The Sims + Magic the gathering: Creativity in game to improve immersion

I am meditating on an idea and I just want some insight.

When I first played magic the gathering, I was amazed by the game like any other game when you first play it. When I played with my friends, I was basically building decks randomly on the spot to play with the cards I found cool mostly for their look and sometimes their abilities. Making combos and strategy was not part of the design. I never put duplicates in my deck (besides land)

I later played Master of Magic which has basically the same theme and I am a huge fan of the game. So I am a very good fan of the Almighty sorcerer theme.

Then I played the video game and fight some opponents with strategy deck, I realized that Hey, I could make combinations and strategy deck. This is where I became more experienced with the game and start to look at a game from a mechanic point of view, which destroyed the original amazement. Normally all game expert lose this initial amazement.

Then I played Duel Masters, which was mechanically better than magic, but thematically worse. In fact, I had so little attachment to the cards, that the only amazement I got was for the mechanics, and I never took a look at the theme. Even MTG has sometimes similar effect, for example there was a spell called "Feast of the Unicorn" that featured a banquet table with a unicorn head. The card boosted a creature, but there was no connection between the theme and the effect. Why does eating a unicorn boost a creature, what kind of spell is that?

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Now you'll say, why am I bringing the sims into this. Well the sims has some sort of mechanics in the game, but the core of the game is creativity, and I think (I'll have to confirm with my girlfriend) that even if you are an expert at the game, and could design in optimization with the mechanics of the game, you will always need creativity which should give a certain level of amazement.

So what if I want to keep the original amazement of Magic all the time, maybe the solution could be to add more creativity. The deck building is a form of creativity in magic, but it has it's limits. Now one thing I did once is card design, with a card making software, it was really fun and ended up making cards too powerful. But I am wondering if that could not be the solution to amazement.

First, allow people to make their own cards. Sure, they can design from a mechanic point of view, but they still have to give it a name and a picture. But I would push further, design a card during game play. Yes, that is weird, and would require a computer game, but what if you could unlock abilities and level of strength to design cards. I might require do design a monster in game to face an upcoming threat like it would be the case in a "Real" fantasy life game.

Would it not increase the immersion and amazement of the game? There is still the risk, that when you are very experienced with the process of creating cards, that you are going to see again everything from a mechanical point of view. So the end the amazement will reach a limit.

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In order to try simulating this, I am thinking to first find or design a solitaire rule of MTG, try to pre-design cards and see how the game goes. See if the experience is better and for how long. I am not sure if there is a card balancing guide for homemade cards to simplify the design process.

Else I could use blank cards, and write directly on the cards on demand to simulate in game design.