Card of the Day - Jetstream Elemental

This guy is a Levitation on legs.  Definite first pick in any draft you play.

Card of the Day - Digestor Muck

I've always loved oozes.   This one started at 2B, but I realized it could easily be hybrid and changed the mana cost.  The art looks better in a hybrid frame anyway.

Card of the Day - Eureka Moment

I like the idea of forcing an opponent to choose a card from your library. This is a pure Johnny card and I'd like to make a deck that forces the opponent to make a bad choice every time. Any good ideas?

Card of the Day - Silent Seer

Blue utility guy.  I started him out as a 2/2 for 1UU with an activation cost of 1, but I changed them all to 2's to keep it symmetrical. Also bumped it down from rare to uncommon because of the increased activation cost.

Card of the Day - Extraplanar Tutor

I want to playtest this card.  It seems like it could be very useful in the right situation.  The drawback of letting your opponent see your entire deck is pretty steep, but I think this could be a lot of fun.

Card of the Day - Evil Doll

AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Reworking my Magic - Marduk's Malice/Vaporize

This is just a flavorful reworking of Marduk's Malice.  I asked you guys to help me find a better way to show Marduk's affinity with technology.  Paul Irving suggested that I "lean a little scifi with Marduk's stuff," so that's what I'm intending.  I just renamed this card and put a picture in (both Paul's suggestions, btw).  So, without further ado, I give you Vaporize:

Card of the Day - Grog Festival

I made two versions of this card.  The premise is that the creatures get rowdy when they are attacking, and lethargic when they are resting.  Let me know which version you like better.

Card of the Day - Meteor Strike

This card makes squishy bits out of either a potentially large chunk of guys or one or two really mean baddies on the battlefield.  If someone has a better flavor for this effect, let me know in the comments.

Card of the Day - Embue Venom/Venomous Assault

Today's card is an evolution of an idea.  It started as a black instant and evolved into a multicolored sorcery. 

Let's see how it happened.

At first I wanted a black combat trick to punish blockers.  I came up with this:

As you can see, it is quite powerful, and can rip though an unsuspecting opponent's defenses like a spark plug through window glass.   The first thing I changed was the name.  Embue Venom sounds more like an Aura than an Instant, and it doesn't feel like a whole team kind of thing.  The new name is Venomous Assault.

Once the name was changed, the card felt less black than it had previously.  Assault to me is a very red/white feeling word.  Also, I didn't like this card as an Instant. It felt too swingy. I reworked it and came up with this.

In this iteration, it forces the opponent to make a tough choice.  The little boost is nice, too. 

I like the dual hybrid cost.  It's such a strange thing, but it totally works on this card.  You can play it as Selesnya, Orzhov, Gruul, or Rakdos.  I really hope this is something WOTC explores in the future. 

For more on 4 color cards and Dragon's Maze, check out Bradley Rose's article about them, here.

Card of the Day - Inspiring Denial

So... Cancel costs 1UU, Dismiss costs 2UU, This costs 3UU.  Seems right.

Card of the Day - Aven Anachronist

I wanted to have a sub-theme in this set where the citizens are (obviously) fighting back.  The mobilizing army calls itself "The Anachronists."  Here is one of the avens that belong to that army.  I was going to make a 1/1 for 1W with the protection from colorless ability, but I wanted to give it a bit more flavor, so I made him a bird.

Card of the Day - Marduk the Merciless

This guy is nuts.  Srsly.  I don't know how well his card will be received, but DANG!  What a loon!  Probably the only 0 cost Planeswalker ever.  Probably.

Edit:  here's the suggestion in card form.  I'm not sure if -X is ok for 0 mana, but he's pretty fragile, so it's probably fine.

Card of the Day - Marduk's Army

This card was inspired by White Sun's Zenith.  The most common colorless creature token is going to be the 2/2 Construct.

Card of the Day - Ancient Contraption

My take on Spark Elemental.  This guy plays a little differently, but can be just as effective.

Card of the Day - Marduk's Malice

I like this card, but the problem is finding flavor for a non-magic user to cast spells...  I had to make it a sorcery, even though this guy doesn't use magic.  Any suggestions to make colorless spells less spell-y?

Card of the Day - Marduk's Castle

The nice thing about legendary lands is that there can only be one out at a time.  It means you can push the power just a little bit, and it shouldn't get out of hand.  This ain't Tolarian Academy, but it's pretty darn good in the right deck.

Card of the Day - Marduk's Solution

This card is dangerous.  If it gets countered, you lose.  If you're forced to discard it, you lose.  If it gets milled, you lose. If it gets destroyed before your next turn, you lose. But if you cast it and it sticks around for one turn, you win.  Easy peasy.  Let me know what you think.

Card of the Day - Marduk's Manifesto

OK, so I was thinking.  What if there's a plane where there's a guy who can't use magic?  What if he's really jealous of wizards and the fact that they can?  What if he decides to use his knowledge of artifice to attempt to destroy all the wizards?  What if he wrote a manifesto trying to convince the rest of the non-magical people to rise up against the imagined oppressive mageocracy running the plane he lives on?  What if he actually convinces people that the wizards are bad and he has some sort of rebellion?   I just made a plan for a new set, that's what.

