CCDD 071714—Enforcer of the Forgotten

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/17/2014 - At face-value, Enforcer of the Forgotten exists either to make single-card lobotomies more effective or to combo with an effect that exiles cards from your opponent's library. It also happens to hose suspend, rebound, Misthollow Griffin, and similar mechanics that let you play cards directly from exile.

CCDD 060211—What If Magic Were Always Fun

Cool Card Design of the Day
6/2/2011 - Last week, Sam Stod wrote an excellent article on the importance of randomness and — more specifically — land screw in Magic. It's not the first article to take this position; Mark Rosewater and more than one developer have discussed this as well. I'm going to take a stand here and call them all wrong.

To summarize the major points supporting the other side: Randomness is necessary, land-screw allows players to beat better players occasionally, and the land system rewards better deck builders. All of those are true statements and important considerations for the game, but I claim that none of them depend on the system being as flawed as it is.

Rules Fixes: The Legend Rule

Honestly, sometimes I wonder if Mark Rosewater's trolling his own column. In case you missed it, a couple weeks ago MaRo effectively threw down the gauntlet and challenged the community to design a better legend rule. Even if he didn't quite do it on purpose, his post started 27 pages (and counting) of forum chatter and managed to elicit a response from Tom LaPille of Magic R&D and "Latest Developments" fame. As a result, I've grotesquely over-invested my time on this troll-foolery, and here's what I've come up with: