Daily Card Redesign #26: Blessed Wine

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.

This time, I'm trying out writing a post where I present my finished replacement card first then talk about why I did what I did. This is instead of my usual "stream of consciousness" style of writing where I put down words as I think - which isn't really the best thing for readers to consume, I admit.

So, here's the card!

The original card is not part of a cycle, so I was free to change the card to something else. 

Magic: The Gathering has various Auras that call out "Artifact" in its name like Steal Artifact, Curse Artifact, Animate Artifact, or Warp Artifact; but there hasn't been a Bless Artifact. That name should exist as a Magic card in the future. I didn't choose "Blessed Artifact" because that would mean the card is actually an artifact that is blessed. Also, it would break the wording convention like with Steal Artifact.

I made sure that the artifact granted the controller life instead of just you so that it doesn't feel like you're sapping life off of an opponent's artifact. The opponent would feel like the artifact is cursed or is betraying or a burden. Nay, whoever has the artifact experiences its blessed nature. 

In the art, the goblet represents the artifact, and the radius of bright colors emanating from the goblet is an expression of it being blessed.

What do you think? Is this blog post a better format than how I have written these in the past? It's shorter, and more digestable; and for the folks that prefer to cut to the chase to the finished product, the redesigned card is near the top of the blog post.

Let me know! Thanks!

Daily Card Redesign #25: Safe Passage

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.

This is today's card. But I'm not going to write about my design process of coming up with the replacement card. Instead, I'm going to write about this series. 

This whole scenario of killing a card late in development started as an idea of doing something different from the other Magic: The Gathering design enthusiasts. I didn't even have a name for it in the beginning and experimented with different names before settling on something succinctly descriptive yet ambiguous. Yes, it's "Daily." Yes, it's a "Card." But what does it mean to be a "Redesign?"

I ask this because Chardish was confused about what the heck is going on with this fake scenario. In real life, cards get killed late in development for what I imagine to be one or more of a variety of reasons. On this blog, a random card gets killed, but there isn't a reason why. 

So, I just made up a rule that I simply had to redesign a card that was different from the abilities/effects on the original card and was also different from anything that currently exists now for interest's sake and non-bias-ness (It's easy to say, "Well, Totally Lost didn't exist at the time, and that card would have been great to put as a replacement to the killed card. There, job done."

From my experience thus far, there's a couple quirks:

• Cards that are part of tight cycles means I have to redesign whole cycles. Do I skip these cards are redesign the cycles?
• Common cards are a lot more restrictions than rare cards, and I imagine that the "hole filling" actually occurs at higher rarities than common. Yet, due to the nature of commons being common, I come across commons so often. Perhaps I should only redesign rares?

The upside of designing a card that must match the rules I lay out for myself (restrictive naming, same art, same rarity, same color) is that, as Mark Rosewater's mantra goes, restrictions breed creativity. I don't have to keep coming up with some kind of idea or thought every day and design from there. And the Random Card button in Gatherer seeks out my next topic for me.

Perhaps what I need to do is take what's good about this exercise and cull out the bad parts to make something entirely new. While forcing myself to design under the "card killed late in development needs replacing" scenario is a novel idea, it may not be the best as it is now.

For example, one way of changing the premise of this daily card design thing is to get my random topic in a different way. Instead of a Random Card to redesign, I get a random word or phrase that I must design around. Perhaps I get a random picture from the internet. Perhaps I get two random cards and I must design something new that evokes both cards. Stuff like that.

What do you think of this daily Magic: The Gathering design exercise? Do you guys read, skim, or skip my writing? What do you want to see more of, and what do you dislike? Got any ideas? Let me know!

Thanks!

Daily Card Redesign #24: Coercion

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.

Coercion! The more mindful Mind Rot!

This situation reminds me of what the Orzhov might do to children. The corrupt religious thang.

The first thing I do is check to see if there's at least another card in Visions at common or uncommon that does discard. And, yes, there are: Funeral Charm and Urborg Mindsucker! So, now I can do a different effect without neglecting black's "discard" piece of the color pie.

Next, I checked the mana curve of the black common cards. There's a good spread with the cap being a single card at four mana. There are four cards at two mana and four at three mana. Two cards at one mana. I think this card can be O.K. at the following mana costs: one, three, four, or five. If it remains at three mana, there's already another card that has two black mana in its mana cost, so it should be 2B. It's all right with double black at four or five mana, though.

