#cfac 28

[blackdeckwins]

CFAC #28 Showcase (part 4)

Hello again, everyone! Another day, another showcase of CardsFromArt! Specifically, CFAC #28. We’ve got five entries to examine today: a legendary creature, a sorcery, and three Planeswalkers! Follow the jump to check out all the awesome entries!

Art by Benjamin Ee

@commandtower-solring-go:

In an attempt to try and fulfill the challenge, I’m worried I gave her too much Red, but I’m happy with it anyway. It’s very Braids but I like that. Pox but with an upside.

I find it really interesting that if she’s the only creature you control, you’ll have to pick her and kill her. That may not be intuitive, per se, but it’s certainly cool, to me. I definitely think it feels significantly more Black than Red, though I will admit that I’m hesitant about the last ability giving it a repeatable source of mana; I would be more comfortable with a Gold-token-esque design.

Thanks for the submission! Two points!

@t-a-c:

The vines/flowers in the art gave an impression of a green card, so I wanted to go for some kind of regrowth effect.

I have a soft spot for Regrowth effects. However, Regrowth effects generally target, and this card in particular needs to say “target creature”. I’ll let it slide for the challenge, but it’s not really in the spirit of things :P

As for the card itself, I was initially apprehensive about it until I remembered modern reanimation spells cost about five mana anyway, so giving you an extra creature to your hand and costing a ton of life to put one on the field should be fine. A solid design for a take on the artwork that was different from most.

Thanks for the submission! Two points!

@voicesofchaos:

Course with that artwork it had to be a planeswalker and I had been thinking for weeks about how I have been wanting to do a planeswalker for these challenges so I’m was very excited to see this lovely art! The bonus challenge is extra hard though, especially ‘Black’ and ‘Sacrifice’ since those are words a mono-black planeswalker would want to use. But luckily I focused on the flowers growing out of the corpses and that allowed flavor that is much different than Vraska and Garruk so Golgari planeswalkers isn’t overcrowded yet. Originally the first ability was a combination of Nissa Sage Animeist and Ob Nixilis Reignited but compared to Domri Rade that seemed too powerful so I made it closer to his ability. Wording/template may be off on it though. The second ability was inspired a bit from Vraska’s +1 but I love how it fits her flavor. Same with the ultimate which was the first ability I designed. I almost put “under your control” at the end of the emblem to clarify that when your opponent’s creatures dies you get plants but I figured it made enough sense as is. Finally I almost made the ultimate -5 but every other 3 CMC planeswalker needs to wait 3-4 turns to ultimate so it only seemed appropriate to follow that mold

So, the design is quite cool, and I definitely like that it’s a Green/Black ‘walker that plays in different space from the current ones, but that top ability is much too strong to go on a +1 for a three-mana planeswalker. It’s literally strictly-better than Ob Nixilis. See, Domri Rade’s ability was conditional: it didn’t always draw a card. This one always draws a card, and sometimes it even ramps. I would recommend doing a play on Domri’s ability, except only reveal if it’s a land and put it on the battlfield. If it’s a nonland, it stays on top of your library.

That second ability seems really week: it’s only going to gain a notable amount of life in conjunction with a board wipe. and as-is there’s almost never a good reason to use that over the other +1 ability. 

To be honest, this last ability doesn’t “feel” ultimate to me. You know what would be cool? If Phylantha took a page out of Gideon’s book, and this ultimate was -3: that way, you could always just play Phylantha, -3 her and kill her, but have the permanent emblem. And I think the impact is low enough that it’s fine, power-wise.

So yeah, the second ability is the big one I think I would change. Beyond that, nice job.

Thanks for the submission! Two points!

@thricexandvii:

First, let me just say that I love the art this week!  It really was inspiring and the aspect ratio led directly to my design, which I think is part of why I like CFACs so much: they allow me to flex my design muscles based on art and not other considerations!

Okay, so at first designing a whole Planeswalker without using ANY of the most common words used on Black cards was a bit rough… until I realized that she was begging to be Green-Black!

As such, I took as my inspiration a very Golgari one: death merely begins the cycle of rebirth and new life.  Rose embodies that rather well I think, churning out Plantserr, Thorns (a type I chose to make it harder to game your card draw) with her ability to speed up the growth of things from corpses and other dead things.  From there, she is all Necromancer, using the plants to animate the corpses themselves and also netting you value in a very Necromantic style while still being tied to her green roots (see what I did there?) by having it deal with creatures.

If you want, you can pop her into play and right away go Ultimate to get an indestructible Enchantment, basically, or you can hit her +1 a few times and hope she stays around to net you some sweet card draw.  Either way, she seems pretty powerful.

Overall, I’m rather pleased with this one as it is flavorful, and for one of my first forays into making a Planeswalker, I think it’s pretty cool.

Glad to hear you’re enjoying it :)

So, let’s break down this ‘walker. The first ability makes two 2/1′s with deathtouch, which, needless to say, is pretty powerful. In fact, I looked through the four-mana planeswalkers, and I wouldn’t hesitate to say it was better than all of the rest. I could see toning it down to a single 1/1 with deathtouch, but that still may be too good for a plus ability.

Tying the 0 ability in with her other abilities is interesting, but I think keeping people from “gaming” the ability really fights against people wanting to play her. I would be much more interested in the type working with a pre-existing type: Plants or maybe Saprolings (and of course, tying the +1 in with the proper type).

Finally, the ultimate. Now, I know I just finished telling voicesofchaos that Phylanthia’s ultimate would make a good cash-in emblem, but there’s a huge difference between getting a 0/1 token and getting the creature back! In fact, this emblem already exists on Liliana, Defiant Necromancer, except hers delays it, it’s a -8, and you have to flip her from a creature to a Planeswalker before you can even start working towards that emblem. That should tell you how insanely powerful this effect is. I would recommend finding something different for this effect.

Thanks for the submission! Two points!

@magicarasa:

So it looks like I’m not the only one who thought of a planeswalker when I saw the art. The portrait layout is good for it and it also bears a striking resemblance to Liliana to me. Evoking the flavor of Liliana without using the words specified was a fun challenge. I think I managed to do that, getting the sort of effects you’d expect including a Zombie creation variant. I considered making the -4 and -2 to manifest instead. I’m not sure how oppressive that emblem would be.

Mo’ ‘walkers, mo’ breakdowns.

That first ability is a bit pushy for a four-mana walker (most of the card advantage options are at least conditional). It’s also not really in Liliana’s powerset: so far, she’s had discard, sacrifice, reanimation, and tutoring, not counting that Swamp-filled version that wasn’t properly Liliana-flavored. This is a lot closer to Ob Nixilis-style effects.

The second one hasn’t been really done on anyone, but I could believe it being a future Liliana effect. Gideon’s emblem is the inverse of that and it’s proven good-but-not-broken, but he also doesn’t get an ultimate as a result and his ability doesn’t stop your opponent from playing a certain subset of creatures (read: small). It might be a tad oppressive....but I would probably let it slide until the first playtest.

Finally, the ultimate is a bit weird because of manifest. If it was basically Ghastly Conscription, I could get behind it being flavorfully Liliana, but with the added randomness of shuffling them into your library and manifesting the top few, it really feels more like a Blue/Black ability than Mono-Black Liliana.

Thanks for the submission! Two points!

[blackdeckwins]

CFAC #28 Showcase (part 3)

Hello again, everyone! Another day, another six entries into the CardsFromArt Challenge to check out! We’ve got a Planeswalker, some creatures, and even enchantments to take a look at today, so let’s dive in!

Art by Benjamin Ee

@palaguin​:

When I saw the artwork I knew I had to create a Planeswalker.  No Zombies so I made them spirits.  For the second ability I almost created an emblem that that sacrificed itself to a target, but I caught myself in time.  When I needed an ultimate I thought Armageddon and tried to fix it.

Although land animation isn’t exactly primary in these colors, I got a good chuckle out of turning the Swamps into White and Blue creatures. It feels like there is a big disconnect between the +1 and -6: ultimating Caryie basically makes her worthless. It’s an interesting direction for the Planeswalker, for sure, but it could do with some tweaking to make the abilities synergize more.

