Day 16: Round 3 Design Test

I passed the multiple-choice test. I'm in the top 101 people of The Great Designer Search 2, and it's only going to get a lot more difficult within the next two days. Nay, I don't even have 48 hours. So, here's the deal:

Mark Rosewater posted up the design test for Round 3. And if you'd like to help me out designing some cards for my challenge (I'm going to need to choose four designs not done by me), here are the steps you'll need to take (You might have already taken care of a few things.)

1. Go to my Wiki page here.
2. If you haven't signed up for the Wizards' Community forums, click on the "Sign Up" link in the upper-right hand corner of the page and sign up.
3. If you haven't joined the Magic: The Gathering group, click on the "Join Group" link below the group's avatar image along the left side of the page. (If you aren't on the same page of that group, you can click on the link to my page in the first step, again. Then, you'll see it.)
4. Read the top of my page under the section "Round 3: Design Test" Assignment. Then just follow the instructions.

So, below, I've got the tribes and mechanics described for you, so that you can be on your way.

Tribes

Bird (Vulture folk) - White/Black
These guys are vultures. They fly, for the most part. I haven't defined much of a personality for them, so imagine what you like.

Gnome - Blue/Red
Gnomes make their debut as a major tribe in this set. There's only be one non-artifact gnome in Magic. This will fix that. Gnomes are tricky. They like to "play around" with magic, pull pranks, and are curious. They make up for the absence of Goblin mischief and stature with their own wily and short ways.

Crocodile (Crocodile folk) - Black/Green
This race isn't as well defined, either. Well, except, that they're the largest of the five species listed here. Note that the Crocodile card listed below is the smallest Crocodile's printed power/toughness. Don't take that card as a final card, just like the keyword names chosen that's on the example cards below.

Dwarf - Red/White
This is a proud race. They are tough, sturdy, and hard-headed. The choice of white dwarves stemmed from Eventide's hybrid red/white dwarves. As red/white are functionally about combat, this fits the dwarves perfectly.

Frog (Frog folk) - Green/Blue
These frogs are bipedal frog folk. They're NOT like the Anurid race from the plane of Dominaria. Those guys are, like, beasts! This plane's frogs are not beasts. They are intelligent dudes. Again, not much personality imbued in these guys.

Dreams and Nightmares
I'm not sure whether to add these types. If I do add them, they'll span multiple colors. If I add only Nightmares, I'll spread them all across the five colors. Same thing if I choose Dreams. If, however, I choose both, then I'm thinking of doing it like the Odyssey block and put Nightmares in blue, black, and red. And Dreams would be in green and white. Nightmares would have the Trauma mechanic (described below) and Dreams would have flashback (Yes, the first time creatures would have flashback. They work like Evoke does, since they'll have effects that trigger from you casting it and would get exiled when the spell resolves. Except, you know, you actually get to use the creature once before they die and is flashbacked (flashed back?)).

Classes for Ally Pairs
I've decided that the race creature types are going to pair two enemy colors when you want to build a deck around a certain race. However, for more diversity, I'm going to use the classes to pair ally colors. Except, in a broader sense (like three colors to a class). For example, Wizards will only be in blue, black, and red. This means that there can be blue/black Wizard decks, black/red Wizard decks, and (blue/red Wizard and/or blue/red Gnome) decks. The main focus won't be on these ally pairs, but they will be there as a minor theme. I'm not sure whether to include tribal cards that reference classes. But, the fellowship mechanic will definitely work with class types.

And I finally have four mechanics, though, a couple may need a bit of polish. Here they are, with some card mock-ups for visual appeal.

Fellowship

Fellowship -- Whenever you play a card sharing a subtype with CARDNAME, DO THIS.

And here's an example card:

Trauma

Trauma NUMBER (Whenever this creature would deal damage to a player, that player mills NUMBER cards intead.)

This card was modified off of Evan Erwin's Erode mechanic. His blog post debuting the mechanic is here: http://www.misterorange.com/?p=220 And the mechanic on the Wiki is here (one of the pages of MTG Color Pie's Wiki, in fact): http://community.wizards.com/magicthegathering/wiki/Labs:Gds/gds2/mtgcolorpie/FurnitureShopping1

WHOA! Disclaimer: There's "mill" as an action word now. Just like with scrying and regenerating, the "Target player puts the top X cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard" wording has been shortened to "Target player mills X cards." As this was a "library-themed" block, I thought it'd be proper to take take a risk and take action here with a commonly used cluster of words.

Here's an example card:

Flashback

This one's not new, but the placement of flashback on creatures is new. When you cast a creature from your graveyard via flashback, that creature will trigger its "when you cast me, stuff happens" ability, then it is exiled. It's like an evoke creature entering the battlefield (or leaving it), then sacrificing it. Here's an example:

Also, here's a Gnome tribal card just because:

Hold Thought

Hold Thought (Play with the top card of your library revealed. Whenever you would draw a card, you may draw the second card from the top of your library instead.)

Most, if not all, cards that have this ability have a second ability that interacts with the top card. Most often, the parameters for successful interaction is if the top card shares a subtype with the card with Hold Thought. 

