Weekend Art Challenge 042916—sandara

Hello Artisans,
Anastase here. Last week's challenge was slightly too perplexing.
This week all constraints are off.

CCDD 042816—Hydra Grub

Cool Card Design of the Day
4/28/2016 - Hydra Grub will occasionally be stranded in your hand in Limited. Other times, it will win you the game. In Constructed, it should be a big deal quite often. Take a look.

CCDD 042716—Brave Fool

Cool Card Design of the Day
4/27/2016 - I wanted to figure out a mechanic for this art that would encourage your tiny human to tangle with a real monster. It needed a chance to defeat that creature. But it's clearly white, and white doesn't do random like red does, which is why looking at the CMC of the top card felt wrong. If only there were a class of cards that could boost a creature…

CCDD 042616—Violent Resurrection

Cool Card Design of the Day
4/26/2016 - The trick to fixing the awkward templating of old cards like Animate Dead is not to try to duplicate them precisely. If you preserve what made them cool to begin with, but forget about the rest, modern technology can serve up a clean homage that's interesting in its own right.

CCDD 042516—Goldnight Betrayer

Cool Card Design of the Day
4/25/2016 - I'm not entirely sold on Goldnight Castigator. It suffers double damage, but its toughness was doubled, so that ability doesn't matter. If it were red-white, the combination would be cute, but red doesn't do giant toughness, so it's just a poorly delivered joke.

I played it this weekend and against it, and Castigator cost its caster the game every time. Not surprising, since if you boil it down, it's a 4/4 haste flyer for four with a huge downside—a downside that red is least equipped to mitigate. It certainly compares poorly to Thundermaw Hellkite, for a mythic.

None of that is to say that the design goal or the flavor are bad… I love them both. Which is why I wanted to find an execution that does them more justice.

Weekend Art Challenge 042216—Perplexed

Hello artisans! Anastase here.This week we are doing something different:

I really enjoy Sean Uy's work over on perplexing chimera and gatheringmagic.com. He makes interesting puzzles which I love solving, and I tend to then wonder how slight modifications in card wordings could make the challenge impossible or easier.

CCDD 042116—Dig Up

Cool Card Design of the Day
4/21/2016 - A few takes on the same basic idea.