CCDD 093014—Icepeak Denizen

Cool Card Design of the Day
9/30/2014 - Worse hexproof. Worse shroud, actually, but that could be changed with the addition of three words.

Weekend Design Challenge 092614

Weekend Design Challenge
Greetings, artisans! Click through to see this weekend's design requirements for your single card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, and everyone is encouraged to give feedback. You may use that feedback to revise your submission any number of times, though only the version rendered will be included in the review, if that happens.

CCDD 092514—Resist the Grave & Fight Another Day

Cool Card Design of the Day
9/25/2014 - Fight is primary in green and secondary in red. It's not in black's color pie at all, but I couldn't help imagine a skeleton hopping out of a closet or a zombie dragging someone into its grave.

Artifical Constraints

[Wizards of the Coast safe]

When we last left Tesla a couple of weeks ago, we were discussing mechanics that encourage playing artifacts in a different way than Magic has before. You delivered a plethora of options, but I'm not going to be discussing any of them in detail just yet. Today's topic is closely related and ought to have come first.

Riddle me this: what is an artifact?

CCDD 092414—Beggar's Mox

Cool Card Design of the Day
9/24/2014 - Invisible aesthetic: When a design looks a certain way because it is a simplification of something more explicitly sensible. Take a look at this card, and when you're done being upset how good/bad/average the card is, take a moment to try and guess what the invisible aesthetic was that led to this end.

CCDD 092314—Setessan Stalwart & Lady of Fangs and Arrows

Cool Card Design of the Day
9/23/2014 - I liked the heroic mechanic from Theros a lot. There's so much right with it. I would never go back and change it. Even so, I was thinking about other mechanical possibilities to express the same thematic concept. If I wouldn't replace heroic, why would I bother thinking of mechanics to replace it? Because designers are explorers, and explorers don't stop exploring just because they've found Atlantis.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 091914—Code Geass

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Here's the challenge we're reviewing today.

Weekend Art Challenge 091914—Code Geass

Weekend Art Challenge
Greetings, artisans! Click through to see this weekend's art and the design requirements for your single card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, and everyone is encouraged to give feedback. You may use that feedback to revise your submission any number of times, though only the version rendered will be included in the review, if that happens.

Ferocious vs. Fiverocious

I love it when Magic revises old mechanics. 

Most of the mistakes we see out of R&D are development errors: Thragtusk should have cost {3}{G}{G}, Pack Rat reduced variance unacceptably, the combination of Sphinx's Revelation and Supreme Verdict meant two years of control decks being only Azorius or Esper, etc. However, a reimagined mechanic is a broader admission that the original fell short. More importantly, it demonstrates how to improve a mechanic that didn't fly the first time. 

Twittering with Mark Rosewater About Counters

Looking over the fully spoiled card list for Khans of Tarkir—which I'm quite excited about and supremely bummed Life is preventing me from attending the prerelease for—cards like Rite of the Serpent hit a bell in my head that there's been a +1/+1 counter theme (or -1/-1) in every block since the first Ravnica. On a whim, I struck up a conversation in the hopes of giving voice to the concern that counters are over-used.



I was delighted when Mark responded and continued to respond through the evening.

CCDD 091714—Paternity Test

Cool Card Design of the Day
9/17/2014 - I've been messing with the punisher mechanic recently. Not because I think it's a deep well of Magic design, it's just what keeps bubbling to the surface. This is easily my favorite design in that vein.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 091214—Jim Bizzle

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Here's the challenge we're reviewing today.

Weekend Art Challenge 091214—Jim Bizzle

Weekend Art Challenge
Greetings, artisans! Click through to see this weekend's art and the design requirements for your single card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, and everyone is encouraged to give feedback. You may use that feedback to revise your submission any number of times, though only the version rendered will be included in the review, if that happens.

CCDD 091114—Hunter

Cool Card Design of the Day
9/11/2014 - Inspired by yesterday's card—and surely with some background inspiration from Czynski's land-hunt mechanic—I present a new keyword, similar to flanking and bushido but with a tribal or color focus like protection has.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 090514—egilthompson

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Here's the challenge we're reviewing today.

CCDD 091014—Meadhome Guardian

Cool Card Design of the Day
9/10/2014 - Was thinking how Goblins are the most common tribe to get tribal mechanics in any given set, and wanted to explore a way to turn that on its head. Meadhome Guardian could be {2}{W} and even common, depending on the set.

CCDD 090914—Concentration

Cool Card Design of the Day
9/9/2014 - Having to concentrate when you cast magic is a common trope. I explore that today in three variations.

CCDD 090814—Keeper of the Open Hand

Cool Card Design of the Day
9/8/2014 - Looks like the WAC review won't go up today, so here's something else.

Weekend Art Challenge 090514—egilthompson

Weekend Art Challenge
Greetings, artisans! Click through to see this weekend's art and the design requirements for your single card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, and everyone is encouraged to give feedback. You may use that feedback to revise your submission any number of times, though only the version rendered will be included in the review, if that happens.

Tesla: the Apple doesn't Fall Far from the Tree

Let's talk artifact mechanics for Tesla. Our mainstays have been Cogs and Mechs, and one or both of those may suffice, but surely there's more space to explore before we settle on anything.

We've looked at a few different versions of the Cog mechanic. The core idea is to let players build their own Rube Goldberg Machines out of assorted artifacts. Most of our implementations have had too much board complexity for common, but one was quite simple.

CCDD 090314—Pouncing Almedon

Cool Card Design of the Day
9/3/2014 - In a duel, this card simply must attack each turn. In multiplayer, it serves a similar goal as dethrone, though as a drawback rather than a bonus. While the opponent with the most life isn't always the biggest threat at the table, this can backfire just as easily, forcing you to pick on a player who is mana-screwed. Pouncing Almedon also doesn't give you any particular reason to play it in multiplayer, but printing it in a multiplayer product would be sufficient.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 082914—sc0pe

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Here's the challenge we're reviewing today.