I really don't like the name of this mechanic. Also, I'm wondering whether this mechanic can be done better. I believe this one is the weakest of all (unless you count that flashback-ing isn't innovating enough, maybe?). However, it is caught up in the synergy among all the mechanics. Trauma is good for ruining cards that care about the top card of card of the library (Hold Thought). Of course, those cards put into the graveyard may be flashback cards, so that's good for the player being milled. And casting multiple spells to trigger Fellowship is desired, so, flashback can help with that.

Here's an example of this mechanic, anyway:

Easy as pie, right? Also, I know that "drawing the second card from the top of your library" may be a controversial thing since you don't draw from there, you "put" from there. As in, "put the second card from the top of your library into your hand". But, since it's already so wordy, I decided to short-hand it.

For each of the mechanics, I tried to incorporate the fact that this plane resides in the mind of a planeswalker. (That's why it's a "library matters" theme.). Well, with the exception of fellowship. Anyway, if you'd like to submit your designs for my efforts, just go back to the top of this post and follow those steps.

Cheers,

Brad

Day 12: Essay Answers

It's been a while! That's because I was world building and writing essays for The Great Designer Search 2. Speaking of which, I made it into Round 2! I'll be doing the multiple choice test sometime during the 24-hour window on Wednesday. Man, it's gonna be tough.

When I saw others post their essay questions on their blogs and whatnot, that reminded me: Hey. I have a blog, too! So, here I am to post my answers. Then you guys can all throw tar and fire at me after you read them.

But, first, here's the link to my Wiki page:
"Raining" "Cats" and "Dogs" Block

I've yet to have a satisfiable environment. I do have mechanics and themes, yet, I'm working on the world to cement these mechanics and gameplay in and perhaps spawn more ideas in terms of gameplay. Perhaps you'd like to help and leave some suggestions or feedback on my Wiki page. That'd be awesome.

O.K., and as per the questions from this page, here are my answers (except for number 1):

2. You are instructed to move an ability from one color to another. This ability must be something used in every set (i.e. discard, direct damage, card drawing etc.). You may not choose an ability that has already been color shifted by R&D. What ability do you shift and to what color do you shift it? Explain why you would make that shift.

If I were instructed to move an ability from one color to another, that would be the ability to “bounce” permanents from blue to white. This would make an impact on blue’s overall ability to deal with other card types, but there are other means that blue could take advantage of to make up for the loss. Here’s what I’d do exactly:

The reason why I’d move this ability to white is to play into white’s theme of dealing with adversity in a pacifist way (Unless something did wrong to white first, then white will seek justice, of course). Returning a permanent to its owner’s hand doesn’t kill it, but bouncing gets rid of the problem for white, at least, temporarily. White already does this method of temporary solutions in the form of putting creatures onto the top of their owners’ library. Actually, this is ability is also shared in blue. Speaking of which, here’s what I’d do with blue after I make the shift.

Blue’s loss of returning permanents to their owners’ hand means less power in dealing with all the other card types. However, blue has other means in dealing with these cards. As I mentioned before, blue can put creatures on top as well as shuffle them into their owner’s library. Blue could even put them Xth from the top or put them on the bottom of their library. To be brief, this is what else blue can do to various cards: tap down temporarily or indefinitely, counter, gain control of, mill, manipulate power/toughness, gain unblockability, have shroud, and change targets of. Blue still has plenty of tools at its disposal.

Moving the ability from blue to white still makes sense flavor-wise for white. White would gain an extra “pacifist” way of dealing with problems. For blue, it means cranking up blue’s current solutions to cards as well as taking the white ability to shuffle or put on top of the library creatures and their ilk.

3. What block do you feel did the best job of integrating design with creative? What is one more thing that could have been done to make it even better?

What Alara block did right was how they represented five distinct shards of a world, the elegance of the shards coming together, and the end-product twist of the final set.

Shards of Alara saw the different shards of a world, each missing two colors of mana. That was represented in the game literally. However, design made a great decision and divided up the set’s mechanics among each shard, giving each their own feel for what playing with only three colors is like. Another good decision: Having Esper all-artifact-based and having Naya care about creatures with power 5 or greater to combat the problem of not having enough keyword mechanic slots to give to every shard. Finally, revisiting cycling in this was a top-notch move.

With Conflux, the shards came together which led into the makes-so-much sense return of domain. And then cycling explored more design space: Basic landcycling. Wow. It has synergy with domain’s mechanic?! It’s like some well-thought out plan of flavor and function playing off of each other unfolding before my very eyes.

Lastly, Alara Reborn pulled off a milestone with its all-gold set. The excellence of Alara creative set the stage for the reason for doing a set with all gold cards. The Borderposts were a genius move, cycling proved itself to be an MVP once again for fixing mana bases in Limited, and the hybrid mana symbol gave each shard access to more cards in the set, which, again, was important for Limited. Problems of an all-gold set: solved.

However, one thing that could have been done to make Alara block even better is improving upon Naya’s mechanic. It’s the weakest of all five shards, and it doesn’t do a great job of being exciting. Esper’s shtick made an impact with “splashy-ness.”

4. R&D has recently been looking at rules in the game that aren't pulling their weight. If you had to remove an existing rule from the game for not being worth its inclusion, what would it be?

The rule that “snow mana” (I know, it doesn’t actually exist.) is defined as mana that comes from a snow source is one that I think isn’t worth its inclusion. Its lack of pulling weight is defined as “pushing weight”. Of course, with this exclusion comes a new inclusion as well. I’ll explain:

Let’s go back to the time before the card Nantuko Elder was designed. During that time, there were just five types of mana. The generic mana symbol used for costs was supposed to represent “mana of any color” and only that. And then Nantuko Elder came along, trying to produce “1G” mana. “Whoa!” said the Magic rules. Then, one thing led to another and now permanents can add colorless mana. A sixth type of mana was added!

