tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479847193762153273.post3327639948388250113..comments2024-03-11T02:32:15.295-04:00Comments on Goblin Artisans: Weekend Design Challenge 033018 - Your Signature SpellbookUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger81125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479847193762153273.post-28035758927403110832018-04-04T23:17:00.734-04:002018-04-04T23:17:00.734-04:00Thanks for the kind words, Zeff! I think Sapling s...Thanks for the kind words, Zeff! I think Sapling should be 1GG, since that ensures you can't just splash it.<br />For Motorcycle, I definitely thought about more keywords, but I couldn't decide, so I just left it as is to make it readable. I'd probably use first strike and double strike, and haste, but it's 6's either way.Skyehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00329168455575789365noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479847193762153273.post-80407987825572431362018-04-03T19:41:32.289-04:002018-04-03T19:41:32.289-04:00I read Programmable Hedron as choose three permane...I read Programmable Hedron as choose three permanents on the battlefield, seems like it would choose 3 lands often. Also what is the CMC for the Hedron?Doug Kenthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11099708938705613144noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479847193762153273.post-34244768276049681402018-04-03T17:21:37.178-04:002018-04-03T17:21:37.178-04:00So glad to see the cycle completed! What a nice ba...So glad to see the cycle completed! What a nice batch of cards. Homework, especially, walks right up to the "absolutely playable in constructed" line while still being printable and interesting.Pasteurhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02058331124653341978noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479847193762153273.post-78632003348210450532018-04-03T16:46:52.942-04:002018-04-03T16:46:52.942-04:00Homework B
Sorcery - C
Scry 2. For each card put o...Homework B<br />Sorcery - C<br />Scry 2. For each card put on the bottom of your library this way, Homework deals 1 damage to you.<br />Draw a card.<br /><br />Shucks G<br />Sorcery C<br />Lands you control have "T: Add one mana of any color." until end of turn.<br />Untap a land you control.<br />Wobbleshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11494097707732649864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479847193762153273.post-88157854911411023472018-04-03T16:21:06.560-04:002018-04-03T16:21:06.560-04:00Holy guacamole did you guys knock this challenge o...Holy guacamole did you guys knock this challenge out of the park. I'm so impressed with the different designs you guys came up with, especially given the difficulty of the challenge. For all the descriptors and associated words you all came up with to define yourselves, you definitely need to include future GDS4 contestants to that list. Amazing job, one and all.zefferalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13845251416516553492noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479847193762153273.post-16095294774074273882018-04-03T16:06:03.647-04:002018-04-03T16:06:03.647-04:00Another stellar batch of cards! Choose your victor...Another stellar batch of cards! Choose your victory is an uber-Tammy <a rel="nofollow">Fact or Fiction</a>, and I almost love it, but having the opponent cast one of the stacks causes two problems. First, it doubles down the downside after the opponent already chose the 5 cards, and second, it makes dividing the piles take a significantly longer time as you have to weigh a lot of different scenarios. I'd just cast one pile of an opponents choice for free and exile the others, but otherwise a fantastic card.<br /><br />Programmable Hedron is technically doable in black border, but translating it into magic-ese wouldn't be as fun as if it was done in Silver border. I like where you're going with it, but it definitely needs some tightening up. I can name activated abilities from any magic card ever? That's too broad, and paradoxically means there's going to be a small handful of "right" choices to make. Maybe exile three cards from your deck, so you can use it as a toolkit, so long as the tools exist in your deck already.zefferalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13845251416516553492noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479847193762153273.post-51865521386007390762018-04-03T15:22:30.295-04:002018-04-03T15:22:30.295-04:00Your next descriptors are inscrutable, unique, and...Your next descriptors are inscrutable, unique, and surprise.<br /><br />Wobbles is a solid design. It might need to be bumped to uncommon because there's a bit of hidden complexity there, but maybe not. <br /><br />I love how simple each of these are, and how each has somehow not yet been printed? Incredible. <br /><br />Alright, you get homework. Let's see the 1-CMC common black and green spells that complete this cycle. you don't need to conform to terms, but you are encouraged to.zefferalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13845251416516553492noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479847193762153273.post-73715732602709923352018-04-03T15:17:22.577-04:002018-04-03T15:17:22.577-04:00I love these designs. My goodness. Tender sapling ...I love these designs. My goodness. Tender sapling is how I wish they'd do the draft guiding uncommons with more frequency than the gold cards. That's some fantastic flavor. It might need some cost adjustments, but I love the direction it's moving in.zefferalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13845251416516553492noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479847193762153273.post-23348141438933910832018-04-03T15:06:19.857-04:002018-04-03T15:06:19.857-04:00Motorcycle is incredible. Can only be blocked by c...Motorcycle is incredible. Can only be blocked by creatures with keyword is a very interesting space to play in. I think if we were doing that, it should list two different keywords that are primary/secondary in three colors between them to keep it from being to often just unblockable. For morocycle, haste and reach? So green and red, and occasionally black creatures can block it? Awesome design. zefferalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13845251416516553492noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479847193762153273.post-8904626447246999482018-04-03T14:10:17.952-04:002018-04-03T14:10:17.952-04:00All fun designs, and most of them are