CCDD 021920 - Playing With Fire

Rituals (spells that generate more mana than they cost) are tricky to design. Aggressive decks getting to trade cards for tempo is a cool idea, but almost any ritual that's good at that is even better at powering broken strategies. (Storm decks are the best-known example.) On the other side of the power scale, weak or restricted ritual effects aren't consistently good enough to be worth a card in most decks. If only we could print a ritual effect that didn't take up an entire card...

CCDD 021820 - Boogeyman

Reanimation spells like Cauldron's Gift usually have to target expensive creatures to be worth it. If you're spending 4-5 mana and a card, you want to be getting a creature that's worth at least that much, not some random 3/3. Even creatures with reanimation built-in often want extra bonuses when they come back-- like Pharika's Spawn and the other Escape creatures from Theros Beyond Death. So what would it take to make a 1-mana creature an appealing reanimation target?

Legends of Runeterra

Riot just released the beta for the League of Legends CCG, Legends of Runeterra. I thought I'd share my reactions:

CCDD 012320—Garruk Wildspeaker

Cool Card Design of the Day
Found a note I made last year about another way to solve the when-planeswalkers-were-sagas-they-didn't-have-enough-agency problem.

Announcing: Goblin Game 2020

It's that time of year again! Tomorrow (Wednesday, Jan. 21) I'll be running my annual Goblin Game on Twitter. It'll kick off some time around 1 PM EST, and run throughout the day. I'll try to tag Artisans whose twitter names I know, but look for #GobGame on twitter to get more info.

CCDD 010920 – Evolved Wilds

Core 2019 had a focus on eliminating as many tutor and shuffle effects as possible. It made me think: Is it possible to completely eliminate shuffling from Magic except for once at the start of each game?

Weekend Design Challenge 09202019 - Brawl Commanders Throughout History

Good afternoon, Artisans! Click through to see this weekend's design parameters. With those as your guidelines, design a custom magic card. Over the course of the weekend, give feedback to your fellow designers on their designs, and incorporate their feedback to iterate on your own. If I have time over the course of next week, I will try to offer some of my own feedback.