Weekend Art Design Challenge 20200807 - ZendikART Rising (1)

Happy Friday, Artisans! Click through to see this weekend's design parameters. With those as your guidelines, design a custom magic card. Over the course of the weekend, give feedback to your fellow designers on their designs, and incorporate their feedback to iterate on your own. If I have time over the course of next week, I will try to offer some of my own feedback.

Zeffrikommons Part 4: Ash to Bone

Hello? Is this thing on? 1-2, 1-2?

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Zeffrikommons, Part 1: Common Red Creatures

Here on GA, we tend to put a lot of focus on designing individual cards and mechanics. This is great for the feedback we provide and encourage, and I think that it's a great set of development tools for all of us, especially those of us planning on competing in the next GDS. In fact, the types of designs we spend most of our time on here pushes the skills MaRo & Co. were looking at when selecting the finalists for GDS2. After the essays and the test, we had to design 10 cards that would be used to showcase a set during the course of a preview week. The emphasis was on designing one card to fill one slot that appealed to a particular type of player/reader.

Zeffrikar This or That 1: Ramping into Madness

Sometimes the discussion that broader design pieces generates results in a lot of disjointed conversations in the comments. There are a number of issues raised in BfZ threads that I'd like to continue with a more focused approach. First up is going to be a good look at my manabond mechanic.

Zeffrikar Exploratory Design Part 3: A Lack of Color Here

There are a few more mechanical areas that we need to explore before we start selecting keywords for the final count. Today I'm tackling some land mechanics for the set to dabble in, and taking a look at the needs and wants of the inscrutable Eldrazi.

Zeffrikar Exploratory Design Part 2: Everything that Isn't Landfall

Now that I've solidified my stance on Landfall's return in Zeffrikar, it's time to look at the other Zendikar mechanics a little more in-depth. I've already given my one-sentence ratings for these, but we can dig a little deeper.

Zeffrikar Tangent 1: Excavating Zendikar

Introduction: Bury the Lead

On MTGO, they just released this really cool idea of a product (I can't testify as to whether it's actually cool or not, I avoid MTGO most of the time). Tempest Remastered. Take a block that wrapped up seventeen years ago, cultivate the cards from across the sets down to 250 or so, and make it as close to modern draftable as the card pool allows. It's a great idea, and I hope it sells a billion digital packs so they do it with some other blocks. It's a set that lets them capture the nostalgia of the past sets while skipping over the fact that they're pretty terrible to draft with by modern standards.

Zeffrikar Exploratory Design Part 1: Past as Prologue

This is the first part of my Design Vision Document for the set, what is going to be the rough equivalent of R&D's Exploratory Design. Obviously nothing is set in stone (Zendikar jokes), and I'll probably change direction more than a few times over the life of this project, but at least at the outset, here are the ideas I’m going to be keeping in mind before setting up a skeleton and doing a first pass at the commons.

Introducing... BfZ?

I am not one of the people who was super-pumped when Wizards announced Battle for Zendikar a little while ago. When it came out, Zendikar was kind of a flop for me, more so than any set since Prophecy. I fully realize that I'm in the minority here, and that Zendikar was pretty successful as far as Magic sets go, but I found the overall design of the set boring. R&D were still finding their feet with NWO, and as a result a lot of the design space they mined for the commons felt very repetitive. There just wasn't a whole lot going on in most packs to pique my Johnny-mind.

Zeffrikar Index

Here's a quick reference for Zeffrikar mechanics and other design concerns:

Current draft archetypes:

• {W}{U}: Trap Tempo
• {W}{B}: Weenies/Sac
• {U}{B}: Mill(drazi)
• {U}{R}: Colorless Matters
• {B}{R}: Attrition Control
• {B}{G}: Lands Lands Lands! (Landfall and Excavate - Tempo)
• {R}{G}: Eldrazi Ramp
• {R}{W}: Equipment aggro
• {G}{W}: Weenie aggro
• {G}{U}: Voltron Battlecruiser

Current Mechanics:

• Moonburst (~ enters the battlefield with a +1/+/1 counter for each colorless mana used to pay for it)
• Not in White, less frequent in Black
• Ghostfire -- Whenever you cast a colorless spell, [effect]
• Red and Blue, uncommon in Black
• Excavate N (To excavate N, put an excavation counter on each of N target lands you control that don't have an excavation counter on them)
• Example:
• Enchantment: When ~ etb, Excavate 3. Whenever you excavate, target player puts the top card of her library into her graveyard.
• In all colors, moreso in Green and Black
• Trap
• All colors, blue and white care about the subtype
• Landfall
• Green and Black at common, others infrequently at higher rarities
• Quest - Enchantment: When [Condition], sac ~ and [effect]
• All colors
• DFC Creatures
• All colors
• Milldrazi N (Whenever ~ attacks, defending player puts the top N cards of her library into her graveyard)
• Colorless, Blue and Black
• Bravado N (Whenever ~ blocks, becomes blocked, or fights another creature, it gets +N/+N ueot)
• All colors, although maybe not in Blue
• Colorless
• Some spells with colored costs will have a CDA making it colorless.
• Eldrazi Spawn
• Made by Colorless, Red, and Green spells, and Black at higher rarities

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Here are links to all the Zeffrikar posts to date:

Introduction

Stage 1: Exploratory Design

• Part 1: Past as Prologue
• Tangent 1: Excavating Zendikar
• Part 2: Everything that Isn't Landfall
• CCDD 052115: Explore
• Part 3: A Lack of Color Here
• CCDD 052715: Eldrazi Adolescent
• This or That 1: Ramping into Madness
• CCDD 060115: Unfeeling
• CCDD 060215: Ulamog's Gorger (Bloodfeast)
• Weekend Art Challenge 060515: quaz

Stage 2: Early Design

• Zeffrikommons Part 1: Red Common Creatures
• Zeffrikommons Part 2: White Creatures and Spells
• Zeffrikommons Part 3: Cyclical Behavior