Weekend Art ChallengeGreetings, 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.
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| dchan |
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| sanskarans |
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| 404mockingbirds |
Choose one of these illustrations and design a card that cares about colorless mana.
Wild idea:
ReplyDeleteIllistation 3: 404mockingbird
Mana deprivation: X
instant
X can only be paid with collerless mana.
Up to X target creatures loses color, all abilities and all end of turn effects.
I know, it doesn't really care about colerless. But the illistration looked like the collour is sucked out of the wolf.
It is doable, but you really have to set a p/t for those creatures, otherwise creatures with cda's do not work.
DeleteCDA?
DeleteCharacteristic defining ability. Like Nightmare.
DeleteAt this point, CDAs have gotten in the way of so many cool designs that I'm expecting Wizards to change the rules at some point (like they did for morph / manifest). It would be easy to stipulate that P/T are equal to 0 unless they are defined, for example.
DeleteYes. I wish they would make this rules update. Especially since they continue to use them for new designs (unnecessarily, in my opinion).
DeleteIt _used_ to be that * was 0 in all zones except play; It's not much of a step to make it 0 anytime it's not defined.
DeletePurifying Fire
ReplyDeleteSorcery (Unc)
2R
Sorcery
Pure (You can't spend mana of a color other than red.)
~ deals 3 damage to each creature.
I think specifically wanting colorless is the sort of "weird" that usually wants to be reserved for Eldrazi. But here's another possibility, a keyword for a one- or two- colour card that gives a mana cost somewhere between 2R and RRR (like hybrid R/<>), disincentives playing an extra colour, but not playing dual lands or utility lands.
I think that's something we want to do in moderation, since players should usually be able to choose the trade-offs for themselves and not be forced. But it's useful to have something that pulls a two-colour environment into a two-colour decks. None of the art fit that so I made a mono card instead, which is also possible (cf. devotion) if less common.
I think you should leave the pure, and just make that Hybrid mana symbols. Pure read wierd. My first instinct was: "why not just make the mana cost RRR"
DeleteI like the idea. I agree that it's hard to convey intuitively on the card, though.
DeleteThis template would not function quite the same way-- it turns the card from a red spell into a colorless spell-- but it reads a lot more cleanly:
Purifying Fire 3
Sorcery (U)
Spend only {C} and/or {R} on CARDNAME's mana cost.
CARDNAME deals 3 damage to each creature.
OK, I'm not completely convinced by this, but at least lets try compromising the reminder text:
DeletePurifying Fire
Sorcery (Unc)
2R
Sorcery
Pure (You can only spend R or <> on CARDNAME.)
~ deals 3 damage to each creature.
My first two designs using the 1st and 2nd art options weren't remotely related to making colorless mana matter once I was done with them. So here's a super simple, non-Eldrazi Common design.
ReplyDeleteAstral Direwolf (COMMON)
2G
Creature - Wolf
2/2
Voidborn (This creature enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter on it for each C spent to cast it.)
I like this a lot! I know there have been similar ideas around twobrid in the past, but doing things this way is so much cleaner and more intuitive now that we've got colorless mana.
DeletePrimordial Peak (Rare)
ReplyDeleteLand
T: Add [1] to your mana pool.
Whenever you cast a colorless spell, put a pressure counter onto CARDNAME.
T, Remove three pressure counters from CARDNAME: Add RRR to your mana pool.
I went on a very Vorthos journey with this design. It is not intended to carry the whole story on it's shoulders, but to exist in a framework that makes the connection between colorless magic and tectonic energy more clear.
Colorless spells are sort of primal in my mind, they are from a time before the five colors became dominant. Thinking in that direction I imagined a land based on a primordial Earth-style plane with a molten surface. This plane is in the transition period from pure, primal, colorless mana all the way to colored mana. Each color would be showing signs of this, connecting a primal form to the more traditional color pie.
Earth magic is typically red, but perhaps the energy of the tectonic plates moving about is the oldest form of red mana, and so, a tectonically powered volcano that erupts once the pressure is built up evokes that transition.
Another, wordier, messier, but slightly more flavorful version.
Primordial Peak 2
T: Add 1 to your mana pool.
Whenever you cast a colorless spell, put a pressure counter onto CARDNAME.
At the beginning of your main phase, if CARDNAME has three or more pressure counters on it, remove all pressure counters from it and add RRR to your mana pool.
Oh, oops, and this uses dchan's art, centered on the erupting volcano in the middle.
DeleteYou could simplify it another way too:
DeletePrimordial Peak (RARE)
Land
Whenever you cast a colorless spell, put a pressure counter on Primordial Peak.
