Five Design Challenges for GDS4

Starting November 1st, I'm joining Wizards of the Coast as a designer. As a parting gift to the wonderful Goblin Artisans community, I'm leaving five design practice challenges to help you develop your skills on GDS4.

These challenges hew closely to the contents of GDS3, with a focus on designing commons and making cards that go together in an environment. These were inspired by Zach Barash's practice challenges for Hipsters of the Coast, which were very useful, and are intended to help you warm up after the GDS4 is announced. That said, there's nothing wrong with doing them now.

Because I'm pretty close to a point where I can't look at custom Magic designs, please do not post answers in the comments just to be safe. Thanks!

1. Design a two-color draft archetype for use in a premiere set. Try to choose a draft archetype that explores space that hasn’t been explored by that color combination before. You may use one deciduous mechanic. You may design up to three creatures and up to two of each noncreature card type. Design the following:

• Three commons
• Two uncommons
• One rare
• One mythic rare

2. Choose your favorite draftable Magic set. Create ten commons, two of each color, that could fit into that set. Each color should have one creature and one noncreature card. It’s okay if the common occupies a “slot” that was already taken; for example, you can design a bounce spell even if the set already has one at common.

3. Choose a premiere set prior to Ikoria. Create a legendary creature intended for use in Commander that explores a particular mechanical theme of that set, like we see in modern Commander precons. Design four cards that accompany that legendary creature, then choose four non-mythic cards from that set to include in the precon.

4. Create eight top-down cards for a set based on post-apocalyptic action movies like Mad Max. There must be two of each rarity, so two commons, two uncommons, and so on. You may design a maximum of four cards of each card type. Each color must be represented at least once (but it can be on a multicolored card). You may use one of the following deciduous mechanics: Vehicles, Treasure tokens, or Food tokens. You may not use any other deciduous mechanics.

5. You’ve been tasked with leading vision design on a Magic set that has some kind of mechanical twist, like Conspiracy, Battlebond, and Planechase. Figure out what twist you’d like this set to have, then design two commons, two uncommons, two rares, and one mythic rare that play along with the twist. You may design up to three creatures and up to two of each noncreature card type. Each color must be represented at least once (but it can be on a multicolored card). You may use any number of deciduous mechanics that don’t require extra expense to be printed, so no double-faced cards etc.