Friday, September 11, 2020

Weekend Design Challenge 091120 - Kaldheim MDFCs


Hey Artisans! Click through to see this weekend's design challenge. Your mission is to design a custom magic card that follows the guidelines. Over the course of the weekend, give feedback to your fellow designers on their designs and incorporate their feedback to iterate on your own. I'll try to offer some feedback of my own starting on Monday.

During Zendikar Rising previews we learned that the next set, Kaldheim, will also be using modal double-faced cards (aka MDFCs: cards like Valakut Awakening where you can play either side). Your challenge this week is to design a rare MDFC that we might expect to see in Kaldheim (neither side should be a land since that was Zendikar Rising's thing). Bonus points for strong tie-ins to the "Viking-inspired" worldbuilding.

Good luck and have fun!

12 comments:

  1. Springthaw Cowherd (uncommon)
    1G
    Creature – Human Peasant
    T: Add G.
    1/2
    ///
    Rimewind Warrior
    4G
    Creature – Human Warrior
    4/4

    Viking culture was an important but only partial component of Norse life, and this card is meant to be a person who might tend to his family's farm during times of peace but go raiding when supplies are scarce.

    Making the back side a big vanilla creature helps people know what their two options are without having to look at both sides. It also allows for the front side to be a smaller creature with more early-game utility.

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    1. Oops, didn't realize it was supposed to be rare! My bad.

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    2. That's very cool. I could see this being printed as low as common, maybe with slightly worse stats on the backside (3/4? 4/3?) so it's not an autodraft. I think duality of creatures based on peace/war is a likely theme (see my card below)

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    3. No worries that it's not rare! I probably shouldn't have set that as a constraint. Springthaw Cowherd // Rimewind Warrior looks like a great uncommon or common design with clear "drew it early / drew it late" gameplay options.

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  2. I had a bunch of interesting ideas but none of them managed to turn into a modal rare :)

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    1. Feel free to post anyway! :-) I specified "rare" because modal common/uncommon designs seem very limited in complexity but I'll be interested to see the designs in any case.

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    2. Thank you! I didn't get as far as any cards I was completely happy with (or I would indeed have just posted them), but genres I considered:

      Mysterious wanderer/Norse God [Norse gods tended to be more human than a lot of pantheons]
      Stay at home/Raider [just like Jeremy]
      Pre-ragnarok/Post-ragnarok [But really they wanted to be a "everything is on raganrok side once X spells with ragnarok have been played anywhere"]
      cheaper-god/Splashier finisher spell

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    3. That's a neat idea for a Ragnarok mechanic. Probably calls for a city's-blessing-like wording rather than MDFCs, as you said.

      Norse gods as MDFCs is also interesting. Now I'm trying to imagine how that fits into the "Gods are indestructible and can only sometimes attack/block" paradigm. Maybe the godly side is pure enchantment and the "hello fellow mortals" side is the only one that can attack/block? That plus a Bolas-god "returns to library/hand on death" rider would be interesting.

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    4. I was thinking perhaps borrowing the "put it in your library third from the top" mechanics.

      Or maybe, when either side dies, it comes back to the battlefield transformed, so the more powerful side can be got rid of for one turn at least.

      I'm thinking those because the Norse gods were much less ethereal or untouchable than other pantheons, it's pretty realistic they'd just get unfortunately stabbed one day, although their *story* wouldn't really stop, so it would be good for them to have some kind of stay-on-the-battlefield ability, but probably one more conditional than indestructible or "power on at condition X"

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  3. Tular the Crashing Wave 2UUR
    Legendary Creature - Demigod Warrior (M)
    Whenever ~ attacks, you may pay {U/R}{U/R}{U/R} for each attacking creature creature you control. If you do, tap up to X target creatures, and ~ deals X damage to each of those creatures, where X is equal to the number of times you paid this cost. (You must pay the cost for all attacking creatures for this ability to work).
    5/4

    //

    Tular the Steady Tide 1GUU
    Legendary Creature - Demigod Warrior (M)
    At the beginning of your end step, as long as ~ is untapped, put a +1/+1 counter on it.
    T, Remove three +1/+1 counters from Tular: Draw three cards. Until end of turn, you may play any number of land cards. Tular doesn’t untap during your next untap step.
    1/2

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    1. I really tried to make a rare that reflected a two-mode demigod (warlike, prosperous) of the tides, but this guy ended up being super mythic. Honestly, each of these halves could be their own legendary commander.

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    2. That's super-splashy (no pun intended) and fun! I was wondering when we'd start to see MDFCs with different color identities on each side-- split cards have been doing it since forever and MDFCs are just generalized split cards, so I think it's inevitable.

      "Tides" makes me think an old-fashioned transforming DFC as far as the flavor goes, but I understand why MDFC makes more sense for the gameplay. Aggressive vs. defensive is a fun and classic choice and this is a vibrant, Timmy-friendly way of capturing that.

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