CCDD 040720 - Face of the Unknown

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I liked designing Commanders that pushed popular color combinations in a different direction, right? Well, meet the brute-forciest of brute-force solutions to that challenge.

CCDD 040520 - Trainer's Orb

This is a very top-down design. By that I mean: first I designed the name and mana cost... then the type line and rarity... and then the abilities.

CCDD 040420 - Barricades

Here's another Fog effect-- this time an actual attempt to riff on the card Fog, though I think there was some top-down motivation here too.

CCDD 040220 - Glade Elemental

Evasion is a bummer. I mean, yes, it's a crucial and valuable part of Magic gameplay, from flying to menace to straight-up "can't be blocked". But evasion abilities are fundamentally an invitation not to interact, and decks can abuse those abilities to the point where interacting through combat just isn't a viable strategy. Is there a way to make cards that would punish those decks?

CCDD 040120 - Gatling Blast

For a bottom-up design, this card went through a crazy number of templating iterations. I knew what I wanted it to do, but not how to do that in a clean and intuitive way. Finally I realized that I could get the text box down to four lines by reusing an existing set mechanic.

CCDD 033120 - Seize Them!

GUARDS!!

CCDD 033020 - Eager Brute

I was a big fan of the Monarch mechanic (as seen on Palace Sentinels) when it showed up in the second Conspiracy set. Being able to assign statuses to players opens up a cool new region of design space. Finding effects that fit nicely there was harder than it seemed, though. Here's an example of one that I'm reasonably happy with.