Card of the Day - Journey's Hope

No specific theme this week.  I'm having a tough time coming up with a Boros keyword, but I'll try to have one for next week.  This card is a cross between Krosan Verge and Seek the Horizon.

Card of the Day - Sassafras Cove

This is a Wedge land.  I wanted to make it different than other lands by having its ETB trigger be dependent on the type of land it is.  Another example would be the Plains that taps for red or black and ETB tapped unless you control another Plains.  We could call it Gore-strewn Battlefield! (I just made that up!)

Card of the Day - Intuitive Adept

Here's an example of a keyword I designed while figuring out the guild keywords.  This one didn't quite fit into Boros, but I thought I'd share it with you all anyway.

Bonus! Card of the Day - Aerial Stalker

I love making these Espionage cards!  Here's another bonus for y'all. 

Card of the Day - Watchful Serpent

I love making a huge blue common creature.  Most big sets have one. It's almost always a serpent, and it's almost always overlooked. Here's one more to put in the pile.

Bonus! Card of the Day - Unwavering Plague

Although this isn't strictly a Dimir card, it is an excellent card to draft in a dedicated Dimir deck. The synergy with Espionage is staggering.  Also:  a good way to clear the board!

Card of the Day - Undercity Scoundrel

With Espionage as the Dimir mechanic, mill is a viable draft strategy.  This guy is a good enabler for a lot of mill strategies.  If he has to block, it could be ruinous to your opponent.

Card of the Day - Baleful Specter

A new take on a Specter.  I like how he makes the damaged player draw a card as well as milling three.

Edit:  Here's an updated version.  His dealing damage ability is useless with the new iteration of Espionage, so I changed it.

Card of the Day - Rogue's Treachery

Does this seem forced?  Black has very limited direct damage. I wanted to make a spell with Espionage instead of only creatures, and this was the first design that came to mind.  I looked at it for a few minutes trying to make it more black, and came up with the perfect solution.
 

Once I added the lifegain element, the card felt infinitely more black.  It costs two more mana to cast but it resonates with one of the iconic black mechanics, life drain.

Edit:  Here's Rogue's Treachery with the new Espionage wording:

 I changed it to an instant since it doesn't deal actual damage to players anymore.

Card of the Day - Dimir Spy

This week is House Dimir.  As you may know, the Dimir are very secretive.  They even convinced the general populace of Ravnica that they didn't even exist.  Their keyword, Espionage, reflects their secretive nature while complimenting what they are really good at: milling!

Edit:  Thanks to Wobbles for coming up with a better implementation of Espionage. Here's the new and improved Dimir Spy.

I lowered his mana cost because he deals 1 less damage and mills 1 less card than before.  I really like how Espionage mirrors Infect.

Card of the Day - Hefty Warhammer

Here's a Gruul equipment.  If you have a big dude to put it on, it can get real mean.  Even better with Enrage!


Edit:  Here's a differenter version!

Card of the Day - Borborygmos the Cruel

Each guild has a leader.  The Gruul's leader is a giant Cyclops.  Also: he's real mean.

Card of the Day - Fury of Battle

This is a given.  If the Enrage mechanic is ever a thing, this card will be made to go along with it.  I can see this being uncommon, as well. 

Card of the Day - Rioting Dragon

It fells weird giving Enrage to a flying creature, but it feels weirder to not give Enrage to a Dragon.  Flavor wins over functionality on this one.

Bonus! Card of the Day - Gruul War Shaman

I liked the tension on the Battle Druid so much, I had to make a red counterpart.  So, here he is!  Bonus!

Card of the Day - Battle Druid

There's an interesting tension here.  He's kind of a Llanowar Elf.  He's kind of a little hurty guy.  This, to me, is a powerful design that just might catch a lot of the slower strategies off guard.

Card of the Day - Gruul Battle Drummer

For goblins, drums signify creatures not being able to block how they'd generally like to. I'm expanding on that a bit for this guy.  A nice support card for the Enrage strategy in limited, to be sure.

Card of the Day - Crazed Tribal

This is the card I submitted for the contest on Goblin Artisans.  I changed the mana cost because he wasn't quite good enough at 1RG.  He should be a good cornerstone for any fast damage Gruul deck.

Now I'm REALLY angry!

So, it turns out I'm lucky enough to win a contest.  The concept of the contest was to design a mechanic that works best in the Red Zone.  I'm currently trying to make a mechanic for each of the ten guilds, and this was the perfect opportunity to create a mechanic for the most Red Zone-y of the guilds - the Gruul.