Now I want to stare at the art and see if there's a top-down card waiting to happen. It looks like this guy could be teaching the young boy. Corrupt Teachings? That would fit alphabetically. Seems quite appropriate! Let's go with it.

Looks like teaching some corruption to a little boy is more of "affecting a creature" rather than the powerful planeswalker that is your opponent. I'd like to make this an Aura that does something bad for your opponent!

Before I go further, I need to see what kind of detrimental Auras there already are in Visions at common and uncommon.

• Death Watch hurts the opponent upon the enchanted creature dying.
• ...That's it.

O.K.! That's great! Because Corrupt Teachings is useless on a creature that is dead! We want the negative effects of the Corrupt Teachings to occur while the creature is alive. Perhaps the creature betrays its own master, revealing secrets! Or the creature would be a turncoat and hurt the opponent for you.

Ooh, this would call for a different name than Corrupt Teachings, if it revealed things like the hand for you. But then it would be a weird version of Telepathy. And revealing opponent's information to you is more of a blue thing, anyway.

Hmm. Let's take a look at all the monoblack creature Auras. It'll be informative, and surely not as necessary, but I'll get a kick out of it.

Whoa, dude. The new card Dying Wish from Gatecrash is almost like Death Watch. Subtly different!

Soul Bleed is kinda like what I want going on. Turns the creature into something that is working against its controller but not being hurt, destroyed, or doomed. Contaminated Bond, too.

Ooh, Treacherous Link is kinda along same lines of what I was thinking. Also, Binding Agony is slightly different but does the job all the same.

And done. All the black creature Auras. Fascinating.

If this creature is going to be taught to turn on its opponent, then it shouldn't fight for its opponent. That means we should stop it from fighting for his or her controller. It should do more than Contaminated Bond and not just hurt the opponent for having its creature attack or block - because Contaminated Bond-ed creatures can still hurt its controller's opponent's creatures.

I want this creature to be tapped, but I can't do that since that isn't a black thing. It's a white and blue thing. Instead, I need to not directly control what the creature can do. I need to make it so that it's punishing to the creature so that the opponent doesn't want to use the creature.

O.K., got it. 

I costed it at three mana since that is the standard amount of mana needed to destroy a creature, and that's what this Aura is almost doing - rendering a creature useless. But since the creature can still block, it's not completely useless - which means instead of double black mana like Murder, it'll use just one black mana.

And I know the wording may be slightly too updated for Visions at the time, but that's nitpicking.

Daily Card Redesign #23: Attendant Cycle

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. Because there isn't a given reason for why the card is killed like in real life, I follow a self-imposed rule of designing something "different."

There's a lot of cycles in Magic: The Gathering.

Anyway, the Attendant cycle here is really just one single card design. There's nothing different among them besides the three colors of mana they produce. There's tight cycles and then there are super-tight cycles. I want to instill a little bit of variation with my replacement designs.

But maybe these dragon attendants don't really do much because they don't do much in the story except to serve their dragon master or whatever. They're 3/3, so their sturdiness is nothing to sneeze at. And if anybody dares tussle with them, they'll fight back. 'cause they gotta be functional to serve that dragon, right? ...This is just me imagining what they're for. I wonder if there are more information on them.

*researches*

...I learned a lot and ran out of time to write. Here's the cards that are shoddy at best. The idea here is that they can fetch for their respective Dragon master OR for their master's respective charm that appears in Planeshift, the next set.

Daily Card Redesign #22: Giant Tortoise

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. Giant Tortoise!

I don't know the nuanced differences between a turtle and a tortoise, so this guy is never going to be renamed a Turtle. Wanna get this right! (Though, tortoises are consolidated into the creature type Turtle in modern design.)

...But then I looked up the difference. Tortoises are land-dwellers with large dome shells and live about two to four times as long than your average turtle. Turtles are water dudes with flatter shells.

Fascinating!

What makes this tortoise giant, from the art? The perspective, as if you are craning your neck up to look at a Giant Tortoise looming over you. After all, the skies are all you see in the background, so you gotta be looking up. Normally, you look down on these creatures. So, we'll avoid making this tortoise small, if anything, just like how this tortoise won't be a turtle.

