Tesla Design Challenge 022916 — Aggressive Mechanics

Howdy all! Let's start off the week with a Tesla design challenge! Last week, there was some discussion on the Multiverse about finding a possible replacement for Renown, given how often it's been overlapping with Revolution. So let's address the issue with a design challenge!

Weekend Art Challenge 022616—Conspiracy 2.0

Weekend Art Challenge
Hello, artisans. My name is Zeno Rage, A.K.A. Walter Christy, and this weekend I’ll be hosting the challenge. And what is the challenge, you may ask? This week Wizards announced the sequel to a fan favorite set: Eternal Masters Conspiracy!

While we may not know what the final name will be, we do know that it will build off of what the first set had: Draft matters cards and multiplayer mechanics. I’d like to see everyone explore some more of these themes. A couple of weeks ago there was another, more focused multiplayer challenge that you can look to for some inspiration on the multiplayer part. As for the draft matters part, well, that's what your creativity and imagination is for. Lets get to the art!

CCDD 022516—Jury-Rig

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/23/2016 - Inspired by Devin's initial Spotlight Challenge submission, I wanted to find a mechanic that combined unearth with a way to get your artifact into the graveyard, like cycling. That led me to something similar to dash.

CCDD 022416 Late-Nite Edition -- Eldrazi-Bone Gurney

There was a lot going on in today's denoument-installment of the story formerly known as Uncharted Realms, but my brain wouldn't let go of the idea of Chandra using a piece of Ulamog as a chair while she recovered. I especially liked the idea of it paralleling Dragon Throne of Tarkir in some way.

CCDD 022416—Subsume

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/24/2016 - Inspired by synthesis from Devin's initial Spotlight Challenge submission, I made a keyword out of just the core action so that it could be used in a variety of ways. That flexibility comes at the cost of more reading (since less of a card's use of the mechanic is reminder text), and makes the mechanic itself less exciting (even if every card with it brings its own excitement). The flavor is considerably weaker too.

Spotlight Challenge 3 Final Review—Devin E. Green

Here's the challenge Devin E. Green took lead on:

Design six cards that inject a clear flavor-identity into a returning mechanic—either by adding flavor where there is none (ala cycling), or by re-branding a returning mechanic (ala chroma and devotion). Include at least two commons, one uncommon, and one rare or mythic. Include at least two colors.

Here's the initial submission.

Let's take a look at the final submission.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 021916—gold synergy

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Hello Artisans! This week we are reviewing this gold-based challenge.
I had envisioned it more like the elf, orc and human challenge of two weeks ago, in that it would make people interact with previous designs, but it gathered slightly less momentum than the previous challenges did. I fear the wording of the challenge is to blame on this, but I regard it as a learning experience.

Never the less, you artisans came through with some interesting designs! Let's get to them.

Weekend Art Challenge 021916—gold synergy

Weekend Art Challenge
Hello all! Anastase here. This week we are re-examining this:

CCDD 021816—Scent of Brains

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/18/2016 - Almost strictly better than "Each other player discards a card." It doesn't reanimate anything, though, so I think it's safe. Agree?

Tesla: Playtest Engineering III: Testing Cards

This article is WotC-safe.

Hello again, everybody! Once again, a return from a lengthy break, and this time, we're concluding the series about designing an all-commons playtest. Last time, we designed all the commons for our playtest. In the first part, we talked about the overall structure of a playtest set. Now, we're onto the most important part: playtesting the cards, gathering feedback, and using that feedback to improve both the designs and the set as a whole.

CCDD 021716—Cassandroid

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/17/2016 - A Future Sight Clone.

CCDD 021616—Magic Reshaper

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/16/2016 - Mono-red riff on Matter Reshaper.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 021216—multiplayer mechanics

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Hello all. Guest goblin inspector Anastase here. It has been a busy weekend for Goblin Artisans, and it is time to inspect your craftsmanship. This is the challenge we are reviewing.

A few words on the challenge first:

Actually fulfilling all the requirements was very hard. A mechanic that works well both in duels and multiplayer usually has to scale upwards.

Making it general enough for the cards to be usable by all colors or a cycle of 5 color combinations requires to find a situation or trigger that all colors will care about.

Doing that while keeping the mechanic fun adds a layer of complexity on its own, since "fun" is a very broad term.

A few ways that have been proven to work are the will of the council, offering and dethrone cards, even though dethrone stayed in Grixis.

This challenge was meant as a way to make people think about the intersection of duels and multiplayer, about what is important to have to make a multi-player game tick. I secretly added a focus on combat (which is supposed to make MtG end and its major place of interaction) by asking to design one mechanic about that. The main phase restriction was more open-ended, but I had hoped for some way to make sorcery speed effects slightly more interactive.

The images were not restrictive this time, since you could suggest your own images if you had a mechanic that did not fit them.

I will present some more thoughts on this challenge and the nature of challenges in the conclusion of this article, but for now let us see some excellent cards!

Weekend Art Challenge 021216—multiplayer mechanics

Weekend Art Challenge
Hello Artisans, Anastase here, with yet another WAC. This time we are diving into politics. Will of the Council was an interesting idea during Conspiracy and that set had enough success to warrant an expansion.

CCDD 021116—As Many Arrows as it Takes

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/11/2016 - I wanted to make a scalable bolt: one that could deal 1 damage for one mana, 2 for two, or 3 for three.

CCDD 021016—Serve Me or Die

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/10/2016 - mtgdesignprompts on Tumblr posted "Design a card with a 'threaten' effect, like Browbeat. Bonus points if it's not red."

I made this.

Spotlight Challenge 3 Initial Review—Devin E. Green

Here's the challenge Devin E. Green is taking lead on:

Design six cards that inject a clear flavor-identity into a returning mechanic—either by adding flavor where there is none (ala cycling), or by re-branding a returning mechanic (ala chroma and devotion). Include at least two commons, one uncommon, and one rare or mythic. Include at least two colors.

Devin was split on two directions, so he's submitted two (smaller) mechanics. Let's see how this goes.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 020516

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Hello all!
I really liked what you all cooked up this week. Here is the challenge we are reviewing: Using different rarities to answer specific cards was an interesting exercise!

Since this time I did not have a specific design-space challenge, I will not digress further. No, that is a lie, I need to inform you that my MSE is bugging a lot out of late. Therefore I am sorry for the quality of the images that follow:

Weekend Art Challenge 020516

Weekend Art Challenge
Hello Artisans, Anastase here, bringing you another guest WAC. This week we will try an old/odd format:

CCDD 020416—Retribution Demon

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/4/2016 - This demon is fine with you making a sacrifice to summon it, but really it just need a soul to travel from the world of the living to the world of the dead so it can sneak back in. The demon will tell you it wants to help you get revenge for your fallen minions, but it really just wants to be free.

CCDD 020316—Ambitious Wolf & Regal Beaver

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/3/2016 - Here are two creature keywords that reward enhancing your creatures.

CCDD 020216—Seek

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/2/2016 - I sure do love smoothing mechanics. Almost like I think the game is just a bit too random without one.

Seek is a bit like dig, but less powerful and more versatile, trading card advantage for card selection.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 012916—Colorless

Weekend Art Challenge Review
I must start this week, as always, by thanking you all for your participation. Unfortunately this week I had to grapple with windows 10 and MSE, and as such I was unable to do the renders on time. Thankfully Jay came to my rescue.

So this week's challenge was to try and differentiate between colorless and generic mana. It is a hard task, one on which wizards has not given us enough information.