Signature Spellbook: Star Swirl the Bearded · 3:12pm Mar 25th, 2018
Following in Zennistrad's and FOME's hoofprints, and on Thought Prism's suggestion, I'm dipping into Magic: The Gathering again with a card-based profile of everypony's favorite mad wizard, Star Swirl the Bearded.
First the caveat: this proved more difficult than I would have thought. I mean, it's not just a list of M:tG cards, it's an act of character interpretation under a specific set of constraints. There are, what, tens of thousands of spells to choose between, and let's be honest, Star Swirl knows most of them. Plus it's been a few years now since I actually played Magic, so I'm a little out of it. And just seven spells is a very small range to try to capture the essence of one of the greatest magical minds there ever was. Plus my habit of making everything harder than it needs to be is interfering again.
Some of these are obvious, some were harder, some are from my old favorites when I was playing the game regularly. And as I don't have a convenient link for a Star Swirl Planeswalker, I'm making one up myself (and I don't have FOME's mind for card design so he's probably either worthless or brokenly OP).
Signature Spellbook: Star Swirl the Bearded comes with Star Swirl the Bearded, Archmage and seven spells.
Star Swirl the Bearded, Archmage
2WUB
Artwork: Star Swirl stands in midair on a glowing rune circle, looking up at the starlit sky.
Legendary Planeswalker - Star Swirl the Bearded
+2: Exile target nonland permanent for as long as Star Swirl the Bearded, Archmage remains in play.
+0: Every player loses their attack phase until the start of your next round.
-12: Place a Legendary Creature token named "Clover, the Prophecy Fulfilled" into play.
2 starting Loyalty.
Clover, the Prophecy Fulfilled
Artwork: Clover the Clever is sitting at her desk, confused, looking sideways at the camera as she eats a sandwich.
Legendary Creature, Unicorn Wizard.
At the start of your upkeep, place a Friendship Counter on Clover, the Prophecy Fulfilled.
When there are three Friendship Counters on Clover, the Prophecy Fulfilled, you win the game.
1/1.
Oblivion Ring.
Artwork: Star Swirl the Bearded looks at a pale round amulet that crackles with sinister force, held in his magical aura. Behind him is a round metal cauldron with a lid, in a fireplace. Next to the fireplace stands the mirror portal, and shadowy figures look out from its surface. Through a window the moon hangs low in the dusk sky, showing the Mare in the Moon.
Flavor text: "The seal will last for one thousand years. Or until someone breaks it."
Archmage Ascension.
Artwork: Star Swirl and Clover look out across a vast magical landscape from a high precipice. A pillar of light rises from a distant spot, casting off sparks of different colors.
Flavor text: The greatest rewards always seem impossibly far away.
Ocular Halo.
Artwork: Star Swirl and Clover stand in the center of a ring of magic floating eyes. Clover looks distinctly squeamish.
Flavor text: "That was a good lesson."
"We were ambushed, professor."
"It was very educational."
Diplomatic Immunity.
Artwork: Star Swirl the Bearded stands before an enormous elder dragon, as its head reaches down on its long neck to look him in the eyes.
Flavor text: "If he succeeds that's one less enemy to worry about. If he fails that's one less enemy to worry about." --The Unicorn King.
Spellbook.
Artwork: Star Swirl writes in his journal by candlelight late at night, ignoring his own exhaustion.
Flavor text: No one mind can contain everything that is necessary.
Crystal Ball.
Artwork: A table and wall are covered with different scrying tools: mirrors, gemstones, balls, a silver bowl filled with magical water. Star Swirl is slumped in the corner, looking down.
Flavor text: He has searched countless futures for one that will work.
Clinging Darkness.
Artwork: A griffon assassin cowers in mortal dread in the shadow of something that is not a pony.
Flavor text: "I searched even the darkest places for knowledge. Let me show you what I learned."
– – –
This is an idea of Star Swirl as he appears in The Education of Clover the Clever. At other points of his life he will have different spells, in different colors. As you can also see there's a focus on enchantments. At this point in his career, and the flavor text hints pretty heavily at this, Star Swirl is concerned with the search for something that will endure when he's no longer around to keep an eye on things.
