CCDD 062518—Peark, Orcish Diplomat

Cool Card Design of the Day
Exploring how various fantasy cultures approach diplomacy is often fun. How do Orcs bring about peace?

CCDD 021418 - Rashka, the Slayer and Autumn Willow

I've been thinking about Legendary Matters as a theme for a dumb vanity project I'm working on, and have been trying to come up with a Marquee mechanic to highlight that element of the design. Specifically, I want to get a sense of passing a destined role from generation to generation. I came up with these absurdly long mechanics.

CCDD 122517—Rudolph the Red-Nosed & Santa Claus

Cool Card Design of the Day
12/25/2017 - Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, my friends!

CCDD 080917—Gaea's Lieutenant

Cool Card Design of the Day
8/9/2017 - I'll bet you can guess which product inspired today's design.

CCDD 021517—Chandra's Fire Reflex

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/15/2017 - There's a solution for making the legendary supertype meaningful in a positive way, it's just years too late to implement: Spells that reference your legend are improved while it's in play. Maybe they all cost a little less to cast, or they all have some kicker, or a wild variation of benefits.

We could today implement a new across-the-board rule that any spell with a legend's name in its own costs {1} less, but Wizards doesn't like to mess with cardnames-matters because of variations due to printing across languages. In theory, proper names should be consistent within a given language, but there are still a number of issues, probably including: Cardnames that share a word or word-part in common with a legend's name but were never intended to be related; cards that were meant to be related but do so by art or flavor text and not by name; cards with no generic mana in the cost.

Anyhow, here's a custom card based on the idea:

CCDD 112416—Seprimus

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/24/2016 - One cornucopia of cards coming up. Happy Thanksgiving!

CCDD 110415—King of the Eight Seas

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/4/2015 - Here's a big legendary octopus.

CCDD 071015—Legendary Phoenixes

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/10/2015 - Today's WAC is coming, but first I wanted to share some phoenixes I designed too late for Remaking Magic's legendary phoenix design challenge.

CCDD 081214—Mina, Dreamweaver

Cool Card Design of the Day
8/12/2014 - This design didn't fit the requirements of the Weekend Art Challenge, but I liked it well enough to share. Originally she just had the second ability, but the first ability was a nice fit, gives the card clear internal purpose, and doesn't increase the power level as much as it might seem.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 080813—IgorKieryluk

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Here's the challenge we're reviewing today.

CCDD 070213—Kerberos

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/2/2013 - Kerberos is directly inspired by Taresivion's Champion of the Gods submission for the last weekend art challenge. It had "protection from non-divine creatures" which I swapped with "protection from non-legendary creatures." That ability makes the creature it's on a fearsome combatant few can stand against, but it also makes legendary creatures better, since they're the only ones that can defeat it.

Rules Fixes: The Legend Rule

Honestly, sometimes I wonder if Mark Rosewater's trolling his own column. In case you missed it, a couple weeks ago MaRo effectively threw down the gauntlet and challenged the community to design a better legend rule. Even if he didn't quite do it on purpose, his post started 27 pages (and counting) of forum chatter and managed to elicit a response from Tom LaPille of Magic R&D and "Latest Developments" fame. As a result, I've grotesquely over-invested my time on this troll-foolery, and here's what I've come up with:

CCDD 050911—Piker Elite VS The Legend Rule

If you haven't already, start by reading Mark Rosewater's article today: The Issue Is Legen—Wait for It—Dary. Within, he discusses certain flaws tarnishing the rules for legendary permanents, not because the current rules are bad, but because there is room for improvement. It is this attitude of "fixing what ain't broke" that has sustained Magic as the best game in the world even after so many years. We cannot be content with "pretty good" or "good enough" but must always strive to be as close to perfection as possible. No one ever mastered anything by becoming the best and then stopping there.