Weekend Art Challenge Review 102216—vlda

Design a card for Kaladesh or Aether Revolt with this art. Bonus points for each of Johnny, Tammy, and Spike to whom it appeals strongly.

Confiscation Officer steals an artifact from your opponent, provided you can afford to cast it (or care to); otherwise it just super-removes it. Tammy can dream of getting something sweet out of the deal, Spike appreciates the two- or three-for-one, and Johnny can imagine re-casting his own artifacts for profit (but there are better options for that).

Unlike most cards like this, a future officer will give you access to the items a past officer confiscated. That's great flavor for the cardname, and not a bad fit for the art. Confiscation Officer is on the strong side, but not too strong for a pushed rare. Very white-blue.

Obviously one portal won't do you any good. You've got to have a source and a destination.

Linking Portal is thematically adorable, and has huge potential to cheat out terrifying things. The randomness makes it hard to exploit (on top of needing to get two copies before doing anything), making this a very Jenny card with a nice helping of Timmy sensibility.

The Spike in me really wants a mode that operates as a singleton and helps set up the linked part. Maybe "{T}, Discard a card: Scry 3." But that reduces the card's elegance and uber-Johnny aspect.

I've not had luck getting the energy symbol working in MSE.

Technological Convenience does something Harnessed Lightning et al don't; the thing you'd pour energy into isn't critical to getting value out of the card, and the ideal threshold of how much you want to spend is unclear. Even so, scry 6 is actually a big deal if you expect the game to last 3 or 4 more turns, and/or are digging for something specific. For that combination of reasons, I wouldn't be surprised if Development pushed this card to uncommon (but cmn is conceivable too).

Good flavor for this art; simple but novel effect; clear Spike appeal, with some value to Jenny.

Taigam's Strike all up-front, with an untap rider. That first part makes for a solid uncommon, with good flavor for the name, but a tone mis-match with the art. Functional for Spike, and exciting for Tammy.

The untap clause seems to be there for the flavor too, but it's not necessary to get the flavor across and confuses the card: Do I play Teleporter before my attack step? If so, my creatures probably aren't tapped. Should this be an instant? (If it were, would players think you could cast this after blockers are declared to undo blocks?) Maybe they were included to intrigue Johnny, but I'd cut those last two words.

Ultimate Artificery is (intentionally, I suspect) obtuse, with a lot of text and purpose that's not immediately clear. So the audience is Jenny. Now what does it do?

Your opponent has to figure out the highest number of artifacts they're okay with you cloning, and the lowest number of choices they're okay with you searching up, and reconcile the two. Basically, if you already have the best artifact in your deck, they choose 1, and if you don't, they choose 2 or maybe 3. (You don't even cast this while you control no artifacts, because they choose one million and you fail.)

Which is a very Spikey position to put your opponent in. So this card is for Jenny-Spikes. (You could argue there's Timmy appeal because you don't know what your opponent will choose, but I'd argue the appeal is marginal because you can mostly guess their choice, and the card is much more about crafting the situation that makes this most useful.)

Flavor's not evident, and doesn't particularly fit the art (but that won't bother Jenny-Spike).

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Good stuff, Artisans! It's tricky to design for multiple psychographics, and very hard to hit all three. Many of you decided to deliver something great for one or two of them, rather than something good-ish for all three, and that's a wise call.

Thanks for participating!