CCDD 033115—World's End

Cool Card Design of the Day
3/31/2015 - This was a top-down design based on the art, though I'm pretty fond of its potential application.

Did you know there's a real World's End? I've been there. It's nice.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 032715—aviaku

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

CCDD 033015—Rage

Cool Card Design of the Day
3/30/2015 - The exact cost to power ratio is debatable, but here's a red common I can't believe we've never seen.

Weekend Art Challenge 032715—aviaku

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 032615—Thrill of the Hunt

Cool Card Design of the Day
3/26/2015 - A green trick with conditional cantrip.

Making a Mark

[Wizards of the Coast safe]

Every choice we make in designing a set influences how it will play, but some of them make larger impacts than others. Foremost among them are the choices we make surrounding what I’ll call ‘marquee mechanics,’ that is, ones that dictate the shapes of the environments they appear in. Prime examples include Landfall in Zendikar and Infect in Scars of Mirrodin.

So before we return to our exploration of mechanical space that Tesla might use soon, let’s pin down what it is thatwe’re looking for.

CCDD 032515—Commit (Kavu Dragon & Virulent Necrosis)

Cool Card Design of the Day
3/25/2015 - Commit is a new iteration on the idea I was pursuing with incant and predict over a year ago; Easing the mana burden of a spell in exchange for broadcasting your intention to cast it next turn.

CCDD 032415—Hunting Tower

Cool Card Design of the Day
3/24/2015 - I wanted to see how simple you could make a borderpost, and whether that design would have any value. Hunting Tower is definitely simpler and cleaner. It doesn't fix your mana nearly as well, but it does swap adeptly between being a 23rd/24th Forest and humble mana acceleration.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 032015—xiaobotong

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

Weekend Art Challenge 032015—xiaobotong

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 031915—Dragon Warrior

Cool Card Design of the Day
3/19/2015 - Dragons of Tarkir's Dragon Hunter has a lot going for it. It's an Elite Vanguard that benefits from Tarkir's warrior tribal and it can even block a dragon every turn safely. What it can't do—even if you bolster it to the size where it can deal dragons lethal damage—is hunt dragons.

CCDD 031815—Baloth Pup

Cool Card Design of the Day
3/18/2015 - Today's card is inspired directly by jack’s Daughter of Angels. I considered having Baloth Pup look for a specific card—Rumbling Baloth or something—but while that design has play value in its Limited environment, it'll never make a player feel clever. This version will.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 031315—Blaze Wingdragon

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

CCDD 031615—Solemnite, etc

Cool Card Design of the Day
3/16/2015 - I wanted to make {3} mana rocks whose bonus wasn't late-game value but mitigating the tempo hit you take playing them. The effects I came up with for these ally-color artifacts were specific to the colors they produced, so they needed to require one or both of those colors to play.

They could be {1}{W}{U} or {2}{WU}, but I realized this was actually a perfect place for twobrid. If you can already produce {W} and {U}, this card isn't fixing your colors, just accelerating, so costing two is fair. (Though, with the ETB ability, maybe not,) If you've got either, you can get it for the standard three mana. And if you've got neither, you can pay extra to get it anyhow.

Weekend Art Challenge 031315—Blaze Wingdragon

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.

Back-Forward Design

I wrote this post last year, before Wizards announced the big shift to a two-set block structure. I'm not sure whether I forgot about it after seeing the announcement, or because I wanted to think of a better example for the conclusion. It's no longer terribly relevant to Magic, but I'll share it now for the perspective it shares on Magic and game design in general. And I won't delay it further by looking for a better example.

July 17, 2014…

Wizards has gotten better and better at block-planning. They look years ahead to know what kinds of blocks are coming. They begin development of one block before finishing the last one, and use that information to interweave synergies that make those blocks more than just circumstantial neighbors. Within a block, advanced design gives them a better idea of what will work across the block and what won't, so they can hit the ground running and not run out of gas. They've also been playing with block structure a lot, finding new ways to keep each expansion relevant throughout the year.

I've got one more idea.

CCDD 031215—Resonate & Call

Cool Card Design of the Day
3/12/2015 - Seeing all the control-or-reveal-a-dragon effects in DTK got me thinking about another way to reward playing a lot of expensive creatures like dragons. I've turned Amplify from a size-boosting mechanic to cost-reduction (like yesterday's feed).

EDIT: These are bad designs. See if you can figure out why, then read on.

CCDD 031115—Hungry Wyrm (Feed)

Cool Card Design of the Day
3/11/2015 - Every time they reprint Dragon Fodder, I want to make a mechanic like devour, but better. It's entirely debatable whether feed is better, but let's take a look anyhow.

CCDD 031015—Morning Mist

Cool Card Design of the Day
3/10/2015 - Morning Mist is a Fog variant. It doesn't prevent as much damage—on paper—but being one-sided might prevent one or more creatures from attacking for several turns.

Weekend Art Design Challenge Review 030615—corndoggy

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

Weekend Art Design Challenge 030615—corndoggy

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 030515—Sarkhan, Dragonlord

Cool Card Design of the Day
3/5/2015 - I took this stab at a new Sarkhan before DTK previews began. That shows as early as the second word, because 'dragonlord' is the exact term DTK uses to refer to the five dragons who rule the clans instead of khans, so Sarkhan is clearly not a dragonlord. I'm also now thinking there's a good chance he'll be red-green.

Tesla Horizons: Graveyard Shift

As we continue exploratory design for Tesla we'll be looking at all of our options for mechanically representing Tesla's progress theme (as discussed here). Each piece will examine what a few of the possible implementations might do to the surrounding set.

The first post looked at cards that improved themselves, tracking progress with the battlefield, and explicitly counting progress counters.

The second post investigated using lands and mana to track how far you've progressed.

Today we'll see if we can track progress using the graveyard rather than the battlefield.

CCDD 030415—Leaping Frog Strike

Cool Card Design of the Day
3/4/2015 - There's a lot of merit in the idea behind Jade's Great Cleave and Czynki's Strike of the Student. I wanted to explore a shorter iteration to see if we can find something that strikes the same nerve but is simple enough for common.

Weekend Art Challenge 022715 Review—mad_jojo

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

CCDD 030215—Peasant Army

Cool Card Design of the Day
3/2/2015 - It'll be a bit before the WAC review goes up, so here's a CCDD for now. Peasant Army is directly inspired by Pasteur's Arm the Masses.