I get what's happening with the original ability - the shell doesn't mean anything for a tortoise as long as it is exposed. While it's tapped, it is peeking its legs and head out. Bash in a tortoise's head, and it's as good as dead! ...But just like with so multiple other Magic: The Gathering Turtles, we can assume that this tortoise is quick enough to withdraw into its shell, thus being able to have permanent high toughness.

This is a common card, so I can't make this card too complex. Gotta be elegant about its design. I looked to other Turtles in Magic: The Gathering. There's shroud and high toughness. Hexproof should happen some time with a future Turtle with modern Magic design.

Power and toughness switching happened with Calcite Snapper, which is interesting. Of course, I wouldn't do that for an Arabian Nights common. You'd need a way of triggering the swapping, too! Too much complexity.

What interested me most is Giant Turtle:

Its ability plays into the slowness of Turtles. That is so flavorful! I would like to represent the slowness of Turtles, too! Two things came to mind:

"Whenever CARDNAME blocks or becomes blocked by a creature, that creature gains first strike until end of turn."

The above ability is a bit weird. It works well with high-toughness creatures, though! Actually, this is an ability that I've longed wanted to give to a Slowpoke, if it were a Magic: The Gathering card:

The other effect that came to mind was the ability that appears on a few Zombies and some other creatures:

"CARDNAME enters the battlefield tapped."

I think is the best. It seems like there should be a Turtle that exists that does this. And replacing the current design there is now is great because it's not tied down to any other constraints and shroud and hexproof haven't existed as keywords, yet, to take advantage of those.

Holy moly - did you know that there are only five common blue cards in the Arabian Nights expansion? Three of those are creatures: 1 one-costed creature and 2 two-costed creatures. I think we should increase the mana cost of this guy to three or four. And because Dandan has two blue mana in its mana cost, I want to make sure there's only a single blue mana in the mana cost of this new Giant Tortoise.

Oh, and I think Giant Tortoise is a great name already. Especially since it has no other constraints to the world it's via flavor or mechanics. This way, it can be reprinted easily later.

A Giant Tortoise at three mana, compared to Horned Turtle, should normally be a 1/4. But because it enters the battlefield tapped, the stats should change if we want to keep this creature at three mana. Either a 2/4 or a 1/5 would do it. I don't like a huge disparity between the power and toughness, so I would go with 2/4. If this were a creature that cost four, I would need to make it about a 3/4 or a 2/5, given that drawback of entering the battlefield tapped. Eh, I'd rather the Giant Tortoise be a 2/4. Let's not get too crazy now.

Summon Tortoise:

I used the wording on the old card Polar Kraken, for reference. I like how both Giant Turtle and Giant Tortoise exist and that they both play up the "Turtle creatures are slow" theme.

Daily Card Redesign #21: Fleetfoot Panther

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.

Fleetfoot Panther is part of a cycle of ally-color creatures that force you to return a creature of either one of their colors to their owner's hand. As such, I will keep the second ability on this panther. The first ability, however, demonstrates its panther-y-ness: the use of flash (The text you see on the card is flash but before it was keyworded to flash). And that's what we're going to change yet try to keep it feeling panther-y.

Panthers are quick, thus, the flash. I did a search of other Panthers in Magic: The Gathering, and they tend to end up being quick as well, with uses of the keywords haste and first strike. Haste is something that appears in green (but maybe not back then - meh) and white has first strike. I can use either one of these!

First, I must check out the other cards in Planeshift that also have this ability and make sure that they didn't already use haste or first strike.

Alas:

So, I'll have to either use haste or something else!

Oof. Haste feels so wrong to include on a card in the past. Haste wasn't strongly established as something that green does back in Invasion. At least, I believe so.

Then I thought about reach and whether panthers can climb trees. ...Turns out they can! So, they need  a tree to climb. Does this work, then?

"As long as you control a Forest, CARDNAME has reach."

Or

"Tap an untapped Forest you control: CARDNAME gains reach until end of turn."

It could just have reach by default due to you probably having a Forest-like land from casting the panther in the first place.

Needing to have an untapped Forest to tap to give the panther reach does cause you to have the kind of gameplay where it feels like the panther is lurking in the trees. You keep that Forest untapped, threatening your opponent that the panther can gain reach to block a flier. So then they decide to perhaps back down because you had that forest untapped, occupied by a panther.

