Friday, July 8, 2011

CCDD 070811—Mox Amethyst

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/8/2011 - It is a time-honored tradition among Magic designers and developers to fix beloved, broken cards of old. The Moxen are right at the top of this list and have seen a few updates: Chrome Mox, Mox Opal, and Mox Diamond if we ignore Lotus hybrids and Un- cards. Those are all strong cards and solid updates. Today I present half a mox.


Beyond the half-idea, this is obviously inspired by landfall. I like that it requires you to play lands, which sounds trivial out of context but would actually be relevant in a legacy deck running as many moxen as possible. That said, there is a cleaner more-to-the-point execution:


If you hate counters and love remembering things, you can go even simpler, but I really don't recommend it: The last thing you want to worry about during a complex board state is which of your faux-lands don't untap this turn.


11 comments:

  1. I think the first one is the best. Straight-up giving you an extra mana every other turn doesn't seem right to me, though I can't articulate why.

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  2. Jeweled Amulet?

    http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=184639

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  3. Interesting designs. Designing new Moxes is a dangerous thing to do, but also exciting, of course. Your second and third designs are very similar to and strictly better than Jeweled Amulet. On the other hand, Jeweled Amulet wasn't good enough to see play at the time, so perhaps the second design moves it to a better spot, power-wise.

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  4. Hmm, if I take 12 hours to press "post comment", I'm likely to get ninjad.

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  5. I definitely missed the existence of Jeweled Amulet. Probably because I saw it back when it was printed (in Ice Age) and promptly forgot it ever existed. Neither is it worth playing, nor is it clean design.

    Jeweled Amulet, I do not apologize for stepping on your ugly little toes.

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  6. I think the "cleaned up" version of Jeweled Amulet from the ARCCD is a fine little card. The concept is incredibly elegant and flavorful. Store a mana, get it back later. Easy-peasy.

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  7. When will there be a Goblin Artisans podcast??

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  8. While the design value for these are fine and decently powerful (especially the landfall one), I really don't like how easily playable these are. The new Moxen (Diamond, Chrome, Opal) all have significant drawbacks and/or deck constraints, yet feel very good in the decks they are in (except maybe Chrome Mox, which Ad Naus/TES only wants to see during Ad Naus :P). I feel like every deck in Standard would throw in 4 of these since starting with 1 or 2 on turn 1 would be such an advantage, even if it is only every other turn.

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  9. Another fan of the Jeweled Amulet here too :8

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