CCDD 090920 – Market Guardians

"In response, I call my stockbroker."

CCDD 022820 – Spirit of the Format

Yeah, this one's stupid.

Comparing the Limited play of Unstable, Ixalan & M25

Ixalan is the least dynamic Limited format we've had in perhaps a decade. The problem is that the only supported archetypes are tribal and there are only four tribes. We get a bit of flexibility in pirates and dinosaurs since they're both three-color tribes, but there is zero cross-tribal support and apart from the difficult-to-draft explore deck and flying deck, there are no alternatives.

Unstable is huge fun even when you ignore the silver-bordered silliness because the various mechanics you're invited to play are less strictly distributed between colors and there are a ton of bridges: Cards that reward players for mixing two different mechanics together.

CCDD 122517—Rudolph the Red-Nosed & Santa Claus

Cool Card Design of the Day
12/25/2017 - Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, my friends!

Augment and Host

Unstable introduced a new card pairing mechanic like meld in which augments can be played to modify hosts. This is an exciting area of design for players because we love creating monsters. Their execution here does something very clever. There's also a shiny veneer I'd like to pull off.

Let's discuss augment.

CCDD 040517—Give Me a Hand

Cool Card Design of the Day
4/5/2017 - Seeing the red and blue Amonkhet gods got me wondering how you could turn both on at once. The result is an un-card.

CCDD 030916—Demonic Connoisseur

Cool Card Design of the Day
3/9/2016 - The big problem with tutor effects is that players tend to get the same thing with them time and again, leading to repetitive gameplay. What if there were a tutor that could never get the same thing twice?

CCDD 090815—Dragonflame

Cool Card Design of the Day
9/8/2015 - I hope to have the WAC Review tomorrow. Today's card could definitely only be printed with a silver border, and even then it's questionable. Imagine that you're losing a game and hoping for a miracle. Or that you're going to lose this turn and peel the top card of your deck out of turn to indicate your concession.

Weekend Art Design Challenge Review 122614—Gilberto March

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Here's the challenge we're reviewing today.

Weekend Art Design Challenge 122614—Gilberto March

Weekend Art Challenge
Greetings, artisans! Click through to see this weekend's art and the design requirements for your single card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, and everyone is encouraged to give feedback. You may use that feedback to revise your submission any number of times, though only the version rendered will be included in the review, if someone volunteers to render the cards.

Weekend Art Challenge Review 102414—Steve Prescott (Un-set)

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Here's the challenge we're reviewing today.

Weekend Art Challenge 102414—Steve Prescott (Un-set)

Weekend Art Challenge
Greetings, artisans! Click through to see this weekend's art and the design requirements for your single card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, and everyone is encouraged to give feedback. You may use that feedback to revise your submission any number of times, though only the version rendered will be included in the review, if someone volunteers to render the cards.

CCDD 040211—Squadron Hawks & Swippy-Swap

Cool Card Design of the Day
4/2/2011 - The game store I draft at each week is building a custom cube for fun. By 'custom' I mean all the cards in the cube are custom designs by the participants for the cube. In this particular case, 'custom' also happens to mean silly. Not silly-terrible, but silly-powerful and/or silly-funny. Before I go any further, let me clear. I love me some silly and a lot of these cards have a lot more than just that going for them.

The reason I bring this up is that I was chatting with one of the owners last night about a fun new vein of design they were thinking about after one of their regulars suggested that whenever you draft a Squadron Hawk, you should get a free copy for your deck.