CCDD 043018—Clonelet

Cool Card Design of the Day
4/30/2018 - I wanted to make a cheap Clone that could only copy small creatures. Mocking that up gave me a couple more ideas. (Treat the following cards as rare, for complexity, like Clone.)

CCDD 042918—Now or Later Land

Cool Card Design of the Day
4/29/2018 - Now or Later Land is a rare dual land cycle where you choose whether you can't use it the turn you play it or the turn after.

Weekend Art Challenge 042718 — Skizoh

Click through to see the requirements for your design test, due by Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, which you may use to revise your submission any number of times. I encourage you all to revise your designs at least once in response to feedback. I will review the most recent submission from each designer.

Meet the Top 8: Linus Ulysses Hamilton

Our series of interviews with the Top 8 contestants of the GDS3 continues with Linus Ulysses Hamilton, who was kind enough to answer a few questions.

CCDD 042518 - Steam Vent Remixes and Overdesign

I've been thinking a lot about rare land cycles a lot recently, and Ravnica's shocklands have been bugging me.

CCDD 042418 - A Few More Remix Legends

Just a couple more Weatherlight Crew remixes before moving onto something else.

Weekend Design Challenge Review - OG Weatherlight Remix

Wow. You guys made a great crew and cast for the Weatherlight. Here's the design challenge we're reviewing today. Let's dive in.

Weekend Design Challenge 042018 - OG Weatherlight Remix

Hello, Artisans. Click through to see the requirements for this weekend's design challenge, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, which frankly, you all are awesome at. Listen to each other's feedback, revise your submission any number of times, and on Monday-ish, I'll review the most recent submission from each designer.

CCDD 041918 - New Line of Questioning and Better Options

I was designing Blue commons yesterday for Adam Klesh and Bradley Rose's Castmire, and came up with a couple of spells with semi-hidden modes.

CCDD 041818 - Spoils

Larcent's article Monday had me thinking about a mechanic that could have used the treasures that Ixalan's Pirates kept creating (finding? stealing? conjuring?). I tried to find a mana sink mechanic that wasn't kicker or a variation thereon, and came up with this.

Meet the Top 8: Ari Nieh

Next in our series of interviews with the GDS Top 8, we spoke with Ari Nieh, one of the co-founders of Goblin Artisans.

The Pirate Problem: Flavor Doesn't Make a Tribe

By Larcent

I've been playing in the beta for Magic: The Gathering Arena since February. My experience in this very limited game environment has helped me think a lot about tribal design, particularly where Ixalan block succeeded and failed. Let's talk about Pirates and figure out what the heck happened with them, design-wise.

Weekend Art Challenge 041318 - Tsabo6

Hello, Artisans. Click through to see the requirements for this weekend's design challenge, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, which frankly, you all are awesome at. Listen to each other's feedback, revise your submission any number of times, and on Monday-ish, I'll review the most recent submission from each designer.

CCDD 041218 - Batching and Augmented

I was reading MaRo's article on Historic and the new mechanic technology of Batching a few days ago. I have thoughts on it, but I'll save those for a twitter rant. In the meantime, I was thinking about other ways to use batching, and came up with Augmented.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 041018 — David Alvarez

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Here's the challenge we're reviewing today!

CCDD 041118—Jaya's Immolating Inferno

Cool Card Design of the Day
4/11/2018 - Have you seen Jaya's Immolating Inferno from the Dominaria spoilers? Let's discuss legendary sorceries.

Alex Werner's Essay Submission

(Wizards has alerted GDS3 Top 8 contestants that their essays would not be published on the mothership, and gave them clearance to self-publish. We reached out to all contestants and offered to host their essays.)

GDS 3 Index Page

Here at GA, we've produced a lot of material leading up to and in response to the GDS3 (arguably, every bit of content on this site since its birth falls under that umbrella). Here's an index of links, somewhat organized, of such material since GDS3 was announced. (This is a work in progress. I'm still going through our archives and assembling links. Please be patient as I get it together.)

CCDD 041018 - Questing Bear

I've been looking at D&D stuff for the first time in about 20 years, and that had me thinking a lot about Zendikar. I liked the leveler mechanic in Rise of the Eldrazi, although I felt like they should have used Quest counters rather than level counters to better parallel their enchantment counterparts*. This brought me down the path of how we could tie creature leveling to gaining quest counters.

Meet the Top 8: Ryan Siegel-Stechler

Continuing our interviews with the GDS Top 8, we spoke with long-time Artisan Ryan Siegel-Stechler. Click through and see what he has to say about Magic design.

Weekend Art Challenge 040618 — David Alvarez

Click through to see the requirements for your design test, due by Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, which you may use to revise your submission any number of times. I encourage you all to revise your designs at least once in response to feedback. I will review the most recent submission from each designer.

Jay Treat's Essay Submission

1) Introduce yourself and explain why you are a good fit for this internship.

Hey everyone! My name's Jay Treat and I'm a professional game designer.

Scott Wilson's Essay Submission

(Wizards has alerted GDS3 Top 8 contestants that their essays would not be published on the mothership, and gave them clearance to self-publish. We reached out to all contestants and offered to host their essays.)

Comparing the Limited play of Unstable, Ixalan & M25

Ixalan is the least dynamic Limited format we've had in perhaps a decade. The problem is that the only supported archetypes are tribal and there are only four tribes. We get a bit of flexibility in pirates and dinosaurs since they're both three-color tribes, but there is zero cross-tribal support and apart from the difficult-to-draft explore deck and flying deck, there are no alternatives.

Unstable is huge fun even when you ignore the silver-bordered silliness because the various mechanics you're invited to play are less strictly distributed between colors and there are a ton of bridges: Cards that reward players for mixing two different mechanics together.

Ari Nieh's Essay Submission

(Hey all, Ari here! These are my essays for Trial 1, now with special Goblin Artisans exclusive formatting. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.)

Jeremy Geist's Essay Submission

Wizards has alerted GDS3 Top 8 contestants that their essays would not be published on the mothership, and gave them clearance to self-publish. We reached out to all contestants and offered to host their essays. Jeremy Geist has already posted his on his own website, and has asked that we link directly to that. Swing on by, check it out, and see some of game designs. You can offer your reactions to his essays in the comments below.