CCDD 123115—Find Beauty

Cool Card Design of the Day
12/31/2015 - I'd like green to have a little bit of incidental life gain in each block. Time to Feed and Aerial Predation are great examples. Found a spot for another.

CCDD 123015—Despondency

Cool Card Design of the Day
12/30/2015 - This effect is in blue's color pie, but it fits this flavor so well I wonder if it's not worth the bleed. Could alternately be {UB} in the right set.

CCDD 122915—Personal Nemesis

Cool Card Design of the Day
12/29/2015 - This top-down illusion ended up as weird, conditional, creature removal for blue. Kinda cute, I guess.

CCDD 122815—Springwind Invoker

Cool Card Design of the Day
12/28/2015 - Inspired by surge's multiplayer-friendly-ness:

Spotlight Challenge 1—Zeno Rage

This fortnight, Zeno Rage is going to take lead on this challenge:

Design a cycle of mythic rare legendary creatures to be the marquee cards for a new launch of Commander decks.

Weekend Art Design Challenge Review 121815—dchan, sanskaran, 404mockingbirds

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Choose one of these illustrations and design a card that cares about colorless mana.

Announcing a New Design Challenge Series—The Spotlight Challenge

It's time for something new.

This community is ready to stretch itself again and I've finally figured out a good way to do it.

Weekend Art Design Challenge 121815—dchan, sanskaran, 404mockingbirds

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 121715—Goblin Ritesinger

Cool Card Design of the Day
12/17/2015 - I envision what "Drawblin" might look like after listening to Re-Making Magic episodes 42 and 43.

CCDD 121615—Enrage the Stone

Cool Card Design of the Day
12/16/2015 - What do you do when you've got a clever effect that's not quite strong enough to be its own card?

CCDD 121515—Auntie's Lore

Cool Card Design of the Day
12/15/2015 - Dan Felder was discussing the 0 ability on Chandra's newly spoiled card and it got me wishing there was a modern version of Goblin Lore.

As it happens, there are a bunch of them, including Burning Inquiry, Dangerous Wager, Faithless Looting, Desperate Ravings & Tormenting Voice.

Pfft. Like that's going to stop me.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 121115--Copia / Seb / Casiopeia

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Choose one of these illustrations and design a card that cares about the cards Act on Impulse exiles or combos with red cards like it in some way. For bonus points, make a mechanic usable for multiple cards (demonstrated on a single card).

Weekend Art Challenge 121115--Copia / Seb / Casiopeia

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 121015—Hunt

Cool Card Design of the Day
12/10/2015 - Can Tail Slash be green? Seems like red doesn't necessarily need it, but it easily fits green's removal-via-creatures shtick.

CCDD 120915—Trash the Heirarchy

Cool Card Design of the Day
12/9/2015 - I've explored modern options for land destruction before, looking to make the effect viable where it's needed while avoiding the issues that got Stone Rain excommunicated from modern Magic. Here's another.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 120415—Damie M

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Design a rare card for this art. What's the setting? How does that impact your design?

CCDD 120715—Engrave Guilt

Cool Card Design of the Day
12/7/2015 - This design's been sitting in my folder getting passed over dozens of times for being unworthy. I finally re-worked it.

Tesla: Playtest Engineering I: Structure

This article is WotC safe.

Hello again, everybody! I hope you've all been enjoying your holidays, and that you continue to do so! Now, back to business. This week, I'll be starting a three-part series on designing an all commons playtest, from start to finish. First off, we'll be discussing the overall structure of a playtest set, and how one can use concepts like as-fan to help quickly create such a structure, using our custom collaborative set Tesla as an example. (The lessons in this article are great for anyone looking to design a set, though!)

Weekend Art Challenge 120415—Damie M

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 120315—Temple Ruins

Cool Card Design of the Day
12/3/2015 - A simple but potentially very useful land in the right context. Too strong for common? Uncommon?

CCDD 120215—Draconic Reconnaissance

Cool Card Design of the Day
12/2/2015 - While not nearly as deep as creature-type-tribal*, keyword-tribal remains a relatively unexplored vein of design. In particular, I'm attracted to effects that reward prowess because more than many keywords, prowess feels like a skill the creature possesses rather than a mere characteristic, and because the non-creature spells it triggers off of can actively double their benefit.

CCDD 120115—Grave Desecrator

Cool Card Design of the Day
12/1/2015 - Here's a dangerous way to get added value from your zombie cards.

CCDD 113015—Sanguine Warrior

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/30/2015 - Dev can tweak the cost and stats here, but the core identity is an aggressive red creature that the opponent can force into a bad attack.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 112015 -- Bramvan / Julian_Faylona

Weekend Art Challenge Review

SciFi Week with RoboRosewater Redesign Bonus!

CCDD 112515—Runed…

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/25/2015 - A very inexpensive way to add smoothing to your deck is through symmetric effects like Ruined Servitor. We want to give players smoothing, and giving both players smoothing with a single card that the first player won't feel bad playing could do a lot to improve games.

