Conflicting Metaphors—Inspired VS Heroic

Games are metaphors and game designers are poets. In order to make a card feel thematic, we need to find one way to express the concept it represents through game mechanics. That's all that's needed to make a player feel, "Yeah, that is a dragon. That is a unicorn. Yup, that's dark magic."

CCDD 092314—Setessan Stalwart & Lady of Fangs and Arrows

Cool Card Design of the Day
9/23/2014 - I liked the heroic mechanic from Theros a lot. There's so much right with it. I would never go back and change it. Even so, I was thinking about other mechanical possibilities to express the same thematic concept. If I wouldn't replace heroic, why would I bother thinking of mechanics to replace it? Because designers are explorers, and explorers don't stop exploring just because they've found Atlantis.

Weekend Art Challenge 042514 Review—AndyParkArt

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Here's the challenge we're reviewing today.

Weekend Art Challenge 042514—AndyParkArt

Weekend Art Challenge
Click through to see this weekend's art and the design requirements for your single card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, which I will try to provide, and which everyone is welcome to provide as well.

If you choose, you may use that feedback to revise your submission any number of times. I will post and review the most recent submission from each designer some time on Monday, life permitting. To help ensure I recreate your design accurately, please use CARDNAME instead of ~ in your submissions.

Weekend [Art] Challenge 041814—Journey into Nyx

Weekend Art Challenge
Click through to see this weekend's design challenge. Your single, final submission is due by Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, which I will try to provide, and which everyone is encouraged to provide as well. You may use that feedback to revise your submission any number of times. If and only if you provide a direct link to art for your submission, and the artist's name, will I mock it up and include it in a follow-up review.

Weekend [Art] Challenge Review 012414—Greek Tropes

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Here's the challenge we're reviewing today.

Weekend [Art] Challenge 012414—Greek Tropes

Weekend Art Challenge
Click through to see this weekend's design challenge. Your single, final submission is due by Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, which I will try to provide, and which everyone is encouraged to provide as well. You may use that feedback to revise your submission any number of times. If and only if you provide a direct link to art for your submission, and the artist's name, will I mock it up and include it in a follow-up review.

Theros Review (Part 1—Multicolor)

The problem with reviewing a set when it first comes out is that all your opinions are speculation. No matter how talented or experienced you are at dissecting new sets and predicting card value, deck archetypes and how much fun it'll all be, you don't have the perspective born from playing with those actual cards in the actual environment and that will limit the value of your writing.

The flipside is that no one will care what you think if you write about it after everyone knows the environment. Unless you're not writing strategy tips, but instead analyzing the set for game design nuggets. Let's do that now, with a season of perspective under our belts.

Multicolor

Agent of Horizons and 9 more cards comprise a double cycle of common creatures with off-color activated abilities. These cards push players toward two-color combinations and help give direction in a draft without hurting a player's chance of casting her spells like gold cards do. For that reason, all five ally color pairs and all five enemy color pairs are represented—to keep the format interesting, we want at least those 10 decks to exist and have unique identities. Some of these cards are better than others (which is inevitable for a large cycle) and that might be an indication that Development thought the {B}{G} deck needed less help than the {U}{B} deck, for instance.

Weekend [Art] Challenge Review 110813—Born of the Gods

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Here's the challenge we're reviewing today, since TehWERR took the time to mock the submissions up with art and all. What a guy!

Akhilleus doesn't represent a new mechanic for Born of the Gods, but it is a really cool top-down design of a trope you can bet Wizards will execute on before the block is out. Evan is aware that {1}{W}{W} 2/2 Doublestrike is a little too similar to Fabled Hero and expects Development would vary it up a bit. My money is on 3/1 {2}{W}{W} or something.

Rally is thematically fitting and plays very well with heroic, monstrosity and the myriad auras and tricks that enhance creatures. TehWERR wisely avoided a stat increase effect since the power half of it would make it harder to turn your opponent's rally off once it's on, and since toughness that can disappear before EOT is a huge feel-bad trap.

Jules mentioned concern that your opponent can turn off rally with a single piece of instant removal. That's not inherently bad, but if they commonly do so while also wasting your heroic trigger and half your bestow all at once, that could prove too swingy. Warrants playtesting.

It's not impossible to confuse the divinity counters on Ascended Akroan for +1/+1 counters or vice-versa, but the fact that this creature becomes a non-creature enchantment when it ascends means you only get confused in a very long game with multiple Akroans.

This particular execution leaves me a bit wanting as a 1/1 for four is quite underwhelming even with first strike. "Creatures you control have first strike" is conditionally great, but Knighthood was {2}{W} and I'd prefer something even splashier (or just more efficient). Even so, Ben's concept is neat and I could see a cycle of these at a higher power level.

Not sure the divinity counter is necessary with the total type change, though it is a fun callback to Kamigawa.

Lobster explored a few as-yet-unused uses for devotion, and Disciple of Iroas really does look plausible if not downright likely.

Shadows explored off-color bestow, which seems like a solid evolution for the mechanic. This particular execution has a flaw where it breaks [player's confidence about the rules] if you ever cast it on an opponent's creature. You wouldn't, but that's not the point. He proposed:

Emissary of Iroas and enchanted creature each have +X/+X where X is the total power of the creatures with a different controller.

which he is aware isn't great. I propose:

Emissary of Iroas and enchanted creature each get +X/+X where X is the number of creatures you control.

Jules' spectacle is similar to Rally but is a triggered ability instead of a static one, so it can't be turned off half-way through combat or right after. Instead of boosting the creature with the ability, it boosts the creature that got big, which is more exciting with Dauntless Onslaught. Good stuff.

