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 033120 - Seize Them!

GUARDS!!

CCDD 102318—Gaea's Benediction

Cool Card Design of the Day
I found this Gaea's Blessing variant while ideating on a Beacon of Creation challenge. It didn't end up fulfilling the challenge, but it's interesting enough to share.

CCDD 032118 - Ogre Leper and Maddening Delays

I was thinking about the GDS3 Design Challenge, because frankly, I'm never not thinking about the GDS3 Design Challenge. My draft cards still need quite a bit of fine tuning, but I was considering how I didn't really push many odd game boundaries, which I probably should have done more of. So I made this guy.

CCDD 022218 - Spoils Distributor

I still haven't had time to come up with a coherent GDS3 Design Test grouping, but I started thinking about it some more. Today I wanted to try to come up with something for Orzhov.

CCDD 111517—Astral Dissection

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/15/2017 - I saw this art and had to make a removal spell.

CCDD 100317—Unrelenting

Cool Card Design of the Day
10/3/2017 - This idea went through 7 revisions before I settled on this version. Originally, it was "when this dies, you can cast a copy of it from your hand for free." That seemed too limiting, so I let you scour the top of your library too. To save on words, to make it a cost, and to make both options viable, I had you exile those cards. The result is an uncertain sort of undying/persist that plays better in multiples (or with Arc-Slogger).

CCDD 022817—Path to Stone Rain & Path to Counterspell

Cool Card Design of the Day
1/25/2017 - Path to Stone Rain is the spell form of Ghost Quarter. It's a Stone Rain that uses the Path to Exile downside, which turns it from mana denial to utility-land denial, something red is known for.

CCDD 020917—Caught

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/8/2017 - Here's an Oblivion Ring that rewards you for having an army.

CCDD 020716—Detain for Questioning

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/7/2017 - Make any of your creatures a Banisher Priest. Almost; I embellished a bit with the minimum-power clause, which is flavorful and limits the card's power level.

CCDD 011816—Stern Response

Cool Card Design of the Day
1/18/2017 - Stern Response is comparable to Swords to Plowshares against a 6+ power creature, costing you some life rather than gaining them some. Unless you blocked with an 0/7, in which case it's better. Or unless you're willing to bribe the court to expedite your enemy's sentencing.

CCDD 022416—Subsume

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/24/2016 - Inspired by synthesis from Devin's initial Spotlight Challenge submission, I made a keyword out of just the core action so that it could be used in a variety of ways. That flexibility comes at the cost of more reading (since less of a card's use of the mechanic is reminder text), and makes the mechanic itself less exciting (even if every card with it brings its own excitement). The flavor is considerably weaker too.

CCDD 052715—Eldrazi Adolescent

Cool Card Design of the Day
5/27/2015 - How do Eldrazi spawn grow into monstrous titans? Horribly, violently, and unpredictably.

CCDD 041615—Spell Torrent

Cool Card Design of the Day
4/16/2015 - Spell Torrent is similar to Commune with Lava, but arguably more red because it's not about setting up future turns, and it feels more like gambling.

Tesla Horizons: Graveyard Shift

As we continue exploratory design for Tesla we'll be looking at all of our options for mechanically representing Tesla's progress theme (as discussed here). Each piece will examine what a few of the possible implementations might do to the surrounding set.

The first post looked at cards that improved themselves, tracking progress with the battlefield, and explicitly counting progress counters.

The second post investigated using lands and mana to track how far you've progressed.

Today we'll see if we can track progress using the graveyard rather than the battlefield.

CCDD 021213—Mist Dryad / Ethereal

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/12/2013 - Ethereal is a very meta mechanic. Its weird enough that it wouldn't appear on sufficient cards to justify keywording it. Even if you wanted to put the word on the card to help drive a set's theme, you'd probably just use an ability word. That's not what I want to talk about, though. Here's an ethereal card:

CCDD 122311—Humble Savior / Knight in Shining Armor

Cool Card Design of the Day
12/23/2011 White has a great shtick around saving its own creatures. Damage prevention and protection effects were the earliest expression of this, but it got interesting when Flicker introduced blink effects. Whitemane Lion (and friends) put a similar effect on creatures. With the recent addition of Fiend Hunter to white's arsenal, today's card seems inevitable.