So, what does this have to do with snow mana? Well, I want to make snow mana a supertype of mana. Yes, I mean there can be snow white, snow blue, snow black, snow red, snow green mana, and snow colorless mana. I believe this will be greatly beneficial to Magic design as seen in the form of “snow red mana” and “Spend only snow mana on X.” And snow colorless costs can still be represented by “snow colorless” symbols with numbers in them just like regular colorless costs.

I recognize there’s a problem with having different types of snow mana, though. The symbol uses a snowflake, currently, but how do we graphically represent a snow red mana being different from a snow blue mana? That’s where I have faith that the same forces that created the hybrid mana symbol graphics can do the same with snow mana symbols.

I’d like to remove the rule about paying costs with snow symbols needing to use mana that come from snow sources. And with that removal required an inclusion of a new rule that says that snow is a supertype of mana. And this will help create more Magic design space.

5. Name a card currently in Standard that, from a design standpoint, should not have been printed. What is the card and why shouldn't we have printed it?

From a design standpoint, Marshal’s Anthem should not have been printed. This is because the card’s “return a creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield” effect is outside of white’s slice of the color pie. Sure, white returns creatures from the graveyard to the battlefield but not in this way.

White used to be able to return creatures from the graveyard (Breath of Life, Resurrection) to the battlefield without some sort of catch. Then, one day, Wizards R&D decided that this ability should be shifted to black and printed Zombify; and I agree. As one of the colors that are identified as being able to interact with the graveyard, black should be the color that has that definitive power in bringing creatures back from the dead.

This isn’t to say that white shouldn’t ever return creatures back from the graveyard. It just does so with restrictions. Either the returned creatures are small, army types (Proclamation of Rebirth, Order of Whiteclay) or they’ve had something happen to them first, fitting the “redemption” flavor of white (Second Sunrise, Adarkar Valkyrie).

Looking at Marshal’s Anthem, it doesn’t do that. It allows you to bring a creature back with no restrictions even if it’s been there for quite a while, too – And multiple creatures, to boot.

Bonus reason why it shouldn’t have been printed: From a flavor perspective, it doesn’t make sense for the anthem of a marshal to be able to bring people back to life (unless you count taking a metaphor of “That anthem brings people to life!” quite literally).

6. What do you think design can do to best make the game accessible to newer players?

What design can do best to make the game accessible to newer players is to make sure both the fantasy flavor and the image of the complexity of Magic is strong. Newer players are looking for different things in a game that they can enjoy, depending on the person. Introduction of Magic to newer players is where the Vorthos and Melvin axis of player profiles is most important.

Newer players that lean toward being Vorthos are looking for something that evokes the fantasy experience strongly. This means being resonance with the fantasy theme is important, so that the player can identify with it. Wizards has already made an excellent move in the Magic 2010 and Magic 2011 core sets with more of a focus on flavor as well as the terminology and rules changes with “casting”, “battlefield”, and etc. The core sets are also doing a good job of attracting new players with using the traditional fantasy theme, as new players should start within the familiar. New mechanics in each new set should strive toward matching up with the flavor of the world/block that the mechanic is in, whenever possible. All of these efforts will be aimed toward making that new Vorthos player happy.

Newer Melvin players will be seeking a game with richness in complexity. They’ll appreciate the strategy, the depth of gameplay, and the innumerable combinations and situations with the thousands of cards available. Whenever Wizards reaches out to newer players, they should highlight the former qualities of this game and not try to hide the fact that the game is actually something complex. Seasoned gamers / strategy players will want to see that this game actually has much to explore in terms of gameplay. Fortunately, what design can do in the future for Melvin players is to keep up strong Magic designs in each of its cards, its mechanics, and its themes and the interesting interaction potential among these pieces of the game. Just keep Magic’s gameplay strong, and you’ll have a strong chance of winning the new Melvin player’s heart.

7. What do you think design can do to best make the game attractive to experienced players?

People want familiar things with a twist. With each new set that is released, it has to still feel like Magic. With experienced players, you have an important resource at your disposal: Magic itself. Design should use this to best make the game attractive to experienced players.

What I mean is that when players have been playing for a while, they’ve built up experiences and knowledge of older Magic sets, mechanics, and cards. When revisiting planes, experienced Magic players would go, “Oh, yes! I loved drafting that set, and now, it’s back? Hooray, more of the same but with a twist!” (Something like that.) Planes have “design space”, too. As for mechanics, some mechanics are worth revisiting for their design space, but, depending on the mechanic, players might also have fond memories for the time period the mechanic last appeared in. And also depending on the mechanic, it might even spice up a deck of old that they have, like an Affinity deck. Lastly, reprinting cards might have a little impact but printing new cards that remind players of other notable cards are also a plus.

What it comes down to is nostalgia. Time Spiral used this as a theme, the Un-sets uses this for its comic material, and there’s no avoiding nostalgia when revisiting Scars of Mirrodin. Look at how Nintendo is using their Mario. People remember playing the Super Mario Bros. video game and perhaps that would motivate them to purchase a Nintendo DS with New Super Mario Bros., a 2D Mario sidescroller (despite multiple 3D Mario games).

