CCDD 082620 - Doomed Soulbinder

This is a Zombie tribal card-- kind of. My inspiration was roughly "Why is Zombie a creature type? It's just some other kind of creature that's been reanimated." That got me thinking about how to give non-Zombies some graveyard / Zombie synergies.

The Great Redesigner Search: Tribal

Welcome back to The Great Redesigner Search, the series where I revise all of my GDS3 designs! This week was the challenge I did best on, so you'd think I don't have that much to change, but I turned in a few cards at the last minute and would like to rectify that. As before, you can see my original designs and judge feedback here. 

CCDD 051920 - Herald of Ula

As I run low on cool card design ideas I've started using the "random card" button for inspiration. Here's the first product of that. The card I got was Priest of the Wakening Sun, which tries to serve as small-creature support for Dinosaur tribal.

CCDD 041220 - Bonelord Skeletrex

Loosely based on an I Think You Should Leave sketch that basically encapsulates my taste in comedy.

CCDD 08152019 - Hermit Squirrel

The Beacon of Creation podcast had a design challenge to create a card for the commander 2019 decks this past week. I had an idea to create a new Magus-like cycle, where instead of creatures embodying various classic non-creature cards, it was artifacts embodying classic creatures. For the Populate deck, I immediately went to Deranged Hermit as a possibility, but they just printed Deep Forest Hermit in Modern Horizons. Instead I came up with this:

CCDD 020719 - Slivers of Tarkir

It looks like I may have inadvertently backed myself into a tribal theme this week. Oops. Anyway, here's the very beginnings of an idea I had last night. May I present, the Slivers of Tarkir:

CCDD 101118—Riddle of the Sphinx

Cool Card Design of the Day
Here are two variations of a spell that supports Sphinx-tribal.

CCDD 101018 — Seeker of Riddles

Cool Card Design of the Day

While Dragons and Angels are popular enough to warrant dedicated tribal themes, how could smaller-time iconics like Sphinxes get tribal cards without being too narrow? Well, here's one idea.

CCDD 100418—Goblin Liaison

Cool Card Design of the Day
Here's a design I apparently saved from Zefferal's 2016 Goblin Game.
This design came about top-down, but it suggests a vein of anti-tribal design. What merit does such a vein contain?

CCDD 082918—Hobgoblin Warlord & Master Illusionist

Cool Card Design of the Day
Since yesterday's CCDD turned out not to be new, here are two. These both explore double-tribal.

But first, let's briefly explore some good and bad tribal designs.

Weekend Design Challenge Review 052118 — You Might As Well Tribal: Review

Hello, Artisans! It took us a little while to get to here, but today we're reviewing the first of our Play-At-Home GDS Challenges, You Might as Well Tribal.

Our guest judge for this first play-along challenge is Reuben Covington. Reuben is a pillar of the custom magic design community, having long been active on the MTGSalvation custom magic forum, the Custom Magic discord, and of course, here at GA. He helped take our community project Tesla over the finish line, and has created/is creating other sets, including Dreamscape and Vastuum. He hosted the Remaking Magic Podcast, and has written one of THE defining pieces on NWO and Redflagging. Plus, he’s an all-around awesome dude. Welcome Reuben.

So you Artisans came up with a frankly absurd amount of tribal cards for this challenge. The volume of submissions, along with doing whatever we could to keep pace with the GDS show, made it a very busy few weeks since these were submitted. We tried to give meaningful feedback as best we could. If we came off slightly more critical or dismissive than usual, it’s because we are trying to emulate the “GDS Judge Voice.” But know we were all incredibly impressed with the thoughtfulness, creativity, and excitement you all poured into your designs. It showed, and frankly reinforced just how proud we are to be a part of this community

All that gushing aside, let’s get on with the show!

CCDD 061118 - Characteristic Anthems

Back before the GDS Bullet Train left the station, I had started an exploration of Form of enchantments exploring what they might look like separated from Red's history with the template. While working on that, I gave a lot of thought to both the Iconic and Characteristic races in Magic, and how they are captured mechanically.

CCDD 060518—GDS3 Oozes

Cool Card Design of the Day
For the tribal challenge in GDS3, I built and tested five tribes. Oozes were my first choice, but Chris Mooney got there first. Shamans got a full day more development than Oozes (and that clearly wasn't enough), so these are very under-cooked, but I thought I'd share some of the more promising veins of design among the 83 cards I brainstormed.

Weekend Design Challenge 051818 — You Might As Well Tribal

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

CCDD 051718 - Wishing for a Shot at Challenge 1

Well, I wanted to take a shot at the first Challenge amidst hopelessly failing to keep up with the pace of the GDS. Here are my very unplaytested, very uniterated, cards for the tribal challenge.

The Pirate Problem: Flavor Doesn't Make a Tribe

By Larcent

I've been playing in the beta for Magic: The Gathering Arena since February. My experience in this very limited game environment has helped me think a lot about tribal design, particularly where Ixalan block succeeded and failed. Let's talk about Pirates and figure out what the heck happened with them, design-wise.

CCDD 020618 - Lifecycle Aetherborn

Kaladesh's Aetherborn fascinated me, and while they got some limited tribal support in the block, there wasn't much that captured their unique lifecycle in the lore of the plane.

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 112817—tribal auras

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/28/2017 - Most auras can hit any permanent of the appropriate type. Sometimes there are conditions about who controls the permanent. With the exception of 'enchant wall,' there are no auras that care about their target's creature type.

That makes sense for the most part: Such auras would be quite narrow. Even so, augment has me thinking we could make a few tribal auras.

CCDD 101117—Lord of Vedalkis

For some reason I've had Tribal Lords on my mind. Can't figure out why for the life of me.