Monday, February 28, 2011

CCDD 022811 — The Scavenge Mechanic


Cool Card Design of the Day
Every day, I design a new card and discuss it briefly. Sometimes I will examine new possibilities for colors or mechanics, sometimes I'll re-examine existing executions and sometimes I'll just design something I think is neat.

Sunday, February 27, 2011

CCDD 022711 — So Rise the Champions


Cool Card Design of the Day
Every day, I design a new card and discuss it briefly. Sometimes I will examine new possibilities for colors or mechanics, sometimes I'll re-examine existing executions and sometimes I'll just design something I think is neat.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

CCDD 022611 — Master's Simulacrum and Master of Being


Cool Card Design of the Day
Every day, I design a new card and discuss it briefly. Sometimes I will examine new possibilities for colors or mechanics, sometimes I'll re-examine existing executions and sometimes I'll just design something I think is neat.

Friday, February 25, 2011

CCDD 022511 — Skilled Assassin


Cool Card Design of the Day
Every day, I design a new card and discuss it briefly. Sometimes I will examine new possibilities for colors or mechanics, sometimes I'll re-examine existing executions and sometimes I'll just design something I think is neat.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

CCDD 022411 — Universal Might and the 'Universal' Mechanic


Cool Card Design of the Day
Every day, I design a new card and discuss it briefly. Sometimes I will examine new possibilities for colors or mechanics, sometimes I'll re-examine existing executions and sometimes I'll just design something I think is neat.

Goblin Lore: Red Looting

Welcome to Goblin Lore! In the spirit of the namesake card, each column of Goblin Lore will focus on a particular design question, and offer four (approximately) possible answers to address that question. Unlike the card, you get to choose which ideas to keep and which to discard!

The recent Great Designer Search 2 directed competitors to write several essays on Magic design, one of which was, “Choose a mechanic to move from its current color to a new one.” A number of the contestants, including finalist Shawn Main, suggested that “looting” be moved from Blue, a color with many supporting mechanics, to Red, a color with relatively few. Looting, which originated with Antiquities' Jalum Tome, moved into Blue with Weatherlight’s Merfolk Traders, and is now present on many Blue cards including the iconic Merfolk Looter, is the act of drawing a card and then discarding one. Unlike other Blue card draw abilities, looting does not provide card advantage, but the ability to filter through unwanted cards does improve card quality. Magic R&D has responded that they are indeed considering the shift from Blue to Red. The question, then, is how should looting function in Red? Here are four possible approaches.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

CCDD 022311 — Erratic Denial & Desperate Denial

Cool Card Design of the Day
Every day, I design a new card and discuss it briefly. Sometimes I will examine new possibilities for colors or mechanics, sometimes I'll re-examine existing executions and sometimes I'll just design something I think is neat.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

CCDD 022211 — Replacement Body

Cool Card Design of the Day

Every day, I design a new card and discuss it briefly. Sometimes I will examine new possibilities for colors or mechanics, sometimes I'll re-examine existing executions and sometimes I'll just design something I think is neat.

Reinventing Alpha, Part 1: I'm an Excellent Driver

Time travel is a dangerous business. There I was, cruising through the streets of Walla Walla circa 1993 in my DeLorean, when some guy walked into the road right in front of me. Okay, not just some guy. A math professor from Whitman College. Richard Garfield. I tried to swerve, but he just came out of nowhere, you know?

Okay. So I traveled to the past and ran over Richard Garfield before Alpha was released. My bad. But I resolved, then and there, to set things right!

No, not by traveling to the future to stop myself from traveling to the past. That sort of negative causality loop never ends well. Instead, I decided to take over Magic: the Gathering and release Alpha myself. Armed with a spoiler, I set about reconstructing Garfield's vision.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Card-Knapping: Parasitism and Linearity

One of the concepts that came up a lot while I was designing a (mock) Magic set during the Great Designer Search 2 was "parasitism." The designers working on the project were very worried about parasitic mechanics, but there was some disagreement about what parasitism actually is.