Design needs to tread familiar ground (planes, mechanics) but in new ways. It also needs to recognize and harness the power of nostalgia to keep experienced players happy and perhaps bring back players of old who remember those “good ol’ days.” This is how design will best make the game attractive to experienced players.

8. Of all the mechanics currently in Extended, which one is the best designed? Explain why.

Proliferate is the mechanic best designed of all other mechanics currently in Extended. I know, I know, the mechanic is as new as a mechanic can be in Extended; but, man, does it deliver. Here are the reasons:

The mechanic made the Phyrexian/poison theme possible. Infect alone wasn’t going to cut it. Proliferate provided the support that the Scars of Mirrodin block needed and then some. It also does a good job of supporting the flavor part of the Phyrexian oil infection.

Proliferate is modular. And I mean VERY modular. Poison counters get affected by proliferate, sure, but within its own Limited environment it also affects -1/-1 counters, charge counters, and loyalty counters.

It’s elegant and adds extra depth to the game in a new way. As previously mentioned, proliferate affects many different kinds of cards that use counters because of the fact that all the counters share the attribute of “being a counter.” Proliferate gets right to the core of this attribute and touched that practically virgin design space (My respects to Gilder Bairn, especially, of the few cards that are related). As a result, proliferate interacts with countless cards that use counters as markers.

And, to boot, many Johnnies are happy with proliferate. This mechanic is a shiny new plaything by which they can build decks around and say, “Look what I did with proliferate! I’m using it with Chance Encounter!”

Supporting a block theme, modularity, elegance in execution, and its impact on Magic’s gameplay as a whole make proliferate the best designed mechanic currently in Extended.

9. Of all the mechanics currently in Extended, which one is the worst designed? Explain why.

The worst designed mechanic currently in Extended is clash. It’s not as elegant as other mechanics are, and it doesn’t make the flavorful connection to the world of Lorwyn. I also can’t see much wiggle room in terms of design space.

Clash makes me put the spell aside, reveal the top card of my library along with another opponent, compare the costs, then decide on whether to leave the card on top or put it on the bottom of my library. Oh, yeah, I was casting a spell, wasn’t I? And the benefit of this mechanic is a method of randomization. The coin flip, while not innovative, is a much cleaner process.

However, as for the benefit, it’s not much of a gain to merit the mechanic. It can interact with kinship, but it’s a narrow synergy. If you clash and find a creature on top, then well, you were already going to get your kinship to go off anyway. If you clash and put it on the bottom, well, there’s still a chance the next card won’t be a Shaman.

While it’s O.K. for there to be mechanics that don’t make a flavorful connection to the world (like cycling), it does help. Clash doesn’t have anything to do with the tribes or anything else in the world other than maybe referencing how the tribes are “clashing” with each other. But, Magic always has a clash with each other. Otherwise, there wouldn’t always be a combat phase. And if I’m missing a flavorful connection with clash, that’s further proof that clash did such a poor job with flavor.

Clash is too clunky, not interactive much with other mechanics, and it’s not flavorful. There’s not a lot of variation you can do with clash, either. This is why clash is my choice for the worst designed mechanic currently in Extended.

10. Choose a plane to revisit other than Dominaria or Mirrodin. What is a mechanical twist we could add if we revisit this plane?
I’m going to not choose Kamigawa and the untapped potential of “splice onto <something besides Arcane>.” I feel that’s too obvious of a choice for what plane to visit with a mechanical twist to it.

Instead I’ll pick Ravnica. However, a problem with this is the number of mechanics in the block. Because of the way the block was done, there were ten mechanics spread out over the. What mechanical twist can be done to the return of the guild system and Ravnica to make it not feel like a “rinse and repeat” block? This is my answer:

Color used as a theme over the course of Magic has been explored time and time again, and yet, there are still aspects of color that haven’t been touched on. Ravnica block explored the pairing of two of the five colors. Shards of Alara block focused on the identity of three-color shards, each missing two colors. “Monocolored” is the default distinction in Magic. So, that brings us to four colors missing, three colors missing and two colors missing, which leaves: one color missing.

This would be an exploration of two-guild four-color factions. While there have been four-color cards, this hasn’t been done as a theme of a block before. The joining of two guilds can mean a hybrid twist of two of the old guild mechanics. For example, a Selesnya-Izzet guild can have “Replivoke 2 (You may tap two creatures any number of times as you cast this spell. For each time you tap two creatures, copy this spell. You may choose new targets for the copies.)”

I realize that the number of factions would result in five mechanics when usually a large set has four mechanics. I’d like to think that solution can be figured out as was done with the Shards of Alara block (Nay and Esper). Anyway, the point is that the four-color theme and exploring un-evolved mechanics is the mechanical twist that can be added if Magic decides to revisit the plane of Ravnica.

So, that's that. Feel free to criticize (or compliment) my answers and/or reasoning as you wish. So, now, I'm going to get going on preparing for my future endeavors in the competition.

Cheers,

Brad

Day 1: Unterior Decorating

Hey! 

If you haven't already heard The Great Designer Search 2 has begun! If you're interested in Magic design period, and you haven't yet read the introductory article by Mark Rosewater, then GET GOING MAN. 

Stop reading this right now and read that. 