CCDD 112315—Sogleaf Brownie

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/23/2015 - These brownies refuse to fight with their own kind. That's good and bad… mostly flavor.

(This post was scheduled. Jay is in Poland pretending to be a Wizard just now.)

Weekend Art Challenge 112015 -- Bramvan / Julian_Faylona

Weekend Art Challenge

OK, Artisans. Jay is on vacation, so I'll be substituting this week. 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. I'll do the renders if no one else volunteers by Monday.

CCDD 111915—Hide

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/19/2015 - Here's a modern take on Avoid Fate.

(This post was scheduled. Jay is in Poland pretending to be a Wizard just now.)

CCDD 111815—Disengage Time

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/18/2015 - You could look at this as a nerfed Remand—and it very much is—but if you ignore its broken pedigree, Disengage Time is far from unplayable, buying time and often invalidating tactics and spells.

(This post was scheduled. Jay is in Poland pretending to be a Wizard just now.)

Weekend Art Challenge Review 111315 - Maaria Laurinen and Nikola Anchev

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Design a card that tells a story using one of the two provided illustrations.

CCDD 111615—Nesting Baloth

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/16/2015 This is a Petravark unless you build a baloth-tribal deck, when it upgrades to Annex on a stick.

(This post was scheduled. Jay is in Poland pretending to be a Wizard just now.)

Weekend Art Challenge 111315 - Maaria Laurinen and Nikola Anchev

Weekend Art Challenge
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!

CCDD 111215—Foothills & Murky Mountain

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/12/2015 - Both of these lands are meant to help you fix your colors, either slowly in a three-color deck, or colorlessly in a two-color deck.

CCDD 111115—Terramorphic Rift & Gateway Unknown

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/11/2015 - Both of these are inferior choices to Terramorphic Expanse for most sets, but could serve as alternatives somewhere.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 110615—PollyUranus

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Design a monocolored card for this art, whose name falls alphabetically between Killing Floor and Lammasu's Portent.

CCDD 110915—Revenge & Mispronounce

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/9/2015 - Let's say it makes complete sense that blue should have exclusive access to countermagic. There are still ways other colors can respond to spellcasting.

Weekend Art Challenge 110615—PollyUranus

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 110515—Total War

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/5/2015 - Total War's largely weaker than Curse of the Nightly Hunt, but I think it's worthwhile for the big flavor.

CCDD 110415—King of the Eight Seas

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/4/2015 - Here's a big legendary octopus.

Tesla: Your Own Resources

This article is WotC safe.

Hi everyone! Last time, we discussed the art of making commons for playtesting mechanics, and continued our work over at the Tesla Project forum. Since last time, we've had some great commons, but playtesting is understandably hampered by the difficulty of collecting all the cards from across the forum posts, past articles, and so on. Well, no longer - this week, I have a lot of resources to share with you all! In addition, I also have some mechanics in need I'd like for us to focus on this week.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 103015—jubjubjedi

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Design an uncommon creature for this art.

CCDD 110215—Spell Forest 3b

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/2/2015 - I was brainstorming spell lands a few weeks back and was iterating on a few ideas, toward an alternative to the very good Looming Spires and Teetering Peeks spell land cycles. Specifically, it was evident that we could have a more impactful effect if, like more expensive spells, it only worked when you had more mana or lands. A large activation cost worked, but if it's repeatable, the effect must be fairly small, so I considered a land that did something when you sacrificed it, rather then when it ETB'd. That's cool, but fights with the goal of having enough mana to cast Eldrazi. Let me show you my final iteration before I share my conclusion:

Weekend Art Challenge 103015—jubjubjedi

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 102915—Sentry Basilisk

Cool Card Design of the Day
10/29/2015 - Turns out there's never been a creature with both vigilance and deathtouch. Not hard to imagine why there aren't a lot of those, but surely one rare or uncommon would be neat.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 102315—detkef

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Design a common or uncommon card for this art.
 

CCDD 102715—Bad Advice

Cool Card Design of the Day
10/27/2015 - Mechanically, Bad Advice leans a toward red, but I quite like the story it tells as a black card.

CCDD 102615—Honed

Cool Card Design of the Day
10/26/2015 - An alternate casting cost mechanic that rewards mono-colored play. It has a variable, and I imagine the block that introduces it would only set the variable to one or two specific values. It's possible this is undevelopable, but I'm optimistic.

Weekend Art Challenge 102315—detkef

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.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 101615—Jason Engle

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Design an ally creature card for this art.
 

Tesla: Make Common Cause

This article is WotC safe.

Hello again everyone! Last time, the Tesla Project forum debuted, where the discussion from Our Refinery has continued nicely. Over the past week, alongside discussing proposals and alterations for the candidate mechanics, many of us have begun to design example commons for the mechanics - which leads directly into our topic for this week, designing commons for playtesting our mechanics.