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.

 

CCDD 040220 - Glade Elemental

Evasion is a bummer. I mean, yes, it's a crucial and valuable part of Magic gameplay, from flying to menace to straight-up "can't be blocked". But evasion abilities are fundamentally an invitation not to interact, and decks can abuse those abilities to the point where interacting through combat just isn't a viable strategy. Is there a way to make cards that would punish those decks?

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.

Weekend Art Challenge 122118—green evasion

Click through to see the illustration and design requirements for your single card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, which you may use to revise your submission any number of times. Skye and/or I will aim to review the most recent submission from each designer.

Undaunted

Hey folks. Please enjoy a post from guest columnist Skye.
—Jay Treat

I wanted to tackle a Daunting subject today. For the past few years, Wizards has been experimenting with trying to find meaningful evasion for non-blue colors. Blue has more than its share of good evasion, with both flying and unblockability. This leaves most of the other colors, especially Green, with a bit of a mixed bag. For the benefit of green, I want to start somewhere you might not expect: Fear.

CCDD 121518—distract & carry

Cool Card Design of the Day
I imagined this effect as a one-off Eternal card for my infiltrate deck, when I realized how similar it is to escort and had to mock it up as a Magic mechanic.

CCDD 112315—Sogleaf Brownie

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/23/2015 - These brownies refuse to fight with their own kind. That's good and bad… mostly flavor.

(This post was scheduled. Jay is in Poland pretending to be a Wizard just now.)

CCDD 061715—Sandtribe Marauders

Cool Card Design of the Day
6/17/2015 - Here's a design from my old folder. I don't propose it as a cycle like Mudbrawler Raiders, and certainly not a keyword mechanic, but I do like the flavor of one or two cards that are just so unrelatable to a certain color that both sides refuse to interact, even to kill one another.

CCDD 012015—Skilled Madcap

Cool Card Design of the Day
1/20/2015 - Red needs more evasion? It's got a pretty nice piece of very on-color evasion that we just don't use very often. We should use it more often.

CCDD 081414—Tao Keeper & Zephyr Duelist

Cool Card Design of the Day
8/14/2014 - I'm trying a couple things here. First, I want to show a bad-ass Fantasy character with a disability, representing that disability mechanically, but with a positive tone overall. Second, it occurs to me that the Charging Rhino ability can be expressed as a cost rather than a restriction, and that the Goblin War Drums ability is as good on small creatures as it is on big ones (for different reasons).

CCDD 090413—Sneaky

Cool Card Design of the Day
9/4/2013 - Blue needs more creature keywords to give designers more flexibility when creating creature cycles. Sneaky is an evasion ability that feels blue enough that it could be primary there (and it could be secondary in black or even green).

CCDD 122211—Bellow

Cool Card Design of the Day
12/22/2011 Last week I asked my Twitter followers whether this card should be red or green. From their responses, I am convinced it should either be mono-green or red-and-white. Take a look before I get 'splainy.

CCDD 081611—Battlehonor Knight, Bloodlust Vampire or Warfury Barbarian

Cool Card Design of the Day
8/16/2011 - Ophidian has quite the legacy. A free draw as a reward for damaging your opponent feels great and has been used by twenty-some cards since. What then would come of the same mechanic if we just replaced "player/opponent" with "creature?"