Card of the Day - Curse of Reflections/Doppelganger Pack

Today's card comes from an idea from my girlfriend.  She said to me, "Is there a card that when you play a creature, everyone else gets the same creature?"  I thought for a second and said, "no... at least not that I can recall."  To which she responded, "Well then. Make one."

So I did.

I coudn't decide which version I like better, so I'll post them both.

The first version is a curse that lets everyone copy one players creatures.  The rider at the end prevents multiples on different players causing infinite loops.

The second one only lets you get the tokens, but at a cost.

I feel like this card could be blue or green, but I didn't want the curse to be hybrid.

Let me know which version you like better, and if you'd make any tweaks on the design.

Edit: As per suggestion.

A nontoken clause is more effective in regards to preventing going infinite. 

Card of the Day - Mausoleum Skulk

This one's been sitting in my unused pile for a long time now.  I wanted a guy to help out Reanimator decks.

Card of the Day - Mindmeld

Flavor text suggestion:  All your thoughts are belong to me.

Reworking my Magic - Hypnotic Stare

On November 28th, I posted this card.  Today, I'm going to rework it so it feels better in Gatecrash.  When I created Hypnotic Stare, no one know about Cipher.  Now we do.

Presenting the new and improved Hypnotic Stare:

Let me know if you're interested in seeing more of this type of thing.  I won't be doing these a lot, but sometimes an old design can be improved with a new mechanic.

Card of the Day - Memory Wipe/Sense Motive

I wanted to make a card where you get to choose whether forcing a discard or milling would be the better play.  I came up with a skeleton for a card, but I couldn't quite get the wording right.  I tried a few more variations and got this:

Instead of choosing which effect to do, it does both.  Sprinkle in some panache (the bit about mana cost), and you got yourself a nice Dimir card.


Bonus!  After going back to the original idea, I finally made the wording fit.  Here's that card.

Card of the Day - Spike Blaster

I haven't seen a spike in a while, so I made one!  This is the first spike that is multi-colored, and only the second one that isn't mono-green.   He has all the usual spike-y stuff, but I gave him a red ability to make him special.  I think I'll try to make one for each green color combination.

Card of the Day - Dragon Saddle

Just watched How to Train Your Dragon for the first time.  I made a card similar to this a while back, but this is one that works under the current rules.  You just have to pretend that there's a Dragon under the saddle you're putting on your guy.

Card of the Day - Armored Battlepriest

I wanted to give this card the feel of a huge cleric running into battle, healing his friends as he destroys his enemies.

Edit: upped the mana cost as per suggestion.

Card of the Day - Keela, Sainted Healer

This card is interesting to me because there are exactly four white faeries in the game, and two of them require other colors to cast.  This card started out as a Human Soldier named Keela, Combat Medic (without flying, of course), but I changed the flavor after I found this beautiful artwork to go with it.

It seems to me that Keela is unique in the world of Faeries, as she has no other agenda but to help out the unfortunate.  She is a good leader as well, since she can recruit other creatures to help her with healing duties.  All in all, I feel like this is a successful design.

Card of the Day - Sporespewer Krasis

I had to finagle the wording so it didn't go infinite with two copies in play.  Seems like this can be useful in a lot of different decks.  In other news, I'm looking for playtesters in the Fargo, ND area to see how my cards play in actual games.  Let me know if you're interested.

Card of the Day - Orzhov Influence

Now that I know the guild mechanics in Gatecrash, I'm going to be designing cards using those mechanics.  Here's the simplest possible version of Extort.  Powerful in multiples, even though it does nothing by itself.  This is my favorite mechanic of the set, and I think I'll be playing it for a long time.

Card of the Day - Ahern Druid/Frigid Priest

Two guys, one piece of art.  They play well together, too.  In other news, I've been posting on this blog for a year now.  Yay!

Card of the Day - Feedback Elemental

Today, I'm going to do something a little different in that I'm going to show the evolution on an idea that made a final card.

My lady and I were watching The King's Speech when I came up for the idea for this card.  I thought, "What if a wizard had a stammer?  It would probably make casting spells a bit harder."

I made this card out of the idea.

After thinking about it, I decided that putting this ability on a creature would be more interesting, so I made it into a Demon.

I gave it flying, a decent P/T and a fun piece of flavor text.  But it didn't feel quite right.

After looking at it again, I realized that this ability is generally a white ability, as evidenced by Aura of Silence and Grand Arbiter Augustin IV.  The Grand Arbiter's version could be said to be blue, as well, but taxing is widely regarded as a white ability.   I changed the card once again to reflect this.

I left the flavor text, but I changed the mana cost, power, and keyword to something more white.  I could have left flying, but I went for vigilance instead.  I also added a bit of artwork and cleaned up the wording.

I'd like your feedback input on this, guys!  Let me know what you think the next evolution of this card should be. 

Card of the Day - Knock Down

One of the secondary mechanics of Frostmere besides all the snow stuff is Mount.  I posted a lot of cards that deal with this ability last year, and I am expanding on the idea again this year.  This is a powerful common direct damage spell that can take care of an opposing mounted creature that would be a nuisance otherwise.