In fact, I will forgive you if you get all caught up in what results from reading that and completely forget (or purposefully ignore) about reading this blog post. For sure, man.

Actually, you might say that anyone who's interested in GDS2 shouldn't be wasting their time reading something like this when they could be spending their time creating and viewing content for world/block designs. Well, I'd like to think that somebody could argue that reading this isn't a waste of time (Off topic: I notice that I don't usually make definitive statements about things that somebody else could have a different opinion on.). There's content in this blog post after all, and there are card designs below that could spark somebody's imagination into generating ideas they didn't have before.

If you still managed to read this and know what I'm talking about in terms of Great Designer Search 2, I thank you so much for your valuable time. Time is VERY valuable now. However, here's something relevant: My world/block page. It was mentioned on this wiki page. Also, I'm part of the Team Color Pie design team for this competition, which has a world/block page belonging to none other than MTG Color Pie.

Anyway, for those that know what I was up for a majority of these posts, I was completing challenges from the last Great Designer Search, and I stopped short of the Un-cards. I will not be continuing any further in my practicing since I'll be focusing on doing things that are actually for GDS2. For now, that's creating my world/block. 

However, I did mostly create four out of five cards. The existing four cards aren't completely complete, however. Just the concept and the text in the text box. The rest of the card is also very important for Un-cards (art and representation of the card), which is why these cards aren't technically complete. Here, I'll show what progress was done:

The art is supposed to depict very gentlemanly and ladylike players dressed in formal wear doing a musical-chairs sort of thing. I think the sophistication in times of silliness is funny, but it could be terrible. I'm no comedian. 

Anyway, the card is tricky in that you'd have to time the death of a player while that player is under the control of another player (i.e. not your seat). 

The last sentence solves the problem where, in a multiplayer game, the player removes all the cards they own from the game, normally. However, since a player can be controlled by someone else, and that player loses instead of the player that would normally lose, that would have meant you'd take your cards under the control of another player, and that person would be out of cards. Unless I forced either the player to get up out of his or her set to replace the losing player or to stay where they are and the cards all move toward him or her. Neither solution was desirable, so that's why that sentence is there.

For all those players that bemoan the existence of Baneslayer Angel. This mostly mirrors Baneslayer Angel, but I figured I didn't have to exactly antagonize it. I just needed enough to be able to do the job: completely answer her in many fun ways. Originally, I had the requirement to put Angelslayer Elemental onto the battlfeild be to yell out, "I will avenge you Serra Angel!", but I didn't want to have more than one card that involved yelling out. Speaking of which, that leads into my next card:

All right, I did a lot of research for this one. There's all sorts of references in here related to MaGo. Actually, too many of it focus on his many names, but whatever. It's all about him! And, no, I'm not some Cult of MaGo fanboy. I just thought it'd be refreshing to do a card design of him instead of the expected gravitation toward designing a card of Mark Rosewater (making fun of one of the people that are the "faces of Magic").

• The name "Mark Gottlieb, Ph. D." refers to his Doctor Wombat name on Magic: The Gathering Online and follows the same format as "Richard Garfield Ph. D."
• Since MaGo is MaRo's archnemesis, I put the mana cost using the colors that what I think a MaRo card wouldn't use. MaRo would be a blue/red (representing creativity). However, I'm not being fair to Gottlieb. He even stated in his last article that all his articles in his House of Cards column have been about being creative. So, I would put him in red/blue at least, as well, if I weren't forcing him to be in the role of being defined by being the archenemy of someone else. Also, I justified the mana cost with the abilities in its textbox. May or not be "stretching it".
• The "supervillain" thing is a fun class to put instead of "designer" since during his time as Rules Manager implied that he could be evil and bend the rules of Magic toward his bidding.
• "Agrajag!" is his Starcraft name.
• He has an affinity with Rabid Wombat. I'm not sure if it's his favorite card ever or not (I can't spend too much time trying to find the source that confirms this.), but he definitely likes this card specifically. It's also the only Wombat (besides changeling cards and Mistform Ultimus), so he's specifically look for this card until the day Wizards prints more Wombats. ...And I'm sure he wouldn't mind being able to search for those new guys. He is also called Wombat for his puzzle masters thing or whatever (Such apathy! If you're reading this, MaGo, I could say I'm sorry, but the apathy also permeates how I care about your feelings. ...Joke. It's a joke. Don't be sad.)
• The second part of that search ability helps a Rabid Wombat if you already have one.
• The final part is the coolest part. "Mago" appears on Spanish cards who have "Mage" in the title in the English equivalent. For example, "Meddling Mage" in Spanish is "Mago entrometido". And, in Italian and Portuguese, the creature type "Wizard" is "Mago". You can read about it in MaGo's article about his discovery of this fact here. In fact, this also cites the source of all other MaGo name references on this card.
• The second ability hoses all Maro cards, except for the weird Molimo, Maro-Sorcerer. And yes, how I did that second ability is a risk in that there could be Cults of Maros appearing in all sorts of places, which would defeat the purpose of hosing. Though, it's fun to think that there'd be one legitimate one out there. But, whatever. I'm not going to spend too much time trying to decide whether "0" or "number of Cult of Maros" is the correct decision. ...Oh, wondering what the Cult of Maro thing is? It references the Cult of Mago that sprung up in Wizards' forums after his last article. Here, read this wiki from MTG Salvation (Yeah, that's pretty much where you'd get all the information
• He played upon the "Rules Manager" title with "Rules Man(ager)" in this article.
• There's no specialness for the 3/3 bit.

