First up, I’ll legit be disappointed if Kaldheim doesn’t reference the viking concept of dying in battle in some way.
This is basically a Morbid variant and easily one of the best custom mechanics I’ve ever designed. It also seems like such low hanging fruit to me for a viking top down set.
Second, this one is based on a recent leaked card. I’m not showing the potential leak, but if you don’t want any ideas about what it might be, don’t look under the read more.
If the leak is real then this is basically the Foretell mechanic. It’s templated a bit differently and does function differently, but it’s pretty cool to basically see my mechanic printed in a set.
Meditate is a mechanic that I designed along with @magicarasa, and is an alteration and more open version of prowess. Instead of just giving a creature +1/+1, it does all sorts of different things.
When making this mechanic, i first started of trying to figure out a White/Red mechanic, when magicarasa suggested that i do something along the lines of “Offend - Whenever a player casts a noncreature spell, [effect].” (I then ended up finding a White/Red mechanic so I decided to possibly put this in U/R.) The mechanic seemed neat enough and the flavor was pretty cool (when your opponent does stuff you get offended and so you do stuff to get them back), the only problem was that it discouraged playing cards, and while one or two cards that do that is okay in a set, having a whole mechanic which discourage players from playing any noncreature spells didn’t really seem like the thing that the set wanted to be doing. I then changed the mechanic too “Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, [effect]”, and then magicarasa came up with the name Meditate.
For this week’s challenge, featuring an Dryad in a tranquil forest, I restricted everyone’s designs by restricting the numbers: Throughout the entire card, each submission could only use one number, though it could use the number multiple times. Thankfully, we did not end up with anyone who tried to be funny and chose “1″ and submitted an 11/11. We saw tons of interesting designs within the restrictions but only one (er, three) can be the winner(s)!
Originally, I was going to award one bonus point to my favorite of each number, but that would be, like, ten categories, and I just didn’t want to do that much work. So, today, we have three bonus points to hand out!
Category 1: My favorite card designed around an odd number.
This category’s winner chose the number 3, and instead of going with a creature, it went with a sorcery. Then, it found the interesting things that Green could do that revolved around the number three, and mashed them all into one crazy card of do-a-lot-of-nothing. But, I found it to be pretty cool, and couldn’t help but smile as I read it (and researched all the effects to see if it was properly costed (it was)). This category’s winner is...
Dryad’s Remembrance by @noyan-dar! Congratulations, you will receive one bonus point.
Category 2: My favorite card designed around an even number.
It may seem odd to go for an even card that’s also a sorcery, but I loved the call-out to another Magic card (even if it doesn’t actually draw two cards). It revolved around the number 2, a popular decision this week. This category’s winner is...
Consult the Leaves by @magicarasa! Congratulations, you will receive one bonus point.
Category 3: My overall favorite card for the week.
Usually when I turn on my laptop Friday night of each week, I catch myself rolling my eyes at the last-minute entries. And there’s not a problem with the later entries: they’re within the deadline, so it’s all good. I just can’t help but go “ugh, I have more things to do before I can do other things.”
This Friday, however, I was pleasantly surprised to find an incredibly interesting tutoring card that had a unique condition: it could tutor up any land, as long as one with the same name wasn’t already on the battlefield. That kind of a utility card was super interesting to me, and my mind went straight to trying to figure out what kinds of lands I would want to include in a deck with it. And when a custom card gets me thinking about deck building that much, I can be pretty sure it’s a winner. This category’s winner is...
Walker of Expanses by @crucibleofcustoms! Congratulations, you will receive one point, and your card will be added to the CFAC Hall of Fame!
Thanks to everyone for participating this week, and keep your eyes peeled for CFAC #32 later today!
CFAC #30 was filled with interesting submissions that tried to work around the seven-line-text limit, and the competition was fierce. However, after much deliberation, I’ve come to a personal consensus on this week’s CardsFromArt Challenge, and I’ve figured out this week’s winners. Let’s take a look!
Category 1: Favorite card that used only one line of text (32 chars or less)
Okay, so, this category wasn’t hard to figure out, because there was only one entry! This was a pretty restrictive challenge, but it let me push the envelope to see how deep the average contestant was willing to go: and the answer was, not this far. This category’s winner is...
Clipped-Wing Crow by @thekillershrub! Congratulations, you’ll receive one bonus point.
Category 2: Favorite non-Human creature
Here is where the decisions became difficult. All of the entries basically boiled down to birds and faeries (as expected). In the end, the bird side won out. This category’s winner is....
Witchhunter’s Raven by @noyan-dar! The card may be a bit aggressively costed, but it felt appropriate for the colors and appropriate for the artwork, and is a good card overall. Congratulations, you’ll receive one point!
Category 3: Favorite non-creature spell
This category was pretty open, and I received submissions that matched it for pretty much each applicable card type. In the end, I went with a submission that was a cool twist on a classic design. This category’s winner is...
Fragile Wish by @amtgplayer! I like the twist on the classic wish, and that it was pretty appropriately costed for such a unique effect. Congratulations, you will receive one point!
