Thursday, February 28, 2013

CCDD 022813—Hunter of the Infernal

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/28/2013 - What if instead of inhibiting interaction with Protection, we had an alternative that promotes interaction. The downside is that Hunter of the Infernal can't block all day like Elite Inquisitor, but the upside is that you get to attack your demons rather than attack past them, which is an odd thing for a monster hunter to do.

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

CCDD 022713—Westfield Marshal

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/27/2013 - I've been living in this run-down dirt-trap they call Westfield County almost a year now. The closest I've got to a friend is the judge whose a bit too eager to string up the lowlifes I bring in. Hell, if I arrested everyone who broke the law around here, three of these towns would be nothing but tree ornaments.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Set Design: Unanswered Question #1

First, I'd like to apologize to our readers for the fact that our set design project has slowed to a snail's pace. The unexpected windfall of free time to which I alluded in this post has vanished. To make a long story short, I was unable to sing for a few months, but am now healthy again and hard at work. That's an excellent outcome for me personally, but not quite so good for having time to blog.

Nevertheless, I intend to keep this ball rolling, and hope that you're still excited about it too! We've narrowed the field to three worlds: Ankh-Theb, Ekkremes, and Frontier. While the original plan was to select one of the three based on the final round of pitches, there are some major unanswered questions that need to be addressed before we move forward. And so, since we have a big crowd of people who love nothing more than solving design problems, we're going to crowd-source those answers before making the final decision.

The first question is about Frontier, our Wild West candidate. We almost certainly want a mechanic to represent gunslinging. Of course, it won't be with actual guns- perhaps some sort of wandslinging? It might take the form of a keyword ability, a keyword action, or neither of the above. It probably goes on creatures.

Tell us, faithful readers: What kind of mechanic can we use to represent gunslinging?

CCDD 022613—Phantom of the Loch

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/26/2013 - Everybody wants to block Stealer of Secrets, but nobody wants to block Slate Street Ruffian. What if we married the two to make a blue creature that your opponents don't want to block?

Friday, February 22, 2013

Ankh-Theb: Make your life now - Your next is not your own.

HV: This pitch is by James Bartolotti.  Here are the pitches from rounds onetwo, and three.

Mechanical Themes: Green and Blue have a theme of growth, realized with harvest counters that you gain from your creatures and spend for effects. White and Black interact with death, by avoiding it (the Mummify mechanic), or defiling it (e.g., Fallen Kathari). Red tribes make their life in the desert,  returning to strike at civilization in one large attack.



Weekend Art Challenge—022213 Takeru-San


Weekend Art Challenge
The first Gatecrash Art Challenge last week went smashingly, so let's keep it up.

Click to see this weekend's art and requirements.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

CCDD 022113—Direlion

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/21/2013 - I've designed this card a few times. I'm amused by the idea that the cost to grow your creature increases with its size. The result is a card that's useful at any point in the game, that you can invest excess mana into, and that grows as you desire, but not in an unbounded fashion that requires it to be rare or mythic like Primordial Hydra.

Random is the New Shuffle

Adding more randomizing elements to MtG is something that had always sounded cool to me. I loved the dice cards like Growth Spurt from Unglued (which is saying alot, because I hated the Unsets as a whole), and one of my favorite mechanics in my old GDS2 project was a dice rolling/level-up monster baby. Even though that mechanic was universally hated by community, I was convinced that some variant could work. However, after listening to Mark Rosewater’s podcasts on designing Innistrad and playing a blue-red burn deck with Desperate Ravings in Standard for a while, I’ve decided that “at random” effects are largely a failed experiment.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

CCDD 022013—Flower Wasp

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/20/2013 - How green can do Hornet Sting without bleeding the color pie:

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

CCDD 021913—Vine Maiden

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/19/2013 - Vine Maiden was inspired while reading Mark Rosewater's Designing for Simic. It's not a Simic card mind you, but it is blue-green. It's entirely possible she needs to cost 5 or even 6 (or just be rare).

Monday, February 18, 2013

Weekend Art Challenge Review 021513—Tsabo6


Weekend Art Challenge Review
Wow. You guys really went all out on this challenge and I couldn't be more pleased. There are 17 entries, not counting my designs. Awesome. This won't be short, so let's jump right in.

Friday, February 15, 2013

Weekend Art Challenge 021513—Tsabo6

Weekend Art Challenge
Inspired by the success of the Gatecrash Art Challenge, I'm going to try a new weekly activity. Each Friday (assuming this takes off), I'll post a piece of art and a set of requirements. You'll submit your card in text form in the comments before Monday morning (~9AM EST) and I'll post and review all the submissions as soon as I have time—ideally the same day but at least by the following Friday. Your own opinions will be most welcome, as well.

