CCDD 092012—Moorland Bandit

Cool Card Design of the Day
9/20/2012 - This black two-drop might be the love-child of Surrakar Marauder and Bloodthrone Vampire, with Psychatog as her godfather. Inspired from the art, I was looking for something that evoked the mercenary feel but with a necro-twist that explains why she's hanging around in a graveyard.

CCDD 091812—Challenge the Mighty

Cool Card Design of the Day
9/18/2012 - Here are three iterations of a design based on a piece of art and a name. I wanted to share the thought process that some cards go through. The first two versions have serious problems but the last one is pretty decent.

Challenge #9: Duh, Winning!

L'Shana Tovah, designers! May the year 5773 be happy and Magic-al for all of you.

This week's contest is difficult, and will present a serious challenge to your creativity. Alternate victory condition cards only come along once every few sets. Your challenge is to design one that's different from any we've seen before. (EDIT: This includes the recently spoiled Azor's Elecutors.)

E-mail your card to tweetforcealpha@gmail.com by midnight (Pacific Time) on Friday, September 21. The winners will be posted on Monday, September 24. This challenge is open to everyone. One entry per person. Please specify your preferred name or pseudonym. Entries may be edited slightly for consistent templating. If you are interested in having your submission publicly critiqued, put the word "critique" in the subject line of your e-mail.

CCDD 091712—Interminable March

Cool Card Design of the Day
9/17/2012 - This illustration by Brent Hallowell needed to be a card. The mood gave me the card name, the name gave me the ability, and the ability gave me the color. You might question that last part when you see the card, so let's take a look now. I'll explain when you're done.

CCDD 091412—Parasitosmosis

Cool Card Design of the Day
9/14/2012 - Fungal Sprouting rewards you for having a big creature. That's a good thing. Players enjoy big creatures and it does the game good to reinforce fun strategies. That said, every* strategy needs a counter strategy, which got me thinking about a version of the card that cares about your opponent's biggest creature. One logical twist later and you've got two new cards:

CCDD 091312—Prey Tracker

Cool Card Design of the Day
9/13/2012 - Prey Tracker is the result of this recent conversation. The first version is needlessly complicated but demonstrates my attempt to duplicate the ability to attack tapped creatures instead of players in Kaijudo. The main problem is the awkward wording, but even without that, we also lose something in translation: In Kaijudo, creatures with blocker can intercept any attack, even against one of your other creatures.

This is very similar to Axxle's Brawling Goblin:

Challenge #8: Critique

Axxle submitted the following combat-based mechanic for critique:

Brawling Goblin
R
Creature - Goblin
When ~ attacks, you may have it fight target creature.
1/1

This is a simple and elegant trigger.  The flavor implications are quite clear and resonant.  But there's a huge risk in printing a card like this, one which is not entirely obvious without some historical context.  (This overview will be familiar to many Goblin Artisans readers, but I think it'll be interesting to some.)