CCDD 20210901 - Simic Mutagen

 This is a card I was tinkering with for this past weekend's design challenge before I put it up. It's designed for my Experiment Kraj deck.

Weekend Design Challenge 102320 - Tome

Hey Artisans! Click through to see this weekend's design challenge. Your mission is to design a custom magic card that follows the guidelines. Over the course of the weekend, give feedback to your fellow designers on their designs and incorporate their feedback to iterate on your own. I'll try to offer some feedback of my own starting on Monday.

CCDD 092420 - Phyrexian Control Center

This is a lot more powerful than most cards that make token armies-- Birthing Boughs, say-- but it comes with a critical (and flavorful) weakness.

CCDD 080520 - Vault of the Dross

I designed a scry (and cascade, etc.) reward that works along the same lines as Bag of Holding. The Bag works more smoothly in a couple of ways, though. See what they are?

CCDD 070720 - Robo-Brawler

This is a classic example of a pure Mel design. Given the concept, the text box has basically zero flexibility, so the only available "knobs" are the power/toughness and mana cost.

CCDD 050420 - Ritual Stone

Inspired by the discussion on a previous CCDD, here's a mana rock with a twist. Think of it as a reverse Mind Stone.

CCDD 040920 - Sangromancy Scroll

Should this card be evaluated as a charm? A split card? A morph-like mechainc? I'm not really sure, but it seems to be doing cool things.

CCDD 040520 - Trainer's Orb

This is a very top-down design. By that I mean: first I designed the name and mana cost... then the type line and rarity... and then the abilities.

CCDD 040420 - Barricades

Here's another Fog effect-- this time an actual attempt to riff on the card Fog, though I think there was some top-down motivation here too.

CCDD 022520 - Reality Pillar

What do you do with a fun static ability that isn't worth a whole card? You could put it on a card anyway and cost it aggressively, but that might make it too swingy-- oppressive when it works, disappointing when it doesn't. You could put it on a creature, but that might change how it reads and plays. Or you could staple it to other kinds of effects. Cantrips are a popular example (e.g. Blood Sun) but depending on the context there might be better choices. With today's card I ended up taking an unusual approach.

CCDD 110518—Moon Dial

Cool Card Design of the Day
This is strictly better than a Manalith and I think it's totally printable.

CCDD 091918—Tyron Spark & Bronze Dragon Suit

Cool Card Design of the Day
If Iron Man were a Magic card.

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 112317—Voltaic Key Ring

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/23/2017 - Hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving.
Here's a double-mana-rock for activating abilities.
(Posted retroactively.)

CCDD 112117—Gem token

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/15/2017 - Sometimes treasure tokens let us cast a spell a turn or two early and that's fun and powerful. Powerful enough that access to treasure is limited at low mana costs, especially at common. Which limits how often treasure tokens are used to make up for missed land drops or to fix your colors when you'd otherwise be color-screwed. And that's a shame, because Magic often lacks that kind of smoothing.

If treasure didn't accelerate your mana, it could be much cheaper, and more common. Let's explore that.

CCDD 111617—Reciprocating Arch

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/16/2017 - Reciprocating Arch came from thinking about alternatives to treasure tokens that could help you cast spells without the added cost that accelerating your mana necessitates. This idea begat 3 bonus cards.

CCDD 100417—Sword Cabinet

Cool Card Design of the Day
10/4/2017 - This card might be a bad idea because of memory issues, but the equipment version of Primal Clay is cute, at least.

CCDD 050217—Staff of Wisdom

Cool Card Design of the Day
5/2/2017 - Staff of Wisdom is a hybrid between color-fixing like Mana Prism and card advantage like Jayemdae Tome. I was thinking about ways to let a deck play out differently more, and using your opponent's deck is the perfect resource.

CCDD 042717—Curvebell

Cool Card Design of the Day
4/26/2017 - I wanted to make a card that would both reward players for playing on curve and help them to do so. It's pretty wordy, but I like what it does.

CCDD 032317—Sorting Hat

Cool Card Design of the Day
3/23/2017 - Top-down Jenny strangeness.