Weekend Art Design Challenge 103114—Halloween

Weekend Art Challenge
Greetings, artisans! Click through to see this weekend's art and the design requirements for your single card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, and everyone is encouraged to give feedback. You may use that feedback to revise your submission any number of times, though only the version rendered will be included in the review, if someone volunteers to render the cards.

CCDD 103014—War Recruiter

Cool Card Design of the Day
10/30/2014 - Just a reusable Zealous Conscripts. "Just."

War Recruiter is restricted to hitting untapped creatures, which limits its power a bit, and encourages players to attack with their creatures, which was the real inspiration for the card: "You're guys will attack for you, or they'll attack for me, but no sitting on their asses."

Weekend Art Challenge Review 102414—Steve Prescott (Un-set)

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

Tesla: Version 2.0

We're intending to give Tesla a theme of progress, and that focus is tied up with the trappings of Steam Punk and artifacts. Thus far we've come up with a multitude of ways to convey progress, and a number more to interact with artifacts, but we haven't addressed their main overlap.

How can we weave in the concept of technological advance?

Weekend Art Challenge 102414—Steve Prescott (Un-set)

Weekend Art Challenge
Greetings, artisans! Click through to see this weekend's art and the design requirements for your single card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, and everyone is encouraged to give feedback. You may use that feedback to revise your submission any number of times, though only the version rendered will be included in the review, if someone volunteers to render the cards.

CCDD 102314—Dragonslayer

Cool Card Design of the Day
10/23/2014 - We've hit this trope so many times, but I found a new solution last night.

Tesla: Rise to Power

Next up on our list of proposed Tesla mechanics to investigate is an adaptation of Charged as originally proposed by fading shadows of a memory beloved: Ben Nassau's Power-Up.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 101714—Frank Hong

Weekend Art Challenge Review
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CCDD 102014—Forced Retirement

Cool Card Design of the Day
10/20/2014 - It's awkward that Oblivion Ring and Banishing Light are targeted removal enchantments like Pacifism, but aren't auras, and you don't name your target until after the spell resolves. Here I take a stab at a couple alternate templates for an updated Journey to Nowhere.

Weekend Art Challenge 101714—Frank Hong

Weekend Art Challenge
Greetings, artisans! Click through to see this weekend's art and the design requirements for your single card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, and everyone is encouraged to give feedback. You may use that feedback to revise your submission any number of times, though only the version rendered will be included in the review, if someone volunteers to render the cards.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 101014—Nightmares of Somnia

Weekend Art Challenge Review
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CCDD 101614—Inevitable

Cool Card Design of the Day
10/16/2014 - Here's another keyword inspired from yesterday's Twitter discussion about auras. Inevitable shirks the fizzle rule (to an extent) by letting you choose a new target if your first choice bites it.

Tesla: Animated Short

Tesla is continuing full steam ahead, and after talking about Batteries last week it's time to take a look at another innovative idea from our artifact mechanics discussion: Zachariah Howell's Animate.

CCDD 101514—Invoke

Cool Card Design of the Day
10/15/2014 - This 'invoke' mechanic was basically invented by George Gone. It's like evoke for auras. One of the downsides of auras that always takes second stage to their grave potential for card disadvantage is how often they're just stuck in your hand. This site has messed with mechanics like living weapon already (and before living weapon was revealed), so let's explore this other solution.

CCDD 101414—Test Your Meddle

Cool Card Design of the Day
10/14/2014 - Found this design in my old folder. Seemed worth updating. I'll show you the original first so we can discuss its flaws.

Moving Activation Restrictions to the Left of the Colon

The Review for the last WAC will come later this week. Today, let's chat about a potential upgrade to Magic templating. Remember when they changed "Enchant Creature" to "Enchantment-Aura" and "Summon Knight" to "Creature-Human Knight"? Go even further back and remember when they clarified 'Mono', 'Poly' and 'Continuous' Artifacts? There have been countless tweaks and upgrades to the templates used for Magic cards over the decades, most of them small, in the form of word choice and phrasing, but some of them significant, noticeable.

A few days ago, Ipaulsen suggested "Sacrifice this artifact on your turn: Untap target permanent." The act of moving the timing restriction from the right side of the colon to the left spawned a conversation and rightly so. Turns out, it's got potential. The right side might not be the correct side.

Weekend Art Challenge 101014—Nightmares of Somnia

Weekend Art Challenge
Greetings, artisans! Click through to see this weekend's art and the design requirements for your single card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, and everyone is encouraged to give feedback. You may use that feedback to revise your submission any number of times, though only the version rendered will be included in the review, if someone volunteers to render the cards.

CCDD 100914—Call to Battle

Cool Card Design of the Day
10/9/2014 - Call to Battle is meant to be another stab at the bottom-dollar haste-granting spell. This implementation tries to run double-duty as a red mana ritual. Take a look.

Tesla: Charged with Battery

We've been looking at potential artifact mechanics for Tesla, and last week saw a lot of good ideas. I've given some thoughts in the comments, so today I'm going to focus in on one idea I found particularly interesting: Bass' Batteries.

Conflicting Metaphors—Inspired VS Heroic

Games are metaphors and game designers are poets. In order to make a card feel thematic, we need to find one way to express the concept it represents through game mechanics. That's all that's needed to make a player feel, "Yeah, that is a dragon. That is a unicorn. Yup, that's dark magic."

CCDD 101714—Prototype & Blueprint

Cool Card Design of the Day
10/7/2014 - Two alternative keywords for a single idea. They could go on colored permanents, but make more thematic sense on artifacts and are more relevant on colorless cards. Basically the opposite of invent.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 100314—kokoszkaa

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

Weekend Art Challenge 100314—kokoszkaa

Weekend Art Challenge
Greetings, artisans! Click through to see this weekend's art and the design requirements for your single card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, and everyone is encouraged to give feedback. You may use that feedback to revise your submission any number of times, though only the version rendered will be included in the review, if someone volunteers to render the cards.

Tesla: Breaking the Mould

It's been a while since I actually managed to get anything written about Tesla. A few weeks back we were looking for a different way to care about artifacts.

I'm not going to discuss every solution you offered here; you can read the comments for that. What I will do is cover some areas you proposed and discuss their merits and challenges.

CCDD 100114—Nail in the Coffin

Cool Card Design of the Day
10/1/2014 - I kinda feel like I've done this card before, but I can't find it. The concept is decent: If you can finish off a creature with 1 damage, it doesn't cost you a card. But…