#winner's post

[inventors-fair]

Three winners will visit you

Congratulations to our winners @stormtide-leviathan, @fractured-infinity and @snugz. Rest in pe- your laurels!

Spirit’s Will: This design grants Haunt instead of having it, I can’t deny its incredible flavor and power. Its once per turn limitation allows it to fly past enemy radars and to have a cheap cost. While Blue isn’t known for its creature destruction, you can always try to haunt creatures about to die and reap your reward.

The Binding of the Eldrazi: Not gonna lie, I was surprised to see Sagas in the inbox. They are a good candidates for having Haunt because they have an expiration date, but I was curious if they would feel right. Turns out Haunt can be used as an element of the story the Saga tries to tell, and the execution was on point! Turning the haunted creature into the jailer of your enemies is nothing but awesome! The only tiny flaw I can find is probably the cost of the card because it offers great effects for just 5 mana.

Realmbreaker: The name alone sets the stage for something big! The effect of the card is as splashy as it gets. I mean, who doesn’t like having a TON of mana, especially in EDH. Love the fact you picked evoke as the second mechanic to appear on the card, and that it costs a bit more, because immediate access and control over the death trigger is extremely important!

[inventors-fair]

Winner Tsunami!! Big Splash Contest Winners

A big round of applause for this week’s winners!!!

General’s Inspiration @i-am-the-one-who-wololoes

Hollis, Thessisf Dispatcher @wilsonosgoodmcman

Joraga Gigantomancer @kytheon4-4

Before continuing on the commentary for each of those stellar cards, let me tell you some things about the challenge as a whole. While I feel the ratio of cool to normal cards was higher than usual, the same was also true cards that missed the point of the challenge vs the cards that didn’t. But I think it’s partly my fault because maybe I didn’t deliver it as loud as I should.

That said, I think that designs that were placed in the group commentary are stellar, and could have been winners in their own right in a different time. Again, thanks everyone for sending their designs. This week was full of surprises!

On to the winners!

General’s Inspiration: I don’t keep track of the contest winners, but I feel this is the first time I’m picking i-am-the-one-who-wololoes , one of the biggest fans of the Fair, as winner and I’m really happy! Maybe as happy as winning clashes! Love the fact that the three colored enchantment has three abilities, and they tie into each other nicely! Also like the fact that you associate clash and fight. About the power level, I feel it depends on what’s already on the board, but it will certainly have an impact worth more 3 mana for sure!

Hollis, Thessisf Dispatcher: The wording on this card as a whole is damn witty, it shows you gave serious thought about everything like any Dimir Azorius spy that respects their job! Reusing exiled cipher cards was something that the mechanic desperately needed, and the damage splitting both for you and the opponents is strong, balanced and fresh! Can’t even imagine the political power of this bad boy on the kitchen table!

Joraga Gigantomancer @kytheon4-4 While the other two winners got their “A” for effort and elegance, Joraga Gigantomancer is the card that I feel embodies the spirit of the challenge best. Simple, fun, splashy, and if you do the math, you will also see that it’s a bomb in disguise, rivaling the power of the dreaded Craterhoof. On top of that, both the art and the name of this Timmy-god are throwbacks to two Zendikar cards, Gigantomancer and  Gigantiform.  What’s not to love?            

[inventors-fair]

Number 1 of Twenty-Twenty One!!

Happy new year everyone!!! Thanks for sending cards for yet another year and for making the fair big and vibrant!!

I proudly present to you the winners of the new years resolution design challenge. It was really hard to pick them, because the goal was to explore and bend/break established patterns and not to make jaw dropping monstrosities XD The message you collectively sent with your submissions was that white is in need of some new toys. On to the winners!

With Communal Expedition, @koth-of-the-hammerpants suggests that white could use the gimmick of a handful of past card that require a specific number of creatures to be tapped as an additional cost for a solid reward. Given that convoke is one of the most popular mechanics, I could see Wizards opening up more space in this direction for white. I don’t know if that will include the actual effect of the card, a ramp effect, as white isn’t as mana greedy a color as green or red.

@kavinika​‘s Lion Zoomecha making a grand entrance showcasing a new mechanic that’s the lovechild of equip and mutate! Artifact creatures combining with one another might not be something feasible on many planes but the idea is certainly cool and the same is true for execution. I grew up watching power rangers after all. The design is very enticing but the rarity might need an upgrade because the promise of repeated fighting could warp the draft table around this shiny tiger.

@dumbellsndragons​ revisits the very successful, and IMO criminally underused, concept of card grouping that was introduced on Dominaria with historic. Combat Exemplar is the super glue that brings together three card types that are brothers in arms, knights, soldiers and warriors. I can’t imagine any white creature deck not wanting to slam as many copies of this as possible. Oh, and on top of that, the flavor text is pure gold! 2021 started off strong!!

Stay tuned for the group commentary on the weekend!

[inventors-fair]

Bargain Win

Congratulations to our winners @corporalotherbear​, @fractured-infinity​ and @reaperfromtheabyss​!!! And sorry I was a bit late this week, been super busy. Let’s talk Magic!

Mox Crystal was probably the biggest surprise the fair offered me in a while.      It may be practically useless on its own, like every 0 mana card that respects itself, but the mutate ability is very clever, has a nice impact on a casual game and it’s an insane addition to any mutate matters deck.

