CCDD 20210902 - Harmonic Hydra

 Another custom card for Experiment Kraj deck. My development of it led it too far away from the deck's theme to actually use it in the deck, but originally it had a Chameleon Colossus ability as well. As it stands, it could be interesting in a madness deck (and wouldn't be a stretch in BG)

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 20210622 - Guardian Hydra

 

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.

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.

Weekend Design Challenge 101620 - Loam Dweller Knockoff

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 101520 - Predator's Roar

The idea behind this card was to make a combat trick that rewards you specifically for using it to win combats.

CCDD 090820 - Panpiper

There's nothing too innovative about today's design. I just happened to be looking at the tribute mechanic for some reason and wondered about putting more power into the modal part instead of the base creature.

CCDD 072620 - Confront the Sorcerer

This semi-top-down design was a real pain to template. It ended up as an interesting variant on the "modal spell, but opponent chooses" idea.

CCDD 062520 - Adaptation

Here's a design inspired by Hostility, which turns Lava Spike-style direct damage into creature tokens. I wanted to capture the same feeling of rewarding a type of effect that isn't normally a great investment. Ikoria gave me exactly the tools I needed to do that in green.

CCDD 052820 - Towering Strider

What exactly is the flavor of trample, anyway? Are we supposed to imagine Proud Wildbonder literally running over a Pyroceratops, for example? Or is he just so fast and furious that his momentum carries him past the Dinosaur's corpse and into the opponent's face? I don't really have an answer, so this is just a long way of letting you know that I have no idea whether Towering Strider's ability makes sense.

CCDD 050220 - Obstinate Elf

I honestly don't remember why I thought this design was so interesting. The first ability was the result of brainstorming how Obstinate Baloth-like effects, which green uses to punish discard, could be adapted to play well against Distress-like targeted discard spells.

CCDD 040820 - The Questing Beast

Magic R&D has a hard job. Sometimes they make mistakes. Staying true to the Play Design vision for a card while balancing it properly for Constructed seems especially tricky; I understand why printed cards might end up with problems on either front. So this isn't criticism. I just wanted to prove something to myself: Pushing Questing Beast for a specific role in Standard didn't require a text box with eight lines, three line breaks, and multiple disconnected abilities.

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 031620 - You're Nothing Without It

A while back I was brainstorming ideas for making artifact / enchantment removal more appealing. Naturalize is a good card when it has relevant targets, but it often doesn't, so it tends to want either alternate modes (e.g. Return to Nature) or some kind of upside. Here's one flavorful way I found of adding upside.

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 022020 - Gather Strength

This design brought to you by the Department of the Obvious:

CCDD 012320—Garruk Wildspeaker

Cool Card Design of the Day
Found a note I made last year about another way to solve the when-planeswalkers-were-sagas-they-didn't-have-enough-agency problem.

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.

CCDD 111618—Rancor of Wildwood

Cool Card Design of the Day
Rancor's too strong and Talons of Wildwood is too weak. Let's try and meet somewhere in the middle.