I never did figure out what to put in the art besides Mark Rosewater somewhere in it.

This was the last card I was trying to complete (in terms of gameplay). I obviously never finished (I planned to make fun of Jace, The Mind Sculptor by having five abilities a'la Greater Morphling.). I incorporated black's power thing (money = power) with some green abilities to justify green-ness (I saw that there wasn't enough green representation in my cards). The ultimate ability involves counting the total US cent value of the counters on this planeswalker for some effect. Obviously, I still needed to figure out how I would control it going out of hand (stating certain coins can only be counted, restricting all abilities to only deal with coins with a value less than 25 cents, dividing the total by a large number, and whatever other options) because there are dollar coins in existence that would be adding 100 to the total per coin if used.

Go, go card house building! I like the tension of trying to outspeed your opponent while still carefully building a card house. I tried to state the rules text for a card house in a way so that people don't cheese their way through this challenge. Is this card still costed too little for the amount of cards you could potentially draw? I don't want it to cost too high so that players can play this more often. I tried to offset this with more mana symbols and reasoning that a gambling red part gives the chance of nothing, so the cost is lower.

I want the art to show the tortoise and the hare building card houses. The tortoise's house is clearly stable, yet underdeveloped, and the hare's looks almost done, yet, just about to fall over.

So, that's that. Erm, what else? Hmm... Oh! Yes. OxyFrog in the comments of my last blog post pointed out that my Shapeshifter lord doesn't actually work the way it does since Shapeshifters lose their Shapeshifter type when they're copied as another creature. I forgot this fact, which is no bueno. Thanks for helping me see that, OxyFrog!

Cheers,

Brad

Day -6: Picture This

These cards are in response to the challenge "Picture This" from the first Great Designer Search. To summarize, the challenge was simulating the situation of designing cards to fill in holes so late in development that all the art is already in. So, in addition to designing ten cards that each need to meet specific requirements, it had to match one of ten pieces of art provided.

So, here are the ten cards:

White (uncommon)

We need an answer to all the token making in the environment. Be subtle.

Clerics from Onslaught block are surrounding a fighting-type guy. This guy looks uncomfortable among his peers. I thought of him feeling ashamed, then tied the "flicker" effect to feel like he took a temporary leave of absence. And, of course, tokens cease to exist when they leave the battlefield.


My one concern is whether the fact that all tokens have the same name is too obscure for enough players to use this as a token-hoser.

White (rare)

We're looking for a weird Johnny-style enchantment

In addition to a guy in very white civilized clothes, there's a zombie in the background. This implies that there's some tango-ing with non-white creatures. One way to explain this is that these are the enemy creatures.

The challenge for the player is being able to keep up life-gain and managing the number of creatures you control to maximize your chances of triggering this ability. You'd pretty much have to build your deck around this card to accomplish this. Go, Johnny, go!

To make it feel more like random creatures from your opponent's army are swayed by your diplomacy skills, I had the opponent choose the creature. And it's more interesting that way. Bringing over the best creature from one side to the other can turn the tables quite a bit and the focus on this enchantment then fades away.

Blue (common)

We need a sorcery. No card filtering or drawing. No bounce (aka returning cards to hand).

This card shows the mage discharging two streams of magic. And there's blue hues. Thus, the two targets in this blue card. The mechanic here is like Sleep, but I wanted to tap into other card types to further explore the "sleep" effect. Of course, since it can affect noncreatures, the flavor was changed to simple holding magic. It's "nonland" to prevent players from keeping an opponent's mana base tied down.

Blue (rare)

We need a creature. Something splashy for Timmy.

Go, go, Shapeshifter lord! In the art, instead of showing the "real guy" and the "fake guy", it's actually the Doppelganger of the Urn (so, he's fake) passing on his copy to another Shapeshifter (great, another fake!).

Black (uncommon)

Make an aura you want to put on your own creatures.

I'm a little wary of whether the restrictions on this card aren't severe enough. First of all, your most expensive card will have to decide between being used for whatever it was summoned for (attacking, for example) and tutoring. Also, I wanted to make sure that whatever creature was enchanted really did feel like the superior one, as depicted in the art. Secondly, it's vulnerable being on a creature.

Black (rare)

The idea here is that you're given the gift of storytelling, entertainment, and humor (a jester's gift), but the "Fool's" part shows that it comes with just the opposite (Fool's Curse). The gift is also a curse. The curse slowly is killing the enchanted creature, which means that the zombie-looking guy used to not be such a zombie-looking guy.

Also, the enchanted creature is "entertaining" creatures from participating in combat (the crowd in the background), thus the exiling. It's not until the entertainer passes away that the creatures remember that they've got a duty to attend to. I would have put "can't attack or block" instead of exiling using joke counters, but that's more white. So, I took a page from the "faceless" book, and temporarily exiled them.

Red (common)

Instant or sorcery. No direct damage or destruction (artifact or land).

The red background and the emotions depicted on these faces tilted toward a red card for me. This card design is a little unorthodox is very much designed "top down". The moment here is being filled with rage after being informed that a fellow comrade has died.

Red (uncommon)

Creature. Want a build around me for draft (aka something that will encourage players to go down a path or paths he or she wouldn't normally had they not drafted this card early; examples of this type of card are Lightning Rift, Mark of Eviction andMomentary Blink).

