Design Challenge #1: Results

First of all, many thanks to everyone who participated in this design challenge!  I hadn't expected so many responses, and I enjoyed reading all your submissions.  There was a great deal of skill and creativity in every one of them, and choosing the top three was difficult.  

The challenge was:

Submit three cards with the following constraints:

• Your three cards must be "accidentally deleted from the design file" for Innistrad, Scars of Mirrodin, and Zendikar. 

• No two of your cards may share a color or type.

• Your cards must include one common, one uncommon, and one rare or mythic rare.

The judging will be based on the normal criteria (fun, elegance, flavor, comprehensibility, color/rarity appropriateness) and on how naturally each card fits into the set.  The perfect card should make the reader think, "Yeah, why didn't they print that?"

All cards have had art and flavor text removed.  (Since neither were required or considered in judging, I thought this was the most fair way to present the cards.)  I've also edited them very slightly for templating consistency.

Honorable Mention: Zendikar

Winner: Jules Robins

Peak Hurler (Rare)
1RR
Creature - Giant Berserker
3/1
Landfall—Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, target creature gets +X/+0 until end of turn, where X is Peak Hurler’s power.

Timmy's eyes get very, very big when he opens this card.  Amazing with any sort of landfall shenanigans, and the targeted pump makes him versatile as well.  The one flaw is that the creature type is almost certainly wrong: a giant does not have 1 toughness.

Honorable Mention: Scars of Mirrodin

Winner: Mad Olaf

Glistening Wellspring (Common)
2
Artifact
When Glistening Wellspring enters the battlefield or is put into the graveyard from the battlefield, proliferate.

This innocuous card is synergystic with everything: metalcraft, infect, artifact sac outlets, anything with charge counters... a wonderful cog.  Fun in limited, Johnny-tastic in casual constructed.

Honorable Mention: Innistrad

Winner: Trevor Murdock

Darkness Falls (common)
1B
Sorcery
Zombie creatures you control get +2/+2 and gain intimidate until end of turn.

The counterpart to Moonmist and Vampiric Fury.  Nice flavor: as night falls, the distant moaning of "braaaains" gets closer and scarier.  I think this should probably be +1/+1, since it feels a bit too beefy for a black pump card, but that's a minor quibble.

And now for the top three!

Third Place

Winner: Evan Swanzy

Unsteady Propagation (Common)
G
Enchantment
Enchant land
Landfall - Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, untap enchanted land.

This is a clever riff on green mana acceleration that would fit well in Zendikar.  It probably needs to be "Enchant Forest" so as to avoid stepping on Lotus Cobra's metaphorical toes, and cost 2G, but other than that I like it.

Soul Sucking Sword (Rare)
5
Artifact - Equipment
Imprint — Whenever a creature dies, you may exile it. If you do, return all other creatures exiled with Soul Sucking Sword to their owners' graveyards.
Equipped creature has all activated abilities of the exiled creature and gets +X/+0, where X is the exiled creature’s power.
Equip 3

Does this remind anyone else of Stormbringer?  Fantastic flavor, and good use of Imprint.  It's also nicely creepy and Phyrexian.

Lurking in the Mist (Uncommon)
U
Instant
Until end of turn, you may cast creature spells in your hand as though they had flash.

Again, a big flavor hit.  This card is so simple, I'm a bit surprised they've never printed it.  It could easily be a cantrip like Quicken, just to make it a bit more appealing.

Second Place

Winner: Jay Treat

Char the Earth (Common)
2R
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant Land
When Char the Earth enters the battlefield, it deals 3 damage to enchanted land's controller.
Enchanted land gains "T: Add 1 to your mana pool" and loses all other abilities.

This card is a great role-player: land destruction in a block that needs it without complete mana denial, plus a miniature Lava Axe in an aggressive format.  I'm torn on whether this really belongs at common.  On the one hand, it plays almost identically to Spreading Seas.  However, it looks more complicated at first glance.

Alluring Vampire (Uncommon)
2B
Creature - Vampire Siren
2/2
T: Target creature attacks or blocks this turn if able.

Less is more, and Jay gets major elegance points here.  This can force your opponent into bad attacks or blocks, or allow your other vampires to get through for their +1/+1 counters.  We usually see effects like these in colors other than black, but as a top-down card, I find it entirely reasonable to stretch the color pie for this combination.  My one nitpick is that "siren" is its own race, and I'm not sure that a "vampire siren" makes sense.

Macabre Machine (Rare)
4
Artifact
At the beginning of your upkeep, if there are ten or more charge counters on Macabre Machine, you win the game.
Exile a creature card from any graveyard, T: Put a charge counter on Macabre Machine.
Pay 1 life: Untap Macabre Machine.

This card doesn't mention poison or proliferate, but it manages to feel very Phyrexian indeed.  It grinds away, corpse by corpse, until the work is done... and you can feed it your own life force to speed up the job!  This is a flavor slam-dunk.

First Place

Winner: Jacob Munford

Chimes of the Wayfarer (Mythic Rare)
3
Legendary Artifact
T: Add 1 mana of any color to your mana pool. Use this mana only to cast creature spells.
Landfall - Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, put a 1/1 white Soldier Ally creature token onto the battlefield.

This card speaks for itself; there's not a whole lot of subtlety here.  But sometimes, subtlety isn't necessary.  This massively boosts Ally decks, but is not so fast or hard to answer as to be un-fun.  Opening one of these in draft would feel pretty marvelous.

Tragic Portent (Common)
4B
Sorcery
Each player loses life equal to the number of poison counters they have.

Yes, this card is bad.  It's an unreliable Lava Axe in a deck that doesn't care about its opponent's life total.  However, this is a useful kind of bad card, because it's tempting.  Some inexperienced players will see this and think, "Hey, I'm playing a poison deck!  This fits in perfectly with my theme."  Then they'll play it, discover that it sucks, and learn an important lesson.  Like Wurm's Tooth and friends, this card serves a useful purpose for weaker players.

Geist of Lost Dreams (Uncommon)
3U
Creature - Spirit
1/1
Flying
Whenever you cast a spell from your graveyard, put a +1/+1 counter on Geist of Lost Dreams.

The name is actually carrying a lot of weight here.  Because the concept of a ghost made of lost dreams is such a good mechanical fit for Flashback, the card feels both complete and natural.  In fact, it's a much better flavor hit than Burning Vengeance or Secrets of the Dead.  This would also be a welcome addition to many limited archetypes and casual constructed.  

Congratulations to all the winners, and thank you all for playing!  The next challenge will go up soon.