Friday, June 24, 2016

Weekend Art Challenge 062416—Eddie Smith

Hello all! Anastase here, with some free time again.

I will review the previous challenges soon, but in the meantime, let us get on with this challenge:

The following two illustrations by Eddie Smith seem unconnected.

A
B
Design a card for each in a way that they tell a story.

Each Artisan is allowed one submission per card image, but they can update it as many times as they want. Please state the rarity and the image for which you design your card when submitting it!

I wish you all good crafting!

30 comments:

  1. Art A:

    Gaea's Remains
    Legendary Land - Mythic Rare
    T: Add G to your mana pool.
    T, Tap three untapped creatures you control: Add GGG to your mana pool.

    Art B:

    Bolas's Remains
    Legendary Land - Mythic Rare
    T: Add B to your mana pool.
    T, Sacrifice three permanents: Add BBB to your mana pool.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sorry, both of these should ETBT.

      Delete
    2. Sacrifice non-enchantment permanents?

      Delete
    3. I'm sure you have a reason but I'm confused as to why that would be worth the additional wordiness. If someone wants this in their Hatching Plans deck, let them? Am I missing some obvious degeneracy?

      Delete
    4. Black historically has had powerful enchantments with a painful drawback balanced by black's own inability to get rid of them. (The most recent example being Demonic Pact.)

      Delete
  2. Wilting Dryad
    Land Creature - Swamp Forest Dryad (Mythic)
    (T, Add {B} or {G} to your mana pool)
    (Wilting Dryad has summoning sickness)
    0/1

    Despoiler of Landscapes 3UUBBBRR
    When despoiler of landscapes etb, choose 2. You may choose an option more than once:
    -Destroy 2 lands.
    -Draw four cards.
    6/6

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Land creatures have less potential than I thought they did, and despoiler of landscapes will always let you draw eight cards. There is really no reason to destroy the lands.

      OK, maybe in commander, but the cost is super restrictive.

      Delete
    2. I would definitely find some kind of tech to prevent players from cheating Despoiler into play, because destroying 4 lands (or drawing 8 cards after playing a bunch of rituals) on turn 4 would not be fun to play against.

      Delete
  3. Enrage the land (art b)
    6rr
    Sorcery (mythic)
    Each player returns all lands they control to their owners hand.
    Each player puts an X/X red elemental creature token otb where x is the number of lands they returned this way.

    Dryad of New Growth (art a)
    2G (unc)
    Creature - Dryad
    1/3
    You may play an additional land on each of your turns.
    Whenever you play an additional land, you may put a +1/+1 counter on CARDNAME

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The dryad practically has a bullet painted on her(its?) back. Mana ramp and an eventually huge creature for 3 mana is powerful, and if you can combine it with some source of repeated card draw...yikes!

      Delete
    2. Compare to courser of kruphix. While that one gained you life, this one gets slower...but I guess is balanced out by not letting you play the top card of your library if it's a land.

      Delete
    3. I think playing extra land, without a built-in way of drawing extra land, is a lot more limited; most decks don't have that many more land to play by turn 4. But yes, it's strong, if all it does is draw a kill spell on t3, that's probably good too. If it's *too* powerful, I could increase the cost a bit, or require a mana payment for the counter.

      Delete
    4. You have to work to abuse Dryad, whereas Courser just throws cards at you.

      Delete
    5. Additional-lands cards that are powerful in Constructed tend to either draw more cards (Explore, Courser, Oracle), serve as cheap combo pieces (Summer Bloom, Azusa), or are only good in highly specialized archetypes (Exploration, Rites of Flourishing). Dryad's secondary effect is a big beater that only grows when you have additional land drops to begin with, so it seems non-degenerate.

      I'd actually be more worried about something like Primetime > Enrage resetting all the lands.

      Delete
  4. Endangered Spruces {3}{G}
    [A]
    Creature—Treefolk (unc)
    At the beginning of your upkeep, if you control more nonland permanents than lands, sacrifice ~.
    When ~ dies, search your library for a basic Forest card and put it into your hand, then shuffle your library.
    4/4

    Invasive Spessartine {3}{R}{R}
    [B]
    Creature-Elemental Dragon (rare)
    Flying
    At the end of each of your turns, you may sacrifice a Mountain. If you do, ~ deals 3 damage to target c/p.
    4/5

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Should Spruces have 3 toughness so your Spessartine can kill it off on purpose?

