CCDD 032812—Blanket of Ash & Disgruntled Tour Guide

Cool Card Design of the Day
3/28/2012 - There was a lot of interesting discussion yesterday about Oath to Raze, so I wanted to follow up. There were some readers who felt it could be cheaper at 1R or RR while others felt that even this nerfed Stone Rain would have a negative impact on Constructed formats where nonbasic lands are de-rigeur. I'm fascinated that Demolish at 3R doesn't begin to cause a problem where Stone Rain and Oath to Raze do/could, but ultimately there is a better solution to reach the goal I was aiming for.

Making Mythic Creatures

This draft has been moldering in the editing pile forever. I decided to pull it up again when I caught this comment from Metaghost in the dragons discussion: "...I think that the prominent thing this exercise has revealed to me is that part of why recent WotC dragons are boring is that the most resonant dragon tropes are boring. Or at least played out and stale." For some reason I was a little hurt by this. I think it's partly because I secretly love playing giant, terrible cards, especially dragons. Another factor may be that I'm a relentless fan boy, and I want to love everything Wizards does. But frankly, many of the mythics in the last two years (especially dragons) have been really disappointing. I think I assumed as a casual designer that making mythic creatures would be easy (surely they must be easier than red commons), but maybe it's worth reviewing what makes a mythic creature good.

CCDD 032712—Oath to Raze

Cool Card Design of the Day
3/27/2012 - The Magic 2013 design team has kept Magus of the Moon in the file for most of its life. At Ian's suggestion, I asked if it weren't prudent to remove it so that people can enjoy their shiny new duals. We decided to keep it in as a safety valve against the 7 (soon to be 10) Innistrad block rare utility lands and any scary lands Friends may bring with it. (It would only stem a couple months of Inkmoth Nexus.)

That said, sometimes the best answer is the simplest answer. Stone Rain isn't an option since it's been added to the virtual reserve list as far as R&D is concerned. We don't need to answer basic lands though, because those aren't the cards we're worried about. Can we make a simple card that destroys nonbasic lands?

CCDD 032411—Midsummer Dream

Cool Card Design of the Day
3/24/2012 - I found a rare few minutes spare and thought I'd scan my CCDD folder to find an old design that's worth sharing (many aren't, but I'm sure that's no surprise). The one I'd like to share today isn't remotely innovative, but it's very printable, has nice flavor and was created about a month before Innistrad was released.

M13 White Planeswalker

A long time back we discussed which planeswalker we wanted to use in white. We agreed on Elspeth primarily for two reasons: One, a lot of people are big fans of Elspeth as a character. I know I am. Two, Ajani had clearly been printed too much and Gideon Jura had just gotten his reprint, while neither of Elspeth's cards had been reprinted yet.

I am Iron Man

Last night while tinkering with EDH decks, Iron Man popped up on shuffle at the same time the movie came on TV (yes, I live in a world of constant overstimulation). Surely it was a sign! The cosmos were demanding to know, "What would Iron Man the Magic card look like?"

A Quick Survey

I am curious about the play habits of MtG players who are also interested in card and game design. If you have a minute, please check out this short survey, and leave a comment with your responses.

M13 Recap / Dragon

Welcome!
It occurs to me that new readers of the site will be seeing this project from the most recent post backward without context, so I wanted to offer a quick explanation and a link to the index of all posts for the series. Back in August I announced the start of a collaborative set design project. It would be a core set because it seemed like hubris for an amateur designer to start by making an expert-level expansion set. Ironically, with the perspective and experience of having worked on the set for half a year, I'm no longer convinced a core set is actually easier to design. While the level of expectation is lower, there are more requirements and more specific expectations to fulfill. Maybe when we get around to collaborating on an expert set, I'll see different.

CCDD 030912—Ire Phoenix

Cool Card Design of the Day
3/9/2012 - MTG Color Pie recently asked what color you would move the Phoenix to. His concern being—as I understand it—that red doesn't normally get creature recursion and thus that this creature type is out of color. He's quite right that red doesn't get creature recursion and I would agree that the existence of phoenixes doesn't justify more red cards that recur creatures, but I say you could never put a phoenix in another color and that they do red good.

The important distinction is that the source of the rebirth for the phoenix is fire. White can resurrect, black can animate corpses and green can survive what would kill less hearty creatures. Red can't do any of that. But it can, in this one instance, be reborn through flame.

M13 Mythic Dragon part III

This dragon discussion has been a lot of fun for me. Therapeutic, even. It's a real challenge to find red dragon designs that really deserve to be mythic, are appropriate for core sets in general and M13 in specific, and not trumped by some pre-existing design. That said, thanks to all your brilliant ideas and feedback, we've got some real contenders. Here's the latest version of my short list (I know, it's not that short; you all have too many great ideas):

CCDD 030112—Break Morale

Cool Card Design of the Day
3/1/2012 - It's been a while since my last post. There was a death in the family and then work exploded. I'm still catching up so I haven't had a chance to post another update on the M13 Dragon discussion, but I wanted to get something up, so here's a quick CCDD.

This is a top-down design, so I'll let you read it before I explain anything.