Monday, June 28, 2021

CCDD 20210628 - Veteran Thief

This one started out as a common 1/1 lifelink, shadow, vanishing 5 for B. I vacillated between vanishing and cumulative upkeep 1 for the downside/inevitable demise element of the concept, but downside mechanics suck and there's no way I'm actually using them in Cornea. I ended up with a pseudo-cumulative upkeep instead, but it made the life swings big enough that this needed to be bumped up to uncommon (maybe even rare) and I had to tack on at least one more to the mana value.

 

Saturday, June 26, 2021

Weekend Design Challenge 062621 - Dungeon

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.

Wednesday, June 23, 2021

CCDD 20210623 - Invisibility Field

I feel like the top-down Invisibility I was going for here may have gotten away from me a little bit. I'm not sure being able to target it with creatures (and stapling on the Illusion ability) is enough of a window for this to feel different enough from Whispersilk Cloak.

 

Monday, June 21, 2021

CCDD 20210621 - Harmonic Coordination

There is surprisingly little mono-G top-down design space in a Heist Movie theme. I put the clockwork maneuvering of the squad in the Common Bond/Seeds of Strength space, but I wonder if I forced it to be different targets if it would be a better design.



Friday, June 18, 2021

Weekend Design Challenge 061821 - Two Cards

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.

Sunday, June 13, 2021

The Many Faces of +1/+1 Counters

There are a number of evergreen archetypes that Wizards goes back to when a color pair doesn't have anything in particular it wants to do in a set. These are especially visible in core set Limited environments, which are designed to both teach new players what color combinations usually do and to "reset" enfranchised players back to basics, so to speak. While there are a number of these with enough history to write about – U/R spells, W/B lifegain, and so on – what I wanted to focus on in this article is the +1/+1 counter archetype, which sets itself apart from its coworkers by its flexibility. What we think of as a "counter theme" is actually several themes that happen to use +1/+1 counters, each of which is worth exploring in some depth.

Friday, June 11, 2021

Weekend Design Challenge 061121 - Young Planeswalker Fan


Happy Friday 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.

Saturday, June 5, 2021

Weekend Design Challenge 060521 - Iconic Slayer

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.