We could give the panther vigilance.

Looking over the rest of the uncommon cycle of these kinds of creatures, I notice that every single creature in the cycle EXCEPT the Panther one has an ability that triggers upon entering the battlefield. In this case, I can't help but to fulfill the cycle! But with what?

White and green effects:

Returning things from the graveyard

Gaining life

Making tokens

Destroying artifacts and enchantments

Boosting creatures

Flickering/"Oblivion Ring-ing"... wait. Interesting. Oh, wait, that can't be done due to choosing triggers in a certain way so that the creature exiled will never return. Well, poo.

Can't attack or block. (In this case, can't block. ...oh, wait, that's more a red thing.)

Then I stopped right here and decided on "Fruitdrop Panther" and how that relates to life. I'm thinking of how this panther knocks down some fruit from the trees or something as it leaps around, and you reap the benefits. This name fills the criteria of being named something that comes alphabetically between "Ertai, the Corrupted" and "Gerrard's Command."

...I also thought of Ferocity Panther, for giving +1/+1 to each of your creatures. Hmm. Maybe that makes more sense than a Panther dropping fruit. Yep, it does. Even though I am entertained by the idea of a fruit-dropping cat, I think associated ferociousness with a panther is the best way to go.

Then I decided upon a Giant Growth effect on a 3/3 body making more sense. It feels like the panther is helping out on the turn it came out (perhaps the advantage of ambush/surprise), which makes the effect make more sense on it.

Daily Card Redesign #20: Master & Apprentice Cycle Part 2

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.

Last time, I designed two sets of replacement abilities for the 'Scape Master and 'Scape Apprentice cycles. Today, I'll finish with the remaining three pairs of abilities resulting in the rest of each of the cycles in their finished forms. The card you see above is 

So far, I've redesigned the blue and red abilities. They are shown on these cards:

Wobbles on Twitter pointed out something, though: the red ability on the Master overrides the ability on the Apprentice. There is absolute redundancy once you get the Master out while you have the Apprentice out. I think he's right in that this is a wrong thing. So, to fix this, while it's not as clean, I'm going to change the ability to:

"Up to three target creatures can't block this turn."

That way, there's still some potential useful-ness with the Apprentice's red ability. I realize that if the opponent has three or less creatures, the Apprentice would still be sitting on the sidelines with its red ability. But it's good that its red ability can still be applicable if there's a lot of creatures - better than only using the Master ability no matter what.

Next...

SCREECH. Hold up. I was going through each card, setting up the images and preliminary text and such when I noticed something a couple of things, one of which will undo the work I put into the blue and red abilities. First, the minor thing:

Thornscape Apprentice's two abilities are out of order. If you look at the images of the Apprentice cycle at the beginning of this blog post, you'll notice that they all start with a different color. Except, there's two whites and no reds. With the ordering scheme of the rest of the cycle, Thornscape Apprentice is the odd one out. Funny, this has also transferred over to the reprint of Thornscape Apprentice:

If you look at Thornscape Master, the order is correct:

Anyway, I'll make sure it's correct in my version. Next, the more-important discovery: Sunscape Master is the only one that depicts victims of its magic. And, in that art, the blue effect doesn't look like it's drawing you cards. Sunscape Master is freezing a creature. Which means we'll have to change the blue ability. 

And blue, nowadays, when "freezing" creatures, it means to tap the creature and have it not untap during the next untap step. So, I'm going to do that, even though the old white ability on the Apprentice cycle was tapping. This is better and O.K., and I'm not being un-creative! So, here are the new blue abilities:

"Tap target creature"

"Tap up to two target creatures. Those creatures don't untap during their controller's next untap step."

Because of this new blue ability, red is redundant with its "no blocking" ability. Back to the drawing board.

Oh, and I just discovered I accidentally duplicated Grixis Battlemage with my design of Nightscape Apprentice. Exactly the same abilities:

For the other guy in the art of Sunscape Master - well, he's happy. He's got tree stuff growing on him. This makes me think of +1/+1 counters. So, then, I think of the Apprentice granting temporary growth while the Master grants permanents boosts on two creatures. (It goes with the same scheme of "Do the same thing but more and better.") I realize that doing this would mean repeating the green ability of granting +1/+1.

RAN OUT OF TIME! Must post all cards: