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.

It's Harvest Time!

Even though the new Golgari mechanic was revealed this week, I've been working on my own alternate since I saw HavelockV's challenge on Goblin Artisans, a fellow designer blog.

Last week's Sunday card was the first example of Harvest. Here's another:

Golgari traditionally use the graveyard as a resource, as evidenced by their last guild mechanic, Dredge.  I wanted to keep the same flavor while expanding on the idea.  I chose Harvest because of the tension it brings.  I like how you can give up casting the actual spell for the surprise factor of the Harvest ability or you can wait until the creature's dead and use it whenever.

Harvest isn't limited to creatures, though.  Here's an example of a card that might not have a useful target while it's sitting in your hand.

Have a good week, and don't be afraid to Harvest!

Yea or Nay?

As you may know, the next big set for Magic:the Gathering is the Return to Ravnica.  For those of you who weren't around the first time, the plane of Ravnica is a big city, kind of like Coruscant, but less space-y.

The city is divided into ten guilds.  Each guild is made up of two colors and its philosophy is based on the interaction between those colors.  For example: the green/white guild, Selesnya, values community, life, and peace whereas the Cult of Rakdos (black/red) are generally cruel and disgusting.

The last time we went to Ravnica, each guild has its own mechanic or keyword.  Dredge, the Golgari's keyword, is still being used to take down tournaments in eternal formats. This time each guild is going to have a different keyword, and I've been trying to independently figure out a keyword of my own for each one.

Last week we looked at how the Orzhov Syndicate uses gold to get what it needs, and yesterday's  Card of the Day was my take on the Golgari ability word. This week's keyword is for the Azorius Senate.  If you're familiar with the guild, you'll know that the Blue/White Azorius Senate makes the laws for Ravnica and they are very liberal with their use of Law Magic.  Therefore, I propose Voting.

Let's go over a few of the pitfalls before I unveil the whole thing.

In a two player game, if each player gets one vote, most times the vote is going to fail.  The solution for this is to let other Planeswalkers vote, as well.  If you have Gideon on your side, you're probably going to win.

That was the initial design.  After some thought, I decided to let legendary creatures vote, as well, for a few reasons. One, it's just unfun if you're always losing votes because your opponent is playing with (generally) more expensive cards than you.  Most legendary creatures cost less (financially) than Planeswalkers. Two, I wanted people to have to count more votes. Voting seems bad if you don't get to interact with it. Three, Commander!  This seems like a perfect mechanic for commander decks to play with.  It feels at home in a multiplayer enviroment, and when you're playing commander, everyone has at least one legendary creature to play with.

OK, so here's the wording on all vote cards that are less than rare.

(Each player gets one vote plus one vote for each Planeswalker and Legendary Creature he or she controls. Each player may choose to vote Yea or Nay.)

And, without further ado, I present Azorius Justicar, in all his extended art glory:

Counter Production

One of the things I wanted in Frostmere was a counter theme.  A lot of blocks have used counters as a theme. A recent example is the Scars of Mirrodin block.

Since most of the plane is covered in ice, I thought Ice counters would be fun to play around with. They are a callback to a few rares from Coldsnap and one uncommon from Ice Age (which is being reprinted in Frostmere.)

We're going to be expanding on what Ice counters actually mean for the permanent that they are on.  Some cards love to be iced up.

For example:

The icier this guy gets, the more powerful he is.


Other cards punish other players for being Iced up.  This zombie turns all your ice counters into liabilities.

Here's a card that helps you if you're playing with ice counters, and can hinder the opponent if he or she is using them.

Using him in decks with other two preview cards makes him useful in different ways.  You can use him to pump up your Rime Wolf, or give counters to opposing creatures.  Best of all, he can be used to hold down an enemy for a long time.

This week's cards all deal with ice counters in some way. 

Fleshing out Frostmere

It's been a while since I've done anything with snow, but I wanted to give you all a glimpse of what I've been doing with it lately.

On the relatively peaceful plane of Frostmere, the Gargut glacier is receding, and something is coming out from underneath it. Only the Ahern forest stands between the glacier and the city of Tersh. Will the forest succumb to the fiery invaders from another plane? How will the red and black mana spewing out of the glacier affect the citizens of blue and white aligned Tersh?

I've sorted out the mechanics that will be included in the set. Here they are in all their glory:

1. Snow, obviously. It's going to be doing a lot of stuff it hasn't before, like having enchantments that tap, as well as colorless snow spells and lots of cool stuff that affects snow cards.
   
   
   
   
   
2. A lot of lands. Since the main focus of snow in the past has been lands, I'm making it a theme of Frostmere. There is a cycle each of common, uncommon and rare lands, as well as a mythic land. And that's just the Snow lands. There will be others as well.
   
   
   
   
   
3. Red and black have cards that can easily get lands into your graveyard as well as cards that count the number of lands in your graveyard. (I apologize ahead of time for the placeholder art.  There's probably going to be a lot more of that in the future.  It's really difficult finding good art for these things.)
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. Green has a lot of rejuvenating spells to heal the land that is being scorched by the Devils coming forth from the fissure under Gargut.
   
   
   
   
   
5. Blue and white have a lot of ETB triggers on snow permanents, using a new ability word, Snowfall (to be previewed this week!).
   
   
   
   
   
6. Mount! Every color gets at least one Mount creature, with the focus being on green and white.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
7. Mythic Legendary creatures of every color, and two new planeswalkers.
   
