Wednesday, April 29, 2020

CCDD 042920 - Breakneck Pace


Red's gotten a lot better at card draw in recent years. We routinely see Rummaging Goblin and Act on Impulse effects even at lower rarities. The theme for both those effects is that they're "short-sighted"; red isn't necessarily gaining any permanent advantage out of them. That's not just a matter of flavor; it opens the way for some exciting designs that wouldn't be safe to print in blue.


Monday, April 27, 2020

CCDD 042720 - Cabalistic Teachings

I designed this card before the Companions got spoiled, but in some ways it's trying to fill a role similar to theirs. I'll let you decide whether that's a good or a bad thing.


Friday, April 24, 2020

Weekend Design Challenge 04242020 - Mutate Mutations

Happy Friday, Artisans! It's been a while since we've done one of these, and maybe people are staying in for the weekend and have some time to think about magic design. Click through to see this weekend's design parameters. With those as your guidelines, design a custom magic card. Over the course of the weekend, give feedback to your fellow designers on their designs, and incorporate their feedback to iterate on your own. If I have time over the course of next week, I will try to offer some of my own feedback.

Thursday, April 23, 2020

CCDD 04232020 - Megazord

So I don't know much about Kaiju. The closest I guess is I was a fan of Power Rangers when I was in 4th grade, and that had lots of giant monsters. Name of keyword aside, mutate is a cool way to capture the voltron/megazord transformation, so I played around in that space today.

Wednesday, April 22, 2020

CCDD 042220 - Mutate and Defender

Jeremy's Cool Bird post had me thinking about other interesting designs that Morph opens up. I of course came up with the Jennyest of Jenny designs.

Tuesday, April 21, 2020

CCDD 042120 - Touch of Frost

Here's another card from the Have They Really Never Printed This? file.


Monday, April 20, 2020

CCDD 042020 - Commanding General

For today's design, we have a silly pun in the vein of Charming Prince.


Thursday, April 16, 2020

CCDD 041620 - Drive to Exhaustion

Nothing too groundbreaking today, just a neat little Act of Treason variant.


Wednesday, April 15, 2020

CCDD 04152020 - Cool Bird

One of the reasons for Magic's longevity is its ability to change the value of a card by altering its context. This simple design finds new meaning in Ikoria's environment.


Tuesday, April 14, 2020

CCDD 041420 - Shimmering Battlement

Magic has lots of lands that tap only for colorless and then activate with a specific color or combination of colors, like Academy Ruins or Blighted Woodland and their respective cycles. But the activated non-mana ability has to be pretty good to make a nonbasic Wastes playable. One way to narrow that gap: start from a land that's slightly better, like Shimmering Grotto.


Sunday, April 12, 2020

CCDD 041220 - Bonelord Skeletrex

Loosely based on an I Think You Should Leave sketch that basically encapsulates my taste in comedy.


Thursday, April 9, 2020

CCDD 040920 - Sangromancy Scroll


Should this card be evaluated as a charm? A split card? A morph-like mechainc? I'm not really sure, but it seems to be doing cool things.


Wednesday, April 8, 2020

CCDD 040820 - The Questing Beast

Magic R&D has a hard job. Sometimes they make mistakes. Staying true to the Play Design vision for a card while balancing it properly for Constructed seems especially tricky; I understand why printed cards might end up with problems on either front. So this isn't criticism. I just wanted to prove something to myself: Pushing Questing Beast for a specific role in Standard didn't require a text box with eight lines, three line breaks, and multiple disconnected abilities.

Monday, April 6, 2020

CCDD 040620 - Face of the Unknown

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I liked designing Commanders that pushed popular color combinations in a different direction, right? Well, meet the brute-forciest of brute-force solutions to that challenge.


Sunday, April 5, 2020

CCDD 040520 - Trainer's Orb


This is a very top-down design. By that I mean: first I designed the name and mana cost... then the type line and rarity... and then the abilities.

Saturday, April 4, 2020

CCDD 040420 - Barricades


Here's another Fog effect-- this time an actual attempt to riff on the card Fog, though I think there was some top-down motivation here too.

Thursday, April 2, 2020

CCDD 040220 - Glade Elemental

Evasion is a bummer. I mean, yes, it's a crucial and valuable part of Magic gameplay, from flying to menace to straight-up "can't be blocked". But evasion abilities are fundamentally an invitation not to interact, and decks can abuse those abilities to the point where interacting through combat just isn't a viable strategy. Is there a way to make cards that would punish those decks?

Wednesday, April 1, 2020

CCDD 040120 - Gatling Blast


For a bottom-up design, this card went through a crazy number of templating iterations. I knew what I wanted it to do, but not how to do that in a clean and intuitive way. Finally I realized that I could get the text box down to four lines by reusing an existing set mechanic.