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.

CCDD 022718 - Conjured Augmentation and Cascading Design Restrictions

Holy guacamole, the GDS3 design test is fun. My first two first draft designs were an Uncommon Azorius Enchantment and an Uncommon Orzhov Creature. Those decisions put the tightest squeeze on what I would be able to do in Boros and Selesnya, so those are the cards I decided to tackle next.

CCDD 071317—Sylvan Freemage

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/27/2017 - Players enjoy suiting up auras but sometimes need a reason to push past their flaws. Designers want to make fun things playable.

CCDD 060117–Legacy of Terror & Secret of Flight

Cool Card Design of the Day
6/1/2017 - Inheritance is a variation on Rancor and Dragon Fangs' recursion abilities; it's free and immediate… provided you've got a valid target to enchant at that moment.

CCDD 053017—Challenger's Glory et al

Cool Card Design of the Day
5/30/2017 - Normally, retrace is only appropriate on sorceries and instants because we don't want the same creature coming back too many times, but there's another permanent type that's infamous for its transience. What happens if we put retrace on auras?

CCDD 042617—Seek All Destinies & Celestial Parade

Cool Card Design of the Day
1/25/2017 - A couple of splashy all-the-auras rares.

CCDD 111814—Dream Trap, Dungeon Shackles & Aspen Blessing

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/18/2014 - Here's a partial cycle of auras that upgrade from simple+small effects to bigger effects when you can afford it.

CCDD 112613—Spellbind

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/26/2013 - Almost two years ago, I explored spellbind and runeward, mechanics that would combat the risk of enchanting your own creatures. I recently found a better way to template the keyword.

Deconstructing Theros: Bestow

Let's examine bestow, the new creature/aura mechanic in Theros.

Spoilers Ahead:

CCDD 080813—Essence Reflection

Cool Card Design of the Day
8/8/2013 - Enchantment/Aura copying/token-making is generally avoided because there haven't been any good ways to mark what's what and avoid memory issues so far. I'm honestly not sure how you could do that as a multi-card mechanic. Essence Reflection is a shot at doing it on a single rare.
 

CCDD 011812—Safe Ward, etc

Cool Card Design of the Day
1/19/2012 - Today's cards are a direct follow up from yesterday's discussion of Runeward Bear. Wobbles had suggested moving the ability that helps prevent the aura-problem to the aura itself. Rather than put split second on the aura, he used the bear's hexproof-while-targeted ability, which I prefer because it's the least disturbance that achieves our goal. Next, Chah helped pare down the reminder text to something reasonable.

There are a few ways this could look. First, it could be an additive keyword on the aura.

CCDD 030911—The Manifest Mechanic

Cool Card Design of the Day

3/09/2011 - I originally posted this on the Wizards Wiki in January but Living Weapon Week on dailymtg.com got me thinking about it again so I rewrote it and re-posted it here. All of the cards have been refined and new ones added.

When the living weapon mechanic was revealed, it inspired me to think more about incarnate and its variations. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out the first couple weeks of #GDS2. In short, incarnate is the aura mechanic that allows you to generate a creature to enchant when you otherwise couldn't). The choice of 0/0 germ tokens for living weapon seems to support Jonathan Woodward's execution. It's unique and makes it trivial to determine the power and toughness of the resulting creature but I still feel that there is room for another solution. Add to that the fact that 0/0 is now something that has already been done in this realm and we are more or less compelled to find that alternate solution.