Daily Card Redesign #40: Willow Faerie

Daily Card Redesign is a daily Magic: The Gathering design exercise where I randomly choose a card for the scenario of it being killed late during its own set's development, and I design a replacement card that uses the same art, is the same color, is the same rarity, and has a name that, alphabetically, keeps it within the same collector number for the set.

Redesign:

I couldn't think of a word that would fit alphabetically to mean something along the lines of "kinship" or whatever it is that would represent the bond that these two have. So I figured "Willow Faerie" would do, as if she's a Faerie of the woods and befriended an Elk.

When I saw this card, I thought of this other card:

The focus on Willow Faerie, though, is on the Faerie. Not the Elk. Which is great, because then I could mirror the Ambassador Oak card except make the big creature the token!

Thus, Willow Faerie was (re)born.

Daily Card Redesign #39: Mask of Riddles

Daily Card Redesign is a daily Magic: The Gathering design exercise where I randomly choose a card for the scenario of it being killed late during its own set's development, and I design a replacement card that uses the same art, is the same color, is the same rarity, and has a name that, alphabetically, keeps it within the same collector number for the set.

I LOVE "riddle" as a theme. Which is why I love Batman's The Riddler. Anyway, this card is part of a cycle of ally-color pair uncommon Equipment in Alara Reborn. FYI.

Redesign:

I wanted to involve guessing since the art depicts a Sphinx mask, but then it got too wordy and complex for an uncommon Equipment - especially one that is part of a cycle.

I made sure to not have the condition be based on "blocks or becomes blocked," since that would make the opponent possibly hesitant to attack, which is never a great thing to encourage. I don't want them discouraged from attacking and giving you a card and possibly losing a great creature to a not-so-great creature only to have it happen again with the next-in-line-to-be-equipped creature.

Nay, having the condition trigger only upon becoming blocked makes the right focus. Now the opponent has more things to consider than normal when blocking. The decision-making is that much more of a tricky thing to figure out. A bit closer to a riddle than without the mask.

I gave the reward to be based upon the land and not a nonland so that it's not too swingy.

I like how the flavor of "get this riddle right or die" sphinx thing is happening here with granting deathtouch. Kinda. The narrative can be in your head of what's happening with a creature equipped with this mask.

Daily Card Redesign #38: Invasion Dual Lands

Daily Card Redesign is a daily Magic: The Gathering design exercise where I randomly choose a card for the scenario of it being killed late during its own set's development, and I design a replacement card that uses the same art, is the same color, is the same rarity, and has a name that, alphabetically, keeps it within the same collector number for the set.

Sweet! ...And crap. Dual land design is tough since there's not a lot of design space there. Well, here goes:

Redesign:

When studying nonbasic lands, I discovered there's two common drawbacks used to offset the fact that you can make more than one color of mana. The most common is having the land enter the battlefield tapped. This is what this cycle originally did. However, they were designed in a way that makes it so that all future dual lands with the same drawback will be strictly better than them.

In modern Magic: The Gathering design of dual lands that enter the battlefield tapped, there's always a tiny bit of a bonus to go alongside the drawback. It may be a Gate in the case of Return to Ravnica block. The land may gain you 1 life upon entering the battlefield. Or maybe it can make you a third color like in Shards of Alara (the best example of how strictly worse this cycle of lands is). This is because the drawback of entering the battlefield tapped is harsh when compared to rare dual lands.

The difference between uncommon dual lands and rare dual lands is that rare dual lands are the only ones that can possibly enter the battlefield untapped OR not be a land that requires a mana investment. The possibility of being able to play with dual lands uninhibited by a drawback is seen in the other common drawback used that is reserved only for rare lands: a condition to prevent a drawback.

The Scars of Mirrodin dual lands have a condition that check to see how few lands you have. Lorwyn featured lands that wanted you to have a creature card of a specific type in your hand. Ravnica and Return to Ravnica's shock lands want you to pay 2 life.

For this cycle, since they're uncommons, they HAVE to require at least a single mana investment - which is usually being the land itself entering the battlefield itself. Other cases are the Panorama cycle from Shards of Alara.

I wanted to give this cycle a tiny bonus like all the other uncommon dual lands do, so I decided on the above. The tiny bonus comes in the form of allowing you to choose which land is being tapped for the drawback, rather than just the land itself. This can make a difference when you're starved for a blue mana and would rather one of your Plains tap instead of your Coastal Tower.

Daily Card Redesign #37: False Defeat

Daily Card Redesign is a daily Magic: The Gathering design exercise where I randomly choose a card for the scenario of it being killed late during its own set's development, and I design a replacement card that uses the same art, is the same color, is the same rarity, and has a name that, alphabetically, keeps it within the same collector number for the set.

Huh, I didn't know Breath of Life was redone for the flavor of Portal Three Kingdoms as False Defeat. Neat.

Redesign:

A silly-sounding tactic, which I like. "Filly" being a young female horse while "folly" refers to the foolishness of the enemy. Sounds great together and fits within the alphabetical requirements for the replacement design.

