CCDD 073114—Spawning Toad

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/31/2014 - Spawnwrithe definitely deserved to come first. It's more fun because it's more interactive. That said, if Pack Rats are okay to print, a card that's a compromise between the two might be promising too. Mostly though, I just wanted a creature that you could cast every turn.

Tesla: Pick and Choose

Over the past few weeks we’ve done a lot of work to get Tesla rolling. We’ve run a playtest with a bunch of mechanics we designed and in addition to getting the testers’ thoughts we’ve discussed which we liked, and how they could be improved. Now it’s time to decide what we’re going to keep working with and what we should replace. These mechanics will almost undoubtedly change over the course of design (if they make it through at all), so rather than asking you to vote on a particular implementation, I’m asking you to choose space you’d like to continue to play around with. Below are a few examples of how to use that space as well as my own thoughts on how good a fit it is for Tesla. You can vote for any number of mechanics from zero to all of them, everything with at least 33% of the vote will stay in the file in some form, the rest will sit out for now.

CCDD 073014—Attune

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/29/2014 - What if you could dedicate a single land toward casting a spell? Attune works a lot like suspend, but allows you to cast a spell with just one land over several turns.

CCDD 072914—Bear Den

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/29/2014 - Da Bears!

CCDD 072814—Psychic Strike

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/28/2014 - Mark Rosewater's article exploring cost-reduction design space last week was serious fuel for the fire. This idea came from Arc-Slogger. There are two ways to make paying cards from your library as a cost more appealing: To justify it thematically, and to make what you mill relevant, so that you feel good about milling big cards.

CCDD 072414—Summon the Sea

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/24/2014 - Top-down… and busted.

Tesla: Put it to the Test

For those of you who might have missed it, throughout the last week we playtested a variety of mechanical elements exploring the theme of progress for Tesla. First of all I want to offer up a big thank you to everyone who participated in the playtesting or contributed designs for it. I compiled as many of those as I could and filled out the rest of the commons to play with. Things went really well and we learned a lot, as can you by reading through the playtesters’ observations.

CCDD 072314—Ornate Study

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/23/2014 - In Sam Stod's last multiverse article, someone used the phrase "the rich get richer." That's something we want to be careful about in game design, as a runaway leader can turn a game into a foregone conclusion, or prevent more exciting turnabouts. Even so, I couldn't help but brainstorm a couple keywords that take that phrase literally.

CCDD 072214—Quickscale Chanter / Greatreef Relay

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/22/2014 - Here's a Vedalken Orrery on a stick. But not as strong as Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir (who single-handedly turned off an entire keyword of cards from his own block).

Weekly Art Challenge 071814—artofjustaman

Weekly Art Challenge
Click through to see this week's art and the design requirements for your single card submission. Submit any time before the next challenge is posted. Every submission warrants feedback, which I will try to provide, and which everyone is welcome to provide as well. You may use that feedback to revise your submission any number of times.

CCDD 071714—Enforcer of the Forgotten

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/17/2014 - At face-value, Enforcer of the Forgotten exists either to make single-card lobotomies more effective or to combo with an effect that exiles cards from your opponent's library. It also happens to hose suspend, rebound, Misthollow Griffin, and similar mechanics that let you play cards directly from exile.

Goblin Artisans Turns 500,000

Hey folks.
The blog surpassed 500,000 page views today, with a recent average of 15,000 per month. Those are fairly impressive numbers for a site like this, and all the moreso when you consider the quality of the GA community. Thanks to my fellow authors, and to this amazing group of brilliant, creative, honest and supportive designers.

You all rock.

CCDD 071614—Battle Standard

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/16/2014 - A dirt simple update to Konda's Banner, intended to give any color access to a Glorious Anthem effect, inspired by the M15 Paragons.

CCDD 071514—Elvish Explorer

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/15/2014 - This guy is meant to reward you for playing lots of different lands. I like the basic idea, but I iterated it on and want to show you some other options and discuss the merits of each.

Tesla: Progress Playtest #1 Observations

We're in the midst of testing progress mechanics for Tesla. This page will serve as a place for playtesters to document their thoughts, experiences, and observations about the mechanics we're testing and the environment in general.

If you'd like to help out, but didn't sign up, there's still time. Just shoot me an email (julesdrobinsATgmailDOTcom) and I'll get you everything you need to join. Find times to playtest via Doodle.

CCDD 071414—Inhuman Rage

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/14/2014 - Sure, you could block my fatty this turn...

Weekend Art Design Challenge 071114—ursulav

Weekend Art Challenge
Click through to see this weekend's art and the design requirements for your single card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, which I will try to provide, and which everyone is welcome to provide as well. You may use that feedback to revise your submission any number of times.

Tesla: Common Cause

Last week I announced that we would be preparing to playtest Tesla. There will be opportunities to play all next week, so if you’re interested make sure to fill in your availability here.

For the time being, let's figure out what we're testing with.

CCDD 070914—Graveyard Gourmand

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/9/2014 - What if I could be rewarded for attacking, even if it means trading my creatures for yours? This keyword aims to do that by mirroring bloodthirst (which rewards you for getting through with at least one creature).

CCDD 070814—Keeper of the Night

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/8/2014 - Flying Blood Bairn.

Weekend [Art] Design Challenge—070414

Weekend Art Challenge
Click through to see this weekend's design requirements for your single card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, which I will try to provide, and which everyone is welcome to provide as well. You may use that feedback to revise your submission any number of times.

Tesla: Change of Pace

We’ve been discussing how to express progress and change for Tesla in general sense. I’m sure we could debate possible mechanics until the end of time, but at the end of the day that’s not enough. After all, Magic sets need to do more than look good; they need to play well. Thus we need to play with the cards. That leaves us with two things to take care of: scheduling a playtest and deciding on cards to play with.

CCDD 070214—Curse of Withering

Cool Card Design of the Day
4/2/2014 - It's funny. I added "when ~ ETB" to this card to make it more relevant (because even though it can kill most creatures eventually, taking 4+ turns to do so is a serious failing) but now I think it's too good for {B}. Given that it's unlikely to see much Constructed play regardless, this might be an opportunity to skip the fair-ish cost of {1}{B} and go straight to {2}{B}, acting as the kind of removal drafters can pick up later (which is a good thing for a draft).