T: Add C to your mana pool. If there are three or more pressure counters on Primordial Peak, remove them all and add RRR to your mana pool instead.
That is a spectacularly better template. It even makes it feel like you don't have complete control over the eruption, which is what my Messy/Awful second template was try-harding to do.
DeleteReprint: R&D's Secret Lair
ReplyDeleteThe first art, focusing on the people and mountain.
Flavor text: "That's our new secret lair?!?!?"- Mark Rosewater
I feel like my submission isn't quite clear on how it relates to colorless, or specifically the new symbol change. With the colorless symbol change that is coming in OGW, we're seeing one of the bigger, if not biggest errata change since Sixth Edition. With R&D's Secret Lair, every card that produced 1 before OGW can't pay for C.
DeleteBoom (Mind Blown)
Wolf art.
ReplyDeleteVoidhowler 2CC
Creature - Spirit Wolf (R)
Voidhowler gets -1/-1 for each color among permanents you control.
6/6
This is awesome and elegant.
DeleteAgreed. It's the Death's Shadow of colorless.
DeleteArt: sanskarans (monster and lighthouse)
ReplyDeleteSentinel Point
Land
{T}: Add {C} to your mana pool.
{C}, {T}: Tap target colorless creature. If that creature has {C} in its mana cost, it doesn't untap during its controller's next untap step.
Art: sanskarans (monster and lighthouse)
ReplyDeleteSentinel Point
Land
{T}: Add {C} to your mana pool.
{C}, {T}: Tap target colorless creature. If that creature has {C} in its mana cost, it doesn't untap during its controller's next untap step.
Art: 404mockingbirds
ReplyDeleteSpectral Ookami 2
Creature - Spirit Wolf (U)
C: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.
2/2
I had to do a thorough Gatherer search to convince myself that this wasn't broken. Ironically, it isn't broken partly because prior to BfZ there was no reason anyone would want an ability reading "{color}: add {colorless} to your mana pool".
DeleteThen again, maybe this is too good because it's an efficient creature that lets you build a 5-color deck with Unknown Shores and the like. But I kinda doubt it. Very cool design.
Art: sanskarans, zoomed on the foggy monster
ReplyDeleteUnnatural Fog 1G
Instant (Common)
Devoid
Prevent all damage that would be dealt this turn by creatures that are one or more colors.
Excellent. How was this not printed in Battle for Zendikar?
DeleteTerrain Engulfer 2UB
ReplyDeleteCreature- Crab Horror (Rare)
*/*
Hexproof
As an additional cost to cast CARDNAME, put shadow counters on any number of lands you control. Whenever one of those lands would produce colored mana, it produces [colorless mana symbol] instead.
CARDNAME's power and toughness are equal to the number of lands you control with shadow counters on them.
(Sanskarans art.)
DeleteThe concept I'm going for is "a monster so big that it sits on a bunch of your lands and turns them colorless". Unfortunately there's some ambiguity as to whether the effect on the lands should stay after the monster dies.
sanskarans' art:
ReplyDeleteTartraxes, God of the Void [2CC]
Legendary Enchantment Creature — God
Indestructible
As long as your devotion to colorless is less than five, Tartraxes isn't a creature. (Each <> in the mana costs of permanents you control counts toward your devotion to colorless.)
Cards you own can't be exiled.
[3CC]: Exile target permanent.
7/6
It occurs to me, "cards you own can't be exiled" is probably super-broken. Maybe add, "by cards your opponents own"? How best to phrase it?
DeleteThe standard way of templating this kind of thing would be, "Spells and abilities opponents control can't exile permanents you own". Or "cards or permanents" if you really want to be thorough. But already it's getting kind of clunky.
DeleteYeah, quite right.
DeleteI'm on Christmas vacation, I've time to do the renders if no one else wants.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteSoulfade Field{<>}{<>}BB
ReplyDeleteEnchantment - Rare
Devoid
Each creature has -1/-1 for each of its colours.
(404mockingbirds)
Nice!
DeleteThis is a Night of Soul's Betrayal (or better) with major upside for a colorless-focused deck. So it's good that it is more difficult to cast. Even so, I'd expect it could warp a Standard environment somewhat toward colorless. In BfZ standard I'd expect this to be OK; RtR standard, not so much. So that's definitely caring about colorless in an interesting, metagame-y way.
Thanks, Piersabato
ReplyDeletePiersabato? Was that spell check?
ReplyDeleteAh, Zeno :)
ReplyDeleteNo, that's my real name. I'm Italian. (It's nonetheless very unique, I've never met anyone with my same name)