The art depicts an Orgg. I love Orggs. Also, there are only four Orggs in Magic, and the most recent one printed was actually a reprint of the original Orgg in Time Spiral block. Wizards of the Coast, print another Orgg, please! But, anyway, yeah.

All Orggs previously have been rare and big. This has to be an uncommon. And uncommon red creatures are not typically 6/6. What to do? Bam, a baby Orgg, But, it has metal on its skin. Like a karate chop solution, the title explains that the metal is soldered on from melting down artifacts. We've got our build-around: artifacts!

And, finally, it's be sad to have your ever-growing Orgg be chump blocked for a while, or even killed by enough creatures. Thus, Intimidate is there! Besides, who WOULDN'T run from a monster with four metal arms?

Green (common)

Creature. Something that costs four or more mana.

This one was a toughie. The images here don't scream "green". For this art, the green cape hues, the hand-crafted weapons he's wielding, and the morph creature husk (I made it seem like it's just an artifact. It's hard to tell, so I could get away with it to the untrained eye.) were justifications for this being in green.

So, destroying an artifact, check. But, it needed something more. We already have Viridian Shaman for ETB artifact destruction (I'm hoping that this guy is fine at common depending on which environment he comes from), so I looked to the art for clues. He looked like he was surfing that explosion, so I thought of how he was riding along with a spell being cast to help him to his destination (landing on an artifact at instant speed!).

Green (rare)

Non-creature spell. Green's lacking in "wow" factor (aka something that will impress the player by how different it is).

The trick here was that instead of making it seem like that metallic object is breaking itself open to shoot out a beam of colorful destruction on a dude, you make it seem like that you broke the artifact yourself and caused it to rupture a beam of colorful hate from within itself. You just turned a metallic object on the enemy's side into your own weapon.

Since it has all the colored rings, I chose green for this since green's the color that is most in tune with dealing with all five colors, being the land color and mana-fixing color. And because it's a green spell, I needed you to depend on land types and having the different land types allow you access to those color's effects. 

I like how it's flexible for whatever green/X-color deck you want to make.

So, that's that. Now, to move on to the next challenge, which should be my most challenging, yet: Un-cards.

Cheers,

Brad

Day -8: Mythic Cycle

As you regular readers know, here's the final, optional cycle I've decided to do for the Great Designer Search 1's "Gimme Five" challenge.

For this cycle, I knew I wanted to do "big" spells. When I say "big", I mean spells like the the Decrees, Myojins, and the epic spells. That's why these cards cost so much. I don't want to give the impression that I think that "bigger is better" whenever I attempt to design something mythic.

Anyway, since I did two loose cycles and one tight cycle for the other rarities, I decided it would be fair to put the constraint on myself of a tight cycle. The types have to be sorcery, too, as another restraint (I haven't done the sorcery type, yet.) All the mana costs have to be the same, and there must be at least one thing they all do similar yet differently. And that was... choosing to do emblems. Here's a refresher on the rules for emblems.

Whoa. That's serious business. An emblem can't be touched by the opponent! And only planeswalkers give that! The ramifications, Brad! RAMIFICATIONS! It's O.K. I created these rules for myself when designing these emblem-giving sorceries:

• The emblem can't directly negatively affect the opponent. (Such as: "Your opponents skip their main phases.") The spell's effect can be negative for them, but not the permanent emblem effect. This is so that the game is still fun and doesn't feel "unfair." There are no answers to emblems unlike enchantments with cards like Naturalize.
• The emblem can't be used as a drawback for a "big" spell upside effect. (For example: "At the beginning of your upkeep, you lose 5 life.") This is because the cycle is supposed to sell sets. And having a drawback on what is supposed to be a really cool spell doesn't have as much appeal as a spell that's all upside (in terms of effects, not counting the mana cost and other costs). Sure, a spell with a drawback does more for less of a cost is great, but the audience that would love the spell (or go buy cards from that set) becomes more narrow. So, it has to all be big and positive, even if the cost goes higher.
• Lastly, the player has to work for it. The planeswalkers that give you emblems, like Elspeth, have to endure surviving all the way to their "ultimate" ability before giving out an emblem. It takes three to four turns to achieve this as long as they're unhindered among Elspeth, Koth, and Venser (those last two are from Scars of Mirrodin)

So, here's what I came up with:

Tight Sorcery Mythic Rare Cycle

This card is Final Judgment at eight mana (as a trade-off for the extra ability). This spell's one of the more straight-forward ones. 

As you'll see with the rest of the cycle, I ended up making the emblems do something once a turn for the rest of the game for you. However, I didn't want to do the upkeep because, by that time, after casting three spells, you won't be able to immediately reap the benefits of your hard work. Also, a few cards work better with "beginning of the end step" instead of "upkeep" triggers for their effects. 

Finally, the "Judgment" part of the name is both a nod toward Final Judgment (and Day of Judgment, inadvertently) and an aspect of a person. "Judgment" feels like it deals with the white slice of the color pie.

And here's the other straight-forward card. There's Decree of Annihilation's cycling, Bust of Boom/Bust, and removing a divinity counter from Myojin of Infinite Rage that all do the same effect. For the emblem effect, it was a little tricky to not make it feel green to get lands back from the graveyard (or to fetch for 'em), since I wanted the player to be able to recover if he or she worked for the emblem, but then I remembered Fossil Find. Hooray! Color pie intact.

