The Perfect Storm: Rally, Adventure, Manifest, and Adamant

 Mark Rosewater's Storm Scale is an unofficial measurement for how likely a certain mechanic is to appear in an upcoming set. He has described in detail what every numerical rating from 1 (evergreen mechanics) to 10 (broke the game in half the first time) means; many of the ratings in the middle are things that "require the right environment" in order to return, but their return is plausible. This made me realize: Wouldn't evaluating exactly what these mechanics would require to come back be excellent knowledge for Magic design scholars?

Welcome to the first in my new series: The Perfect Storm. I have collected every mechanic worth writing about that were rated a 5 ("We need to find the right place to bring it back, but I'm optimistic"), 6 ("We need to find the right place to bring it back, but I'm a little less optimistic"), or 7 ("It's unlikely to return, but possible if the right environment comes along") on the Storm Scale as of 2020. Each installment, I will select four of these mechanics at random and write about what environment they would actually need in order to be reprinted. I ended up with rally, adventure, manifest, and adamant for my first outing – let's get cracking.

Weekend Art Design Challenge 20200821 - ZendikART Rising (2)

Happy Friday, Artisans! Click through to see this weekend's design parameters. With those as your guidelines, design a custom magic card. Over the course of the weekend, give feedback to your fellow designers on their designs, and incorporate their feedback to iterate on your own. If I have time over the course of next week, I will try to offer some of my own feedback.

Weekend Art Design Challenge 20200807 - ZendikART Rising (1)

Happy Friday, Artisans! Click through to see this weekend's design parameters. With those as your guidelines, design a custom magic card. Over the course of the weekend, give feedback to your fellow designers on their designs, and incorporate their feedback to iterate on your own. If I have time over the course of next week, I will try to offer some of my own feedback.

CCDD 020519 - Distortion Sentinel and Eldrazi Design Principles

Good morning, Artisans. I was thinking about Eldrazi today, so I decided to come up with one. Unfortunately, I've internalized a number of Eldrazi design principles, some of which I extrapolated from Rise/Battle for/Oath/Eldritch, some of which I just made up, but they do make our friendly unfathomable extraplaner weirdos difficult to make.

CCDD 101916—Roil Engine

Cool Card Design of the Day
10/19/2016 - This mana rock doesn't just accelerate your mana, it lets you cycle many of the excess lands you would draw afterward.

Zeffrikar Exploratory Design Part 2: Everything that Isn't Landfall

Now that I've solidified my stance on Landfall's return in Zeffrikar, it's time to look at the other Zendikar mechanics a little more in-depth. I've already given my one-sentence ratings for these, but we can dig a little deeper.

Zeffrikar Tangent 1: Excavating Zendikar

Introduction: Bury the Lead

On MTGO, they just released this really cool idea of a product (I can't testify as to whether it's actually cool or not, I avoid MTGO most of the time). Tempest Remastered. Take a block that wrapped up seventeen years ago, cultivate the cards from across the sets down to 250 or so, and make it as close to modern draftable as the card pool allows. It's a great idea, and I hope it sells a billion digital packs so they do it with some other blocks. It's a set that lets them capture the nostalgia of the past sets while skipping over the fact that they're pretty terrible to draft with by modern standards.

Zeffrikar Exploratory Design Part 1: Past as Prologue

This is the first part of my Design Vision Document for the set, what is going to be the rough equivalent of R&D's Exploratory Design. Obviously nothing is set in stone (Zendikar jokes), and I'll probably change direction more than a few times over the life of this project, but at least at the outset, here are the ideas I’m going to be keeping in mind before setting up a skeleton and doing a first pass at the commons.

Introducing... BfZ?

I am not one of the people who was super-pumped when Wizards announced Battle for Zendikar a little while ago. When it came out, Zendikar was kind of a flop for me, more so than any set since Prophecy. I fully realize that I'm in the minority here, and that Zendikar was pretty successful as far as Magic sets go, but I found the overall design of the set boring. R&D were still finding their feet with NWO, and as a result a lot of the design space they mined for the commons felt very repetitive. There just wasn't a whole lot going on in most packs to pique my Johnny-mind.