Showing posts with label mechanic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mechanic. Show all posts

Friday, November 20, 2020

Weekend Design Challenge 112020 - Mechanic Entity

Hey 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.

Tuesday, October 6, 2020

CCDD 100620 - Relentless Brutality

This is a bad idea for a mechanic, but it's still kind of cool.

Wednesday, April 1, 2020

CCDD 040120 - Gatling Blast


For a bottom-up design, this card went through a crazy number of templating iterations. I knew what I wanted it to do, but not how to do that in a clean and intuitive way. Finally I realized that I could get the text box down to four lines by reusing an existing set mechanic.

Saturday, February 29, 2020

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.

Tuesday, June 4, 2019

Eternal Analysis 017—Shift


Shift is Eternal's suspend mechanic, simplified in some ways and… weird in others. Introduced in the sixth full set, Dark Frontier, along with Onslaught, and Twist.

Thursday, April 25, 2019

CCDD 042519 - Charismatic and Vengeful Leaders

So a project I've been working on (off and on) is an X-Men/Kaladesh fanfic mashup non-set. Currently, I'm trying to crank out a handful of mechanics and keywords to give some better focus to my commons, and one of the ones I'm tinkering with is this.

Friday, February 1, 2019

Eternal Analysis 016—Spark


Spark is Eternal's bloodthirst/spectacle mechanic, opened up to do anything when your opponent has taken damage. What it does most often is suck.

Friday, December 21, 2018

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.


Friday, December 7, 2018

Eternal Analysis 010—Sites


Eternal just previewed another exciting keyword from the upcoming set: Amplify. It's a novel new mechanic that… just kidding. It's multikicker. It's literally multikicker. (I mean, it looks fun. Multickicker's a good mechanic. It's just old news.)

The big reveal is actually Sites. They're a lot like planeswalkers, but with a touch of sagas and some uniquely Eternal stuff. Let's take a look.

Tuesday, September 4, 2018

CCDD 090418—lowlander

Cool Card Design of the Day
Here's an idea I explored two seasons back. It started off called Highlander, with the intention that it would reward you for casting only one of a legend.

Wednesday, July 11, 2018

CCDD 071118 - Half-Lords

Cool Card Design of the Day
During GDS3's first challenge, I came up with an idea for Imps that I ended up discarding because, after iterating, it didn't feel like it fit the tribe anymore. I still like the idea, though, so I figured I'd walk you all through my thought process so we could discuss whether the core idea of a "Half-Lord" is salvageable in some way.

Tuesday, June 19, 2018

CCDD 061918—mana types

Cool Card Design of the Day
Way back when (circa GDS2) I explored the idea of new types of mana. It started with snow mana, flitted briefly through sacred mana, and ended badly at bird mana, lizard mana, beast mana, etc. It seemed like a dead-end.

Earlier this year, it occurred to me that the mistake wasn't caring about what produced the mana, but caring too specifically. First, the thing can't be parasitic, like snow or sacred were; it's got to be something Magic has a lot of. Second, it can't be so preposterously narrow as to carry about a specific sub-type. The reason being that we want to actually use our mechanic, and since we're inherently limiting ourselves to a set of mana producers much smaller than Any Land, we've got to keep the aperture open as wide as possible.

Magic has one card that's a model for this:

Monday, June 18, 2018

CCDD 061818—GDS3 Slick

Cool Card Design of the Day
For the mechanic challenge in GDS3, I built and tested a number of mechanics. Slick was the last of my top choices. Ryan was lamenting hexproof on Twitter today, so it's time to share this one.

Thursday, June 7, 2018

CCDD 060718—GDS3 Jury-Rig

Cool Card Design of the Day
For the mechanic challenge in GDS3, I built and tested a number of mechanics. Jury-Rig was my next choice. You might recognize it from 2016. Originally, Jury-Rig had a variable cost; In testing I found that having two different costs for a bunch of cards made knowing how to play your hand far too much work. So I stole the best part of another mechanic (I'll tell that story another time) and simplified Jury-Rig to always cost {3}; That way you can evaluate your hand with the costs you see printed and just one more.

Wednesday, June 6, 2018

CCDD 060618—GDS3 Riding

Cool Card Design of the Day
For the mehanic challenge in GDS3, I built and tested a number of mechanics. Ride came the closest to making the final cut over bloodspill. I'm really excited about ride because it solves so many of the classic mount problems in a fairly elegant package. I didn't submit it because it's super risky to claim to have found the holy grail so many designers have been searching for, and because bloodspill created the most novel gameplay.

Friday, June 1, 2018

Weekend Design Challenge 060118 - Finding A Good Mechanic

Hey, Artisans! Click through to see this weekend's design challenge, submissions due Monday morning.

Thursday, May 24, 2018

GDS3 Reflections: Jay Treat, Challenge 3, Mechanic

Greetings, acolyte. You wanted to know how to defeat all those who oppose you? You must shed all reluctance to spill blood. Mercy and hesitation are unknown to a true warrior. They who would be victorious have already accepted that their own blood will run with their enemies, but know that the fluid of life will continue to flow through their veins as long as they stand last.

Bloodspill is a very {B}{R}{G} mechanic that rewards you for causing players to lose life, and sometimes you've got to be willing to cost yourself some life to get your engine running. It's pretty spikey, definitely not for everyone, and incredibly fun.

Monday, January 29, 2018

CCDD 012918—Fatetouch

Cool Card Design of the Day
1/29/2018 - It's been almost two months since I've shared a card design with you as we've been prepping for the initial trials of GDS3. Today I want to share with you a mechanic that I had been really excited about until I realized a killer problem with it. Let me build it up before I tear it down.

Tuesday, October 10, 2017

CCDD 101017—omen

Cool Card Design of the Day
10/10/2017 - Here's a mechanic that flavorfully rewards you for playing with a lot of scry.

Friday, September 22, 2017

Weekend Art Challenge 092217—Surk3

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. I will aim to review the most recent submission from each designer.