Friday, August 11, 2017

Weekend Art Challenge 081117—DiegoGisbertLlorens

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.


Design a rare creature card for this illustration.

23 comments:

  1. Glacial Raymond 1RR
    Legendary Creature - Human Knight R
    Prowess
    Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell you may pay 1R. If you do, Glacial Raymond deals 2 damage you target creature or player.
    3/2

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. He pretends all your spells are arcane and that you have a Glacial Ray in your hand.
      Awesome. No tweaks.

      Delete
    2. (although it's pushing mythic. 2/2 for rare?)

      Delete
    3. Totally. It really depends on how pushed you'd want the card to be and how strong you want it to be in limited. 2RR, no prowess, 2/2. Lots of room for tweaks.

      Delete
  2. Aline, Nighteagle General
    3RW
    Legendary Creature - Spirit Soldier
    At the beginning of each combat, untap all creatures you control.
    At the beginning of combat on your turn, creatures you control gain haste and menace.
    /In life, she led a ragtag squadron to glory. In death, she leads a million warriors to unification./
    3/2

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That first ability normally does nothing on your turn. But it does give your team psuedo-vigilance and the ability to tap utility creatures an additional time per opponent. (Which is less white and more green than actually granting vigilance would have been.)

      The second ability helps you attack, and is very red.

      The throughline here is the trigger, but it could be stronger if it were either identical or opposite: "on your turn / on opponent's turns." But it also doesn't do much functionally. All that rules text could just be: "Creatures you control have haste, vigilance, and menace" and be 99% identical (except for the extra tapping, which is green and not white or red).

      Sweet flavor text.

      Delete
  3. Sword-Demon of Erdo Pass 1RR
    Legendary Creature - Demon Samurai
    Renown 3
    Bushido 3
    Partner with Samurai (You can have two commanders if the other is a Samurai.)
    3/3
    Her blade sings Fire! Glory! Death! Again! Again!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Big fan of "Partner with Creature Type", even though it's super strong especially on a defacto 6/6 for 3. Do you imagine that the partnering creature would need to be a legend?

      Delete
    2. I do think both commanders need to br Legendary, though Samurai is particularly useful for a few reasons.
      First, players will love to band a samurai with another flavor-wise; something that's lacking in the current suite of partner creatures. Secondly, samurai have a disproportionately high rate of legends, and being all mono-colored across four colors I think leads to interesting things, where my Erdo-Konda deck had one flavor identity and my Erdo-Umezawa has a different one. I don't know how well this would work for, say, elves, where without checking I assume all the legends are G or GB.

      Having a Dwarf with "Partner with Elf" or Human Cleric with "Partner with Angel" could also be space worth exploring, and why I didn't template it "if both are a Samurai." I assume default commander rules will enforce their legend-ness.

      Also neat is that you should be able to add U to any tribal!Partner by pairing it with Mistform Ultimus? Which should be "cute" rather than "a problem".

      Hopefully removal can take out the Demon if she's too strong, alternatively tweaking her to a 3/1 if necessary.

      Delete
    3. Partner with Samurai is neat. An important difference between it and partner is that the other legend doesn't need a partner ability. Limiting the creature type is thus critical to preventing imbalanced partnerships. Samurai tend to be pretty weak in terms of Commanders, so I like this choice a lot.

      Renown 3 and Bushido 3 has some parity at first blush—and if the product had a bunch of each already it would be okay—but they're functionally different enough that it bothers me: If I block, my blocker takes 6. If I don't, I take 3. But then it becomes a 6/6 and now if I block, my blocker takes 9, and if I don't I take 6. I almost just want it to be: "Whenever ~ attacks or blocks, it gets +3/+3 until EOT."

      3/1 might be necessary since there aren't any real hoops to jump through to make this functionally bigger.

      Delete
  4. Dark Lord of Winter 2BB
    Creature - Human Warrior
    4/4
    Zombies you control get +1/+1.
    Demons you control get +3/+3 and menace.
    Creatures opponents control enter the battlefield tapped.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm not convinced. The zombies thing is covered by the art. The demons thing, I'm not seeing in the art, and I'm having trouble imagining a story that would justify with any art, short of The Gates of Hell Are Opened. The Karma thing is expressing Winter here, but it's a bleed from white.

      Most importantly, none of these abilities speak to each other: mechanically or thematically. What's the story? The card doesn't convey it on its own.

      Delete
  5. Kword, of the Red Snow RR
    Legendary Creature Human Samurai

    B kword gains haste until the end of the turn
    Kword, of the Red Snow has doublestrike as long as you control a snow permanent

    3/1

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Assuming that first ability is activated, with a cost of {B}...

      Kword is always a 3/1 double-striker in Constructed, and sometimes in Limited. When you play it after turn 2, and have a Swamp, that haste could net you a surprise 6 damage. That's quite strong, though not necessarily too strong, especially if the format has some great answers for 1 toughness threats.

      These abilities don't scream this art, but they don't contradict it either. It's weird to see black giving haste to red rather than the opposite. Feels like something Dev would try to sneak past Design.

      Delete
  6. Gyx, Blood Legion Commander
    1RR
    Legendary Creature - Elemental Warrior - Rare
    R, Return an attacking non-token creature to your hand: Create a 1/1 red Warrior token attacking the same player or planeswalker.
    3/3

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. With no timing restriction, this allows you to return a blocked creature to your hand in order to create an unblocked 1/1 after blockers are declared. Or at least, that's how players will read it. I guess that's the intention, since you wouldn't activate this before blockers.

      Basically, every blocked creature card can be saved and you get through +1 damage, as well as creating another little threat for next turn. I imagine you play this with as many 1/1s and 2/1s for one as you can and just flood the board super-aggro.

      "Non-token" was a smart addition, both because it prevents players from trying to save something they can't, and because it prevents you from turning a blocked 1/1 into an identical unblocked 1/1, which just feels cheaty.

      Delete
  7. Mountainhome Enforcer 2WB
    Creature - Demon (R)
    Lifelink
    Whenever you gain life, you may pay 2R. If you do, CARDNAME deals that much damage to target creature or player.
    2/4

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This could arguably be mono-white or mono-black with that red activation, but for some reason WB feels right. I guess it's the art palette.
      Giving you one trigger is nice. Triggering off of any life gain would be dangerous, but costing {2}{R} each time puts us back in safe territory.
      IDK, this just feels like a card to me.

      Delete
    2. With 4RR open, it looks like you can loop this twice, which is certainly cute-not-broken.

      Delete
    3. It could be "whenever you gain life the first time each turn" and no Mana cost, but the Johnny in me likes the potential of turning this into a weird engine.

      Delete
    4. "Whenever you gain life, you may pay 2R. If you do, CARDNAME deals damage to target player equal to the amount of life you've gained this turn"?

      Means on his own you can get 2 damage attacking, +2 damage on 2R, +4 on 4RR? Could also decouple it to make it an activated ability at that point.

      Delete