I wanted something simple, powerful, and resonant.  Something that has an easy trigger, and is useful on creatures. Here's what I came up with:

Enrage (Whenever this creature is blocked, put a +1/+1 counter on it.)

Very simple.  Very resonant of what the Gruul are about.  Potentially very powerful.

Here's the simplest version of Enrage.

This week, we'll be exploring what we can do with this simple but powerful mechanic.

Card of the Day - Grotesque Experiment

This card is iNsAnE.  Note how I used juxtaposed lowercase and capital letters in the previous instance of the word insane.  It's just that weird and cool. Let's go over what it does at each mana cost:

At 2 mana, you get a creature in your graveyard. (Generally not recommended.)
At 4 mana, you get a vanilla 3/3.  Average.
At 6 mana, you get a 6/6 trampler.  Not bad.
At 8 mana, you get a 9/9 trampling vigilance guy.  Really good!
At 10 mana, he gets nuts.  12/12 flying, trample, vigilance.  BeRzErK!

He's good at any point in the mid-to-late game.

Card of the Day - Simic Surgeon

Here's a monoblue Simic card that I created after playing against Trading Post.  None of the abilites on the Post are similar to the ability on this card, but the Surgeon is definitely inspired by it.

Card of the Day - Mindmoss Infusion

I really feel that blue and green together are the best way to gain control of creatures.  My favorite thing about this card is the card you have to get with Modify is always going to cost two more than the creature you're taking control of.  There's no "X or less" clause. 

Bonus! Speculation - RTR Mythics

So we've had three of the five guilds in Return to Ravnica spoil a mythic rare with converted mana cost XAB (or XAAB in Azorius's case.)  I'd like to speculate what the other two guilds would have for their card.

On second thought, Trostani's Balance would be much more useful as an instant.

Card of the Day - Algae Pit

This land is interesting in a variety of ways.  It can be very useful in conjunction with Life from the Loam and/or Crucible of Worlds.  The sacrifice ability is not an ability a land has had yet, and I put Modify on there because I wanted to be able to Modify into a 0 mana cost card.

Card of the Day - Distracting Gesture

Who doesn't love a counterspell with an option to go grab another copy?  I can't make it very powerful, and it's generally going to be a two mana discard spell, but it can dig out Mana Leak, or Remand, or Counterspell, or any number of 2 drop creatures. 

Card of the Day - Ebulliant Ooze

In the case of this card, I wanted to make the modify cost a bit more so you can have a creature that could potentially be really huge for a low cost.  Probably not the best card to drop on turn one. 

In case you are wondering, in my version of Ravnica, the Simic use a lot of +1/+1 counters, so this guy has a lot of potential. (Remember Graft?)

Card of the Day - Asymmetrical Growth

Welcome to Simic week.  As you may know, I've been trying to create a mechanic for each of the ten guild of Ravnica.  Modify is my Simic mechanic.  I think it conveys the flavor of the research of the Simic guild by rewarding you with another card for a small mana investment.

As this is the first iteration of Modify, I made the cost a simple 2 colorless.  There are other cards that have different Modify costs.  You'll notice the mana cost of this card is higher than it should be.  The correct cost without modify is probably GU, but just being able to modify makes it a bit more expensive.

Card of the Day - Erogoh of the Deep

Here's a big mean guy.  He's basically just big and mean and 11 mana.  Good luck hardcasting him.

Card of the Day - Prison of Despair

This was a card I designed from the art.  I liked this piece so much, I had to do a card about it.

Card of the Day - Remove Reality

I like this one.  It just feels sneaky and mean.  Just like blue and black ought to be.

Card of the Day - Tactical Retreat

One of the things I like about this card is that it could be useful if you cast it on one of your own creatures or an opponent's creature.

Card of the Day - Dominating Presence

An easy card for white/green.  They both like having a lot of creatures on the board.  This just gets one of those guys a bit bigger.

Card of the Day - Thrashing Voros

A nice, simple common for a nice, simple guild.  Red and green both like to destroy artifacts, so this isn't much of a stretch at all.

Card of the Day - Hate Beam

This week's cards are all Hybrids!  Hybrid cards should be able to be cast by either color and reflect overlap in the color's philosophies.  This card leans a little black with the life gain (Drain Life, Consume Spirit), but the red is definitely peeking out.

Card of the Day - Low Men in Yellow Coats

These guys are featured in Hearts in Atlantis, another Stephen King novel.  There are quite a few things in the works of Stephen King that cross over into other stories.