CCDD 20210720 - Promising Swindler and Bounty Bolt

Starting to think about which mechanics would be useful to include as a returning mechanic for my Heist Movie set. Renown seems like it might be a good place to start - thieves and charlatans can gain a bit of notoriety. The biggest strike against it is that, to play in the trope space, being recognizable in the heist world is a bit of double edged sword, as you have people paying attention to you when you need to be inconspicuous. Translating that into mechanics means finding ways to punish renown, which is not a great recipe for a mechanic like that.

CCDD 080520 - Vault of the Dross

I designed a scry (and cascade, etc.) reward that works along the same lines as Bag of Holding. The Bag works more smoothly in a couple of ways, though. See what they are?

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.

CCDD 101217—Lucky Gambler

Scry's move to evergreen a few years ago was excellent for the game. It's a flavorful ability that is perfect as an evergreen. My one complaint is that it's a flavor fail for red, which is arguably the color that would benefit the most from it.

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.

CCDD 031617—Stream Forder

Cool Card Design of the Day
3/16/2017 - I was playing a Limited game online a while back and was struck by the distinct moment when my strategy switched from primarily aggressive to totally controlling. I observed that the benefits of racing as I had been were dropping slowly but that I wasn't far from establishing sufficient board control to reach inevitability.

What if there were a card that helped a player switch from aggro to control?

CCDD 110116—Scrytastic Dual Land

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/1/2016 - Was thinking about costs small enough to fill the role of letting a land ETB untapped, and came up with this half-scry-half-etbt idea supporting two-color decks.

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 091213—Misthaven

Cool Card Design of the Day
9/12/2013 - This land cycle is primarily about exploring the use of scry as an alternative to traditional cycling. I also added three words to the ETB clause, that make a colored ETB tapped land slightly more functional, apparently to distract from the primary idea. [shrug]

Why the Scry Lands are Rare

As soon as the scry lands were revealed in this week's Latest Developments, there was a massive outcry that these cards had the wrong rarity. After all, look at Kazandu Refuge, Gruul Guildgate, Savage Lands, and Highland Weald. Don't they establish that a dual land which enters the battlefield tapped with some minor benefit is common or uncommon?

Well, maybe. But there's a much more important convention which takes precedence over that one: