CCDD - Gremlin Pack and Mole Miasma

A philosophical question: does the Detain mechanic work in non-Azorius colors?

CCDD 20210701 - Killer's Provisioner

Another variation on the perfect timing mechanical space I want to keyword for Cornea. 

CCDD 20210628 - Veteran Thief

This one started out as a common 1/1 lifelink, shadow, vanishing 5 for B. I vacillated between vanishing and cumulative upkeep 1 for the downside/inevitable demise element of the concept, but downside mechanics suck and there's no way I'm actually using them in Cornea. I ended up with a pseudo-cumulative upkeep instead, but it made the life swings big enough that this needed to be bumped up to uncommon (maybe even rare) and I had to tack on at least one more to the mana value.

 

Magic: The Removing

For a long time, many Magic players advised players just getting into limited formats to follow the heuristic "BREAD". After bombs – the absolute strongest cards in a set, that could singlehandedly change a losing game into a come-from-behind victory – the acronym recommended that players draft removal.

Although BREAD is better used as a vehicle for butter and jam than as a Magic strategy, the fact remains that removal is the cornerstone of Magic by providing a necessary element of interactivity and allowing players to affect each others' plans. Entire colors are frequently made or broken by how strong their removal performs. However, while there have been plenty of set breakdowns based on their removal spells, I have not yet seen a breakdown of general removal effects at common in modern Magic and what they need to be effective. That's what this article intends to fix, color-by-color.

Weekend Design Challenge 112720 - Mind Rot Variant

Happy Friday, 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 100620 - Relentless Brutality

This is a bad idea for a mechanic, but it's still kind of cool.

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.

CCDD 082620 - Doomed Soulbinder

This is a Zombie tribal card-- kind of. My inspiration was roughly "Why is Zombie a creature type? It's just some other kind of creature that's been reanimated." That got me thinking about how to give non-Zombies some graveyard / Zombie synergies.

CCDD 071620 - Assassin Training

Auras are card disadvantage, which limits their design space in some ways but expands it in others. For example, powerful activated abilities can often go on an aura that costs less than a creature with the ability would. There are lots of examples-- Power of Fire, Presence of Gond-- and I was curious to see how far I could push this.

CCDD 061720 - Funny or Die

Making, and choosing, piles is fun. After the original Fact or Fiction there have been several imitations like Death or Glory and Do or Die. Let's make another.

CCDD 052120 - Your Worst Nightmare

This design was inspired by effects like Vile Rebirth and Scarab Feast that black uses to interact with opponents' graveyards. Exiling even a whole graveyard is barely worth a card on its own most of the time-- Tormod's Crypt is evidence of that-- so the effects are often very cheap and have additional value stapled on. What would a higher-mana-cost version of those cards look like?

CCDD 050620 - Press the Advantage

Today's card isn't too fascinating; I was just happy to find a nice clean design that's never been printed. Eliminate the Competition is a (mostly) strictly better effect for more mana, but this version makes the choice of X more interesting.

CCDD 042720 - Cabalistic Teachings

I designed this card before the Companions got spoiled, but in some ways it's trying to fill a role similar to theirs. I'll let you decide whether that's a good or a bad thing.

CCDD 041220 - Bonelord Skeletrex

Loosely based on an I Think You Should Leave sketch that basically encapsulates my taste in comedy.

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 033020 - Eager Brute

I was a big fan of the Monarch mechanic (as seen on Palace Sentinels) when it showed up in the second Conspiracy set. Being able to assign statuses to players opens up a cool new region of design space. Finding effects that fit nicely there was harder than it seemed, though. Here's an example of one that I'm reasonably happy with.

CCDD 031920 - Curse of Frustration

Dominion's "Curse" mechanic, where you add junk cards to a deck (usually the opponent's), is a cool and powerful design tool that online CCGs like Hearthstone have also picked up. Unfortunately it's logistically impossible for paper Magic. This is the nearest I could responsibly get to implementing it with existing design tech.

CCDD 030420 - Painful Psychosis

There are only so many effects that scale naturally with "pay X life", like Toxic Deluge and Fire Covenant. I think I found one that Magic hasn't done yet.

CCDD 021820 - Boogeyman

Reanimation spells like Cauldron's Gift usually have to target expensive creatures to be worth it. If you're spending 4-5 mana and a card, you want to be getting a creature that's worth at least that much, not some random 3/3. Even creatures with reanimation built-in often want extra bonuses when they come back-- like Pharika's Spawn and the other Escape creatures from Theros Beyond Death. So what would it take to make a 1-mana creature an appealing reanimation target?

Weekend Design Challenge 042619 - Black Spring

Hello hello Artisans! After something of a hiatus, I think we're ready to start doing weekend design challenges again. Click through to see this weekend's design parameters. With those as your guidelines, design one (1) 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.