Weekend Design Challenge 122917—Preview Week

Click through to see the requirements for your design test, 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.

Choose a Magic set no one else has claimed (and claim it in the comments before you begin work, because it'll take a bit and you could get scooped). Then select ten cards from that set for each of the daily features from the mothership circa 2010.

Multiple Choice Magic Design Question of the Day 9

9) Assuming the next four expansion sets will each feature one of these direct damage cards in the common shock variant slot, which two are least likely to see print?

Magma Jet, Scattershot, Pyromatics,
Blaze, Gut Shot, Erratic Explosion

 a) Magma Jet and Erratic Explosion
 b) Scattershot and Pyromatics
 c) Blaze and Gut Shot
 d) Magma Jet and Scattershot
 e) Scattershot and Erratic Explosion

Click through to see the answer and my rationale.

Multiple Choice Magic Design Question of the Day 7 & 8

7) Which of the following timeshifted Planer Chaos cards is least likely to be reprinted in a new expansion set?
 a) Malach of the Dawn
 b) Kor Dirge
 c) Harmonize
 d) Blood Knight
 e) Merfolk Thaumaturgist

8) Which of the above is most likely to be reprinted in a new expansion set?

Click through to see the answer and my rationale.

Multiple Choice Magic Design Question of the Day 6

6) Which of the following is the best way to achieve resonance on a single card?
 a) Use keywords and ability words to define its features.
 b) Prove the rule by finding an exception to it.
 c) Demonstrate as much that's true about the concept as possible.
 d) Show the concept in contrast with its opposite.
 e) Demonstrate one unique thing that's true about the concept.

Click through to see the answer and my rationale.

CCDD 122517—Rudolph the Red-Nosed & Santa Claus

Cool Card Design of the Day
12/25/2017 - Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, my friends!

Weekend Art Challenge 122217—feliciacano & rainerpetterart

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.

Multiple Choice Magic Design Question of the Day 5

5) How many of these abilities can be countered with Stifle?

Flying

Bushido 1

Cascade

Dredge 3

Conspire 

Cycling

Using a face-down creature's morph ability to turn it face-up.

[Mana]: CARDNAME gets +2/+2 until end of turn. Activate this ability only once per turn.

CARDNAME's power and toughness are each equal to the number of cards in your hand.

If a source you control would deal damage to a permanent or player, it deals double that damage to that permanent or player instead. 

CARDNAME gets +1/+1 as long as you control another black creature.

{T}: Add {C} to your mana pool.

If an opponent would draw two or more cards, instead you and that player each draw a card.

You may have CARDNAME enter the battlefield as a copy of any creature on the battlefield.

You may discard a Plains card rather than pay CARDNAME's mana cost.

 a) 4
 b) 5
 c) 6
 d) 7
 e) 8

Click through to see the answer and my rationale.

Multiple Choice Magic Design Question of the Day 4

4) Which of these Ravnica keywords has the largest design space?
 a) Radiance
 b) Overload
 c) Cipher
 d) Forecast
 e) Haunt
 f) Bloodrush

Click through to see the answer and my rationale.

Multiple Choice Magic Design Question of the Day 3

3) Which of the following statements is a red planeswalker most likely to agree with?
 a) I do what's best for me.
 b) I can solve any problem.
 c) Love will overcome.
 d) Just go with the flow.
 e) Justice must be served.

Click through to see the answer and my rationale.

Weekend Design Challenge 121517—black removal

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.

Multiple Choice Magic Design Question of the Day 2

2) Assuming R&D is going to make a card with four of the following five changes to Giant Growth, which of the changes shouldn’t be made?
 a) Add 'you control' after 'target creature'.
 b) Change 'target creature' to 'each creature'.
 c) Make it a sorcery.
 d) Add "Then it fights target creature you don't control."
 e) Change the mana cost to {3}{G}{G}.

Click through to see the answer and my rationale.

Multiple Choice Magic Design Question of the Day 1

1) Which of the following is the least appropriate way for Design to serve these audiences?
 a) Design should make sure there are high mana costs for Timmy.
 b) Design should make sure there are bad cards for Jenny.
 c) Design should make sure there are under-costed cards for Spike.
 d) Design should make sure there are wordy cards for Mel.
 e) Design should make sure there are funny cards for Vorthos.

Click through to see the answer and my rationale.

CCDD 121217—All Hail the Gitrog

Cool Card Design of the Day
12/12/2017 - Top down card.

