Wednesday, August 31, 2016

CCDD 083116--Alpha Ranger

Cool Card Design of the Day
8/31/2016 - Rangers and their wolves. Amiright?

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

CCDD 083016--Perfectly Normal Rock Formation

Cool Card Design of the Day
8/30/2016 - Nothing to see here.

Monday, August 29, 2016

Tesla Design Challenge 082916: Double Time

Hi everybody! Last week, I uploaded a complete commons/uncommons playtest version of Tesla to PlaneSculptors.net. Nonetheless, though, we have a lot left to do. We still need not only rares and mythics, but also to slot in the other DFC cards for uncommon, replacing some cards already in the file. So let's get on that, then! This week, the challenge will revolve around filling in these slots!

CCDD 082916—Encrypt & Encode

Cool Card Design of the Day
8/29/2016 - Two very different ideas for colorless countermagic.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 081916 - A Set In Four Cards

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Apologies for the delay. I forgot that asking for a Set in Four Cards is also asking for four times the reviews. Away we go!

Friday, August 26, 2016

Tesla: Art Thou Ready to Test?

Hi everybody! I'm back from vacation, and with some big news - while on vacation, I've been working on finalizing a playtest file with the uncommons and commons we designed the past few weeks, and adding art! Yay! Over at the Multiverse, you can see many of these changes (the skeleton is still being updated), and over at the new site PlaneSculptors, you can see our very own Tesla page! Using PlaneSculptors, we can playtest Draft and Sealed online, with built-in drafting and deck editors! In addition, we now have a channel at the official /r/custommagic Discord! You can find us under the #tesla channel.

I hope to see everyone playtesting and discussing the newest cards! This week, I'll be sharing a simple tutorial of how to playtest using PlaneSculptors and Cockatrice, to help everyone playtest! In addition, I'll be highlighting some cards made specifically for the playtest file, or cards that have undergone interesting changes.

Weekend Art Challenge 082616 - Kyndir

Weekend Art Challenge
Greetings, Artisans! I'm still writing up my review of last week's challenge, but in the meantime, go ahead and click through to see this weekend's art and the design requirements for your 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 if there's any ambiguity as to what your final submission is, I'll make my best guess when doing the renders.

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Merchants of Araby designer diary

Ten years ago, I was a fan of Magic and madly in love with drafting. I'm still a fan, but I was then too. I wanted to make a game where you drafted cards while playing the game instead of keeping my chocolate and peanut butter separate. I also wanted to try my hand at a vastly simplified version of Magic that could act as a gateway for new players. And I wanted to make it multiplayer, because I love sitting around a table, laughing with and challenging my friends.

CCDD 082516—Archery Lessons

Cool Card Design of the Day
8/25/2016 - Top-down. Not inspired by Hankyu, nor as weak.

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

CCDD 082416—Bandits of Blackwald & Dodgy Bugger

Cool Card Design of the Day
8/24/2016 - The idea of reverse ninjutsu has a lot of promise, but executing on it proves dangerously unwieldy. Here are three, and I'm not sure any of them make the cut, but one at least comes close.

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

CCDD 082316—Drachnid Widow

Cool Card Design of the Day
8/23/2016 - Larger flash creatures have to be expensive because of their potential card advantage. Giving a creature reach at instant speed is much cheaper, because it relies on you having a creature available to block. Drachnid Widow skirts the line, letting you block a small flier by itself, or a large one if you've got something bigger already.

Monday, August 22, 2016

CCDD 082216—stickers

Cool Card Design of the Day
8/22/2016 - I've been sitting on this idea for a while, and just realized that with Conspiracy in the news again, it's the perfect time to share it. Let's jump in and I'll explain as we go.

Friday, August 19, 2016

Weekend Art Challenge 081916 - A Set In Four Cards

Weekend Art Challenge
Greetings, Artisans! Click through to see this weekend's art choices and the design requirements for your 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 if there's any ambiguity as to what your final submission is, I'll make my best guess when doing the renders.

Thursday, August 18, 2016

CCDD 081816—Master Entrancer

Cool Card Design of the Day
8/18/2016 - Time Warp on a stick. Go go, saboteur triggers!

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

CCDD 081716—Dire

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/25/2016 - Dire is (my name for) Wobbles' idea in response to motivated. It was too interesting not to mess around with. And I want to discuss it more.

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

CCDD 081616—Pine Gale

Cool Card Design of the Day
8/16/2016 - Giving choices to opponents in flavorful ways.

CCDD 081516—Dropkick

Cool Card Design of the Day
8/15/2016 - I had intended to follow up ridealong and coattails with dropkick weeks ago, but forgot. Here it is now. Dropkick doesn't care about CMC and that makes it a good bit simpler than its predecessors. It's less a kicker mechanic, but it's no less interesting (and more purely related to surge).

Friday, August 12, 2016

Weekend Art Challenge 081216—molee

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.

Thursday, August 11, 2016

CCDD 081116—Strain

Cool Card Design of the Day
8/11/2016 - Strain is a variation of evoke I hit on while working on motivated.You can get an effect, or a creature, or pay more for both. (Where with evoke you get an effect or pay more to get a creature too.)

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

CCDD 081016—Tidestaff Adept

Cool Card Design of the Day
8/10/2016 - Combining flash with a limited form of {U}: +1/+1. The result is a 2/3 for three that can crush an attacker under the waves. Thoroughly uncommon, I like how blurs the line on x spells and on telegraphing tricks by being a variable-cost card that cares how your opponent attacks.

Tuesday, August 9, 2016

CCDD 080916—Plodding

Cool Card Design of the Day
8/9/2016 - Here's a drawback keyword for creatures that are bad at consuming a blocker's attention.

Monday, August 8, 2016

CCDD 080816—Reality Prism

Cool Card Design of the Day
8/8/2016 - What if all your charms were commands? Or better: fully escalated.

Friday, August 5, 2016

Weekend Art Challenge 080516—depyy

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.

Thursday, August 4, 2016

Tesla: Uncommon Sense

Hi everybody! Last week, we started finalizing the uncommons in Tesla. This week, I want to review some of my favorite uncommon designs from the Multiverse so far, and discuss how they embody some great 'roles' that uncommons should fulfill.

CCDD 080416—Motivated

Cool Card Design of the Day
8/4/2016 - Creatures with ETB effects do a lot for the game, but the biggest issue with them is that players sometimes hold onto them despite needing the body because they want to get full value out of the effect. We should be able to alleviate that if a player can always gets value by playing their creature.

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

CCDD 080316—Escalating Storm

Cool Card Design of the Day
8/3/2016 - This cycle is literally escalate-as-powered-by-storm, but it uses neither keyword because that would add text without aiding understanding, and it won't be used on more than these five cards (because the design space is even smaller than escalate's already small space).

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

CCDD 080216—Forbidden Knowledge

Cool Card Design of the Day
8/2/2016 - I'd love for this card to be cheaper—even if it needs to be rare—but maybe 3 is cheap enough?