less silverb...All fun designs, and most of them are less silverborder than you made them out to be. For Math, I think a solid design (and honestly, probably not that different from the un version) would be to just require three targets with different CMCs. It might need to cost one more, but it's a nice and potent design. <br /><br />Soft Speaker is very interesting. There are a couple of tweaks I would make. First, it's really a sideboard card, so I wouldn't have it in multiple colors and and I would bump it to rare so it isn't gumming up drafts. Blue would make the most sense, but green works too. Should sideboard strategy hosers like this include a drawback by default? I'd have to consult with Play Design and Spikes to get their take on that, but it would at the very least make an interesting experiment.zefferalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13845251416516553492noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479847193762153273.post-56458924920890562552018-04-03T12:50:34.789-04:002018-04-03T12:50:34.789-04:00Memento Mori is another fantastic Jenny card. Hunt...Memento Mori is another fantastic Jenny card. <a rel="nofollow">Hunter of Eyeblights</a> found the tool it's been dreaming of. I'm not sure if it wants to be in Dimir or Golgari so the Counter colors would have more fun playing with it, but I'm in love with it as printed. zefferalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13845251416516553492noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479847193762153273.post-46152026137468126272018-04-03T12:47:18.029-04:002018-04-03T12:47:18.029-04:00I like Blade of the Ready's take on Vulshok Ga...I like Blade of the Ready's take on <a rel="nofollow">Vulshok Gauntlets</a>' incentivized re-equip. It's a very Jenny equipment, of which there are sadly too few. I'm not sure if it's improved by having the double strike be static and the +2/+2 trigger on equip (or vice versa), but I think it would certainly be less niche. Very fun.zefferalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13845251416516553492noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479847193762153273.post-1311173559457918512018-04-03T12:34:56.767-04:002018-04-03T12:34:56.767-04:00Cooking pot is such a fun and flavorful design. Ot...Cooking pot is such a fun and flavorful design. Other than 3 life, as others suggested, I wouldn't change a thing. <br /><br />It might be fun to have different effects based on the discarded ingredient - +1/+1 for a creature, life for a land, card for a spell. It adds a lot of complexity, but it makes you feel more like a chef and less like a line cook.zefferalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13845251416516553492noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479847193762153273.post-87472108850193772042018-04-03T12:31:45.096-04:002018-04-03T12:31:45.096-04:00First off, welcome! Unfortunately, our site doesn&...First off, welcome! Unfortunately, our site doesn't support editing, so we're generally pretty forgiving of tpyos and gramatically incorrect. <br /><br />I'd love to go through all of your designs, as there's so much there to dissect, but I'll stick with two so I finish this before its time for the next weekend challenge. <br /><br />Your rarity was generally a little off. Introspection cannot be common. Scrying for more than two is difficult to do at common in general, as it becomes much much more powerful with each incremental tick up the integer ladder. Scry X in Simic can easily and at common be scry 5 or 6 each turn, and that is powerful and time consuming. That should be something that happens once per draft, not each game. I like the upkeep trigger for the ability, but it might also be interesting to do as a sabateur ability, which gives it different uses at different points in the game and adds a bit of strategic depth to it. zefferalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13845251416516553492noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479847193762153273.post-85339397355425022732018-04-03T11:51:57.517-04:002018-04-03T11:51:57.517-04:00Paroxysm asks the question, at what point does red...Paroxysm asks the question, at what point does red's failure to net card advantage through it's style of drawing cards cross the line? I definitely think this is over the line. Yes, you're not netting cards, which is the big concern with red, but you're also making the distinction kind of meaningless since you have the potential to dig relatively deep for the thing you need. I personally think that red should be capped at three cards deep to find stuff before it really pushes up against the color pie boundaries. <br /><br />How could we fix it? Making it multicolor, either izzet or rakdos, solves the biggest problem. If you had less control over what ended up in your hand at the end of the effect, either through random discard or opponents choosing what ends up there, that would also do the trick. I like where the card is going though.zefferalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13845251416516553492noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479847193762153273.post-5219293997340880462018-04-03T11:42:14.305-04:002018-04-03T11:42:14.305-04:00I'm a fan of Nexus of Knowledge, but it's ...I'm a fan of Nexus of Knowledge, but it's doing one thing too many. Affinity for sorceries (in your graveyard) is great, but I would drop the mana reduction ability and double down on the doubling effect. <br /><br />Arguably red cares slightly more about sorceries and blue more about instants, and this card could be printed in any of Blue, Red, or Izzet. It could also easily be a rare, unless the set it's in has a heavy spell-matters theme, in which case this would be a centerpiece of the set and should stay mythic. Fantastic design.zefferalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13845251416516553492noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479847193762153273.post-6057184980138287862018-04-03T10:47:30.295-04:002018-04-03T10:47:30.295-04:00There's a lot of good stuff to dissect here, b...There's a lot of good stuff to dissect here, but for my second pick I'm going with Dyslexia (which I'm using my official powers to rename Dyslexia Charm).