards. Again, these are not my designs. They were created by a wide variety of very talented artists which I discovered through various online networks. In almost every case I credited the actual artist in the lower lefthand corner of the card, as is the usual place for such a thing.

I am NOT trying to take claim over these works of art! If somehow one of the artists is not properly credited, please let me know and I will fix the problem. There is no profit of any kind to be made in this project so I hope that I haven’t offended anybody by using these pieces of art.