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.

CCDD 20210720 - Promising Swindler and Bounty Bolt

Starting to think about which mechanics would be useful to include as a returning mechanic for my Heist Movie set. Renown seems like it might be a good place to start - thieves and charlatans can gain a bit of notoriety. The biggest strike against it is that, to play in the trope space, being recognizable in the heist world is a bit of double edged sword, as you have people paying attention to you when you need to be inconspicuous. Translating that into mechanics means finding ways to punish renown, which is not a great recipe for a mechanic like that.

CCDD 20210609 - Whisperwing Reconnoiter

CCDD 031021 - I Dare You

At best, a much better Cancel. At worst, a much worse Distress. It all depends on how the mind game plays out.

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.

CCDD 100120 - Inconspicuous Stalker

Invisible Stalker showed that hexproof and unblockable make for un-interactive gameplay, especially in combination. I went looking for ways to make them more interactive while still having a big impact on gameplay, and found an approach that works for both.

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 082520 - Merfolk Dancer

Here's a Blind Phantasm modeling a weird idea for an ability word!

CCDD 071420 - Continuous Looting

This design went through a bunch of iterations, if I remember correctly. I knew I wanted a card selection effect that gave players the option or maybe the obligation to stop at some point. As usual, the best way to do that turned out to be the simplest too.

CCDD 061220 - One-Eye, the Wanderer

Designing "Norse gods" has been an appealing design goal since we saw Magic take on the Greek pantheon in Theros, even more so since we met the Egyptian gods of Amonkhet. I've seen several neat ideas from other sources but there's still one implementation that appeals the most to me as a mechanical and flavor match.

CCDD 051920 - Herald of Ula

As I run low on cool card design ideas I've started using the "random card" button for inspiration. Here's the first product of that. The card I got was Priest of the Wakening Sun, which tries to serve as small-creature support for Dinosaur tribal.

CCDD 042120 - Touch of Frost

Here's another card from the Have They Really Never Printed This? file.

CCDD 032720 - Read the Ancient Scrolls

Here's a common meant to show off a mechanic. This time around the model is Divination.

CCDD 032020 - Friendly Chatterbox

There's a well-known design trap where adding "bad" abilities to an otherwise fine card can make it read a lot worse-- like the difference between Gutter Skulk and Tavern Swindler. Today's card is a little bit that way at first glance, but I'm hopeful that the ability is actually more relevant than it seems.

CCDD 030720 - Wall Runner

This design started out as part of a brainstorming session for blue evasion mechanics. The idea wasn't enough to support a named keyword but it ended up in an interesting spot: kind of like a tamer, blue-flavored version of menace.

CCDD 022820 – Spirit of the Format

Yeah, this one's stupid.

CCDD 022220 - Mental Block

Holding up mana for Cancel (and other counterspells) during an opponent's turn is stressful. You more or less commit to countering whatever they cast, and hope they don't figure out your plan. So a counterspell enchantment that you can cast in advance and use on demand is appealing. In fact it's too appealing. It shuts down interaction and creates frustrating play patterns-- at least, I assume that's we've never seen one (unless you count Common Courtesy). But maybe there's a similar effect that could work.

CCDD 112018—Eva and Elena

Cool Card Design of the Day
This art begged to be made into a red-blue legend for Innistrad.

CCDD 110818—Foresee Obstacles

Cool Card Design of the Day
Here's a weird spell.

CCDD 110718—Restrain

Cool Card Design of the Day
This counterspell can straight up counter a spell that costs the same or less. It can still answer a bigger spell, but only temporarily. I wanted to explore this space because it's problematic for unconditional countermagic to create a mana advantage.