Weekend Art Challenge Review 062615—artofjustaman

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Design a common green creature for this art to help mitigate an imbalanced Limited environment that otherwise favors black over green.

CCDD 062915—Recall to Duty

Cool Card Design of the Day
6/29/2015 - A black Caller of the Claw. Green needs this ability the most, but it's clearly native to black.

Tesla: Design Challenge 062915 — Interactive Progress

In last week's discussion about the kinds of progress and anticipation that we might use in Tesla, we talked about certainty. If progress is too certain, Jenesis notes, then Tesla games devolve into "solitaire resource-accumulation". If progress is too uncertain, Lee Owens observes, and "when it works, you aren't happy that your machine finally worked. You are frustrated that it took so long to do something it was built to do". The problem is finding a balance between these.

Jenesis did note one solution: interaction. If your opponent has nothing hidden, outcomes are certain - but if they have an unknown, hidden variable, all your results become uncertain. This changing nature of interaction allows us to find a balance in a fun and natural way. This week, let's explore this further. Your challenge is to design something that uses progress in an interactive way. 

Weekend Art Challenge 062615—artofjustaman

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 someone volunteers to render the cards.

CCDD 062515—Splitting Shambler

Cool Card Design of the Day
6/25/2015 - Another unstoppable zombie horde.

CCDD 062415—Unnatural Order

Cool Card Design of the Day
6/24/2015 - I was designing around black tutors that require sacrifice and came up with this card's text before seeing the connection to Natural Order. Would've priced it {1}{B}{B} otherwise.

Weekend Art Challenge 061915 Review—Ruslayer

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Design a black common for Spike.

Tesla: Forms the Future Takes

[Editor's Note: Today we're excited to welcome Inanimate to the Goblin Artisans team! We've appreciated his insightful observations in the discussions on the site and look forward to seeing more as he takes the reigns as Lead Designer for Tesla.]

I'm honored to serve as Lead Designer of Tesla after Jules, and I wish him well in his new position! I hope to continue Jules' work on Tesla with the same passion and dedication.

Lately, Tesla has been exploring two themes: anticipation and progress. As we have designed cards to capture these two themes, it's become clear that there are many forms the future takes: different kinds of anticipation and progress, each a different experience... and it has been noted that perhaps Tesla would be best if it focused on a few kinds, rather than using them all. The big questions, then, are these two: what kinds of anticipation and progress are there? And which kinds do we want to focus on in Tesla?

The Yellow Brick Road

We come to Goblin Artisans for all sorts of reasons. Some of us are looking for a fun pastime making up Magic cards; some are looking to improve as game designers through feedback and discussion; and some want nothing more than to craft this game we all know and love as a career. Some want all three.

Next week I start a summer internship doing Magic design at Wizards of the Coast.

Weekend Art Challenge 061915—Ruslayer

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 someone volunteers to render the cards.

CCDD 061815—Magcore Sentry & Geistbond Reaver

Cool Card Design of the Day
6/18/2015 - Here are a couple designs for Tesla: Design Challenge 061715—Automation that wouldn't translate well in plain text.

Tesla: Design Challenge 061715—Automation

We've been focused on capturing the overarching feelings of progress and anticipation for Tesla. But within these big-picture themes individual elements impose their own restrictions.

In particular, many of our visions have involved machines acting on their own, whether that means an assembly line that just chugs along or full-fledged artificial intelligence. Your challenge is to design something to capture this feeling of agency.

CCDD 061715—Sandtribe Marauders

Cool Card Design of the Day
6/17/2015 - Here's a design from my old folder. I don't propose it as a cycle like Mudbrawler Raiders, and certainly not a keyword mechanic, but I do like the flavor of one or two cards that are just so unrelatable to a certain color that both sides refuse to interact, even to kill one another.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 061215—kattnboys

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Design a card for this art that shows one color complimenting, emulating, or mocking an ability primary only in another color. Try not to cross the hazy line into too much color bleed.

Weekend Art Challenge 061215—kattnboys

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 someone volunteers to render the cards.

Tesla: Ascendancy

Last week we generated ideas for capturing a feeling of anticipation in Tesla's gameplay. Today I want to take a look at one in particular: jack's Ascendancy.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 060515—quaz

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Design a card for this art with a converted mana cost between 8 and 12. Bonus points if it's awesome for Tesla or Zeffrikar. Bonus points if it doesn't need to be rare, but that's probably a trap.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 052915—Sakura Mitsukai

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Design a non-land card for this art without using the words 'you' or 'your.'

CCDD 060915—Unravel

Cool Card Design of the Day
6/9/2015 - A lot of Magic design consists of building something novel from existing parts. Once you have Metalcraft, it's an easy leap from Shock to Galvanic Blast.

More often than not, these designs come from trying to tie existing mechanics into a new theme. But every once in a while, you find a clean overlap between core mechanics that could appear in any set.

Weekend Art Challenge 060515—quaz

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 someone volunteers to render the cards.

CCDD 060315—Claim Pet

Cool Card Design of the Day
6/3/2015 - A Mind Control variant (where 'worth' stands in for CMC.)

CCDD 060315—March of Progress

Cool Card Design of the Day
6/3/2015 - At some point in Tesla discussions, this reverse-devotion mechanic was mentioned off-hand. The new talk of a culture shift from Tesla to Edison got me thinking about it again.

Tesla: Design Challenge 060215—Anticipation

Back in April we began discussing ways to make Tesla play out so as to put players into a state of anticipation. That discussion generated a lot of great iterations on a few mechanics, but I doubt we've fully mapped the design space.

That's where you come in.

CCDD 060215—Ulamog's Gorger (Bloodfeast)

Cool Card Design of the Day
6/2/2015 - Here's another way for spawn to matter differently in the new Zendikar. Sacrificing them not only brings your battlecruisers online earlier, but makes them bigger too. A few points of added toughness will often make a huge difference on a card like Ulamog's Gorger.

CCDD 060115—Unfeeling

Cool Card Design of the Day
6/1/2015 - Spawn tokens helped players cast Eldrazi when they rose, but it would be a little boring if they worked the exact same way when we return to see how the battle is raging on Zendikar. One simple way to iterate on them is to make them even better at accelerating your giant monsters.