Tommy speculates that Born of the Gods will slow the format down. I'm not sure if that's true, but it easily might be and I love his reasoning. I'm hesitant about his solution of creating a cycle of expensive common double-cantripping cards. My problem with that is that cantripping is in all colors because you're merely replacing the card you spent casting it, so that mana was your only real payment. Doubling a negation doesn't really compute and players aren't going to get that idea: They're going to see crazy white and red Divination plus on-color effect cards.

Alex' Fleeting Eidolon is an execution of bestow Wizards would have been foolish to print in the first set. It's perfect for a small set. If it represents a cycle, I hope it's a loose cycle where each member gets a different ability that interacts with bestow in a wacky way, since black and red should basically never be able to bounce their own stuff.

Reverence is pretty sweet. Doubling your spells seems like a lovely reward from your favorite deity. Mike was definitely right that pairing reverence on a Clone spell warrants rareness. I love spells like this.

Most reverence cards wouldn't have this problem, but how many players will argue whether the new permanent's mana cost counts toward your devotion total for reverence?

Nich's Hubris is a neat idea for a single aura (though underpowered next to Scourgemark) and/or a creature or two in black or red (maybe a vertical cycle). It's not something we'd want to do enough of to warrant a keyword.

Ant explored what the multicolor gods in the next two sets might look like. It's tricky since they have so many abilities. Originally, he explored "devotion to red or white" which I think is likely to happen in some form, but here he split them up: If you have enough red, Iroas becomes an undercosted creature. If you have enough white, it becomes an overcosted Glorious Anthem. With both, you get both (making your god 6/6).

That's a little lopsided (making Iroas better for mono-red than mono-white), but it kinda pales compared to the last ability which is arguably the best of all the gods' abilities.

The other interesting question is whether hybrid mana will show up. It's slightly out of place having just left Ravnica again, but they're doing gold anyhow and it really does work well with devotion. My guess is that if it does appear, precious few cards will have more than one in their mana cost. (Iroas deviates from Theros gods by counting 2 toward his own devotion—you could argue that mitigates needing to get 5 red and 5 white for full effect).

BTW, Ant did included indestructible in the final version, but that was probably after the cards were rendered.

Weekend [Art] Challenge 110813—Born of the Gods

Weekend Art Challenge
Click through to see this weekend's design challenge. Your card submission is due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, which I will try to provide, and which everyone is encouraged to provide as well. You may use that feedback to revise your submission any number of times. There will be no separate review posted, the feedback and dialog that occurs in the comments below is the review.

CCDD 100313—Fortune's Favor

Cool Card Design of the Day
10/3/2013 - I was scanning my old CCDD folder for designs that seemed less boring than the ones in my new folder. I found several, but this one from May 2012 stuck out to me because of the art, which reminds me of Theros. I'm not claiming any kind of prescience; I just think it's neat how this could work in Theros almost as-is.

Deconstructing Theros Overview

Now that we've looked at each of the major mechanics in Theros, let's take a brief moment to consider the bigger picture.

SPOILERS:

Deconstructing Theros: Devotion

Alternate title: Why Chroma was a bad mechanic, but Devotion will be good.

Chroma was pretty much a dud when it debuted in Eventide. It was certainly not as beloved as Persist/Wither, but probably more popular than the untap symbol. Still, a mechanic needs a stronger recommendation than "more popular than the untap symbol" to get a second shot. The success of individual cards like Primalcrux and Light from Within suggests that perhaps the problem wasn't with Chroma itself. Perhaps the execution was flawed. Devotion is an improvement on Chroma in three crucial aspects: flavor, consistency, and as-fan support.

Deconstructing Theros: Bestow

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

Spoilers Ahead:

Weekend Art Challenge Review 090613—Theros Monsters

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Here's the challenge we're reviewing today.

Weekend Art Challenge 090613—Theros Monsters

Weekend Art Challenge
Click through to see this weekend's art and the design requirements for your card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, which I will try to provide, and which everyone is welcome to provide as well.

If you choose, you may use that feedback to revise your submission any number of times. I will post and review the most recent submission from each designer some time on Monday, life permitting. To help ensure I recreate your design accurately, please use CARDNAME instead of ~ and don't use the {} symbol images in your submissions.

Why the Scry Lands are Rare

As soon as the scry lands were revealed in this week's Latest Developments, there was a massive outcry that these cards had the wrong rarity. After all, look at Kazandu Refuge, Gruul Guildgate, Savage Lands, and Highland Weald. Don't they establish that a dual land which enters the battlefield tapped with some minor benefit is common or uncommon?

Well, maybe. But there's a much more important convention which takes precedence over that one:

Weekend Art Challenge Review 083013—Theros Speculation

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Here's the challenge we're reviewing today.

Deconstructing Theros: Heroic

Theros is focused on three major groups from classical mythology: gods, monsters, and heroes. We've already discussed enchantment creatures and Monstrosity; today, I'd like to talk about Heroic. All cards in this post have been officially previewed by Wizards.

Weekend Art Challenge 083013—Theros Speculation

Weekend Art Challenge
Click through to see this weekend's art and the design requirements for your card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, which I will try to provide, and which everyone is welcome to provide as well.

If you choose, you may use that feedback to revise your submission any number of times. I will post and review the most recent submission from each designer some time on Monday, life permitting. To help ensure I recreate your design accurately, please use CARDNAME instead of ~ and don't use the {} symbol images in your submissions.