Weekend Design Challenge 112720 - Mind Rot Variant

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 101320 - Irrational Exuberance

File this in the One With Nothing drawer, please.

CCDD 062320 - Cascading Failures

Here's a Shatter variant that punishes artifact-heavy decks. 

CCDD 061720 - Funny or Die

Making, and choosing, piles is fun. After the original Fact or Fiction there have been several imitations like Death or Glory and Do or Die. Let's make another.

CCDD 060320 - Impatient Growth

Plenty of iconic spells have multicolored variants-- e.g. Detention Sphere or Counterflux-- but as far as I know we've never seen a multicolored Rampant Growth effect, unless you count Spring // Mind. Part of the problem is that Rampant Growth is faster unconditional ramp than Standard is supposed to get these days, so tacking on a multicolor bonus would probably create a too-powerful card. But there's at least one way around that...

CCDD 052220 - Brain Beam

We've seen the Erratic Explosion effect multiple times; many of the variants have some way of making up for the real feel-bad when you flip over a land. This version cuts to the chase and just has the land deal a reasonable amount of damage.

CCDD 052120 - Your Worst Nightmare

This design was inspired by effects like Vile Rebirth and Scarab Feast that black uses to interact with opponents' graveyards. Exiling even a whole graveyard is barely worth a card on its own most of the time-- Tormod's Crypt is evidence of that-- so the effects are often very cheap and have additional value stapled on. What would a higher-mana-cost version of those cards look like?

CCDD 050620 - Press the Advantage

Today's card isn't too fascinating; I was just happy to find a nice clean design that's never been printed. Eliminate the Competition is a (mostly) strictly better effect for more mana, but this version makes the choice of X more interesting.

CCDD 041620 - Drive to Exhaustion

Nothing too groundbreaking today, just a neat little Act of Treason variant.

CCDD 032720 - Read the Ancient Scrolls

Here's a common meant to show off a mechanic. This time around the model is Divination.

CCDD 030420 - Painful Psychosis

There are only so many effects that scale naturally with "pay X life", like Toxic Deluge and Fire Covenant. I think I found one that Magic hasn't done yet.

CCDD 021920 - Playing With Fire

Rituals (spells that generate more mana than they cost) are tricky to design. Aggressive decks getting to trade cards for tempo is a cool idea, but almost any ritual that's good at that is even better at powering broken strategies. (Storm decks are the best-known example.) On the other side of the power scale, weak or restricted ritual effects aren't consistently good enough to be worth a card in most decks. If only we could print a ritual effect that didn't take up an entire card...

CCDD 100518—Unravel the Guildpact

Cool Card Design of the Day

I was thinking about the last two Weekend Design Challenges; both the one two weeks ago where I asked for Bolas's plans and the psychographic design challenge from Inanimate. 

Weekend Art Challenge 081817—LuisMelon

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.

Weekend Art Challenge 042117—arvalis

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.

CCDD 010417—Mad Whispers

Cool Card Design of the Day
1/4/2017 - Mad Whispers means you never have to choose whether to draw cards yourself or ding your opponent for 2 life with Sign in Blood. Symmetry!

CCDD 120616—Family

Cool Card Design of the Day
12/6/2016 - Doubling Season for nontoken creatures… that you have to pay mana for… and ignores counters. So it's nothing like Doubling Season. But hey, free clones!

Midweek Art Challenge 112816—kafine

Click through to see the illustration and design requirements for your single card submission, due Wednesday 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 some time on Thursday (possibly in the comments below, we'll see).

CCDD 112516—Dark Confidence

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/25/2016 - Retroactively posting this sorcery tribute to Dark Confidant.

CCDD 033016—Desert Hope

Cool Card Design of the Day
3/30/2016 - A discard card for a thirsty plane.