Tesla: Archetype for the Taking & Playtesting Plans

Hello again, everyone! Last time, we discussed the recent announcement of an official Kaladesh set, and what that means for us. This week, we're going to discuss potential archetypes, as well as some plans for playtesting in the future.

CCDD 053116—Cloudwailer

Cool Card Design of the Day
5/31/2016 - Dragons belong in all colors, but it's hard to make green dragons when all dragons fly and green doesn't. Here's one solution.

Weekend Art Challenge 052616—Stop Skulking.

Hello Artisans, Anastase here.
Wizards found out recently that prowess is good enough to be evergreen. The mechanic does enough that it will appear a bit on every set, and I do not blame them. I guess I actually congratulate them because it rewards playing instants and creatures with prowess and helps the blue/red decks a lot.

In SoI they tried to introduce skulk, to be the Dimir (blue/black) equivalent mechanic to prowess. Dimir are known for their stealth and cunning, preferring the drop of poison to the swash and buckle. Skulk has not been the success they hoped it would be and as such Dimir are left without a well defined, easy to grok, NWO evergreen mechanic.

Are you up to the task of designing it?

CCDD 052616—Adopt & Emulate

Cool Card Design of the Day
5/26/2016 - I originally made Adopt from this art. When I realized there had never been a Clone aura, I made the simpler Emulate. Rare for complexity.

CCDD 052516—Potential

Cool Card Design of the Day
5/25/2016 - Let's explore the possibility of using charge counters on creatures. Below you'll find two ability words, some unnamed charge-matters abilities, and several enablers.

Weekend Music Challenge Review 052016

Hey Artisans. Today I'm reviewing this weekend's music-inspired challenge. Let's see what you all came up with.

CCDD 052416—Ki Strike

Cool Card Design of the Day
5/24/2015 - Thematic and aesthetic synergy will help us continue to make new burn spells for a long time.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 051316

Hello all, Anastase here.
Here is the challenge we are reviewing. Let us see what was submitted.

Weekend (art) Challenge 052016 - Music

Hey Artisans! I'll be doing a non-art challenge this week.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to design a card inspired by a song lyric, or even a piece of music. Genre does not matter to me, as long as you can link to the music on YouTube.

Every submission warrants feedback, and everyone is encouraged to give it throughout the weekend. 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 this week. 

Final submissions are due by 1PM Monday Afternoon Pacific Time.
Bonus points if you include a link to some art for the card.
Extra bonus points if you create a mechanic, named or not, thematically linked to dreaming or the creative process.

CCDD 051916—Primed

Cool Card Design of the Day
5/19/2016 - Traveling today and tomorrow. Here's a bunch more cards designed around a mechanical theme. Sort of heroic from the other direction.

CCDD 051816—Stitched

Cool Card Design of the Day
5/18/2016 - I started exploring a new Skaab mechanic—perhaps because Shadows refused to deliver on that aspect of its predecessor—and hit upon a keyword fun enough to just keep making cards for. Check it out.

Tesla: The Announcement Agenda

Hello again, everyone! Wow, yesterday had a big announcement from Wizards of the Coast - Kaladesh is an actual set coming out in September! Seeing as our own custom set creation project, Tesla, is based on Kaladesh, this means we've got a big robot elephant in the room to discuss.

CCDD 051716—Sphinx of the Waning Moon

Cool Card Design of the Day
5/17/2016 - Blacker Sphinx.

CCDD 051616—A Mind Wrought

Cool Card Design of the Day
5/16/2016 - That discard is solely black and countermagic solely blue causes those mechanics to more homogenous than most. That's what intrigued me about Jack's 'burn' mechanic: It's a red (arguably) discard mechanic.

How else might red emulate discard?

Weekend Art Challenge Review 050616—Daniel Dociu & New Challenge 051316

Hello all, Anastase here.
This week we are combining the review with the challenge! You will find the review of all the cards submitted bellow, and a challenge for each of those cards.

For your answers cards, you can choose among the following artworks:

by Adam Duff

by Jonathon Earl Bowser

by FangWangLlin

Please specify which card you are answering and which artwork you are using for your answer in your design submission.

Each Artisan is allowed one design per card challenge but can update their design as many times as they want.

Since I expect this might generate a lot of cards I would really appreciate any help given in rendering them this week.

Let us get going then!

Tesla: About Double Face

Welcome back, everyone! Last time on Tesla, we discussed Kicker variants for Tesla. One of the big possibilities we discussed was a mechanic called Discovery (now being called 'Develop'), which utilized double-faced card technology for its unique take on Kicker. This week, we're going to discuss the role of DFCs in Tesla, and what approaches we could take regarding them.

CCDD 051216—Curious Tidebreaker

Cool Card Design of the Day
5/12/2016 - A more vanilla Jeskai Elder / Looter Il-Kor.

CCDD 051116—Something in the Woods

Cool Card Design of the Day
5/11/2016 - The woods used to be terrifying, back before we'd hunted all the predators close to extinction.

CCDD 051016—Determined Hunter

Cool Card Design of the Day
5/10/2016 - Top-down update to Elite Inquisitor / Slayer of the Wicked.

CCDD 050916—Abundant

Cool Card Design of the Day
5/9/2016 - Here's a kicker variant. It doesn't actually require you to spend extra mana, just to have it, so it encourages more surge-like gameplay than kicker.

I got a little carried away finding uses for it.

Weekend Art Challenge 050616—Daniel Dociu

Hi all,
Anastase here.

This week we are designing a card with the following art:

Weekend Art Challenge Review 042916—Sandara

Hello all!
Thank you for your patience with this review, I had some serious pc issues.
Here is the challenge we are reviewing this week. Without further ado, let us see the cards you crafted!

CCDD 050516—Serpent of the Black Sea & Spear of a Vengeful Sea

Cool Card Design of the Day
5/5/2016 - Two more simple serpents, both reactive.

CCDD 050416—Ravenous Tsunami

Cool Card Design of the Day
5/4/2016 - Ravenous Tsunami inverts Islandhome/Islandwalk like Lonely Serpent so that it's good against most decks and a liability against some (rather than weak against most and good against some / irrelevant against most decks and absurd against some).

Like Hungry Serpent, Ravenous Tsunami uses must-attack rather than can't-attack. There's an argument for using must-attack when it's thematic in blue, given red and blue's shared history of sirens, but I'm 100% fine with just making this red (though red hating mountains seems wrong, and red hating islands seems archaic).

CCDD 050316—Hungry Serpent

Cool Card Design of the Day
5/3/2016 - "Must attack" tends to be a red thing, but it made Hungry Serpent's drawback more relevant, both mechanically and thematically.

CCDD 050216—Lonely and Softheart Serpents

Cool Card Design of the Day
5/2/2016 - Fell into a Sea Serpent design hole last week. So it's gonna be Sea Serpent week here. First up…