As I said above, picking out just seven cards was very difficult. It's not just a question of which is most appropriate either. There were dramatic and mechanical concerns. Should I pick cards that are considered good, on the grounds that he is the most powerful wizard ever, or ones that suit his personality regardless of their relative power levels? Giving him only Power Nine cards and mythic rares would seem cheap to me. Even though he's all about card draw, and Ancestral Recall is a contemporary of his. Or should I pick ones that are comical in nature to go along with those that highlight his hopes and fears?
Also, Consecrated Sphinx is amazing with Archmage Ascension, and is also canon for The Crown of Night.
You'll also note that there are no creatures, not a one, and none of these spells are going to win the game on their own. A lot of what Star Swirl is about here is not so much big powerful effects to defeat the enemy, but keeping things under control for as long as possible. Another card I considered was Dissipation Field, but mechanically it wasn't quite what I had in mind. What I had in mind was something more like Silent Arbiter, or Norn's Annex, but those didn't work for me flavorwise. Besides, the two artifacts I already included was pushing it. The Iopometer aside, Star Swirl isn't really an artificer.
Also, while I believe very strongly that Star Swirl has a hint of black in him, finding appropriate black spells was challenging. I considered Feast of the Unicorn, the feast being a bowl of Void Porridge. Or Read the Bones, possibly in place of Crystal Ball.
Well, this was an interesting exercise. Hopefully some of you found it interesting, even if it is a different IP entirely 
The hiatus is now officially over, so there will be more pony things to talk about as well. We will see how it all goes.
Hooray! Also:
*cracks knuckles*
Before I begin, know that I'm doing this because I care.
First off, that name is too long given the four mana symbols. As a rule of thumb, anything with more characters than Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis is out.
Next is the type line. Because of how subtypes work in Magic, you actually need to hyphenate "Star Swirl" to make it work. (See Assembly-Worker.)
As for the abilities, the +2 is positively insane. I'd recommend moving that to a 0 at absolute maximum loyalty cost. Given how there's nothing especially black about Star Swirl, he could lecture at you as his plus. I'll get into the mechanics of that in a moment. As for the ultimate, that phrasing might work in Hearthstone, but in Magic, the card that creates a token needs to explicitly define all of that token's properties. (This can lead to some epically wonky text.) There's also the matter that 2 loyalty is way too low on a five-mana, three-cost 'walker, to say nothing of how it takes Star Swirl ten turns to win the game if absolutely nothing disrupts him or Clover. He may be fine with that, but your opponent won't be so patient. As such, I recommend the following:
Star Swirl, Archmage 2WUB
Planeswalker — Star-Swirl
+1: You draw a card and lose 1 life.
0: Exile target nonland permanent you don't control until Star Swirl leaves the battlefield.
-7: Create Clover, the Prophecy Fulfilled, a 1/1 white and blue legendary Unicorn Wizard creature token with "At the beginning of your upkeep, if you control three or more creatures, you win the game."
4
Good thing Dominaria's introducing a much more evocative template for legendary token creation. The "you don't control" rider is to keep Star Swirl from exiling himself over and over, which he'd obviously do for his own inscrutable purposes if given half a chance.
This fills me with the utmost dread, considering who and what consecrated that sphinx.
In any case, excellent spell selection.
Laughed my ass off, but the big ability on the walker is very meh. 5 for a 4 loyalty walker is poor to begin with, and one that needs five turns to get three turns to win...
Or, alternately, he just sits there using the +0 until the other guy finds removal.
'Walkers are stupid hard to design, though.
Otherwise, excellent selections.
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I suspected, but it's good to have confirmation.
So, brokenly OP then?
Thanks for the comments. I make no claim to having any card mechanics design qualifications. As for the name length and Clover token text, I confess I knew that was wrong but I decided to take liberties with the formatting for ease of reading
It could be worse. I could have given each of his abilities their own flavor text
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Or, another possibility that crossed my mind, make Star Swirl a flip card like Garruk Relentless, with one side representing Star Swirl with highly anti-social abilities and the other Star Swirl and Clover together with more constructive ones.
I do not promise that Jin-Gitaxias will appear in CoN ([Rarity] NO SPOILERS [/Rarity]), but Star Swirl did beat a sphinx in a game of wits and to me that also counts.