Finally, the overall winner
This card jumped out at me for being a cool design that was likely to play differently whenever you play it, puts some control in the opponent’s hands with a high chance for punishment, without being as bad as the usual “punisher” cards. This week’s overall winner is...
The Raven Man’s Lantern by @magicarasa! Congratulations; you’ll receive one point, and your card will be added to the CFAC Hall of Fame!
Thanks for everyone for participating! CFAC #31 will be up later today, and I can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with this week.
Another afternoon, another round of submissions! If you want to get in on the CFAC action, there are still a few days left to enter! Check out the challenge’s information here!
Today, we’ve got a bevy of lords and removal spells, along with a single enchantment that branches outside of the obvious Black/White options. Follow the jump to take a look!
Art by Conor Burke
@amtgplayer:
What’s funny is that, when I looked at this piece, both parts of it reminded me of Valorous Stance. Therefore I decided to make a variant of Valorous Stance.
Confrontation would be an Entwine-like mechanic which flavorfully represents the conflict between a Human faction and a non-Human faction on a plane like Innistrad or maybe FRF Tarkir. The design space may be somewhat small (must be on modal spells that can reasonably target either/both your creature or/and your opponent’s creature), but I believe it’s not hard to make one or two cycles out of it.
I agree that it’s quite a small design space, though it may be worth keywording for a few cycles; this feels like a keyword for a supplemental product rather than a main set, though that’s not a bad thing. 2W sounds fine for the costing: my gut reaction for cards like this is “cost it more than it would if you could only choose one, but less than you would if you could always choose both.” 1W is the former and I’d say 3W or maybe 2WW is the latter, so 2W sounds like a good compromise.
Thanks for the submission! Two points!
@nyx-fleece-bamf:
So as a fan of Dark Souls and Bloodbourne, I decided to go and make an “against all odds” type enchantment for all the knightly types out there. And what says chivalric, boisterous, knight-errant better than Don Quixote W/R? I decided to make an enchantment that supports knights, a oft-looked over type like Warrior, or Wizard that has some support, but not much. And I think that should be rectified.
Well now I want a windmill-fighting card.
I like the design. It may be a tad complex, and a bit too powerful: I would tag a mana cost to giving it the buffs, and maybe remove the one from getting a token. If I didn’t reduce the cost, I would say make the token bigger: 1/1′s are the realms of soldiers, and Knights should be slightly larger. And the vigilance in the top ability is pointless, because your creature is already attacking. I would shorten it to just +2/+0 and indestructible.
Thanks for the submission! Two points!
@acting4life97:
Took a step back to some simpler design this week. The flavor of more knights on a team making it easier to take down whatever foe they may be facing seemed to be a good way to take this card, but I wanted to use it in a way that incorporated the creature type idea. This kill spell may be somewhat situational, but if the whole set was designed around medieval type mythology such as that portrayed in the art, I think it would see plenty of use.
We do have past removal spells that targeted a specific creature type, so that’s not out of the question. I’m not a huge fan, though: it’s just so likely to be dead in a lot of situations. I would prefer a card that for example, tapped a creature, but if it was a Demon or Zombie, destroy it.
Affinity for Knights is also an interesting concept, but I would be hesitant after it’s been so broken in the past. I would probably put this at 2WW, because if the “affinity for knights” part is going to be relevant, there have to be a lot of knights, and if there are a lot of knights, this card gets really cheap.
Thanks for the submission! Two points!
@keyla-lovely:
The art isn’t Innistradi in nature, but the first thing I thought when I saw this art was a Champion of the Parish after being killed and raised again, still with some semblance of what his purpose once was.
I suppose it does have that type of stance/feel about it. Part of me wishes there was something more “zombie” about it other than being a higher-costed version of Champ. Perhaps also having Diregraf Colossus’ ability to get counters for the zombies in the graveyard, in addition to what it currently has?
Thanks for the submission! Two points!
@noyan-dar:
I couldn’t decide between Zombies and Knights so i went with both. Thematically it sorta works as if the presence of the giant lich dude turns other knights into zombies and zombies into knights, hence the vigilances and deathtouches. I was considering hybrid mana instead of straight-multicolour but it would make it too easy to use in both decks.
You would also have the mess of a Black creature with vigilance and a White creature with deathtouch if you went with hybrid, so I’m glad you didn’t. I like cross-over tribal cards, and I think tribal-leaning blocks definitely need them to allow color pairs to coexist properly. It seems appropriately costed and flavorful for the art.
Thanks for the submission! Two points!
@magicarasa:
Righteous Stand is a bit of stretch as far as white removal goes but it targets creature types that are predominately black, all monsters that white sees as inherently evil threats to the world and worthy of destruction.
I think this falls flavorly into “preemptive justice” and mechanically for “removal with restrictions” for White, so it seems fine to me on that front. I’m less of a fan of hyper-niche removal, but I suppose a set with this in it will be loaded with targets. At the point that it reaches, though, there’s almost no reason for this to not be “destroy target black creature” (outside of the bonus challenge, of course).
Playing around with @magicarasa‘s Good Death mechanic.
One issue occurred to me as I made these. I’d like to push the death triggers now that sac outlets don’t work with them, but...you can still use sac outlets if you just attack first.
Is “dies as a result of combat damage” legal wording?
