The Usual Suspects: The Tapper

Welcome to a new installment in my series, The Usual Suspects. For those who haven't seen the first edition, in The Usual Suspects I take a deep dive into a card archetype that has seen repeated designs across Magic's history and analyze its purpose, its variants, and what makes it good (or bad). This week: One of the most archetypal white effects, the tapper – a creature that can tap itself to tap one of your opponent's creatures.

Magic: The Removing

For a long time, many Magic players advised players just getting into limited formats to follow the heuristic "BREAD". After bombs – the absolute strongest cards in a set, that could singlehandedly change a losing game into a come-from-behind victory – the acronym recommended that players draft removal.

Although BREAD is better used as a vehicle for butter and jam than as a Magic strategy, the fact remains that removal is the cornerstone of Magic by providing a necessary element of interactivity and allowing players to affect each others' plans. Entire colors are frequently made or broken by how strong their removal performs. However, while there have been plenty of set breakdowns based on their removal spells, I have not yet seen a breakdown of general removal effects at common in modern Magic and what they need to be effective. That's what this article intends to fix, color-by-color.

CCDD 093020 - Nepenthe

I found a cool graveyard-hate effect that wasn't worth a card in most cases, so here's a cantrip version.

The Great Redesigner Search: Mechanic

Welcome back to the Great Redesigner Search, a series where I redo all of my GDS3 entries. This week is a little bit different from the others, because I'm making all new cards as opposed to revising old ones. As always, you can read my original entries and judge commentary here.

CCDD 081620 - Locked in Combat

Here's one of those card designs where the concept is clear and the challenge is how to make it appealing, because the concept just doesn't do that much. How often would you want this effect over Smite or Celestial Flare?

CCDD 070920 - Frontline Anthem

Here's a weird keyword ability. It goes on any permanent, but preferably non-creatures to avoid timing issues. It's partly upside but mostly downside. It's trying to capture the flavor of borders, conquests, and lines of battle. It's... defensive!

CCDD 061020 - Recording Angel

A top-down design based on the name.

CCDD 051820 - Restrictive Priest

"Freeze" effects like Take Into Custody aren't in white's color pie. Discard effects aren't either. Can we make a case for giving it a mechanic that lets an opponent choose between the two?

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 042020 - Commanding General

For today's design, we have a silly pun in the vein of Charming Prince.

CCDD 04152020 - Cool Bird

One of the reasons for Magic's longevity is its ability to change the value of a card by altering its context. This simple design finds new meaning in Ikoria's environment.

CCDD 041420 - Shimmering Battlement

Magic has lots of lands that tap only for colorless and then activate with a specific color or combination of colors, like Academy Ruins or Blighted Woodland and their respective cycles. But the activated non-mana ability has to be pretty good to make a nonbasic Wastes playable. One way to narrow that gap: start from a land that's slightly better, like Shimmering Grotto.

CCDD 033120 - Seize Them!

GUARDS!!

CCDD 032520 - Advance Guard

A recent brainstorming project of mine: figure out what kinds of abilities would be interesting on Savannah Lions (2/1s for W, like Venerable Knight). One idea that occurred to me was a strategic one: these kinds of creatures usually feature in "weenie" decks that want to cast and attack with multiple creatures early on, getting value out of Glorious Anthem effects and the like. Maybe there could be an ability that pushes players in the other direction?

CCDD 031720 - Ghost Soldier

I was thinking about another design problem when this weird combination of abilities suddenly occurred to me. In hindsight it reminds me of Debt of Loyalty, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't what I had in mind.

CCDD 030320 - Great Wall

This design was inspired by Star Realms, which has a category of "Base" cards (think "planeswalkers without loyalty abilities") that have to be destroyed before you can be attacked. It's as if a planeswalker had the static ability "creatures can't attack you." But because of how combat works in Star Realms it's actually more than that-- damage to a base heals at end of turn. The easiest way to implement that in Magic was to make it a creature, even though it often acts more like an enchantment (Moat) or a planeswalker (Gideon Jura).

CCDD 022620 – Rouse the Rabble

I got inspiration from Divine Visitation, but I took it in a different direction.

CCDD 022320 – Squire of the Hypotenuse

A dumb silver-border design based on one of my favorite jokes. I tried to make it playable with a general triangle theme instead of making players square root numbers, though the joke becomes a little thinner.

CCDD 022120 - Struck Blind

Pacifism is an iconic way for white to "remove" creatures by keeping them out of combat. Many powerful creatures these days can just shrug it off, though. Kenrith, the Returned King doesn't have to attack or block to make an impact. To counter this, recently we've seen more variants like Arrest and Trapped in the Tower that turn off activated abilities as well. But then what can we do about creatures like God-Eternal Oketra and Niv-Mizzet, Parun?

CCDD 111918—Infinitry

Cool Card Design of the Day
This idea just came from the portmanteau that popped into my head.