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Greetings, artisans! I'm not your usual challenger, but Jay is on vacation. So here I am, stealing the WAC for my own purposes!
Click through to see this weekend's art and the design requirements for your single card submission, due Monday evening (6PM PST). 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. By the way - this week, I'll be rendering the cards!
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| Chance by Maaria Laurinen |
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| Golem by Nikola Anchev |
Choose one of the above illustrations. Design a card for your chosen art that tells a story. (Alongside posting your card, perhaps mention what you think it means for a card to 'tell a story'.)
Bonus: The card you designed is a common.
Double bonus: The card you designed fits into Tesla, and hopefully accomplishes one of the highlighted goals from last week's post. See the Tesla Project forums or Multiverse card database for ideas of how Tesla looks right now.
Chance by Maaria Laurinen
ReplyDeleteFirst Grapnel {G}
Creature - Human Scout (common)
Reach
Other creatures you control have Reach as long as they're blocking a creature blocked by First Grapnel.
1/2
...
I've been a little out of touch with Tesla's mechanics recently... I wanted to make a card about that little guy in the first picture, but I didn't want things to get too parasitic. So I figured a way to help your creatures dogpile on a crewed flying vehicle -- without actually specifying "Vehicles only" -- was a kind of interesting way to play into the art.
Also I have no idea if this rules wording works, but, y'know. You get the idea. This would probably also work (and be simpler) if it just gave everyone on your side reach as long as it's blocking.
Arguably uncommon, too. But I wanted to sneak under the bonus radar, sshh.
uh, let's make this guy 1/1
Deletealso does {g} work?
ok, good
I don't think this wording works, because they can't be blocking a creature blocked by First Grapnel unless they already had reach.
DeleteI took a look at the rules on this and I think it checks out. I know it's weird-lookin' but you assign all blockers in one step, then the next step checks to see if your assignment was illegal.
Delete(Also: I was going to say "creatures that block with ~" but that seemed too vague, rules-wise)
DeleteReading the comp rules slowly, it looks to me like 509.1a, choose creatures, happens firs,t then 509.1b check restrictions, and only then 509.1g "Each chosen creature still controlled by the defending player becomes a blocking creature."
DeleteHowever, maybe its something like, "if a creature is blocked by cardname, other creatures can block it as though they had reach"?
Golem art.
ReplyDeleteTrinket Scrapper 4
Artifact Creature - Golem (R)
Whenever an artifact is put into your graveyard from the battlefield, put a +1/+1 counter on Trinket Scrapper.
4, Sacrifice Trinket Scrapper: Return up to X target artifact cards from your graveyard to the battlefield, where X is the number of +1/+1 counters on Trinket Scrapper.
2/2
Ancient Colossus [5]
ReplyDeleteArtifact Creature — Golem
Defender
As long as you have five or more experience counters, creatures you control lose defender.
Standing guard for eons over an empire whose name was lost in legend, its heart began to reignite, and it found someone to fight for.
8/8
My thinking is this is basically the Iron Giant or some such trope. But, I was looking over Tesla's advance mechanics and it seems to me that a threshold mechanic like counting the number of permanents and so forth is a bit bitty, but I liked the idea of "once you reach advancement, you're advanced" and I thought experience counters could work. The flavour is you're building your civilisation or machines or whatever, and you have something that can say if *you* are advanced or not.
Actually, this version might be more fun
DeleteAncient Colossus [4]
Artifact Creature — Golem [rare]
Defender
Creatures with defender you control get +1/+0 for each experience counter you have.
As long as you are advanced, creatures you control lose defender. (You are advanced if you have 10 or more experience counters.)
0/10
I certainly saw Wizards' take on experience counters with recognition rather than surprise, based on all the discussion we've had about progress counters and suchlike :)
DeleteDavid and Goliath
ReplyDeleteFirst art
2G
Sorcery
Choose target creature you control. If its converted mana cost is 1 or less, it gets +3/+3 until end of turn. It fights target creature.
I think this is really neat. In the right set, given the focus on small creatures, this could be white-green. What rarity?
DeleteAlso makes me think of Mistmeadow Skulk, and makes me wonder if we can do
spell
something
Underdog--If that creature's converted mana cost is 2 or less, BONUS.
which I suppose would be a white mechanic.
Mm, certainly white. If I had to pick another color it'd be red, I think?
DeleteAll the existing pump+fight cards are green, so I went with that. I agree there's also a lot of white in it, but I don't want to automatically make all cards that could be multicolor multicolor.
DeleteUnderdog makes lots of sense as a mechanic, I agree it would be white and maybe one or two other colours. If so, maybe the mechanic would also be in G or R, or this card would be in W despite fight not usually being W.
