CCDD 111218—Path to Peace

Cool Card Design of the Day
The problem with Path to Exile is that pesky downside. What if we turned that around and made it an upside?

CCDD 110518—Moon Dial

Cool Card Design of the Day
This is strictly better than a Manalith and I think it's totally printable.

CCDD 112317—Voltaic Key Ring

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/23/2017 - Hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving.
Here's a double-mana-rock for activating abilities.
(Posted retroactively.)

CCDD 081617—Crystal Growth

Cool Card Design of the Day
8/16/2017 - I wanted to make a Rampant Growth that's free once you have enough land, and ended up continuing the basic land theme in order to prevent it from untapped Gaea's Cradle and friends.

CCDD 072717—Kenra Mystic

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/27/2017 - Kenra Mystic is a red Initiate's Companion. It can't untap creatures, but it untaps the land soon enough to use on combat tricks. You can, of course, still just use that land after combat like Hardened Berserker.

CCDD 030917—Vacant Mansion

Cool Card Design of the Day
3/9/2017 - We don't usually want to reward players for doing nothing (because if the reward is substantial enough, they will, and nothing ain't fun), but helping a player comeback from a position where they can't do anything seems reasonable.

Walk with me.

CCDD 121516—Hold for Questioning

Cool Card Design of the Day
12/15/2016 - It's rough when you have to spend four mana to Sleep Paralysis a two-drop. Hold for Questioning tries to make you feel better about that by repaying you the mana over time.

CCDD 101916—Roil Engine

Cool Card Design of the Day
10/19/2016 - This mana rock doesn't just accelerate your mana, it lets you cycle many of the excess lands you would draw afterward.

CCDD 122815—Springwind Invoker

Cool Card Design of the Day
12/28/2015 - Inspired by surge's multiplayer-friendly-ness:

CCDD 102015—Apprentice Wand

Cool Card Design of the Day
10/20/2015 - Apprentice Wand helps you to cast the spell you choose to attune it with. It's a very conditional Mind Stone.

CCDD 081815—Sphere of Seeing

Cool Card Design of the Day
8/18/2015 - Busy now. WAC Review will have to wait a day or so. In the meantime, here's a simple design I like.

CCDD 032415—Hunting Tower

Cool Card Design of the Day
3/24/2015 - I wanted to see how simple you could make a borderpost, and whether that design would have any value. Hunting Tower is definitely simpler and cleaner. It doesn't fix your mana nearly as well, but it does swap adeptly between being a 23rd/24th Forest and humble mana acceleration.

CCDD 031615—Solemnite, etc

Cool Card Design of the Day
3/16/2015 - I wanted to make {3} mana rocks whose bonus wasn't late-game value but mitigating the tempo hit you take playing them. The effects I came up with for these ally-color artifacts were specific to the colors they produced, so they needed to require one or both of those colors to play.

They could be {1}{W}{U} or {2}{WU}, but I realized this was actually a perfect place for twobrid. If you can already produce {W} and {U}, this card isn't fixing your colors, just accelerating, so costing two is fair. (Though, with the ETB ability, maybe not,) If you've got either, you can get it for the standard three mana. And if you've got neither, you can pay extra to get it anyhow.

CCDD 060314—Elven Traveler

Cool Card Design of the Day
6/3/2014 - I haven't added to my folder of card ideas much this year, and it's starting to dry up. There're a lot of so-so or so-bad cards in there. Here's one where I can at least show a thoughtful improvement.

CCDD 040314—Murk Stenchling & Emboggen

Cool Card Design of the Day
4/3/2014 - Its important to green's identity that it is the color that gets mana acceleration, and "mana elves," but what if there were a block where it was important for another color to get a little? I claim that it would be in black, and could look something like this. (Assuming we're looking for indefinite mana acceleration, as opposed to red's well-carved claim on one-turn mana acceleration.)

CCDD 030514—Jaunt Through the Woods

Cool Card Design of the Day
3/5/2014 - This was the card I originally tried to use Satyr Wayfinder's text on, but it was too much text. So this uses the old search method to leave room for the keyword that can get you the spell for free.

CCDD 030414—Expedition

Cool Card Design of the Day
3/4/2014 - Satyr Wayfinder gets you land without breaking the game for a search-and-shuffle. I argue it's inevitable that we see a more direct Rampant Growth variant using that tech. One important difference is that a card that only does that shouldn't be able to fail (Wayfinder gets away with that because you always get at least the 1/1 body.)

CCDD 021314—Taa-Zhur Druid

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/13/2014 - I'm not remotely suggesting Zhur-Taa Druid should have been different, only that this is another way to make a red-green mana dude.

CCDD 012214—Verduran Mystic

Cool Card Design of the Day
1/22/2014 - Meletis Astronomer made me want a card that produces mana whenever you cast an enchantment. Why not an elf?

CCDD 073013—8 Cost-Reduction/Added-Value Keywords

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/30/2013 - I made the mistake last week of wondering how I could represent chaotic mana before going to bed. These ten cards are the result. Sleep is overrated anyhow, right?

Most of these cards are clearly unprintable, but they add ideas to the entire group that can only accelerate progress toward the few usable ideas that might emerge.

The original goal here was to allow the player to pay less than the spell's full cost at the risk of failing to cast the spell at all and wasting that mana. This isn't the normal cost-reduction mechanic because it's unreliable and it's most useful when you're either desperate and need to get lucky, or when you've got nothing better to do with your mana. Both of which are times I'm happy to help a player out.