To explain parasitism I really need to start with the distinction between linear and modular mechanics. Magic's head designer Mark Rosewater explained it in his article, but I'll try to boil it down in my own words. Linear mechanics strongly imply a certain type of deck. For instance, Slivers encourage you to play with more Slivers, and Morph cards encourage you to play with other Morph cards. Modular mechanics are flexible and can be used in many different types of decks. Examples of modular mechanics include Equipment and kicker. From a design standpoint, linear mechanics are useful because they help to guide players in their deckbuilding choices. Modular mechanics reward more experienced players by allowing them to assemble unique decks in combinations which were not anticipated by the designers. Generally, cards exist on a spectrum of linear to modular.

Parasitic mechanics generally fall into the linear end of the spectrum. However, you can't identify a parasitic card just by looking at it. Parasitism is all about context. For example, here are two cards. Both of them are clearly linear, but only one of them is parasitic:


















CCDD 022111 — Heidenberg's Wurm

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/21/2011 - Every day, I design a new card and discuss it briefly. Sometimes I will examine new possibilities for colors or mechanics, sometimes I'll re-examine existing executions and sometimes I'll just design something I think is neat.

[1/10/12—Note that this is the first CCDD posted on Goblin Artisans. Everything before it has been added for historical reference.]

Sunday, February 20, 2011

CCDD 022011—Ritual of Corruption

Classic Cool Card Design of the Day
What follows is a CCDD that was created before the feature transitioned from the Wizards Wiki to Goblin Artisans. It has been formatted to fit your screen.

2/20/2011 - The idea behind Ritual of Corruption is that you're mummifying everything that dies and the more things that die, the stronger your mummies grow. Perhaps it should put counters on all your skeletons each turn (Mummy is currently only an 'Un' creature type). I kind of like that you usually get one 'boss' mummy and a bunch of mummy flunkies, though.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

CCDD 021911—Auriok Saintcaller

Classic Cool Card Design of the Day
What follows is a CCDD that was created before the feature transitioned from the Wizards Wiki to Goblin Artisans. It has been formatted to fit your screen.

2/19/2011 - As often as I try to design entirely new cards and mechanics, I also like to riff on old cards and existing mechanics quite a bit. In his most recent article, Fight Club, Part 2, Mark Rosewater mentioned that "...The more recent mechanics, exalted and battle cry, are more holistic in that they have a relationship between the creature and other creatures you have on the battlefield. I have a feeling this trend is a telling one that hints at future mechanics to come."

Friday, February 18, 2011

CCDD 021811—Evil Doppleganger

Classic Cool Card Design of the Day
What follows is a CCDD that was created before the feature transitioned from the Wizards Wiki to Goblin Artisans. It has been formatted to fit your screen.

2/18/2011 - When I shared Fleeting Distraction, I mentioned that it had inspired a black-red version of the card. In preparing this follow-up post, I determined that there was, in fact, nothing red about it: black already does all of the individual things this card is doing. I am pleased to introduce you to your Evil Doppleganger... in card form. You do not want to meet your evil doppleganger in person.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

CCDD 021711—The Sword in the Stone

Classic Cool Card Design of the Day
What follows is a CCDD that was created before the feature transitioned from the Wizards Wiki to Goblin Artisans. It has been formatted to fit your screen.

2/17/2011 - This was a fun top-down design based off the movie of the same name. It was initially inspired by a discussion of flip-equips amongst #GDS2 particpants working with Ethan Fleischer. The flip-equips were mostly cards that started as creatures and flipped into equipment when they died, representing cave men using animal bones as tools.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

CCDD 021611—Master of the Arena

Classic Cool Card Design of the Day
What follows is a CCDD that was created before the feature transitioned from the Wizards Wiki to Goblin Artisans. It has been formatted to fit your screen.

2/16/2011 - When designing Teller of Insidious Secrets, I intentionally brought the number of cards gained and life lost in line with Phyrexian Arena, but it's still more like Seizan, Perverter of Truth and that made me hungry for an Arena on a stick. That, and a general wistfulness for Dark Confidant brings us to the utterly unsurprising, but certainly printable, and surely fun Master of the Arena.

How mechanics can push players toward fun.

