Tibalt's Bag of Tricks

Tibalt's Trickery caught the eye of the Magic player base as soon as it was revealed. It was a counterspell in red, something that hadn't been heard of before; not only that, the rest of the text was exceptionally bizarre, involving milling, random decisions, and Chaos Warp effects. While it looks like it was added at random, this text is Wizards' best attempt at preventing abuse while maintaining a smooth pace of gameplay. But is it the optimal decision, and what else could have been used instead? Let's find out together.

CCDD 010920 – Evolved Wilds

Core 2019 had a focus on eliminating as many tutor and shuffle effects as possible. It made me think: Is it possible to completely eliminate shuffling from Magic except for once at the start of each game?

CCDD 102318—Gaea's Benediction

Cool Card Design of the Day
I found this Gaea's Blessing variant while ideating on a Beacon of Creation challenge. It didn't end up fulfilling the challenge, but it's interesting enough to share.

Tinkering With the "No-Shuffle Solution"

Aaron Forsythe had some interesting Twitter comments about R&D's move towards using "look at the top N cards for [card type(s)], put it into your hand and the rest on the bottom" technology rather than tutoring or card draw, which led to a discussion of whether the mechanic inherently had bad feelings associated with it.