GDS3 Prep: A Set in Four Cards

A Set in Four Cards is an exercise we've occasionally done around these parts, and a fantastic way to prepare for GDS3. The goal of the exercise is to tell your audience as much as you possibly can about a hypothetical set merely by showing them four cards. The only words you have to communicate your set's themes, mechanics, and hooks are through cardnames and rules text (and the set name).

Big Picture Mechanics

What kinds of mechanics does a set need to click? If we were designing a new set, what sorts of mechanics would we want to be sure to include?

First, let's review the marketed mechanics from the last few years of sets and try to categorize them.

Introduce Yourself!

Goblin Artisans is more than four years old. It's high time we had an open "get to know you" thread!

So, I know you like CCG design, but who are you people? Where do you come from? What are you interested in? What is your life like, when you're not brainstorming Magic cards on the internets?

Lurkers, now's your chance to come out into the daylight! We don't bite.

[Originally Posted July 2015. In the interests of making this thing findable, this has been bumped.]

Weekend Design Challenge 120817—GDS3 Multiple Choice Quiz Questions

Click through to see the design requirements for your quiz question, 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.

GDS3 Prep: Review the GDS 2 Multiple Choice Quiz

You heard the awesome news that the Great Designer Search is back, right? This is the moment that Goblin Artisans was born for. This is your home for preparation leading up to the event, as well as coverage and analysis during. Feel free to share any other content you find relevant. Zachary Barash wasted no time contributing to the cause on Hipsters of the Coast.

The first active culling of potential GDS3 participants will be the multiple choice quiz. The first two times, this test was quite hard, including questions the answer to which had never been discussed outside R&D at the time, and some notorious trick questions. Only the 100 highest scores will move on, so we're going to review the previous quizzes, analyze them, and speculate about the next one.

First, we'll review the GDS2 quiz. I recommend taking it first. Then follow along with us as we review the questions. The page won't display the answers or grade your test, but the answers have been scraped from the page's code by Mr. Vovoda. Regardless, discussing the questions is more important now than seeing the right answers.

Go Big or Go Home: GDS3 is Here!

As you may have heard, WotC recently announced the Great Designer Search 3.

Are you planning to enter? It has long been a dream of ours that, when GDS3 rolled around, the Goblin Artisans community would crush it and take multiple spots in the Top 8. I can’t wait to see who among our regulars will step up to the challenge.

What sort of content would you like us to post to help you prepare? Jay’s working on a review of the GDS2 multiple choice test. Here are some other ideas:

• GDS2 lessons and retrospectives
• Set building brainstorming threads
• Sample essay questions that we can imagine them asking
• Sample multiple choice questions
• Rerunning design challenges from GDS2

Please let us know what would be most interesting or helpful!

Also, consider this an open thread for “OMG GDS3” comments etc.

CCDD 120617—Master's Journal

Cool Card Design of the Day
12/6/2017 - Here's a six-mana rare that does nothing on its own. Also, it lets you counter more than one spell and is therefore completely broken, like Counterbalance and Forbid.

Non-Games

Hey friend. I want to tell you about a game I'm really excited about. It's the most expensive game on the market, and the rulebook is so much bigger than all other games they don't even print it. But it's totally worth it because the theme and the art are fantastic and the gameplay is so deep and fun. I mean, when you get to play; Maybe a fifth of all games are decided by the luck of the draw, though you don't always know that until you've played it out.

Let's talk about game design, variance, and non-games for a bit. Non-Games are experiences that look like games but whose outcome is not influenced by choices the players make. Candyland is a non-game. Some games of Magic are close enough to being non-games that it's a problem worth discussing.

Non-games aren't Magic's biggest problem. A steep learning curve, overcoming the perception of a poor value ratio and appealing to the full potential market are #1, #2 and #3 in some order. I would put the frequency of games that are frustratingly decided by the draw at #4. I'm calling these non-games because they aren't decided by decisions players make after the game has begun (after deck-building and mulligans, which certainly factor heavily). While not the most important problem facing the game, it is important, and it's something we can address.

Weekend Design Challenge 120117—binary auras

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.

CCDD 113017—reborn

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/30/2017 - Reborn is a keyword action that lets you enjoy enters-the-battlefield abilities of your permanents again, inspired by the discussion about augment/host, but most especially this comment by Wobbles.

CCDD 112917—Mirror Violence

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/29/2017 - Since green has absorbed creature-based damage from red, here's another something to base red damage off of.

CCDD 112817—tribal auras

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/28/2017 - Most auras can hit any permanent of the appropriate type. Sometimes there are conditions about who controls the permanent. With the exception of 'enchant wall,' there are no auras that care about their target's creature type.