As for Fleeting Changeling, I kinda expected that a card like that would be submitted, but the execution exceeded my expectations. Being both an enchantment and an artifact creature makes it a truly universal fodder for any    “X matters deck” and the name, the image and more importantly that cheeky flavor text!! This design literally has everything!

On to Fresh Neonate! Just because a card has 0 cost,it doesn’t have to be played or even be relevant on turn 1. Only a handful of entries were created with this principle in mind, and I think this young vampire is their best representative. The card as a whole tells a story and though it lacks power, it can be very relevant in the right deck!

Again, congrats to our winners and thanks everyone for participating!

[inventors-fair]

Enter the Elite Four*!! “I wanna be the very best” winners!!

Congratulations @greensunzenith, @mardu-lesbian, @dabudder​,​ and @illharg-the-rave-boar. Let’s go over each individual design and see what caught my eye in each of them.

Suicune, the North Wind’s design captures the elusive nature of roaming Pokemon in the game. Every time you meet them, it feels amazing, and encounter after encounter, you get better at finding them, as long as you don’t accidentally beat them with an out-of-nowhere critical hit XD

Lugia was the most popular Pokemon of the contest, and in Sea-Dwelling Guardian we have a great defensive card utilizing ability counters that encourages you to play other big creatures and it nets you some cards too. The use of the full art frame adds to its already high epicness!!

Kyurem, Glacial Infuser was both good as a top down approach and also an interesting card mechanically. I really like how you represented its relation with Reshiram and Zekrom with the use of counters! For 2WBUU it reaches its full potential as a 6/6 flying lifelink creature that can freeze up to three nonland permanents for each successful hit. Give it a couple of turns and it can snatch control of the game!

Like Lugia, Deoxys was also a card with multiple submissions, and that’s only logical because its mutable nature can be express in many ways.

In Master of Destinies, the three activated abilities each represent the speed, defense and attack form is a really nice way and I like how you can switch between forms if you got mana to spare. Also I think it’s funny how Deoxys is a red blue Pokemon and it has a red blue design that feels very natural for what it is meant to do!! Good job!

*I wanted to pick 3 winners, but hey I had to slam “Elite Four”. “Who’s the champion” you ask? Maybe it’s you, maybe the friends we made along the way.

[inventors-fair]

Hello everyone and again, sorry for the delay. For the cycle challenge I decided to pick one colored and one colorless design, so @dabudder and @scavenger98 congratulations!!

Impulse Skeins adds a red card to the Black-Blue pair of skeins from Dissension! A really cool choice for the cycle expansion, and a well executed card. I wonder if it could even cost one since it’s a sorcery. Bonus points were given for the natural continuation of the flavor text. Now the cycle needs two more cards of sudden revelations between guild members.

Chancellor of the Spheres. Boy oh boy! It is the colorless card that expands the completed cycle of the chancellors of New Phyrexia. A really big surprise with a super splashy start of the game trigger. The things you could do with it... like playing Primalcrux for the tiny price of 18 life! Or 15 life for the spirit avatar megacycle.Turn 1 Deus of Calamity seems super fun XD And like impulse skeins, Chancellor comes with a rad flavor text! All will be one!

[inventors-fair]

The Winning Formula

Congrats @teaxch​ for this blazing hot set of cards!

A hero wielding a corrupted weapon was a really nice trope to explore and it was delivered very nicely! Not only that, but the two cards can stand on their own very well, so fusing them is not just the purpose of their existence but rather a bonus!

On Ravening Wretch, it could enter the battlefield tapped and attacking to avoid all the text breaks etc, but the way it’s worded now gives the rest of your team a chance to attack twice. Once on their own and then Ravening Wretch joins them.

And, as the trope goes, it’s only the hero that dies. The weapon returns, waiting for a new master to empower, and eventually destroy.

All in all, this design challenge was a wild ride and you all deserve a round of applause for participating! Designing two cards that interact and fuse with one another was a big jump. Commentary on the rest of the submissions coming out on Saturday and Sunday! There are some pretty crazy and ambitious sets of cards to discuss!

[inventors-fair]

Perfect 10: Winners!!

Congratulations to @starch255, @ace-hobo and @machine-elf-paladin!!!

I put the winners in order of complexity for a smooth commentary, so let’s start with Killing Spree! Adding instant speed to cards increases both their impact factor and their mana cost and is a great method to reach the ideal 10 mana card. Both choices of Hero’s Downfall and instant speed In Garruk’s Wake are tremendous and together they create a stellar card that would be a chase rare for both standard and EDH!

Oh, the expertise cycle.. the memories and the seer value of each and every one of those cards. Today a sixth card, Temporal Expertise joins the family! I really like the fact that you tweaked the “free cast” part of the card so you can cast cards with combined converted mana cost rather than the usual “cast a card that’s one mana cheaper than the spell”, because a deck running this baby is likely to not have many other expensive cards to fully take advantage of the feature.

All-pack Alpha! I knew this would be a wild ride from the name alone! Flexible cost ranging from 1G to 5WUBRG*, simple and complex, while staying true to the green identity because all 4 abilities it grants is part of package.

*The full cost is a 2/2 that gives +4/+4 trample, vigilance, hexproof and haste to the team.