Friday, July 14, 2017

Weekend Art Challenge 071417—Aaron Miller

Click through to see the illustration and design requirements for your single  card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, which you may use to revise your submission any number of times. I will aim to review the most recent submission from each designer.


Design a common card for this illustration.

17 comments:

  1. Alznar, Historian of Rhonas G
    Legendary creature - Human Advisor R
    Alznar, Historian of Rhonas enters the battlefield with three -1/-1 counters on it.
    G, T: Remove a -1/-1 counter from target creature. If you do, draw a card.
    4/4

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh wait, common creature?

      Rhonasean Cultist G
      Creature - Human Cultist C
      T: Add G mana to your mana pool. Spend this mana only to cast creature spells.
      0/2

      Delete
    2. Nice! The creatures-only restriction seems like a natural variation of a G mana creature, I'm surprised I haven't seen it.

      Delete
    3. Sweet Elvish Mystic variant.
      I sense that this guy really likes animals.

      Delete
  2. Viper Advcocate 4R
    Creature - Human Wizard Advisor (c)
    When ~ enters the battlefield, target creature deals 5 damage to target player.
    1/1

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Lava Axe on a stick seems fine, but I'm baffled why you choose any target creature. If the creature could only damage its controller, then we require our opponent have a creature we can target. If the creature has to be power 5+, we have to build around that. And so on. But this is just confusing. Since it doesn't hit creatures, it only combos with lifelink, and otherwise the source almost never matters.

      Delete
    2. I think you're right that it should be "creature you control", possibly even "other creature you control". But the idea was to incentivize playing with lifelink creatures as well as other saboteur-style creatures (ones with "damage to a player", not "combat damage to a player", of course.)

      I'm also slowly working on permutations on "Strike- if a creature or player has been dealt 5 or more damage this turn, (effect)" and was curious how this might feel in the abstract as an enabler.

      If >75% of the time you choose the Advocate itself as the lava axe source, do you think the extra option of "target creature" is too cluttered? It's about the same text as "CARDNAME deals", but I don't want to confuse newer players if I can help it.

      Delete
    3. This is the type of ability that could exist in Magic in theory, but just looks really weird in practice. Creatures (usually) deal damage based on their power, so having a creature deal an arbitrary amount of damage feels off.

      Delete
    4. 75% of the time feels like too much. 50% might be fine.

      The format being full of non-combat damage saboteurs and bloodthirst>=5 triggers would help explain it. But I still want it to make sense on its own, and "another target creature" at least helps.
      Flavor explaining why it causes something else to deal the damage would be a big win.

      Delete
  3. Sultan's Advisor
    2W
    Creature - Human Cleric - C
    Vigilance, Soulbond
    Creatures paired with ~ get +1/+3 and have vigilance.
    1/3

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So in the set where we bring back soulbond, the creature doing the bonding gets no benefit from the bond but always has their own abilities. That's simpler and more intuitive. I like it. (The two types would be confusing together in some bizarre Modern deck, but that didn't stop them from complicating slivers or allies.)

      Sultan's Advisor seems like a fine card in that set.

      Delete
  4. Ophidian Hypnotist
    1G
    Creature - Human Shaman
    2/1
    When ~ ETBs, you may have target creature lose all abilities and become a 1/1 green snake creature UEOT.

    Sorcery snakeform is a lot weaker, but in some ways more interesting as it's a variant on "can't block" or "debuff" so it can go on a fairly efficient creature.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Very cool! Would really be interesting in a set with -1/-1 counters as a theme

      Delete
    2. Power-wise, this looks like a fun common. Complexity-wise, it really wants to be uncommon.
      Not convinced this effect is mono-green.
      The flavor of "you think you're a snake now" is pretty hilarious.

      Delete
  5. Renowned charmist G
    When ~ etb target snake gets +1/0 and trample until eot
    0/3

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If the set has snake tribal and the format really needs an 0/3 for {G}, I could see this. Otherwise, I'd expect a more significant effect to make the text worth reading.

      Delete
  6. Kobri Missionary 2G
    Creature - Human Cleric [C]
    Whenever ~ deals combat damage to a player, draw a card.
    "What do you mean, you hate snakes?"
    2/2

    ReplyDelete