Weekend Art Challenge Review 092713—IACG

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

Weekend Art Challenge 092713—IACG

Weekend Art Challenge
Click through to see this weekend's art and the design requirements for your card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, which I will try to provide, and which everyone is welcome to provide as well.

If you choose, you may use that feedback to revise your submission any number of times. I will post and review the most recent submission from each designer some time on Monday, life permitting. To help ensure I recreate your design accurately, please use CARDNAME instead of ~ in your submissions.

CCDD 092613—Mangler

Cool Card Design of the Day
9/26/2013 - Mangler was probably inspired by the siren designs from the last Theros weekend art challenge. It should probably be blue-black, although it's 'siren' ability is different enough it could be put on a black rare without upsetting the color pie terribly. In any case, I liked the idea of a horror that draws people in, eats them and then grows to draw in more people.

Designing for Low-Skill Players: Get a Life

Many instructions for games begin with that magical phrase: "Object of the Game". Players need to learn the goal before the rest of the rules because that gives them a framework for understanding the available moves. In Magic, the goal is to reduce the opponent's life total to zero. 

Because the goal is to get in twenty points of damage before the opponent, it is convenient to think of the life totals as a "score" for the game. If you're up 20 to 10, you're winning by a lot. If you're down 12 to 14, you're losing, but not by much. This way of thinking is applicable to virtually every game with a numerical scoring system. (Blazers leading the Knicks 90 - 75? Good day in Portland.) 

It is also completely and utterly incorrect when it comes to Magic.

CCDD 092513—Flanking Raptor & Pack Hunter

Cool Card Design of the Day
9/25/2013 - Nothing too fancy today. Here's a pair of veloceraptors that play well together.

Suvnica Week 14 Review, Part 2: Peacemaker (Sorba Keywords)

Our last set of reviews covers the vigilante guild. There were a number of really cool keywords thrown out there for this one. Here's some of the ways we can protect those that can't protect themselves.

Suvnica Week 14 Review, Part 1: Living in the Future (Kismi Keywords)

Kismi proved to be one of the more challenging guilds to design keywords for. Because so much of their identity is tied up in predicting the future, and because translating that into game mechanics leads to either very cumbersome rules text or unfun methods of playing, it was tricky to find a keyword that hit that sweet spot of fun, grokable, flavorful, NWO-friendly rules. Still, we came up with a number of really strong efforts here. Let's see what everyone had to say about our fortune-tellers.