Daily Card Redesign #116: Recover

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:

This was awesome. I learned that Barrin had a daughter who he had a falling out with when he forbade her from her interest in artifice, based on his experiences with Urza. He later finds that she had since died at the hands of Phyrexia. Overcome with grief, he recovers her body and aimed to bury her next to her mother in Tolaria. That's when he found Phyrexia had infiltrated that place, too. So he cast a spell he swore he would never cast. It was this:

Anyway, so since the art of Recover features Barrin recovering his daughter's body, I'd be hard-pressed to find any other kind of effect that would match the art and story other than returning a card from the graveyard back to the hand. I thought of exiling the card from the graveyard, but it turns out that Cremate already exists in Invasion!

So, I pursued to go after a variant of this staple black effect that hasn't already been done before. There's multiple design variations, but I thought of a flavorful restriction. Since Barrin didn't find his daughter until after she had already died, the player can't return a creature that had just died that turn. Otherwise, it'd be like Barrin was there to see his daughter die and immediately got her body back. It was after the fact. Thus, the restriction is to only return creatures that hadn't died that turn (not technically worded that way since creatures on the battlefield are different objects from creature cards in the graveyard).

Now, since this is a drawback, and the normal cost for this effect is one black in the form of Disentomb, I needed to add an upside to this card. Drawing a card has already been done on the previous submission, so I wanted to pursue something else to differentiate this new design enough from the original. The cleanest upside I found was making this an instant. There's barely any spells with this effect that are instants, so this was perfect!

Daily Card Redesign #115: Stab Wound

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:

That wound on her looks QUITE like a stab wound. But I wanted to find a different interpretation of a stab wound. Especially when I can't use -1/-1 counters in this set, and the original design already does such a great job at evoking the feel of a stab wound while still being New World Order-friendly (New World Order is the name for the current age of modern design principles/rules).

I looked at the blood and noticed how it was black. ...Seemed magical, then. Otherwise, she'd have red blood, right?

So that's when I thought, "Aha! What if the lady wizard being depicted here isn't a creature - what if it's  the player herself?" That would explain the painful, magical blood.

And that's how I arrived at a painful link between the creature and the player. Binding Agony, Ragged Veins, and Spiteful Shadows already exist - but those are all Auras. No instants! So, this was the time to make an instant one-turn version of the same effect.

Daily Card Redesign #114: Puppeteer

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:

Recreation Master: he's the best at recreational activity (i.e. playing chess/games)! Initially, I had wanted to do certain games that included flipping coins or choosing odd or even (gambling). But those are red games! Red games are games of chance while blue games depend upon your intellect.

Thus, the effect that I have here. It depends on you to figure out what your opponent has in his or her hand.

The flavor is that this guy, rather than fight with the creatures he gets into combat with, plays a game with that creature. The "winner in the combat" is the one who wins this little chess-like game. He is a master, after all.

Daily Card Redesign #113: Ophidian Eye

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:

So, Ophidian Eye. It referenced the original Ophidian card. So I set out to come up with a different reference using those eyes besides Ophidian. Did you know that Ophidian and Ribbon Snake are the only monoblue Snakes in Magic: The Gathering? Ribbon Snake's abilities didn't quite fit for the art, so I set out to find non-Snake references.

There are no monoblue Cats in Magic: The Gathering. So, next, I thought of Beasts. To make matters more difficult, I had to find a reference to an old Magic card that would help place the card's name between Mystical Teachings and Paradox Haze, alphabetically.

So, then I found a fantastic card: Chambered Nautilus! Here's why it is an awesome replacement:

• The "Nautilus" word fits between Mystical Teachings and Paradox Haze, alphabetically.
• Like Ophidian, it's the only card in Magic: The Gathering with "Nautilus" in its name. Well, besides this card that references Ophidian or this redesign.
• A Nautilus Beast is freaky enough to warrant those eyes in the art.
• The ability is basically an INVERSE of the Ophidian ability!

Fun fact: Chambered Nautilus has been errata'd to have the Nautilus creature type. Looks like I'll try to  squeeze in a Nautilus creature card in a future card set of mine!

Daily Card Redesign #112: Original Dual Land 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. 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.

Gatherer randomly gave me Taiga! Of course, this is just one card of the whole ten-card dual land cycle in Alpha. They're all identical except for colors of mana, so that's what this redesign will be of.

Redesign:

Each land has to have a restriction, so here's this redesign's version. The upside of this restriction is that it can always be used right away. The downside is that it requires constant maintenance with playing of the appropriate lands. 

The interesting thing, though, is that this restriction rewards you for doing what you already want to do. In the beginning of the game, you need all the different colors of mana that you can get. What also happens at the beginning of the game, if you deck is of usual caliber, is that you play lands. Your red/green deck is probably going to keep playing Mountains, Forests, and other Taigas until you at least have three or four lands out. Around that time is when you stop playing lands every turn - but that's O.K. You don't need to play more lands. You're fine with just one colorless mana by then.

What's also cool is that, unless you're playing five-color-producing lands every turn, this land would only reliably produce colored mana if you restrict yourself from playing a ton of colors - it regulates your multicolored greediness.

Daily Card Redesign #111: Midnight Banshee

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 heavily enjoy that "Mourning Banshee" sounds like "Morning Banshee," which would mirror "Midnight Banshee."

There's dead guys in the art, which would refer to how the banshee is wailing and hurting others. But what if it was wailing BECAUSE of the dead creatures? As if it was crying out in mourning? ...And that's how I came to this.

Its ability only triggers off of your own creatures because that's what the banshee would be sad about. And it only triggers once each turn because I didn't want degenerate recursive-ness to occur due to the fact that the effect can also trigger the condition of the ability itself.

And, of course, because this has wither, the creatures it affects will be permanently afflicted by the banshee's scream.