Thursday, April 4, 2013

Daily Card Redesign #94: Skyshroud Elite

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. 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 decided that this guy was being a leader to that other guy in the art. So I made that the focus rather than on whatever that thing is in the background (my words are so descriptive!). So, the ability here is him leading someone else with his stats. The "another target creature" makes him differ from Wyluli Wolf (and acceptable at uncommon).

Because the focus is not on him being awesome (an Elite), I decided on the "Captain" word to evoke the him-being-helpful-to-others aspect.

4 comments:

  1. Whatever that thing is? That thing is the top side of Volrath's Stronghold.

    http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/28810323/?pg=last

    Philistine! :)

    I like the twist of the design, but +1/+1 is so tiny. Nowadays it'd probably be a 2/2 for 1G with G, T: Another target creature you control gets +2/+2 until end of turn.

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    1. You got me, man!

      I like the tiny-ness. The design may be better with mana, though, to give that tension-like decision-making in gameplay when it comes to what to do with your mana - which makes the tiny-ness not as rewarding, thus your suggestion of +2/+2. Like that Nantuko Disciple!

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  2. Nowadays this ability wouldn't show up because it raises board complexity enormously. That said, I wouldn't have been surprised if it was actually in Exodus.

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    1. You may be right. I have in the past designed cards with a New World Order point of view and not as if I were a designer back then without all this future knowledge.

      Should I keep carrying on as a NWO designer when designing cards that fit into past sets or not?

      Well, if this is a design exercise, I should probably design as if I were designing for a modern set, if I can help it. I'll avoid designing if I were a past designer unless there's some value with intentionally pretending I don't know about modern Magic design principles.

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