CCDD 123113—Break the Ice

Cool Card Design of the Day
12/31/2013 - Happy New Year!

Weekend Art Challenge Review 122713—Sandara

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Here's the challenge we're reviewing today.

Weekend Art Challenge 122713—Sandara

Weekend Art Challenge
Click through to see this weekend's art and the design requirements for your card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, which I will try to provide, and which everyone is welcome to provide as well.

If you choose, you may use that feedback to revise your submission any number of times. I will post and review the most recent submission from each designer some time on Monday, life permitting. To help ensure I recreate your design accurately, please use CARDNAME instead of ~ in your submissions.

Theros Review (Part 1—Multicolor)

The problem with reviewing a set when it first comes out is that all your opinions are speculation. No matter how talented or experienced you are at dissecting new sets and predicting card value, deck archetypes and how much fun it'll all be, you don't have the perspective born from playing with those actual cards in the actual environment and that will limit the value of your writing.

The flipside is that no one will care what you think if you write about it after everyone knows the environment. Unless you're not writing strategy tips, but instead analyzing the set for game design nuggets. Let's do that now, with a season of perspective under our belts.

Multicolor

Agent of Horizons and 9 more cards comprise a double cycle of common creatures with off-color activated abilities. These cards push players toward two-color combinations and help give direction in a draft without hurting a player's chance of casting her spells like gold cards do. For that reason, all five ally color pairs and all five enemy color pairs are represented—to keep the format interesting, we want at least those 10 decks to exist and have unique identities. Some of these cards are better than others (which is inevitable for a large cycle) and that might be an indication that Development thought the {B}{G} deck needed less help than the {U}{B} deck, for instance.

CCDD 122513—Astronomer's Journey

Cool Card Design of the Day
12/25/2013 - Merry Christmas!

CCDD 122413—Nature's Path

Cool Card Design of the Day
12/24/2013 - Nature's Path is Ranger's Path without the acceleration. Or Gaea's Bounty for a mono-green deck. Or a Divination but… you get the picture.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 122013—ChrisCold

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Here's the challenge we're reviewing today.