      Delete
    2. Maybe.
      Maybe Spessartine can deal 4 damage, but only to creatures.

      Delete
    3. Or maybe it should destroy lands. That seems more interesting.

      Delete
    4. If it destroyed lands, that would make for very unfun gameplay when combined with practically anything else that destroyed lands. On the Magic home site I heard about a format in alpha testing called Sorcerer and created a deck that can cast Frenzied Tilling every turn.

      Delete
    5. Yeah. Having to pay a land of your own mitigates that, but you're right that any other LD breaks that symmetry. Especially as a repeated effect on a five-drop.

      Endangered Spruces {3}{G}
      [A]
      Creature—Treefolk (unc)
      When ~ ETB, put two 1/1 green Saproling creature tokens OTB.
      At the beginning of your upkeep, if you control more nonland permanents than lands, sacrifice ~.
      3/3

      Delete
  5. Art A
    Sealing-Circle Dryad 1GG
    Creature - Dryad (R)
    Sealing-Circle Dryad can’t be sacrificed.
    Creature cards in graveyards can’t enter the battlefield, and can’t be the target of spells or abilities.
    When Sealing-Circle Dryad dies, return another creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield.
    0/5

    Art B
    Unsealed Behemoth 8BG
    Creature - Demon Beast (R)
    When Unsealed Behemoth enters the battlefield, destroy another target permanent.
    At the beginning of your end step, for each permanent that was put into a graveyard this turn, destroy another target permanent.
    10/10

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. One for Johnny and one for Tammy. And the pair for a Timmy-Jenny.

      Is it important that Dryad can't be sacrificed? Is it important that Behemoth can't target itself?

      Delete
    2. Short answer: Yes and Yes-kinda-sorta?

      Dryad can't be sacrificed because I don't want this just turning into a lazy 3 mana combo piece. As a Johnny-Vorthos card, it should make the player have to work a bit to get their value.

      Behemoth can't target itself one for flavor reasons, and two because in the improbable scenario that some infinite-death-trigger-loop happens at the same time as Behemoth being in play, I'd rather disallow the complete board wipe so the Behemoth can (hopefully) end the game quickly.

      Delete
  6. ART A
    Nature's peace 2G
    Creature - caryatid 2/3
    Rare
    Hexproof
    Lands you control tap for any color.

    ART B
    Nature's rath GBRUW
    Creature - dragon elemental 6/6
    Rare
    Flash menace
    If a land you control were to be destroyed you may discard a land. If you do you may cast Nature's wrath without paying its mana cost.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nature's Peace is cool on its own, and helps you hardcast Nature's Rath. That's made a less interesting by Rath's alternate cost mechanism, though. Can you make one feed into the unique elements of the other?

      Why menace?

      Delete
  7. Vitalroot Sentry 1G
    Enchantment - Aura (U)
    Enchant land
    Tap an untapped creature or land you control: Enchanted land becomes a 3/5 green Dryad creature with haste until end of turn. It's still a land.

    Vital-Coal Annihilator 5RR
    Enchantment - Aura (R)
    Enchant land
    Sacrifice a creature or land: Enchanted land becomes an 8/8 Dragon artifact creature with flying, trample, haste, and indestructible until end of turn. It's still a land.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Very cool. Very R/G.

      Small suggestion: Could "Untap it" (or "If it's your turn, untap it") be added to the Vital-Coal? 7 is a LOT of mana for a card that does nothing right away, and you already run into the "instant speed onboard combat trick" problem whenever you happen to leave the land untapped.

      Also probably don't want "Annihilator" in the name of a card that neither has nor grants the annihilator ability.

      Delete
  8. Stillness Strider 2G
    Creature - Dryad (r)
    At the beginning of each player’s untap step, that player chooses creatures or lands. That player untaps only permanents of the chosen type that turn.
    2/1

    Bael's Ravager 2BB
    Creature - Horror (r)
    When CARDNAME attacks, you may pay X. If you do, when CARDNAME deals damage to a player this turn, you may put that many +1/+1 counters on it.
    4/4

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Is Stillness really green? (Maybe?)

      I love that you pay X before the defender decides whether to block Ravager or not.

      Delete
  9. Is the story that Card A is a hoser to Card B?

    ReplyDelete