There's a blue spell in Portal Three Kingdoms called Broken Dam which taps down up to two target creatures without horsemanship. Since there are up to two guys here sneaking up men on horses in the art, I decided this was a great counterpart to that spell. 

Except, there are fewer creatures with horsemanship than there are without. So I decided to give the flavor of these guys of temporarily using the horses. Of course, "horsemanship" is the equivalent to "flying" in Portal Three Kingdoms, so this should be within white's color pie to grant creatures flying.

Two different effects on a spell might be complex, but I'm hoping the flavor of taking the horses helps it become more easily understandable. And, yes, I intentionally made it so that this works even when there are no creatures to tap with horsemanship.

Note: I wanted to do Rain of Blades, but Rain of Blades already exists. The art looks like this is a sneak attack of minor damage upon an opponent's attacking creatures.

Daily Card Redesign #36: Lone Wolf

Daily Card Redesign is a daily Magic: The Gathering design exercise where I randomly choose a card for the scenario of it being killed late during its own set's development, and I design a replacement card that uses the same art, is the same color, is the same rarity, and has a name that, alphabetically, keeps it within the same collector number for the set.

Apparently, lone wolves is a thing, as you can tell from the expression that people use "lone wolf." Wolves are either part of a pack and hunt together or they go solo and forage for things they can manage to hunt by themselves. Lone wolves, as a result, tend to be more vicious than their pack counterparts. I initially went to do this design to show off the decision a wolf makes in whether it becomes a Lone Wolf:

Wolves are normally 2/2, so I put it at those stats. The +1/+1 counter does two things: toughens it up to represent how tough lone wolves are; and 2) keeps track of whether or not the player has decided for it to "become a lone wolf."

However, this card appeared in the set Portal Second Age. This was a starter product for new Magic: The Gathering players; and, as such, had a lot of the more complex parts of Magic just left out. A search across all the Portal products didn't show a single card that used +1/+1 counters. As such, I needed to scrap the above idea, even though it's pretty cool on its own, I think.

So, here's the actual redesign:

I tried to follow the odd Portal wording. And boldness. ...font-wise.

Daily Card Redesign #35: Goblin Tunneler

Daily Card Redesign is a daily Magic: The Gathering design exercise where I randomly choose a card for the scenario of it being killed late during its own set's development, and I design a replacement card that uses the same art, is the same color, is the same rarity, and has a name that, alphabetically, keeps it within the same collector number for the set.

Yay! I like this guy.

Redesign:

Funny, I was debating between Pathrazer and Pathblazer. Pathrazer only appears on one card, Pathrazer of Ulamog, and it's in the same set as this Goblin Tunneler. But razing a path feels more permanent than blazing a path. In fact, blazing a path just means to go through it fast, which is what my design is doing.

The first thing I thought of, based on the art I have to work with, is mountainwalk. But Magic: The Gathering already got their bases covered in terms of French vanilla mountainwalkers. I can't say the same about temporary mountainwalk, though - so, we'll do that.

Since this guy has such a low cost, there is a highly likely possibility that it will not be able to grant any creature other than itself mountainwalk for a turn. But it can't use its own mountainwalking. Unless it had haste. So I gave it haste.

After the dust settles that is the turn this guy enters the battlefield, he'll be a vanilla creature! A "virtual vanilla" is what you call it. =)

Daily Card Redesign #34: Bounty of the Hunt

Daily Card Redesign is a daily Magic: The Gathering design exercise where I randomly choose a card for the scenario of it being killed late during its own set's development, and I design a replacement card that uses the same art, is the same color, is the same rarity, and has a name that, alphabetically, keeps it within the same collector number for the set.

Redesign:

This is part of a cycle of cards that let you exile a card from your hand rather than pay the mana cost. So I'm going to keep it that way - I kept the first clause. I then did a completely top-down design that may be just bad in terms of power level yet is quite flavorful.

The Elk token that is put onto the battlefield has no choice BUT to be hit by an attacking creature, creating the scenario - every time - of an Elk being hunted as per the art. The focus in the art is the Elk itself. The action that is happening is the hounds attacking it.

Yes, I realize that this is a bad Fog. But Fog isn't strictly better than it! So there's that.

Daily Card Redesign #33: Dumb Ass

Daily Card Redesign is a daily Magic: The Gathering design exercise where I randomly choose a card for the scenario of it being killed late during its own set's development, and I design a replacement card that uses the same art, is the same color, is the same rarity, and has a name that, alphabetically, keeps it within the same collector number for the set.

YES, finally, an Un- card!

All right, so a few things:

I know the power and toughness looks weird. I couldn't figure out in time how to correctly display 3 1/2 power and 3 1/2 toughness on the card.

I had to look up "Ass" idioms to keep this part of the cycle of Asses. "Drag Ass" was what kept this within the alphabetical constraints.

Drag Ass means to be dragging your ass. So, I did last strike. I figured that granting first strike to creatures could make this a red card. I made this a Hill Giant but a bit better (1/2 power and toughness better) to balance the drawback of last strike.

Also, the art looks like this guy is pretty lackluster in his Warrior profession - quite the Drag Ass.