CCDD 073113—Overcharge

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/31/2013 - Lucky was pretty clearly the best mechanic presented as-is yesterday. I want to explore a variation of overcharge some more though, because I really think it has potential.

This version uses manaflow's reminder text, but all the spells have {X} in the cost, allowing you to count the base cost of the spell toward your potential free spell, improving your chances of success.

Tesla Design Challenge: Designing Mecha Cards

As I mentioned in the Roadmap for Tesla Design, we will be test-drafting Tesla, using a mockup set inserting the Mecha cards into Mirrodin Besieged.

CCDD 073013—8 Cost-Reduction/Added-Value Keywords

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/30/2013 - I made the mistake last week of wondering how I could represent chaotic mana before going to bed. These ten cards are the result. Sleep is overrated anyhow, right?

Most of these cards are clearly unprintable, but they add ideas to the entire group that can only accelerate progress toward the few usable ideas that might emerge.

The original goal here was to allow the player to pay less than the spell's full cost at the risk of failing to cast the spell at all and wasting that mana. This isn't the normal cost-reduction mechanic because it's unreliable and it's most useful when you're either desperate and need to get lucky, or when you've got nothing better to do with your mana. Both of which are times I'm happy to help a player out.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 072613—keepwalking07

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Here's the challenge we're reviewing today.

Roadmap for Tesla Design

For followers of our Tesla project, I apologize for the long hiatus. We will be continuing with the design of this set. I would like to quickly review the set concept so far, and then talk about the steps that lie ahead.

Weekend Art Challenge 072613—keepwalking07

Weekend Art Challenge
Click through to see this weekend's art and the design requirements for your card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, which I will try to provide, and which everyone is welcome to provide as well.

If you choose, you may use that feedback to revise your submission any number of times. I will post and review the most recent submission from each designer some time on Monday, life permitting. To help ensure I recreate your design accurately, please use CARDNAME instead of ~ and don't use the {} symbol images in your submissions.

CCDD 072513—Coward's Toll

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/25/2013 - I'm posting this late because the day was insane, but late is better than never. Coward's Toll lies somewhere between Murder and Cruel Edict in power level. Granted neither of those spells can kill multiple creatures, but if that's what's happening when you play Coward's Toll, it's because you'd much rather it just killed the one creature that's really causing you headaches.

CCDD 072413—Ember Phoenix & Lizard Wizard

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/24/2013 - Here are a couple cards messing with red's new play-this-card-now-or-never mechanic. Ember Phoenix is a Future Sight for combat, while Lizard Wizard is a more efficient, but riskier Rummaging Goblin.

Weekend Art Design Challenge Review 071913—Dae-ekleN

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Here's the challenge we're reviewing today.

Designing Suvnica Hiatus, Week 3: Themes and Us

Hey everybody! A couple more weeks and we'll be getting back into the thick of it. I just wanted to throw out another question for you guys to consider while we're on hiatus.

Weekend Art Design Challenge 071913—Dae-ekleN

Weekend Art Challenge
Click through to see this weekend's art and the design requirements for your card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, which I will try to provide, and which everyone is welcome to provide as well.

If you choose, you may use that feedback to revise your submission any number of times. I will post and review the most recent submission from each designer some time on Monday, life permitting. To help ensure I recreate your design accurately, please use CARDNAME instead of ~ and don't use the {} symbol images in your submissions.

CCDD 071813—Enva, the Merciful

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/18/2013 - I'm traveling through Sunday, so I scheduled this early. Enva is simply meant to be an appealing legend for white-blue, that can turn around a game that's gone wrong in terms of life and/or cards. I wouldn't be shocked to learn it's too strong, particularly in Turbo Fog.

CCDD 071713—Psi-Stalker

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/17/2013 - I'm traveling through Sunday, so I scheduled this early. Psionic is based on some ideas tossed around this year. Read the card and then I'll discuss the keyword some more.

CCDD 071613—Rosemail Armor

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/16/2013 - Oakenform is a nice clean card and while it is entirely Limited-playable, cards like Moldervine Cloak and Boar Umbra show that it could also do a bit more. Given that pure lifegain tends to be terrible in green, I propose killing two birds with one stone. Or rose.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 071213—depingo

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Here's the challenge we're reviewing today.

