Friday, April 28, 2017

Weekend Art Challenge 042817—RadoJavor

Click through to see the illustration and design requirements for your single card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, which you may use to revise your submission any number of times. I will aim to review the most recent submission from each designer.

Thursday, April 27, 2017

CCDD 042717—Curvebell

Cool Card Design of the Day
4/26/2017 - I wanted to make a card that would both reward players for playing on curve and help them to do so. It's pretty wordy, but I like what it does.

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

CCDD 042617—Seek All Destinies & Celestial Parade

Cool Card Design of the Day
1/25/2017 - A couple of splashy all-the-auras rares.

Tuesday, April 25, 2017

CCDD 042517—alternate gods

Cool Card Design of the Day
4/25/2017 - Inspired by one facet of yesterday's discussion—the one about Amonkhet's gods—I made some alternate Hazorets.

Monday, April 24, 2017

Amonkhet Design Review

Hey folks. Please enjoy another post from guest columnist Jake Mosby.
—Jay Treat


The release of Amonkhet is just around the corner! Since we’re focused on design here, we’ll be discussing the design philosophy and implementation used for Amonkhet based on documents published by WIzards and by reviewing the set itself.

Friday, April 21, 2017

Weekend Art Challenge 042117—arvalis

Click through to see the illustration and design requirements for your single card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, which you may use to revise your submission any number of times. I will aim to review the most recent submission from each designer.

Thursday, April 20, 2017

CCDD 042017—The Place Foretold

Cool Card Design of the Day
4/20/2017 - Here's another kind of land that wants to be enchanted.

Wednesday, April 19, 2017

CCDD 041917—Enchanted Valley

Cool Card Design of the Day
4/19/2017 - If you really wanted to make land auras relevant to a set, you could make a land that wants to be enchanted.

Tuesday, April 18, 2017

CCDD 041817—land auras

Cool Card Design of the Day
4/18/2017 - Relevant to last weekend's design challenge.

Friday, April 14, 2017

Weekend Art Design Challenge 041417—land aura

Click through to see the design requirements for your single card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, which you may use to revise your submission any number of times. I will aim to review the most recent submission from each designer.

Thursday, April 13, 2017

CCDD 041317—devotion

Cool Card Design of the Day
4/13/2017 - How about devotion as a cost-reduction mechanic? It's a lot like affinity for [color] permanents, but we've actually only seen affinity used for artifacts and lands, so it's still novel functionality.

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

CCDD 041217—Pisonic Intrusion & Nightmare Made Real

Cool Card Design of the Day
4/12/2017 - Here are a couple cards to help support mixing mill and damage as a strategy.

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

CCDD 041117—splitmeld

Cool Card Design of the Day
4/11/2017 - Okay, today's idea is weird. Real weird. Buckle in, kiddos.

Monday, April 10, 2017

Keep Your Friends Close

Hey folks. Please enjoy another post from guest columnist Jake Mosby.
—Jay Treat


Understanding the color pie is a core skill for anyone who wants to design Magic cards. Luckily, there are a lot of resources available to designers that analyze the broad strokes of the color pie. Mark Rosewater has been writing about the color pie for 15 years, and he's written at length about how the colors interact with one another. In all that time, I have yet to see anything more than cliffnotes about how colors come into conflict with their allies. For example, if you want to make a set where green is at odds with white (like Mirrodin Besieged), there isn’t a go-to resource out there to help you identify potential sources of that conflict. This article aims to change that.

Friday, April 7, 2017

Weekend Art Challenge 040717—Josu Hernaiz

Click through to see the illustration and design requirements for your single card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, which you may use to revise your submission any number of times. I will aim to review the most recent submission from each designer.

Thursday, April 6, 2017

CCDD 040617—transfuse

Cool Card Design of the Day
4/6/2017 - Today's mechanic is a blend of repurpose and bloodpact: Rather than discard a card to upgrade a static effect according to the CMC of what you discard, you can pay a variable amount of life.

Wednesday, April 5, 2017

CCDD 040517—Give Me a Hand

Cool Card Design of the Day
4/5/2017 - Seeing the red and blue Amonkhet gods got me wondering how you could turn both on at once. The result is an un-card.

Tuesday, April 4, 2017

CCDD 040417—Repurpose

Cool Card Design of the Day
4/4/2017 - What if you had a spell with a static effect, that you could upgrade to a variable effect at the cost of a card instead of mana? Repurpose is loosely inspired by the Shoal cycle.