Thanks for the submission! Two points!

@thekillershrub​:

I wanted to make a mass resurrection card with an interesting drawback. Mana cost is 1 less than something like Twilight’s Call, which is the same without the drawback. It is an enchantment so you (or an opponent) can strategically remove it to allow attacks.

For some reason, I really like the name and flavor with this card. Turning the corpses into “plants” that bloom from the graveyard is super cool. Unfortunately, while I see the thought process behind letting someone blow up this enchantment to let them start attacking, I’m, reminded of the plethera of creatures that destroy enchantments when they enter the battlefield, and that becomes much less about synergy and more about a two-card combo. I would take a page from Arbiter of the Ideal and make them permanently have defender, and just use the counters as memory devices.

Thanks for the submission! Two points!

@comparablesubstitute:

no commentary

Land tokens are an interesting concept, and taking a piece of technology from the BFZ Eldrazi Processors is a nice touch. I think I would like to see something else for that first ability: Valdia is basically unblockable and un-attack-into-able because it exiles anything that tries to have combat with it before any damage is dealt.

Thanks for the submission! Two points!

@linvala-the-memer​:

Today at the MTG club I go to, a kid asked if you could enchant planeswalkers. I was inspired by the idea. Very simple but definatly an interesting concept that has alot of design space, even if auras are, by default, bad.

Planeswalkers are harder to get rid of than creatures, though, so I imagine an aura that enchants planeswalkers would be slighty better. And this is really a cool idea, but has a lot of issues on this specific card. First, White is the color of helping Planeswalkers: Black would prefer to just kill them; it’s mechanically in White and not Black, so it’s a color-pie break to put it in Black. Also, this effect may actually be busted: How many planeswalkers make creature tokens (or even multiple creature tokens) off of a 0 or + ability? This at least would only need to look at nontoken creatures.

Thanks for the submission! Two points!

@crucibleofcustoms:

I’ll be honest: When I first saw the image, zombies never crossed my mind. Animated statues, on the other hand…

I opted to not have her be legendary, because the concept seemed like something that could happen on multiple planes. Maybe an Orzhov guild member on Ravnica, a noble on Innistrad, and so on.

And while the bonus challenge was a little hard (namely “sacrifice”), it wasn’t too bad. (If I may suggest a word for the future, perhaps “token”)

I like it. It’s pretty straight-forward for a Black rare, fits mechanically, and is an interesting tweak on the “turning to stone” flavor; if only the artowrk was a gorgon.

And as for the challenge suggestion, I’ll keep it in mind, but I did want to give you all some design space to play in ;)

Thanks for the submission! Two points!

@runeofecstasy:

I struggled a bit with the wording on this, but I think it worked out ok

Aside from the complete lack of periods, I believe the wording checks out ;)

Making the roses creatures is somewhat interesting, but this seems like a really good opportunity to borrow technology from Gold tokens to do something similar, maybe even just have them do the same thing. It could also help Vespera cost a bit less so she’s more castable. And good catch making it “nontoken creature” to keep this card from going infinite off of its own tokens dying.

Thanks for the submission! Two points!

[blackdeckwins]

CFAC #28 Showcase (part 2)

Hello everyone! It’s Tuesday, so it’s time to dive into the second round of CFAC #28 entries! Yesterday may have held our first Planeswalker on CFAC, but it certainly was not the last! Today includes two more, alongside two Legendary creatures and two non-Legendary creatures. Follow the jump to check them all out!

Art by Benjamin Ee

@acting4life97:

So the challenge this week was pretty tough, so I had to figure out how I could design a card that felt Black without using many of the key ideals of the black color pie. So I eventually landed on a Planeswalker that harnesses the power ofNecrogenesis, as in she creates life from death that surrounds her, which felt fitting for the artwork. Instead of making zombies, she likes to use zombies, corpses, or the like to create new life on the plane she is on, wherever that may be. She originally comes from Jund on Alara, but is regularly seen learning among the Golgari on Ravnica and the gloom of Shadowmoor.

