CCDD 072916—Stone Reign

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/29/2016 - Stensia Innkeeper got me thinking about modern red land destruction. Here's another take.

CCDD 072816—Excavator Hail & Wake the Quaker

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/28/2016 - First up is a simple punisher Stone Rain. Punisher being a modal spell where your opponent chooses their own punishment.
That modality then inspired an escalate version…

Weekend Art Challenge Review 052616—Stop Skulking.

Hello Artisans,
I am quite overdue with this review. Here is the challenge I am reviewing.

Skulk is an interesting mechanic, making you care about low power creatures, allowing you to slip under stronger creature boards. It is very easy to understand, and will play differently depending on the board state. Unfortunately, it was often not rewarding enough in the games I have played.

Let us see if there are any NWO contenders!

CCDD 072716—Alleytown and friends

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/27/2016 - I designed Alleytown after the colored cycle, but it's the only one that does just what I wanted: A simple land that sacks into a small creature for a reasonable price.

Tesla Design Challenge 072716 — Uncommon Ground

Hi everybody! Last week for Tesla, we started working on filling in the commons over at the Multiverse, and we also began testing with all-commons. The all-commons playtest went pretty well - though we definitely lots of room for improvement! As all-commons playtesting has begun (with at least one contender for every slot in the skeleton), it's also time that we started working seriously on the uncommons!

CCDD 072616—Temporal Refraction

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/26/2016 - Here's a quirky card draw spell. It can draw you a ton of cards, but many decks would just prefer Divination. And that's good.

CCDD 072516—Linked

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/25/2016 - Thematically, linked represents a psychic connection/ability. Mechanically, it's grandeur meets Panglacial Wurm. Take a look at the first card and then we can discuss more.

Tesla Design Challenge 072216 — Hello World

Hi everybody! Over at the Multiverse, we're taking the final steps towards finalizing the commons in the skeleton, in preparation for imminent all-commons playtesting. This week, we're going to have a fun triple-fold challenge: filling in the rest of the commons, in addition to filling in flavor text and the rest of the world of Kaladesh.

CCDD 072216—Addams Family

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/22/2016 - The Gravedigger equivalent of a Squadron Hawk.
(Designed bottom-up, not top-down.)

Weekend Art Challenge 072216—maciejkuciara

Hello Artisans!
Anastase here!

This week the challenge is unconstrained, except for the image, BUT you can get bonus points (oooooh you know you want them) by trying to hit as many of the constraints in the list!

CCDD 072116—Utopian Vision & Impossiville

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/21/2016 - First up, a transient five-color land, ala Gemstone Mine. Then, something similar, but more combo-oriented.

CCDD 072016—Muttoneer & Tinstreet Roofshank

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/20/2016 - The world needs more Viashino Racketeers.

CCDD 071916—Dirge

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/19/2016 - Another scaling mechanic that rewards combat with cheaper spells, this one modeled after morbid.

CCDD 071816—Warmonger

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/18/2016 - Warmonger is a scaling, cost-reducing form of raid.

Tesla: Archetype Hype

Hi everybody! Sorry for the late article, but it's a fun one, so I hope it will be worth the wait. This week, we're going to be showing off the prospective archetypes for Tesla, in all their glory!

Weekend Art Challenge 071516—Conditional Evasion Mechanics

Hello Artisans,
Anastase here! This week's challenge is about finding new conditional evasion mechanics.

Evasion mechanics allow you to deal damage to your opponent even though they control some vanilla defending creatures. Flying, "cannot be blocked," intimidate, and skulk are all evasion mechanics.

Conditional evasion, however, works by convincing your opponent to choose not to block, usually from the fear of losing too much value. First strike, menace, and deathtouch are examples that fit.

Each Artisan is allowed one submission only, and has to specify the rarity of his or her card as well as the art for which it is designed for.

CCDD 071416—Deign to Kill

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/14/2016 - Ineffecient common removal.

CCDD 071316—Iaiajutsu Master's cycle

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/13/2016 - This mechanic would make for a terrible keyword because it can only matter at most once per game, so I put it on a rare. Then another. Settled on a cycle. Still possibly too much, but I like what it offers at rare.

Tesla: Archetype Cast

Hi everybody! Work over at the Tesla Multiverse continues, as we finalize the members of each archetype and solidify the common skeleton in preparation for commons-playtesting and the higher rarities. Last week, we discussed the types of archetypes and the roles they serve - this week, we'll be discussing the types of cards in an archetype, and how this helps us design commons!

CCDD 071216—Maggot Bloom

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/12/2016 - We need another card like Caller of the Claw. This is slightly simpler, more direct, and tells a more resonant story (at the expense of doing nothing on its own).

CCDD 071116—Fell and Mourn

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/11/2016 - Mass removal that's harder to get card advantage from.

CCDD 070816—Flooded

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/8/2016 - Sharing these ideas today because they relate to screwed and deluxe. Where those mechanics looks to mitigate land-screw, these two address land-flood

They're also not Good Enough™, but how they fail is worth discussing.

Weekend Art Challenge 070816—homoseptimus

Hello All! Anastase here with another challenge for you guys!

This week we are going to imagine Ludevic!

He has not yet been spoiled, so let us see if we can find a way to make the quintessential legendary stitcher alchemist come to life!

Weekend Art Challenge Review 062416—Eddie Smith

Hey all. Anastase here. I am lagging with my reviews but hopefully they will keep coming!

Here is the challenge I am reviewing.

Let's get to the cards!

CCDD 070716—Screwed

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/7/2016 - Yesterday's Deluxe aims to help players stuck with cards in hand, but flies dangerously close to Saviors of Kamigawa's "don't play your cards" mechanic. It's also hard to develop and reads poorly. It might play quite well, but even if it does, we can surely find something that accomplishes similar goals without all those drawbacks.

Let's attack the problem from another angle.

CCDD 070616—Deluxe

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/6/2016 - Pursuing the idea of a cost-reduction mechanic that's most helpful when you're having trouble playing your hand (as opposed to surge, which is strongest when you're doing well already), I found deluxe. At face value, it seems to reward keeping cards in hand—and that's far from ideal—but how it plays in practice might be very different.

CCDD 070516—Rise Up

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/5/2016 - This is not a spoiler for Eldritch Moon, it's a response to a design challenge Zefferal tweeted:

Thursday's #AskAnArtisan. Make an #MTGEMN card for this art and I'll offer critique. #MTGDesign #Liliana pic.twitter.com/j1KkXJkB8i

— Jay Zeffren (@zefferal) June 30, 2016

Weekend Art Challenge Review 070116 — smolin

Here's Pasteur's review of last weekend's art challenge.

Weekend Art Challenge 070116 — smolin

Greetings, good morning, and good afternoon! Your friendly neighborhood Pasteur has arrived with a new Weekend Challenge. Click through to see this weekend's art and the design requirements for your single card submission.

Your submission will be due Sunday evening. 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.