I've been designing a dungeon crawler board game for a few months now. If you're not familiar, this genre was popularized by HeroQuest and is essentially a tactical RPG without the roleplaying. It comes down to exploring a dungeon, fighting monsters, finding treasure and leveling up. This particular crawler was prompted by one of the latest to hit the market: Castle Ravenloft. I say "prompted" rather than "inspired" because playing Castle Ravenloft pushed to me to make this game, but most of the ideas that form its core existed before Wizards started developing Fourth Edition D&D, much less Castle Ravenloft. I had forgotten that was the case, but while I was dredging years of old Magic card ideas for the Great Designer Search 2, I also stumbled upon board game ideas and found the core concepts of this new dungeon crawler spread amongst them. I'll write about stolen / simultaneous ideas another day.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

CCDD 021511—Fertile Hydrangea

Classic Cool Card Design of the Day
What follows is a CCDD that was created before the feature transitioned from the Wizards Wiki to Goblin Artisans. It has been formatted to fit your screen.

2/15/2011 - Fertile Hydrangea was inspired by thinking about cards that would be particularly good with Shambing Symbiont and Juniper Order Ranger . It's a Phantom / Hydra, but it holds quite a lot in common with Sekki, Seasons' Guide. I believe he's simpler overall, despite adding an X to the cost because he plays into the multi-headed hydra trope. In this case, cutting off a head spawns a baby plant rather than more heads.

Monday, February 14, 2011

CCDD 021411—Quicksilver Spires

Classic Cool Card Design of the Day
What follows is a CCDD that was created before the feature transitioned from the Wizards Wiki to Goblin Artisans. It has been formatted to fit your screen.

2/14/2011 - Was playing my mono-red deck with Teetering Peeks and kept thinking how nifty it would be if this were a thing and how reasonable a thing it is. Happy Valentine's.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

CCDD 021311—Avenge

Classic Cool Card Design of the Day
What follows is a CCDD that was created before the feature transitioned from the Wizards Wiki to Goblin Artisans. It has been formatted to fit your screen.

2/13/2011 - Folks who have seen my work on Muraganda since the contest will already recognize Avenge. I was conflicted whether to use it here or not because I knew I had set up an expectation, having presented one of each other color so far, but I didn't have any new white card ideas worth sharing. You're seeing this now because it's a strong enough card to "reprint" and because it allows me to talk about expectation and re-use.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

CCDD 021211—Sentinel of the Jade Clock

Classic Cool Card Design of the Day
What follows is a CCDD that was created before the feature transitioned from the Wizards Wiki to Goblin Artisans. It has been formatted to fit your screen.

2/12/2011 - Sentinel of the Jade Clock is primarily inspired by the Eldrazi. The question was originally, "Considering the way that larger mana costs scale into larger effects, how big would a 20cc creature be?" I'm pretty sure the answer, without any other abilities is 100/100, but the whole discussion is moot because without something to prevent players from sneaking it into play for free, it doesn't matter how many times he'd kill a player in a single swing.

Friday, February 11, 2011

CCDD 021111—Savage Philosopher

Classic Cool Card Design of the Day
What follows is a CCDD that was created before the feature transitioned from the Wizards Wiki to Goblin Artisans. It has been formatted to fit your screen.

2/11/2011 - I'm pretty sure there's a common phrase that makes a better name for this card, but it's mentally blocked to me at the moment.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

CCDD 021011—Shambling Symbiont

Classic Cool Card Design of the Day
What follows is a CCDD that was created before the feature transitioned from the Wizards Wiki to Goblin Artisans. It has been formatted to fit your screen.

2/10/2011 - Shambling Symbiont is kind of the anything lord. He boosts your creatures regardless of type. At the same time, he's effectively a */* beater like Scion of the Wild.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

CCDD 020911—Fleeting Reflection

Classic Cool Card Design of the Day
What follows is a CCDD that was created before the feature transitioned from the Wizards Wiki to Goblin Artisans. It has been formatted to fit your screen.

2/10/2011 - In his article, Fight Club, Part 1, Mark Rosewater listed "When Attack, Sacrifice At End Of Turn" creatures as being both red and blue. Thinking about that inspired this card. I love Clone and all its ilk, so I'm always on the lookout for new variations on it. This one chain-inspired a black-red version I'll share another day.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

CCDD 020811—Teller of Insidious Secrets

Classic Cool Card Design of the Day
What follows is a CCDD that was created before the feature transitioned from the Wizards Wiki to Goblin Artisans. It has been formatted to fit your screen.

2/8/2011 - My inaugural card is a tribute to Seizan, Perverter of Truth. I love the way Seizan accelerates the pace of the game without feeling like an overwhelming advantage like modern Mythics. I also love the flavor behind his corrupting power.