Planeswalkers are hard, especially when you make just text versions of them so you don’t see how tiny some of the abilities look. I do like this idea of a Black/Green walker, one that kills but uses the dead to create new life. I definitely think I would cut the life gain from the ultimate and make them 1/1s or bigger, both to balance the text better and to leave behind something with a little more power behind it. The -X is very reminiscient of Chandra, Flamecaller, but I’m pretty sure to balance such a powerful ability, the card can’t have an “Ultimate” ability. It’s also awkward that two abilities are board wipes; I would probably look at changing the -X into something else.

Thanks for the submission! Two points!

@noyan-dar:

It sorta looks like she’s using the corpses to grow something? so i went with that instead of an easier reanimate effect. And since we’re on Innistrad she’s a vampire with madness.

Full-art frame because nice vertical art.no madness flavour text because room and my version of MSE doesn’t have the updated version of that.

I like that flavoring of a vampire farmer “growing” your creatures with the corpses of the dead. I would even go so far as to say it could get away with being a 2/3 for three mana, though that may be pushing it. 

Thanks for the submission! Two points! (I’ll let Madness slide since it’s in the reminder text)

@goblintinkering:

Commentary: The little vines growing from her brood remind me very much of the Thallid creatures, and so I decided to interpret it as such. Perhaps this is in a world where the fungus are once again among us; I do love the Thallids and wish to see the mechanic again soon. I hope that having the creature be black doesn’t disqualify me from the bonus challenge!

I definitely like the callback to the Thallid mechanic. However, all of the modern spore counter designs remove spore counters to make Saprolings, and then sacrifice Saprolings to do some kind of effect. That’s one of the defining things of the Thallid mechanic that sets it apart from being just flavorful charge counters, and I think sticking to that is a better idea than using them for other effects. Of course, you couldn’t use a sacrifice ability and meet the challenge, but a future version of this card probably wants to sacrifice Saprolings, and maybe have a way of making them on its own.

Thanks for the submission! Two points!

@diamondfodder:

no commentary

I like that this card has an effect for both your creature dying and your opponent’s creature dying. I would probably adjust the wording on the first ability to reflect Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet’s ability; partially because it works better in the rules, and partially because completely hosing graveyard strategies isn’t fun. At least let the tokens die!

Thanks for the submission! One point!

@nyx-fleece-bamf:

Black Veil Bride anyone? No? Okay. Well, being immersed in the return to Innistrad, as we all are, I of course saw this art and immediately thought “BURN THE WITCH!” I originally didn’t want to make her Legendary, but felt that her ability was a bit much to be able to use repeatedly without releasing the previously captured creatures.So here you have it! The infamous Witch of the Shaderose, luring men into her hypnotic embrace! The design challenge proved considerably more difficult than I anticipated, I mean, the artwork is a lady in black, with weird zombie-plants (which were the original focus of my idea, a B/G witch who summoned weird colorless Plant Golems) so both Zombie and Black were difficult to avoid, and then you had to go and throw in Target, Sac, and Discard! But, such is life. Hope I did a decent job!

A bit of insight into why I chose the words I chose: this artwork was very clearly going to be a Black spell, and I wanted to make sure you all had to spend extra time designing it, instead of just getting to make an easy Black card. So, first, I banned the word “Black.” Then, I figured the easiest thing to do would be to make a Zombie-token maker, so I nixed “Zombie.” I also wanted to avoid cop-out removal spells, so I killed “Target” and “Sacrifice”, and “Discard” for good measure.

As for this card, that is a lot of conditional riders for that ability. I think it’s definitely interesting, though: it’s likely to get one creature, or could steal multiple tokens quite easily. I think it’s reasonable, especially for a Rare power level. You may even be able to get by with a little extra toughness.

Thanks for the submission! Two points!

@amtgplayer:

Irina used to be a human botanist mage before some unknown circumstance destroyed her home plane and ignited her spark. Her first planeswalk was to Ravnica, where she arrives right in the Golgari territory. She learns necromancy in Golgari, and develops her unique kind of necromancy, before she was driven away from Ravnica by Vraska because she has no interest in participating in Vraska’s shadowy plans. Now she wanders from plane to plane, with no home she could return to.