   
   
   
   
8. Ice counters. Each color has ways to put ice counters on permanents and ways to use the counters for either good or ill.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
9. Lots and lots of Snow Creatures!
   
   
   
   
   

You can check out the history of snow in a blog I wrote a while back, here.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be fleshing out the set. 

In the meantime, expect a few surprises on my brand new Facebook page, found here!

Fun with art

While digging for art for a specific card I designed, I stumbled upon a great site that has a bunch of awesome fantasy art. It's called gdpit.com. There were so many great pieces of art on this site that I started designing cards based on the art alone.  After I did about twenty cards I thought it might be fun to play a design game with you, my readers.

Ok, so here's an example of some of the art I found.

 It looks like some sort of fissure opened up next to a building, destroying it.   Scroll down to see what I came up with.

 Each day this week at midnight Central time, I'll be posting a picture.  I want everyone to design a card around the picture we have, and we'll compare our designs at 6 PM.

Here's another one, just for fun.

There are some Egyptian lookin' folks fighting mummies.













Take a guess and then scroll down.

This one's silly, but you get the point. I hope that everyone reading this tries their hand at designing something!

The Future of Eternal

I've had quite a few comments on the Eternal keyword.  I believe that the best iteration of the ability is the "sacrifice x permanents" version.  I've re-worked all the cards from this week to reflect the new (and hopefully permanent) version of Eternal, and I'll post them today to show you how they look.

This week's cards are all cards that don't themselves have the keyword, but play off of it.

 

And here's a bonus!

Forever is a long time - A new mechanic

I've been working on a keyword lately that needs some help.  Let's call him Eternal.

I have two wordings that could be plausible, the first making the keyword an actual keyword, the second making it merely an ability word.

 

To me, the biggest problem with this mechanic is figuring out what the additional cost is going to be.  I have a few suggestions, but any others would be appreciated.  The "exile cards from your hand" cost seems a bit steep, but if it's kept to one or two, it's probably quite powerful. The first alternative is simple discard.  (Just a note: all the alternates will be with the word Eternal used as a keyword.)

 The thing I like about discard is that it feeds the mechanic.  If you discard a card with Eternal, you can cast it from your graveyard later by discarding something else.  I feel the cost of exiling is much steeper than discarding; especially if the cards can be cast from the graveyard.  These can probably have an Eternal cost ranging anywhere from one to three.

Another option is exiling cards in your graveyard.  I don't like this one for a few reasons;  the first being that it seems too similar to the Innstrad Skaab mechanic. The second: it's counter-productive to exile cards that you might want to play later.  It would force players to use less Eternal cards.  This iteration would best be served in a graveyard heavy block with an Eternal cost of two to six.

This version seems good, as you can trade out creatures in play with ones in your graveyard if the Eternal cost is only one or two.  I can see a huge black monstrosity having an Eternal cost of five with this version.  Like an 8/8 for 1BB that can only be cast from your graveyard. Yeah!

 I'd like some input on which version you all think is the best, and maybe some examples of your own to illustrate how awesome we can make this mechanic.  As always, thanks for reading, and feel free to comment on the blog itself.  ( I removed the "prove you're human" baloney.)

Curses!

I was utterly enchanted with Curses when they were first revealed in Innistrad.  This week, I'll make some new ones!  Let's start with the biggie.

This should have been a card in Dark Ascension.  It literally turns someone into a werewolf! It's a tricky curse though, because whoever is a werewolf can't cast spells anymore, and ultimately becomes more fragile.
















Here's a curse that's better in multiplayer.  The guy that this is enchanting is probably going to be mad at you.
















Here's a useful common curse that's almost discard.  Nice in multiples!








Enjoy the curses this week!

-O

The Denizens of Avadnu

Since we've seen some cards for each of the humanoid races of Avadnu, let's take a look at the local fauna.

Centioch - This creature resembles an overgrown centipede with a scorpion tail.  Its venom is deadly.

Blood Ooze - Formed from the remains of battlefields, these creatures use the lingering energy of spilled blood to roam the countryside.

Argill - The tentacles on their heads are how they extract oxygen from the environment.  They can stay underwater for hours at a time.

Culkma - Desert dwelling lizards that can grow to 6 feet long.  Their skin is pale yellow but has a limited ability to match the surrounding environment.

Eri - Eris are ancient beasts that seek to preserve the balance of nature.  They help wanderers survive in harsh environments.

These are just a few of the creatures that roam the plane.  This week's cards of the day are a cycle of  uncommon and rare creatures from Avadnu with a common theme.

-O

Reexploring Grandeur

I wanted to explore the Grandeur ability a bit more ever since it appeared in Future Sight.  It has only appeared on Legendary Creatures so far, and only at rare.  I thought limited formats would appreciate Grandeur much more if it was stretched across all rarities, with special consideration for commons.

Here are examples of a common grandeur creature, an uncommon equipment, a rare land, and a mythic legendary creature (a bit of a throwback with a twist.)

 I don't want to make the common grandeur creatures too overpowered, but I wanted to keep them playable.

Uncommon is a good place to expand into other card types.  I chose an equipment here, but enchantments and non-equipment artifacts could both have interesting applications.  The grandeur ability is quite powerful on this card, and could be a blowout if one is lucky enough to get this card in multiples in any limited format.

 Here's a powerful land with grandeur.  This one should see play in lots of constructed formats.

Here's a splashy mythic with two cool abilities that work well together.



This week's cards are a cycle of common grandeur creatures.  Enjoy!

-O