Click to see this weekend's art and requirements.

CCDD 021513—Graveyard Vagrant

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/15/2013 - Scathe Zombies meets Reassembling Skeleton.

Haakon, Stromgald Scourge pouts.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

CCDD 021413—Crack the Whip

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/14/2013 - Wha-Chi! Wha-Chi!

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

CCDD 021313—To Greener Pastures

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/13/2013 - What would a modern Land Tax look like? Knight of the White Orchid and Kor Cartographer are the most recent implementations. They don't show up often (nor should they, as the effect dangerously encroaches on already too-similar Green), but I think these cards show that it's still part of white's color pie.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

CCDD 021213—Mist Dryad / Ethereal

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/12/2013 - Ethereal is a very meta mechanic. Its weird enough that it wouldn't appear on sufficient cards to justify keywording it. Even if you wanted to put the word on the card to help drive a set's theme, you'd probably just use an ability word. That's not what I want to talk about, though. Here's an ethereal card:

Monday, February 11, 2013

CCDD 021113—Rewire

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/11/2013 - Inspired loosely by Frontline Medic, which seemed to beg the question "What else can we do with X spells?", I present Rewire.

Saturday, February 9, 2013

The Coolest Card from Gatecrash

...is probably not the one you were expecting. It doesn’t have any blog-o-sphere buzz, and it’s unlikely to set the tournament scene ablaze. But when it comes to a cool card, I guess you could say that those factors are immaterial.



Friday, February 8, 2013

CCDD 020813—Soul Ooze

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/8/2013 - There are no white OozesCrusader of Odric and Ajani's Pridemate are about as close as you get to white creatures that work like oozes, but I'm looking for a literal creature-type Ooze. What would a white ooze look like?

<dreamSequence waveyLines='true'>

Our theoretical white Ooze pretty much has to key off of either creatures entering the battlefield or life gained. Cathars' Crusade mechanically oozes your team but is just an enchantment. Juniper Order Ranger is very oozey, but again, neither mono-white nor technically an Ooze. I might've mocked one up like this, except Champion of the Parish is already doing it better.

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

CCDD 020613—Magma Pulse

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/6/2013 - Seething Song's recent banning got me thinking about rituals. The core premise is that you're trading card advantage for a one-shoot mana advantage. Despite that sounding like a bad deal at face value, Magic's mana system is so crucial to the flow of the game, that trading a card for two mana can be more than worthwhile, whether on turn 1 or 3.

Even so, one mana has never really been a problem (I'm thinking Elvish Spirit Guide as opposed to Sol Ring or Mox Ruby here), so can we find a mid-point?


Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Frontier: Land of the Lawless

HV: This pitch is by Jules Robins. Here are the pitches from rounds onetwo, and three.

Which set are you pitching?

Frontier

What is the name of your pitch? 

Land of the Lawless

What are the major mechanical themes in the set according to your vision?

Duels at high noon: duel (Each duelist draws a card, then discards a card. You win if the discarded cards share a card type.)

Gold rush: Prospect--Whenever ~ attacks, reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a land card, then put all cards revealed this way on the bottom of your library in any order. DO SOMETHING for each card revealed this way.

Slaughtered natives: Bloodline (When ~ dies, exile any number of creature cards from your graveyard and put that many 1/1 colorless Spirit creature tokens onto the battlefield.)

Banditry: "Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player" triggers.

Present a booster pack (10 commons, 3 uncommons, and 1 rare or mythic rare) that shows off the set as well as possible.  These cards need not be original designs; previous challenges and other people's ideas are fair game.

CCDD 020513—Mountain Giant

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/5/2013 - While reading MaRo's Boros article, I was thinking about how great haste is at enabling battalion, and how terrible battalion is at granting haste. What if your creature could attack the turn you cast it, but only if you attack with two or more other creatures?

Monday, February 4, 2013

CCDD 020413—Vampire's Secret


Cool Card Design of the Day
2/4/2013 - What if Demonic Tutor were symmetrical?

Friday, February 1, 2013

CCDD 020113—The Grey Maiden

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/1/2013 - I saw this art and immediately went back to Sorceress Queen. I wanted something that harkened back to the old Arabian Nights classic, evoked the deadly serenity of the art, and is powerful but not broken by modern standards. I wouldn't say I nailed it, but this is pretty decent.

Gatecrash Art Challenge 13 — Ryan Barger




Today we're covering Ryan Barger's art.