Despite her title, Irina is really more experienced at dealing with plants than dealing with corpses. She could only make the most out of fresh corpses, so she sometimes has to take risks collecting them. Anyway, she hates waste as much as the next member of Golgari, so she seeks to find a use for everything she could put her hands on, although some may criticize that her rash methods are not the best for fully utilizing available resources.

//

Well, I guess my character profile sucks, since I’m bad at creative writing and I’m not even a native speaker of English. Nevertheless, this is my flavor explanation for my necromancer planeswalker who eschews black Zombies in favor of green Plants, cares about cards going to a graveyard rather than discarding or sacrificing, and avoids targeting in all three of her abilities.

Also, I would love an MSE template for planeswalkers with one very long ability and two short ones, like Gideon, Champion of Justice, but I couldn’t find one, and making one myself seems like too much work (actually I don’t even know how MSE templates work, although I’m willing to explore).

And it may be a little too early to worry about typesetting anyway, because this card probably need a lot of development changes…

Don’t sell yourself short: creative writing (and writing, and speaking languages, and card design, and basically everything) is a product of practice;  the more you do it, the better you get at it. If you enjoyed writing that character profile, I encourage you to keep doing it, and you’ll slowly find yourself getting better at it :)

I also applaud you for working around MSE’s unfortunate template to make something workable for that second ability. That’s definitely my favorite ability on this card, by the way: it’s super interesting, and gives the card a cool recursion effect without being too “breakable.” It should probably just be your creatures, so you can’t use her to turn your removal spells into Mind Controls.

I also like the plant token angle, and giving them defender reflects her apparent tendancy to be more defensive. The giant overrun effect at the end is certainly flavorful, as well. The +1 is the one that I’m the least optimistic about. I could easily see the graveyard had being wiped and just letting it be a 01/ token producer (or maybe two, since they have Defender).

Thanks for the submission! Two points!

[blackdeckwins]

CardsFromArt Challenge #28!

Art by Benjamin Ee

Source: http://theboyofcheese.deviantart.com/art/Benjamin-ee-necromancer-final-606948076

Welcome, everyone, to the twenty-eighth CardsFromArt Challenge, where I find a piece of fantasy art online and you come up with an awesome design based on that piece of artwork! There are a few ways for you to participate in this challenge:

For the busy tumblr card creation aficionado who may not be able to create a mock-up of the card, simply reblog this post with a text version of your card! Something similar to this will work perfectly:

Name - mana cost Type - subtype, rarity ability/abilities, power/toughness

I’ll create a full image of the card, and give you a few friendly critiques.

If you’re already a user of Magic Set Editor (or mtgcardsmith or a similar card-making program), just reblog this post with a full mockup of your card, and I’ll comment/reblog them with some suggestions. Just remember to include the artist’s credit!

You can find more information about the rules and such in the CFAC Comprehensive Rules Guide.

This week, we’re taking a look at a piece called Necromancer by Benjamin Ee. It felt like a very nice piece for a necromancer card, and should allow you guys to have free reign creating your own characters. Well, not total free reign...

Bonus Challenge: This week, I’m giving you all a challenge I like to call forbidden words. I’m going to list five words that are commonly found on Magic cards. To complete the bonus challenge, you wan’t use any of the five words in your design. The words for this challenge are: Zombie, Target, Sacrifice, Black, and Discard. This also counts for any other forms of those words: no “targets”, “zombies”, or “discarded”. Successfully create a card without those four words that still fits the artwork, and you’ll complete the bonus challenge!

Weekly Winners: First, the card that I like the most will be awarded a bonus point, and will be added to the CFAC Hall-of-Fame. Then, the coolest Legendary Creature submitted to the competition will be awarded one bonus point. Next, the coolest non-Legendary creature card will be awarded one bonus point. Finally, my favorite non-creature card will also be given one bonus point.

Good luck to everyone! I know the difficulty is a bit ramped up: remember that the bonus challenge is completely optional, and you’re 100% welcome to just make an awesome card with the artwork and submit it: you’re still eligible for the Weekly Winners challenges!

If anyone has questions, don’t hesitate to contact me and ask! You have until 11:59 pm on Friday, May 13, 2016 to submit your entries!