Initial Thoughts on Magic 2014

Magic 2014 is out, and I'll be heading to the prerelease in a few hours. In the meantime I'd like to share some initial thoughts on the designs in the set and what implications it may have on the Limited play environment.

Weekend Art Challenge 071213—depingo

Weekend Art Challenge
Click through to see this weekend's art and the design requirements for your card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, which I will try to provide, and which everyone is welcome to provide as well.

If you choose, you may use that feedback to revise your submission any number of times. I will post and review the most recent submission from each designer some time on Monday, life permitting. To help ensure I recreate your design accurately, please use CARDNAME instead of ~ and don't use the {} symbol images in your submissions.

Where is M14 Sowing Seeds?

 

In this week's Latest Developments, Sam Stoddard outlines some of the ways core sets have been designed and how they interact with their surrounding sets. One of the most interesting parts was his discussion about sowing seeds for themes explored in the next block.

CCDD 071113—Ritual Murder

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/11/2013 - I wanted to find a way to kill a creature with flourish. Not only did you strike it down, but doing so didn't even slow you down. Obviously, card advantage on removal is a dangerous thing, so I made it conditional.

CCDD 071013—Blue Elemental Ball

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/10/2013 - I'm not sure this is fair at two mana, and I'm even less sure we want color-hate this focused, but something compelled me to make a simple hybrid of Blue Elemental Blast, Time Ebb and a less amazing Remand. Ironically, the simpler text is less clear, which means even if we wanted to print this, we wouldn't do it in a core set.

CCDD 070913—Panglacial Expedition

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/9/2013 - Directly inspired by Panglacial Scout from last weekend's art challenge; The player's already searching, why not let her piggyback to fix her mana if she can pay for it?

Weekend [Art] Challenge Review 070512

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Here's the challenge we're reviewing today.

Designing Suvnica Hiatus, Week 1: Building Blocks

Hey guys! I've been preparing to take a bar exam at the end of July, and as I'm getting closer, I have to dedicate basically all of my time to preparing for it. Also, Suvnica has been picking up some major steam - I think that we had over 130 cards suggested for the Week 9 challenges (not to mention all of the further suggestions that have been showing up in the design review thread for the Golgari keyword). At the moment, I just can't dedicate the same amount of time to the project. Until I'm done with the bar, I'm putting Suvnica on hiatus.

Weekend [Art] Challenge 070512

Weekend Art Challenge
Click through to see this weekend's art and the design requirements for your card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, which I will try to provide, and which everyone is welcome to provide as well.

If you choose, you may use that feedback to revise your submission any number of times. I will post and review the most recent submission from each designer some time on Monday, life permitting. To help ensure I recreate your design accurately, please use CARDNAME instead of ~ and don't use the {} symbol images in your submissions.

Suvnica Week 9 Review, Part 2: Do the Evolution (Evolving Cycle Review)

The cycle challenge was pretty  tricky. The goal was to show how a cycle that was represented across all ten guilds would evolve over the course of the block. This meant that not only did you have to capture the guild's feel in its representative card in the cycle, but also that there had to be some clear mechanical shift in the way the card would operate if the guild were placed in a different set in the block.

CCDD 070413—Fireworks

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/4/2013 - Happy Independence Day! I wanted to make a a fireworks card for you all. My first design was needlessly wordy and melviny. My second design was smooth, but way too close to Epic Experiment.

CCDD 070313—Eternal Shade

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/3/2013 - Eternal Shade is like chocolate-covered chocolate. Does anyone need that much chocolate? Of course not. And that's the point.

Suvnica Week 9 Review, Part 1: Bears and Bears and Bears (Oh My!) (Gilrog Keyword)

Here I thought that sticking to only one guild for the keyword, and doing three cards for a cycle would lighten the workload a little bit. Ha! You guys came up with 128 cards this week. Let's take a look at the keywords you came up with for our power-hungry Gilrog.

CCDD 070213—Kerberos

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/2/2013 - Kerberos is directly inspired by Taresivion's Champion of the Gods submission for the last weekend art challenge. It had "protection from non-divine creatures" which I swapped with "protection from non-legendary creatures." That ability makes the creature it's on a fearsome combatant few can stand against, but it also makes legendary creatures better, since they're the only ones that can defeat it.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 062813—ilkerserdar

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Here's the challenge we're reviewing today.