<br /><br />I love the thematic synergy in the abilities, even though the mechanical synergy is not especially high (not that charms need mechanical synergy between their abilities). <br /><br />My biggest concern is that each of these modes on its own is highly complex, and adding that modality to a card with all three can make for exceptionally spikey plays. It's a very interesting design, but probably needs to be rare based on complexity alone. zefferalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13845251416516553492noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479847193762153273.post-34856544949691815882018-04-03T09:13:28.576-04:002018-04-03T09:13:28.576-04:00Thanks! We're happy you found us and glad you&...Thanks! We're happy you found us and glad you're designing. It's a blast.<br /><br />Church of Theater is amazing. Designing 5 color cards is tricky, since most of the time they don't actually NEED to be 5 colors. Every single mechanic on that fits neatly into blue, for instance. But it's such a great out-of-the-box design that it would completely work as a 5-color mythic in the right set.zefferalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13845251416516553492noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479847193762153273.post-386480880462225642018-04-03T01:08:13.579-04:002018-04-03T01:08:13.579-04:00Perfectionist - Perfection _is_ the enemy of good....Perfectionist - Perfection _is_ the enemy of good. This is way more interesting than fun, as just sitting there calculating what on the board impacts it and vice versa eats up time and brainspace that could be spent playing magic. A super Mel card, and there's something interesting there, but it needs a little less rigidity.<br /><br />Snorlax is amazing, although I can't tell from the templating whether he gains you life or just your opponent. Either way, my big concern is that he can easily lead to some significant stalemates, where life totals keep rocketing up and he doesn't go anywhere. It fights against the natural inertia of the game in a big way, so testing would have to make sure that he does more than gum up the board in most games.zefferalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13845251416516553492noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479847193762153273.post-49006309358263647612018-04-02T23:20:44.700-04:002018-04-02T23:20:44.700-04:00There is Always Another Design looks interesting, ...There is Always Another Design looks interesting, but do we really need to exile our library for an absurd amount of spare parts? There are sets that may want it in that form, but is the card more interesting or less if it follows a <a rel="nofollow">Myr Incubator</a> approach? Or simply dumps 2, 5, 10, or 20 scrap tokens without touching your library? Cards that will want useless artifact dumps on the battlefield with no other bonus will either be able to immediately do what they want to do, making the exile your library meaningless, or won't, making them play around an already niche strategy for the card. It's a great place to start, but doesn't need to do the exile to be just as interesting.zefferalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13845251416516553492noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479847193762153273.post-77716151822056542018-04-02T22:57:20.531-04:002018-04-02T22:57:20.531-04:00Truth seeking is beautiful, and probably not mythi...Truth seeking is beautiful, and probably not mythic rare. It can also be templated cleaner. Target player draws three cards, then you may look at that player's hand. Choose three cards in that players hand and put them on top of that player's library in any order. It can be very mean, and would need some testing to figure out appropriate cost and rarity, but that is quite fun. Fateseal as a mechanic had problems, but on a one-off card, I like it a lot.zefferalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13845251416516553492noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479847193762153273.post-12695835178021294412018-04-02T21:34:24.929-04:002018-04-02T21:34:24.929-04:00Revisit the Question is phenomenal. It's a sol...Revisit the Question is phenomenal. It's a solid Jenny/Spike card that might be a smidge undercosted. I'd love to play around with it in standard and see if the weird and fun things I can do with it are better than the unfun games that I end up losing because of it. Very nice.zefferalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13845251416516553492noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479847193762153273.post-29393482513835816372018-04-02T21:30:58.595-04:002018-04-02T21:30:58.595-04:00I like what Freeblade Rapier and Unstoppable are t...I like what Freeblade Rapier and Unstoppable are trying to do - making something immune from a subset of abilities is always a fun space to play around in. In practice, the kinds of corner cases it creates are why Protection from X ended up being an amalgamation of so many abilities, and ultimately discarded. If the simpler version of it is to either give it hexproof or blink+haste, that's where its design will end up. Creating a new word that lets it ignore WU limited tricks most likely isn't worth the burden adding vocabulary creates.zefferalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13845251416516553492noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479847193762153273.post-23463264542238104502018-04-02T21:17:43.037-04:002018-04-02T21:17:43.037-04:00These are all interesting designs, and I wish I ha...These are all interesting designs, and I wish I had the bandwidth to provide feedback for all of them, but I really do need to limit myself to two today. <br /><br />Nonviolent methodology is a great design. It reads so similarly to <a rel="nofollow">Pacifism</a> but plays wildly differently. I'm a big fan.zefferalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13845251416516553492noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479847193762153273.post-88898224299373821132018-04-02T20:44:53.222-04:002018-04-02T20:44:53.222-04:00The original draft of this exercise had a ton more...The original draft of this exercise had a ton more restrictions, making it more GDS challenge like, but after discussing it with some others, I decided to make it a little less restrictive (but not especially less less difficult). <br /><br />Worldsoul Totem is incredibly interesting, but would totem work in a non-rare/mythic context? If not, how much benefit is there to creating new language to cover what it does? I'd like to see a vertical cycle of cards that show off the boundaries of the mechanic before simply making it a one-off card, templated so it doesn't need new language added to the game.zefferalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13845251416516553492noreply@blogger.com