That makes sense for the most part: Such auras would be quite narrow. Even so, augment has me thinking we could make a few tribal auras.

Augment and Host

Unstable introduced a new card pairing mechanic like meld in which augments can be played to modify hosts. This is an exciting area of design for players because we love creating monsters. Their execution here does something very clever. There's also a shiny veneer I'd like to pull off.

Let's discuss augment.

Weekend Art Challenge 112417—Akeiron

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.

CCDD 112317—Voltaic Key Ring

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/23/2017 - Hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving.
Here's a double-mana-rock for activating abilities.
(Posted retroactively.)

CCDD 112217—Keldon Forerunner

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/22/2017 - Here's a Keldon Marauders callback.

CCDD 112117—Gem token

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/15/2017 - Sometimes treasure tokens let us cast a spell a turn or two early and that's fun and powerful. Powerful enough that access to treasure is limited at low mana costs, especially at common. Which limits how often treasure tokens are used to make up for missed land drops or to fix your colors when you'd otherwise be color-screwed. And that's a shame, because Magic often lacks that kind of smoothing.

If treasure didn't accelerate your mana, it could be much cheaper, and more common. Let's explore that.

Weekend Art Challenge 111717—MarcSimonetti

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.

CCDD 111617—Reciprocating Arch

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/16/2017 - Reciprocating Arch came from thinking about alternatives to treasure tokens that could help you cast spells without the added cost that accelerating your mana necessitates. This idea begat 3 bonus cards.

CCDD 111517—Astral Dissection

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/15/2017 - I saw this art and had to make a removal spell.

CCDD 111417—Erupt

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/14/2017 - Erupt is a kicker-subset keyword where you can enhance a spell by sacrificing lands. Because its purpose is to put excess land to use and not to make players mana-screw themselves, it only goes on spells with relatively high mana costs.

Weekend Art Challenge 111017—Roberto Gatto

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.

CCDD 110917—Fervant Contradiction

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/9/2017 - Spell Blast meets Contradict.

CCDD 110817—Interfere

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/8/2017 - This counterspell mostly just burns up the mana your opponent used, like Remand but there is one added wrinkle.

CCDD 110717—Shush

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/7/2017 - Today we have the most dangerous of all countermagic: The free kind.

Weekend Art Challenge 110317—Risachantag

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.

CCDD 110217—Seeing Eye Wolf

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/2/2017 - This card walks the line between utility and efficiency. A 2/2 for two is nothing amazing for a green uncommon, but it's relevant enough to play in Limited. If you're stuck on land, this can help you find it. It can do that multiple times, but very slowly and without card advantage. The result is intended to be a card you're okay main-decking that can help you out in some sticky situations.

CCDD 110117—Goblin Cheerleader & Goblin Cheer Captain

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/1/2017 - Here's a wildly simplified Goblin Bushwhacker.

CCDD 103117—Animate Soul & Quick Stitch

Cool Card Design of the Day
10/31/2017 - This was the creepiest card I found sitting in my CCDD folder. I suspect the inspiration (from January) was to mess with base power and toughness while reanimating, or perhaps I wanted to do the Shade version of Rise from the Grave?

Magic's Terrible Value Proposition

Magic is my favorite game. It's a game millions of people play. And it's a terrible value proposition.

Many gamers never even try Magic because it's notoriously expensive.

How much does it cost to play Magic? Well, there are a ton of ways to play and Magic is literally its own economy, but we can answer this from the perspective of a consumer choosing between Magic and another game.

WeekendArtChallenge 102717—CarmenSinek

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.

CCDD 102617—Wreathe in Flame

Cool Card Design of the Day
10/26/2017 - Trying out some aura-on-the-stack tech.

CCDD 10/25/17—surprise auras

Cool Card Design of the Day
10/25/2017 - Here are some auras that can be played faster, cheaper, or both in specific situations.

CCDD 102417—Great Heights

Cool Card Design of the Day
10/24/2017 - This is like a slow trap. It gets cheaper/better in response to a certain action your opponent might take, but it's less preventative and more punitive.

Weekend Art Challenge 102017—AlexandrescuPaul

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.

CCDD 101917—Jungle Hunt, Hunt through the Mist, & Feral Curiosity

Cool Card Design of the Day
10/19/2017 - Here are three cards that show a progression into a vein of design space.

CCDD 101817—Lost in Battle

Cool Card Design of the Day
10/18/2017 - Lost in Battle is vaguely inspired by Settle the Wreckage, but only bounces creatures and is much more symmetrical: