Daily Card Redesign #95: Midnight Ritual

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 didn't like the thought of keeping track of instant-speed trickery of removing creature cards from graveyards to beef up this card, so I made the sorcery-speed restriction.

Fun fact: The only "Mass of" creature is Mass of Ghouls. Now, in a somewhat poetic move, here's a Mass of Souls. 

Man, the original design of producing Zombie tokens just doesn't match the art here. Sure, you can say that the spirits of the dead left the bodies; and, thus, the bodies can become zombies - but then why doesn't the art focus on the zombies instead of these spirit-looking things? Answer: something went wrong during Mercadian Masques development in regards to the original card. I fixed it here by making this a Spirit card!

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.

Daily Card Redesign #93: Triumph of Ferocity

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:

The art of Triumph of Ferocity is one that sparked controversy, debate, and an eventual apology from Wizards of the Coast for being an image that either depicts or triggers survivors of sexual assault.

When redesigning the card, I tried to stray away from the power aspect, so that it doesn't feel like Liliana is helpless compared to Garruk. I tied the name to what Garruk did in the lore after Liliana cursed him: he went to find her to try to undo the curse. The art here depicts him finally tracking her down. The name isn't talking about him being more powerful (because assaulting women is related to being "a power thing") or about any physical harm at all. The name talks about the pursuit. However, the effect itself pins a creature and stops it from getting away; but, hopefully, it's at least an improvement.

Provoke untaps creatures and forces them to block anything. This spell, on the other hand, untaps a creature and stops it from making itself unavailable to block again by using any activated abilities it might have (like with Prodigal Pyromancer using its activated ability and becoming tapped again) as well as force it to block a specific creature of yours. It's better-costed than a Murder, but it requires you to have a creature that is larger than the other creature you're tracking down in order for it to be beneficial.

Daily Card Redesign #92: Warp Artifact

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:

The stretchy-ness of the artifact within the art made me think of increasing numerical values by one. But then I looked through Alpha's artifacts and discovered there's not a lot that would actually hurt the opponent by increasing the numerical value in an artifact's text by one. So, I decided to do decrease. Perhaps the artifact is being "spread thin?"

I didn't want to settle for allowing you to be able to increase your own artifact's abilities positively. Because then it wouldn't feel like the black flavor that this is. This is a curse set upon an artifact, so it's gotta remain that way. To be sure, I added the first clause. No potential cheating for yourself.

I also included "non-mana-symbol" since the intention is only to affect the, well, non-mana-symbol numerical text.

I realize this is a little bit eccentric of a design, but it's a rare card, so there's some "O.K.-ness" there. This perhaps would be more at home as a blue card and without that opponent restriction and with an increase in numerical value rather than decrease. Alas, I am stuck with doing a black card as per the rules I've set for myself.

But now I know I've got a concept for a future blue rare design!

Daily Card Redesign #91: Dark Revenant

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:

There aren't enough cards mentioning Cowards like Boldwyr Intimidator does, and this guy is pretty scary, so I thought this was the appropriate time to mine that design space for Cowards.

Daily Card Redesign #90: Svogthos, the Restless Tomb

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:

It's tough because the first design was PRETTY good! So, here's an alternative. I was thinking about creating a legendary creature token, but I figured that was getting too complex for the sake of being as much different from the first design as possible.

The name "Restless Tomb" made me think I should stick with this ability making itself into a creature.