The spell effect compares with Distorting Wake. Of course, if there weren't an emblem clause, this card would be strictly worse, but because it's there, I felt that I had to make the card so that, even though Distorting Wake has an advantage of being variable, it has one less target than Distorting Wake when 5UUU is paid. Four's still a lot, though.

While this effect is mostly on white cards, it doesn't mean green can't have it as evident with Fracturing Gust. O.K., so this one might be underpowered compared to its brethren when casted without getting the emblem. However, once that emblem is obtained, the potential is great. Depending on the deck(s), this could either suck or be totally "bah-roken". I feel like it'll tilt more toward the former, but it depends on the environment. Your friends' artifact deck won't like this. Decks built around cards from the Mirrodin and Scars of Mirrodin blocks (maybe not poison) would probably not like this either. As for everything else, I'm just not sure. Poor Green. It's still not easy being you.

This is the one I'm most excited and nervous about. This just might be purely broken. I know, I know, I should do playtesting of these cards. But, my whole Magic collection is in storage! So, what am I gonna do? Make a 60-card deck of index cards? Or... use certain programs that let you play Magic online without it being Magic Online? Craziness! (*cough*)

Anyway, with the cards in this cycle, white got rid of creatures. Red destroyed lands. And green dealt with artifacts and enchantments. That leaves one permanent type not affected: planeswalkers. I didn't want to create a card that specifically said it destroyed planeswalkers since it didn't feel right. Planeswalkers are powerful wizards, man! However, black has a couple cards in the form of Aether Snap and Vampire Hexmage that indirectly deal with planeswalkers. So, sweet. The fifth permanent type is not safe. 

I have no qualms with killing planeswalkers as I hate seeing how most of these cards are all upside, even in terms of their mana cost. This leads to prices soaring and many decks just needing to include them because they're so good, and they're mythic rare, to boot. Ugh. Don't get me wrong. I love the fact that there are planeswalker cards. Just how it all turned out has gone amiss in some way. ...I'm going on a tangent. Let's get back to the card.

So, dealing only with planeswalkers, what we have happening here is sapping every planeswalker opposing you and yours being fueled, if you have at least one, and if you got the emblem. Parasitism is black, indeed. For those of you that think the emblem might only be useful for that one single turn, don't forget that using any "minus" abilities on your planeswalker during your turn means you get to put them back on your planeswalker at end of turn. You could even put them on another planeswalker!

Yes, I am aware that if you end up doing the work to achieve this emblem and getting Sorin to 8 (He's gotta stay alive.), you pretty much win the game. But, that's a bunch of work needed to accomplish this. And you should win, then. Just like with any infinite combos involving Mindslaver.

And, yes, other ultimates will end up going off easily, too. If you get the emblem. And if you control a planeswalker with your opponent controlling one, too, with a decent amount of loyalty counters. Or if you control two planeswalkers. Good luck with that, sir or ma'am.

...Let's not forget those +1/+1, -1/-1, charge, and other types of counters you could redistribute! Wee.

Whew. Second challenge done. Eight days or so left until the Great Designer Search 2 begins. I've got my work cut out for me if I want to accomplish doing all the challenges of the Great Designer Search 1 before the sequel begins. So... HERE I GO!

Cheers,

Brad

Day -12: Common Cycle

For those of you just tuning in, I'm preparing for the Great Designer Search 2 (announced here) by going through the challenges that participants went through in the first Great Designer Search. This submission of cards is the common cycle for the three five-card cycles challenge.

The common cycle needed to be simple and easy to understand while not being too swingy in Limited. I chose to design a new keyword mechanic for this cycle as an easy way keep them interesting, and I hadn't done one for the uncommon or rare cycles. Because this new keyword mechanic is supposed to permeate all sorts of cards in the imaginary set they're from and not just these five commons, I needed to have the five cards to apply the keyword in some way, but in one of the most basic ways. Here's what resulted:

It's Friday Night Magic, and you're in a Limited game where you're in topdeck mode. You have a few creatures out, but you really need to draw a bomb. You take your turn and draw a... 2/2 bear. Great. Oh, wait a minute. This one has boost. Most likely, it's going to be at least a 3/3 with trample. Hooray-ish!

Part of the restriction of this challenge is that an effect may be used on no more than one card. I had a blue card in the enchantment cycle that granted flying, so that was ruled out for this guy. First strike and vigilance was used in the red card and white card of that same cycle, respectively. I didn't want to use lifelink because of how this creature's power is variable and this card might become too swingy for Limited. That leaves protection (of the common creature keyword abilities for white). So, why not?

Another spin on the common blue large serpent. 

I used Nether Horror for reference on power level. Traded a point of power and added a drawback in exchange for having boost.

Even making this guy a 0/1, I'm still nervous whether this is overpowered. I changed its creature type from "Goblin Warrior" to "Human Warrior" just to make sure that Goblins wouldn't abuse this too much because of the nature of the creature type.

So, there's my cycle. Finally, here's the third version of one of the cards from my rare cycle of cards, thanks to the responses of MTG Color Pie and my friend Josh.

Up next, mythic rares. After that, I finally move on to the next challenge. I gotta pick up the pace if I want all this done before September 29th!

Cheers,

Brad