Not sure on rarity. Existing pump+fight cards are mostly common, but this is a bigger pump than most of them, so it has a greater chance of taking out an opposing creature only, so I'll play safe and say uncommon for now.
Wording it like Savage Punch seems to make more sense; right now I kinda thought it did nothing unless the creature is CMC <= 1
DeleteOh, agreed that this is definitely green, Jack. Was just noting that Underdog as a mechanic would probably be in white/red. On a single card it could of course be in any color, depending on the rest of the card.
DeleteArt #2
ReplyDeleteData-lore Golem. 5
Artifact creature- Golem
Whenever you cast a spell that doesn't share a color with CARDNAME, CARDNAME becomes that color in addition to its other colors.
As long as CARDNAME is all five colors, it gets +7/+7 and has indestructible.
3/3
The illustrations didn't really speak to me, so I'm not completely happy with this. I wanted to capture a machine tasked with "learning about the human heart" like Data from Star Trek TNG.
There's a serious memory concern over this type of effect. Maybe this should be legendary so that it doesn't get confusing in multiples. In that case, the stats would need to be tweaked.
DeleteA couple suggestions/questions:
DeleteMaybe make this scale with each spell, so it's not just a sudden activation (and is more memorable) - CARDNAME gets +1/+1 for each of its colors.
Does it gain one color for each new spell or does one 5 color spell turn this on?
Don't make it cost 5, since lots of good spells exist at that mana slot for the 5 color deck (almost every 5 color spell). Maybe shrink everything for that?
Ah, sorry to hear neither of the illustrations did it for you. I knew 'tell a story' would be pretty illustration-inspired so that's why I tried to find two illustrations that felt different in tone and story to me. Hopefully you still had a fun time with the challenge though!
Delete@inanimate- I meant that I wasn't happy with my submission, not the challenge :) you did good, keep it up.
ReplyDelete@zach: the counters had crossed my mind. I was hopeful that it wouldn't need it.
Data-Lore Golem. 3
Leg art cre- golem (rare)
Whenever you cast a spell that doesn't share a color with CARDNAME, put a +1/+1 counter on CARDNAME.
CARDNAME has indestructible as long as it has five or more +1/+1 counters on it.
2/2
Catch a Lift, {1}{U}{U}
ReplyDeleteChance art
Enchantment, uncommon
Whenever a creature with flying attacks, creatures you control gain flying UEOT.
Was originally going to be "Whenever a creature *you control* with flying attacks", but the artwork spoke to me more of the birdship's occupants being oblivious to their passenger, so I let it trigger off the opponents' attacks too. That makes it better than Gravity Well, but it's still not quite as good as Levitation.
It's not as much "tells a story" as I might like. The story here is pretty obvious, to the point of being dull or just "the flavour".
I wrote out a bunch of stuff about "telling a story" with cards and then accidentally closed my browser :(
ReplyDeleteBasically they main groups of story cards are in order of effectivness:
Self contained stories, have a temporal component. (Demonic Pact, Return from the Underworld.)
Paired Cards to show change. (Xenagos, DFCs, The Khans in DTK.)
Single Events. (Diecide, Gruesome Slaughter.)
Worldbuilding Snippets (Shrine of the Foresaken Gods, KTK Fetchlands.)
My card cleanly falls into the last category.
Art#1
Hitch a Ride U
Instant (C)
Target creature you control gets +1/+1 and gains flying until end of turn. If you control another creature with flying, draw a card.
"The consul seek to restrict our movements, little do they know they provide all our transport needs."
--Armir Sar, Rebel lieutenant
If you use Chrome or Firefox, I recommend "Lazarus Form Recovery", which helps me when I accidentally lose huge comments and articles and such. :)
DeleteI was working on a similar breakdown and for self-contained stories, some other good examples that are a bit more clear: Doomed Traveler, Glacial Crasher, Alchemist's Apprentice.
(Golem Art)
ReplyDeleteAdvantaged Negotiatior {3}{R}{R}
Artfact Creature - Golem (unommon or rare)
At the beggining of combat on your turn, target opponent may choose one:
*Your artifact spells cost {2} to play this turn.
*You may destroy target creature with defender.
If he does, CARDNAME cannot attack this turn.
6/5
Telling a story for me is using a mechanic that makes you reinterpret the image you see.
I've updated the due date if anyone wishes to submit their entry today!
ReplyDeleteArt #1
ReplyDeleteAerial Maneuver 1W
Instant (C)
Target creature gets +1/+1 and gains flying and first strike until end of turn.