The Great Redesigner Search: Booster

Welcome to the final chapter of The Great Redesigner Search, a series where I redo all of my GDS3 entries. This week was the booster pack challenge, or as I like to think of it, a thinly-veiled version of the "design a bunch of commons" challenge. As always, you can read my original entries and judge commentary here.

The Great Redesigner Search: Art

 Welcome back to the Great Redesigner Search, a series where I redo all of my GDS3 entries. This week covers the challenge where we were given slush art and tasked to make hole-filling cards with it. As always, you can read my original entries and judge commentary here.

The Great Redesigner Search: Mechanic

Welcome back to the Great Redesigner Search, a series where I redo all of my GDS3 entries. This week is a little bit different from the others, because I'm making all new cards as opposed to revising old ones. As always, you can read my original entries and judge commentary here.

The Great Redesigner Search: Circus

Welcome back to the Great Redesigner Search, a series where I redo all of my GDS3 entries. This week I'll be going over everything from round 2, the top-down challenge set on the circus plane of Bigtopia. Though I placed in 2nd, there were a lot of misses and room for improvement. As always, you can read my original entries and judge commentary here.

The Great Redesigner Search: Tribal

Welcome back to The Great Redesigner Search, the series where I revise all of my GDS3 designs! This week was the challenge I did best on, so you'd think I don't have that much to change, but I turned in a few cards at the last minute and would like to rectify that. As before, you can see my original designs and judge feedback here. 

The Great Redesigner Search: The Design Test

About two years ago, I went on a reality show and my life changed forever.

GDS Reflections: How Custom Magic Cards Helped Me Publish a Book

By Scott Wilson

Hey there, I'm Scott Wilson from the top four of last year's Great Designer Search 3. You might remember my lukewarm Samurai cards, lukewarm Ancestry mechanic, and lukewarm Innistrad designs.

But hey, at least I'll always have Circus Peanuts.

Weekend Design Challenge Review 052118 — You Might As Well Tribal: Review

Hello, Artisans! It took us a little while to get to here, but today we're reviewing the first of our Play-At-Home GDS Challenges, You Might as Well Tribal.

Our guest judge for this first play-along challenge is Reuben Covington. Reuben is a pillar of the custom magic design community, having long been active on the MTGSalvation custom magic forum, the Custom Magic discord, and of course, here at GA. He helped take our community project Tesla over the finish line, and has created/is creating other sets, including Dreamscape and Vastuum. He hosted the Remaking Magic Podcast, and has written one of THE defining pieces on NWO and Redflagging. Plus, he’s an all-around awesome dude. Welcome Reuben.

So you Artisans came up with a frankly absurd amount of tribal cards for this challenge. The volume of submissions, along with doing whatever we could to keep pace with the GDS show, made it a very busy few weeks since these were submitted. We tried to give meaningful feedback as best we could. If we came off slightly more critical or dismissive than usual, it’s because we are trying to emulate the “GDS Judge Voice.” But know we were all incredibly impressed with the thoughtfulness, creativity, and excitement you all poured into your designs. It showed, and frankly reinforced just how proud we are to be a part of this community

All that gushing aside, let’s get on with the show!

CCDD 071118 - Half-Lords

Cool Card Design of the Day
During GDS3's first challenge, I came up with an idea for Imps that I ended up discarding because, after iterating, it didn't feel like it fit the tribe anymore. I still like the idea, though, so I figured I'd walk you all through my thought process so we could discuss whether the core idea of a "Half-Lord" is salvageable in some way.

CCDD 061818—GDS3 Slick

Cool Card Design of the Day
For the mechanic challenge in GDS3, I built and tested a number of mechanics. Slick was the last of my top choices. Ryan was lamenting hexproof on Twitter today, so it's time to share this one.

Weekend Design Challenge 061518 - A Work of Art

Hey, Artisans! Click through to see this weekend's design challenge, submissions due Monday morning.

Ari Nieh Wins the Great Designer Search 3!

Congratulations to Ari Nieh for winning the Great Designer Search 3!

Ari, from all of us Artisans, we're so happy for you. You made it from 7000+ applicants down to the very end for this amazing opportunity. Goblin Artisans has spent the last seven years being THE place to go to prepare for the GDS3 when it arrives, and I can't think of a better ending for the show than for one of GA's founders to take the prize.

Your victory is well earned, and we can't wait to see how Magic becomes an even more amazing game from your contributions.

CCDD 060718—GDS3 Jury-Rig

Cool Card Design of the Day
For the mechanic challenge in GDS3, I built and tested a number of mechanics. Jury-Rig was my next choice. You might recognize it from 2016. Originally, Jury-Rig had a variable cost; In testing I found that having two different costs for a bunch of cards made knowing how to play your hand far too much work. So I stole the best part of another mechanic (I'll tell that story another time) and simplified Jury-Rig to always cost {3}; That way you can evaluate your hand with the costs you see printed and just one more.

CCDD 060618—GDS3 Riding

Cool Card Design of the Day
For the mehanic challenge in GDS3, I built and tested a number of mechanics. Ride came the closest to making the final cut over bloodspill. I'm really excited about ride because it solves so many of the classic mount problems in a fairly elegant package. I didn't submit it because it's super risky to claim to have found the holy grail so many designers have been searching for, and because bloodspill created the most novel gameplay.

CCDD 060518—GDS3 Oozes

Cool Card Design of the Day
For the tribal challenge in GDS3, I built and tested five tribes. Oozes were my first choice, but Chris Mooney got there first. Shamans got a full day more development than Oozes (and that clearly wasn't enough), so these are very under-cooked, but I thought I'd share some of the more promising veins of design among the 83 cards I brainstormed.

The Late Game: Ari Nieh

Editor's Note: I sent follow up interview questions to the GDS Top 3 yesterday, mistakenly thinking the final day of the GDS was Thursday. It's today, and by now they have already started their tour of WotC. Ari responded last night, and apologies to Jeremy and Chris for sending these out too close to the Renton trip to give you time to answer. -Zeff

Weekend Design Challenge 060118 - Finding A Good Mechanic

Hey, Artisans! Click through to see this weekend's design challenge, submissions due Monday morning.

GDS3 Reflections: Scott Wilson, Challenge 5

By Scott Wilson


Well this was it, the final challenge. And the day before we started, Mark Rosewater sent us an e-mail that made my heart drop.

GDS3 Reflections: Jeremy Geist, Challenge #5: Fleshy Humans of Tarkir

By Jeremy Geist

Ah, the “design a bunch of commons” challenge. Truly the Restaurant Wars of GDS.

GDS3 Reflections: Ari Nieh, Challenge #5

One last challenge! One last hurdle before Renton! One last chance to follow the rules in their entirety! I felt optimistic about this challenge, because I'm more comfortable with the refining/editing/polishing phase of creative work than generating new ideas whole cloth.