The Usual Suspects: The Tapper

Welcome to a new installment in my series, The Usual Suspects. For those who haven't seen the first edition, in The Usual Suspects I take a deep dive into a card archetype that has seen repeated designs across Magic's history and analyze its purpose, its variants, and what makes it good (or bad). This week: One of the most archetypal white effects, the tapper – a creature that can tap itself to tap one of your opponent's creatures.

The Usual Suspects: The Green 4/4 for 4

Welcome to the beginning of what I expect will be a recurring segment on Goblin Artisans. In The Usual Suspects, I will analyze a card archetype common across multiple sets, exploring its history, variants, and value to the game. This week's suspect: The ruler of stats for the cost, the green 4/4 for 4.

CCDD 030320 - Great Wall

This design was inspired by Star Realms, which has a category of "Base" cards (think "planeswalkers without loyalty abilities") that have to be destroyed before you can be attacked. It's as if a planeswalker had the static ability "creatures can't attack you." But because of how combat works in Star Realms it's actually more than that-- damage to a base heals at end of turn. The easiest way to implement that in Magic was to make it a creature, even though it often acts more like an enchantment (Moat) or a planeswalker (Gideon Jura).

CCDD 022920 - Mama Bear

Bear with Set's Mechanic has become such a design cliche that it's now an official joke card. But it's a cliche for a reason. Sometimes the best way to show off a neat bread-and-butter mechanic idea really is to put it on a bear.

CCDD 120716—Army Trumpet, Balloon & Prison

Cool Card Design of the Day
12/7/2016 - A vertical cycle to reward the white mage for going wide.

Zeffrikommons, Part 1: Common Red Creatures

Here on GA, we tend to put a lot of focus on designing individual cards and mechanics. This is great for the feedback we provide and encourage, and I think that it's a great set of development tools for all of us, especially those of us planning on competing in the next GDS. In fact, the types of designs we spend most of our time on here pushes the skills MaRo & Co. were looking at when selecting the finalists for GDS2. After the essays and the test, we had to design 10 cards that would be used to showcase a set during the course of a preview week. The emphasis was on designing one card to fill one slot that appealed to a particular type of player/reader.

CCDD 010413—Bloodcall

Cool Card Design of the Day
1/4/2013 - I recently wondered if unleash wouldn't have been a better keyword for Gruul and bloodrush for Rakdos. This morning, I thought a bit about other possibilities for the Gruul mechanic. I named them all bloodcall, but have five executions for you to consider. They all preserve the Gruul focus on attacking, but are more focused on getting your creatures onto the field rather than into your graveyard.

CCDD 112912—Stoic Defender

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/29/2012 - This card's been sitting in the file for a while. It had an additional clause which ensured you only got the defensive exalted bonus if you also attacked with Stoic Defender, but that seemed much too fiddly to keep. I'm guessing it had been included originally to force you to risk an attack and prevent you from just sitting back and blocking, but it read strangely and introduces (light) memory issues. The card's just cleaner without. It probably doesn't need vigilance now either.

CCDD 030111 — Jared, Adept

Cool Card Design of the Day
Every day, I design a new card and discuss it briefly. Sometimes I will examine new possibilities for colors or mechanics, sometimes I'll re-examine existing executions and sometimes I'll just design something I think is neat.